Read Online Noise by Darin Bradley - Free Book Online Page A

decision.”
    I glanced at the others in the circle. Each sat cross-legged on a different rug. Some of the rugs looked Middle Eastern, some Navajo. Mine was simply a giant rug-picture of a wolf. It had been provided.
    The others had their chins up and their eyes closed. Cassandra, the evening’s hostess, sat in the center, small votive offerings to each of the four corners around her. North, South, East, West—she appeased the compass before we all sat down to become spiritually lost.
    “You have to decide that the ‘you’ you know is mistaken. It is occluded, screened by the smokes and muds of our contemporary society.”
    I closed my eyes. I wanted this to work. Wanted to experience
something
. Spiritual.
    “Your totem animal is the better you. The wild and natural you. You must decide that it is a better ‘you’ than you are.”
    I didn’t know how these ceremonies went. I had just followed a flyer on the wall at The (D)rip, the coffeehouse on the Strip.
    PAGAN FELLOWSHIP, ALL WELCOME
UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST CENTER, 112 NORTH MAIN

    Would there be sex? I knew terms like
sky-clad
and
Great Mother
, but I’d spent too much time in Southern Baptist churches growing up. I wasn’t an atheist yet. Not then. I liked the … respectful anarchy of the neo-pagan movement. I’d read about it on the Internet.
    I tried very hard.
    I was losing patience. When the Nine blew, Ruth went into hysterics. The mobs hadn’t broken her, not the trip here or the Strip-rat. What we’d told her about Salvage. None of that. It was hearing the explosion, feeling the fizzed air pressure, like a TV on mute that you can still
feel
.
    The explosion hadn’t been as concussive as we’d thought, but afterward, we could hear transformers groaning all up and down Broadway. Bright lights, big city, and then they popped, one at a time. That was it for the yellow-brick road. The Wailing Wall had been right, and we were left with darkness and smoke.
    After a minute, we led the girls back into the living room. Opened the blinds, let them look at the Northern Lights. Mary stood at the window, uninterested in Ruth’s fit, her no-longer-painted face occasionally violet. Green. Red. The substation burned silently, throwing its alien-hued fires a hundred feet ormore in the air. We could see them clearly, even though we were on the west side of the square.
    For now, there were no screeching tires, no shouting crowds, no one running down Broadway. There was the silence and the light and a Slade riding the first wave of its trip-fantastic into a very bad near-future.
    For now there was Mary at the window, Levi setting new batteries into the black-and-white. Colors phased across the wall, across our upright suit of imitation armor, hammered out of tin. Across our gaming console. Across the map of West Texas we’d tacked onto the wall—the Place noted with a giant safety pin, likely farms nearby that we could Forage marked with multi colored pushpins.
    “Ruth, you can shut up, or you can leave,” I said.
    “How long will it last?” Mary asked.
    “Five minutes. Maybe ten,” Levi said.
    “
What?
Fuck you! You can’t throw me out there.”
    “The fuck I can’t.”
    “Why is it so colorful?”
    “Fine, I’ll take my shit and go. You psychos can play army all you want.”
    “We’re not sure. Salvage just knows what happens, in most cases, not why.”
    “No, your stuff stays. It’s ours now. It belongs to the Group.”
    “What
group?
”
    Mary turned around, limned by the light like some holy nimbus. I looked at her for a minute, expecting something meaningful.
    “This is fucked up,” Ruth said. “I’ll call the police.”
    She picked up one of her packs. I couldn’t remember which it was—her personal gear or the metalworking tools. I stood up. Behind me, Levi had stopped working on the black-and-white.He handed me one of the swords. Mine, judging by the blood. He had stabbed, not swiped, and the wounds had sucked his blade