The Devil Delivered and Other Tales Read Online Free Page B

for gossip, muckers. Clear or get deep.
    CORBIE TWA: Just fillin time, John John. Caught the last set of entries. Someone’s slidin fast.
    BOGQUEEN: Got a thing against sex, Corbie Twa?
    CORBIE TWA: Seems a fall from grace.
    JOHN JOHN: Corbie’s got a thing, all right.
    STONECASTER: Just don’t know how to use it. Deep enough, John John?
    BOGQUEEN: You wish, Stonecaster.
    JOHN JOHN: The boy’s about to wander, muckers. Running a varied call, can’t be traced. All we’ve got is the American north-west. Big place.
    BOGQUEEN: And a snowstorm, which places him on the north side of the Midwest Hole. The town could be Climax, Val Marie, somewhere around there.
    CORBIE TWA: Climax? There’s a town called Climax? Can I spend a week in Climax?
    STONECASTER: So what’s this boy of ours up to? Theories?
    BOGQUEEN: Out under the Hole.
    STONECASTER: Suicidal? What a disappointment. There’s better ways, after all. Amuse yourself to death, it’s what everyone’s doing these days. I especially like the new Peasant Crusade. Imagine, dying at forty with a smile on your GO-FOR-IT-TILL-YOU-DROP face. All muscles and no fat makes Jack a dull boy, a dead boy.
    JOHN JOHN: I doubt it’s suicide. It’s a quest of some kind.
    CORBIE TWA: Oh no, a neo-pagan!
    BOGQUEEN: Anything but. This boy talks the tongue of science.
    CORBIE TWA: Really? I could’ve sworn it was soft porn with some hag named Stel.
    BOGQUEEN: Can’t wait to pick at your bones, Corbie Twa.
    CORBIE TWA: Get in line, lady.
    Lakota Nation, near Terminal Zone, July 1, A.C .14
    Behold these valleys of salt, and above, the sky of blinding white. Patches of nothing mar the world.
    William darkened his goggles another setting and swung his attention to the snow-crusted valley below. A creek carved a route along the valley floor, slipping under old wood fence lines still tangled in barbed wire. Small twisted trees rose along either side of the creek, the branches thick with ice-wrapped buds.
    He sipped lukewarm water from the spitter, clamping his teeth down hard on the plastic tube where it sat against the corner of his mouth. Behind him, near the tepee rings, his shield tent luffed in the steady wind, the sound like ghosts drumming on sand.
    William watched two vehicles converging toward a low rise just above a bend in the creek. Their dark domes glinted dully in the afternoon’s light as they crawled steadily like insects over the rolling terrain. After a moment, William rose from his squat and faced east. A half mile away, the old blacktop highway stretched its way in a long, lazy bend southward. Terminal Zone, old Rural Road 219, a dead track reaching into dead land. Lakota Border.
    He took another sip of water, shouldered his pack, then headed down into the valley. His boots crunched as he crossed a sinkhole where the day’s heat had failed to melt the snow and ice. Elsewhere, the yellow prairie grasses shivered stiffly in the breeze, matting worn-down rises and rumpled hills.
    A man had climbed out of each vehicle. They stood side by side at the edge of the creek and watched him approach. William waved. The taller of the two, dressed in the latest issue bootsuit, waved back. The other, old and bent and wearing a faded jean jacket, raised his head slightly, his mirror sunglasses flashing white, then looked away.
    “Today’s the day?” William asked as he strode up to them.
    Daniel Horn slowly shook his head. “Your sensiband’s flush, William.”
    “Almost sunset.”
    The old man gestured at William with a chopping motion of one hand. Without looking back, he said, “He doesn’t care. He doesn’t live under it.”
    William smiled. “And he that liveth seven score years shall no more fear God’s wrath. Good afternoon, Jack.”
    Jack Tree chopped his hand a second time, turning to William. “I’ll never show you the secret places, Potts. Never.”
    “I never asked.”
    “We were arguing,” Daniel said.
    William looked around, his grin broadening. “A