This Burning Man (Future Arizona Book 1)

by Kris Holt

  Jensen wasn't going to be fooled. He knew he was up against pros, and he also knew that a rifle is not the gun you want in an enclosed space. He brought it up as Mar's own pistol came down. The two weapons clashed and both spun away like lost cartwheels. Jensen retreated to the far end of the cavern as Mar approached, moving in front of my line of fire.

  'Mar, I can't get a clean shot at him.'

  'Then don't take one.' She stopped for a moment as Jensen skulked away, lifted her arms and allowed her coat to slip off her shoulders. The clothes beneath were non-descript – a ragged, dirty top and khaki combats – but I knew the message she was sending. The show was over, it was time to fight. No image, no distractions. One-on-one. The way that bounty hunters had always fought.

  Jensen watched the girl intently as she drew Cass's knife from her belt and brandished it in his direction.

  'This is my friend's knife, the one you killed. Her name was Cass.'

  Jensen didn't blink. 'Cass should have watched her back. Maybe she'd still be alive now.'

  'Are you ready?' Mar said.

  Jensen laughed to himself, though it was a weary, sluggish gesture. Turning half away from Mar, he shrugged in my direction.

  'This is where we are now? You're gonna let the women do the fighting?'

  'I reckon she does it best,' I said, and was shocked to find that I actually believed it.

  'You know, I always liked you, boy. But you're letting the side down here. This is sad for everyone.' I was reflecting that it sounded like something Piano Man might have said when Jensen whipped around, slipped a machete out from somewhere within the folds of his combat jacket and brought it down on Mar with all his strength.

  His blade was bigger than hers, and his muscles were too. But that girl was smart; she didn't try to block his swing outright. Instead, she just deflected it away with the flat, using Jensen's own momentum against him. A lesser opponent would have stumbled but Jensen was balanced in a flash, moving around, making sure his back was never open to me. As the fight began in earnest, I saw a flash of doubt in Mar's eyes. She'd expected Jensen to be fast, but maybe he was faster even than that.

  I watched her dive in, feint, swing her blade back around only for him to drift in and out of range like a ghost in the night. As Jensen orbited Mar, probing at her defenses, so I circled around myself in the space, trying to find an angle.

  There was a fourth body too, and I remembered the scientist from earlier all too late as he appeared from nowhere and pushed the hovertrike into my side, sending me sprawling. I was only half-up when the trike hit me again, in the side of the face. The next thing I knew was the immense weight of the truck as it landed on my chest, grinding me down into the dirt of the cavern, crushing the breath and the life out of me.

  The trike throbbed with spent power, roaring, tearing my flesh as it rolled over and off me. There was a flash of pink in the near-dark as Mar produced a flying kick that launched its driver into the wall and down onto his face. With her distraction came Jensen's moment. Stalking her, seizing her neck between his hands, he lifted Mar upright and slammed her down next to me. The girl lifted Cassie's knife, but he was easily able to turn it in her grasp and point the blade down at her heart.

  Kneeling astride her, Jensen barked at me. 'Get up! I want you to see this. I want you to watch her die.'

  My pistol had to be here somewhere, within reach, but I didn't even know whether it still had charge. Just sucking in air was painful enough to make my vision go black. A hero would find the energy, but I didn't know if I was hero enough.

  I looked to Mar to see Cassie's dark eyes staring back at me. She opened her mouth wide, wider than human. A dark, spirit tongue licked out from within, and Piano Man's voice hissed from her mouth.

  'It's not always about you,' she said, and the lights flickered.

  Jensen's eyes were searching for me, desperate for my attention. His teeth gritted as he tried to force the blade down, but by the time he did so, Mar had wriggled away beneath him, sliding away between his legs. He tried to get upright but the second he had spent staring at me was all the time the dark angel needed. Standing above him as he was trapped on his knees, she pinned one of his arms in a perfect hammer lock and brought Cassie's blade, still between the fingers of his other hand, up to his throat. Where the blade touched his skin, the tiniest red line formed and a single drop of blood oozed to the floor.

  I stayed still, sitting before him. Beaten, stuck tight in Mar's grip, Jensen could only spit at me through his teeth.

  For a second, the silence was perfect. Then Jensen began to wail, sounds of some deep inner humiliation from a time before he had words, and he tried unsuccessfully to shake himself free.

  'That's why she does the fighting,' I said, and kicked him unconscious from my sitting position before he could reply.

  Chapter 39 – Starting Over

  Mar and I helped one another upright. I think it was the first time we'd ever actually touched. I wasn't sure who was providing most help to who. Certainly, I was grateful she was there.

  'Nice moves there,' I said, always ready with an understatement.

  'I always had it under control,' she replied, acid tongue firmly in cheek.

  'Cass would have been proud of you, Marigold.' Those words slipped out before I could stop them, and then I found myself thinking that it was true and that it was a good name, and there was no shame in saying anything that I'd said.

  Still, I was surprised when Mar half-smiled, and then full-smiled. She grew in that moment as her face came to life, holy in the dark.

