Steve did not panic, however, as Evy guided the plane to an illegal landing. In fact, he was as calm as could be. If he were to say why, it was probably because he had a sinking feeling that whatever waited for him on the ground was worse than even the most reckless of near-crashlandings Evy could deliver.

  “We’re landing?” Dawn asked as the plane descended over the wide Mississippi River.

   “Yeah, why?” Steve asked.

   “What about Burney?”

   “He shall have to run very fast. That or he’ll leave a nice smear on the runway. Either way it should be humorous to watch — anyone have a camera?” Gore asked.

   “About to turn toward the runway,” Evy said. “Better tell him to get ready to hit the ground running, and maybe not land on his head.”

   “Hold on. Keep us over the river for a second,” Steve said. He then opened the door, holding it open with one hand and clinging to his hat against the wind with the other. “Hey Burney! Say something if you don’t want us to drop you in the Mississippi River!”

   Burney let out a distant, flame-fueled scream from the end of his tether.

   “Cool! We’ll meet you at Jackson Square!”

   Burney screamed.

   “See ya! Gore, cut the chain, would you?” Stene said

   “Done and done,” Gore said, shifting heavily in the small plane so he could unsheathe his sword. All it took was a little flick of the wrist, and the black-flamed sword split the chain that bound Burney to the plane.

   There was a moment where Burney continued to sail forward. Then like a suddenly popped balloon, the chain fell straight down and Burney let out a frightening scream heard throughout the crescent city of New Orleans. He continued to scream, his cry fading while his flame roared, till he hit the Mississippi River with the tiniest of splashes.

   “I would have preferred to smear him on the runway,” Gore noted.

   “Yeah, well, I figure we ought to try and be nicer to Burney for a change,” Steve said, and shut the door.

   “Ooh, Jasmine is flying much nicer now. Maybe I can land without crashing into a restaurant this time,” Evy said, turning the slightly damaged plane away from the river and toward Lake Pontchartrain, and the small Lakefront Airport.

   “I’m just going to pretend you didn’t say that,” Steve said, and tightened his seat belt.

   “Put on your seatbelt, Gore,” Dawn advised, ensuring hers was tight.

   “Gore does not wear a seat belt,” Gore declared with his arms crossed.

   A few short minutes later, they were on the ground and perfectly safe. Sure, the plane jolted quite a bit. Sure, Evy almost crashed into the unfortunately located airport bar and grill, but that was due to a sudden cross-wind. Once the plane landed and taxied over to a place where Evy could tie-down, they were able to hop off the plane without injury. And once they pried Gore’s head out of the avionics, they were able to walk away from the plane.

   Gore, however, sort of crawled away from the plane, since his head had collided with the avionics. “Concussive injuries are merely the cost of being as awesome as I am,” was what Gore thought he said.

   What he really said, stumbling and struggling to his feet, was something like, “Connecticut jerseys are really lost of meaning as blossom cyan.” This led to a not-at-all-interesting discussion with Evy, since blossom cyan was one of her favorite colors. Gore, of course, had no idea what she was talking about. He also had no idea what Dawn was saying, but she was just scolding him for not wearing a seat belt.

   This all occurred while Steve was inside the tiny airport’s offices calling a taxi. By the time he returned, Gore had regained his senses and was failing to convince Evy that he had absolutely zero concern for whether or not blossom cyan was better than evening cyan.

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   Lakefront Airport was on the other side of New Orleans from Jackson Square and the famous French Quarter. Steve knew that if they were to find the best sandwich in New Orleans, and hopefully the world, it would be found in this historical district. After all, what more famous part of New Orleans is there than the French Quarter? It’s world renowned for its food and music and general acceptance of Bohemianism. To locals, this was poor logic, since the quarter was usually filled with nothing but drunk tourists, but it made sense to Steve, so Steve directed the cab driver to take them to Jackson Square.

   When Evy asked Steve if he’d been to New Orleans before, Steve merely stated that this was the city where his father and mother had met.

   The drive to Jackson Square had to detour a bit. At every other intersection in the weather-aged city, the cab encountered another group of people walking so thickly the driver would either have to wait an hour for them to pass or divert to another street.

