Flanked

back in Austin had been home to snakes and rats, some of the few animals left. Even though this lake was dry, Joe couldn’t shake the feeling that its brush concealed the same pests. He slipped his fingers over the VICE-shot he’d borrowed from Devin and kept moving.
Since Joe had left the other set of vision shields with Flix so at least one person from each group could see in the dark, he needed to guide Marcus up the slope. He took Marcus’s hand and was pleased at how normal it felt. Wandering around holding hands wasn’t something he’d ever done, not before Devin had come into his life. Then a few days ago — when Devin found out that Joe had withheld the truth about Boggs and their friend Ebony’s baby, Nina — they’d stopped touching, at least until the dazzler had messed with Devin’s sight. Joe had missed holding hands, had wondered if he’d ever have it again. Holding Marcus’s hand wasn’t anything like holding Devin’s, didn’t give Joe a thrill of heat. It was just a friend’s hand.
“It’ll be fine, right?” Marcus asked. “We’ll figure it out?” Away from his brother, the difference in their voices was even more pronounced. Flix was brash and confident, and he often tried to sound seductive, older. A boy trying to be a man. Marcus sounded like a kid, one who’d lived his life in his brother’s shadow.
Joe tapped his thumb on the back of Marcus’s hand. “We will find water.”
“It was my fault, the water spilling. Peter made it sound like Flix was perverted or something, liking boys the way I like girls. I should have expected some white northerner to be a spigot.”
Joe snorted. “Bigot. The word’s bigot.”
“Whatever.” Marcus swung his and Joe’s hands like a rope between them. “I mean, I see how they act, the men who come down here. They’re sneaking away from their wives and girlfriends to get a bit of dick. Tells me all I need to know about the north.”
Joe hated to think of Marcus seeing himself as a “bit of dick.” What they’d done at Flights of Fantasy was different than simple prostitution. At least, that’s what he’d always told himself. Not that he’d minded being a whore, not really. What he minded was feeling like he’d had no choice, no say in who’d touched him or how. And the jobs had been different for different runners. Their friends Trig and Roxy had a filthy bondage routine that kept Trig covered in bruises and left Roxy almost untouched. James and Ebony had been popular using a few stereotyped shticks that made Joe gag. But Marcus and Flix... Joe had started at Flights of Fantasy when he was fourteen. He’d been the baby-faced little pretty boy. He knew what happened, even with a female partner, as he’d always been paired with before Devin came along. He didn’t want to think of those things happening to the twins.
“Peter’s been through a shock,” Joe said, hating the way they’d refused his pleas to come along when they ran away from Flights of Fantasy. “He’ll come around.”
“I thought he was.” Marcus almost sounded like he was whining. “We wouldn’t have let him come with us if —”
Joe wheeled so he could see Marcus’s face. “No matter what Peter believes right now, you were right to take him with you. Devin and I really do regret leaving him at the Flats.”
“No one deserves our life,” Marcus whispered, staring at his feet. “Even before Mr. Boggs did what he did to Flix.”
“No one,” Joe agreed. He turned and headed back up the bank, only to be stopped two steps later when Marcus didn’t follow.
Marcus’s hand began to shake in Joe’s grip. “Joe.”
Joe heard it then. The rustle over his shoulder, the rattle. He slipped the VICE-shot from his pocket and shifted his feet, not daring to pick them up. When he looked in the direction of the noise, his breath caught.
A large, thick snake sat coiled two feet to Marcus’s left, its head lifted, ready to strike. Even with Nightsight activated on his vision shields, Joe couldn’t see the snake’s head well enough to get a fix on the type, but he wasn’t about to take any chances with that rattling sound it was making.
“Slowly, Marcus. Don’t look at it. Walk slowly toward me.”
Marcus lifted a foot, and the snake began to hiss. He whimpered and placed his foot on the ground.
“Good. Other foot now.”
As soon as Marcus lifted the other foot, Joe jerked him forward.
Faster than Joe could react, the snake struck. It lunged for the spot where Marcus had been, and its jaw missed his calf by inches.
Before the snake could try again, Joe zapped it with the VICE-shot.
The snake froze, fangs extended, body shocked straight. It sizzled and popped, and Joe had a brief fantasy of eating it, before smoke curled from under its belly.
He stopped the current of the gun and kicked the snake to the side. Around the carcass, black and orange embers spread, eating the dead brush. Joe whipped off his shirt and dropped it over the fire. He stomped on it, trying to smother the blaze. The fire burned through his shirt.
“Marcus, get your shirt off. Help me —”
Too late. Bright orange flames curled over the brush and licked their way up a tree. Bark peeled back, split, and smoke poured out of the wounds.
Joe stood still for a second, transfixed by the way the fire devoured the tree from the inside out. Then heat touched his shoes and legs. While he’d been watching the fire in the tree, the fire on the ground had grown. The first heavy hit of smoke curled around his head and made him cough, jerking him out of his stupor. He grabbed Marcus’s hand again and ran.
The heat of the blaze chased them up the hill. Smoke swirled around them and pushed ahead, blinding Joe to everything except the glow of the flames. Only the tension between his hand and Marcus’s