  'I felt like she was there during the fight, watching over me,' she said, and side-eyed me, like she expected me to judge her. After what I'd seen, I couldn't say for sure what was true and what was not. There was only what I said, and what needed to be said.

  'You saved my life,' I said. 'Again. Thank you.'

  Mar waved a hand like bets were off. 'No big deal. Anyone could get run over by a hovertrike. Keep a tab. Buy me a drink for each one.' Unspoken was the knowledge that every fully-stocked bar on the planet was burning to a crisp right as we spoke.

  Everything, everywhere, was burning.

  Everything except us, the Hole Town army, people who'd made it to a place of sanctuary, provided we could take back ownership of our own. And somewhere way beneath the last battle as it played out, two people, tired from their own fight, lying down in the cool like it was all over.

  It wasn't, of course.

  'Did you hear what he said about your girls in the barracks?' I asked.

  That put the fire back in Mar's limbs. 'That's where he took them?'

  'That's what he said.'

  'Then that's where I'm going,' she replied, walking back the way she'd come in, dragging the unconscious soldier behind her by the collar. 'Are you coming?'

  'Nope.' I shook my head. 'You got to avenge Cassie and save your sisters. But there's a bad still standing and I have a job to do. Nate Di Vio is mine. He started this whole thing – he's the bounty.'

  Perhaps she was hurting more than she was letting on; for a moment, Mar stopped, like she didn't want to leave me to fight alone. But I knew she'd already chosen, and that I wasn't the choice she'd made.

  'Go to them,' I urged.

  'Be careful in there,' she warned.

  'Don't worry about me. I'm a hunter,' I said. 'This is what I do.'

  When she'd gone, I hauled up the scientist from earlier, marched him down the stairs and pressed his face into the steel door next to the entry panel.

  'I can handle you lying to me earlier,' I said, 'But your ambush with the hovertrike, well, that was just unfriendly. You might wanna reflect on that now.' I pressed the barrel of the pistol into his cheek, just below his eye.

  'I...won't do it,' he whimpered.

  'Oh, you will,' I said, leaving him in no doubt as to what I'd do to him if he didn't. 'The lights on the side here tell me that I've got one good charge left in this baby. A laser will burn through a d
oor, even a steel one. Of course, I'd rather save the charge for something else, but it's up to you.'

  Slowly, the scientist lifted a shaky bloodsoaked hand to the panel, entered a four-digit number and the panel above us went green. As it hissed open, I banged his head on the door a couple of times for good measure and left him unconscious on the walkway.

  And now. Time for one more prayer, one last candy jack, and then it's the big bad. This is what it's all about. Doing the job, bringing it home.

  Immediately beyond the doorway, the walkway split in two either side of a huge, fluorescent-lit pool beneath a rocky, domed ceiling. A generator hummed to one side as I stepped slowly into the room.

  I was readying my taser when I saw Di Vio, dressed in a lab coat beneath his silver cloak, standing on a raised platform above the reservoir.

  'Nate Di Vio,' I called.

  Di Vio looked around when he saw me. The whole right side of his face was a purple knot of bruising and crumpled bone. He began to twitch furiously, though I couldn't be sure if this was related to his anger or his injuries.

  'Seeing as I don't give a snowball's chance in hell to your boy Jensen's chances of living long enough to stand trial, I'm holding you personally responsible for the murder of my friend Cassie, shot down a couple of hours ago at the celebration you organised out in the desert.' I took a couple of steps towards him. 'I'm also holding you responsible for the deaths of all of the citizens of Hole Town and of your own men in the fight going on upstairs right now.

  I hadn't expected him to come quietly, and Nate Di Vio didn't disappoint. 'You. I recognise you from the camp. Who in hell do you think you are? First of all you destroy my cannon, and now you've brought barbarian hordes to my door!'

  'You're also the chief suspect in the kidnapping of a number of young women, including my sister Rat, who your men left to burn in a ceremonial effigy in the desert.'

  'Thanks to you,' he screamed, 'I nearly died!'

  'In addition to those heinous crimes, you stand accused of one count of religious desecration within jurisdiction of a President's quartermaster. Not to mention you've committed about a million other crimes against humanity and all that's holy in the meantime.'

  I was a hundred percent by the book on this one. It had been so long since I'd actually said the subsequent words to anyone that I was surprised I remembered them. But some things are like day and night. They stay with you and become part of you.

  'With the authority afforded to me by the state of Arizona, I am placing you under arrest for your crimes. Surrender your weapons and come peacefully.'

  That cratered face sneered, tapered lines running across the space between his bright red hair and the top of the silver cloak that had saved his life earlier by protecting him from the explosion in the cab. He said, 'Everything. I could have given you everything. There were enough supplies here that you could have bought every friend you ever made over this threshold. We have food, water, livestock, fertiliser, a seed bank. We have everything we need to build the world again.'

  'And we will rebuild it. Best believe it.'

  He sneered. 'What do you know about farming and harvests? About crop rotation, animal husbandry, plant bioscience?'

