Read Bridgetown, Issue #1: Arrival for Free Online Page A

the ground underneath
her feet.
    It was liquefying. Where moments before there
had been the dusty desert floor, she now saw a sea of molten earth,
floating on a layer of golden light that glimmered through breaks
in the soil. The strange ozone stench rose out of the ground
itself.
    Wayne tapped her on the shoulder, wordless.
He was looking up at something behind them.
    Susanna turned around and saw it:
    A ball of white energy rose from the sea that
now surrounded them. It was four stories tall and just as many
wide, tossing ribboning flares of magma into the night sky. It was,
in its own way, beautiful.
    The liquefied earth beneath their feet spun
about the light sphere, caught in a riptide vortex.
    Susanna, Wayne, and the Jeep began to move
with the liquid floor towards the ball of light.
    "Get back in the car!" Susanna shouted.
    She leapt in, turned the ignition, threw the
transmission into reverse and slammed her foot on the gas. But it
was to little effect. They were in the tide now, the Jeep caught in
the paranormal undertow.
    Where's Jesse?
    Susanna jumped out of the Jeep and kicked
furiously against the spinning vortex, but the phenomenon only
pulled against her harder.
    Wayne was saying something to her. She
couldn't hear him.
    Everything was going white. And getting
hotter.
    She was waist-deep in the liquid earth now.
She had absolutely no control over the situation.
    She flipped onto her back and looked up at
the Jeep, which was tipping upright like a sinking ship. Wayne was
clinging for dear life on the back of the car, one futile hand
outstretched to her.
    Susanna gave up trying. She stopped moving,
and let the strange waves crash over her, consume her.
     
    "Just give me the fucking keys, Joe!"
    Jesse wasn't in the mood to ask politely.
Wayne was taking off with his girl. The one who'd just shot him
down.
    This wasn't how the night
was supposed to go. Jesse was supposed to be engaged right now.
Discovering the wonderland inside Devil's Peak had been a sign. A sign that this
was the right place to build his commune, true; but also that this
was the place to bring Susanna to propose. Someplace so beautiful
she'd have to say yes.
    But he'd read the tea leaves wrong, and now
he was drunk, dirty, and bleeding. Susanna probably hated him. And
he hated Wayne.
    So all he needed were the fucking keys from
Joe, so he could take the Volkswagen and chase down the Jeep. Get
his car back. And his girl back.
    "Joe," Jesse repeated. "Please."
    Joe looked guilty, like he knew he was doing
something wrong. But he handed the keys, replete with lucky rabbit
foot keychain, to Jesse.
    Jesse cooled his demeanor. He took a deep
breath, patted his loyal reveler on the shoulder, and said, "Thank
you."
    Then he got in the bus, started it up, and
tore off down the desert flat towards the Jeep that was receding
towards the horizon.
    Lightning crackled in the sky overhead.
    Jesse kept his eyes on the road, but his mind
wandered. He and Wayne had always fought. What brothers didn't?
    But there was something different about the
competition between them. It was rabid. Hurtful. It always had
been, ever since they were kids.
    Why was that? When had it started? Why did
Wayne resent him so much?
    Jesse thought back to the summer of 1958.
Twelve years earlier. The first summer after their parents had
managed to wrap their Buick around a tree, and the two brothers had
gone to live with their grandparents in Jackson.
     
    The move had been a culture
shock to the California boys. The air was different, the bugs were
different. Their grandparents were Depression-era hard-asses.
Bitter people, and if they had any love for the boys, they didn't
show it. Not that Jesse had ever needed touchy-feely shows of
approval, but there was a coldness in their house that was hard to
ignore. Grandma hadn't let him put up any of his baseball posters
in the former nursery room he moved into with Wayne. She said she
didn't want any holes in the wall, and when he offered to