(no subject)

[destruction1_0]

This is not the Winnemucca road.

Reno, Chicago, Fargo, Minnesota, Buffalo, Toronto, Winslow, Sarasota, Wichita, Tulsa, Ottawa, Oklahoma, Tampa, Panama, Mattawa, La Paloma, Bangor, Baltimore, Salvador, Amarillo, Tocopilla, Barranquilla, and Padilla, I'm a killer

Just as well. There's not enough in his pack to justify the verb 'to tote'.

Boston, Charleston, Dayton, Louisiana, Washington, Houston, Kingston, Texarkana, Monterey, Ferriday, Santa Fe, Tallapoosa, Glen Rock, Black Rock, Little Rock, Oskaloosa, Tennessee, Hennessey, Chicopee, Spirit Lake, Grand Lake, Devil's Lake, Crater Lake, for Pete's sake

It's pretty dusty, though.

---

Start asking yourself a couple of questions about entropy and things get a little overwhelming. Better to just stop paying attention. The world has moved on. Is still moving on.

He whistles, and bootheels clock on hardpan hellground. He's a tall man, an ageless stranger in faded, pegged jeans and a denim jacket and a Boy Scout knapsack. He's a walking dude.

This isn't Highway 51, though. Not even

(God said to Abraham, kill me a son)

Highway 61.

Not even some two-bit two-lane highway.

---

There are highways in hiding that are traveled by the poor and the mad, by the professional revolutionaries and by those who have been taught to hate so well that their hate shows on their faces like harelips and they are unwanted except by others like them, who welcome them to cheap rooms with slogans and posters on the walls, to basements where lengths of sawed-off pipe are held in padded vises while they are stuffed with high explosives, to back rooms where lunatic plans are laid: to kill a Cabinet member, to kidnap the child of a visiting dignitary, or to break into a boardroom meeting of Standard Oil --

Or maybe Citgo.

-- with grenades and machine guns and murder in the name of the people.

Louisville, Nashville, Knoxville, Ombabika, Shefferville, Jacksonville, Waterville, Costa Rica, Pittsfield, Springfield, Bakersfield, Shreveport, Hackensack, Cadillac, Fond Du Lac, Davenport, Idaho, Jellicoe, Argentina, Diamontina, Pasadena, Catalina, see what I mean

Mid-World is right up his alley.

---

He strides on at a steady, ground-eating pace, and there's something in the air: something is coming. It's a sooty hot taste that comes from

Pittsburgh, Parkersburg, Gravellburg, Colorado, Ellensburg, Rexburg, Vicksburg, Eldorado, Larrimore, Atmore, Haverstraw, Chattanika, Chaska, Nebraska, Alaska, Opelika, Baraboo, Waterloo, Kalamazoo, Kansas City, Sioux City, Cedar City, Dodge City, what a pity

everywhere, as if God is planning a cookout and all of civilization is going to be the barbecue.

The land's time of transfiguration is almost at hand, and he's on hand. He always is.

Everywhere.

He's been everywhere.

Comments

[shadowsusannah.livejournal.com]

She looks down into the dirt. "Got no money. Got nothing, really. You could keep the plane."

This is a dry place; an empty place. The last roadhouse.

She looks up; meets his eyes with eyes that are the color of mud and dead inside. "If you want--that--let the boy go into the barn first." Her voice is flat and no particular tone at all.

Patrick makes a strangled, angry noise, and begins to dig in his pocket for something.

[destruction1_0]

The thing is, you can shape mud.

He laughs, long and loud; clouds of dust gather around his boots. "Assuming I wanted it, I don't think I'd enjoy it. No. Not that."

"I tell you what."

"We'll call a flight payment."

"For services rendered."

[shadowsusannah.livejournal.com]

Patrick found what he's looking for; a stainless steel Silva compass. It's a pretty valuable trinket, for these waste lands, and it helped him find his way here. He holds it out to the terrifying stranger.

"You got a name?" Susannah asks. "Since you know mine."

[destruction1_0]

One step forward and another. Bootheels click even though there's nothing for them to click on.

He bends, almost like a tree snapping in half with oddly slow and liquid grace -- and does anyone care? -- and plucks the compass from Patrick's hand like a mote from a kid's eye.

