Prepare to Die! (36 page)

When she returned to the table, and as she was tucking the carefully folded wax paper into her purse, I said, “She keeps wax papers. She carves her name into rafters. She is a hero to all the men and boys.”

“Let’s talk about sex,” she said.

I said, “Oof.” Just outright said it. Girls are not supposed to bring up such topics. They do, of course, always. But, still. Oof.

She said, “Pretend that I’m just a reporter, someone that’s researching articles and books, and that I’m not at all a potentially jealous woman.”

“Potentially,” I said.

She glared.

I said, “I’m pretending.”

“How did you end up with all those women? You weren’t… don’t take this wrong… you weren’t all that forward, before.”

“No. I suppose not. So… now that we’re done with that particular topic, I believe there’s some birthday cake back at…”

“You slept with Siren.” Adele had her elbows on the picnic table. Her chin in her hands. She looked innocent. Perhaps it was a super power. An illusion. She was casting an illusion of innocence.

I said, “Am I still supposed to be pretending that you’re not potentially jealous?”

She didn’t answer. It was the most challenging answer of all. If a woman is going to make a man walk across ice, she could at least say something about it. “
Hey, watch your step
,” or, “
It’s a bit slippery, there, so be careful
.” But, no… she remained silent. It was clear I was supposed to say some things, even though it was probably best if I stayed quiet.

I said, “My strongest memory of sex with Siren was something that happened, one time, after.”

“Don’t give me any stories about cuddling.”

“Siren doesn’t cuddle.” I began trying to think of what to say to Adele. What should I explain? What information (as little as possible) should I give? What information (most, if not all) should I censor? Luckily, the strongest memory I have about Siren isn’t completely (not entirely, at least) about sex. The strongest memory I have of Siren is the first time with her, afterwards, with her in the shower, me sitting on the toilet lid, watching her, incredibly glad for my photogenic memory, incredibly guilty about what had just happened (sex with a criminal, nice job, hero) and incredibly wallowing in the sexual pleasure of that guilt. The name of
Octagon
had come up, with me asking (hating myself for it, because what could be more pitiful, or less worthy of discussion) if I was a better man in bed than Octagon.

“Competitive?” Siren had taunted from the shower. The water was hitting her from all sides, from four different directions, there in one of Octagon’s private residences (it was, soon after, back on the market) with the beads of water sticking to the walls, droplets of condensation from the heat, each of these water drops reflecting her image, tainted (that is absolutely the wrong word) with the musk of her scent.

“Competitive,” I answered. It was impossible for Siren to lie to a man. In light of recent events, it seemed like I owed her the same consideration.

She thought for a moment. I was swirling in rising lust (most men would have been dead, seriously and literally perished, from just watching her in the shower… but being superhuman has many many benefits) and also swirling in a sort of rising agony, knowing that most women will have the kindness to tell her most recent man that he is the most talented lover she’s ever had… but here I was asking the question from a woman who could tell nothing but the truth. It was possible that the most desirable woman in all the world was about to verbally kick me square in the balls.

Instead of lying, she defused the question, saying, “You ask if you’re a better man in bed than Octagon?” She didn’t wait for me to nod. Instead, she cupped one breast, rose it slightly, and flicked a bit of water from the end of her nipple. It (obeying every law of such a moment in time) hurtled through the air to splash on my cheek, and while it was running down my face, Siren said, “Reaver, look at me. You’re asking the wrong sort of question.”

***

Adele said, “What then?”

“Then… I asked a different question.”

“Which was…?”

I said, “Not fair. You’re asking all the questions. I want to know something… when you were in college, did you really buy Reaver costumes for your lovers?”

Adele said, “Oh shit, really? I hate Laura so much!”

“You shouldn’t. She tries really hard to make you happy. Even if she does tell me incredibly embarrassing things about you.”

“She probably even told you about the vibrator, didn’t she?”

“No.”

