We drove down the road of a small city. There were no welcome signs so I had no idea what city it was. We didn't even know what state we were in. Things had really been pretty foggy ever since the State of Jerry, I guess. For that matter, things had really been pretty foggy for a pretty long time.

A monastic silence enshrouded this city. I had the feeling that, if we pulled up to one of the motels, there wouldn't be anyone there. It looked like a hurricane had just struck even though I knew we were nowhere near the coast. Had it been devastated by a tornado? No, tornadoes usually didn't devastate entire cities. Maybe a street or two, a row of houses, but this entire city seemed lain to waste.

"Gotta stop soon," Dad said. His head lolled back in the seat and he b.u.mped a few cars parked along the side of the road. Not that it looked like it really mattered. A number of cars had trees on top of them. Most of them had at least a window smashed out. The paint flaked off all of them and they looked like they had been shot up with some kind of gun. The windows of most of the establishments were boarded over or just broken out. Signs were blown down. Waste littered the street.

I spotted a place called the Happy Motel and helped Dad navigate into the parking lot.

"You stay here, I'll get us a room."

"Need money?" he said.

"I don't have any."

"Here ya go," he said. He pulled some coins from his pocket and tried to hand them to me but most of them ended up thumping onto the seat. I scooped them up and looked at them. They were not like any coins I had ever seen. The faces were strange; not just foreign, nearly alien. The script was something I had never seen before. I didn't know if this would work or not but, then again, I guessed it wouldn't kill us to sleep in the van for one night.

I tried the door of the motel's office but it seemed to be locked. Everything was boarded up so I couldn't see inside. I would have dismissed it as abandoned but their pylon sign glowed like a beacon, welcoming all pa.s.sersby and, beneath their name buzzed a neon pink *Vacancy' sign. I knocked on the boarded up front door. A slot opened and a worried set of eyes peeked out at me.

"What do you want?"

"I was wondering if we could stay here tonight. Your sign says you have rooms?"

"The storm's comin," the voice said.

I looked around me. Ominous thunder clouds rolled over the city.

"Here," I said, grabbing the change and the money from the restaurant and cramming it through the slot. He seemed far too panicked to reason with. "That's all I have."

"Good enough. Good enough. Just gotta get in outta this storm."

His eyes disappeared for a second and then some keys reappeared in their place, attached to a plastic tongue with 3078 printed on it. I a.s.sumed this meant the third floor even though the hotel looked like it only had one.

"It's around back," he said.

I hastily walked back to the van. Wind had begun to sweep over the city and I had the nagging suspicion that a storm had done all this damage. Maybe the same storm came every day, wreaking a new kind of havoc.

I didn't think I had the time to move Dad and he was completely pa.s.sed out so I just sat on his lap and guided the giant van to the back of the building. It must have gone on for three blocks. By the time we got to the room it had started to rain. I lifted Dad out and we went to the door. I unlocked it, tossed him in, and went back to the van for the flame. Reaching the room safely, I slammed the door and sat down, exhausted, on the bed. On the door was posted a sign that said: STORMPROOFED FOR YOUR PROTECTION. DO NOT LEAVE ROOM DURING STORM!

Just as I finished reading it, thunder boomed and I heard what may have been rain but was most probably hail pelt the tattered door and the boarded up window. On the bedside table was a laminated sheet of paper with a lightning bolt at the top and, below that, WELCOME TO TRUCULANT. It seemed like a history of the town. I figured I would most probably nap during the storm and thought I might as well read the history of their city before falling asleep.

It was written in all caps and gave me the impression that whoever wrote it was yelling at me: WELCOME TO TRUNCULANT AND THANK YOU FOR BEING A PART OF OUR THRIVING TOURIST INDUSTRY! SITUATED ON THE BORDER OF KANSAS AND CALIFORNIA (?) TRUCULANT AND IN THE FABLED STORM DISTRICT TRUCULANT COUNTS ITSELF AS PART OF NO STATE. IF YOU ARE HERE IN TRUCULANT THEN YOU MUST BE HEAR FOR THE STORMS. THESE STORMS ASIDE FROM BEING AN AWESOME SPECTACLE ARE ALSO PART OF ARE CAPITALIST STRENGTH. EACH DAY AT SOME TIME UNKNOWN TO ANYONE BUT OUR MAKER A STORM DESCENDS ON THE CITY AND DESTORYS ANYTHING IN ITS PATH!! AS YOU CAN IMAGINE THIS WOULD BE QUITE COSTLY IF YOUR PRIMARY TRADE WAS NOT LABOR. SINCE OUR PRIMARY TRADE IS LABOR WE HAVE PLENTY TO GO AROUND. WE NEED PEOPLE TO HELP BOARD UP WINDOWS AND REPLACE WINDOWS. WE NEED PEOPLE TO REMOVE TREES FROM CARS AND CORPSES FROM THE GUTTERS. IN SHORT. WE NEED YOU!!! SO TAKE A LOOK AROUND. LIKE WHAT YOU SEE? IF YOU WOULD BE INTERESTED IN STAYIG GIVE THE PRESIDENT A CALL. HE WOULD BE GLAD TO HERE FROM YOU!!! ENJOY YOUR STAY IN TRUCULANT AND THINK ABOUT MAKING IT A PERMANENT ONE!!!.

