He met Jo’s eyes and groaned; she had the look. The look that Mary had when she was fixin’ to say something he might not like. Here we go.
“You know we get it from y’all, right?”
“I know,” he grumbled. “You want better sense for your kids.”
“You know. Apples and trees and whatnot.” Jo sighed. “We can’t help it.”
“All I’m askin’ for is that if you’re going on a killing spree, do it right. There’s a time and place for that. A sensible type of brooding. I thought I at least taught ’em that, y’know.”
“It’s something I picked up after a time. You’re really good at it, Dad.”
“Am I?”
“Sometimes.” Jo smiled. “But really, we’re in trouble now with that little stunt he pulled. Where were you guys all yesterday anyway?”
Drifter squirmed. “Shooting some Bluecoats and taking their stuff.”
“You do see that Spencer thought what he did was a good idea because of stuff like that, right?”
Fair point. Drifter relaxed. Jo knew how to put things into perspective. Even when she was a kid, she knew how to correct her ol’ pa. Still, he wasn’t going to apologize, nor did she expected him to. The fact remained that they were in trouble, and no matter how well-intentioned her nephew was, he screwed them more than he could possibly imagine.
Drifter filled the cup with a little more water, kinda hoping there was something stronger in his small cup. He needed to cool down. “Where’s Evan and Wood?”
“Wood’s heading back. Evan said he’s coming up the mountain too. He’s got something he’s been working on. Not to mention Doc’s been working on a few things. Nothing like funerals and imminent danger to bring our families together. I take it where I can get it, though.”
Jo spoke Appetite up; they heard the familiar roar coming up the driveway. Not even a few minutes after she said it, the small brown and green tank came rolling up the side of the mountain. He didn’t stop for a second, hardly noticing the crowd. Drifter watched his big son climb out of the side and land with a thunderous crash. A few of the cousins laughed under their breaths as they usually did when seeing Appetite move. Never to his face, of course. Though normally patient with them beyond what was acceptable, his darkest mood stripped that away.
He charged into the house and came back only minutes later dressed down in sweatpants, a tank top, and flip flops - his comfort clothes. He charged towards them, his hair wild and his beard long against his collar bones. He heaved a heavy breath. “What’s happening?” he asked in a slow, measured anger.
Jo shook her head. “Spencer killed a bunch of Bluecoats and put them on display.”
“Of course he did.” Appetite frowned. He took a deep breath. “Cassie’s stayin’ for a spell at the Willow’s Grove.”
“Don’t seem too happy ’bout that,” Jo said, folding her his arms.
“She’s her own girl, but...don’t trust her stayin’ close to Ignace. But I can’t do much about that.” Appetite pinched the bridge of his nose.
Jo folded her arms. “That pompous son of a gun still around?”
“And you haven’t killed ’im yet?” Drifter found himself adding. Ah, see, bad habit. “Don’t say it, Jo. I heard what I said.”
Appetite gave a puzzled look but didn’t ask. “She’s going to stay for a while. What are we doing ‘round here?”
“Tryin’ not to die.” Jo shrugged.
Appetite laughed. “That’s all any of us tryin’ to do, I reckon. What’s the plan, Pa?”
“We haven’t gotten that far yet.” Drifter pinched his nose. There was a lotta things they could do; there was a lotta things needed to be done. They had prepared for this eventuality for years. And they called me paranoid. Nothing came easy. They get here easy. They didn’t stay here ’cause it was easy. They learned what worked and how to survive, preparing for the day that the colonizers would grow interest in C’dar. Only a matter of time. Only a matter of time. “I need some company, y’all alright coming along? I know you’ve had a long day, Wood, and your patience for your ol pa’s gettin’ thin, Jo. I honestly need both of ya if you can manage the time. If I stay around them, I might do something I regret.”
“We might have even more company.”
