The Keep of Fire (13 page)

Travis climbed the cement steps to the back door of the saloon and put his hand on the knob. He hesitated. It was too early, Max wasn’t there yet, the door would be locked.

He turned his hand, and the door swung open.
Dimness beyond, like a cave. Travis stepped inside and shut the door, leaving the last pieces of the day outside.

He stopped and waited for his eyes to adjust. One by one, shapes appeared from shadows: cardboard boxes, empty kegs, a stack of chairs, the hulking form of the saloon’s old cast-iron boiler. Travis made his way past the clutter, slipped through a door, and stepped into the main room of the Mine Shaft.

It was a little brighter in here—daylight squeezed through small windows—and Travis saw him at once. Max sat at a table, hunched over something, his back to Travis, his long hair unbound and tangled. A low sound rose and fell on the air. Like muttering. Or like a chant.

Travis moved among the empty chairs, his boots of Eldhish buckskin making no sound against the floor. He came to a stop in front of Max’s table, but his partner still bent over the scarred wood, sorting, counting.

“What are they, Max?”

The words were barely a whisper, but they shattered the silence. Max looked up with wild eyes; his matted hair fell back from his face. Travis had prepared himself for the worst, but he took a step back all the same.

“Oh, Max.…”

Max’s eyes wavered, racking into and out of focus, then locked into place. “Travis?”

The word was the croak of a man lost in a desert, and Max looked the part. His flesh was dark and had sunk close to his bones, and his lips were cracked and oozing. His clothes were disheveled, and a yellow crust caked the bandage that wrapped his right hand. However, no odor rose from him—save for a dry smell, like dirt baked by sun. On the table were a medicine bottle, a plastic bag, and two piles of pills.
The pills were glossy and purple, each marked with a white lightning bolt.

Travis stared at the pills. “Max, what are you doing?”

Max grinned, a terrible caricature of his usual mirth. “You know me, Travis … always counting.”

Max scooped the pills into the bottle. One of them rolled from the table and bounced across the floor. With shocking speed, Max threw himself from his chair, scrambled on hands and knees, then grabbed the pill with his shaking left hand and brought it greedily to his mouth. He swallowed it dry, then pressed his eyes shut. A few heartbeats limped by, then his trembling eased, and his thin shoulders slumped in a sigh.

When Max opened his eyes again, they were as clear as a hurricane’s. “All better now,” he said with a laugh.

Travis shuddered at the sound.

Max started to use the table to pull himself up. Travis reached out a hand to help him.

“No! Don’t touch me!”

It was the snarl of an animal in pain. Travis leaped back and clutched his hand to his chest. Max staggered to his feet. His eyes were brighter now, burning with feverish light.

A moan escaped Travis. “What’s happening to you, Max?”

The expression on Max’s face flickered somewhere between wonder and fear. But then, maybe there was little distance between the two. “I don’t know, Travis. It’s like I’m getting clearer. Clearer and lighter all the time. Everything I always thought was real or important seems so dim to me now. The town, the saloon, the people. I can hardly make them out. But other things … they’re so bright, so sharp, that I wonder how I didn’t ever see them before.”

“What things, Max? What things do you mean?”

But Max only smiled and shook his head.

Travis’s gaze moved to the bottle of pills on the table. “What are they, Max? Did the doctor give them to you?” But there was no prescription label on the bottle, and before Max could answer the question, Travis knew the answer. He had never seen pills like them before, but what else could the little lightning bolt signify? “It’s Electria, isn’t it?”

Max picked up the bottle. He held it in the crook of his right elbow. The bony fingers of his left hand fumbled with the lid, then snapped it on.

“I don’t know how they knew, Travis. I’d almost forgotten myself. Sure, I used stuff in New York. Then again, I was a senior accountant at one of the top advertising agencies in the city. Things moved so fast, it was almost company policy.” He laughed, and it sounded like the old Max. “If you weren’t using, they’d send you to the company doctor to get your prescription. But that was ages ago. I left that all behind when I … when I came here.”

Travis took a step nearer his friend. “Who, Max? Who gave them to you?”

