The wind carved a path out of the desert and carried the license plate across the baked earth with a hollow clattering of steel.  Behind the beaten metal walked a man, not a tall man like the kind that would have walked out of the desert, like in a movie.  Neither was he a small man, little or unimposing.  He was normal, of normal build and of normal gait.  In a time not more than thirty years ago the double-barreled shotgun which was slung across his shoulders in a handmade holster would have been abnormal, but these days it was suicide for a man to walk alone without anything more powerful than a good shotgun.  He chewed a long piece of wood between his teeth.  Where he had gotten wood was a mystery--even he had forgotten by now--but he had a bundle of it wrapped in twine and bouncing at his waist.  It was good wood.  It burned well and could be carved by a good carpenter.  Wood was worth its weight in gold these days.  At least out West.

He walked on, the sun barring down on his neck, but the leather duster he wore protected him well enough.  Beneath that Nathan Rain wore only a dirty, gray wife-beater and army fatigues.  He was conscious of those fatigues.  Not everyone could wear those kind of pants these days.  They had become a sign of strength and brutality.  Nathan wore them not because he was proud to be a murderer or because he wanted to prove something to the old timers who ran the way-stations, he wore them in hopes that everyone else would leave him alone.

The license plate banged against something and Nathan looked up from the cracked, yawning ground.  The plate, which had been rolling and bouncing along in the wind for the past twenty minutes, and had in a way became a companion to the man, lay at the foot of an old highway sign.  It looked dead, and that made Nathan feel uneasy.  Nathan leaned on the metal signpost, the steel hot in his hand, but the heat eased his tense, stiff fingers.  The green paint had faded and been blown away in streaks over the years, and the letters themselves had somehow been burned from white to yellow by the desert day.  The sign read Exit 144, Last Chance.  Nathan smiled, the splinter rolling across his stained teeth.  He had kept to the road, even though the highways and expressways cutting across southern Arizona had long ago been buried by the desert dust, having no cars to scatter the soil back where it belonged.

He looked at that faded, forgotten sign for a while, his hands going to the pouch that hung opposite the wood on his right leg.  He pulled the nearly empty Evian Spring-water bottle from the pouch and took a small swallow.  He bent and picked the license plate up.  ARV-2234.  It was a Colorado plate, how the hell that thing got all the way down here was beyond Nathan.  With a sigh he tossed it back into the desert, and the wind picked it up and bounded it away, the clanging no longer audible.

Every time he came to a new city, no matter how small, Nathan felt like he had won somehow, like he had beaten the desert.  He replaced the bottle and checked his shotgun; it still slid smoothly out of the holster, the one loose strap no longer catching on the hammers.  He felt safe enough and so began the walk along what was left of the Arizona Intestate, right into the sleepy little town of Last Chance, once home of Last Chance Gas, Last Chance Dinner, and the Last Chance Last Chance brothel.  Everywhere in Arizona there was a little bit of Las Vegas hidden away.

*

Fluorescent lights lay shattered across the way-station parking lot, the white specks of glass twinkling like snow in the desert afternoon.  Nathan stopped momentarily at the door of the way-station, watching the dust storm growing behind him.  The first drifts of the sand ash were rolling past the gas pumps of the way-station, their last drops drained when Nathan was still a young man.  Now they stood like obedient, though stupid, soldiers, waiting some final day, their pump handles hung proudly at their sides.  The way-station itself was another example of the decaying twentieth century.

The days of aluminum siding and flickering red and white Coke signs, the kind that always have about a pound of blackened bug bodies in their bottoms, had passed slowly away, like the paint on a weathered desert road sign.

Nathan ran a hand through his sandy hair.  It was cut close and rather unkempt, but no one in their right mind gave a damn about their hair, at least not out here.  He walked on to the way-station, wondering just how far he was from Last Chance itself, assuming that more than this rusted, stained Exxon still stood.  The screen door opened and nearly ripped off its hinges in the wind.

"You better empty that Remmington real fast, Tex."  The voice carried up from behind the counter of the old gas station.  The clerk was a small man, his face as broad and flabby as his gut, and equally covered in a slick sweat.  Flies buzzed around him, and somewhere Nathan heard the hiss of a propane stove.

"Yeah, sure,"  Nathan mumbled.  He always mumbled, but most of the time it really didn't matter if he was heard or not.  He laid four shells on the counter.  The Formica counter still smelled strongly of oil and gasoline, even after all of these years.  Behind the counter the clerk grunted and casually took one of the shells, rolling it between two plump fingers.

"You payin' with these?" he asked.  There were about a dozen empty magazine racks littering the space between the counter and the back wall, most laden with odds and ends.  There was twine, an empty Tupperware case, some fishing hooks, and a box of Johnson & Johnson Family pack Extra Strength Galls.

"Got somethin' better."  Nathan flipped his duster back.  The clerk bolted upright, swallowing the words he was about to say when he saw the bundle of wood hanging there.

"Christ almighty," the fat man whispered.

"He ain't all that mighty," Nathan muttered, but no one heard him.  "I want those galls.  I got me a fear of bacteria."

"Well, now those galls are a mighty rare item to come across out West."

"I didn't see no trees comin' in here either."

"Well, now I guess we can start trading, huh?" The clerk leaned forward, fingers crossed into a neat fold and a shit-eating smile pasted on his face.  Nathan spat the wood splinter onto the counter, his blue eyes narrow and hard with the years he had spent in the desert.  He bored a hole into the wall behind the man, his stare visibly unsettling the man.

"What kind of way-station is this?"

"What are you talkin' about, Outsider?"

"You know the rules, buddy.  Man in need is a friend in deed.  You're lookin' to con me outta a pound of this wood, and I need something vital, not some beer and a pack of the powder.  A man's got no use for a way-station that ain't got no morals, and there's people walkin' these roads that are real big on honesty, buddy."

"Don't you go talkin' to me about them," the clerk spat, his brow growing a bright shade of red.  "I run me a tight place, always have, always will.  I don't mean you no harm, Outsider."

"Yeah, I guess," Nathan muttered, again not being heard.  He left the counter and looked around the tiny gas station.  There wasn't anything here at all.  Just a few rolls of toilet paper, which was too much for a man like Nathan – he had gotten used to the feeling in his ass after the first month.  There was some moonshine and some barrel-beer, a few boxes of munitions and matches, and a porno magazine.

Nathan picked up the Penthouse, thumbed gently through the brittle pages, the gloss long gone.  They were all red heads.  A goddamn red head issue, fifteen years old, but a fucking red head issue all the same.  Inside of him, Nathan felt something fall, something like a lead ball into the bottom of his stomach.  He felt sick, and put the magazine back down.

"I'll give you four pieces of the wood for the galls, six for some Neosporin."

"Ain't got no medicine, pal, just what's on the shelf."

"Fair enough."  Nathan put four pieces of wood on the counter and his cold, impassive glare ended any thought of barter or banter before it had begun.  The clerk hastily gathered the white medical galls and hid the wood under his stool.  Nathan pocketed the shells into his coat and carefully inspected the galls for any kind of defect.

"What can ya' tell me about Last Chance?"

"It's eight miles on the way you're goin', ain't none but a handful of people there.  They won't like your type there."

"Why not?"

"You talk too much."

"Now that's something I don't hear often,"  Nathan said dryly.

*

When the screen door closed behind him and Nathan Rain had walked on a ways, his figure and his shadow the same on the near horizon, the sun had nearly set.  The clerk had spent the rest of the day behind the counter, nervously waiting for the night.  He had forgotten the chicken he had plucked the morning before and it had burned on his Coleman stove, but he was too hungry these days to pass it up.  There wasn't much to do around here, so he made the mistake of falling asleep.  Usually a bandit or two would watch a way-station for hours, waiting for the clerk to doze off before looting the place, but the bandits kept to the town, where there was shade.  As the first rays of light vanished in the west, and a dark shadow the color of an ugly bruise had taken the land, the screen door creaked open once more.

A puddle of tumbleweeds rolled in past the door, gathering with the red dust in a far corner.  A man, this one tall and dressed, oddly enough, in a black suit with black sunglasses, leaned unconcerned on the doorframe.  He drew a cigarette from his breast pocket and puffed away, the bouncing light of the hand-rolled smoke the only light in the way-station.  The face it shadowed was that of a young man, his hair sleek and black, his beard cut into a neat goatee.

"Get up David."  The clerk snapped awake, his hand going for the rifle he kept under the counter.

"Christ you scared the fuck outta me, Amerigo."

"Who was that?"

"The guy with the wood?"

"Who else?"

"I don't know.  Bought some bandaids or something, didn't say much."

"Is he going to Last Chance?"

"Sure, I guess."  Amerigo walked slowly, deliberately around the station, finding the porno magazine and scrutinizing it.

"So tell me, Amerigo, what is it you do?" David asked.

"I collect things for other people, David."

"You ever been East before Amerigo?"

"There's nothing there except starving wraiths, David.  Just grayness and broken shells." He folded the Penthouse and tucked it into his suit pocket.  "We haven't asked you to ask about us, David."

"I'm sorry, Amerigo, its just that nothing ever happens around here.  I just sit and swat flies all day, and sleep some, but that ain't comin' so often no more."

"Did he ask about the fountain?"

"The San Christi Fountain?"

"Yes.  Did he say anything or act like it was at all important?"

"No, he just bought some bandaids and left.  Didn't say anything about no fountain."

"Take care of yourself, David.  You won't have to worry in the coming days, but if I were you I wouldn't venture into town until I come back."

Amerigo pushed the door open, standing half in half out of the building, and nodded.  His mouth curled into an inhuman grin, revealing wickedly curved yellow teeth like something which belonged on a reptile, and behind his sunglasses his eyes began to glow a fierce red, the light making small pools of crimson shadow across his chiseled, angelic face.  Once the door slammed back into place, the red of his eyes and the yellow of his teeth seemed to linger on in the air for a moment.

David took a white, wrapped package from the back room.  He untied it quickly and found his Bible and his rosary.  He took the rosary in hand and began to hurriedly pray, though he had forgotten all but the first few lines of the Passion.  Suddenly David cried out, a sharp pain stinging his hand.  He looked down and in horror watched as the rosary melted through his fingers, the brown and white plastic beads merging into one stringy mess.

"God forgive me," the clerk whispered, and tears escaped his eyes, falling into the remains of his rosary.

*

The sun was setting across the remains of Last Chance when Nathan Rain came in from the desert.  He hated watching the sunset over the desert; it always reminded him of the years before the Storm, of a time when life was life and not a constant struggle just to live.  But mostly, mostly it reminded him of her.  The setting sun had enveloped the world when he had understood what had happened then, and every day it reminded him of her dead, upturned face, her pale eyes glazed and fixed, even as the silt blew into them.  And sunset meant that night was coming, and no one liked the dark hours any more, least of all a man like Nathan Rain.

