Night Kingdom -- Prologue

[This is probably just part 1 of the Prologue, but it's started.  My third book is underway--and, just to reassure you, when Pick says that the vampire thing is stupid, it really is.  This isn't a vampire book.  It's something very different.

[I've decided to post it for now.  If it starts getting too grim, I'll try to put warnings in these little section headers for more sensitive readers.  As for now, it is not yet grim.  It's...grim-light.]


Prologue – Six months before the Tucson Food Riots and the establishment of the Maricopa County Dead Zone.

“Explain to me again why we’re out here?” said James.
“Because I’m curious,” said Pick, tracing a path on the ground in front of him with a flashlight, then following it around a massive, spiky agave.
“I really don’t know about this,” said Michael, trailing behind the other two.  “I mean, isn’t there a curfew, even for eighteen-year-olds?  Not to mention that my parents wouldn’t be too happy about this.  Mom’s lips would get all pursed, and her eyes kind of droop, and then there’s the whole ‘we were so worried about you’ speech.  I’m not sure I’m up for that.”
Pick stopped, turned around to face his friends, and shone his own flashlight up under his chin.  He’d just seen The Wizard of Oz, and he hoped he looked suitably green and ominous—well, at least ominous, since the flashlight’s LEDs were more blue.  He pointed his free hand at one friend, then the other.
“James!  You get no more explanations!  Three times is plenty, even for you.  Michael!  You do not get to hide at home this time!  You’re coming with us because not everything that’s cool comes over the internet.  If the rumors are fake, then at least you’ve had some exercise for once.  Now shut up and let’s go.  I want to see these flowers.”
Pick turned and stretched out his long, long legs while he walked.  The other guys could catch up at their own speed.  Something to his left scampered through the cactus and brush, but Pick’s eyes flicked only between the ground in front of his feet and that faint glow just ahead, or what might be a faint glow.  Pick couldn’t tell.  The whole thing might be fake.  He’d heard it from Trish, who heard it from Mark, and if Mark doesn’t know about something he makes stuff up.  It had taken most of the ninth grade for Pick to realize that Mark was a pathological liar—really a pathological liar—but if this time it was true, and these were the flowers, he wanted to see them before the National Guard swept in and burned them all out.
James jogged up behind him.  “So if the flowers are here, and they are the flowers that destroyed Eastern Europe, what do we do about it?”
Pick shrugged, trying to find a good path up the ridge in front of him.  In Tucson, everything has spines, thorns, or lots of spines, a side effect of not enough water to go around.  He didn’t mind bumping into the big needles, since those hurt and were done.  It was the little ones that clung to everything—those were the ones to avoid.
“Aren’t you curious?” asked Pick.  “Don’t you want to know what happens if you eat it?”
“Which part should I be curious about?  The part where I turn into a vampire?  Or the part where I go insane?”
“Come on,” protested Pick.  “With all the news out of Eastern Europe, did they ever once find an example of someone drinking blood?”
“No,” said Michael, catching up to them.  “In fact, there are websites dedicated entirely to debunking those rumors.  They mostly showed up because the flowers first started spreading in Hungary and Romania.  You know, where Transylvania is.”
“Fine,” said James.  “So that takes care of the vampire rumors.  What about the going crazy?”
“The news stories didn’t say you necessarily go crazy,” said Pick.  “The flower just…changes you.”
“Technically, you eat the tuber or root,” said Michael, “not that I would.  Who wants to be one of the crazies?  It’s like people who play the lottery.  Dad says that you have better odds of being struck by lightning.  Twice.  On a cloudless day.  So count me out of the craziness.”
“You just lost me,” said Pick.
“It’s because you’re so tall,” said Michael.  “Thinner air has less oxygen, so your brain doesn’t work as well.”
“Still lost,” said Pick.
“Let’s assume,” interrupted James, “that eating this ‘tuber’ would change us, we wouldn’t become vampires, and we’re some of the lucky few who don’t go insane.  Why?  Why do we need something to change?  Our life is fine.”
“Exactly.”  Michael was nodding.  “My life is fine.  Loving parents, accepted to three universities, high speed internet.”
“No dates,” said Pick.
“No dates for whom?” asked James.
“For any of us.”
“You want to do this to get a date?”
“No,” said Pick, exasperated.  “It’s not about dates.  It’s about our lives.  They’re full of nothing.  The exact same nothing that every other kid at our high school has filled their lives with.  We’re not in Africa working for the Peace Corps, we’re not building houses for homeless people, we’re not changing the world.”
“So let’s build a house,” said James.
“But that’s not it, either!  Even if we go build a house, we’re still the same people doing the same things.  Good things, sure, but same.  Then we’ll grow up and get same jobs at same places doing  more of the same.  Doesn’t that make you feel…trapped?”
“Why should it?” asked James.
“I kind of like trapped,” said Michael.  “At least, I think I do.  It’s nice to not feel on the edge.  Sometimes I feel like I might want to be the crazy guy who duct tapes himself to the underside of an airplane with an oxygen mask, but I don’t.”  Michael paused.  “Right?”
Pick threw his hands in the air, his flashlight beam flickering over cacti and disappearing into the night sky.  “Fine, James.  You don’t feel trapped.  You’re okay with your life the way it is.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“What are you saying?”