Adele sat up straight. Her entire face went so red that I thought maybe she would pass out. I sat, smiling. Feeling alive. She began cycling through subjects, not even settling on anything, just passing over the heads of possible topics, verbally flying at high speeds. There was sports (she obviously cared little for sports, and was just trying to get me started on the topic) and there was whether or not people should wear helmets when bicycling, if the freedom of the wind was more important than the security of the safety, and then she talked about how it was a decision that I myself didn’t need to make, since my head was denser than concrete, although (she was quick to point out) she hadn’t meant that I was dense, meaning not smart, because she thought I was very smart, and then she moved on to the topic of food (I’d probably eaten a lot of good food, traveling the world, lauded at state dinners) and did I want to talk about that (I didn’t, I was very busy smiling) and if I didn’t want to talk about that then what did I think about having lunch with Michelle (her cousin) and did I even remember Michelle (not really) because on the day that I was riding nude (she was trying to bait me… I hadn’t been nude) on top of the Lincoln, with Tom driving through Greenway, Adele had been carrying a doll that she’d been mending, and the doll was for Michelle, who was now all grown up and was a young woman who had once watched Dark Mercy use that living shroud of hers to devour (simply DEVOUR) a carjacker, and how Michelle had thought the man had been literally eaten (instead of teleported to the Athens Penitentiary, where Dark Mercy likes to drop her enemies) and it gave her a taste for meeting superhumans, and she (meaning Michelle) once stood in line to get Taffy’s autograph during a book-signing (it must have been for
A Good Long Stretch
) and now would it be okay if Michelle met us (Adele and I) for a lunch or something and, okay, honestly, we’re babbling here, aren’t we, I mean
I’m
babbling, and, and…

“So I wrote your name on a vibrator, once,” Adele said. “I mean I wrote
Steve
. Not
Reaver
. It’s no big deal.”

“The vibrator wasn’t a big deal?” I had her on the defensive. I’ve been in combat many times. I know when to press my advantage. “Just how big was it?”

“Eight inches. Made of semi-rigid plastic. Warmed by a battery, on… the…
inside
.” Her blunt answer (said while leaning closer, and giving that look that nature only teaches to women) had me instantly on the defensive. I’ve been in combat many times. I know when to retreat.

“We should get back to my birthday party,” I said. “It’s my birthday. You know. Sort of.”

Adele stood. She stepped up onto the picnic table, looked down at me for a moment (she was still using that look of delicious trouble) and I wondered if she was going to try to seduce me, right there, on a picnic table in Charles Park, not far from a mother who had decided Reaver wouldn’t be a bad influence on her young son, with Fifth Street immediately adjacent, with cars going by, with any number of SRD satellites trained on my every move, and it would be a ridiculous setting for any sex. Especially with the log cabin so close. It would have only taken a few steps (and I move at three times the speed of a normal man) to reach the cabin door and…

Adele sat on the top of the picnic table, her feet down on the seat to my side, the outside of her left knee pressed up against my ribs. Her eyes were troubled. Worried. She did not look like she was seducing me. She did not look like she was thinking of undressing me. She looked like she was wondering how to go about stripping me in the other way… the mental way… the intervention way.

She said, “Steve. Tell me why you’re giving up. Tell me about Eleventh Hour. This thing with Octagon. This pact about you dying. Tell me what has you so sad.”

“It’s nothing. I’m not sad.”

“I know you, Steve Clarke. It’s me. It’s Adele. I know you. You’ve been out fighting for all of us. This is me. This is Adele Layton. I’m fighting for you. I’m going to save your life.”

She nudged me with her knee.

She said, “Tell me. Tell me what has you so sad.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

L
ava can burn at nearly two thousand and five hundred degrees, Fahrenheit. That’s hotter than any normal human can stand anywhere close to without eventually (somewhat quickly) bursting into flames. And you better keep the lava upwind. The wrong breeze can ignite you.

Paladin wasn’t planning to just stand near the lava. He was going down into the caldera. Down into the volcano itself. Down into the lava. Down to the hole where the lava was being spit up from below, where it was being belched up through a blowhole, thrust up through the cracks.