Max didn’t look up from the bottle. “They knew me, Travis. They knew all about me, but I didn’t know who they were. Sure, I’d seen the commercials. But I never knew what they were advertising. I don’t think … I don’t think it could have been this.”

A jolt ran through Travis, like one of those little lightning bolts. The word was more reflex than statement. “Duratek.”

Max shoved the bottle into the pocket of his jeans. “I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to take them. But my hand—nothing else made the pain go away, nothing the doctor gave me, and this … this made it stop. At least for a little while.” He hung his head, his voice a rasp. “Forgive me, Travis.”

Travis tried to blink the stinging from his eyes. He
started to reach out, then remembered and pulled his hand back. “It’s all right, Max. It’s all right. The pain would make anyone do it. And they’re just pills. We’ll get you off of them.”

Max lifted his gaze. “No, Travis. Not Electria. That’s not what I want your forgiveness for.”

“Then for what, Max?”

“For what I’m about to do.”

A shrill whine pierced the air of the saloon. Travis went rigid. He had heard that sound once before, the last time he had talked to Max on the phone.

Max reached down and unclipped a small object from his belt. A pager. He gazed at the glowing screen, nodded, set the pager on the table, and looked up.

“They’re coming.”

Invisible hands reached out of the dimness to clutch Travis’s throat, strangling him. He stumbled back from the table, sending chairs clattering. Max stood stiff, his expression calm with a kind of sorrowful resignation. Travis fought for air. It was so hard to breathe; the heat was going to suffocate him. A trap. It was a trap.

“How long?” His voice was a croak. “How long do I have?”

Max cradled his wounded hand. His tangled hair hid his face. “Three minutes. Four at the most. They were supposed to be here before you, waiting, but you were early. I guess they hadn’t counted on that. I guess they thought you’d stay away until the last minute.”

Travis’s lips pulled back from his teeth in a rictus grin, and he thought of the fence in the old railyard. “Even they make mistakes.”

Max nodded. “But not many.”

Travis’s grin faded. He clenched his hands into fists, but the gesture was formed of anguish not anger. First Jack had hidden things from him. Then Deirdre.
Now Max had betrayed him—good, kind, goofy Max. What was going on? Was everyone hiding some truth that, like a poisoned sword unsheathed, could only wound when it was finally revealed?

Then again, you know all about hiding things, don’t you, Travis Wilder?

He forced his hands to unclench, forced his eyes to meet Max’s.

“I’m sorry, Travis.” Max’s blistered lips barely moved as he whispered. “I’m so sorry. I never told you how … how bad it was. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to keep going. When they first came, when they first gave it to me, I thought they were a godsend. The Electria, it … it was like …” He shook his head. “You can’t understand. It was like life, like hope. Then they told me they couldn’t give me any more. Not for free, not unless I did something for them.” His body was trembling now. “Not unless I wrote you that note.”

Travis knew he should run, knew he should get out of here, but he couldn’t move. Max reached out thin, shaking arms in what seemed a gesture of supplication. Then he snatched them back and hugged them close to his hunched body, as if they were something precious, or something dangerous.

Travis’s anger melted away, replaced by—what? Not fear, not pity. And not just sorrow. Understanding, then. And what a terrible thing that could be. A tremor passed through Max. Travis could feel the heat radiating from him in waves.

Max licked his lips with a swollen tongue. “I’m burning, aren’t I, Travis? Like the people I saw in the newspaper this morning. Like the man who came into the saloon, the man in the black robe.”

No
, Travis started to say, then he swallowed the word. “We’ll do something, Max. We’ll figure something out. The truck’s outside. I’ll drive you to
Denver. We’ll go to a hospital, and we’ll get you taken care of, all right? Let’s just get out of here, and—”

The sound of a car door shutting drifted through the window along with the bloody light of sunset. For a few moments, as Travis had spoken, hope had shone in Max’s brown eyes. Now they grew hard and dull.

“You’re too late, Travis.”

Travis shook his head. “No, I won’t believe that.”

The sound of another car door shutting. So there was more than one of them. He glanced around, searching for the best route of escape.

“Which way, Max? Which way are they coming?”

Max stared into space, a statue.

“Which way?”

Max blinked under the force of Travis’s words. “The front,” he said, gasping. “I was supposed to have locked the back.”