The town itself wasn't as big as he had thought it would be.  There was a small downtown area, a place of squat, lined buildings that had once been mostly air conditioning repair shops and thrift stores. It was also the place where the Last Chance Diner stood, though its windows were broken and the place barren on the inside.  He had walked in for a minute to get out of the blowing wind, not because the dust storm had finally reached him but because the desert wind cuts like a knife.  There were tumbleweeds piled in a corner and the remains of a refrigerator strewn across the pale green tile.  He wondered how long it had been since someone had eaten in here.  Probably not since the Storm, making that nearly twenty years.  A whole generation had grown up without the Last Chance Diner, and that left a strange feeling in Nathan which he could only call apathy.  He used to find himself depressed over things like these abandoned diners, and even more disheartening were the entire subdivisions he had seen, completely deserted and lifeless, the yards overgrown and the houses dingy without anyone to tend them.  Now he listened passively to the wind and the scrape of dust against the remains of the asphalt outside.

He watched the street from his place at a battered, stiff booth near the windowed side of the diner.  It seemed that downtown Last Chance had been built around a large, marble fountain which dominated the center of the district, visible from Nathan's seat in the diner.  The thing was wide, the center fountain surrounded by five angels, their faces upturned toward heaven, all except for one.  That, Nathan decided, would have been Lucifer.

A car stood silently nearby, its wheels gone and its windows a spiderweb of cracks and bullet holes.  There was no one in the street, most likely they didn't live here.  Most of the survivors in a small town like this usually lived in their homes, if the home was theirs.  He had decided that he would wait until the sun set and would try and find a house with a light on in it.  If he couldn't then he'd stay here.  Nathan liked the diner, it somehow reminded him of the old days, but in a way that hurt.  In fact, the only thing that was out of place in the Last Chance Dinner were the tumbleweeds and the ramshackle refrigerator.
 
 

Once the sun had set and the desert had fallen into a dim twilight of blues and purple, Nathan gathered his shotgun and his small pouch and set off, first toward the fountain, which intrigued him.  He felt as if he had seen it before, in a time when water had spouted out of its center, and the feeling was growing more powerful each minute he looked at it.  As he walked, Nathan gathered a handful of shells from his pouch and dropped them into his duster's pockets, where he could get to them quicker.  He felt that twang of fear in his gut, the instinct a man develops over the course of years alone in the desert, and he had learned to trust that twang.

He approached the fountain and to his surprise saw that it was nearly half way filled with water.  It was stale water, and probably would give him a stomachache, but it was water.  Nathan untied the cord around his bundle of wood and the pile slid along his leg to the ground as he filled the water bottle.  He looked up at the angels while he did, and a stale, unreadable look passed over him.  The angel he had thought to be Lucifer was indeed not the Devil, but rather Michael.  In these past few years Nathan had grown apt in the ways of angelic lore.  Michael was depicted in carvings as having a broad spear or sword.  This angel held both, one in each hand.  He was looking down because the head of a serpent was posed between his feet, about to strike.  Nathan saw that the snake passed under the feet of the other four angels as well, and that each had his right foot bearing down on the viper.

"Nice wood you got there, Outsider."  The voice came from behind him, and Nathan sighed.  He should have been more attentive, and not so lost in thought over angels.

"Yeah, it gets me by," he mumbled.

"You got three seconds to drop that shotgun, or we drop you."  This was a different voice, also coming from behind him, and a little to the left of the original brigand.  He judged them to be close enough for his buckshot to be effective.

"You got it, bud," Nathan responded.  He did not sound angry or even stunned.  In fact, he acted as if it happened all the time, which, of course, it did.  He shouldered his shotgun at an awkward, unbalanced angle, his back still to his robbers, and kept his other hand in the air where they could see it.  He heard the clicks of pistols and the bolt of a rifle sliding into place.  Great, there was a third one.

"I have a pistol, too," Nathan said, fluttering the fingers on his loose hand.  "I guess you'd have found it and shot me.  If I lay it down can we talk about letting me live?"

"Shut the hell up, Brigger, and lay it out.  Try anything funny and we'll light you up like a demon in the river Jordan."

"Sure."  Nathan flicked his hand sharply, heard their guns shift, and pulled both triggers on his shotgun.  The recoil sent him stumbling forward and loosed a violent pop from his forearm.  Nathan rolled with the retort and ended up face up in the fountain.  Only a second later a scatter of rifle shots cracked out across the barren town.  An angel's head exploded, sending a rain of marble into Nathan's face, and another shot got the water near his feet.  His hands already in motion, the shotgun swiftly reloaded, though wet, and with a last burst of effort, he lunged upward and fired a blind shot.

He saw the scene in slow motion.  Two men lay on the ground.  One was a short, stocky Hispanic fellow whose face and upper body were a mass of meat and blood.  The other was a white man, his face frozen in shock, his internals spilled out behind him like discarded chicken parts.  The last man, the one with the rifle, still stood, though his leg had been hit with some shot.  He knelt down, aiming his rifle at one of the statues when Nathan came springing up out of the dirty water.  His face went slack, his finger automatically pulled the trigger, though the barrel was aimed at St. Michael, not Nathan.  He felt his heart stop for an instant and as the shotgun bared down on him he felt a warm release in his crotch.  Then the hammers hit, and there was no crack of buckshot.  The powder was wet.

Nathan hit the rim of the fountain hard and somehow managed to fall from it to the ground, putting himself nearly at the feet of his robber.  The shotgun lay useless at his side, and he thought that he had broken his arm in the fall.

"You got a lot of balls, Brigger."

"That's what I hear," Nathan replied, his throat dry.  He was gauging just what caliber that rifle was.  Maybe .35, maybe even .45.  It was definitely a big game rifle.

"What'd you say?"  The man leaned forward, the rifle only inches from Nathan's stomach, a smirk on his face when there was a sudden rupture of blood from the man's neck.  Wasting no time, Nathan rolled out of his way, and the bandit fell face down almost where Nathan had lain.  His rifle went off in the process and took his right shoulder off in a burst of gore and bone.  It was a hell of a rifle.  Nathan saw the arrow still lodged in his neck, driven almost to the fletching, the rest broken off with the fall.  He scanned the street leading back from the diner and saw a small, feminine figure in the center of the road.  She was rushing toward Nathan, her face and body hidden in a black scrawl, almost like a nun's.  A quiver and a bow were slung across her back.

"Are you alright?" she yelled, still a good stone's throw away.  Nathan gathered his shotgun and hurriedly emptied the dud shells, replacing them with a curse.

"Yeah, fine.  What do you want with me?"

"What?" she asked, coming to a halt near the fountain and bloodshed.  Now he could get a good look at her, even under the hood drawn about her face.  The woman was young, probably not even twenty yet, probably born post-Storm.  That thought always registered first in Nathan's mind, and he hated it.  He wished that little things like that wouldn't pop into his mind, things like I wonder if they have ever watched a t.v. show? or I wish I had a car right now.  Things like that ate him alive, slowly, but completely.

"What did you say?" she asked again.  Her auburn hair hung in curls around her oval face, framing the large, green eyes that looked healthy despite the harsh desert winds.  Maybe she was an Outsider too, but he doubted it.  Nathan Rain was the only Outsider he had ever met.

"What do you want with me?  Why did you save me?"  He kept his shotgun across his lap and watched himself flexing his hurt arm.  For some reason he couldn't bring himself to look at her.  Suddenly the smell of blood and intestines hit him hard and he nearly dry heaved, but managed to hold it down.  He wanted her to leave.  She was a girl.  She didn't have to see this kind of stuff.

"I guess I'm your guardian angel," she said with a smile.  Nathan watched her smile, and he was unaware of the confused, distant look in his own eyes.  It took him a minute to draw his attention from the fact that she was a girl to what she had said.  When he did he just looked coldly at the ground and took his shotgun in one hand, using it to help himself up.

"I doubt that, miss," he said, walking past the fountain to gather his bundle of wood.

"Why is that?" She asked, now sounding somewhat worried.

"Because I killed my guardian angel."

*

Amerigo Vacinni walked alone under the night sky, his heels falling silently on the hard earth of the Arizona desert.  The stars and the moon shone fiercely tonight, and he liked that.  Maybe they could see him coming, maybe they would know to leave him alone.  Last Chance was known throughout Yuma as nothing more than a haven for bandits and demons. That wasn't entirely true, in fact.  Last Chance had one or two angels in it as well.

That thought brought another wicked smile to Amerigo's face.  He had come upon the tombstone now, and stood before it, his back to the pale moonlight, a half-shadow falling over the grave.  The wooden cross stood utterly alone in the wastes of the desert, Last Chance being twenty miles to the north, the way-station half of the that to the east.  Even in the days before the Storm this place was far enough away from the interstate to warrant some measure of peace and quiet.  Amerigo laughed now and lit his cigarette, the glow coloring his face and alighting the paint on the cross.  It read: Joseph Carpenter.

"Yeah, there's not just us demons and murderers in Last Chance, is there, Joseph?"  He tapped ashes on the silent grave and looked down at the wooden cross.  "We have a few whores, a couple of junkies.  Hell, we even have a goddamn town drunk.  Try pulling that one off out here!  A drunk for the love of God."  Amerigo stopped laughing and knelt beside the grave.

"Oh, I'm sorry Joe, I forgot."  He sounded sincere, and he even looked apologetic, but it was a mockery and that was evident in his eyes.

"God quit, didn't He?!"  He jumped up, laughing louder this time.  The cackle filled the desert, and stirred a rattlesnake from its sleep in a heap of rocks nearby.  Amerigo noticed the serpent and knelt again, holding his hand out to it.  The snake seemed to sense him and slithered into his palm.

"I didn't come to rub it in, old friend.  I just wanted to tell you that another member has signed up in our happy little sub-urban-commute community.  Now Last Chance has a Walker."  He rolled his cigarette between his teeth and dropped the snake onto the wooden cross.  It creaked under the added weight and the rattlesnake coiled about it, its rattle chilling the air, and began to violently strike the earth nearby.  It was as if the snake sought out whoever had been buried under that tombstone.

"And it looks like we've got him, Joe."  Amerigo wondered if the Tree of Knowledge sprouted apples.

"Yeah, how do ya' like them apples, Joe?"

In the morning the sun dried out the dead body of the snake.  It seemed to have battered itself to death trying to reach the body hidden beneath the parched ground.

