The storm began, as most do, with a single drop.  Such humble beginnings did little to warn of the events that they preceded, though it was perhaps fate that landed the first drop on the forehead of a young man in Las Vegas.  Amidst the millions that lived in the valley, and the millions that would know life on such a shortened scale, it was Malcolm who received the first droplet of water that the desert had seen in months.

“Just fuckin' great,” he murmured, wiping the droplet from his forehead.  The bus was already an hour late, he was probably going to get fired, and now he had to endure it wet, to top it off.  Within moments, he was pelted by another, and then yet another.  Guarding his mp3 player under his shirt, he pulled his legs up onto the hot metal bench.  “Bus'll prolly get called off on account of holy flood now, right?”  Such was the way of the desert—from drought to flood in thirty minutes flat.

Elsewhere, the oncoming rain was a sign of great fortune.  Deacon sat on his back porch—where he often found himself, pondering all the oddities of life—with a cigarette in hand.  Inside, his foster parents were screaming at one another, but in the backyard, the sound of thunder over-powered even their feuding. He was mute, and the screams of his caretakers overpowered his own silent protests, but nature could always roar louder.

As Malcolm finally climbed onto the west-bound Sahara bus, his co-worker and brother in life was finally stirring.  Jak had first hit snooze, and then turned the alarm off.  When the secondary alarm kicked in twenty minutes later, the clock was unplugged, wrapped in a sheet, and launched into his open closet with deadly precision.  His head didn't shift from the pillow until another half-hour later.  Checking the time on his computer, he lit up a cigarette and punched in a few digits on his cell-phone.  “Yeah, Karen?  Hey, it's Jak.... Jak?  James A. Kellerman?  I've worked there a few months?  No, Malcolm's the shaggy-haired one, I'm the guy standing next to him—yeah, there ya go.”  He chuckled, taking a drag.  “Yeah, I'm gonna be a little late.  Yup, stuck in traffic, y'know.”  Third time this week.  But seven-fifty an hour was just enough pay to get the job done.  Not quite enough to get there on time.  

“Oye, mami!  I can't talk to you right now!  I'm almost at school, and my phone's gonna short out on me if it gets any wetter.  Yeah, sorry—love you!  Bye!”  Layla slapped her phone shut, heaving her backpack further up onto her shoulder.  She'd thought that setting out for Vegas would help loosen the leash that came with Cuban parents, but the bonds felt tighter than ever.  Using her leather portfolio as a cover from the rain, she tried dialing Jak again.  That boy could sleep through the end of the world, she thought with a laugh as she strolled on to the campus of the art institute.

While some people were finally getting up for work, others had already been going hard for hours.   People made fun of the idea of flash floods in Las Vegas, but no one took it more seriously than the workers that installed and maintained the fledgling attempt at a sewer system.  “Heya, boss, it's getting' pretty nasty out here—maybe we oughta call it a day?”  Robert Danson was shouting into his cell-phone over the sound of traffic.

“What the hell do you think you get paid for?  Sewer work's always nasty, Bobby.  Stick it out the next couple of hours, and enjoy your day off tomorrow, kay?”  Mr. Brock replied, in the comfort of an internally cooled leather chair.  The massage function was working its magic on his lower back while he watched the rain through a floor-to-ceiling window .  “Call me if anything more important comes up, 'kay Bobby?  Thanks.” Click.   He tapped his cigar into a crystal ash-tray, rolling his eyes.  “Little rain comes down, and these kids act like getting wet wasn't in their job description.”

In the VIP room at the top of the Bellagio, a sleazy businessman was snorting a line of coke off a hooker's cleavage.  Somewhere in Summerlin, a close-knit family was gathered around their breakfast table, thanking God for bacon and eggs.  Downtown, a man lost his entire life's earnings, while another won four million at a casino directly across the street.  The sun continued to raise over Sunrise Mountain—albeit obscured by clouds—and the city continued to run below.  Storms always came with mixed feelings in The Valley, and this one got no special attention, though none of the tourists or citizens below would ever forget it.

