“Are you all right?” says Traven.
“Never better. But I’m in the mood to kill someone. Who don’t you like around here?”
“Please don’t talk like that.”
“What about your bodyguards? Which one should I do first? The one on the left looks extra stupid.”
“They’re as much my responsibility as I am theirs, so please don’t try.”
I get up.
“You’re right. They’re too obvious.”
I stagger a few steps away from the fire.
“Where are you going?” says Traven.
“To pick a fight.”
“With who?”
“Anyone.”
Instead, I fall into a drunken sleep in the cab of a half-dismantled backhoe.
I wake up with a bad headache, a sore back, and aching stitches. But I’m all right.
I didn’t pick a fight last night, but I am keeping my other promise. My mind is a complete blank. No memories. No sorrow. No more bad dreams for me. This is Day One. Just like when Mason Faim first sent me to Hell. Only this time, I’m not the scared, privileged little shit who fell into a world of monsters. I’m Sandman Slim. The monster who kills monsters. And I’ll kill every one of these road hogs if it gets me an inch closer to home.
Repairs take four days. It gives the havoc time to heal, but it also gives them time to become restless and bored. Hunter-gatherers need to hunt and gather. Sitting around, people drink too much and shoot off their mouths, enough that fights break out all over camp. Even the conscripts, usually a pack of passive little bunnies that keep to themselves, form a few gangs that prey on the weaker ones. The camp is about to explode. There’s practically no one at the next religious service.
On the third day of sitting on our asses, the dog pack runs the Magistrate out to see the obelisk. Gisco can’t ride a bike anymore, but with some trucker speed and Cherry’s potions, he’s okay enough to drive a car. Daja scores him a silver Hellion chop-top convertible that looks like the love child of a giant squid and a torpedo. The Magistrate rides with him into the desert.
When we reach the obelisk, he’s the first to get to it, gently running his fingers over the thing like it’s made of parchment and not marble.
“It is stunning. Even more beautiful than the Empress said it would be.”
“It’s wonderful,” says Daja.
Wanuri, Johnny, and Frederickson mumble “Yeah” vaguely in a way that sounds more like “This is what we killed and died for all this time?”
“So that’s an obelisk,” says Doris. “It reminds me of the marker on Tootsie’s, my cat’s, grave. Though it’s a bit taller, of course.”
I wash the dust out of my mouth with some water and hand the bottle to Doris. She drinks and passes it on.
I call to the Magistrate, “What does it say?”
“I have no idea,” he says brightly. “It is very old. The markings are an early, degenerate form of Hellion that I do not know.”
“Then what the fuck good is it?” says Johnny in a tone that visibly annoys Daja. I don’t say anything, but I definitely agree with his sentiment. “You brought us all this way and almost killed Gisco, and for what?”
“Calm down, Johnny,” Daja says.
“No. It is all right,” says the Magistrate. “I knew all along that there was a chance I could not decipher the markings. That is why we have a specialist.”
Now I understand the bodyguards.
“You mean Father Traven,” I say.