Read Bridgetown, Issue #1: Arrival for Free Online

at least."
    Wayne stared at her blankly for a moment over
the idle of the Jeep. After a moment, he conceded. He scooted over
the gear shift into the passenger seat.
    Susanna walked around to the driver's side
and put the car into first, pulling away from the crescent of
parked vehicles and in the general direction of the distant
highway. The dim headlight bulbs cast a flickering, incomplete
image of the path ahead, and the dusty windshield made it even
harder to see. She could just imagine shredding a tire on one of
the bits of old adobe building still jutting out of the ground.
That would be just the thing to make this night complete.
    More thunder.
    A flash of lightning.
    And that strange ozone smell again.
    "Wayne?"
    "Yes?"
    "Can the lightning hurt us?"
    "I'm sure we're safe," he said, his hands
clasped in a kind of pennant gesture. "I'm sorry for all of this,
Susanna."
    In the rear-view mirror, a flash of lightning
illuminated the sky behind Devil's Peak, and for a moment it again
seemed like the monstrous giant it had when Susanna first saw
it.
    She couldn't look away—more and more
electricity danced in the sky behind and above the mesa.
    It was an otherworldly
light show. She had the distinct impression the lightning was
coming from the
mountain.
    She wondered what was going on inside the
mesa at that moment—inside that massive, hollow cavern of light and
water that was so impossible, and so wondrous.
    The Jeep hit a rock, and bounced
violently.
    "Shit!" Susanna let out. She brought her eyes
back to the road.
    "Wayne, I gotta keep my eyes on the road,"
she said. "But take a look at the mountain back there and tell me
there isn't something very strange going on with it."
    "Strange? What do you mean?"
    "Just look at it."
    Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Wayne
peering to their rear. A light, like a flashlight, illuminated his
worried gaze.
    "Jesus," Wayne said. "He's following us!"
    Susanna glanced back up at her rear-view
mirror, and saw the distinctive double-globe appearance of the
Volkswagen Bus' headlamps.
    "Oooookay," Susanna said. "This has gone on
long enough."
    She braked hard, bringing the Jeep to a dusty
stop. She stepped out and flagged Jesse down.
    "Susanna, what are you doing? He could be
murderous!"
    "Quit being so dramatic. He's not
'murderous,' he's your brother."
    She turned back to the bus, which was slowing
too.
    But her attention was pulled away by the
sight of Devil's Peak. Columns of lightning still danced over its
head.
    And the mesa was…
    … glowing.
    That was the only way to describe what she
saw. Red-hot, exactly like iron in a crucible, not yet cooled—the
whole mountain! Its molten glow pulsed, rhythmic.
    The wind whipping up, the skies full of
charcoal clouds, the mountain and thunder—it all struck her as
positively Biblical, like one of those 70 millimeter Technicolor
epics that were popular when she was a little kid.
    The door to the VW swung open, and Jesse
stepped out. Even though it was the middle of the night, his shape
was perfectly cut out against the sky, which was more of a dull
grey than black at this point, shimmering as it was with rippling
light. Jesse must've seen the slack-jawed expression on both
Susanna and Wayne's faces, because he turned around, still
absentmindedly stumbling backwards towards them, and looked up at
the light show.
    Susanna felt a chill in her bones. She had
the distinct impression this is what it felt like in the last few
moments before a bomb went off.
    Devil's Peak was absorbed in a brilliant
white light. But she couldn't look away.
    A ribbon of energy shot out from Devil's
Peak, across the desert plain. It was heading for them like a
train.
    She didn't have time to say anything. It was
on top of them before she could flinch.
    The ribbon of energy impacted with the
Jeep.
     
    She opened her eyes.
    She was still standing. Still alive.
    She looked around. Wayne was still next to
her. So was the Jeep.
    What happened?
    But then she looked at