My hand goes in my pocket for my phone, but it isn’t there either. Dumb move. A stupid reflex. I’ll have to watch that if I’m going to be here for a while, and I have a bad feeling I’m going to be.
To my left are the remains of an old trail cut into the lava stone. It looks steep and slick and dangerous, but from what I can see, it’s the only way down.
Unless my eyes are playing tricks on me, the dust plume is heading in my direction, which raises all kinds of fun questions. Is it a storm? A lost pack of stampeding hellhounds? Maybe it’s the damned souls of old Rockettes rehearsing a new show.
Yeah. Let’s go with that.
A couple of steps in the direction of the trail, my foot comes down on something soft. It’s a pack of Maledictions. I pick it up and put it in my pocket. Now I know someone is fucking with me. They left me smokes, but no way to light them since my lighter is back with my na’at in L.A. Nothing I can do about it now.
I head down the trail.
The dust plume is definitely moving toward me. It looks less like the Rockettes and more like a hurricane with every passing second. Nothing else moves. Everything in the valley is dead except for that roiling dust. It’s hypnotic. Kind of pretty in an End of Days kind of way. I suppose I could stay up here on this peak and be nowhere or take another chance and be somewhere. Maybe I’ll get lucky and the wind will carry me home to Dorothy and the Tin Man.
I walk down the mountain, heading straight into the storm.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
New York Times bestselling author RICHARD KADREY has published eleven novels, including Sandman Slim, Kill the Dead, Aloha from Hell, Devil Said Bang, Kill City Blues, The Getaway God, Killing Pretty, Dead Set, Butcher Bird, and Metrophage, and more than fifty stories. He has been immortalized as an action figure, his short story “Good-bye Houston Street, Good-bye” was nominated for a British Science Fiction Association Award, and his novel Butcher Bird was nominated for the Prix Elkaban in France. The acclaimed writer and photographer lives in San Francisco, California.
ALSO BY RICHARD KADREY
The Everything Box
Metrophage
Dead Set
Killing Pretty
The Getaway God
Kill City Blues
Devil Said Bang
Aloha from Hell
Kill the Dead
Sandman Slim