"Thankee-sai, little trailhand."

A wink at Patrick, and he straightens. "They call me plenty of things. And they say D is for many things. One more puzzle for you."

[shadowsusannah.livejournal.com]

Services rendered, huh.

"T is for Texas, that's all I know."

Patrick jerks back like a startled horse.

"Plane's in the barn."

[destruction1_0]

He's studying the compass like an old friend. "Now. What the hell am I supposed to do with this?"

[shadowsusannah.livejournal.com]

"Supposed to point your way," Susannah says. "Don't know how much good it'll do you here."

Patrick grunts, then resorts to hand gestures; he mimes handing something over, then crosses himself; points upwards.

Susannah gives him an odd look.

[destruction1_0]

"Time grows thin, the past's a riddle."

Destruction of the Endless frowns.

"I can't make a line about everything drifting out of alignment rhyme."

[shadowsusannah.livejournal.com]

"It's bad poetry to begin with," she says.

Fuck Stephen King. Fuck him right in the ear.

[destruction1_0]

"Everybody's a critic." Almost sadly. "When was the last time you ever bothered creating, Susannah-Mio?"

[shadowsusannah.livejournal.com]

"With your sister, (http://community.livejournal.com/endless_realms/14334.html?thread=235262#t235262)" she says, taking a risk.

[destruction1_0]

"One of hers," he says, tilting his head. Looking at her. Looking through her. "So you are. Say true. Say hallelujah."

"Go on. Say amen."

[shadowsusannah.livejournal.com]

"Amen," she says, dry as dust.

[destruction1_0]

"I find your lack of feeling appalling." But his grin has too many teeth for that. "One could almost think you didn't believe in happy endings."

[shadowsusannah.livejournal.com]

She does, though. That's the bitch of it.

"Just endings," she says, looking out to the shrinking horizon.

[destruction1_0]

"You don't want to be on your way, do you?" He's almost laughing. Laughing at her.

[shadowsusannah.livejournal.com]

Endless is Endless, and she must keep her temper, but this one brings out all the worst in her. Her eyes flash, cold gunmetal, and she sets her jaw and her patience. "I do."

[destruction1_0]

Well. His eyes are dancing.

"The plane's in the barn, what barn, whose barn, your barn. And am I going to have to going to use the compass to navigate?"

[shadowsusannah.livejournal.com]

"It's not my barn," she protests. "I'm a stranger here myself." It's nobody's barn; this is a waystation.

"And I suppose you might. The place we want--" She looks at Patrick for confirmation-- "Is on the other side of the mountains. There are doors there."

[destruction1_0]

"You could try to go under," he says. "You know you're going to freeze like that."

[shadowsusannah.livejournal.com]

"That way is shut," she says flatly. "I've got a sweatshirt in the barn."

[destruction1_0]

"One door shuts and the sky opens up." Destruction shakes his head. "It'll be a moment, lady-sai, I have to look at the controls." He disappears inside the barn.







Minutes later, he comes out, and he's driving a Nazi fighter plane.

Read it and weep, kids.

[shadowsusannah.livejournal.com]

Most Focke-Wulf German fighters were single-seaters, but they did make a few twin seat models, including the F187 Falke; in this, and models based on it, there was so little space that the instruments had to be put on the engine nacelles. The rear seat was for a gunner or radio operator.

This particular model was a prototype; the F298 Habicht.

It's very fortunate that Patrick is scrawny, and the gunslinger is missing her legs; they wedge inside the rear seat with quit a bit of difficulty. God knows how the massive red-bearded man managed to fit himself behind the controls.

[destruction1_0]

Oh, Susannah Dean. You're forgetting that God doesn't exist any more.

Slippage, don't you know.

"Ready, Susannah-Mio?"

It's shouted. He's managed to drum up a leather cap and aviator's goggles -- maybe from his Boy Scout knapsack; their motto is be prepared, after all.

[shadowsusannah.livejournal.com]

She's facing backwards, looking into the gunnery hatch where a machine gun might've been nestled once.


Something else is nestled there now. She shrieks, which cannot possibly sound like yes, ready, let's get going.