Other Earths by Nick Gevers; Jay Lake

Author:Nick Gevers; Jay Lake
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Fiction - Science Fiction, Alternative histories (Fiction), Science fiction, Fantasy fiction, Alternative History, Science Fiction - Anthologies, General, Short stories, Fantasy, American, Science Fiction - Alternative History, Science Fiction - Short Stories, Fiction, Science Fiction And Fantasy, Short Stories
ISBN: 9780756405465
Publisher: New York : DAW Books : c2009.
Published: 2009-04-06T07:00:00+00:00

The next morning, the Chevy ran out of gas on a hot gravel track in Atomic Golgotha. White earth, lightly tinged with pale green, spread out in dizzying shimmers in all directions. Even with the sun low on the horizon, heat leached through the windshield, cooking the oxygen in Em’s lungs. Em grew up knowing the desert around Oasis Town, and she knew her best chance of survival lay in staying with the truck. By noon, it could be 120 degrees, and the truck would provide a little shade and would make her easier to find. But that was the problem. If the Templars tracked her out here, they would take the bag and its contents and torture and rape her, just to make a point. The truck was a bright red spot on the bleached earth, as noticeable from a distance as a bloodstain on a white altar cloth.

In the backseat she found a Navajo tourist blanket that Mark had been using as upholstery. Except for the generations of dust and grime embedded in the fabric, it was identical to the ones she sold in the reptile farm’s gift shop. She draped it over her head, and even though it stifled, keeping the sun off her was critical. The blanket hung far enough down that, by threading one of her shoelaces through the handles of the alligator-hide bag and through her belt loops, she could walk with it concealed on her hip.

“This is a lot of trouble for nothing,” Em muttered. Within hours she’d be a corpse, anyway.

Perhaps three hours later, Em awoke from a sleep of fever dreams about snakes and alligators and great radioactive lizards stomping the Holy City at the behest of God. Her head pounded with dehydration. Her tongue was wood. She looked up from the sand, where she’d fallen, to find herself surrounded by men in robes colored the blues and greens of the sea. They stood beside llamas bigger than those Em had ever seen at petting zoos, bigger even than any she’d seen in pictures in National Geographic. The men wore seashell necklaces and elaborate, spiky wreaths of dried date palm fronds around cloth headcovers. The blades of scrap metal they carried glinted painfully in the sun.

Only when the animals’ pungent reek reached her nostrils did Em know the llamas and the men were not a mere vision.

Em swore in a parched whisper that she’d die before she let these Hawaiians take her bag.

For a time, they consulted with each other, their language strange to Em’s ears, full of repeated syllables and rhythmic halts, but she recognized an argument when she heard one in any language. Some of the men gestured at the heat mirage on the horizon. Others pointed their weapons at her. If Em had to guess, she would have said the two sides of the dispute could be summed up as “kill her now or take her home and kill her there.”

This went on for at least ten minutes.

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