Under Dark Sky Law

by Tamara Boyens

  From her place on the ground, she watched in awe as he finished setting up the array of ropes and pulleys and fired up the engine. It made a soft whirring as it started pulling the enormous machine from its place in the sand. She scrambled to her feet and backed away, just in case the thing overcorrected and tried to roll back her way. Radar seemed convinced that it wouldn’t, but she didn’t feel like taking a chance. Being crushed by a steel tank wasn’t high on her list of preferred ways to die.

  “I’ll be a son of a bitch,” she said as the crawler thumped back into an upright position, vibrating the ground underneath her. Sand licked her ankles from the movement. Radar was grinning with his hands on his hips.

  “What did I tell ya? Good as new. There’s almost no situation you can’t build yourself out of,” he said, clearly proud of his little contraption.

  “I’ll remember not to doubt you next time,” she said.

  With the crawler upright and out of the sand trap, they were able to open the doors to the supply hull the rest of the way and gain access to its contents. There was a lot of miscellaneous crap that wouldn’t do them any good, but there was more water, food, some clothing, some medicals supplies, and other things that would be useful.

  “Hey, there’s a bunch of albuterol and atropine back here,” she said. “I can shoot your guys up with a little cocktail that will make them feel like shit, but should help keep them a little more oxygenated until we can get them back into a dome.” He clearly cared about the survivors for reasons she couldn’t really understand, and it seemed the least she could do to pay him back for getting the crawler out of the sand.

  “You have medical training?” he said, his eyes twinkling with a glimmer of hope.

  “I’m actually a psychiatrist, but yeah I went to medical school, so I have some idea about what I’m doing,” she said.

  “That’s wonderful. I would really appreciate it,” he said.

  A little Alphamine would really help perk them up too, but it wasn’t that kind of a run, and she didn’t have anything like that on her. At least she would also be able tend to her own wounds a little bit better. There were some analgesics in the medical supplies, and the generalized burn that kept pestering her skin might make her cave to actually taking some. She couldn’t think clearly with pain plaguing her every movement anyway.

  It took some time, but they got everything ready to go. She put on a more appropriate set of mission clothing—there wasn’t another waterproof suit, but there were at least some spare military field uniforms in desert camo patterns and some combat boots that were a damned sight easier to work in than the loose toga that kept getting caught on things and had left her standing naked in front of Radar more than once. He hadn’t seemed to mind too much.

  The sun was sinking, but she could still see the black cloud that was the remains of Yuma shimmering in the distance. It was still on fire. She shuddered thinking of what kind of explosives would have been necessary to make that happen. Radar gathered the survivors before the last light of the day went out and crammed them into the supply hull of the crawler. There was at least some minimal filtration in the cargo holds just to prevent corrosion of any sensitive materials, and they would have an easier time breathing back there once they got the crawler started again. After shooting everyone up with a rescue cocktail and making sure none of them died in the process, she gathered a toolkit of water, food, and additional medical supplies to bring up the cabin with her.

  Radar had brushed most of the glass out of where they would be sitting, and was systematically taking apart the front of the dashboard trying to repair the radio.

  “I’ve got the wiring fixed, but the mechanism got soaked in the storm. It should work again once it’s dried out again, but that will take some time,” he said. “It would be nice to let someone in the flats know what our situation is.”

  “Ah, that’s right. Gila Bend’s dome is defunct,” she said. It had been awhile since she’d had to go out that way for any runs. Back in the day Gila Bend had been a nice small dome, another crossroads like Yuma, but its population had been too small to justify the resources needed to keep it running. Officials had decided that keeping Yuma open as a border transition would be a wiser decision. It had been a recent development however, and she wondered what kind of condition the flats were in out there. With any luck it still had some of its infrastructure intact. After such a rough week, she wasn’t looking forward to dealing with the kind of slums they had in most of the flats.

  “Yeah, been dead for a couple of years now,” he said. “But it should have enough oxygenation left to keep these guys alive, at least until communications are restored and we can figure out a way for them to get back into a proper dome.”

  He was far more optimistic about it than she was, but there was no point in dashing his hopes. Knowing how slowly the government worked, it could be weeks before any sort of rescue mission was put together, and in her opinion they would be long dead before that, even in a partially controlled dome atmosphere. They weren’t adapted to be living in that kind of harsh environment. Darwin could be a total pain in the ass.

  They took a few minutes to drink some water and scarf some of the emergency rations and water that she’d dug out of the cargo. The dry protein bar tasted just about as good to her as the fancy food she’d had at The Niagara and at Xed’s place, and they made small grunts of pleasure as they slugged down the tasteless food. Nothing like a disaster to make you enjoy life’s small pleasures.