*

The room was a small apartment, the only one still livable in the whole city.  The wallpaper was tattered around the edge of the woodwork as if it had been nibbled on by some sort of bug.  The floor was once carpeted, but now only sleek, gray concrete remained, broken in places by the remains of old glue.   Her name was Marie Hart, but she explained that no one called her that any more.  Mostly it was Chastity, on account of the nun's scrawl that she wore.

"So you're just passing through, huh?" she asked.  Nathan nodded and walked toward the pile of worn and threadbare cushions piled in a corner, his duster slung over one shoulder, the shotgun over the other.  Other than that there was only a small dresser of draws in the room and a box of candles propped up next to it.

"I'm tryin' to make it back home," Nathan said, suddenly wondering why he was talking to her.  He hadn't spoken more than three words to anyone since he had left Las Angeles.  He looked at her from the corner of his eye, trying to hide it by cleaning out his gun.  She felt his eyes, but it didn't bother her.  It had been a long time for Marie too.  She walked by him, letting her hand brush against his bare shoulder.

"Where are you from?" she asked, her voice slowly becoming lush, and tempting.  Nathan had always found that a woman's voice could be as tempting and as sensual as any other part of her, but the rest of Marie wasn't bad.  She was smaller than he was, maybe even short, but you couldn't really call a woman short, just petite.  Her body was rounded and firm with years of survival, her movements fluid and graceful at once.  She was clean, at least by the loose standards of 2021, and that was – oddly enough – something that Nathan rarely saw in women anymore.  Most people growing up in the new generation weren't used to shaved legs and washed hair, so most didn't bother.  It was refreshing to find a woman who did.

"Louisville," he replied.  His arm ached, and he acted as if he were tending to it, but used the time to steal a glance at her bottom.  She was standing at the window, though the glass was gone and a big piece of industrial plastic stood in its place.

"Where's that?"

"East."  He didn't feel like giving a history lesson on this grand old country, a place once called America.

"Does anyone still live there?"

"I don't know.  The place was hit really hard by the plague years ago.  I was with the last survivors as they migrated out and into the west."

"Why are you going back?"

"I don't know."  Now Nathan had stopped with the conversation.  He knew why he was going back, but for some reason he couldn't bring himself to her why.  When he thought about it, it seemed so selfish and so stupid.  So worthless.  It was like when he saw how casually she regarded the dead bodies around the fountain.  He didn't want this girl, this woman, to know things like this.  Nathan supposed that he had been born with some defect in his personality.

"Then can I ask you another question?"

"What?"

"Why do you keep staring at my ass?"

Nathan dropped the gun, his fingers limp.  He felt as if someone had just heart-punched him.

"I'm old enough to be your father.  I wasn't looking at you.  Look, if you don't want me here, I'll go.  I can find another place to stay tonight."  He got up and began to slide his duster on.  He felt hollow, stupid, and guilty.  He really didn't want to look her in the eyes now.

"Oh, come on, I was just kidding.  Every man in this town and half of the women stare at my ass.  I've grown to take it as a kind of flattery."

Nathan looked in her direction, but continued to adjust his gear.

"I wouldn't have saved you if I didn't want you here."  Now he stopped, his hand on the doorknob.

"I'll be going now.  Thank you for everything." he mumbled, his confidence and willingness to speak gone.  The door opened and he stepped out, the moonlight bright in the night sky.

"You won't find any other places in Last Chance.  The town is nearly empty, and no one trusts Outsiders since last summer.  A bunch of pilgrims came through here and one of them had the virus.  We lost most of the older folk between the Fourth of July and Christmas."

Nathan paused in the doorway and considered this for a moment.  It may have been a lie, but something inside of him was pulling him back to Chastity.  Maybe it was his libido, or maybe it was something else, but it was stronger in that moment than his guilt.

"I'll sleep on the floor then."

***

He slept heavily that night, waking only once out of habit.  It was near dawn then, and the first pale light had found a way into the window.  It clung to Chastity's hair, turning it white.  That made Nathan feel sick to his stomach, and he rolled over on the floor and stared at his pouch.  The Mason jar poked out of the side a little, the rim far too dull to sheen in the moonlight, but Nathan saw it all the same.

"I'm sorry, Angie.  I'm sorry."  He didn't know if he had mumbled the words or if he had just thought them, but either way they sounded too hollow, too empty for them to mean anything.  That really depressed Nathan and he tried to fall back to sleep.

Later, Chastity woke him, and she had a small helping of rattlesnake stew for them both.  The thing had been made natural – that was the term they gave food that one caught and killed these days, which covered nearly everything.  Canned foods were a thing of the past – but she had boiled some past for him.  Nathan didn't know what to say to this.  Something like Kraft macaroni without the cheese powdering was the rough equivalent to fifty dollars these days.  All he could think to do was thank her quietly and accept the bowl.

"I want to pay you for this.  I don't have much, just that wood," Nathan said out of the corner of his mouth.  He still had rattlesnake stuck to his teeth.

"No, I won't take it.  It's not everyday that I meet someone like you, Nathan Rain."  She smiled when she said it, but there was a demanding presence in her eye.  He knew she wouldn't take any type of payment and so he wouldn't push it.  But that made him feel even more miserable.

"What do you mean 'someone like me'?  I'm a nobody in the middle of nowhere."

"No, you're different."  She scooped another spoon of the pasta' ala snake and waved at him.  He declined.

There was something about her, even in the way she waved a spoon of snake-mush.  She was very independent, something which had, oddly enough, vanished in most women after the Storm.  Once, in the late part of the ninety's and the new century before the Storm, women – American women more than anyone – prided themselves on their independence.  Now it seemed that Nathan had only seen women as either whores or ghostly, gray figures which hid behind their husbands or sons.  That always depressed him, probably because it reminded of how things used to be.  The feeling that he had for her last night, a strange mix of nostalgia and lust, returned.

"Yeah, how's that?"  He had debated responding to her opening in this conversation, and had decided that it wouldn't be that bad having someone to talk to.

"You have some decency."  His spoon dropped from his mouth and he looked up sharply at her, sharper than he had wanted to and Chastity dropped her eyes.

"I used to let Outsiders stay here a lot.  I used to be one myself, and I know what it's like.  There were a lot of men who came through Last Chance about two or three years ago.  I was younger and stupid and maybe I wanted it, but I let them stay with me.  I… I…"

The spoon hung limp in her hand.  Maybe she expected Nathan to take it from her, to comfort her.  It was obvious that she was attracted to him, but Nathan wasn't acting on instinct – which would have told him that this was probably a con.  Anybody that skilled with a bow would never let themselves be raped – he was acting on something else.

"I'll have to leave soon.  I need to make miles while that dust cloud is in high.  It won't be long until it comes back down."  He went to get his stuff when she blurted something under her breath.  Her eyes were red and wet, and her voice jittered as if she were holding back a deluge of tears.

"I saved you because I wanted the wood."

"What?" Nathan replied, surprised.

"I have killed people for less.  I just, it's just that wood is so hard to find and it is worth so much, and the others were so sure of themselves, and …"

"Stop!" Nathan spat.  "You're tellin' me things that are gonna get you killed."

"I didn't mean it."

"Bye."  He shouldered the gun and strapped the pack to his leg.  The door was already open.

"Go on, run away!" She was screaming now, her neck strained and her eyes red.   "I think I feel something for you, and you know it, so you run away.  That's what your type does, they just keep running!"

She was crying now, kneeling in the center of the floor, the spoon and rattlesnake mush strewn in front of her.  Nathan felt that she was being sincere, that this wasn't a con anymore, or if it was, it was working.

Reluctantly he turned, and stepped out of the door.  There was a noise behind him, and Marie charged in to his back, embracing him.  She was crying and the tears quenched the parched, cracking leather of his duster.  He stopped, but did not turn to her or take her.  She did not leave, and just continued to cry.  The dust rolled along in front of them and the morning sun was growing hot.  Somewhere someone was using a hammer.  Somewhere else there were children already up and yelling at one another.

If it weren't for the broken windows, the neglected paint on the barren homes, and the dried, withered plants which had depended on sprinkler systems, this morning would have almost felt like a normal morning, a morning before the Storm.

It's tomorrow, baby, it's tomorrow.  He didn't say it, but he could hear himself saying it all the same.  That was when Nathan turned and kissed her.

*

About twenty miles away, under the same burning sun, a horseman road along the remains of Highway 8.  He sat slouched in the saddle, his long, unwashed oily hair hung below his shoulders and he wore a handmade overcoat fashioned from a medley of cloth, leather, and even silk.  He was a sullen man, his face pale, even in the desert heat, and his eyes were dark.  He never looked up unless he had to, and wore a wide, black sombrero to shield him from the sun.  Two Desert Eagles hung in holsters at his thighs, and though everything else about this gunslinger was filthy, blackened, and soiled, his guns glittered brightly.  The horse was in poor condition, frothing at the mouth and constantly twitching its head to the left.  There was no bit for it, and no eye-guards, just a reign and a saddle with no stirrups.  The horseman pulled his steed to a small street sign that he had been heading toward for hours.

The old white sign stood at the left of the highway, facing East, like the last solider holding his place long after the truce had been signed.  The sign stood at the junction of Highway 8 and some smaller, two-lane road, though that road had survived years of neglect while the highway had crumbled.  The poor thing was so covered in dust and rust from the infrequent but torrential Yuma storms, that the horseman had to dismount and wipe it off.
 
 

NO ADMINTANCE

LUKE AIFROCE BASE   MOWHAWK VALLEY   YUMA, ARIZONA

RESTRICTED AREA
 
 

The sign swayed in the sudden morning wind, and the man's horse whinnied loudly and pathetically.  He shadowed his eyes with a long, dirty hand and looked ahead along the road.  There was another sign some miles up, this one not covered in dust.  Though no human eye could read it at that distance, the horseman could easily make out the lettering.
 
 

HIGHWAY 8

LAST CHANCE  12 MILES
 
 

The horseman smiled and mounted his mare.  He remembered what this place had been in the years before the Storm.  The mortals had used the area as a military testing site, a place for their atom bombs, their high powered machine guns, and advanced fighter planes.  The place was also the storage area for the Falschift Virus, although the horseman doubted any living mortal knew that.  He was quiet assured of it.  The virus had leaked out somehow, though that is inevitable, and had spread across the country, the world.

The horseman hadn't been here then, and had been spared the horrors of the first days of the Storm.  But he knew.  He knew everything, or at least most of it.  And he knew that a Crossroads lay close by this place.  The Native Americans knew it, and the creatures of the desert knew it, but he hoped and prayed that the Darkness had overlooked this last Crossroad.

