by Kate MacLeod
“Totally up to you,” Tucker promised. “It’s just east of here, a little farther into the hills.”
“Don’t you mean up?” Scout asked as she slapped a palm on the lock to open the rover door.
“No, no,” Tucker said. “I mean in. You’ll see.”
6
Scout lifted both dogs inside, then waited for Tucker to climb up before closing the door. He lingered in the alcove that housed the door, eyes sweeping over the room. Scout felt a stab of self-consciousness at the general untidiness of the space. The crates full of broken or disassembled appliances, the liberal sprinkling of random tools all over the place—that had been Ottilie, but the mess in the kitchenette was on Scout.
“It’s not mine, I’m just borrowing it,” Scout said. She couldn’t keep herself from sweeping the empty MRE containers into the recycler and tossing the sporks into the sink.
“Oh. It looks like you live here,” Tucker said, looking toward the bunks in back. The top bunk was overflowing with more boxes of junk, but the bottom bunk contained nothing but bedding sloppily arranged into a nest that no longer held an old cat.
“Just for a few days,” Scout said. “Help yourself to whatever you can find in the kitchen if you like. I’m going to get us rolling.”
“Thanks,” Tucker said and opened the mini-fridge to peer inside.
Scout climbed up into the rover’s cockpit, the dogs close at her heels. There was a brief altercation as they fought for space on the passenger seat, scuffling and barking that ended with a loud yip from Shadow. Gert barked back her deep, booming bark, a frightening sound that would surely seem to mean she won any argument, but she hopped down to the floor of the cockpit, curling up with her head just touching the side of Scout’s boot. Shadow sat up in the seat that was now entirely his, his back straight and his head high with an air of magnanimously not rubbing in his victory.
“All settled?” Scout asked, then grabbed the wheel and started the rover rolling in a lazy circle until the hills were directly in front of her.
Then she saw that the rover’s path was going to pass close by the gravel mound and her curiosity was piqued once more.
“Do you know what this thing is?” she called down to the back of the rover. Tucker came to the top of the steps, a glass of water in his hands. The sides were already beaded and running with moisture and Scout’s mouth felt suddenly parched just looking at it. He had filled the largest of the glasses. And that was not water from the recycler; it was almost half of the fresh glacial water Ebba had left in the fridge.
“No,” Tucker said, squinting out the window. “Slag from a mine? But I don’t know of any mines near here. It’s always been there, so far as I know.”
“You’ve always lived around here?” Scout asked.
“Just for the last five years or so,” he said. “Do you see the gap in the two hills up ahead? Aim for that gap. It’s going to become a canyon. Might be a bit tight for your rover, but nothing you can’t handle.”
Scout said nothing. The hours of that day represented the sum total of her driving experience, but if she looked competent to him, she was scarcely going to correct his faulty assumption.
“Have you felt any earthquakes here lately?” Scout asked.
“Earthquakes?” Tucker repeated with a frown. “Isn’t that more of a coastal thing?”
“Usually,” Scout admitted with a sigh. What had happened that morning? Some freak of her imagination?
“Why do you ask?”
“Forget it,” Scout said with a wave of her hand. He watched her drive for several minutes while she tried to ignore the feeling of those gray eyes on her.
“So, what’s your story?” he asked at last, taking another sip of water and moving to sit on the edge of the passenger seat. Shadow and Gert were clearly still making him nervous, and Shadow was prepared to defend his perch on the seat. Scout reached past Tucker and put a hand under the dog’s rear, lifting until he gave in and hopped down to the floor. Tucker sat down but kept his feet in the aisle between the seats, nowhere near the deeply napping Gert.
“My story?” Scout repeated, looking over every panel around her and trying to seem busy. She couldn’t look at him for more than a bit at a time without her stomach flopping over again. Stupid stomach.
“You’re not from here,” he prompted.
“I make deliveries and carry messages,” she said. “Usually on my bike, but this rover was temporarily left in my possession.”
“Where do you live, though?”
“Nowhere,” Scout said.
“Where’s your family?”
Scout bit her lip before she could snap back “at the bottom of a crater.” He wasn’t trying to upset her. “No family. Not these days. Not for ages.”
“Just two wild dogs?”
“They’re not wild. Shadow—that’s the white one—he’s actually quite highly trained. Gert is still a puppy, though.”
“This big black beast is still a puppy?” Tucker said, eying the dog sleeping near his feet.
“Yeah,” Scout said. She wasn’t sure exactly how old Gert really was. She had just been there one morning when Scout and Shadow woke up, curled up against Scout’s feet with no intention of ever leaving them. She had been about Shadow’s size then but with enormous paws she still hadn’t quite grown into. Her puppy days might be ending, but she was far from exhibiting adult dog behavior.
To Shadow’s frequent annoyance.
“You don’t like to talk about yourself,” Tucker guessed.
“No more than most people,” Scout said.
“A lot less than most people, actually.”
“I guess I wouldn’t know,” she said, annoyed. She didn’t like feeling judged. But he seemed unperturbed by the edge of anger in her voice.
“I guess someone with your nomadic lifestyle probably gets to meet all sorts of people, but you never stay in one place long enough to really get to know them.”
