Midnight Agency, Season One by Ken Hoover

Author:Ken Hoover [Hoover, Ken]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Two

Kory didn’t believe the stories of the great, ravenous Thunderbird god who lived in the mountain. But when saw the vast ruinous mountainscape, she began to rethink. After all, she was a girl of fourteen with damnable horns on her head. Who was she to judge?

A traveler on the road had warned her to steer clear of this town, but it was a point between where she was and where she was going. A pass to the north. The thoroughfare itself had been cleared, but the road was crushed concrete and the ramshackle buildings were little more than neatly stacked walls of stone, brick, concrete, and rock. This town looks like an old wasp’s nest, she thought. She felt eyes watching her through the hollow, black windows, and she frequently looked over her shoulder.

She soon came to an empty stone plaza, surrounded on all sides by tumbledown buildings. Dust swirled in the breeze. Tumbleweeds had gathered in one corner. The dark windows and side streets were empty. Not a soul, she thought. She had hoped to find food or water, but this place was as good as dead.

As she continued up the thoroughfare, she heard something behind her and spun around, hand reaching for her flintlock, but not touching it. A young girl stood in the nearest alley. She was tan-skinned and dressed in homespun clothing. By contrast, Kory wore a sombrero and a striped poncho. When people saw her, they saw a boy and usually let her be. It was tough for a girl alone in the world, so she had sympathy for the waif.

She pushed up the brim of the straw sombrero, letting the fierce sun hit her face. “Hey. I won’t hurt you. Do you live here?”

The girl nodded.

Kory walked slowly, her boots crunching on stone and gravel. “Where is everyone?”

The girl said nothing. Instead, she pointed toward the rocky mountain peak, and Kory immediately saw the zigzag shape of a red thunderbird, painted onto the side of the mountain, each wing hundreds of feet wide. Ribbons of oily smoke rose from somewhere below.

When Kory looked back, the girl was gone.

Although curious, she had no desire to get involved with whatever was happening up there, where the black smoke continued to billow.

She was nearly out of town when she heard horses coming down the road. She moved to the ditch to let them pass, but they came to a stop, dust clouding around them. Figures, she thought.

“Boy,” said one of the men in Spanish. “You’re supposed to be at the festival with everyone else.”

Kory kept her head down, the sombrero low on her face. She decided to respond in English to indicate she was an outsider. “I’m just passin’ through.”

From beneath her brim, she looked at the men’s sun-dark skin and brown eyes. One wore a sweat-stained cowboy hat made of straw, the other a filthy netted baseball cap with a faded devil pitchfork on the front.

The man in the cap chuckled, then responded in English. “Before you go, you must pay tribute to the Thunderbird.

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