Free Warning! Do Not Read This Story! by Robert T. Jeschonek Page B

survivor."
    The Incas hung on her every word, gazing at her delicate features in the firelight. "You are welcome to stay with us," said one of the elders.
    The storyteller shook her head sadly. "I cannot stay. I have come to tell you one story, and then I must go."
    "What story is that?" said one of the children.
    "It is my reason for existence," said the storyteller. "Atlantis was destroyed by her own people. They became too powerful and forgot their humility.
    "I walk the Earth to ensure that no race of people, ever again, is so completely annihilated. To teach the lesson of humility and preserve the people against the coming storm."
    "Tell us this story," said the King. "Perhaps we can help you bring it to a people who need your lesson."
    "Perhaps." The storyteller smiled. She took a deep breath and began. "Long before these times in which we live, there was a boy in a bucket..."
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    *****
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    Buzz and the sisters saw the first body twenty feet into town, hanging from a noose strung from a streetlight. It was a young man with black hair and coveralls, twisting in the wind. Staring forever at the dusty pavement below.
    Carrol stubbed out her cigarette on the sole of her red canvas sneaker. "How many are there?" Her voice was sharp and businesslike in a way it hadn't been before.
    Towers sniffed. "Thirty-seven. Plus three unaccounted for, best we can figure."
    "Unaccounted for." Sascha snapped photos of the hanged man with a digital camera the size of a credit card. "Meaning they could have been out of town and missed all this."
    "Or escaped in the middle of it," said Carrol.
    "We've got people searching the desert," said Towers.
    Buzz continued past them and stopped ten feet away, at body number two. This one was a middle-aged woman...portly, with long red hair wrapped in a giant braid. She lay in a dark spot on the sidewalk, where her blood had soaked into the cement. Her hands were clamped around the handle of a long knife that was sunk to its hilt in her belly.
    "What does forensics say?" Buzz snapped on a pair of latex gloves and crouched beside the body.
    "Suicides," said Towers. "Thirty-seven suicides."
    Buzz tried to move the dead woman's hands, but they were locked around the handle of the knife. "Why do you think otherwise?"
    "Because it doesn't make sense," said Sascha. "Thirty-seven people don't just up and kill themselves for no reason."
    "Exactly." Towers sounded surprised that Sascha had answered for her. "And all within twenty-four hours."
    Both hands on her lower back, Carrol hobbled toward a third body in the street. This one, an old man, lay face-down with arms and legs splayed. "Reminds me of Sestina."
    Buzz joined her at body number three. He looked up at the open third-floor window from which the old man must have jumped. "What happened in Sestina?"
    Carrol combed fingers through her cap of dark gray hair, which looked like it had been cut around a bowl. "A real picnic." She coughed and hobbled off toward body number four. "It made us what we are today."
    "This isn't Sestina." Sascha snapped a photo of the woman with the knife in her belly. "If it were, we'd be killing each other right now."
    Suddenly, a deafening crack echoed in the street.
    "Gunfire!" Buzz swept his nine-mil from its holster and spun in the direction of the blast. "Get down!"
    Towers charged past him with pistol drawn and bolted down a cross-street. Buzz moved to follow...then stopped dead at the sound of Carrol's voice.
    "Help!" Buzz couldn't see her, but the cry was coming from up the street, near a blue-and-white pickup truck. "Help me!"
    As Buzz hurried toward Carrol's voice, Sascha darted out from behind an SUV and ran alongside, then sprinted out ahead of him. She bolted around the pickup, and Buzz followed with the nine-mil at the ready.
    He didn't need it.
    "Oh, God." Carrol writhed on the pavement, clutching her lower back. "It went into spasm!"
    Sascha dropped at her side. "Deep breaths, honey. In and out now."
    Cursing