  The last sun rays of day were gone, and she switched on the cabin’s overhead lights. The light cover had been cracked at some point in time, but thankfully the bulb was still intact so that she could see well enough to sift through the medical supplies that she’d brought with her.

  “If you don’t mind, I can drive. I know the way to Gila Bend, and that way we can get on the road while you take care of your injuries,” he said.

  She raised an eyebrow at him. “You sure you can handle this thing?” she said.

  He laughed. “I can rebuild one of these things from the ground up. I’m pretty sure I can drive one,” he said.

  She shrugged. “Point taken. Alright. I can take over if you get in over your head or something,” she said and shot him a look that said she was joking. It’s not like he could do any worse than the assholes that had crashed into her crawler in the first place.

  He peered into the medical kit and fired up the crawler. “You know, you should give yourself some of that morphine. It will give you a chance to relax and heal. Use a small enough dose and you should be clear before we reach Gila Bend,” he said after seeing a vial of it mixed in with the bandages and syringes.

  She stared at him and cocked her head to the side. She’d been contemplating the same thing, but after so many fuckups this week, she was rather reluctant to just give the helm over to some mercenary stranger she’d just met hours before.

  “Look, if we’d wanted to kill each other, we could have had chances hours ago,” he said. “There’s nothing either of us could gain from it at this point. We’re both businessmen, uh, women…business people, that is. Shooting your partner before the payoff is just sloppy business.”

  He had a point. They were both useful to the other in terms of survival. She knew these deserts like the back of her hand and had connections with people in most of the nearby settlements, and her reputation as a vicious fighter was well known across the region. If they ran into trouble, he’d want her on his side. He had already more than proved his worth to the point where she was wondering if there was any way she might convince him to join the Grease Weasels. Much as she didn’t like thinking about it, if things didn’t start going better, she was going to have two openings to fill in the near future.

  “Alright. I’ll be able to clean up these wounds a little more thoroughly if I’ve had some drugs, but I may end up passing out for a spell. Just jam some atropine in my ass—that outta wake me up,” she said and drew up a small dose of morphine. />
  Within seconds of injecting the drug a warm sense of relief washed over her, and she realized just how much pain she’d been in from the distributed chemical burns. She pulled the syringe out of her thigh and gave a long audible sigh.

  “Better?” he said.

  “Absolutely,” she said sluggishly, drawing out each syllable.

  “Sorry I don’t have any Alphamine on me. That would probably do you some good right about now,” he said.

  She laughed. “I’m the one that makes that stuff, you know,” she said.

  “I do—it’s still one of my hottest commodities. I assume you don’t have any either, considering you were on a government run when the storm hit,” he said. Smart man. She was liking him more as the night wore on, and she began thinking of what she could use to try and entice him to join up. That would have to wait till later. First they needed to get the fuck out of the dead zones.

  “I never touch the stuff—shit’s addictive as fuck,” she said.

  He shook his head and chuckled. “Ah, the irony. Well, at least you have the morphine for now,” he said and turned his attention back to the vast sandy plains that rolled past in never ending segments of their headlights.

  She set about cleaning herself up before the morphine made her too drowsy to function. She’d given herself a deep intramuscular injection, so she had some time before the full effects took hold—it would take time for the drug to make its way into her bloodstream. Getting to some of the burns meant that she had to strip down to her skivvies again temporarily.

  “Sorry I keep getting naked in front of you,” she said.

  “Not something you typically do on a first date, eh?” he said.

  She bit her lip, feigning embarrassment. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” she said.

  “I can think of worse things to be subjected to,” he said without taking his eyes off the road. “Don’t worry though—I’m always a gentleman.”

  “I dunno, peeling skin from chemical burns and crusty stab wounds are pretty fucking irresistible. You might not be able to control yourself,” she said.

  They both laughed hard, releasing some of the tension between them. He would fit right in with the Grease Weasels if she could dream up a contract tasty enough to tempt him.

  Besides helping her relax, the pain medication allowed her to do the unpleasant job of debriding all the wounds and cleansing some of the more serious chemical burns without wanting to just give up and shoot herself in the face with a laser. It still wasn’t terribly comfortable, but at least she was able to get through it without vomiting or passing out.

  “You okay over there?” he said, listening to her grunting and huffing through the discomfort.

  “I can think of better ways to spend an evening, but I’ll live,” she said. After covering herself in a layer of burn salve and putting sterile bandages on all of the larger cuts, she put her clothes back on and put away the medical supplies.

  “Put your head on my lap and take a nap. You need the rest,” he said.