"Last Chance.  What a fitting name, don't you think, Claudius?"  The horse only plodded forward, to the little known town of Last Chance, a place just outside the Luke Testing Range, a place just outside the wasteland, a place just outside the reservations.  Had they looked hard enough, the living would have seen the Truth.

*

Nathan awoke near noon.  He couldn't remember when he had fallen back to sleep, but he remembered the rest of it.  He lay on the cushions, and Marie, or Chastity as he seemed to want to call her, lay cradled next to him.  Her hair wasn't longer than shoulder length, but it had fanned out and covered his chest.  The dry wind fluttered it over his bare skin and it made him want to fall back to sleep.

Nathan had always woken up before the women.  There had been many women between Louisville and LA and there would be more between Last Chance and Louisville, and he would wake up before all of them.  Nathan thought that he was reading too much into little things like that, but he couldn't help it.  His life had been built on the little things, and the little things kept him going.  Like right now, Marie's breath against his shoulder was soothing, more soothing than anything he could imagine, more soothing than anything he could ever want.  There hadn't really been many times like this since it all happened, the Storm, Angie and everything, but he remembered every soft breath a woman had breathed on his shoulder, and he remembered the way their breasts trembled when they breathed.  These things were the things he wanted to keep, the things he wanted to bottle up and keep with him, but he couldn't.  The world had moved on, past such simple times.

He tucked her hair behind her, his fingers lingering a moment on her cheek.  She really was beautiful.  Maybe in a time when there were acne medications and conditioners she may have been even more beautiful, but she was close enough.  He sighed and gently untangled himself from her arms and legs.  He dressed in perfect silence, and sat his shotgun and pouch near the door.  He was about to leave when something stopped him.

Nathan turned and stared at her, lying on the pile of old, dusty cushions, her nude body dark and soft in the saffron light which filtered through the taped window.  He wanted to take her home, he wanted to be with her, to go somewhere away from this world, back to a place with toothpaste and prime-time television.  He wanted a house and a dog and a wife and kids, not an old Mason jar filled with…

He was crying.  The tears just slid out, having no business wetting his cheek.  Nathan hunkered down in the doorway and his hand went in the pouch he kept nearby.  They procured the Mason jar, and the light glittered and danced through the blood he kept in there, making it sparkle almost like wine.  Stirring at the bottom of the jar there was a necklace, a picture of the Christ affixed to the chain.  Nathan stared into that blood and the tears kept coming.  Soon his face was slick and large plops of water dotted the concrete between his feet.

"What's wrong?" Marie, or Chastity or whoever she was, asked.

"Nothing," Nathan replied, hoping his voice wasn't quivering as well, but it was.  She wrapped the scrawl around her and sat next to him.  The afternoon sun burned down onto the broken streets and the weathered homes of Last Chance.

"What's that?" she asked, her voice more than a little nervous.  Nathan turned the jar around in his hands and sighed something that sounded like: "fuck".

"Its blood," he said, not knowing any other way out of it.  Nathan looked out at the city, not wanting to face her like this.  He hadn't cried in a long, long time.  It hurt to have someone else see him like this; it hurt to have his thoughts laid out like this.

"What? Why do you have it?"  Now she was sounding very nervous.  Probably she heard rumors of demons and other such Darkness that polluted the major cities these days.  The stories said that they drunk blood and feasted on human flesh.

"It not that.  But sometimes I think its easier to just write off that way," he replied, his voice coming under control.

"Tell me what it is, then," she commanded, very softly. Her hand went along his thigh, resting on his knee.  Nathan looked at that hand for a moment and then out at the small, decaying mobile homes and few homes that still stood along the hills surrounding Last Chance.  Smoke curled up from one of the homes.

"Before the Storm," he began, but didn't know why.  Maybe he felt as if he owed her something for being so callous, but Nathan had never spoken of this to anyone, and even he didn't know why he was doing it now.  Maybe he was falling in love too, but that was ridiculous.  He couldn't even remember Chastity's last name, so he doubted it was love.  In fact he doubted he possessed the ability to love.

"Before the Storm, I was a garbage man.  I lived in Louisville.  I ran a route every day except for Sundays and I lived alone in an apartment.  I never really gave much thought to anything in life.  I passed high school with a C average, I never went to college."  Chastity had a blank look on her face, but she was trying to follow him.  "I just floated around, making a dollar.  The only thing that ever really meant anything to me at all was this girl I had known in high school, when I was a little younger than you.  Her name was Angel, but everyone called her Angie because she didn't think that Angel was a very cool name.  Her parents were Catholic.  Very devote.  I still remember how their home always smelled like candle wax and Ajax.

"I thought that she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.  I think I might have fallen in love with her.  I don't know anymore, and I don't want to know.  We grew up and moved apart, she forgot me and I tried to forget her.

"I had had my job as a garbage man for three months.  I was three weeks away from my twentieth birthday when the Storm came.  It really wasn't as cataclysmic as everyone says it was.  In fact, up until the plague came through, I didn't give a shit about a bunch of meteors hitting the South Pacific.  But it came, and when people started putting their dead out with the garbage, that was when everything started to break down.  At first the government tried to keep people under control, but there was a nationwide panic, and in Louisville nobody important really gave a rat's ass, so we mostly just up and started out west because in the East everyone and everything was dead or dying with the virus.  They say its still bad out there.

"Anyway, I came to this place in Indiana."  He paused, smiled to himself and went on.  Chastity didn't know Indiana from Timbuktu.  "A place called French Lick, which used to be a big vacation area for mostly people from Louisville.  There was this hotel there, a big, old-fashioned hotel that was run down and decimated even before the Storm.  I remember going there with my parents one summer.  I liked the place.  It was peaceful and it was, in some dark way, beautiful."

He paused, watching the smoke curl away in the wind.  Nathan wondered what was burning, maybe garbage, maybe something else.  He licked his lips, which had cracked and dried a long time ago but only now bothered him.

"I was with a large group of people, maybe thirty or so because that was the safest way to travel.  We stayed that night in the hotel, and of course it brought back a lot of bad memories.  Well, the memories weren't bad, but they hurt me, maybe because they were good and I knew that those days were forever gone.  Listen to me, I sound like an old man."  He tried to laugh at that one, but his heart wasn't in it.  He really was getting up there, not old yet, but older than most people in this harsh world.

"Another group came in that same night and I'll be damned if Angie wasn't in with them.  She saw me and we talked, but she left me and I was filled with some sort of happiness and…and something like pride.  It was like the whole world had died and just left us.  That night was the longest night I can remember.  I had set my mind to telling her how I felt the next day, sure that we would never see each other again.  I was wrong.  The people leading our group said that we should stay there for a while. There had been reports of trouble along the highway up north, which is where we were going.  So we stayed for a week.

"In that time we talked and she told me about her life and I told her about what passed mine.  We caught up on old times, but everything was different.  You just can't take everything that you have grown up with, everything that you depend on and throw it away and hope two people who went through that together could sit and have a normal conversation.  I guess you could say we were afraid.  Fear drives people, and it drove us together that week.  We kissed, we loved each other, and it was without a doubt the most sacred, most important time of my life.  I loved her then, as I do now or if I did before, I can't really say, but right then, under the chipped, water-stained marble of that hotel ceiling, I loved her.

"But she was just afraid."  Somewhere a dog howled and a gun shot echoed out of the desert.  The bandits of Last Chance had struck again.  Next to him Chastity couldn't meet his eyes, and she looked at the upturned sidewalk between her feet.  The cruel sun beat down on them, and sweat beaded out on Nathan's forehead, but it wasn't from the sun this time.

"But I thought…I…."  He looked at the jar in his hands and his face wrenched up in a horrid convulsion, a strangled cry escaped him, and the tears came again.  Chastity put an arm around him, but Nathan felt cold, not to her touch, but more or less removed.  He did not respond to her in any way, but he managed to tell the rest of his story through broken gasps.

"She looked so beautiful in the moonlight.  It came in through a hole in the ceiling.  It really wasn't a hole.  It was a shattered window that had been set at the top of a dome over the lobby.  Angie had this…this white nightgown she slept in. It was linen and it was about as hard to see through as a piece of glass.  I wanted her then, and I thought…I though she loved me, so I."  He stopped, breathed and looked straight ahead.  His voice was level, cold, and completely apathetic.

"So when she whispered for me to stop, I thought that she was really just being coy.  I didn't stop."

There was a long silence, and Nathan sat the jar down on the sidewalk.  The sun which fell through the blood left a crimson splash of light on the stoop in front of Chastity's flat.

"The days passed and we remained there for another week.  Angie never told anyone about what I did, because they would have either killed me or exiled me, which meant I would have died.  She didn't have it in her, but she should have.  I was too chicken-shit to tell the leaders what I had done myself.  So the days passed.  She wouldn't talk to me, and I avoided her.  She grew to hate me, and I grew to hate myself.  Then one day they all say that we're going and so we all pack up and head off, in separate directions.

"The night before we were to go, I went to her, to say…shit I don't know what I could have said, but I was going to say it anyway.  I found her in the hotel garden, the plants were blossomed out and the air was sweet.  She was near the pond.  I don't know why she went there, but I could hear her praying.  She had this,"--he pointed to the necklace which lay at the bottom of the jar--"wrapped around her hands when she was praying.

"When she saw me a look of stark terror overtook her, and I rushed toward her, my heart broken, trying to console her, but she was quicker.  She drew a knife out of the sleeve of her gown and stabbed at me.  I don't know what I did, a sort of side stepped, sort of grabbed at the blade, but I ended up with the knife in my hands."

Chastity's hands were playing with his hair, and he wiped his face off.  The sun was indeed hot today, and he was sweating profusely, but maybe because he was nervous as well.

"I told her that I had loved her, and that I had made a mistake.  I had never said anything that was so hard or so true ever since.  I didn't want her to return anything.  I just wanted her to know the truth.  But she couldn't listen.  She started screaming and she told me to fuckin' die.  She told me to fuckin' die."

He stopped, and with a sigh put the Mason jar back into its pouch.

"So I killed her.  I stabbed her in the neck.  She gargled and then died.  I got away, into the woods that surrounded the hotel, and spent the night alone.  The next day they had gone, and left her body under a haphazard grave of stones.  No one came after me.  I found her gown, the white stained red and I found that Mason jar.  I rung the blood out into it, and I have kept it ever since, to remind me when I forget.  I'm a sinner and I expect no mercy from no one."

Nathan stopped, that being the most he had ever said at once since the Storm some twenty years ago.  When she said nothing, Nathan continued.

"I'm leaving now.  I thought about asking you to follow me, but I can't let that happen.  I've got to go home, to make my peace."

