by Kate MacLeod
“The dog’s not hurt,” the boy she had dubbed Mr. Math said. “She bit Sal, but I tied her up in that sack without hurting her. We just needed her out of the way.” Then, almost too softly to be heard: “Sorry.”
“Sorry?” Scout repeated with a humorless laugh. “Hey, do you kids know what’s funny?”
They stared sullenly back at her.
“What’s funny is that if you had just asked me for what you needed, I would have given it to you. You didn’t need to rob me. You certainly didn’t need to attack my dogs.”
“How were we supposed to know that?” the boy standing in the rover demanded. He seemed to be the oldest in the bunch. There was even a dark smudge on his upper lip that might be the first hint of a mustache.
“You could have asked,” Scout said. “I would have given you everything I could spare. Heck, we could have worked out a deal where I’d’ve let you keep my rover after I leave here in a few days. Lost opportunity. I hope you’ve learned something from all this. Now get out of my ride.” That last bit dripped with every gram of don’t-mess-with-me attitude she could infuse it with.
“What are you going to do? Yell for the grown-ups?” the kid in the rover sneered.
“We still outnumber you,” Mr. Math said.
“And we have your dogs,” spear girl added. Her voice cracked a bit, like she was trying hard to sound unflappable but wasn’t quite there. Then she poked at Shadow again.
Scout dropped the stone she had been hiding in her sleeve for most of their conversation into her hand, then fired with one swift motion, this time catching the girl in her unbitten shin. She dropped the spear and fell to the ground with a cry.
Then Scout staggered back, the wind suddenly knocked out of her. It took a moment to realize that Mr. Math had thrown his stone, catching her right in the chest. She gasped for breath, the corners of her vision threatening to go black again. But through that deepening blackness she saw the boy pull his arm back to throw another stone. She doubted he had thrown as hard as he could the first time, as much as she knew she was about to have an impressive black and blue patch across her chest that would linger for weeks.
Scout reached to the back of her belt, the belt that had once belonged to a galactic marshal, and drew the laser pistol. She had intended to fire a warning shot, but with her vision still filled with black blossoms and her breath coming in hard gasps, she didn’t trust herself not to kill one of them by mistake or maybe even hit one of the dogs.
Luckily for her, just seeing the weapon was warning enough. Scout heard the soft thump of a stone dropping to the dusty ground, the louder thump of the boy jumping out of the rover, and then the scrabble of the two boys helping the spear girl limp away to disappear in the grass, the littler girl who had stood silently beside the wagon all this time scampering after them. The wagon remained silent, abandoned.
Scout put the gun back, feeling more than a little sick. She had just drawn a weapon on kids. Kids.
Granted they had hurt her and tried to hurt her dogs, but was this who she was now? Someone who reacted that quickly with that much disproportionate force?
Still laboring to breathe, Scout staggered forward to fumble at the ties holding Gert’s bag closed. At last the dog broke free, knocking Scout to the ground as she jumped up on her, causing another paroxysm of pain to seize Scout’s chest. Shadow came slowly out from behind the rover tread, eyes on the tall grass in case his tormentor returned.
“Good dogs,” Scout said, trying to scratch them both around the ears at once. As usual, each dog thought it was getting shortchanged in the attention department and fell away from Scout’s reach in a loud, growling tussle. “Come on, dogs. Let’s get out of here.”
Street kids. Another wave of nausea at the thought of what she had almost done.
Scout had been an orphan herself since the age of ten. She had been left with nothing but a bike, a dog, and the clothes on her back, but that had been enough for her. Delivering packages and messages from town to town had kept her and Shadow fed. She had always known a lot of kids who were a lot worse off. In the cities they banded together into groups, groups of such size the city officials took sometimes extreme measures to break them up, to catch strays and lock them away.
For their own good, of course.
She doubted any street kids living in a town could band together like the city kids could. The four she had seen were probably all a town like Prairie Springs could support, however involuntary that support was.