Drifter furrowed his brows, seeing a man in a tattered cloak coming up the mountain. He leaned heavily on a twisted old rod fashioned from parts of a car axis. He wasn’t a big man, or tall, much the same as Drifter himself. There was something about him, though; even in his tattered wandering clothes of tan and grey pants, and a yellowed t-shirt that might’ve been white once with a few too many holes. Puffs of grey-green smoke left his respirator, billowing around and through the fabric of his hood. Two small, rusted red drones buzzed around his head and a long, bare skeleton ’roid followed him closely.
Loner, the youngest of Drifter’s children, silenced the light hum of conversation. He wasn’t one to leave his cave at the bottom of the mountain; unless he went on a scavenge for parts, or to work on the radio station network. He wandered toward them, his small mechanized army making a bit of a ruckus in this awkward silence.
Drifter grabbed him into a hug; the man smelled of oil, rust, and sand. He loved him.
Loner huffed a little, patting his ol’ dad on the back. “’Ey, pa. Jo. Wood.” His hugs continued around their small family.
“Hood off, son.” Drifter smiled.
He hated it but he did it anyway; Loner tossed off his hood. Though younger than both Appetite and the Rancher Queen, Loner had inherited Drifter’s apparent ability to lose all the color in his hair in his mid thirties. There were a few persistent flecks of weak darkness in his hair, cut messily short by what looked like a knife. His eyes were a shade darker than the rest of the family’s blues and rimmed with dark circles. He hadn’t been out much lately, judging by the milky color of his skin, almost sickly against the metal of his respirator.
He huffed again, deep, measured, and a little uncomfortable out in the open. “’Right, you guys got me outta my cave. What now?”
“The ’roid is new,” Jo said, drawing out the conversation. Loner hated talking about himself.
“They can’t speak yet, trying to learn itself. New AI I’m messing with. Jesse. Say hi.” The bare ’roid of black bones looked as startled as a machine could. It waved awkwardly after a time. “Good. Good.”
“Don’t overwork yourself, Evan.” Drifter found himself saying. “Last time…”
“I know. I know,” he muttered. He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “What’s happening? I heard about Matt.”
Jo took the lead. “Let me bring you up to date.”
And just like that, their little clan was together. Drifter and his three children walked through the Homestead, inspecting the defenses and checking the inventory. The anger he felt hibernated, and the whole situation dissolved into shallow puddles in his head. He listened to Jo’s explanation on what was happening with her own life; Loner and Appetite listened and then shared what was happening with them. All the years of raising them in that small cabin gave them a close bond with one another. Kids were cruel at any age and in any galaxy; and his children knew that too well. They learned to deal by working as a unit. That hadn’t changed in their older age. They were a pack - his pack of smart, witty, and resourceful men and women.
Drifter led the small crowd across the Homestead, checking things here and there. The watch towers were back up. They hadn’t been up in years, not since the pirate problems they had a while back. Doc’s kids and grandkids had worked on setting up the fences and the turrets. The familiar sounds of metalworking and woodworking - the buzzing of saws, the beating of hammers, and the humming of drills - filled the area. While Doc and Vermin worked on that, Drifter couldn’t help but notice Mirabelle taking what seemed to be parts of a reactor. The young woman, just as thick as but darker-skinned than her fat
her, carted the pieces onto her small floating shuttle, wordlessly smiling from ear to ear. It might as well have been her birthday with how well she was taking this.
Big Thunder and Moses’s countless children and grandchildren scurried around the Homestead, ranging from young kids to teens to grown adults older than Appetite. They had started earlier than Drifter and hadn’t stopped; through them, the Caldwells’ genetics would survive into the next few centuries at least. Drifter saw the children’s several mothers (a habit they gotten from the father they shared, and the cause for their vastly different appearances) huddled up and talking amongst themselves.
Big Thunder was instructing any kid that could hold a weapon on safe gun rules under the massive oak tree. Moses preached by the crashed spaceship, their ark, with a small congregation, speaking words of equal parts wrath and mercy. Drifter couldn’t help but notice the similarities of how the brothers handled the topics. Eerie how similar their words were. Drifter let that thought sink in for a while and found the hole a bit too deep for his liking; he put it away in his head and kept scrolling.
