CHAPTER 1 - Opening Scene

Even in the safest womb

Passion can find its way in

Aborting your chances for a subtle retirement

The howling of sled dogs and the thunder of black fuel-fed treaders reached the shallow cavern where Janus Kymbel lay curled up, unconscious in the dirt. 
The sound popped in his head like a firecracker.  His eyes flew opened. Seconds rolled into minutes as he stared blindly at the cavern’s mouth, and the changing sky beyond. His dull mind toiled in place like the stuck second hand on a dying clock. He didn’t move. He didn’t make a sound.  And he didn’t know he was sharing the cave, or himself, with a cold blooded predator. 
It wasn’t until a brown scorpion, its eight legs tiptoeing out of his shirtsleeve like a cagey prowler that he scrambled to his feet, only to stumble backwards and crash into the rear wall of the cavern. 

Hoarse gulps replaced slumbering breaths and a rapidly forming lump on the back of his head was already giving him a sick headache.  He staggered toward the cave’s mouth where he searched the floor for the scorpion.

“Not so fast, asshole,” he said, when he spotted it.

He let the toe of his boot hover above it. 

The prehistoric anthropoid squared itself around and raised its stinger as if to say, you really want to do this? 

“Yes. Yes I believe I do,” was his answer. 

He lowered his boot until he felt the pop before twisting the insect’s guts into the sand.

Across the valley the dust from the treaders spilled out of the deep shadows.  It was a churning, pulverous flashflood. And hidden in its asphyxiating core were the ruthless desert- guerrillas and their vicious canines who wanted him dead.

He retreated into the cavern where he stood for a long moment staring at the ceiling. He then he raised his hands to his face, pressed his palms hard against his temples and screamed, “faaaaauck.” 

He had wasted his only protection, the night, by sleeping through it.

“Forgive me, my friend,” he said, sweeping his hat from the floor.  He slapped it against his thigh to clear the dust, and then with the kind of gentle poise a father might exhibit approaching his sleeping infants crib, he reached for the horse that had gotten him this far. 

“I’m sorry.  Fuck, I so sorry.” He rested his forehead on the horse’s neck and then drew in a breath, reached for his saddle, and hoisted it over the animals back.  He had to cinch the strap to the last notch, but the saddle still slid more than was safe.

The bay gelding didn’t respond to his apology or to the weight on its back.  That glaring apathy, like the chaotic roar in the distance, served as another reminder of his failure. 

“Looks like we lost this one.  Big surprise, huh?  We’ll go down together, you and me, okay?” 

He was shaking now, but not from fear.  That emotion had left him long ago.  His body simply wasn’t willing to play anymore, and in light of what he was certain to face in the next few minutes, odds were he wouldn’t have to.  In one way or another, the skylines would kill them both.

A small map he held in his possession told him he was in the heart of the Devil’s Anvil.  It wasn’t the first time he had ended up there.  In fact, it was the third time in as many days, and he couldn’t understand how the map, his compass, and the stars had failed to get them past it.  Still, there was something comforting in this bleak place, something in the air.  It smelled like rain. 

That the Anvil was one of the grimmest places imaginable hadn’t stopped the Mechanics from pursuing him.  Another fact he couldn’t comprehend.  A wedge of cheese, some clothes, and an old discarded weapon were all he got from their outpost; hardly a reason for killing a man. Nevertheless, that’s all there was between them.

He edged his way out of the shadows to consider his options in the nowhere-to-hide landscape. Then everything seemed to wink-out when he saw a flash and heard the crack of a high-powered rifle.  The pack had spotted him.  The bullet splintered rock above the entrance just east of where he stood.

He didn’t flinch.  He knew they weren’t interested in a clean kill, and he contemplated whether he should wait for them where he stood, or make them work.  He chose work.

Once in the saddle, he drew the weathered rifle from a makeshift sling he wore over his shoulder.  The gun was foreign to him.  He had never even fired it.  All he knew is what the Mechanic’s woman told him.  Point and pull the trigger.  He took his time loading it, all the while singing a nameless tune to the gelding.  A second shot didn’t interrupt his chorus, but when he did slam the breechblock shut, he kicked the horse into a gallop.