Blood Price (Dark Places Of The Earth 1)

by Evans, Jon

Then inspiration struck. I knelt, newly adrenalized, and looked at the ground. The bullets that had missed me had plunged into the hard-baked playa surface, cracking it like a broken windshield. I reached for the nearest bullet hole and pried up a chunk of playa, a rough jagged diamond shape maybe four inches across and two inches thick. I steeled myself, told my hand not to let go, no matter what happened, until I said otherwise. I raced to the edge of the burning pool of gasoline, dipped my hand and the playa chunk in, and kept running, keeping pace with the Cessna.

  Getting that close to that burning pool of gasoline had scorched the outside of my leg, but although my right hand was now on fire, amazingly it hadn’t started to hurt yet, or I was in too much shock to feel it. I stopped, called twelve years of youthful baseball practice to mind, stepped into the throw, and hurled the gasoline-soaked, flaming chunk of playa at the Cessna as it turned towards the airstrip.

  I immediately fell full-length on my flaming hand to extinguish it. The impact on my cracked ribs made me howl with agony. But I kept my eyes open. I kept watching that jagged diamond of burning hard-baked desert soil as it whirled and cartwheeled through the air. I had aimed for the back of the propeller, but it didn’t quite get that far, the propeller wash was too strong, it broke the burning chunk of earth into a hundred tiny clods and send them spinning backwards. It looked like it disintegrated into a hundred fireflies, or a hundred matches, blown straight back from the propeller, straight towards the hissing tank of propane between the Cessna’s wheels.

  As the airplane climbed into the air, I saw a tiny blue tongue of flame beneath it.

  In the distance, the Burn began. Flames crawled up the Man’s bright blue skeleton, up the arms that today had been raised above his head, and in less than thirty seconds the Man was transformed into a gargantuan pillar of flame, amazingly bright, a second sun that cast shadows across the desert. Long shadows fell from Talena and Lawrence and Saskia and I as we stood together, from Steve as he shambled clumsily toward us, from the field of airplanes all around us. The Cessna gleamed in the Man’s firelight as it gained altitude and banked south.

  The Man burned. Whirling pillars of flame spun away from him and careened into the desert for a little ways before dissipating into smoke. Steve joined us, breathing heavily, and all five of us stood in a row, watching their airplane dwindle into the distance. It had left the playa behind, it flew above the jagged crags and promontories of the desert hills to the south. We stood and watched, squinting, and as the burning Man fell backwards onto the desert, as a gigantic bloodthirsty howl of approval rose from thirty thousand throats and echoed across the playa, the Cessna suddenly, silently, gracefully, as if it was some kind of delicate flower, unfolded into vanishing, plummeting petals of flame. Blink and you would have missed it.

  In unison, we gasped.

  It was Lawrence who broke the silence, a full minute later, when the Man had dwindled to a bonfire, gigantic but only barely visible from where we stood.

  “Christ,” he said. “I don’t know about you lot, but I could use a beer.”

  * * *

  Talena and Lawrence pushed Rogue across the playa. Saskia steered. Once they got some momentum going, we coasted across the playa with surprisingly speed. Steve and I were in the back. Steve lay on his stomach; his back was burned, and a large shard of the propane tank had bounced off his ribcage and carried a chunk of flesh away. I sat with my head slumped on my knees. I had added total exhaustion and a hand covered with burns – the pain had dwindled from “unbelievable” to “awful”, but I still breathed through gritted teeth – to my day’s catalogue of misery.

  We had left the spider-car at the airport, a kind of exchange payment for the airplane Zorana had shot to pieces. We wanted to get away from the scene so nobody could connect us to what had happened. It didn’t take long, less than twenty minutes passed between leaving the airport and arriving at Camp Crackhaus, but in that time I felt like we passed through some kind of border, out of a mad world of gunshots and depravity and hate, back into the equally mad but much more civilized world of Burning Man. It was a transition I was very glad to make.

  There was nobody at Crackhaus. We staggered in, found the cooler in the back corner of their shade structure, and opened it up, unconcerned by social niceties or the thought of being discovered stealing someone else’s beer.

  “Pabst Blue Ribbon,” Lawrence said, wrinkling his nose. “In a can. Ah well, any port in a storm. At least it’s cold.”

  He distributed four cans, popping mine open for me so I didn’t have to use my burned hand, and we sat and clicked them together. I was trying to think of an appropriate toast when Hatter walked in, dressed in a robe and a pointed wizard’s hat covered with multicoloured glow-stick stars.

  “What the – Paul? What are you doing here? What happened to Rogue?” he asked. He looked at me closer. “My God. What the hell happened to you?”

  “I fell off an art car,” I lied.He looked entirely unconvinced.

  “Hatter,” I said, “you’re my friend, right?”

  “Yes,” he said warily.