“Pa.”
“Yeah,” Drifter said, turning to Appetite. “Gonna have to ask whatever you were asking again. Wasn’t paying attention.”
“Where are we going?”
“Oh, nowhere in particular. Been thinking about what we’re gonna do next.” Drifter wasn’t actually telling the whole the truth; he was, in fact, pondering anything besides what to do next. He pinched his nose and cleared his head. There were plenty of things on the table now. First and foremost was to check on Big Thunder’s distillery. The moonshine was their primary source of bartering, after fuel and salvage - it was by far the most consistent outta all of them. Before the Bluecoats even attempted the mountain, they would go there to cut the Caldwells off from potential allies. Maybe they’ll do it to try to stay in the law. They would’ve come up here before if they weren’t so worried about that. Luckily, the Caldwells didn’t have to abide by the law; they would cut corners if they had to, cheat if they gotta. That was the difference between the two factions. The Bluecoats believed they were in the right and legal. Drifter knew that him and his kin weren’t.
“Gather around everyone,” Drifter barked.
The family stopped what they were doing. Guns were put away, bibles were closed, and all manner of talking stopped. The throng of family made a tight circle around him. Drifter couldn’t help but noticing the Hounds standing a little further away. He sighed. Right now, he couldn’t afford alienating them. Besides, they were some of the best gunmen in the family. Drifter found himself wishing a little that Kindle was here. Pit, his brother, he could handle. The Hounds as an angry ball of revenge, he couldn’t. Shepherd stood in the forefront, broken nose taped but dribbling a bit of blood on his lips. He still hungered, biting at bones without meat on it. Might can use that. Gotta use that, stoke that flame.
“As we all know by now, we done got the attention of a Major of the Civilization’s Bluecoats.” Drifter took a deep breath. “I know, I know. We’re all partially to blame, me included. We poked this cage enough times. Now the cage’s open and we’re gonna have put the beast down.” He cleared his throat. “First, we need make sure Thunder’s distillery’s ’right. There’s too many things there that they can’t have. Secondly, our homes. They’re gonna come for me, I know it. Y’all already done a good job startin’ it. But take this seriously. These ain’t people we want to mess with. We hit them hard before they hit us. Got that?”
“What’s stopping them from coming up here right now?” one of Moses’s many grandkids shouted. Zeke, maybe.
“Nothin’ to be honest. That’s why we’re gonna keep people here. Two teams: one for the distillery and one for the Homestead.”
“Where are you gonna go?” Bulldog asked. He, of course, expected him to stay at the Homestead. It was his home after all. Drifter smiled at the young boy through the crowd.
“I’m gonna go with y’all. It only makes sense.”
The Hounds nodded. They wanna fight, let ’em.
“Of course, y’all gonna have to listen to me. We didn’t get this far being dumb. If I ask you to do it, do it. Don’t ask me question, don’t say the word ‘but’, don’t even look at me the wrong way. You do it even if you don’t agree with it. Y’all gotta trust me - all y’all. I didn’t bring my brothers here to let us lose all we got.”
“I gotta question, Pops.” Appetite raised a single finger. “Why exactly do you think they want us gone? We’re just a backwater planet full of nothing but old stuff.”
The five Patriarchs - Drifter, Pit, Big Thunder, Doc, and Moses - knew this answer. Drifter saw his brothers’ faces change within the crowd, some soft, others harder. There were pieces of their past, things they kept from their children and grandchildren. Not out of secrecy; not entirely. There were things a man couldn’t find a way to talk about. The Space Prison of Taros and the Desert Prison Planet of Daedal were his childhood, and the reason he could do what he did. The dark metal cells, the hours in a glass pod filled with stasis liquids, the silver sands of windy dunes in his mouth, the hammering of ore for days at a time. Those things he wanted to spare the next generation of. How could he tell them that their mutations were no different than a farmer growing the perfect breed of corn?