Scout didn’t reply. They had reached the valley between the hills, and as the canyon walls closed around the sides of the rover, she no longer had to pretend to need to give all her attention to driving.
“Since you’re clearly not going to ask, I’ll just tell you about myself,” Tucker said, taking another sip of the glacial water. “I also am without family. My parents and brothers were killed four years ago when the Space Farers dropped their rocks from orbit. I was staying with an uncle at the time, sort of a punishment for a school infraction. He was supposed to ‘turn my attitude around.’ He had a hut on a hill overlooking the city, close enough to get inside the gates if the coronal mass ejection event alarms sounded. But of course there were no alarms that day, no warning. And I saw it all happen from up on that hillside. I saw the meteor streak across the sky. It looked so small and seemed to move so slowly that I could reach out a hand and stop it. But of course I couldn’t.”
He paused to take a drink, although whether he was truly thirsty or just anxious to let the thickness in his voice pass before speaking again, Scout wasn’t sure. Her throat felt tight as well. She remembered that day. Four rocks had fallen through the atmosphere to hit the four largest cities, sparing the capital. She hadn’t seen the one that had taken out her home, but the impact of it had sent her tumbling off her bike from kilometers away.
“Which city?” Scout asked at last.
“Sunshine Valley,” he said.
“Me too,” Scout said, her voice barely more than a whisper.
His face lit up. “Your family was there too?”
“My parents, and my baby brother. All gone now. I only had Shadow with me.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Me too. I mean, I’m sorry for your loss,” Scout said. The canyon was still very narrow, but it ran straight long enough for her to risk a glance over at him. His gray eyes were shining a bit too brightly and he quickly looked away.
“There can’t be many of us out here. Survivors of Sunshine Valley, I mean. Quite a coincidence
we should run into each other like that.”
“You have no idea,” Scout said under her breath. She didn’t want to reveal that she hoped her remaining time on the planet was short. She didn’t want to jinx it. But she couldn’t help thinking, another few days and they would never have met at all.
“Maybe we knew each other?” Tucker said, the jaunty tone back in his voice. “We look about the same age. Seventeen?”
“Sixteen,” Scout said.
“Close enough. What part of the city were you in?”
“It was a big city,” Scout said, certain the odds were slim that they had been close. “My parents were bakers. We lived at the edge of the western market.”
“Ooh,” Tucker said with a wince. “We were in the south quadrant, near the gate. My mother was a gate guard. My father taught at the high school. History.”
“And you had brothers, you said?”
“Yes, two. Both older. Both home that day.”
“But you still have your uncle?”
“Alas,” he said with clearly artificial good cheer, “he died less than a year after the strike. It broke his heart, I think. He was an eccentric; only my father really understood him. He was never the same after. Then he caught a strain of flu that was going around and just couldn’t shake it.”
“So you’ve been on your own ever since?”
“Yes, but I found some people who took me in. We’re nearly at their doorstep now,” he said, straightening up in the seat to look out the window. “It’s going to get tight at this next turn, but on the other side it widens out again. This is the last tricky bit.”
“Okay,” Scout said, clutching the controls as she worked the pedals, guiding the rover on its treads through a canyon with walls curved tight around them like a tunnel dug by a worm. The top corners of the rover’s body were grinding against the rock, sending a cascade of grit and dust raining down on them.
The rover jammed, briefly, then lurched forward, rocking so hard it woke both the dogs from their naps. Then they were out in a wider canyon.
With the sun so low in the sky, the light reaching them had a scattered quality, muting the colors of the world around them. Scout was used to this effect near sunset. So when the colors of the canyon walls around her snatched her breath away, it left a deeper ache to know what this place would look like in the full light of day.
The walls of the canyon were like rainbows, band after band of bright color but not in layers like sediment. It was as if someone had painted diagonal stripes of indigo, peridot, ruby, topaz, jade, amethyst, and a thousand more. The canyon floor was the same red clay she knew from all over the hills, but she had never seen anything remotely like this before.
And the canyon walls were not just high—more than twice the height of the rover—they were also nearly completely sheer. The only way to get out of this canyon was back the way they had come. It was like a magically secluded space. She was so grateful she had gotten the chance to see it before she left this world behind.
“I’ve never even heard of this place,” Scout breathed.
“Aren’t you glad you agreed to drop me off?” Tucker asked with a smile.
Suddenly both the dogs sat up at once, hair on their backs standing tall as they went on high alert. Then Scout heard it too, the roar of engines echoing and reverberating off the canyon walls.
“Where is that coming from?” Scout asked, trying to stand up without taking her feet off the pedals. The rover was meant to be piloted by someone a bit taller than she was, but more importantly by someone with a copilot to stand and keep a 360-degree watch out the vertically narrow but panoramic windows.
“Behind us,” Tucker said, turning to look out the back window. He was about to say more but his words were lost in the sudden outbreak of barking. Shadow’s bark was alarming enough, but Gert’s deeper growling woof was terrifying even for Scout. She woofed again and the blood drained from Tucker’s face. He dropped the glass onto the seat, sending water everywhere. He turned paler still and tried to climb up onto the backs of the two seats.