“But you didn’t. Good, Max. That was good. It means we have a chance. Come on.”

He started toward the back room, and he would have tugged Max after him, but he didn’t dare. Not yet. Not until they were sure how this disease of fire was transmitted. However, after a few seconds, Max lurched behind him. Faint but distinct, Travis heard the sound of feet on the boardwalk out front. He stumbled into the dimness of the storeroom. Max followed. Travis shut the door, then groped into the gloom until he found a shovel. He placed the shovel across the door and wedged the ends behind pipes that ran on either side.

“It’s no use,” Max said. “That won’t hold them.”

“It doesn’t have to,” Travis said, turning around. “We just need it to—” His words ended in a sharp intake of breath.

“What is it, Travis?”

“I can … I can see you, Max.”

Max lifted his left hand and gazed at it. It was dim, but in the darkened room it was obvious: a deep red
nimbus emanated from Max’s skin. He was glowing. No, he was
radiating
.

Max shook his head. “What’s happening to me?”

Travis opened his mouth, but he had no answer, and at that moment a crash sounded from the other side of the door. There were a few seconds of silence, then came the muffled sound of talking. Travis made out at least three distinct voices.

He looked back at Max. Now, at last, fear won out over all other emotions. “They’re here.”

Max lowered his hand. Then he gave a small nod. “Of course—I see it now. I see what’s happening, and it all makes sense. I know what I’m supposed to do.”

“What are you talking about?”

Max moved. In the dimness it was hard to see what he was doing, but Travis could follow the crimson outline of his body. Max stooped, rummaged in a corner, then stood again, an object in his left hand. Then he turned, and a stray fragment of light caught a sharp edge. It was an axe.

“Max—no!”

It was too late. Max lifted the axe and swung.

Travis ducked, but the axe went wide of his head. There was a bright clang of metal on metal, then a hiss like a serpent’s dying breath. The axe clattered to the floor, and Max sagged against a wall, drained by effort. Travis struggled to grasp what had happened. Then he caught the sweet, rotten scent.

It was the pipe that ran to the old boiler. Max had broken it. The room was filling with natural gas.

Footsteps sounded on the other side of the storeroom door. The noise of the axe had alerted them. The door moved inward a fraction, then it met the shovel and stopped.

“Max?”

“Go, Travis.”

“Max, what are you doing?”

A thud sounded against the door. The shovel rattled against the pipes, but it held.

“You’ve got to go.” Max’s voice was quiet and measured, as if he had found some strange sort of peace. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for me, Travis.”

“Max!” Travis was frantic now. His heart clawed at his throat. Once before a friend had told him to run. He couldn’t abandon another. Not again.

A second blow struck the storeroom door. The handle of the shovel cracked.

“Now, Travis. While there’s still time. Open the door to the alley.”

The scent of the gas was cloying now. Travis staggered, dizzy from lack of oxygen. In seconds it would asphyxiate them. They had to get out of there—both of them. He stumbled forward, and his hands found the doorknob. Just inches away, on the other side, was breathable air. But Max wasn’t behind him. He looked over his shoulder.

A third blow struck the storeroom door. The shovel splintered, and the door burst inward. In the opening stood a compact man with a blond goatee and glasses just like Travis’s own. The man dusted his hands together and smiled. Behind him were two shadowy forms.

“Now, Travis!”

Max stretched his left hand toward the broken gas pipe, palm turned up. The Duratek agent turned toward the motion, and his smile altered into a frown. Max pressed his eyes shut, then opened them, an expression like ecstasy twisting his face. That was when Travis saw it: A crimson blossom of flame unfurled on Max’s outstretched hand.

The blond man’s eyes went wide. Travis turned, jerked open the door, and dived through. Behind him came the rich, mirthful sound of Max’s laughter.

Then the world expanded into fire.

Red clouds hung in the sky as Travis climbed the last few feet of the road that wound up the hill south of town. He knew it wasn’t possible. It should have taken him at least an hour to walk to this place from the burning destruction of the Mine Shaft. But somehow it had seemed to take no time at all—somehow it was still sunset. Then again, maybe it would always be sunset now: the day forever dying in flames.