Page 1 of The Mountain Man's Curvy Trick-or-Treat

Chapter

One

EVERETT

The line at Ponderosa Salvage crawls like glacier melt. Slow, relentless, ancient as regret. I lean on the bed of my old truck, waiting my turn to dump a load of scrap—twisted metal limbs and scorched circuitry stacked beneath a thick blue tarp.

Kids in plastic fangs weave between idling cars, their laughter fizzing like static, candy-filled pumpkins swinging like tiny suns. On their approach, I reach into my truck, grab the bag of goodies and put a handful in each basket.

“Thank you, Mister,” one screams.

Another giggles. “Trick-or-treat.”

I used to think these earth-born tadpoles pathetic … soft, breakable things. But somewhere between centuries, they grew on me. Cute in their own way, flushed round cheeks, and toothy grins. Still, they’ve got nothing on kittens or baby alpacas.

A worker wears zombie makeup, white and green, to cast his complexion in a rotten pallor. Torn clothes and black circles around his eyes to evoke the undead. No dread there.

The best costume here is the one nobody sees. Big brown beard, denim, flannel. If only they knew how hard I have to concentrate not to glow.

The light wants out; the same way truth does. It gathers behind my ribs like a storm no textile can hold back forever.

Ten more trick-or-treaters and a nearly empty candy bag later, I finally make the front of the line.

The zombie gestures me forward. I hop back in my truck, make the engine rumble, and pull up next to him. The man eyes me, nods, then strides to the back, lifts the tarp.

He squints, face scrunching. “Electronics?”

The pile in my truck bed once marched, saluted, obeyed. Now it’s just twisted obedience, ready for the crusher. Sentinel constructs. Or robots, some might say.

Made to patrol the frontier, break the Resonant where they’re found. A final act of rebellion I’ve been inching toward for centuries.

I step out, cross my arms, and grimace. “Junk.”

He doesn’t look convinced, but the line’s long, and there’s no use fighting. Besides, I add, “No radiation or poison.”

If he only knew the half of it.

“Nice costume, man! Those glowing eyes are killer!” A voice calls my way. A man wearing a clown mask.

I deadpan, “Yeah. Killer.” I let my bioluminescence flare for one solitary moment, savoring the way he steps back and does a double-take.

I smile to myself. Don’t know if it’s the joke or the joy of finally knowing I’m doing the right thing after so many centuries of inner conflict.

Humor blunts the guilt, though the scraps still hum under the tarp like restless ghosts. A residual current, nothing spiritual.

How do I know this? Because even buried under concrete and metal, I can still feel the Mother Tree’s slow heartbeat miles away—roots whispering through rock, calling her wayward sons home.

The zombie and I throw the rubble into the huge pit below, where bulldozers smash and crush the otherworldly pieces.

Memories of last night wash back over me. Robot watchers limping back to my cabin, circuitry humming with demands. A recharge. Small repairs. Something to combat a dampener. That’s when I went from listening to smashing, not stopping until the constructs lay around me in violent heaps.

I may be a builder of artificial intelligence by day. Still, I’ll be damned if I let them use my tech on any more of the halfbloods, despite their transgressions.

Sentinel purity has become our quiet path to extinction, not a noble choice. The halfbloods, Wildbloods, whatever they want to call themselves, were right all along. Only I hope this realization hasn’t come too late.

My face is grim, but the corners of my mouth tilt up at the fracturing metal, crushed circuitry well beyond repair or reverse engineering.

An act of sedition—small, silent, maybe suicidal.