RELEASE DATE: 1 Sept 2022
Warm snow falling at Christmas in Florida? Don’t touch it. Definitely don’t lick it.
But for Yalana, totally worth the risk to her life for a chance to hunt down what she seeks.
Of course, in a dystopian wasteland, Yalana’s two-week-old information holds questionable worth…
And what she finds lurking in the shadows of the Junkyard? More than she was looking for…
A vivid, atmospheric story for everyone determined to navigate the dark and seize their happy ending: don’t miss Neon Snow!
Neon Snow
Snow fell in large, fluffy flakes through the night, drifting between the multicolored Christmas lights and the palm fronds at the edge of the Junkyard. Yes, snow when it was eighty degrees out with ninety-nine percent humidity. It was better to think of it as snow than chemical ash from the permastorm that churned over the Gulf of Mexico, spitting hurricanes up and down the Atlantic seaboard.
Don’t lick it. Don’t touch it. Don’t —for the love of all the gods—try to melt the stuff. Let it fall. Sweep it away. Dump it somewhere far from civilization, or at least far from the bits of civilization that have money to pay to get the snow far away from them.
Yalana breathed in, taking in the smell of rancid garbage rotting along the dark street, the brine of the ocean air lapping against the beach, the smoke and spice of the Junkyard. It wasn’t as sterile as a city building, nor fetid as the alleys where work sometimes called her. It smelled of death—everything on Earth did these days—but it was a lively, irreverent death that flipped the bird to the satellites overhead and the lunar colonies watching everyone down here who was still waiting for rescue.
A flake of snow came uncomfortably close to her face. Yalana blew it away, hunched her shoulders, and flipped the collar of her camel-colored coat up. Long sleeves, long pants in a darker brown, heavy brown combat boots hidden under the slacks. With a little luck, the only thing she’d burn tonight was time and the goodwill of the Coast Guard commander, who was probably just realizing that she hadn’t left the port to cruise around the open water with her lover.
The Junkyard was under quarantine; it had been most her life. It was one of those festering sores of modern living that polite society liked to forget existed. A little town on the Florida panhandle that had continually voted to tax the poor rather than the rich and support land grabs over addressing the rising sea levels.
The rich left when the tide got high. Everyone else, the ones who thought they were one lucky break away from being rich enough to leave, were either dead or somewhere in this half-floating park of madness.
Houses on stilts and houseboats were tied together by weak ropes and anchored to the pieces of mud the storms hadn’t yet washed away. It was only a matter of time before the Junkyard was another set of flotsam battering the sea walls protecting Tallahassee.
The people here didn’t care.
They came because they didn’t want to go to rehab for whatever vice they loved so much. Or maybe because they’d stopped loving everything and wanted to die in a party.
Music and uneasy laughter rolled out of the windows. Everything was for sale in the Junkyard. Everyone had a price.
It was a good place to get lost.
And a good place to hunt for lost souls.
The mud path from the port had once been lined with wood, but most of it had washed away. Now the land underfoot was changing, growing dryer with each step, rising upwards into a small hillock crowned by chain link fences with wood and steel debris lashed to them.
Fist-sized lightbulbs in every color imaginable were strung along the top of the fence, dancing gently in the tropical air.
Two large sections of gate were propped open by heavy barrels of burning driftwood. Blue and purple flames crawled skyward, singeing the snow and giving off a choking smoke that caught the light in odd ways.
A man stepped out of the shadows, wiping large hands on a dirty, yellow cloth. He wore a ripped black vest and faded, gray pants too large for him, held up by a heavy black belt. His eyes were dark and far more focused than any Junkyard denizen was expected to be.
He cocked his head, the light filling in more colors. Purple hair tied up in a knot—and just the knot; the rest of his head was shaved. The rest of him looked hairless too, probably a sign of snow poisoning. It leeched in like that, slowly killing off the outer layers of the body until the skin was little more than scar tissue. In the city it was treatable. Out here…
…She’d worn a coat for a reason.
“You look like you’re a long way from home,” the man said in a low drawl with hints of New Orleans and Atlanta.
“I am.” Yalana put her bare hands in her pockets. “Ever heard of Quebec? It’s north of here.”
The man’s eyebrows—what was left of them—went up and fell with little sign of recognition. “North is as far as the moon.”
“Hmm. Well then. You know north where the Yankees live? I was born north of that north.”
“I know about Canada.” He smirked. “What I don’t know is what a pretty little snow bunny is doing playing down here with the sharks.” He turned and his vest opened enough to show the black ink outline of a shark with tribal knots.
“Since when was this Shark territory? Word was this belonged to Shiftly.”
The man shook his head. “Sorry, beautiful. Shiftly’s shuffled off.”
Dead. Two-week-old intel was the best money could buy and it still wasn’t enough.
“You looking for trouble in general?” the man asked. “Or just the kind Shiftly sold?”
“I’m looking for something special.” It was doubtful the man could see her smile in the dark, and even less likely that he’d understand why she was smiling, but she smiled anyway.