He stood up, strapped the pouch and the wood to his legs, slung the gun over his shoulder and walked on.  He did not look back, but he felt her eyes staring wide and horrified after him.

He kept on going and never looked back.  She let him.

*

The dust storm rolled high overhead, the world below shadowed and the air chilled.  The mobile homes that lay toppled, their sides brandished and stained with neglect, clattered loudly as rocks and bits of debris struck them.  The sound was hollow, empty.  The sound spoke for the tenants of those homes, it spoke of how they would never return, how these places were lost forever in memory, and even that memory would pass with enough time.  It was late afternoon, the hottest part of the day, the time of day when wasps and flies are the most active, the time of day when the sun should be at its fiercest.  But it was as dark and sullen as evening.   Even the flies did not follow Amerigo.

The man came to the building, a squat, brick structure not unlike the rest of the places in the center of Last Chance.  The building stood not more than four blocks from the Last Chance Diner, and the San Christi Fountain was visible from the cracked, convoluted stoop which was once a stout staircase ascending in from the building door.  The screen door beat itself blindly against the withered frame, and Amerigo watched it.  Marie sat inside, just up the hallway, the last room on the left.  The only room which hadn't been infested by either snakes or other, more human vermin.  Though he had never been here in person, Amerigo knew exactly what the room looked like.  He knew when the window had been broken, when Marie had taped it up, and even how she had stolen the cushions which adorned the corners of the flat.

Amerigo had shared many dreams with the woman.  He had been here, though as nothing more than a fantasy, a wish, but she had wanted him – and that gave him all the power he needed.  Drawing on her desire, her lust for him, Amerigo was able to change himself.  It was not a dramatic change, with flesh readjusting itself and such, but very subtle, and quicker than thought.  One moment he appeared as a rather tall, slender, Italian man with oily, black hair and red eyes – the next moment he was shorter, more muscular and his squared jaw darkened with dirt and the coloring of a young beard.  He was exactly the image that Marie had conjured up in her dreams, her image of a perfect man, of a perfect lover.  He smiled, already used to this body, already knowing its limits and its strengths.  Amerigo pushed the screen door open and proceeded along the hall.

"Hello, my love," he whispered, though his voice passed through her door and even roused her from sleep.  Marie realized who it was, wrapped herself in the shawl, and opened the door.  Amerigo, as she had known him in her dreams, stood there.  She could not speak, though her lips worked as if they would go on and try anyhow.  Her whole body trembled, but most of all, warmth spread throughout her, making her legs weak and her belly uneasy.

"You…you came." She did not offer him in, but he entered anyhow.

"Of course, my love.  I keep my word, to the bitter end."

"He was here.  He was the same man you said would come."

"Shh," Amerigo walked toward her, and stroked her hair, whispering into her ear.  "Not now.  Not yet.  I would rather put pleasure before business, my love."

As he touched her, his hands eliciting feelings which no other man had ever given her, his kiss humbling all before him, she could not say that she fully wanted this now.  A month ago, yes.  A week ago, yes.  But as they shed their clothes and found the cushions, the only thing that Marie could think about was a jar of blood.

Blood which was older than her, yet still as fresh as the day it was drawn.

*

Even with the howling wind and the rolling thunder overhead, the horseman could hear the woman's shrill cries for mercy.  He was not far from the way station; the only one that still stood near Last Chance.  The place was an old gas station, and the pumps and angled, slanted roof of the service station had an eerie quality in the twilight of the storm.  She cried again and the man tipped his hat forward, shielding his face.  Inside of him a rage grew and bubbled its way into his hands, but he steadied them and they did not go to his magnums.  Rather, the horseman guided his mare quietly to the ancient, broken asphalt of the Texaco service station and waited.

Soon the door swung open and the woman ran out into the parking lot.  She cried in short sniffles, the kind of crying which tried desperately to cling to any pride that remained.  She was not a beautiful woman by any standard; plump, her skin too pale and her hair greasy, but she had powerful eyes.  The horseman had come to regard a mortal's eyes as something mystical, nearly divine.  If they had souls, than surely those souls peered back through the eyes, and this woman's soul was broken, dark and withering.

He nodded to the woman who did not respon.  The bug-laden Coke sign beat sporadically above her as she pleaded for help with those deep, lucid eyes.  He nodded again, this time toward the service station and she responded by dropping her face to the ground and letting loose a sharp, strangled sob.  The horseman dismounted and was within the station before the woman knew what had happened to him.

"What the hell is this?" the clerk intoned.  His fat, balding forehead was ripe with sweat even though it was cool with the looming storm.  "More people have been in here this week than in five years."

The horseman did not reply.  He stared at David from under his wide sombrero.  The clerk was quickly unnerved and began to sweat even more.  From outside the sound of the woman became suddenly crisp as she wailed aloud.

"You dealt with him, David,"  the horseman said.  His voice was soft but penetrating.  It was like the sound of wood scraping against wood.  It chilled the air even more.

"Who?  What the hell is this about?"

"A tall man, an Italian with long hair and sunglasses.  You know him as Amerigo."

"Yeah, he came in here to trade for gun oil, so what?"

"He came to you seeking another man, a man who also has passed this way."

"You're a fuckin' crackpot.  Get outta' my store."

"The man was named Nathan.  He was rough looking, weathered and armed with a shotgun."

"You got till I count to five, buddy."  David had drawn his pistol, an old-fashioned revolver, and leveled it with the horseman's chest.

"What did Amerigo ask you, David?"

"One." David tried hard to keep his voice steady.

"Did he want blood, or a corpse?"

"Two."

"You should answer me, David."

"Three."

"Do you read the Bible, David?"

"Four."

"My favorite passage is - "

"FIVE!"  The revolver muzzle exploded into a blossom of flame, and a thick cloud of smoke etched its way from the counter to the horseman's chest.  He staggered back, a hole large enough to fit a cat through now yawning in his chest, but he did not fall.

" – the old earth passed away and a new heaven and a new earth awaited me."  The horseman walked calmly toward the counter, sliding in his own blood.  David stood motionless, his jaw slack, the gun aimed at the man but unable to fire.

"Have you ever heard of Aaron?" the horseman asked.

"N…no." David replied.

"He is the angel of vengeance."  The Desert Eagles were drawn from their hostlers and both discharged at once, the recoil enough to break a weak man's arm, but the horseman did not waver.  David's chest buckled inward, the wall behind him exploded into splinters of plaster and tile.  The clerk fell to the ground, his eyes locked into place.  The horseman looked into those dead unseeing eyes and watched the man's dark soul wither and vanish, drawn into the place which had been prepared for it.

The entire service station and everything in it except the horseman were drenched in blood, even the porno mags dripped crimson drops from their corners.  He hated these guns.  They were too effective.

The horseman left the building and tipped his hat to the woman.  She stood horrified, her face even paler, her mouth trembling.  He knew she wanted to do something, to yell, to run, to fight, but she couldn't.

Some part of him, the part that didn't always work anymore, was striving to make him walk to her, to heal her broken, rendered mind.  With but a touch he would remove every bad thought, every traumatic memory forever.  He could have saved her, but instead he mounted his horse and galloped along toward the San Christi Fountain, leaving her broken and lost.

He had read David's soul as it slipped from his body as easily as a man can glimpse at a billboard and read the message, and thus had seen what he needed to see.  He had seen how the clerk had just beaten and humiliated this woman.  That was how he had gotten his kicks, by paying for a whore and then beating her.  He had seen the man named Nathan Rain, he had seen his enemy's newest guise –Amerigo Vacinni, and he had seen the fountain.

It lay directly in the center of town, in a place where all of the major roads intersected.  It was a crossroads.

*

The colors were running, like a bad watercolor painting, like the edge of your vision in a dream. When Nathan noticed her, her gown left a trail of white smeared behind it.  That was when he realized it was a dream and not a memory.  But it was a powerful dream this night, the same as always, but still just as bittersweet and as real.

Angie stood across from him, resting her bottom on the rim of the low garden wall.  Every detail was vivid, the marble of the wall, the old cobblestones which formed the walkway, even the tender, green grass which sprouted from the mortar between the cobbles.  It was all so bright, and the colors ran into each other.  Nathan rarely had audio in his dreams, but she spoke to him.  She always spoke.

"I miss it all, Nathan," she said, looking at the place between her bare feet.  That must be the place that people keep their secrets, and maybe their guilt.  He thought of things like this in his dreams, stupid thoughts that he forgot when he awoke.

"I know," he responded.  It was all the same.  This part wasn't a dream, and except for the constant thought running through his head that this was something that had already happened, Nathan even felt the same.  His stomach quivered in anticipation, his calves trembled as well, but his voice was steady.

"I just…it's all too much, Nathan.  I saw a whole family dead in their van.  They were on the road out of the city, just dead right there in the middle of the highway."

He crossed to her, even though he wanted to stop, and took her hand.  She did not smile, or even look at him.  She looked upward, at the sky, at the night stars.

"They never change, do they Nathan?"

"What, the stars?"  He was holding her hand, their fingers braiding themselves together.  His throat was dry, and his heart beat loud enough to ripple the muscles in his chest.

"Yeah.  They'll be here tomorrow.  They'll be here forever."

He slid his hand along her back.  She did not resist.

"We'll be here tomorrow, Angie.  We'll be here forever.  We just have to come together now.  We have to be together."  He took her hand and kissed it.  She placed a hand in his hair and swirled her fingers delicately, almost unnoticeably across his scalp.  Chills and warmth spread from his head downward.  He took her hand, brushed it against his face.

"I'm so afraid, Nathan," she said, though her voice was quiet, nearly silent though he could hear her perfectly.  She did not sound afraid, only far away, removed from this insane world.

"Hold me," she whispered.  And he took her, and he kissed her.  She did not return his kiss at first, and when she did it was not like he had expected.

Stop it you idiot!  Nathan yelled to himself, but his dream-self did not waver.  He ran a hand down her back again, this time finding the fasteners of gown as he went.

"Tomorrow the sun will shine, Angie.  Tomorrow…" his voice trailed off as he pushed her gown out of the way, his voice buried in the soft skin of her abdomen.

"Please, Nathan…"  But she didn't mean it.  At least she didn't sound like she meant it.  She asked for him to stop again, but her voice was also filled with what sounded like desire, what sounded like pleasure.  Nathan learned later, after many years of hardship and bitterness, that most of the time a man can't tell the difference between fear and desire.

He continued and she did not stop him, the entire act was dreamt though, exactly as he had remembered it.  He would have noticed the tears running along her cheek and the quiver in her bottom lip had he looked up, but he did not.  Then the dream took its own course and he did look up, and what he saw frightened him.

