The Zona Read Online Free Page A

and Gila monsters and dust.  Terence’s shack was outfitted with a bit of jerky, a shallow ditch well that leaked brackish water, an old canteen and a stack of books.  Lead slept on Terence’s couch, shut in against the nighttime.  The night contained lizards and snakes with violent dispositions and poisonous bites.  Man without fire or the sanctity of the Church’s blessing had no business out at night.  Demons and poulters also preferred the night.  Better to walk in the sun.
    Lead looked back to the riverbed.  A motorboat half lodged in the hardpan pointed to the sky like a finger accusing the heavens of not providing.  Nothing existed in Topock that didn’t belong to the past.
    Lead looked west to the setting sun.  Over the far horizon hung thick clouds and tornado funnels illuminated with cobalt lightening flashes.  Days away but fierce and lush lay the Abandoned Earth, the place taken by the Lord and the Storms.
    Lead looked south.  Hell continued on.  Havasu Parish lay in that direction.  Lead scanned the vast desert up to rocky hills. Heat waves rose off of rock and sand creating false lakes and shimmering ethereal towers of bent light.
    Lead climbed to the edge of the broken rail bridge and took shelter from the impending night.

    Dawn came with new light and new heat.  A layer of dust coated Lead’s mouth.  He followed the riverbed south, the sun beat merciless on his straw sombrero.  The sand roasted his feet through the cracks in his boots which breathed stink in the otherwise scentless scrubland.  Lead looked to the ground and focused on walking straight.  He knew a man in the scrub without water tended to drift right and form a circuitous route.  Lead was determined not to be that fool.
    The omnipresent sun ate his strength through the early morning.  The sweat on his hands and arms evaporated as soon as it beaded out.  Lead smiled and whispered a prayer of salvation under his breath.  This was penance.  This was castigation for not apprehending the old man.  He’d gone against God’s will and the Church’s will and had been set against by the Holy.  It made him afraid but also relieved that he was within God’s vision and judgment.  He might survive and be made clean again.  He smiled.
    The first time Lead fell was unexpected.  He was deep in the mind, contemplating God and walking straight and he simply tumbled into the sand.  One foot caught the other and he plunged. He held his face from the grit and breathed peppered air.
    Lead pulled himself up.  His steps took on an uneven sway.  He drifted from left to right, spinning to avoid clumps of dead brush.
    Lead fell again when the sun reached mid-sky.  He dropped to his knees in a patch of tumbleweed.  Lead rolled out of the brush and regained his legs.  He picked thorns out of his left hand.  The scar left by Century’s dinner knife was numb, would always be numb.
    Lead promptly fell again shortly thereafter.  His body had reached a place where the solidity of muscle ebbed and flowed and he could no longer trust functions taken for granted. He rolled to his stomach and looked at the sand.  It was an ocean of quartz and pink gypsum flakes built into wave-like dunes by wind, then shifted by wind and shifted again into infinity.  It got his mind wondering again about time and God.  Lead pushed himself back to his feet and strode forward.
    After the fourth collapse, Lead contemplated staying down.  He looked to the sun and counted to one-hundred.  He whispered a prayer to the Lord and found tenuous strength; enough to get up, enough to move forward.
    Over the next dune a thin line of smoke crept and showed through the heat waves.  Lead shaded his eyes and stumbled forward towards the smoke.  He smiled again.  God had spoken and revealed salvation.  He wasn’t going to die.
    Lead continued his jagged trek through the desert, past rock and dead brush.  Over the dune he spotted tents set around a large cooking