Those kids likely needed whatever they had determined to be valuable more than she would ever need it. She should leave it for them, all of it. Perhaps a little kindness from a stranger would make them rethink how they went about things. Perhaps they would learn to be kinder to dogs, at least.
It wasn’t like she could get all that stuff back inside the rover anyway. Not when it hurt just to move her arms.
But as she got the dogs inside and closed the door between her and Prairie Springs, she knew it was mostly because she felt guilty. She had pulled a gun on a bunch of kids. Without a thought, like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Which, after the last four days she had barely survived, it really was.
Scout made her slow, painful way up to the driving cockpit and set the navigation system to take her to Flat Valley. Then she flopped down on the seat to watch the land around Prairie Springs fall away behind her.
Sitting still was better than moving. It only hurt if she took a deep breath.
She couldn’t wait to get off this planet.
Not that she had more than the vaguest idea what life was like anywhere else. Gertrude hadn’t talked about it much, but her revulsion to life on Scout’s world had spoken volumes. That, and the belt of wondrous gadgets she had left behind, said that the rest of the galaxy had to be infinitely better. Wonderful, even.
Not to mention the clothes Gertrude had worn. She had dressed for rough conditions, intending to walk through the open countryside as she stalked her prey, but even so, her clothes had been finer than anything Scout had ever seen. Touching the long white shirt that had protected her from sun exposure had been like touching a cloud, a brightly glowing white cloud. And when the shirt had gotten dirty—more than dirty, bloody—Gertrude had just run it under water and snapped it in the air, and just like that, it was clean and dry.
Scout might have taken that shirt when she took the belt, but it had been badly torn when Gertrude had died. Being stabbed in the back would do that.
Once Prairie Springs was nothing more than a bad memory behind her, Scout turned her attention back to the navigation system. It was going to take a few hours to get to Flat Valley. It would be midafternoon before she got there.
But he was living near there. He had to be. Farlane McFarlane. She would have him before nightfall. Then she would just have to sit on him and wait out the last two days until Liam McGillicuddy came to meet her.
Just two more days. Then surely she’d leave this place forever. It would fade from her memory even as Prairie Springs was already doing, lost in the cloud of dust kicked up by the rover’s treads. She would be gone before the dust could even settle.
4
The town of Flat Valley was much farther north than Scout had ever been. As the rover rolled on, the hills around her grew ever taller. She could even see the dark smudge of mountains on the horizon. The rover crested the top of a sprawling ridge that extended out from the hills to the east, slowly fading down to the level of the prairie to the west. Far to the north was another similar ridge, the two like the arms of a prostrate worshiper spread as far as they could reach into the prairie, fingers splayed wide into its red-gold grasses. Between the arms was bare mud and rock dotted with sparse scrub, the typical ground covering in the hill country. She could almost smell it, the sharp sage-like aroma the scrub gave off when stepped on.
And in the center of that scrubby plain was the town, even smaller than Prairie Springs. It had no metal wall, nothing to catc
h and reflect back the sunlight. From this distance it looked like nothing more than a strange rock formation standing far apart from the rest of the hills. But the rover map was labeling it Flat Valley.
Once the rover was down the ridge and back on level ground, Scout got up to stretch her back and then went down the steps to check on the dogs.
Shadow raised his head from where he had curled up at the bottom of the stairs, tail wagging somewhat uncertainly. Scout bent to give him a pat on the head and a little scratch behind the ears.
Gert was sprawled across the center of the floor and stirred not at all.
Scout’s eyes fell on the pistol lying on the table in the dining nook. Her stomach clenched, and she felt like she had eaten mud and it was hardening in her belly.
She had threatened a bunch of kids. She had never intended to shoot them, but then she hadn’t intended to draw the weapon either. Who was she now that she had so little control over her impulses?
She was prepared to live with the nightmares from what happened those four days underground, for the rest of her life if she had to, but she vowed she wasn’t going to let that fear change her.