James blinked, looking thoughtful.  “There are things I’d change about my life, just like anyone else, but we don’t need some ‘magical plant’ to do it.  It comes on its own.  ‘The universe is change, life is understanding.’”
“Who said that?” asked Michael.
“Marcus Aurelius.”
“Who’s that?”
“I have no idea.  I just liked it.”
“There!” said Pick, a bit of triumph in his voice.  “There is something you want.  You want understanding.  You want to know all the why and the wherefore.”
“‘Wherefore?’” said Michael.  “Is that even a word?”
“And what do you want, Mike?”  Pick wasn’t going to let quibbling over a world derail him.  “There’s got to be something you want, but you’re not going to tell us, because you can’t even tell yourself.  You’re so afraid of figuring out what you want because you’re afraid it might make your life crazy or hard or upset your parents.  You want something, but you won’t admit it.”
“If I don’t know I want it, how is it possible that I want it?”
“He has a point,” said James.
Pick turned and walked up the hill.
“You’re doing that a lot,” called James.
“Doing what?”
“Walking away from us.”
“If I hadn’t, would we have made it this far?”
“He has a point,” said Michael.
Pick legged his way to the top of the ridge, kicking sand in small slides behind him, and stopped.  There it was, in the bottom of the ravine.  A field of flowers.
It was a very small field.  A large pickup could have covered them all, but they were flowers, a light purple that Pick’s sister would have called ‘lilac.’  Or maybe it was ‘periwinkle.’  How did she keep those colors apart?  Anyway, those were definitely the flowers.
Because they were glowing.
“They’re glowing,” said James, coming up beside Pick.  “Mark wasn’t lying.”
“For once,” said Pick.
“Those are glowing,” said Michael, catching up.  “Looks like a computer game.”
“And the even look 3D,” said Pick.
“Now you’re just making fun of me.”
“Sorry.”
Pick looked down at the flowers.  “They didn’t exactly destroy Eastern Europe, you know.”
James laughed.  “How would you describe it?  ‘Don’t worry about Eastern Europe, honey.  It’s experiencing a near total collapse of civilized society, but it wasn’t destroyed.’”
“It’s bouncing back,” said Pick.  “Right, Mike?”
“Only sort of.  Hungary has some kind of militaristic government that’s stopped warring in an area almost as large as pre-World War I Hungary—”
“See?” interrupted Pick.  “Not destroyed.  I’m going down.”
His two friends followed (again) as Pick slid his way to the side of the flower patch.  Up close the glow from the flowers was enough that his flashlight was unnecessary, so Pick turned it off.  They were beautiful, the flowers.  Did they have a name?  Besides what everyone called them, that is.  ‘Night Flower’ seemed so pedestrian, a new word Pick had discovered that described so much of his life.  The flowers almost looked like a lily, but smaller, more delicate.  If he touched one it seemed it would shatter into dust and drift away.
“Why is that one white?” he asked.
“Right,” said James.  “With my in depth knowledge both of botany and the Night Flower, I will now explain to you why that is white.”
“I should have told you to leave your sarcasm at home.”
“I bring it everywhere.  Even church.”
“I bet your mom loves that.”
“I like church,” said James, “so I keep my mouth shut.  But I still have my sarcasm close at hand.  Just in case.”
“The white one glows brighter,” said Michael.  “And I think I do want something.  I mean, something big.”
“Really?” Pick was surprised. “What?”
“I don’t know.  But I have the feeling that I could find out.”
“That’s it,” said Pick, decided.  “I’m eating the white one.”  He reached out and grabbed the stem of the flower.  The first tug moved the earth around the flower a little but he had to get a firmer grip, closer to the ground, before he could pull the plant out of the ground.
“Huh,” said James.  “Potatoes.”
“It…does look like a potato.”
“You’re eating that?” asked Michael.
“Yes.”
“Really?” asked James.
“Yes.”
“Fine.  Get me one.”
“Seriously?” said Pick.
“Yes, seriously.  Michael and I decided that if you were going to be an idiot, we’d be idiots with you.”
“Actually,” said Michael, “you were the one who decided that.”
“But you agreed to it.”
“Kind of.”
James smacked his forehead and ran his hand down his face.  “I’m not usually this grumpy, I swear.  It’s just that I’ve been up since five, and I haven’t eaten in hours, and you, Michael, are driving me nuts!”
“I’ll do it,” said Michael.  “I wasn’t trying to say I wouldn’t.  It was just that you were the person who decided it, and—”
“Let’s share it,” interrupted Pick.  “The white one.  It’s big enough for us each to have a piece, and that makes us like the Three Musketeers, or something.”
“Which I’ve never understood,” said Michael, “because after d'Artagnan shows up, there’s four of them, and that’s pretty much the whole book.  And the sequels.  They even call the books the d’Artagnan Romances.”
“Here’s your piece, Mike, and yours, James.  Sorry if it’s a bit dirty.”
The three friends looked at each other.  There was a cool breeze and the glow of the Night Flowers around them and an owl, calling somewhere.
“Do we say something?” asked Pick.
“It was your idea,” said James.
Pick took a deep breath, nodding.  “Right.  Well.  Probably nothing will happen, and I really hope we don’t get sick, and I especially hope that none of us go crazy—and I’m not even mentioning vampires, because that’s too stupid to bring up.  And don’t tell me I just brought it up.”  James closed his mouth.  “If we do go crazy or die, then I’m sorry.  I’ll try to make it up to you.  But if our lives change somehow, then I just wanted to say thank you.  Thanks for doing this with me.  You guys made high school bearable, and if I can find something more than this, I want it to be with you.”
“And with a girlfriend,” added James.
“I should have said that,” said Pick.
“I thought I’d remind you.”
“Thanks.”
“When do we eat it?” asked Michael.
“Now,” said Pick, looking down at the piece of root in his hand.  “We eat it now.”