I placed the piece of paper on the bedside table and thought about how it may be the most hopelessly optimistic, depressing, and poorly edited welcome I'd ever received. And then I fell asleep.

Twenty-three.

"Wake up, sleepyhead!"

I awoke to the shouting and kicking of my bed. It moved a bit with each kick. I felt damp and cold. I opened my eyes. Dad was soaking wet.

"Why are you wet?"

"Took a shower."

"Did you bother drying off?"

"All the towels were wet. Look around. You'll see why."

I sat up in the bed which, I realized, was sopping. The motel room was virtually nonexistent. The roof and most of the walls were missing. The wall housing the door and the picture window looking out onto the parking lot was still there. The four walls housing the bathroom, amazingly, still stood as well. Maybe that was what they meant by "stormproofed" for our protection.

"You should shower up too. The van's starting to smell weird."

"It smelled weird when we found it."

"Anyway, you should think about showering."

"Okay okay. Just... let me get my bearings."

The flame sat on the nightstand, blazing away. It rested atop the laminated history of Truculant, unharmed also. Now I guess I knew why they bothered laminating it. I slid out of bed and looked around.

Dad took a deep breath.

"They've been predicting the big one for years. I guess it finally happened."

Looking out over the town I saw a bunch of buildings that looked like crooked, whittled down teeth and a lot of rubble. In other words, it looked even worse than when we had first entered the town. People picked through the rubble, looking for personal belongings and, maybe, loved ones. None of them looked the least bit surprised or unhappy. This was part of their day played out on a ma.s.sive scale.

"Jeez," I said.

"Jeez is right," Dad said.

"You've been here before?"

"A long time ago."

"When you tried to find grandfather?"

He nodded his head.

"Do you think he's still alive?"

"Hard to say. From what he said, the Nefarions never died. They could be killed. Usually by a storm or during a rite of pa.s.sage..."

"A rite of pa.s.sage?"

"Sure. Aside from the typically stupid rites of pa.s.sage most adolescents undergo, the Nefarions also have to sail out upon the Malefic Ocean, using only a leaf from one of their gargantuan palm trees, and stay afloat for two weeks. A lot of them end up dying this way but, for those who return, he has his pick of the village girls. Unfortunately, this virtual rape is their, the girls', rite of pa.s.sage. Not many of them die this way but some are undoubtedly traumatized for life. Anyway, if left to their own bodies, aside from outside influences or acts of G.o.d, your average Nefarion will live forever. Or, at least, what we think of as forever. It may be only a few years in their time. So, I guess we'll find out if their immortality is genetic or environmental. I would say if it's genetic then your grandfather is most probably dead. If it's environmental... well, your grandfather would probably have done something to get himself killed by this point anyway."

"You're probably right. Guess I'll go shower now."

I sloshed through the wet carpet on my way to the shower. I didn't really see how this was going to make me feel any cleaner. Taking off my wet and dirty clothes just to shower and put them back on again but at least the water would be warm and that would feel pretty nice right about now. I wondered if the van was still outside. Stepping into the bathroom, I looked up and noticed it still had a ceiling. I shut the door, stripped off my clothes, and stepped into the shower, getting it good and hot. There wasn't any soap or shampoo in the shower so I just stood under the beating stream of hot water until the water began to lose its heat.