  'Not much, it's true. But I do know you have an appointment with a gallows, and I'm gonna make sure you make it there on time even if I have to learn carpentry and build the damn structure myself.'

  He spat at me. I heard it plop into the reservoir beneath him.

  Di Vio was a long way out of taser range, so I took to walking towards him. 'You brought this on yourself, y'know. Tell a lot of lies, hurt a lot of people, that's gonna come home to roost.'

  'You're an idiot. You're all idiots! Right above you now, right now, the Earth is dying. You get that, you dumbass hick? Everyone, everyone you ever knew who isn't deep underground right now is getting their ass fried.'

  'You knew about it earlier than anyone,' I said. 'You could have warned people.'

  'I didn't want to! I think it's a good thing! Earth was a cesspit of morons and fools. They all deserved to die. Them, and you.'

  Both the scientist and Jensen had said that the earlier fall had changed Di Vio. The nature of the change wasn't something they'd gone into, but it was pretty clear to me now that he was totally unstable. I'd spent my life chasing toothless hillbilly lunatics around and I was dead set that I'd never faced a man more ruthless and crazed than this one.

  He shifted in the shadow beneath the platform and yelled at me. 'You're nothing! A nothing person. A tiny mind. You don't get the implications of this. You don't see the opportunity we have to start humanity over.'

  'You had a chance to warn the world about the perihelion,' I said. 'A chance to stop millions of people dying, and you chose not to take it. I ain't too sure exactly where that stands as far as the law is concerned, but it sure as hell breaks a few personal rules of mine. And as God is my witness, I'm going to take you down first and worry about the why later on.'

  He was just about in taser range now, and I had it half-raised when he said, 'Stop. I know what you're planning.' He lifted his own hand, and I could see he was holding a tiny unstoppered vial filled with sludgy yellow liquid.

  'One more step, and I drop this poison in the water supply. One more step, and everybody who came down here is going to die of thirst before the surface becomes liveable again.'

  If Jayci was here, she'd tell me to talk down the crazy. Lord, was I missing that girl right now, but I couldn't afford to lose focus. 'C'mon now, let's not do anything we regret, hey?'

  'Regret? Oh, no,' Di Vio said, following this up with a raspy, asthmatic laugh. 'I won't regret killing you and your disgusting comrades at all.'

  As he tipped the vial, I did what I do best. I dropped the taser and had the gun out in one movement. Squeezed the trigger. It was my gun for sure, but maybe my mom's finger was right there alongside mine, showing me the way.

  The laser beam hit the vial full on, shattering the glass and vaporising the contents. Not a single drop hit that water.

  Di Vio looked shocked for a second, but rather than retreat, he advanced on me at a walking speed that would have matched most runners. I felt the full force of his fury. 'Look at you with the laser. The boy with the old tech! I heard my own people talking about you in hushed voices, like your stupid weapon is something special. If I had a month, I could produce something a hundred times the size! Do you appreciate that? Anything you can do, I've already done better.'

  I dropped the now-useless pistol and grabbed the taser. 'Funny story. This probably runs on one of your batteries.'

  He was twelve feet away when I hit him, but there was no reaction. Instead, he whipped his cloak and lab coat off, revealing the armored vest underneath that shielded him from the impact of the taser. Before I could move away, he struck me with a glancing blow that still knocked me head over heels.

  When I rolled over and shook myself, trying to clear the cobwebs, I saw a device around his arm that was hooked up to a piston behind his knuckles. It glowed with the same blue light as the ones round the pool.

  'What?' he said, when he saw I'd noticed it. 'You think you're the only one with old tech?'

  He swung a punch and the piston engaged with a force that would have separated head from shoulder if I hadn't ducked and rolled away. Fortunately, while the device made him incredibly powerful, it was also heavy enough to make his swings wild and uncontrollable. I dodged the next one and kicked out at his chest, knocking him backwards. He grunted with the impact. I could still hurt him, for sure, but if he got one blow in, it would pulversise my face like it was beefsteak.

  With no usable weapons, I needed time to formulate a plan. He chased me down the walkway and back to the doorway. I got a couple of numbers into the panel before his power fist crashed over my shoulder and into the door, leaving a crumpled dent the size of my head.

  'No way out,' he snarled. 'You die here.'

  'Not if I can help it,' I said.

  I
retreated once more, trying to judge a feint, and Di Vio pushed me back into the generator. My ribs, still sore from earlier, sang out with all kinds of hurt, but I couldn't afford to lose focus even for half a second. I sidestepped a downward blow that would have cut me in half, but that only succeeded in carving a hole in the generator. The lights wavered, and then flickered repeatedly between on and off. DiVio's power fist gave his body a blue wavering outline in the dark. It was like being attacked by a spirit.

  A quick swipe left and right as he advanced took the safety barriers off both sides of the walkway. I continued to step away from him. DiVio's features seemed twisted upon themselves, rippling like the water. His laughing face looked nothing short of demonic. 'Are you having fun yet?' he snarled.