“Relax,” Scout said, reaching behind her head to push his foot away. His toe was digging into the back of her neck. “They aren’t going to hurt you. Tell me who’s outside. Welcoming party?” Scout asked him. The roar of engines was all around them now. The canyon’s acoustics were twisty, but Scout was certain she should see what was practically on top of them. The rover had cameras in various places but none of the screens were showing anything, not even a stirring of dust.
“Please call your dogs off,” Tucker said.
Scout glanced over to see the dogs jumping up at where Tucker was now pressing himself between the passenger seat back and the roof of the cockpit. He had impressive acrobatic abilities, but his unusual behavior was too puzzling to the dogs. Ironically, his fear of them was leading them to see him as a threat.
Shadow jumped again, snagging the hem of Tucker’s pants and pulling.
“Shadow, down!” Scout commanded, but the dog knew he only had half her attention as she once more stood up on the pedals, trying to see out the narrow windows.
The engines sounded huge, but what if they were actually little? Little but noisy?
“Are these your friends?” she asked again.
“This dog is trying to kill me!”
Scout glanced back again and saw Gert standing on the seat, her massive paws digging into Tucker’s hip. Gert was still growling but she was watching Tucker closely as if expecting him to do something to explain himself.
“If you get down from there they’ll calm down,” Scout said.
“I don’t think I can.” If it was possible for someone to sound like they were about to faint, that was how he sounded. She could barely even hear him over the continued barking and the roar from outside.
Scout stopped the rover and stood up on her own seat, pressing her face tight against the thick glass.
Down below, a three-wheeled motorcycle was pacing the rover right next to the forward treads. The bike was covered with armored plating, and a long gun barrel ran along either side of the rider. The rider was wearing a body-concealing long white duster, face hidden behind helmet and goggles. She could barely tell if it was human or not. Then she realized the rider was using some sort of tool to remove the bolts from the rover’s treads. She didn’t bother looking out the other window. With two dogs and a boy between her and a view out that side of the cockpit it wasn’t worth the effort, but she was certain she would see another, similar figure engaged in the same activity on the other side.
She glanced down at the monitors. Yep, they had busted out the cameras that were trained on the treads.
Scout dropped back down into the driver’s seat and pressed down on the accelerator, all the way to the floor.
Whoever these people were, they weren’t going to take her down so easily. The rover roared down the canyon, rattling as it went. Occasionally she heard the ping of something breaking free.
Just how much damage had they done in that minute she’d parked to look around?
The rattling became a grinding but Scout kept on, leaning her whole weight in to keep the pedal flat on the floor. Because, past the grinding, she could hear the whine of their engines in pursuit.
She was not going to go down easy.
7
Scout clenched her jaw, focusing on keeping the rover steady at full speed as the treads under them started shaking apart. She was vaguely aware of the canyon walls rushing past them on either side, drawing ever closer as the canyon narrowed. The rattling that echoed through the cockpit was louder than the still-barking dogs. She could feel it in her teeth; they would be chattering against each other violently if she loosened her tight hold on her jaw for even an instant.
There was a slight metallic tang on her tongue. At some point she’d bitten down on something but didn’t give it the attention to figure out if it was lip, cheek, or tip of her tongue. Instead she narrowed her eyes, not letting the rover jump to the
side as it propelled out of another dip in the ground. Her arms were aching already. She’d be losing this battle with the control yoke soon.
“Isn’t there a hatch in the roof of this thing?” Tucker asked, pounding a fist against the metal hull.
“The dogs won’t hurt you!” Scout snapped.
“It’s not the dogs. I need to get outside and signal to the others before they plant the incendiary devices. They aren’t responding to my messages.”
“Before they what?” She longed for a stretch of clear ground so she could look back at him.
“Stop the rover,” Tucker said.
“These are your friends?” Scout asked.
“Yes. Just stop. I’ll open the back door so they can see me. But hold on to your dogs.”
Scout slammed down on the brakes, acutely aware of the sound of loose bits from the treads rattling loose, raining down on the baked earth of the canyon floor.
“I asked before. Why didn’t you answer me?” Scout asked, turning to glare at him the moment the rover had stopped rolling.
“I—” But he broke off, glancing at Shadow and Gert as if they were waiting to jump him if he said a word against them. “I told them we were coming, but I guess they weren’t checking their messages. A lapse of protocol.” He tried to shoot her another smile but it quickly died. “Just hold on to your dogs.” Then he vaulted down the steps to the main compartment of the rover.
“I don’t like orders,” Scout said. She got up from the driver’s seat and stood at the top of the steps, blocking the dogs behind her. Shadow pressed his snout between her calf and the rover wall, snuffling loudly. Gert was whining and pawing at the back of Scout’s thigh hard enough to hurt.
“Sorry, but there’s a time factor,” Tucker said, looking around to find the controls for the door. He pushed the button, then stepped back as it emerged from its recess in the wall of the rover and swung open with a clang.
Tucker jumped out of the rover and quickly moved out of view. Scout glanced back at the monitor screens behind her, but several had gone dead, the exterior cameras they linked to now smashed.