When I emerged from the shower, through the steam, I made out the shapes of ten men. I stood there for a minute, waiting for the steam to dissipate, hoping these guys were maybe just part of the steam. Maybe the steam merely suggested their shapes and I filled in the rest. As the steam lifted, however, I noticed they were still there. The one in the front held my damp clothes out in front of him. I dressed, knowing it would not help to ask for any privacy. I didn't really feel too ashamed to be seen naked in front of this group of people. Something about them suggested they weren't really human. They all looked like older men. They all looked the same. So I thought about simply trying to ignore them. If they were there for any specific reason, I a.s.sumed they would make that reason known without letting me get too far. Like when a cop shows up at your door, you usually don't have to ask him why he's there. You either know or he tells you, first thing.

Once clothed, I slipped through the group of men and exited the bathroom. I almost expected Dad to be missing, like maybe they had already loaded him up in their car or van or whatever. But Dad still stood in the middle of the room, looking out over all the destruction. He stood, I guessed, because any place to sit would be wet from the previous night's storm. The group of men followed me out of the bathroom.

"Ready?" I asked.

"Ready as I'll ever be. I can't believe we slept through all this."

"Well, we were pretty tired. Had a long day yesterday. Not that I even really know what a day is anymore."

"Time does become a little... confusing. Out here on the edge."

"The edge? The edge of what?"

"The edge of civilization. The edge of the world. The edge of consciousness. The edge of anything really. Does this feel like the heartland to you?"

"Not exactly. Do you know if the van's still out there?"

"Don't know."

"Do you know why these people are following me?"

"Following you?"

"Yeah. The ten guys dressed in black suits behind me. You don't see them?"

"Nope. Just you. Are you sure you're ready to travel?"

"Does it really matter? Is it like we can just lie around the room and rest?"

"I don't think so."

"Neither do I. So it's probably best we get going."

We opened the door to the motel room, even though it would have probably been easier to walk around the wall. The van was out there. It had a very large rock on the roof. A boulder, I guess. The roof was all smashed in but it looked like it would still be drivable. If we could get the rock off. The rock would have to add at least a couple thousand pounds. It was nearly the size of the van.

"Guess we should get that rock off, huh?" Dad said.

"I can help."

We both went to the driver's side of the van and tried to lift the rock from the roof. It wouldn't budge. The ten men began crawling onto the roof of the van. Five of them got on one side of the rock, five of them stayed on the other side. In unison, they all bent down and put their fingers under the rock.

"Ready?" I asked Dad. "Lift!"

And we lifted just as the ten men lifted and the rock easily slid off the other side of the van and landed with a solid crack in the parking lot.

"That was a lot easier than I thought it would be."

"Me too."

The ten men then climbed down from the van, most of them dusting off their cave black suits.

I ran back into the room and grabbed the flame. I was determined to forget it yet but, if I did and I was meant to take it where it needed to be, then I guessed it would find me somehow.

I heard a gunshot and turned just in time to see one of the ten men collapse onto the pavement of the parking lot. Looking further into the distance, I saw the eagle-headed man duck behind a building. They were shooting at us!

"What the h.e.l.l was that!" Dad said.

"I think the Nefarions are shooting at us. We'd better go."

We hopped into the van and the nine remaining men filed into the back of it.

"Are you sure you don't see those guys?" I asked Dad.

"I really don't."

"They helped us move the rock off the van and I'm pretty sure one of them just took a bullet that was intended for one of us."

"Bodyguards."

"Huh?"

"They're probably your bodyguards. Be thankful you have them."

"But it doesn't seem right for you not to be able to see them."

"Really? It doesn't seem right? What about this seems right to you?"

"Nothing, I guess."

"That's right. Nothing is right. It hasn't been right for a long time and it will not be right until we return the flame."

Twenty-four.

We drove in silence for hours. It was a ch.o.r.e to get out of Truculant. Everything was devastated. Not a single building or tree stood intact. Yet, this didn't seem to bother anyone. Earth moving machines were out in abundance, pushing away the remains of the old buildings while construction crews went to work building new ones. They would work for a few hours, until the next storm came, and then retreat into their sh.e.l.led homes, clutching their skyrocketing homeowner's insurance form and thankful their business was labor and human resources and knowing there would never be any shortage of that. And there was always plenty of overtime to be had. Dad had to navigate the van over all the rubble. The vehicle was not made for offroading. The nine men in the back sat there, legs crisscrossed, faces expressionless, as the van jostled over the remains.

Luckily, we made it to the edge of town without bursting a tire, although the alignment was seriously out of whack. Dad had to turn the wheel sharply just to keep the van on the road. I was pretty sure the m.u.f.fler had been torn off on one of the rubble piles as well. The van now roared ferociously.