  “Then, as my friend, I need you to do me a very big favour.”

  “All right. Sure. What?”

  “Don’t ask what happened to us tonight.”

  He peered at me like he was trying to see right through my skull. Then, slowly, he nodded. “Fair enough.”

  “Also,” Lawrence added, “while you’re at it, you should probably pretend you didn’t find us drinking your beer.”

  Hatter laughed. “You’re welcome to the PBR. But Deathguild is going to want to know what happened to Rogue.”

  “I’ll set the poor girl straight,” Steve assured him. “No worries.”

  “One day I want to hear the story,” Hatter said.

  “One day I’ll tell you,” I promised.

  “Something smells like a burn,” he said. He examined me with a professional eye – like all smokejumpers, he was a trained paramedic – and winced. “Jesus Christ. Your hand. Christ. Paul, you should get your ass to the medical centre right away.”

  “We’re taking him right there,” Lawrence said defensively. “I mean, as soon as his beer is empty.”

  “As soon as his beer is empty,” Hatter said skeptically. Then he shrugged and sat on a spare chair. “Well. As long as you’re dead set on drinking. There any more in there?”

  We made it to Burning Man’s impressively clean, professional, and orderly medical centre, staffed by doctors and paramedics who also happened to be burners, about half an hour later. The medical staff listened to our outrageous lies about a homemade flamethrower that had exploded in our hands, then cleaned and patched and bandaged my many wounds, and Steve’s burnt and shrapnelled back. He too had cracked ribs, but nothing more serious. When we were finally released, my head and hand and chest still hurt like a sonofabitch, but I hardly felt the pain through my brain-dimming exhaustion. I have only vague memories of collapsing into our tent and passing out.

  Chapter 28

  Sunday: The Temple Of Honor

  On Sunday morning, Black Rock City began its long slow process of disintegration. Tents were struck, domes deconstructed, cars and trucks loaded full of cargo, burnables dumped into the Community Burn Pits that raged all day. Exodus began, cars and trucks converging on the Gate from all points of the city, leaving blank patches of desert behind where their camp had once stood, forming a long snakelike line that trickled from the Gate to paved Nevada highway that led towards Reno and the real world.

  Hatter had advised us to stay over Sunday night, so we could watch the Temple burn and avoid the worst of the exodus traffic. We would have stayed even without his advice. None of us were in the mood to pack and travel. I had a headache, countless cuts and bruises, cracked ribs, muscles so stiff they felt brittle, and a hand wrapped in gauze that hurt like it was still on fire. Steve’s back was burnt and cut in several places where shrapnel had bounced off his ribcage, but he turned down Hatter’s offer of medica
tion. I did not, and the pills from his medicine chest took some of the edge off my pain.

  I didn’t really mind the pain. It was uncomfortable and annoying, but I knew I would heal, and the pain would vanish. Any or all of the five of us could very easily have died the previous night. Walking stiffly and painfully feels like an enormously generous gift when you know that yesterday you came very close to never walking again.

  “Hey, guess what?” Talena asked me, as we strolled along the Esplanade, watching the disassembly of the big theme camps.

  “What?”

  “I think we get our life back.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Good.”

  “But I think we should move. Just in case. They still have our address. Saskia’s too.”

  “Saskia should move into a big house with roommates,” I said. “She’ll make more friends that way.”

  Talena nodded.

  “Where do you want to move to?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Maybe the Sunset?”

  “Don’t make assumptions.”

  I looked at her cautiously. “What kind of assumptions?”

  “Like staying in San Francisco.”

  I stopped walking. She followed suit.

  “What exactly are you asking?” My voice was quiet.

  “I’m asking you what you want,” Talena said. ” That’s all. I know I sound like the kind of stereotypical clingy neurotic woman I make fun of a lot. Well, maybe today that’s exactly what I am. I want to know. Where is your home, and do I live there? I don’t think it’s in San Francisco. Maybe I’m wrong. But that’s the question you need to answer.”

  “Today?”

  “Whenever you know,” she said.

  “What if I don’t know what I want?”

  “Then I kick your ass from here to Timbuktu.”

  We laughed louder than the half-joke deserved.

  “Okay,” she said. “The ball is now in your court, right? And you will answer my questions in a future which is measured in days, right?”

  “I will.”

  “Thank god. I declare the relationship processing part of this conversation over. You may sigh with relief.” She reached her arms above her head and stretched, catlike. “Shit, I’m still tense. Let’s go to the Hatter’s place and see if he’s got any more beer. I could go for getting seriously drunk, how about you?”

  “That sounds like a plan and a half,” I said.

  * * *

  When the Temple of Honor burned, there was no drumming, no dancing, no primitive howls in praise of destruction. Those of us who had stayed sat in solemn, peaceful rings around the Temple, thousands of us but far fewer than the throng who had stood and shrieked as the Man burnt. We spoke in whispers, reverentially. Talena and I held hands. We didn’t know where Steve and Lawrence and Saskia were. I think they made a point out of leaving Talena and I alone that day and night.

