by Kate MacLeod
“Stay, dogs,” she said as she moved slowly down the steps and past the dining area to stand in the open doorway.
Tucker was standing alone a few meters away, shading his eyes against what remained of the setting sun. It was no more than a red slash on the horizon now, the first stars already awake and twinkling brightly in the east. The canyon walls now appeared to be only a diagonally banded gray. Scout narrowed her eyes until she too saw the dark shapes moving toward them out of the setting sun.
She had left the rover running, the engine echoing loudly here where the canyon was so narrow, but the sounds of the approaching engines quickly drowned it out. Shadow pressed up against her calf, trembling. He had no love of loud mechanical noises, especially ones that never seemed to end.
Gert was less bothered, and Scout had to reach down and catch her collar before she could jump out of the rover and run to investigate. Scout wanted her dogs near her, inside the rover, just in case she needed to slam the door shut and make her escape. Or at least hunker down in what safety the rover’s thick hull provided.
Tucker raised an arm and waved it back and forth twice. The dark shapes slowly gained form as they approached, becoming ghostly white, flapping figures astride monstrous vehicles like armored dinosaurs. They raced up to Tucker, drawing close enough to make Scout wince, although he just waited calmly as they slammed to a halt on either side of him. A cloud of reddish dust enveloped newcomers and Tucker both.
Gert whined, tugging a bit at the collar still in Scout’s grasp.
“Hush, girl,” Scout said, waiting for the dust to settle. Before it had, the last sliver of the sun slipped below the horizon, taking all its light with it. Scout glanced up at the moonless sky. The stars were bright enough to give the basic details of the world inside the canyon, like a rough pencil sketch, but she needed more than that. She looked at the controls by the door and found one to turn on the exterior lights.
The light was far brighter than she had expected, like the sort of light they used at spaceports to guide in the craft with faulty navigation equipment. Tucker turned back to glare at her but she wasn’t sorry.
The shapes made more sense now in the full light. The wispy ghosts were people dressed in long white dusters to protect from the glare of the sun. They had been driving with hoods up and held in place by the goggles that now dangled around their necks. The skin around their eyes was clean, almost pale against the reddish dust that coated their lower faces and foreheads.
Teenagers, Scout realized, like Tucker and herself. The boy with close-shaved dark hair was leaning in to speak close to Tucker’s ear. The girl stood a bit apart, listening but not speaking. She reminded Scout a bit of Ottilie. Ottilie had worked on the crew of one of the big guns the Planet Dwellers had used to fire into space during the war. This girl was built much the same: tall, wide shoulders, massive forearms. But where Ottilie had kept her silver hair buzzed short, this girl had a sloppy braid of ash-blonde hair wrapped around her head like a crown.
“These are your friends?” Scout asked, pitching her voice to carry over the meters of empty ground between them. Tucker didn’t respond at first, still listening to the boy speaking in his ear, occasionally nodding but more often scowling and giving little shakes of his head. He kept tapping the little screen on his wrist demonstratively.
As the boys argued, the girl raised a hand in greeting to Scout and Scout hesitantly returned the gesture.
The other boy finished talking with an overly elaborate shrug of his shoulders and turned back to climb back aboard his armored motorcycle. The two massive gun barrels ran down either side of the bike, starting at a mechanism that spanned the back of the seat, a belt of ammunition running in and out of a box just behind the rear wheel. The barrels thrust out awkwardly to either side of the front wheel.
“Those must be hard to aim,” Scout said as Tucker walked back to the rover. He gave her a questioning look, then glanced back as the girl turned her bike to follow the boy.
“It just takes a bit of practice,” Tucker said.
“What’s going on? If these are your friends, frankly I’d rather you hopped a ride with them and let me be on my way,” Scout said.
“You’re going to need repairs,” Tucker said. He was looking under the rover as he spoke, examining the treads. Scout hopped down to get a closer look herself, and the dogs jumped down after her.
“I wouldn’t need repairs if you would have said sooner that these were your friends. Or if you had told them we were coming.” The damage wasn’t as bad as she had expected. The treads were still running on their tracks, but barely, and a lot of bolts were missing. She saw a few in the dust behind the rover, but it would be impossible to find them all in the dark, sprawled out across the length of the canyon as they were.
“Yeah, I did try to tell them. And it was no good you slowing down before they knew you weren’t the enemy. I really thought there was a hatch up there . . . sorry,” Tucker finished, giving her a lopsided smile of apology as he rubbed at the back of his neck. Scout didn’t return the smile. “I am sorry. But Bente and Ken will have you fixed up in no time, I promise.”
“How much time is ‘no time’?” Scout asked, picking up the bolts she could see gleaming dully in the starlight.
“Leave those, we have plenty back at the base. And Bente and Ken can have you fixed up just after dinner. I did promise you dinner.” He tried another smile, but Scout still didn’t respond in kind.
“I didn’t accept that offer,” she said.
“Oh yeah?” he said as if he hadn’t remembered that, but his tone wasn’t convincing. “It’s going to be fine, I promise. You’ll get something to eat, and afterward you can go on your merry way. You and your dogs,” he added, looking down at the two still standing close at her sides. He tried his smile on them. They were unmoved as well.