   “What’s with parades in this city?” Dawn asked.

   “Those aren’t parades,” Steve said as they passed another group of people. Children, men, and women of all ages were gathered together. What was uniquely different about this gathering was that they were all smiling and laughing, and there wasn’t a sign of public intoxication. To see so many happy, sober people in New Orleans made Steve uneasy.

   The taxi drove through progressively older and progressively more interesting buildings on its way to the French Quarter. The brick and iron of old homes and businesses, with the unbroken chain of corner bars bearing names like Boe’s and Ray’s and Boe-Ray’s continued without interruption. These bars’ interiors were dark as midnight, though it was midafternoon. But the darkness wasn’t what concerned Steve, it was that no one was inside these seedy establishments. The normal patrons of the darkened bars were outside, in the street, walking and laughing toward something that lay the same direction the cab traveled.

   By the time the cab dropped them off at Jackson Square, the heart of the New Orleans French Quarter, there was a little more than an hour left before Steve’s deadline to find the sandwich that would begin the End Times. The sun was beginning to set, and hung brightly against the horizon.

   Steve paid the cabby and got out. Jackson Square is composed of a small park with a statue of Andrew Jackson on horseback in its center. It sits right at the edge of the Mississippi River, where a bum-frequented, brick-paved boardwalk allows visitors to stroll and watch the muddy river flow. Guarding the landward side of this square sits the white-washed exterior of the St. Louis Cathedral. The whole area quietly reminded Steve why so many had fallen in love with, or drank themselves to death in, the open-aired cafes and musical streets of this historic city.

  There was also a French-style coffee shop next to the boardwalk that made the world’s most recognized beignets and coffee. Beignets are basically doughnuts shaped like beanbags and covered in powdered sugar, but tourists flocked to eat them and pretend they’re culturally significant. This time, however, there were no fat Midwesterners, or self-important east coasters, or self-entitled west coasters to annoy the self-centered locals. Everyone was in the streets, dancing, and happily laughing with one another.

  Steve could see people at every corner. And with them, in possibly larger numbers than the adults, were scores of children. Children lined up to get food from expensive restaurants literally throwing sandwiches at them. At the white tablecloth restaurant next to the coffee tourist trap, patrons received free food handed out by the bucket full. Even at the multi-storied Jackson Brewery Building, which lay at the river’s edge a block in the opposite direction from the coffee shop, children received freely given food.

  “This is unsettling,” Dawn said.

  “I like it!” Evy exclaimed.

  “Don’t go punching people in the crotch just yet, Dawn,” Steve noted. “We have work to do.”

  “Can I punch people in the crotch?” Gore asked.

  “In a bit.”

  “This is incredibly unsettling, though,” Dawn said, swallowing back the urge to reverse the balance of good and evil. In order to soothe her nerves, she summoned a bunny and broke its neck, taking a deep breath as she dropped the strangely cute corpse.

  “We should get a sandwich from the people in the crowd. Maybe they’ll share with us!” Evy suggested.

  “I doubt that,” Steve said.

  “Ah. But they look like they’re having so much fun-fun.”

  “Sandwich first, unnatural happiness second. Anybody seen Burney?”

  Steve searched through the crowd, but couldn’t see any sign of a ball of fire through the streets of people. The boardwalk, however, was empty, which allowed Steve to see a pillar of steam rising from the Mississippi River.

  “That’s him,” Steve said, and ran over to the boardwalk. The others followed, and climbed the boardwalk steps to the river’s embankment. Past the concrete steps, rising to the boardwalk, there was a set of old wooden steps leading down into the water, the muddy Mississippi lopping lazily against the rock-lined shore.

  There, brushing up against the steps, lay Burney, river water steaming all around him. He was face down, arms spread, and his flames were struggling to break through where they boiled just beneath the surface.

  “No time to lie down on the job, Burney, we need your help,” Steve said.

  Burney lifted his head out of the water and screamed.

  “Just a little over an hour.”

  Burney screamed again, and exited the river