The Kill Society (Sandman Slim)(26)

“What explosion?” I say, as innocent as a newborn bunny.

“One of the cars. The gas tank went up. It’s been burning all night.”

She points and I follow her finger.

“Oh, that. Yeah. I saw that.”

“And you weren’t interested enough to crawl out of that bucket?”

I pick up another bottle. It’s empty, so I drop it.

“I’m from California. Pretty much everything is on fire these days.”

She gives me a look.

“There’s a drought.”

“Mmm.”

“And we kind of had an apocalypse thing not that long ago.”

“Mmm.”

We stand there for an awkward minute, staring into the fire.

I say, “Why are you over here talking to me like we’re friends? You wanted me dead a couple of days ago.”

“Who says I wanted you dead?”

“I burned your friend.”

“Megs?” she says, and laughs. “He wasn’t my friend. He was useful, but he wasn’t anyone’s friend.”

“Still, you would have killed me when I first got here.”

“Of course. You came out of nowhere with that story about walking down the mountain.”

“It was all true.”

“The Magistrate believes you, so now so do I.”

“But,” I say.

“But what?”

“No—you were going to say ‘but.’”

A leg collapses on a nearby roulette table and a mob of naked people tumbles onto the ground.

“You have secrets,” she says. “I watched you in that fight with Asodexus . . .”

“The guy who looked like a horned toad?”

“Yes. That wasn’t an ordinary fight. You did something.”

I wonder for a second if she spotted the hoodoo, but I’d be dead by now if she had.

“And you want to know what I did.”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe you saw wrong and it was just a fight.”

“I’ve seen fights. I’ve seen souls and Hellions kill plenty. What you did wasn’t like that.”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why?”

I give her my best shit-eating smile.

“If I tell you now, what will we talk about on our next date?”

Wanuri and the earless, noseless guy call to Daja from over by the fire.

She looks at me.

“You’re with the havoc now. Don’t forget it.”

“I won’t.”

Daja walks backward away from me, pointing at me with both hands.

“And I know your name isn’t Pitts, no matter what Mimir says.”

I wave to her as she leaves and head back to my bucket, suddenly wanting to be alone.

I take off my coat, roll it up, and put it under my head. Settle down for a nap. The last thing I think before drifting off to a slightly dizzy whiskey sleep is, Daja’s a lot more interesting than I thought. But I really am going to have to kill her.



A few hours later in whatever counts for morning around here, someone knocks on the side of the bucket. I sit up, a little cramped from my steel crib. The Magistrate leans on the edge of the earthmover’s bucket, a bottle of water in his hand. He tosses it to me. I catch it, unscrew the top, and take a drink. It feels good. Whatever was in that flounder whiskey last night left me with a headache, but the water eases it. I finish the whole bottle.

“Good?” says the Magistrate in his clipped diction.

“Very. Thanks.”

“I’m glad. Come. Take a walk with me.”

I crawl out of the bucket and follow him. The camp looks like a tornado passed through during the night. I don’t see a stick of furniture that isn’t broken, cracked, or burned. Gambling tables are overturned or were propped up and used for target practice. The havoc is scattered on the ground, in the backs of vehicles, or on the remnants of the furniture. It’s like a company picnic that turned into Altamont and everybody loved it.

Me and the Magistrate walk out of camp and into the desert. A nice open space to kill someone. But which one of us is it going to be?

We’re about fifty yards out when he stops. He stares out into the distance not looking at me. He seems completely relaxed. But he doesn’t say a word. Finally, I can’t stand the silence anymore.

“Nice magic show yesterday.”

“What?” he says distractedly. “Oh, that. Yes. Another interest of mine. You see those mountains in the distance?”

“There’s nothing else out there.”

“What do you think they are made of?”

I look hard and say, “Rocks?”

He takes out his telescope and scans the horizon. When he finds what he’s looking for, he hands me the glass and points to a spot in the distance. I don’t see anything but more of the monotonous land that we’ve passed through.

“I don’t see a damned thing.”

He points again.

“Your answer was more correct than you think. You said rocks rather than the more logical ‘stone.’ In fact, what surrounds us are not mountains, but rocks. Brilliantly huge rocks that giants might have used to mark the edges of their domain.”