* * * * *

Electronics Empire was both a curse and a blessing of a job.  On one hand, its employees received a rather decent discount, while on the other, its location made it a prime stop for tourists.  In other words—the job generally consisted of explaining electronics to people who didn't speak English.  A little patience went a long way, and by the time Jak rolled in, Malcolm no longer had any.

“Y'know, I had to deal with a Russian family in your department,” he grumbled, while Jak clocked in.  “Russian!  Yeah!  And they looked at me like I was stupid.”

“Well, y'are,”  Jak teased.

“Yeah, fuck you.  I don't go on vacation in countries where I can't speak the native language.”

“Well, technically, I think the natives of this area were Creek or Cheyenne Indians.”  Jak waved in passing at the girl working the DVD and Music department.

“Don't be an ass, we conquered them forever ago.”

“Maybe you should go out on a smoke break.  I'll watch over your iPods for you.”

Malcolm sighed, coming to the slow realization that this conversation was going no where.

“Yeah, fine.  I'll be back in a couple minutes.”

With his primary distraction gone, Jak took a long, deep breath and shook out the negativity.  “Alright, then.”  Gazing over the vast ocean of digital cameras, and the customers of various ethnic backgrounds perusing them, he forced a grin and dove in.

Malcolm had barely lit his cigarette, stepping around the side of the building, before he heard a soft “ahem.”  Raising his eyebrows, he peered up to find Roy, Electronics Empire's newest supervisor.

“Heya, how's it goin' boss?”  Mal tipped his head, taking a drag off the cigarette.

“It's goin', it's goin,”  Roy responded, taking a drag off his own cigarette.  “Say, who's watching your department, if you're out here?”

“Jak?”

“Y'mean the kid over in imaging?  Who's always busy?”

Malcolm thought he knew where this was going.  “Yup?  That'd be the one.”

“How well do you think he can watch your section, if he's busy with his own?”

“Well, y'know... I was pretty stressed and..” Malcolm tried, to no avail.  Roy was on a roll already, and for a scrawny guy with hunched shoulders, he could get kind of scary when he got pissed.

“You do remember that just yesterday we had a portable DVD player walk off on us?  Whose problem is that?”

“Mine, I guess.”

“Right.  We're not in the business of giving away electronics, alright?  Keep your head up, and your eyes open.  This is not a good area of town, and we can't afford to have our employees fucking around on the clock, got it?”

Malcolm nodded, flicking his cigarette on the ground.  “Yes, sir.   Guess I'll head back in, then.”  He turned and began back towards the entrance.  “Enjoy your cigarette,” he grumbled under his breath, stepping through the automatic doors.  No sooner had he set foot back inside the store, than he saw the gaggle of Mexicans coming his way.

“Ehm... You espeak espanol?” He heard the question before they even asked, and was shaking his head before they were done.  Not that it mattered—the resident 'translators' were both off today, which meant he'd just have to grin and bear it. Their questions weren't even about his department, but Electronics Empire was a strong supporter of the Boundless Selling system—you only had a department as long as a customer didn't ask you for help in another.  

Sure, I'll try to explain technology that I'm not familiar with, in a language that I don't know, he thought, and it forced out an actual giggle.  Doing his best to quell the Bad-Customer-Service-Beast, he led the family towards car electronics.


* * * * *

By noon, the rain was coming down harder than Deacon had seen in years.  He'd passed through Texas one time, and had experienced one of their storms with utmost glee, despite his parents complaining from the front seat.  This wasn't quite that good, but it came close.  He had stripped his shirt some time ago, and now stood in the middle of his barren backyard, chest exposed to the clouds with his arms extended to either side.  Had he a voice, he could have cackled.

Instead, the thunder cracked for him, a flash of lightning splitting through the clouds.  He danced and twirled around like a leaf on the wind, celebrating the pure life that poured from the sky onto parched land and skin.

