The Pseudo-Chronicles of Mark Huntley

In the Court of the Silver King - 11/24/04

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

OK. This one’s time-released. By the time you read this, we’ll have already launched ourselves at the Archfiend. I could be dead right now. My intention is not to be.

I need you to know everything that happened in Colorado. How we built our little army of human weapons. If the idea was right, but our execution was bad, you and your most open-minded friends might have to go out to Colorado and make the same preparations—to become the second wave.

But I’m going to need to pretend it’s still in Louisville, Colorado, for just a while longer. If I out the location of the pocos stronghold here, for the world to see, and if we did fail to stop the muchos… well, the purples are just going to go in there and destroy the silvers for good, obviously.

So Naomi and I hit this town, Louisville, about midday—just north of Denver. A dry, sandy place, with incredible views of the mountains. The threat of snow had held off for the time being, so when we rolled into town and pulled up near the Old Louisville Inn, it was a cold but precipitation-free day. Bright blue sky hung over us, bright enough to hurt my eyes.

Have you ever been out west, Reader? Maybe you’re reading this now from the West. Maybe you already knew. But I didn’t.

This insane trip was the first time that I’d ventured out in this direction past, say, Ohio. If only it were under different circumstances. Such a change from the crowds of D.C., or a lot of other places on the East Coast for that matter. With our gates and fences and roadblocks, cities full of closed-up towers full of yearning people. We live in a culture of barriers and limits on our world.

But here. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to just stop the car at a random spot just off the highway, and go wandering out into the fields or the scrub. You don’t know what’s out there, but it entices. You get this feeling of… endless possibility.

I mean, maybe it’s just as much of an illusion as the one that the muchos have cast over us all our lives—an illusion of choice. But it feels good when you’re in its spell. It feels like the world is so much bigger than you and your petty little concerns about Apocalypse.

Anyway. Naomi and I got out of the car and stretched, enjoying the view. We smiled at each other, neither of us needing to acknowledge how pretty it was out loud… we still felt that connection from the night before, and were tingly from it, despite our nervousness at how the day would play out. 

Remember, this is before we got our names dragged into the mud as terrorists and our faces on the news and the watch lists. Before we had to kill human beings who shouldn’t have had it coming. Seems like a time all rosy and innocent, in retrospect.

Then a van pulled up near our car. A shiny blue van that looked like a rental. The doors opened and Anton Zalt got out, along with five men and one woman. Everyone wore sensible, padded clothing that could very well have concealed armored vests, for all I knew, and had pistols in holsters at their sides. Including Zalt. Back in D.C., they would have triggered the terror alerts immediately, walking around like this. But here in Colorado, they were just regular folks out for a fun day.

Zalt didn’t look so good. Yellower face than I remembered, and it seemed he’d lost weight, even from just a few weeks ago. The eyes he peered at me with were yellowish as well.

“We’ll skip the pleasantries, I hope,” he said.

“Agreed, though I hope you guys had a comfortable flight,” I said. “So. You know that guns are going to be no good against these things.”