  I heard quiet sobs from all around us as the flames licked at the base of the Temple, but otherwise, we watched in utter silence as they mounted its bulbous spires and, like the Man had, briefly turned night into day. When the structure finally sagged and crashed and fell to the ground, a great quaking sigh ran through the crowd. We sat and watched it burn for a long time, before we stood and silently made our way back across the empty playa to the camps we would call home for only one more night.

  “Wait,” I said, halfway back, as we reached the thick field of ashes which had once been the Man. “Come here.” Our first words since we had sat to watch the Temple burn.

  I led her into the center of the still-warm ashes, to the exact spot above which the Man had once stood. It seemed somehow appropriate. I took both her hands in mine and stood facing her.

  “I’ve decided,” I said.

  After a moment she understood. “Oh,” she said.

  I hesitated, trying to find the right words. Talena started to shiver.

  “Tell me,” she said, her voice trembling. “Please. Don’t try to be fancy. Just tell me.”

  “I’m already home,” I said. “I’m home right now.”

  “Right – you mean here? You mean the desert? Paul – Paul, no, that’s crazy –”

  “No. I don’t mean the desert.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you,” I said. “Wherever you are. That’s my home.”

  * * *

  “Mister Wood, Miss Radovitch, good evening,” Agent Turner said, standing in her doorway. “Please come in. You’re just back from Burning Man?”

  “Wow, you guys sure get some amazing Sherlock Holmes type training,” I said. Both of us were still covered in playa dust.

  “Technically we’re not actually back yet,” Talena said. “Just on the way.”

  “Please,” Agent Turner said. “Sit down. Tell me everything.”

  Of course we didn’t tell her everything.

  “So you went to Burning Man just to be sure they were leaving the country,” Agent Turner said skeptically. “Of course. What happened to your head?”

  “I fell off an art car,” I said.

  “How clumsy of you.”

  “Let’s not dwell on my physical inabilities,” I said. “We just gave you the back door to a system used extensively by your turncoat agent. Are we boring you?”

  “No,” Agent Turner said. “Quite the opposite. An unsuspected window on their operations should help me track down Sinisa’s FBI informant quite quickly. Thank you. Well done.”

  “And what about the zombies?” Talena asked.

  “I will file a report on our discoveries with other relevant governmental agencies. Hopefully this will filter up to our elected officials and they will muster enough political will to pressure the government of Belize to act with regard to the war criminals it now shelters.”

  “File a report,” Talena said. “That’s all you’re going to do.”

  “Miss Radovich, I am sorry, I wish I could do more, but they remain far outside of FBI jurisdiction, and the only –”

  I said, “There’s one thing you’ll want to add to your report. In bold print. All capitals. We’re giving you a deadline.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “A deadline. To catch the mole and to start the wheels of justice rolling towards our friends in Belize. One month.”

  She looked at me distastefully. “And what precisely do you intend to do if I fail to meet your deadline, Mister Wood?”

  “Share the wealth,” I said. “Give a few other people the key. The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, Le Monde, I don’t know, whoever might find it interesting. Maybe CNN, it’s probably too dry for them though. But I think at least a few reporters will find Mycroft very interesting. I think a few articles about a crew of war criminals hiding just around the corner from America, and the FBI agent who colluded with them, might amp that political will you’re talking about, speed up those wheels of justice a little bit, don’t you? I’ve noticed those wheels seem to move a whole lot faster when a few million eyes are watching them.” I paused. “I don’t really mean to threaten you. I’m just saying that if you catch your mole and deal with the zombies within the next month, you’ll read fewer interesting articles about corruption within the FBI.”

  “I see,” Agent Turner said. “And you’re not a little worried that these reporters will start asking some questions about you? Because, after all, what reporters do, at least in their Platonic ideal, is unearth the truth. And I don’t believe for a second the two of you have told me anything near the complete truth of what happened at Burning Man.”

  Talena and I said nothing.

  “Do you recall when we first met?” Agent Turner asked. “And the fate of the man we discussed then?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Are you going to try to go after them yourself? Am I going to receive word sometime next month that Sinisa or Zoltan or Zorana have been found dead in a canyon in Mexico?”

  I said, “I can absolutely guarantee you that that will not
happen.”

  “Really. Is that because they are already dead?”

  “All I can tell you is the last time I saw them, they were on a plane headed for Mexico.”

  She frowned. “You are a very bright man, Mr. Wood. You and your girlfriend both. Very bright and brave and capable. So why is it that I don’t trust you one iota?”

  I squeezed Talena’s hand, smiled innocently, and said, “I really can’t imagine.”