* * * * *

Layla curled up in an over-sized bean-bag chair in the student lounge, pulling her sketchbook from her portfolio.  Their model for the day had come down with some sort of nasty rash, and had to call off, which left a class of amateur artists with an hour of free time.  Most, to Layla's dismay, sat mindlessly watching a TV.  So much for enlightenment amongst the creative.

“--Desert Inn underpass is completely flooded, and we cannot stress enough how dangerous it is to drive through there,” the reporter was imploring the public, while footage of filthy gray water flashed by.  “These flood waters are always a lot deeper than they look.  You may think it's a puddle, but you don't want to risk your life, or your car for that matter, just to get to work on time... In other news, Nevada Health Officials have put out a bulletin warning that a string of spider-bites have shown up across town.  This time of year, it's getting hot and all the little bugs are coming out--”

Layla wasn't listening anymore.  Someone had drawn in her nearly-new book.  Right after the picture of Jak and Deacon she'd sketched out when she first got it, and a tribal design for Malcolm's new tattoo, it was supposed to be blank.  Instead, the next three pictures appeared to be mostly landscapes.  The pencil strokes looked like her style, but she'd never done a decent landscape in her life.

The first depicted New York, only it looked like a few steps before Planet of the Apes.  Buildings were burnt and partially crumbled; Central Park looked even more like a junkyard than it already did.  The second was far less striking, but somehow creepier, in its own way.  Someone had penciled out a night scene that looked like a Norman Rockwell painting of southern life.  Only, that someone had signed the picture with her own initials and handwriting.

Flipping to the third, she found a picture that was unmistakably hers, though it showed signs of skill and control far beyond hers.  This one showed a male silhouette, with features that shone out in white against the negative space.  He looked like the devil in disguise, as depicted by an Image comic book artist.  All over his shoulders and back, insectile bodies stood out against the white background.

This one put a fear into her that seemed somehow familiar.  She couldn't quite put her finger on it...

“Hey, Layla!  Did you hear about the field trip next week?  There's a new Van Gogh exhibit up in the Wynn!”  Jamie—one of her fellow art students—broke her out of her reverie, dragging her back to earth.

Blinking up at him, she shook her head.  “No shit?  He's, like, my favorite painter.”

“Totally—they got a hold of some of his originals, and they're putting them up next Friday.  Didn't you check the bulletin board?  C'mon, I'll show you.”  He yanked her from the cushion, and she allowed it.  Her sketchbook fell closed upon the chair, and she pushed the images from her mind, though they never really left the back of her head.

* * * * *

“Yo, Rob, fuck this shit—I'm goin' home!”  the other technician was calling, from the top of the manhole.  Robert craned his neck, clinging to the ladder for dear life above the frothing white tunnel of water and human waste.

“Dammit, Mikey, don't you do this shit to me!  Boss says we stick it out, we stick it out!  I got bills to pay!” He called back up.

“Yeah, me too!  And I wanna be alive to pay 'em!  You can drown for your shitty salary if you want, but I'd rather not!”  The form stepped out of sight from the circular lip of the pipe.  

Robert let out a sigh, dropping his head between his arms and resting against a bar of the ladder.  Gritting his teeth, he let out a few choice swear words below his breath, before something caught his eye.

“What the hell?” He murmured, climbing a few rungs down.

Amidst the garbage and feces, the water seemed to be carrying along tons of baby lobsters.  Yellow ones, with long, slender bodies.  One caught hold of the bottom rung, weakly fighting against the tide.  It didn't seem to have any sort of claws, or even a proper lobster tail, once he got a better look at it.  Almost like a shrimp, then?  Or some sort of over-sized insect?

Like a child, Robert Danson heard the voice of his mother in his head, telling him not to play with strange bugs and things, but also like a child, his curiosity couldn't be thwarted.  Reaching down, he scooped the strange little lobster-bug into the palm of his gloved hand and began his way back up the ladder, to get a better look at it.