It wasn’t something I could have done. It wasn’t something anyone else (not even, I don’t think, Stellar) could have done. I could stand next to the lava… could even scoop some of it out from one of the flows, meld the liquefied rock (it feels like extremely warm and heavy clay) in my hands… make a lavaball (like a snowball, but more insane) and toss it at my friend, Greg Barrows, as long as I didn’t hold it in my hands for more than a few seconds. After that, it began to sting.

“You can’t be serious,” I told him.

“No. I mean, yes. I am. I’m the only one that can do this.”

He was already inside the lava, inside the lip of the flow, peering out like a man at the edge of a pool. His expression hadn’t changed. He wasn’t burning alive. He could endure the heat and said that his shimmer (even he called it a shimmer) kept the lava from direct contact, kept it maybe a tenth of an inch away from him. So, the lava wasn’t bothering my friend. In this respect, he was unique in the region, because an enormous volume of the lava had already bothered its way down much of the mountain. It had already buried half of the town of Pilipano, a town that doesn’t make any maps because of the squalor, and because it lacks any sort of government or organization, but it had a population of nearly twenty thousand before the first of the eruptions, and now a bit less than ten thousand, after a few thousand of its people had left, and a few more thousand had died.

SRD geologists (irrefutably backed by data from Checkmate) claimed another eruption was imminent. How big? Big enough that the remaining townspeople (who simply could not be convinced to leave, no matter how much Paladin pleaded and I cursed) would undoubtedly be… how to put this…
sacrificed
to the volcano that many of them considered to be their god. In short, in a day or so, we’d have almost ten thousand more puffs of ash that had once been human beings.

Was there any way to stop this tragedy?

Certainly. Of course. Nothing could be simpler.

All that was needed was for someone to adventure down into the crater and reach the vent. From there, this person (are there any volunteers?) would need to plunge themselves into the lava, swim down through the throat of that lava (and who doesn’t love molten rock?) until such a time that they were basking (a private bath!) in the magma reservoir chamber itself. Far hotter down there than the twenty-five hundred degree surface temperature, of course, so let’s keep that in mind, shall we? Then (after a suitable time of lounging in the undoubtedly restorative powers of one of nature’s most interesting tubs) our volunteer (I’m still not seeing any hands!) would have to plunge through the weakened rock at the side of the magma chamber, boring his way (is that a hand I see, raised there?) through a few miles of rock in order to create a new conduit where the lava can flow (there are probably natural channels in places, ones that only need further encouragement, so this part of the task, I assure you, should not be overly taxing) and then the pressure of the lava will vent through one of the neighboring volcanoes and the town of Pilipano will be saved.

Voila! And…
yes
, that
is
a hand I see, raised to volunteer.

Thank you very much, Paladin. You are doing humanity a great service.

Now, if you’ll just come this way, we’ll continue the briefing. Hmmm? Yes, you can bring Reaver along if you’d like, but I do wish he would quit his incessant statements of how dangerous this is. I assure you, there are only any number of things that could go wrong.

But Paladin hadn’t listened. Nobody had listened. Everybody had a wonderful assortment of
hero
scenarios in their minds. I was the only one with a
shit
scenario. I was outvoted (not that there was any voting) and in his no-nonsense manner Paladin had told me that the people of Pilipano needed help, and that’s what he was going to do. He was going to help them.

In the language native to the region, Pilipano means, “lip of hell.” Make of that what you will. Back then, I tried to make a lot of it. I even wondered if the type of people who build houses (every last one of them constructed of the most inflammable items they could find) in a town called
Lip Of Hell
were worth saving. They
were
worth saving, of course, and I was only casting verbiage about, because I had a feeling in my head that the mission would be a disaster.

I bitched all the way through the briefing.

I bitched all the way through the walk to the transports.

I bitched all the way during the flight.

We landed.

Then I got down to business, because there was nothing else to do. The nominal leader of Pilipano held a banquet for us (we didn’t have time for that) and presented us with a necklace (one for each of us, made of woven grass and carven wood) and there was a group of young women, nearby, dressed prettily, acting bashful, in fact acting exactly like a group of nervous young girls would act if they were being offered as virgin delights for the soon-to-be-saviors of Pilipano, but we didn’t have time for that either.