Marie, or Chastity as he wanted to remember her, stood over them both.  Angie had turned to stone somehow, her flesh cold and firm, but Nathan did not consider her dead in his dream, only far away, removed from this insane world.  Around them the sound of water fell, and they were no longer in the garden but in the small, Main Street of Last Chance.  The sound came from the fountain, but Nathan had no business knowing that except that this was a dream.

"You fucked her," Marie said.  Spite and virulence colored her voice.

"No…no.  I love her…I," Nathan fumbled for the words, and he looked down at Angie.  Her face was frozen, as still as a statue.  Her eyes were no longer eyes, but the white, featureless eyes of a Greek bust.  Her face was locked in an expression of sorrow, of loneliness.

"You fucked her," she said again.  Nathan screamed something unintelligible, and turned to run.  He ran until he fell over something and then found himself in the fountain.  The angelic statues looked down at him, their eyes also emotionless and far-gone.

"No!  No! I loved her, damn it!"  He hit the water in anger, and turned to face Marie, but she was gone.  In her place there was a Colorado license plate looking up at him like a lost, wayward and frightened child.  He started to tremble, knowing what was coming.

The skies, which had been dark and brooding, parted.   A shaft of light fell on him.  Nathan threw his arms over his eyes from the brilliance and shouted that he loved her, that he loved her forever, even tomorrow.

And then the dove fell from heaven, landing on the rim of the fountain.  Nathan held out an outstretched, soaked hand.  As his finger touched the dove it screamed a very human scream and burst violently into flames.

He awoke crying.  Not soft tears that had slipped out, but crying violently, his chest aching with it, his nose dripping and his breath ragged.  He sat and cried himself back into sleep, which – thankfully – was devoid of any kind of dream.
 
 

He awoke in the morning and gathered his things.  He had spent the night in an abandoned trailer, the west side of which had been torn off, and had apparently vanished into the desert.  It was a good place for him to sleep.  It was barren.  Everything which suggested the old world of billboards and traffic jams had been removed.  There were no family pictures yellowed and discolored by years of neglect to torment him, and there was a sheet that he used to screen the hole up.  Nathan thought that if he found more places like that to sleep, forgetting the old world would be a hell of a lot easier.

There was no morning sun to greet him, just a dark and foreboding sky that danced with lightening near the horizon.  He hadn't taken no more than three steps from the trailer when he heard the click of a rifle, not far away but behind him.

"Don't make any sudden moves, friend."  Nathan slowly held his hands up, his shotgun strapped to his back.

"The wood's all I got.  You'll have to shoot me for it." He said, suddenly filled with an immense rage.  He still felt both warm and uneasy from his dream the night before.  There was no response, only a stillness.  In that silence Nathan heard the sound of a rattle near his feet.  He turned to look, but there was the thunder clap of a rifle, and all he saw was a headless snake, the body only a few inches from his ankle.

"I don't think I'll have ta' shoot a damn fool like you ta' kill ya'."

The rifleman was old, and small standing only a few inches above Nathan's chest.  The man's hair sprouted from his head at every conceivable angle, and he was dressed only in a pair of dusty, faded blue jean overalls.  He had a pair of bulky, bright orange safety goggles strapped to his face.  He sat atop the trailer, his rifle between his legs as he reloaded it, and checked its firing mechanisms.  Once satisfied by a few dry shots, he removed the goggles and hopped down.

"What should I make of you?" Nathan asked, no longer concerned that the man was a threat.

"My name is Joe, Joseph Carpenter."

"Why are you following me?"

"Got nothin' better to do."  Nathan laughed out loud, and it had been so long since he had that it felt strange to do it.

"So, what are you?  A Tracker, a crazy old way-station clerk?  What?"

"I guess you could say that I'm your guardian angel."

Nathan quit smiling.
 
 

Part Two

In her dreams she was a child again.  The world was new, the violence and the decadence were still far away from her and she was pure.  In her dreams Marie walked along the edge of Highway 8, as she had done once, alone, but in her dreams she was not alone.  A man walked with her.  A tall man dressed in loose black pants which hung over old, cracked combat boots.  She never saw his face and he never talked, but she knew who he was, and what he wanted to tell her.

She had walked for a long time along the edge of the highway.  The pavement was visible only in patches, where the dust had blown away or the asphalt had not yet cracked down into gravel.  In her dreams, though, the highway was still new, still in perfect condition as it had been before the Storm, before she was born.  The man who walked beside her was named Sariel.  She couldn't remember the name when she awoke, but in her dream she would try to remember what that meant, if it even meant anything at all.

They walked along the highway in silence, Sariel a few steps ahead of her.  Marie knew where they were going: East.  In the east, cities still stood, the highways were still black and painted, and there was even gasoline for the cars to use.  She was eager and she was afraid, but she had had this dream many times before, and each time it ended the same.  Sariel would stop and point, he would turn and almost reveal his face, as if he were going to tell her something, but then Marie would awaken and the dream would be lost.

Sariel stopped now, and he pointed as he always did, but this time his face made it all of the way around.  She stopped, startled in her sleep, and nearly woke out of fright.  The image blurred, darkness taking its place as she swam up out of sleep, but hands clenched her feet and gently, lovingly pulled her back to the highway where the man stood.  His face was not ugly or wretched.  In fact, it was so normal that she forgot it upon awaking.  He opened his mouth to say something, but the words only came out half way, the sound garbled by the myriad of stray thoughts that assault a person in their dreams.

He said, "Crossroads….no longer….fading…."

As she awoke for good this time, the morning sun hidden behind the brooding storm, those were the only words she could remember from the dream.  She lay on the floor.  Across from her, crouched in the doorway, Amerigo sat with his legs crossed and two pistols on the floor in front of him, dismantled and meticulously being cleaned.

"I have to leave soon, my love," he said, still appearing to her as the stranger who had passed this way a year ago.

"He went away to the northeast, along the Interstate.  I think he's heading for the Saint Anthony Church.  I followed him like you said I should in the last letter, and I saw it.  The jar that is.  It was just like you said it would be, with the necklace and everything.  Except…."  She did not sound like Marie, the woman whose independence and vigor had allured Nathan.  When she spoke to Amerigo she sounded lost, almost drunk.

"Except what, dear?" he asked, not looking up at her.  He was rapidly putting the guns back together.

"The blood.  It…." A word suddenly came to her, and it brought a feeling of relief and joy.  She smiled and whispered it aloud.

"What?" Amerigo asked, his voice suddenly harsh.  She looked at him, her long, flowing hair framing her face in a brown halo, her eyes wide and glassy with fright.  His voice was a weapon, a commanding weapon that could break a man or rescue him with but a tiny inflection of the voice.

"Nothing, the blood…it was old but it was still fresh…"

"I don't care about the damn blood, what did you just say under your breath!"

"Sariel.  I said Sariel," She whispered.  Her breath was raged, her eyes now wide.  She was starting to unravel, her fear blinding her.  It was not her fault, and somehow she understood that much.  It was Amerigo and his cold, piercing eyes.

"You little bitch." He leaped forward, was up and over her, a pistol pressed against her neck in a flash.  She hardly had time to let loose a scream before he pulled the trigger.  The room shook with the blast, and her throat exploded onto the wall in a red burst.  Marie fell backward, clawing at the air and making strange choking sounds.  Amerigo looked at her naked, bloody body and the taped window that was dripping onto the floor and suddenly wondered what the hell he had just done.

Not wasting time to see if she was dead, he rushed for the door, dressed only in his black pants and shoes.  Amerigo stepped outside, the wind dry and silent, electric with the storm.  He was confused and had momentarily lost his sense of direction.  As he stood on the front stoop, looking along the streets, a sound like thunder split the air.  He thought nothing of it until the screen door no more than a hand's length away from him was thrown off its hinges and carried fifteen yards down the cluttered, wrecked hallway.  A hole the size of a softball had appeared in the brick wall at the end of the hall, and as far as Amerigo knew the bullet was still going.

He spun in the direction of the sound, saw the San Christi Fountain and the horseman who stood before it.  The man sat hunched in his saddle, the reigns dropped to his side.  His face was shadowed under his wide sombrero and his dark hair.  Two guns flashed in his hands, apparently made of brass or gold.  Amerigo fired several blind shots at the man, and the horse whinnied and bucked.  Before the horseman regained control of his steed, Amerigo was gone, lost in the alleys of Last Chance.

From his saddle the horseman holstered one of his guns and rode slowly, cautiously toward the door of the apartment building.  The woman inside was not yet dead.  He knew that like he knew that her name was Marie but she called herself Chastity.  He knew that the man Amerigo was not a man, but like himself, an angel.  And he knew that his shot should not have missed.  As he neared the door, thunder shook the heavens and the rain began to pour in a great, unforgiving torrent.  In a matter of seconds the dry, cracked streets were small rivers and the loose pavement and garbage was floating around like a sick impression of jetsam.  He dismounted and stepped through the door, his hat soaked and dripping, his duster plastered to his body.  The horse stood outside.  If it noticed the raging storm around it, it showed no sign.  The horseman found her room and the crippled body in its death throes.

He knelt and placed a hand on the remains of her neck, and when he removed it her skin was still covered in blood, but there was no visible sign of an attack.  She gasped loudly, and let out a cry, pulling herself up by the horseman's coat.  He did not stop her, nor did he help her, but watched with apathetic indifference.

"Take me to him."

She could not respond.  She only pressed herself against the horseman, clinging to him with the strength of a drowning man.  In her mind everything swirled, everything was blurred.  She saw endless stretches of highway, she saw faceless men, she saw a man who walked alone, a shotgun across his back.

"You must take me to Nathan before he finds him.  Nathan's life is in danger, Marie."

"Who…who are you?" she managed.

"Just someone who wants to get home."

***

The storm raged around the Saint Anthony Church, rattling the few shingles that still hung on the steeples and gabled roof.  Nathan sat under the archway of the main door, the pale steps spreading from the door to the desert grass below.  The steps weren't cracked or busted up like most concrete things he saw anymore.  Nathan wondered just how in the hell a thought like that could creep into his mind at a time like this.

"You don't gotta' act like you didn't know nothin' Nathan.  You was already startin' to find out about everything on your own."

"I guess.  I just…I don't think much anymore.  There's no use in it, not in this world."

"Well, you can be like that if ya' want, I ain't gonna stop ya', but just remember the things I told you.  A man with nothin' to live for ain't got much to die for neither."

Nathan couldn't respond to that one.  He just sat and stared off at the desert.  The storm reached on forever, spanning all points of the horizon.  They came few and far between, but when they came, they made sure you knew they were there.  Joe stood behind him, leaning in the archway, trying to get a hand-rolled cigarette to light, but the brisk, stray wind kept snuffing it out.