Pulling himself up to have a seat on the edge of the manhole, he held the squirming thing up to the light.  The more he looked, the less it looked like a lobster, but the comparison hadn't been completely wrong—the way the  narrow, plated tube of exoskeleton flexed and flailed was very similar to the way a lobster would swim.  Its legs were all bunched too close to the front, though, and instead of a flipper at the end of its tail, it had two long appendages that matched its antennae and reminded him more of a cricket.  With one powerful flick of its tail, the insect flung itself out of his hand, and he barely managed to catch it with the other.  Snatched out of the air, it let out a long chittering set of clicks that made his spine squirm.  For the first time, it occurred to him that this really might not be a good idea.  Once the doors to doubt had opened, he felt an unreasonable terror wash through, just in time to watch the creepy little thing clamp its long, pointed legs around his hand.  The tail swung quicker than he would have thought possible, and the twin 'tails' that he had thought of as antennae or whiskers stung into his wrist, between the thick rubber of his coat and the leather of his gloves.  

Barking out a choked cry of surprise, he flailed his hand violently, flicking the insect off.  His stomach lurched a moment as the creature hung on only by the two stingers embedded in his skin.  The flesh stretched grotesquely, before the tips snapped off inside of him.  Grasping his wrist against his torso, he brought down a heavy work boot on the monstrous bug.  There was a disgusting crunch, and he felt those stingers flick around into his foot.  Through the boot.  It didn't stop moving until he had stomped another two or three times, and even then one of its pointed, claw-like legs continued to tap on the concrete.

Slamming the metal disc back onto the manhole, he rolled up his sleeve, and again he felt his guts tangle inside of him.  In less than a moment, a thick dark green scab had begun to grow out of the place where he'd been stung.  He watched it grow for a second—just a second.  He watched the tiny black-green fibers sprout of his pores, building a shell of the scab-tissue just over his skin.  Just a second, and then he did the only thing his instincts would allow him—he began to tear it off, somewhere between gagging and sobbing.  Again, his mother's voice rang: Don't pick that scab, Bobby!  It'll never heal!

But it was just so wrong.  And it was growing out of him.

It didn't hurt to peel it off, really—it had grown over the skin more than in it—but he couldn't seem to get the green and black traces out of his pores.  The skin looked bruised around the holes, and there was a hard, crunchy feeling when he pushed down on it.  His boot felt ten-sizes too small, with his foot no-doubt packed in by the same scab material.  “Fuck this,” he grunted to himself, storming back to his truck.  He slammed the door behind him, and began dialing while the truck warmed up.

Mr. Brock hadn't even finished saying 'Hello' before Robert said what needed to be said.  “FUCK THIS JOB, FUCK YOU, I QUIT,” and hung up.  Despite everything, he found that screaming made him feel a little bit better.  The sting didn't look quite so bad, either, once he took a second look at it.  Even the nasty bits that had clogged up his pores seemed to have rinsed out from the rain.  Sure, his foot would probably look horrendous by the time he got home, but once he took a nice, long bath, he was sure that it'd be just as fine as his hand.  

Come to think of it, he really hated going to the hospital unless he had to—he'd probably just wait and see how it felt in the morning, before rushing off to a doctor.  No need to be hasty.

* * * * *

“Well, this one has Digital Face Recognition,” Jak was saying.  Very slowly, mind you. “Yes, face?”  He pointed.  “Yes, face.  This camera will find the faces of the people in the picture, so it'll focus better.  See?”

“Si?” Replied his customer, looking almost amused.  He always wondered whether that amusement was directed towards him or themselves.

“Y-Yes,”  Jak winced, scratching his temple.  “Just.. umm.. You should buy this one.  It's good for--”  A roar began to build up across the store, first low and quickly raising in volume.  Worse, the lion behind this roar appeared to be none other than his good friend Mal.

“You stupid, piece of SHIT, COCK-SUCKING MOTHERFUCKER!  GET BACK HERE!” came the roar.  This was immediately followed by the high-pitched whine of the sensors by the door.  

