Come Away With Me

A man in a black leather jacket with an abundance of steel studs stumbled along the dirt road in a canyon under a high blazing sun. Sweat poured down his face and smeared his eyeliner. Behind him, a plume of smoke rose into the white-hot sky. He stopped, looked back and groaned; for as long as he seemed to have been walking, he ought to have been further along, the plume a distant signal. Perhaps, he thought, it was one of those desert mirages that made it seem closer than it was.

What was definitely not a mirage was the ka-clack of a shotgun being cocked. He raised both hands in the air slowly, and turned around. A tall, slender man in a duster the same color as the canyon dirt stood in the road, shotgun raised.

"Your name," the man said.

"Ben Arbor," he said.

"You're a long way off the beaten path, Mr. Arbor."

"Depends on what it is I'm looking for," Ben said.

"And what are you looking for?"

"A man." He swallowed. "Samuel Cole."

The shotgun lowered just a notch. "Then you're in luck. I'm Samuel Cole."

Ben's face broke out in a relieved grin. "Man, you have no idea how glad I am to see you. You're the one person in the world--at least at this particular time--who has a chance of fixing this thing!" He jerked his thumb over his shoulder towards the smoke.

The shotgun slipped further, along with Samuel's wary expression. "What...