“I don’t really have a choice, do I?” Scout said.
“Hey, don’t be like that,” Tucker said. “You’re going to like the others.”
“How many others?” Scout asked, liking each new development less than the last.
“It depends on who’s home and who’s out on missions,” Tucker said with a shrug. “But I promise we’ll stuff you so full of the best food you’ve ever tasted that you won’t want to leave. Especially since it’s already after dark. You might as well wait for morning to move on.”
“I don’t want to wait,” Scout said. She was standing closer to the door than he was. She could scoop up Gert and get inside—Shadow could make the leap on his own—then slam the door and just drive away. Leave him behind in her dust.
Only she was pretty sure he wasn’t lying about the damage to the rover.
“That’s fine,” Tucker said, raising his hands as if surrendering. “You want to leave right after dinner, that’s fine. Bente will have you all fixed up by then. She’s a whiz.”
“Bente, that was the girl out there just now?” Scout asked.
“Yes, that was Bente. And Ken. They were on patrol.”
“Patrolling for what?” Scout asked.
“This close to the hills, this far from the cities, there are lots of bad folk hiding out here. Like McFarlane dead back in his hut and whoever killed him. Only these others are quite alive, and they tend to travel in groups.” He glanced past her out the open door of the rover. “That light is like a beacon, you know. We really should get to safety. It’s not safe out here at night.”
Scout bit her lip as she considered the situation. She didn’t like trusting people she had just met. She almost laughed out loud, a darkly self-mocking laugh, at that thought. If she had learned anything over the last four days she had spent trapped underground waiting out the solar storm with strangers, it was Never Trust Strangers.
Still, she couldn’t fix the rover on her own. She had crossed the hills many times on her bike, but farther south where the hills were the turf of only the rebels, and they kept themselves hidden. She didn’t know if Tucker was telling the truth a
bout the dangers of this part of the world. He could be lying to lure her into some sort of trap.
Or he could be telling the truth. Because, having just met, what reason could he have for trapping her? If he just wanted to rob her, he could have done that while she was in the hut and her rover had been standing unattended several meters away.
Scout crossed her arms and gave him an assessing look. There was only one question that really mattered. Did he have a reason to lie to her? But she had no way to answer it. And she could scarcely ask him.
She had no facts. All she had was her gut instinct.
“All right,” Scout said at last, and Tucker let out a whoosh of held breath and tried yet one more weak smile. “I’m not happy about this. If you had said something before they destroyed my rover treads, I wouldn’t be in this mess. I don’t like feeling like I’ve been manipulated away from making my own choices.”
“I understand,” he said solemnly. “I didn’t mean for that to happen. I did message them before we got to the canyon. And after that . . . well, I’m not used to dogs.”
Scout rolled her eyes.
“I am sorry,” he persisted. “Can I show you something?” She nodded, then pulled back in alarm as he reached for the fastening on his pants. “Don’t worry, it’s just my hip,” he said, pulling down the waistband on one side. There were marks there, so faint they would be invisible on the sun-damaged skin of his arms, but they contrasted sharply against the pale skin of his hip.
“What is it?” Scout asked.
“Dog bite,” he said, fastening his pants back up. “When I was a kid. A really little kid. Like, two? It’s my earliest memory. I literally remember nothing else until I was like six. But that memory, of the dog coming out of nowhere to knock me down and then sinking its teeth into my hip . . .” He gave himself a little shake. “My mother had to chase after that dog to get me back. I was sick for a long time after; I guess one of its teeth chipped my bone or something. I don’t remember that part so well. But being under that dog, its breath on my face, the inescapable largeness of it? That I can never forget.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” Scout said. “My dogs are good dogs.”
“No doubt,” Tucker said earnestly. “That dog was a stray, probably starving with no better options. But you guys are cool, right?” He put his hands out to the dogs again and they drew closer to lick at him. He looked up at Scout through his lashes and her stomach did that flip-flop again.
“They seem to like you,” Scout said. She kept the steely tone in her voice although all of her anger was floating away from her. “You’re sure we can roll this thing to where we’re going with all the damage?”
“Sure,” he said briskly. “Just keep it at a slow, non-jangling roll. Bente and Ken will let the others know we’re on the way. Shall we?”
Scout stayed as she was, arms crossed protectively over her chest, even though it made the bruise throb, for another beat, but then she relented and hoisted Gert into the rover.
She really hoped she wasn’t going to regret this.
8
Scout had not yet attempted driving in the dark, but once she had turned off the floodlight over the door, she found that the monitors still attached to working cameras compensated for the low light, showing greenish outlines around the protrusions in the canyon walls and the occasional larger rock embedded in the baked mud of the ground. She got the rover moving as slowly as she could, a bit herky-jerky at first but smoother once she found a switch that automated the speed and let her take her foot off the pedal.
Tucker let the dogs curl up together in the passenger seat, leaning against the console between the two control panels and watching her as she navigated down the canyon.
“Which way?” Scout asked.
“Just keep going like you are,” Tucker said, not even looking at the monitors. She nodded, hoping her cheeks weren’t coloring. Those gray eyes watching her so closely were more than a little disconcerting.