“Uno momento, por favor?”  Jak attempted, before bolting down the center aisle.  He came around the corner in time to see Malcolm disappear out the front door, followed by Roy and a few of the other managers, as well as a nosy stock-person.  Jak added himself to the list, fully aware that they weren't doing anything more than looking for license plate numbers.  Legally speaking, it wasn't like they could lay hands on the thief, but they could get a description.  To be honest, he was more interested in catching up with Mal.  That boy was starting to worry him with those anger-management issues.

Around the side of the building, by the smoker's area, a screech ripped through the air—tires on wet pavement.  As Jak cleared the corner, the sound came to a halt.  He watched Malcolm rip open the door of a shitty sedan and pull the driver out onto the concrete.  

“Hey, homes, I'm jus' tryin' to feed my family, y'know?”  The man tried to explain, pulling himself onto his hands and knees.

“Then how 'bout you get a fucking JOB?” Malcolm screamed, punctuating the last with a hard kick to the ribs.  Jak winced in sympathy—Mal wore some pretty hefty Doc Marten's.  The man—a kind of greasy guy of indeterminable ethnicity, Jak would later describe with forced eloquence—dropped back onto the asphalt.  He tried to say something else, but Malcolm wasn't finished yet.

“NO! Shut the fuck up!  It's people like YOU that fuck everything up for the rest of us!  If I can be a functional member of society, then SO CAN YOU!”  Again and again his boot came down, upon kidneys and ribs; upon face and throat.

Roy tried to step in then, and Malcolm turned to face him with a glare that stopped him dead in his tracks.  The boy's hair hung limp and tangled in his face, soaked by the downpour, and his eyes seemed to burn.  He looked so much like a wild-man in that moment, that Jak almost had to turn away.  Stepping over the beaten and battered mess of a man, Mal leaned into the car and pulled out a box netted with anti-theft wiring.

He shoved it hard into Roy's hands, locking eyes.  “I believe I get a bonus check for stopping a theft?”  Roy nodded slowly.  “Good.  Mail it to me—I quit.  This place fucking sucks, anyway.”  

He turned on the ball of his foot, and made his way toward the bus-stop.  This time, he wouldn't mind waiting so bad.  Fire seemed to burn just below his skin, and his boots were stained red, but he supposed the rain would take care of both problems.

* * * * *

From inside the shitty trailer, something crashed against a wall hard enough to shake the windows.  Deacon didn't notice.  The screams inside the prefabricated home had reached a new high, but the boy was as deaf to the world as he'd been mute all his life.  He had been wrong—even though it lacked the ferocity of a Texas storm, this one was the greatest he'd ever experienced.  Nothing else seemed to exist except for the light show that danced across the clouds.  

He lost himself in the electricity of the moment, spinning and jumping in his best attempt to imitate the ballet of lightning.  It was just a storm, but it was like nothing he'd ever felt.  For a moment, he thought he might pass out.

And then the clouds broke open.

The boy stood dumb-struck, gazing up into a pure beam of golden light.  For a moment, he forgot to breath, caught in the lone ray of sunshine.  When he finally inhaled again, it felt as though he drew the glow itself into his lungs.  It felt strange, like a gentle warmth that caressed his throat from the inside.

“You hold the final weapon,” A voice whispered in his ear, almost in his head.  “So long as it remains secret, mankind retains hope.  But you must prove your worth, and the secret must be kept of your own volition.”

The glow in his throat seemed to wrap around his vocal cords, and for the first time in eighteen years, Deacon had a voice.

“Wh-what--?” he gasped, his voice flat and unpracticed.

“Speak not until the time is right, or it shall never be.”

“I don't—”

“Shhhh,” the wind whispered.  Slowly, the clouds closed back in, choking out the ray of light.  The storm resumed, but it was just another storm.  Clouds and rain, with the occasional flicker of lightning.

Only it wasn't.  The warmth in his throat assured him that he hadn't imagined anything.  He could talk, sing, laugh—all of the things that he'd been denied his whole life.  But what was this final weapon?  Weapon against what? And could it really be so fragile, that merely speaking would destroy it?  