Neither was she going to become like those assassin girls who had killed most of the others during those long four days. Once they had been the same as her, perhaps, but then they had changed. They had gone to living beyond fear, beyond any feeling, willing to do anything at all. That couldn’t be her either.
She remembered Gertrude: always calm, always in charge. She had to find a way to become like that. Even when she was afraid for her life.
Scout left the pistol on the table and went back into the rover’s cockpit, all too aware of the different weight to the belt now that the holster at the small of her back was empty.
She could see the town more clearly now. Unlike other towns, the buildings here had never been parts of containers dropped from space. They were made from blocks of stone stacked into walls that were a bit on the short side. Slabs of plastic molded to look like wood were stacked to form the roofs of the buildings. Scout had seen plastic like that used for tabletops. It was pretty durable for that use. Never having seen actual wood, she had no idea how convincing the illusion was, but such tables were common in the cities.
But she had never seen those tabletops used for roofing. It might keep out the glare of the daylight sun or the occasional sprinkling of rain, but it had to be useless against an ejection storm. What did these people do when the alarms went off?
Scout’s hand on the seat back trembled as a horrible image floated up in her mind. The whole town dead, nothing in those buildings but radiation-burned bodies huddled together.
But that wasn’t possible. Someone had answered Ruby’s call. They had seen the man she was looking for. They must have a safe place to wait out the storms.
The rover rolled to a halt a respectable distance away from the buildings and Scout dropped back down to the rover’s main floor. The dogs both looked up at her this time.
“Come on, dogs,” she said as she pushed the button to open the door. Even that little gesture made her breath hitch with sudden pain. “We’re sticking together this time.”
There couldn’t be more than twenty or so inhabitants here, not enough of a population to support any street kids, but Scout wasn’t taking any chances. Shadow jumped up and down, ecstatic to be going out with her. Gert yawned sleepily but her tail was wagging too.
The dogs ran off into the scrub the minute they were outside. Scout stayed by the rover, waiting for the door to seal shut again before stepping away.
The dogs came running back to her when she whistled with tails wagging, bodies crouching and bouncing, trying to entice her to join them in the scrubby grass to hunt for smells or the occasional small animal. But when she turned to walk into town, they quickly fell into step beside her.
The town consisted of four smaller buildings skirting a larger central one. That had to be the public house. She could see no signs of people anywhere, but the doors to the four smaller structures, also of plastic molded to look like wood, were all shut. The public house had larger double doors, the plastic slabs flat against the sides of the stone walls like shutters thrown wide open to let in the wind and the sun.
Scout stopped in the doorway to let her eyes adjust to the light inside. The roof was even less adequate as shelter than she had supposed, little shards of sunlight penetrating between slabs in scores of places, covering the dirt floor with golden circles like coins of light. The floor was otherwise bare, but tables and chairs were stacked on the wall to Scout’s left as if someone was planning to host a dance.
“Stranger,” a woman’s voice said out of the darkness in the far end of the room. It was easily the oddest greeting Scout had ever heard.
“Yes,” Scout admitted. “I’ve come from Prairie Valley. I’m looking for someone.”
“Ruby sent you,” the voice said.
“She did,” Scout said. She took another step inside the building but still couldn’t spot the speaker.
“Your dogs are welcome here,” the woman said.
Scout looked back at Shadow and Gert. They were both standing at the threshold as if waiting for permission to enter. That was somewhat odd from Shadow, who occasionally waited for guidance from Scout but rarely obeyed others. It was very odd from Gert.
“Come, dogs,” Scout said, and the two charged past her. Gert immediately disappeared in the gloom on the far side of the room, but Shadow’s white coat glowed all ghostly. He jumped up, putting his paws on something.