But they had the right to know where they came from, right? The very thought terrified him.
“I - ” He took a deep breath. “The Civilization made us. Sold by our pa, Max Caldwell, to the prison Taros and its scientist for his own dang crimes and debts. We were rats.” Drifter remembered those young years as though they were yesterday. He tasted bile in mouth. “After being experimented on for several years, they threw us on the desert prison planet of Daedal. Mutants like us slipped through the cracks during prison planet riots all across the galaxy. Now the Civilization’s stable under a new Chairwoman, they’re tryin’ to clean up their own mess. We’re part of that mess. Besides, this planet ain’t a bad one for them to get their hands on. Could be great for a new colony. But first and foremost, it’s about cleaning up the previous government’s mess. That’s the long and short of it. Anyone that wants to know anything else, feel free to ask any question ’bout it, but you might not want to know the answers. We are what we are and they don’t like it very much.”
Everyone in the crowd stiffened. It was one thing hearing bits and pieces from their own fathers. Saying it aloud in its entirety came with a certain indescribable shame, like being stripped away by the elements. Drifter swallowed his pride for a moment, taking another deep ragged breath. “We don’t like talkin’ ’bout it, but it’s part of us. You have every right to know why you’re being hunted and why we’re different. Should’ve told y’all sooner, but it is what it is.”
“Well…” Appetite said after a long silence. “That explains quite a bit.”
Jo nodded too. “All because we’re a little different from them.”
Drifter felt himself grow cold and distant. “Everyone git now. We got work to do and it ain’t gonna fix itself. We’re leaving in a bit.” He took the stunned the silence as a chance to slink away.
The soft memories of a hard past came rushing back at once. He liked to think that he got it out of his system, made peace with it. When the words came out of his mouth, he wasn’t the experienced ol’ man. For a few seconds there, he was that little boy with clay-red hair wandering Taros for a glimpse of a dad that sold him. He stepped away, slipping through the mass of kin and to the other side without another word.
He made it to his own porch before he allowed himself to break a little. Mary Lu sat in her rocking chair, a long crocheted blanket of purple and white over her lap. She smiled at him, and somehow, it made the feeling in his gut ease a little. She turned to him with those soft, knowing eyes. With her right hand, she patted on the rocking chair beside her, beckoning him to come over. He did so, slumping into the comforts of wood and mindless rocking. Mary Lu grabbed his fingers and said nothing
. She never needed to.
Chapter 9
Simple Gatherings
Appetite
“You can always tell who a person is by what they bring to a dinner.” --Major Steven Debenham of the Bluecoats Airmen
Appetite hated stormy days. Something ’bout them never settled well with him. The pelting rain against his wood cabin, the crackling of lightning and pounding of thunder, the howling of wind down the side of the mountain - it all gave every storm this ominous presence on Dusk Mountain. He remembered being afraid of this kinda weather when he was a kid, wandering these very halls to his parents’ room on the other side; years later, here he was, wandering the same cabin with the same feeling in his stomach. He felt like a dang fool every time.
“It’s only rain and bad feelings,” he grumbled under his breath. “Only rain and bad feelings.”
As a family, they decided to stay at their father’s cabin while he was away to look after their mother. The party assigned to the Distillery left when the sun cracked over the grey horizon. He remembered hearing the trucks roll off early this morning in several small groups, each armed and ready for a race if they needed to escape. Appetite watched them leave from his window before nodding back to sleep for a while. When he woke again, they were gone and it was raining.
The loneliness didn’t help much. His mother, brother, and sister eased it, but he missed his partner in crime, his buddy, his friend; Kindle was out there somewhere in the Swamp with Remy and Ignace. He hadn’t decided which one was worse after the last debacle. She had urged him to leave, though. His history with everyone there only served to put his daughter in danger. Papa Bear that he was, he couldn’t savor the thought. With the danger everyone was in and her not being here, he thought his mind might explode.
Dusk Mountain Blues Page 11