"How about this: I empty both ashtrays into what's left of my beer, and I mix it 'round and 'round with my index finger, and then I drink it. The whole stinking mixture. If I don't down every last sooty drop of it, I buy you your next round. But if I do somehow manage to slurp it all down, then you get me another. How does that sound, friend?"

The huge bald man on the bar-stool next to me grins. He's missing a few teeth, but it somehow suits him -- maybe 'cause he's missing equally big dents out of his head. He looks from ashtray to ashtray, both over-spilling with the blackened corpses of cigarettes, then at what's left of my beer. "You're going to eat all that shit -- mixed into your beer? What if you vomit it up after?"

"Same rules. I buy you your next drink. Any drink you want."

His eyes wander from me to the shelf of spirits perched behind the bar. He's wondering either what's the most expensive out of them, or what's got the highest alcohol content. Doesn't matter what he chooses: I can't afford it. Only thing in my pocket is a last stick of chewing gum. His head begins to bob. "Okay, yeah you're on." He removes the cigarette that he shouldn't be smoking -- but that no one's going to tell him not to -- from his mouth, and twists the end of it into the nearest ashtray.

I stare down at the long stub. "You're going to leave half your smoke?"

"Yeah," he says, grin ever widening. "Problem?"

"I was only going to drink ashes, not eat--"

"Problem?" He sits up straight, his huge shadow darkening me, his face hard.

"No. No, there's no problem. I just wasn't that hungry, but I guess I can make room." I grab the first ashtray and tip it into my drink, smacking the side to make sure all the ash falls in. There's a little plop as the half-smoked cigarette drops down, followed by a lazy stream of smoke. As I take the second ashtray, the barman turns up the TV that's hanging on the wall above him.

"... Yes, Tony. That's the fourth Storm Born dead, attempting to help evacuate this area of Northern California. She didn't make it more than a mile before she stopped moving and her vitals fell. In related news, scientists widely suspect that the pathogen is man-made. Whether domestic terrorism, or foreign, remains to be--"

I tune out as soon as I know the dead Storm Born ain't Susie and get on with the task at hand. "There," I say, as the debris swirls around my glass. The dry grey surface hides a turbid underbelly. The brown cigarette juts out like a ship stuck in a swamp.

The big man looks into my glass and I see his face shift in disgust. Even he looks concerned. "You not going to stir it more?"

"This is how I like it." I pick it up and start to gulp down the mixture, tapping a nail on the bottom of the glass to help it slide down. Tastes as bad as I imagined it would, like lumpy dry medicine, but that's okay. I get to wash it down with a refreshing beverage shortly.

I wipe my lips with the back of my hand; black ash smears my skin. "There," I say. "Now where's my beer?"

The man just gapes for a while. "You some kind of freak."

Not sure if it's a statement or a question, I just shrug. "Mine's a Guinness."

He nods at me, then grunts at the barman who reluctantly tears his eyes away from the reporter on the screen.

"You going to be sick something awful tonight," the big man says as the beer is put down on the bar.

"I don't get sick," I reply.

"Oh yeah?" says the barman, suddenly leaning over to me, interested. He's got slicked back grease for hair, but sharp eyes and they're already studying me. The big man has turned away and is talking to his friend.

Long sip. It helps loosen the ash stuck in my throat. "Yeah."

"Never been ill?" the barman continues.

"Nope. Not since I was a baby."

His brows furrow. Then a kind of realization dawns on his features. "You're not one... Nah, never mind. You couldn't be."

"Storm Born? Sorta. I was born in a plague, not a storm or the shadows of some flowing volcano. My gifts are... different."

He looks excited. "You are one of them! Holy shit, in my bar?! Why didn't you say? Rest of your drinks are on me, as long as you let me chalk up the board outside. If people know I got a Storm Born... In my bar!" He repeats the line shaking his head. "Wait till Mama hears about this."

I drink my beer and drift away, only half aware of the barman's incessant talk. He wants to know where I'm from. What plague. How'd I live through it. When did I find my powers. All the usual. To him, I was just another blessed child, born and found -- forged -- in the aftermath of disaster. Mother Nature's attempt to right man's wrongs.

He doesn't want to know being born in a plague meant all my family were dead before my first full day alive was over. Or about the foster homes. Or the prisons. Or the rejection from the Storm Born themselves. People like the barman, they never want to know the real stuff. Just the fantasy of it. But then he says, still shaking his head in disbelief, something that catches my attention. "They could sure use a guy who doesn't get sick in California right now."

I stop drinking and let myself chew the line over. Only for a second, mind you. Then I say, "I'm not a hero. Never was, never will be. Understand?"

"Never said you were." Hands raised defensively. "Never said you were. But... I bet, with the right negotiator, they'd pay a fortune to the man who could make it to where the plague started. Find out what -- who -- created it. That's the first step to making an antidote they said on the news. It's why all the Storms are trying and dying."

My beer is empty. I push the glass towards the man. He looks at me, then takes it and refills.

"Just another beer. That's all I want today. Like every other day."

"I get it. No problem. I'm sure you don't need the money at all."

But as I'm drinking the second, and then even more-so the third, I start to wonder just how much they would pay.

On my fourth, as I visit the urinals, the money aspect is strangely draining away with the some of the beer.

Then on my fifth drink, my mind is a blurred, reluctant image of Susie. I try to scribble her out, but she won't go away. Her blue eyes are still there, peering through the blackness at me.

What if she tries to go in? Is she that stupid?

Maybe. She did date me for a few weeks, after all.

Maybe thinks she can cleanse the area with water or something.

Things might have ended badly -- very badly -- but I still don't need her being the next dead Storm Born.

"Ah shit," I say, loud enough to catch the barman's attention. "I hate California."

His eyes seem to shine. "You're going? Someone from my bar is going to save the world?"

"I'm going. Didn't say nothing about saving the world. But I'll tell you what, if you phone the army or the government, or whoever you need, and negotiate my payment while I think out a plan...And have another pint... Well, whatever you manage to get from them, I'll give you five percent of it -- if you drive me to the airport."

He grins like a man who knows a secret. "Twenty percent and I'll book our plane tickets too."

"Our? What do you mean our?" I glare at him, but he still grins like a clown on its birthday. "And twenty? You out of your mind? I'm the one risking my neck. Five percent or nothing."

He pauses. "Ten percent, and free beers here for a year."

It takes me a heartbeat to decide -- it is a shithole, after all -- but then I raise my glass to him, my face stretching to a smile. "Cheers to that."

"Carl," he says, reaching a hand out towards me."

"Sammy."