They had come upon the church shortly before the storm hit and the whole way Joe had been silent, brooding.  Nathan was starting to get uneasy around the man, but he hadn't shot him when he had a perfect chance, so he probably wouldn't do it at all.  Once they had entered the church – the windows of which were still oddly intact – Joe laid it all on him.  He told Nathan about how there were two men who had been trailing him from Las Angles, how his own determination and guilt had kept Angie's blood fresh after nearly twenty years.  Joe had told him how he could open Crossroads, places that still allowed things to travel to Heaven, or to Hell.  He had explained a lot, and he had done it frank, and bluntly.  Nathan would have thought the man was just another crazy who lived in the desert and hunted invisible Indians, but most of it had been right.
 
 

**

"So what's going on here, Joe?  Why now?  Why here?"

"Can't say, Nathan.  I guess these guys are going to hunt you down and force you to open the Crossroads."

"Well, good luck to 'em, I don't know shit about this Crossroad bullshit."

"If it's bullshit, then that jar of blood you carry around like a damn manic is bullshit.  If them Crossroads is bullshit, then you're bullshit."

Nathan turned a narrow gaze at the man, but Joe wasn't affected.  He was still trying to get his cigarette lit.

"You'll know what to do when the time comes.  They always do."

"There's other Walkers?"

"Yeah, sure.  You think you're special or somethin'?  There's a lot more than you'd think."

"Then why don't they find one of them?"

"Don't know.  Maybe they think you are special or somethin'."

"Maybe."  Nathan looked fondly at his shotgun thrown across his lap.  "You know, I would have killed you if I didn't already half believe this."

"I know it, Nathan.  I even know whose shotgun that is."

Now his eyes had grown wide, and Nathan turned toward Joe.  The end of his cigarette burned red, and he blew a jet of smoke from his wide nostrils.

"That shotgun used to belong to an angel.  Don't know which one, too many of 'em around these days, but that was an angel's shotgun, sure as shit."

Nathan let his fingers trace delicately over the barrel and across the stock.  He felt as if everything he had ever done was on the table right now.  He felt as if this insane old man would start talking about how Nathan had screwed up, how he had fucked up and raped a girl.  Not just anyone, mind you, but the one person he truly loved.  He felt naked, he felt afraid.  And the rain did not stop, the skies weren't clear.

"They gonna kill her, if they ain't already."

"Who?"

"You know who, Nathan.  She wasn't supposed to let you go, that's not part of Amerigo's plan."

"Who?"

"An old friend of mine."  Though he didn't see it, a smile--sly and sinister--crept across Joseph Carpenter's face.

"I don't give a shit.  I just want to get home."

"So does everyone, Nathan, so does everyone.  The problem is, there ain't so many homes left in this world.  A man like you carries his home 'round with him.  In a Mason jar to be exact."

"What do you want?  Want me to kill another angel?"

"If he deserves it, but personally I'd go for the demon."

"I can't save her.  I can't save nobody.  I ain't no damn hero."

"There ain't no heroes in this world, Nathan.  There's just people doin' the best they can, and most people don't get a last chance."

Nathan stood, overlooking the small valley of Last Chance.  The abandoned city was highlighted in a flash of lightning, and somehow Nathan saw the San Christi Fountain clearly, its image lingering on in the following darkness.  He went to say something to Joseph, but when he turned, the man was gone.

"Joseph!" he called again, but Joe was gone.  Nathan wasn't surprised.  In fact, he had expected it.  All the same, Joe had been a bit odd as far as angels go.

He set off along the highway, his back to the city, his feet plodding east.

"I ain't no hero, I ain't no hero."  He kept telling himself, but he stopped not more than a hundred yards from the church.  The city was highlighted in another flash of lightning, and he stopped, the rain plastering his clothes to his narrow frame.  He was crying and was glad he couldn't feel the tears in the rain.  He sniffled and wiped his nose on his sleeve.  With his hands trembling, his stomach weak, Nathan Rain turned and began along the path which wound down, back into Last Chance.

As he went he didn't see the storm around him, he didn't feel the wind lashing against his bare face or the rain sloshing in his socks.  He saw a beautiful girl before him, her gold-red hair tucked behind her ears.  She was beautiful, and she was untouched by this world, clean from the dirt that stained Nathan's hands.  In her hands she held a Mason jar, filled with blood.  He walked toward her, and prayed to God that he had one last chance to set it right.

*

The rain came in thick, blinding sheets now, veiling the world in a gray sheet.  Marie walked beside the horseman, her hands bound in a strong, coarse rope.  He rode on, slowly, toward the fountain, never looking at her, never speaking to her.  He had not yelled at her or shown her any sign of violence or harm, other than tying her to his saddle horn.  Marie kept her head down, her thoughts still swirling and her feet light from the gunshot, and of course the resulting miracle.  She had explained that Nathan had set off for the Saint Anthony Church, at least in that direction.  The horseman had sighed when she said that and led her on without further explanation.

"What…what is this about?"

He did not answer.

"Are you…are you a demon?"  Marie could not talk without her voice quivering.  She did not feel afraid, but her body acted as if she were.

"No."  The horseman stopped near the fountain and looked northward along Main Street.

"No matter what happens, I won't let you die, do you understand?" he said, though his voice was cold and emotionless.

"Yes."

"Good."  He drew a pistol with one hand and held the reigns of his steed with the other.  "Amerigo!  Amerigo!  It's time to finish this!  Only one of us can have him, only one of us can return!"

There was no answer from the surrounding storm, only silence.

"You know where he is!  Neither of us can get him there, Amerigo.  He's on neutral ground.  We're going to have to end it between us right here."

Something flung itself from the rain, and the horseman reeled in his saddle.  The horse bucked and screamed, pulling Marie with it.  The horseman fell, his pistol dropping from his hand and the shaft of a long, black arrow protruding from his chest.  Another arrow flew from beyond the rain and cut the rope binding Marie.  The horse galloped off into the storm and the horseman struggled to find his feet.

"She dreams of the Nameless one, Azaiel."  The voice which came from the rain was harsh, grating and somehow similar to Amerigo's.  The horseman Azaiel stood, a magnum in one hand and the broken shaft of the arrow in the other.  He let the arrow fall to the ground and aimed his gun in the direction of the voice.

"She must not be suffered to live," the voice intoned.  Now a form, a figure like a man but different somehow, not in its appearance but mostly in its movement.

"She won't," Azaiel said and fired the gun at the figure standing just beyond the rain.  It rolled back with the blast, a great piece of flesh flinging into the air behind it.  Azaiel fired several more shots, until the figure dropped, its arms and its head blown away.  Cautiously the angel approached the body and was no more than an arm's length away when the glass in a nearby window erupted, the cracking rising over the steady patter of rain.  Azaiel had only enough time to realize that the body he had blown apart was that of the whore he had seen at the battered way-station.  He had fallen for the oldest trick in Lucifer's book.

Amerigo grappled the angel, toppling him to the ground.  His wide sombrero fell away, his pale and sunken face exposed.  The demon smiled a vicious smile, and his eyes once more burned red.

"Just like Joe.  Good guys are always so fucking stupid."  Amerigo's forehead began to quiver, and in a swift, fluid motion two ram horns erupted from his brow and talons from his fingers.  Azaiel pressed both of his Desert Eagles into Amerigo's chest.  The sound was deafening.  The demon flew bodily off of the angel, landing with a thump out of Azaiel's field of vision, obscured by the storm.  Blood ran with the rainwater, though, pooling about the fountain in a wide arc.

The angel staggered to his feet.  His shoulders were badly cut and his chest bled richly, meaning that the devil's claws had struck an artery or vein.  He turned to confront his captive, but she was gone.

"Goddamn it," he hissed.

*

Nathan walked along the gravel path that wound its way from the church to the city below.  He could not see for more than an arm's length in any direction and so kept his head low, hidden under his upturned collar.  His shotgun was wrapped in a strip of cotton that he kept for just such an occasion, but it was still soaked anyway.  His bundle of wood, the thing that started this whole damn mess, was hidden behind a crumbling pew in the church.  The Mason jar, however, was held firmly in his other hand.  He walked on.  Diligent and determined, he headed for the San Christi Fountain.

"Nathan!"  The call rose over the rain, but only faintly.  Nathan stopped as if shot through the heartand listened for the sound of footsteps.  Marie burst from the rain and crashed into him so suddenly that he had no time to find the trigger.  She went to him, her head down, crying, but when she looked up at his hollow, ragged and desperate face, she screamed and backed away.  Murder gleamed out of his eyes and hung around him like a stench.

"What do you want?" he asked her, his voice low, pressed and articulate with rage.

"I...I just wanted to find you.  To warn you."

"A bit fuckin' late, don't 'cha think?"

"I'm sorry…"

"Whatever."  He pushed her aside, not bothering to console or help her.  "Get to the church if you want to live.  They can't go in there." he yelled over his shoulder, his voice mixing and fading in the storm.  She watched him go and felt her knees tremble.  The look in his eyes had been indescribable.  It was the look of guilt, sorrow, rage, and apathy all at once.  He was either returning or dying.  Of that there could be no doubt.

*

Azaiel sat under what remained of an awning of some old pawnshop, Last Chance Rip Off or something.   The rain had slacked down enough for him to see to the end of Main Street, where the desert roads picked up and the paved roads left off, even in the times before the Storm.  He watched a figure approach out of the desert, a shotgun wrapped in cloth in one hand, the other in his duster pocket.  The set of the man's shoulders, the way he stomped through the puddles, even the sharp way he darted his head across Last Chance, all spoke for him.  No other human would have walked with such conviction, such desperate rage and remorse as a Walker.  They were rare, Azaiel knowing of only a dozen in his time on earth, which ranged from the Crusades until today.  Most of them did not understand that it was their will alone that rend the seven veils of earth and heaven asunder.  It was their will alone that quelled even the most powerful of demons or most noble of angels.  To tell the truth, Azaiel felt nervous but relived that he was only human and that he could die if he pushed himself to it.

Nathan neared the fountain and had not yet noticed the angel sitting under the awning.  The Walker circled the fountain, touching the water and looking at the forlorn, nearly forgotten statues of the archangels.   So he has found the Crossroad on his own, Azaiel thought, this one is not so untrained.

"Hello, Nathan," the horseman called, standing.  Nathan turned a sharp eye on him and leveled the shotgun at the stranger's waist.  It was a move so subtle most humans would not have noticed.

"Yeah, who are you?"

"I think you know that answer, my friend," Azaiel responded.  He did not smile, nor did he act warm toward Nathan in any way.  He did not chance that Nathan might sense a lie.