Why me, though? Most of all, that was the question that stuck in his head.

The back door of the single-wide flung open, filled with the shape of the woman who had raised him from child-hood.  Her mascara had ran down to her chin in thick trails. “Deacon, baby, we need to talk,” she choked out.  “S'about your daddy.”

* * * * *

Jak didn't arrive at The Garage until almost eleven at night.  Malcolm was well beyond stoned by that point, and laughing at some cartoon on TV.  At least he doesn't look like he's about to kill someone, Jak thought, letting himself in.  The Garage was actually Malcolm's garage, and the unofficial club-house of their little posse—the Las Vegas Chapter of The Society of Lovins.

“Heeey,” Mal said in the long, slow drawl of the heavily intoxicated.

“Howdy,” Jak replied, carefully. “What's happenin', man?”

“Not much—PowerPuff Girls,” he grinned, pointing at the TV.

“What the hell happened at work today?”

“Eh?  Oh.  Yeah.  Well, y'know—I snapped, I guess.”  He shifted on the couch uneasily.

“You guess?”

“Look, dude, if that guy didn't want his face beaten in, he shouldn't have tried to bolt with some of our merchandise, should he?”  

“Yeah, I guess,”  Jak replied, flopping into a dusty old recliner.  “I just never saw you snap like that.”

“Sure you have.”

“When?”  Jak raised an eyebrow.

“Well, y'know.  That one time...”  Malcolm trailed off, unable to think of a good example, but now that Jak thought about it, maybe there was another time... “Whatever—I just got fed up with the shit.  I would've gotten fired, if he'd gotten away.”

“So you quit.”

“Are you here to mom me all day, or are we still homies?”

“Nah, dawg, you know we still tight an' shit,”  Jak put on his best thug accent, mocking.

“Kay, then can we lay off a little?  I was expecting you to congratulate me for working up the spine.”

“Congrats,” Jak replied flatly.

The door creaked open, and Jak couldn't have been more relieved for the interruption.  

“Look who I found along the way,”  Layla chirped, dragging Deacon in behind her.  There was something wrong about her voice, though.  Her tone was far too solemn for an entrance into The Garage.

“What's up?”  Mal and Jak asked in stereo.  She nodded towards Deacon, who just passed a note.  The ink was smeared with rain, but even a blind man could read it:

“I'm moving back to Florida,”  Deacon had printed in his meticulously neat print.

“What the hell?  Why?” Jak turned towards Deacon, as though expecting a response.  Malcolm didn't even really like the mute kid unless Jak was there, but even his face contorted with a flash of anger.

Deacon mouthed two words—my mom—and that was enough.

“Okay, come on, we're going to the park and getting blitzed,” Mal finally worked out, shoving a glass pipe into his pocket.

The door swung open yet again, and when Malcolm's mother poked her face in, she looked almost like a ghost.

“Sorry, ma—we being too loud?”

“No, it's-..there are some police here to see you.  They're waiting at the front door.”

A concerned look was exchanged around The Garage, and he slid the pipe back out of his pocket, into its hiding place between two couch cushions.  

“Kay... umm, hold on, guys,”  he murmured on his way out the door.  None of them did as they were told.  A few steps behind their host, the Society of Lovins made their way from the garage, around to the front of the house.

Four police in full uniform stood waiting, their faces set and stern.

“Malcolm Wikstrom?”  One of the officers asked.  Mal nodded.  “You are under arrest for assault and battery, as well as involuntary man slaughter...”  He proceeded to read the Miranda Rights, but it fell upon deaf ears.

“I... I killed him?”  Mal muttered dumbly as the cuffs snapped around his wrists.

He was escorted into the back of an LVPD police cruiser, and save for his court-date, he didn't get to see his friends again for a good while.

Days later,  Deacon was gone, leaving Jak and Layla alone in Vegas.

By the next time the Society of Lovins was reunited, Vegas didn't technically exist anymore.