Egg-white nimbus clouds passed over Noah as he watched spiderweb cracks split across his forearm. A hundred cybernetically controlled levers spread his skin apart, revealing the titanium canister within. A thermal rocket launcher system, right here in his arm. Finally, he thought. He felt like a new man, carrying this kind of explosive in him all day and night.
He sat on the bridge railing overlooking the Puget Sound. Footsteps clanked to his right. West. Noah gave the thought and the myriad slices of his arm sealed back together. He hopped off the railing and drew his pistol from its holster.
An old woman dressed in tie-dye robes carefully stepped across the broken sidewalk. Her cane clacked methodically.
Noah reached under his shirt and clenched the cross necklace hanging around his neck. A quick prayer for guidance. Resolve. Righteousness. He let the woman draw nearer, then held up his hand.
“Stop, traveler,” he said. She shifted, pausing to lean on her cane. “God has forsaken East Olympia. We, his chosen, have cleansed the lasciviousness and sodomy profaning his good Earth. What is your business here?” He cocked the pistol at his side.
The woman burst out laughing. It was a surprisingly melodious sound, one Noah thought would’ve belonged to a young, gorgeous maiden. It’d be a virgin, of course. His future wife, perhaps.
“Are you a fool?” she asked.
Noah blinked and blinked again. “What?”
“Not a fool’s answer. That’d be one from an idiot.”
“I am no fool.”
“You have a gun, don’t you?”
“What is it you want here, woman?” Noah’s grip tightened around the pistol.
“I’m looking for a fool. I heard the city beyond was slaughtered and enslaved. Sounded like the perfect place to find a fool.”
“The Lord Jesus purified the city. Through us. It was not a slaughter.”
Another laugh from the woman. “Is that what you told yourself when you shot the teenagers in the alley?”
“How did you know that.”
“It’s in your eyes, dear. The light is almost out. Your city on the hill will soon be hid.”
A gust of wind rushed over the bridge, blowing the woman’s robes open. Dozens of long, colorful cards were held in stitched pockets outside the robe, on her shirt, on a sash strapped over her shoulder.
“Seventy-eight cards,” she said. She met Noah’s eyes. “Seventy eight to choose before the end. I need a fool. You need to begin again, boy.” She reached to her hip pocket and withdrew a card.
A young man whimsically stepping off a cliff. A small, black dog at his heel.
As the woman reached out the card, Noah lifted his weapon and shot the woman three times in the chest.
“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” he said. “I end your heresy and pagan practice. Be free.” He holstered the pistol and hefted the bloody woman in his arms.
The Fool card dropped onto the pavement.
Holding the woman, Noah stared at the card. He felt cold all of a sudden. Hollow, like an old tree trunk. Stirred in the cold, a new piece of light metal in his heart, a feeling he hadn’t known was missing.
He shook his head and dumped the woman’s body over the bridge. A brief plop and a splash. The sound of the current returned. The dead woman’s robe and cards spread outward with her pooling blood. Her feet and legs drew closely together, and her arms extended straight out, and still, the Fool card glared from the asphalt in the sun.
Gnashing his teeth, Noah snatched the card up and placed it between his fingers. He opened the rocket launcher on his arm. The card spun out over the bridge, and he aimed his arm-launcher on target—
The explosion eliminated the card, but its mind-triggered radius was larger than Noah had anticipated. His emotions had ignited the rocket too quickly, too near the edge.
A pocket of the bridge exploded too. Concrete flew out in all directions. The black casing of the rocket bounced at Noah’s heel, and in his brief moment of panic, he stepped out the wrong direction, right off the cliff of his own making.