Scout squinted until at last her eyes could pick out the form of an older woman, stooped with sparse wisps of white hair floating around her sun-darkened scalp. Scout stepped closer. The woman looked anything but frail; the hands offering some sort of treat to each dog may have been gnarled with age but the arms were still all hard muscle.
“I was looking for someone,” Scout said.
“I’ve seen him,” the woman said. “Not lately, not with the storm. He didn’t shelter with us, but then he generally keeps to himself.”
“Where do you shelter?” Scout asked.
“You’re standing on it,” she said. Scout looked down to see a hatch under her feet. More molded plastic, already half-covered with dirt from the floor, although the townspeople would have just come up out of there this morning.
“This plastic is enough protection?” Scout asked.
“That’s just the drop down to the cave mouth,” the woman said. Gert was pawing her, and she bent down to give the dog another treat and rub around her ears. She spoke to the dog in a singsong: “We go ever so much deeper than that, don’t we, darling? To a cavern so large it has its own lake. A whole other world just a kilometer under your four paws. I bet you’d like it down there, wouldn’t you, darling? Play fetch in the lake, chase cave rodents. Wouldn’t you?”
Scout looked down but of course saw nothing but the toes of her own dusty boots. A natural cavern with an underground lake? That she would love to see. A shame she was on a job. And after that she would be leaving this world forever.
“Do you know where I can find him? Or start looking for him, anyway?” Scout asked.
The hard edge returned to the woman’s tone now that she was talking to Scout and not the dogs. “If you step outside and look to the east, you’ll see a hill that’s lighter in color than the others. Head that way. That’s where he walks in from.”
“So he could be anywhere in that direction?” Scout asked. She tried to keep the whiny undertone out of her voice—she hated herself whenever she heard it—but there was no hiding that she was disappointed. This was going to be much harder than she thought. And she only had three days.
“If there’s one thing we like less than strangers in these parts it’s strangers snooping into other people’s business,” the woman said sharply. “I’m telling you this much because Ruby tells me it’s important.”
“It is,” Scout said. “Thank you.”
She started t
o turn to the door but then turned back as a dark thought stabbed into her brain.
“He’s not from here,” she said. “Like really not from here.”
“Not my business,” the woman said. Her voice was still unfriendly but she smiled down at the dogs. Scout was glad she had brought them with. She hadn’t wanted to leave them alone, but now they were clearly also helping her keep this woman talking when otherwise she likely would have stalked away minutes ago.
“Has he been here long enough to know to take shelter from a coronal mass ejection?” Scout asked.
“If he has any sense he knows that,” the woman snapped. “I don’t go mothering others for free.”
Scout nodded and said no more. She wondered what the odds were that her mission was going to end with her standing over a radiation-burned body after all. “Thanks for the help,” she said, then whistled for the dogs. She was half afraid they would ignore her, preferring the company of the treat-dispensing woman, but they both ran to join her as she stepped back out into the stiflingly hot day.
She had to drive the rover manually now, having no destination to program into the navigation system. But she could lock down the steering and speed controls long enough to stand up and get a brief look around now and again.
The rover’s narrow window defined the horizon, framing the hills before her in a panorama. She half expected to see one hill shining brighter than the others based on that woman’s description. At first glance they all looked alike, blending into each other in the glare from the afternoon sun.
Then, as the rover continued rolling across the flat plain, she began to see differences. The farthest hills were bare rock with a blasted and twisted look, as if they had once been mountains before becoming victims of some indescribable violence. The middle-range hills were more of what she was used to: red clay with sparse grasses and shrubs of sage green.
But one hill closer to her than all the others was gray. It seemed a featureless gray at first, as if by some optical illusion it appeared closer than it really was, smudged by the distance like the mountains to the north. After nearly an hour of rolling over the sunbaked earth of the plain she started to see a bit of texture. Another hour and she was certain that this hill, unlike all the others, was covered in gravel. Or was entirely made of gravel. An enormous mound of gravel left out here in the middle of nowhere. But who would do such a thing, and why?