“Until when?” Scout asked.
“It will be obvious.”
Scout nodded again. She wondered if there was a polite, nondefensive-sounding way to ask someone to stop looking at you.
Then he leaned forward and pushed her hat back off her head. She was sitting forward in the seat—she had to in order to reach the pedals—and the hat fell down her back to hang from its string around her neck.
“Hey,” Scout said, but the canyon was narrowing again and she couldn’t spare a hand from the controls to replace her hat.
“I just wanted a better look at you,” he said.
“What for? Put my hat back before I crash us into a wall.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, lifting the hat off her back, then brushing the blonde curls back from her face before setting the battered old hat back on her head. She had showered that morning before blowing up the compound, a rare treat. But she had been sweating on and off most of the day and those curls had been first soaked and then dried into crusty curlicues against her skin. She was acutely embarrassed he had even touched them.
Well, he was a sweaty mess himself. And yet his hair floated in a perfect wave, spilling over his forehead. Was he vain about it? Was that why he wore no hat? Because that decision wasn’t doing his skin any favors.
She fought the urge to heave a sigh. Premature wrinkling aside, he was nearly as cute as he thought he was, smiling at her all the time.
“Do you see it yet?” he asked, startling her out of her thoughts. Then she looked back at the monitors and saw what he meant. The rover systems were having a hard time defining it, but the greenish outlines ahead of her were slowly coalescing into a sort of gate.
“I think so. That’s where we’re headed?”
“Yes. They left the door open for us or you’d never see it at all,” Tucker said.
Scout watched the rover system fight to find the outlines of that gate. The canyon wall extended up out of sight on all sides of it.
What a perfect place for a trap.
Scout switched back to manual speed control and let the rover roll to a halt. Tucker looked at her quizzically.
“What are you?” Scout asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Look, I just spent the last four days locked in a secret place no one could find from the surface, and while I was down there I watched nine people die, one after another.”
“I’m sorry. That must have been horrible,” he said with what sounded like genuine empathy, but Scout didn’t let it melt her anger.
“I’m not going to repeat it. I’m not going into another super-secret location with no facts.”
“Fair enough,” Tucker said. “But most of it isn’t my secret to tell. I can promise you’ll be safe, and as soon as the repairs are done you will be free to go.”
“I have no reason to believe you’re trustworthy or that your promises mean anything,” Scout said.
“I guess not,” he allowed, tugging at his bottom lip while he stewed in thought. Scout slumped back in her seat, arms crossed as she waited for him to go on. At last he just shrugged. “I’ve got nothing. I can probably persuade the others to let Bente come out here and fix your rover for you while you wait. In the dark. She can lug her tools this far; she’s strong.”
“Don’t try to guilt me,” Scout said. “You’re the reason I’m even in this mess. I should have left you to walk back on your own after I found you.”
“I am sorry,” he said, reaching out to grasp her shoulder but thinking better of it at her hard glare. He let his hand fall. “Look, it sounds like you were just through a truly terrible experience and it’s left some scars. Totally understandable. I went through some nasty stuff myself those first few years on my own after my uncle died. Not that bad, but bad. Then these people found me and took me in, and they’ve been taking care of me ever since. Now I’m in a position to do some of that caring myself. Clearly, I’m not very good at it yet. But these people are my family. Maybe the thing you need the most rig
ht now is to sit at a proper table, filling your belly with warm food, surrounded by warm people.”
Scout felt herself relenting. She didn’t like it.
“Give us a chance to show you not all strangers are bad. I mean, most are,” he quickly amended with a grin. “That’s why Ken and Bente did what they did. We don’t like strangers any more than you do. But I feel like I already know you well enough to know you’re our kind of people. And if you give me a chance, I can show you that we’re your kind of people too.”
“Fine,” Scout said. “But mainly because I don’t want Bente to have to haul a bunch of tools out here and work in the dark, okay?”
“Of course,” Tucker said. “Just keep rolling straight in.”
Scout uncrossed her arms and sat forward to get the rover moving again. She thought she heard Tucker blow out a sigh of relief, but when she looked up at him he just flashed that too-confident smile at her again.
She didn’t return it.
The monitors still had a hard time pinning down exactly where the green outlines of the gate were, but it was wide enough that Scout could navigate between the innermost versions of the shifting outlines with room to spare on either side. Once the nose of the rover was through the gate, they were bathed in floodlights even brighter than the light over the rover door, shining down from some point higher up the canyon walls. Even through the window Scout could make out no details; the lights blinded her so that all she saw beyond them was black. Were they in a nook off the canyon with sky still above or was she once more underground in an immense cavern? She couldn’t tell; the lights were too bright to see stars even if they had been there.
The ground here was the same as the ground outside the gate, packed-down mud that might have been wet once decades ago but was now slowly eroding away into dust that whipped around in eddies as the rover treads stirred it up. She saw the armored bikes parked off to the right of the gateway next to a small four-wheeled vehicle. It might have been a jeep or a dune buggy; it was hard to tell what was going on past the bristles of armaments and all of the metal plating.