"You're one of three people.  An angel, a demon, or the bastard who thought tying Marie's hands together and scaring her out of her mind was the best way to treat her.  No one else here knows who I am."

"You are very accepting of someone who deals with devils, Nathan."  Nathan looked coldly at the horseman, his eyes gauging the angel.

"She would have just as soon seen you die as fuck you," Azaiel said, indifferently.  Nathan's face screwed up in a visage of anger, and he dropped the useless cloth away from the shotgun.

"You recognize this?"

"Dear God…"  Azaiel was truly stunned.  The weapon leveled at him was not a mortal gun, but fashioned from the forges of heaven, wielded from the Light of God.

"Then that means you're the angel.  You really aren't very good at this angel shit, you know."  Nathan did not remove the gun from the horseman, but took a step back.  Azaiel closed his mouth, embarrassed, and also stepped back.

"I am not an angel of forgiveness.  My order is that of Aaron, the avenging angel.  My place on this world is to avenge, not forgive."  He let his eyes wander across Nathan, looking for any signs of a sidearm when he focused unconsciously on a large, cylindrical lump in his front duster pocket.

"I suppose you want me to open a gate to heaven, so you can go home, right?"

"That was…well to put it so simply, yes."

"Then before I do, you have to answer me a question."

"I shall."

"What would you have done with Marie if you couldn't find me, or if I turned to the devil?"

"I…." Azaiel paused, his hands sweating even in the rain, his lips trembling in a very human manner.  "As an angel of vengeance, I would have punished her for betraying God, for abandoning the Light."

"Wrong answer."  Both barrels discharged at once and Azaiel's waist vanished in a spray of bone and meat.  He fell backwards on the ground, screaming.  His mortal body was his only chain to this world, and it was desperately close to dying.  Nathan began to expertly reload the weapon.

"PLEASE!  PLEASE, I'M DYING!" he yelled, his voice straining.  Azaiel thrashed on the ground, his wings beginning to unfurl from his back, ripping his duster along the seams.  He was rolled half over, just enough to hide his hands.

"The last angel that tried that 'help me' shit got his gun stolen," Nathan said, coldly and without any trace of emotion.  He kicked the angel back over and found the horseman's hands on the hilt of his pistols.  He locked the barrel and aimed it at the angel's face.

"Take them, take them!  For the love of God I'm just doing my job."

"No you're not," Nathan hissed, picking up the pistols.  He dropped them into his pockets and removed his Mason jar.

"All angels are the same.  You fuck up, and there they are, right there to punish you.  No second chance for me, but I don't want one, not from you, not from anyone.  But Marie, she's just a kid.  She don't know nothin' but this world, she's just part of it.  This world's rotting away and it's rotting everything in it as well.  No, she was just doing what her heart told her was right.  I saw most of this coming.  Most of it."

He picked up the angel, who winced in pain, and dropped the him in the fountain.  The rain had filled it to overflowing, and water toppled over in a great deluge, soaking Nathan even more.  Azaiel breathed heavily, but seemed mostly unhindered by the horrid hole in his belly.

"I knew about angels and demons a long time ago.  Things changed after the Storm. Your kind started to get nervous and tales of miracles and magic were spreading like wildfire.  But this is the first time I ever heard anything about a Walker, other than that they were a modern legend."  He opened the Mason jar and stuck it under the angel's nose.  The smell of blood, hot and rich, floated out only to vanish in the wet air.

"I thought that was some curse, maybe an angel's, maybe a demon's, but a curse.  That blood is nearly twenty fuckin' years old, and it's still fresh.  Now some crazy old man tells me that it's my will alone which keeps the blood fresh.  He tells me that I am a Walker.  Imagine that."  He poured the blood into the fountain, and as it swirled in with the water and the angel's blood, something began to happen.  A red glow that began to seep out of the water.

"What are you doing!" Azaiel shouted.  He struggled to get out, but his legs were useless.  Nathan pressed him back in with the shotgun.

"Sending you home, with the rest of the damned souls."  A heat began to pour out of the fountain, a terrible heat that boiled away the rain in a cloud of steam.

"Why are you doing this?  I'm the angel?" He sounded pitiful, pleading, and it almost touched Nathan's heart.  But it didn't.

"I ain't no fuckin' part of a machine you can just forget about.  You just march into my life, command me to send your ass home, and what do I get for it?  A jar of fuckin' blood is what I fuckin' get.  You're gonna learn what it's like losing everything, and then losing it again."  Flames actually began to lick up out of the water, and Azaiel was on the verge of screaming.

"I…I forgive you for this, Nathan Rain!" he called.

"You're an angel of vengeance, not forgiveness."

The fountain erupted into a roar of blue flame, but burned for only an instant, then it fell silent.  There was no sign of the angel when the steam cleared.
 
 

*

The rain stopped at last, but the streets still swirled and ran with water, rolling like little rivers.  Nathan stood before the fountain, waiting.  Waiting for what would come, for who would come, and not really knowing what he was going to do.  His shotgun was ready, but he didn't think he would use it.  He was tired, his stomach and legs felt heavy.  And strangely enough, his throat was dry.

"You frighten me, Nathan Rain."  The voice was soft, unimposing, but carried a presence, a subtle commanding power which Nathan knew—somehow--was divinely given, not naturally developed.  The voice belonged to a man who came quickly along the wet streets, a suit jacket thrown across his shoulder in a very arrogant manner.  He was taller than Nathan and his clothes clung to his body.  His long raven-black hair dripped but still a good natured smile yawned across his face.

"Why is that?" Nathan asked in turn.  He unholstered his shotgun and Amerigo stopped.

"You would kill me as easily as you killed Azaiel.  Most men are at least….well…."

"Surprised?" Nathan spat in return.  "I've been stepped on too much to be surprised anymore."

"Your life has not been that bad, my friend.  In fact, I have a feeling it is all about to change."

"I don't make deals with the devil."

"If you mean Lucifer, then there is no way you can."  Amerigo removed his sunglasses and looked steadily into Nathan's eyes.  "My Lord was slain in battle, at the hands of an angel.  He died honorably."

"So the devil's dead, huh?"

"I promise you, I speak no lie."

"You couldn't say anything but lies.  I've dealt with demons before.  To be honest, I think you guys have more style than the angels anyhow."

"Why thank you."

"So what's the deal?  What do I get for opening the Crossroad for you?"

Amerigo smiled again and tucked his sunglasses into his shirt pocket.  He dropped the jacket that he was slung over his shoulder.

"I can bring her back, Nathan."

"What?"

"Angie.  I'll arrange it so that the Caretakers find her soul.  They can fashion a fleshly body--"

"Wait a fuckin' minute! You're tellin' me that Angie is in hell?"

"Everyone's in hell, my friend.  When he was alive, Lucifer wasn't biased."

"Alright.  I've got nothin' to loose."

"Well then, it's a deal."  Amerigo held out his hand, and Nathan took it.  They shook and the demon turned toward the fountain, pulling himself into the water gracefully.  He did not see the small, hardly decipherable smile that had grown on Nathan's face.

"I think I know how to open it," Nathan said.  He walked toward the water and touched his fingers to it.  The water began to swirl, and he felt something leave him, something hard and dark, and as it did his stomach and his legs no longer felt heavy.  In fact he felt rested, he felt at peace.

"It's working," Amerigo said.  "I am a man of my word Nathan."

"I know," Nathan replied.

"You have no clue how long I have been here.  It will feel good to be home again."

"I know," Nathan replied, his voice identical.  Amerigo looked down at the man, but Nathan's head was bowed.

"You shot her.  You would have killed her," Nathan said suddenly.  Amerigo stepped back from the man in surprise, hitting his head on the angelic statues.  There was something in the water, something that clung to the demon's feet, something that was both hot and cold.  It came to him, and the demon screamed out in terror.  The Walker had found the Light, and the Light had given him a glimpse of the truth.

Instinctively, the demon's wings and horns sprouted at once.  He flung himself into the sky with one great flap of the leathery, bat-like wings that had ripped from his shirt.  Nathan looked up and stumbled backward, the transformation happening so quickly that it shocked him into stillness.  He looked up at the demon, his hands leveling the shotgun, and suddenly Amerigo knew that no matter what happened, he was destined to die this day.  Not only his mortal shell, but his soul as well.  But before the shotgun burst into a plume of smoke and before it tore his wings from his back, he looked into Nathan Rain's eyes.

"I know you…" Amerigo whispered, even as he plummeted from the sky, his wings useless.  The demon fell on the upraised sword of Michael, the statue breaking and toppling in the process, but the battered devil still remained tangled in the other six.  He turned a pale and stricken face toward Nathan.  The shot had hit him in the stomach as well, and blood poured through his shirt.  He was dying, but even then he knew that his torment was not yet over.  Like the angel before him, Amerigo now understood the danger of underestimating a human, a Walker.

"I know you," He said, and this time Nathan heard him.  The man narrowed his eyes, but said nothing.  Instead, he turned his back and began to walk toward the church.  Amerigo tried to pull himself off the statues, but they had become an island of sorts.  The water beneath him was churning and frothing, a pearly light glowing faintly beneath the waves.  The light grew, and Amerigo understood what it was.  He mustered what strength this vessel still held and stood, spreading his tattered, useless wings.  His horns, each as long as a man's leg, were curled up toward the sky.

"So this is how it ends?" he called.  Nathan turned and drew one of Azaiel's pistols from his duster, leveling it at the demon's heart.

"Yeah.  Tell God that his days are numbered."  The Desert Eagle exploded. Nathan, not realizing the power of the thing, was thrown to the ground, the gun sent whirling through the air.  Amerigo's chest was torn in two, the pieces falling into the fountain with a thump.  A brilliant light, a light not unlike that of the morning sun, rose from the fountain.  Nathan hid his face from the holy light, and then, like the flame before it, it vanished.  There was no trace of the demon, save the broken statue of Michael.

Nathan stood, gathered his weapons and began to head back for the church and Marie, not knowing what to do now.  He stopped before he turned off Main Street and looked back at the fountain, which stood as if nothing had happened, as if it were nothing more than a fountain.  The water still brushed the rim of the basin.  For a moment, a brief, fleeting moment, Nathan felt like he wasn't here.  He felt like he was in an earlier time, a time before angels and demons, a time when kids rode big wheels up and down the dirt roads around Last Chance, a time when people still bitched about gasoline prices.  He felt like he was at home, but the feeling left him, leaving hollowness and coldness in its place.

"Yeah, it's tomorrow baby, it's tomorrow."

Copyright 1998 Robert Walz
 
 
You can e-mail Robert walz_d@earthlink.net