The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl by Tim Pratt Read Free Book Online Page B

Beej breathed a long sigh.
    “Your bag smells like pee,” the boy said.
    “Still waters run deep,” Beej said, grinning, and nodded toward the lighter fluid and matches. The kid rang up the purchases and Beej grubbed around in the pocket of his leather jacket until he came up with a few coins and bills. The boy took the money, wrinkling his nose. Beej saw that he’d accidentally given the kid a wad of gum wrappers along with the money. Except it
wasn’t
an accident—it was all part of the god working through him. Beej was an instrument of the lord of wreckage now, and everywhere he went, chaos and detritus would follow.
    The boy picked the wrappers out of his hand and threw them into the trash, then made Beej’s change. “Paper or plastic?” he asked.
    Beej grinned. “I’ve got a bag, thanks.” He dropped the matches and the lighter fluid into his garbage bag, then left the store.
    The moon was up and full, leering like an albino jack- o’lantern. Beej went the long way around Pacific again, and this time he walked all the way to the altar.
    The altar was in a hole in an empty lot surrounded by a fence, with a clothing boutique on one side and a parking garage on the other. Once there had been a building on this lot, but that was before the 1989 earthquake. Loma Prieta. That was the last major quake to hit the area, and it had leveled much of Santa Cruz. The heart of town, as it stood now, bore little resemblance to the town’s layout before Loma Prieta. Beej hadn’t lived here then, he’d still been in Indiana, but he’d seen pictures of the old town, and the wreckage, at the Museum of Art and History. In typical California fashion, the residents had started rebuilding right after the disaster, reinventing the town. There was a time when Beej had respected that impulse to rebuild and re-create, had found it wonderful—humankind uniting in the face of adversity, taking back the world from the elements. But he knew better, now. His eyes had been opened.
    Humans were stupid filthy persistent insects. The world slapped them with an earthquake, and they came back for more! The earthquake was a message from the god itself, and they disregarded it. How much clearer did the god have to be? What part of “I don’t want you here” didn’t they understand? They had pride sufficient to offend the god.
    Next time, there would be no rebuilding. The destruction would be utter, the ground scoured of life, no stone left on a stone.
    For the first time in his life, Beej felt in total harmony with nature. So
this
was what all those pagans at school were talking about! He’d thought it was airy-fairy shit, all about trees and fields and the moon, but it was really about the raw brute force of nature. Titanic earth forces. The ground itself making its will known, throwing off the parasites that lived and thrived on its surface.
    For whatever reason, this empty lot hadn’t been rebuilt after the quake, despite its prime location adjacent to downtown. This patch of ground was unchanged since the day after the earthquake, except for the rubble that had been hauled away, and the fence, and the grass growing up inside. It still bore the mark of the god’s fury.
    Beej squeezed in through a hole in the fence and stood on the edge of his temple, the altar of the earthquake. Whatever building had once stood here had had a basement, and there was still a large hole with partially broken concrete walls shoring up the earth. Tumbled chunks of concrete filled the pit, with bits of rebar sticking out. Beej skidded down the steep slope into the hole, his bag over his shoulder. Several of the concrete blocks had tumbled together and formed something like a table, with a flat block across the top. The first time Beej saw that, he knew it wasn’t coincidental, not just a random pile of wreckage—it was a sign. It was an altar.
    Beej worked happily, the moon providing his light. He took out the contents of his bag and piled them on the