  She raised both eyebrows.

  “I promise to be a gentleman,” he said.

  She didn’t really have the energy to argue, didn’t give a shit if he was a gentleman or not, and the morphine was starting to make her dizzy. She mumbled something, and lay her head on his pants. They were surprisingly soft, smelling of wood smoke, sand, and something she couldn’t quite place. He switched off the overhead lights, and in the rumbling darkness she fell asleep listening to the crawler’s treads rolling across the uneven desert terrain.

  CHAPTER 15

  Gila Bend had seen better days. It had never been a particularly robust city, but if nothing else it had been a decent crossroads for travelers trying to make their way from Arizona back into Southern California. When it had become a dome, the town had gone through significant modernization and gentrification, briefly functioning as a tourist destination before traveling became restricted and the railroads died.

  After being abandoned to become a flats location, things had slowly deteriorated, but it was still in much better shape than some of the abandoned domes she had toured. That wasn’t saying much, but at least it meant that there was some modicum of structure left behind, some commerce and city services that they could exploit. Radar seemed to be fairly familiar with the place, and he navigated around the area with ease. Border security was nil, so at least they didn’t have to deal with that. Not that security seemed to mean jack squat these days anyway.

  The only bad thing about having some residual infrastructure was that there was also still some sense of community, meaning people still gathered and talked. After depositing the survivors at one of the still functioning medical shelters, Radar had taken them to one of the local restaurants to try and get ahold of some information and a way to contact the outside world. The radio was still fried from the rain, and they hadn’t had any luck making contact with anyone. They were both starved for information, and now that immediate survival was taken care of, Xero was antsy to figure out what the fuck she was going to do about the Ketocillin.

  The Saturn Disco had to be nearly 100 years old. It had been remodeled and repaired numerous times during its lifespan, but remnants of another century could still be seen within the elements of the tacky restaurant’s décor. Everything was blue and white and covered in cheesy planetary decorations—bad models of space ships and planets with peeling paint jobs hung from the ceilings, and retro space ornaments plastered every wall. The place was dirty, its blue Formica tables cracked and peeling, the white booth seats torn and smeared with decades of grease and ass stains. It was packed with agitated patrons and she was second guessing how wise it had been to park themselves in there.

  Radar had insisted on just pulling the crawler up to the front of the joint and leaving it there—he said it would help with the intimidation factor and might make someone think twice about trying to get the drop on some out-of-towners. If there was a military vehicle involved, they were likely to be armed with lasers too. With all the chaos going on, she wished that she had been able to recover Delta and Echo’s lasers so that they would both be armed, but she had never even found Echo’s body.

  Speaking of which, their weapons were now technically unauthorized, so perhaps it was best that an undocumented mercenary wasn’t in possession of a government laser. She needed to make contact with the Phoenix dome as soon as possible so that they didn’t think she was part of these rebel attacks on the domes. Officially speaking, they were also AWOL and in possession of cargo that could be considered stolen. Not that it seemed like there was really any time to be tracking down such trivial crap like a load of missing cargo while major terrorist attacks were happening, but she’d seen the dome governments do stranger things. She couldn’t afford a trip back to a dome prison, and she also couldn’t really afford to sever her official ties with the domes just to stay out of jail for a weekend. Sometimes, whether she liked it or not, you just had to play by the rules.

  Radar was leaning with his back to the wall with one of his legs stretched out across the booth seat. Xero sat across from him with her feet straight forward and her arms crossed. The place was crammed full of people talking, eating, and arguing amongst themselves about what had happened at Yuma.

  “You seem to be enjoying yourself,” she said.

  “It’s good to see Gila Bend so active still—look at the agitation and the community spirit. They’re still ready to band together and fight. You don’t see that in the flats very often. They’re not ready to just roll over and die,” he said. “Also, it’s a perfect place to gather information. It’s all here, we just have to wait and listen.”

  She unfolded her arms, leaned forward onto the table, and twirled a grimy half-full salt shaker in her fingers. “Point taken,” she said. She was enough of a well-known personality that word would have spread that she was in town trolling around in a government crawler sooner or later. She was far from being above scare-tactics or strong-arming, and she had no probl
em being up in people’s faces for the purposes of getting vital information.

  A jaded waitress slumped over to their table wearing a stained white apron. She was middle-aged and had poorly dyed red hair.

  “Hey Radar, what are you having today,” she said evenly, as though the place wasn’t crawling with turmoil and it was just like any other day at work. Her eyes briefly flicked over to Xero before quickly moving back to her waitresses notepad. “Who’s yer lady friend.”

  “Trudy, this is Xero—we crossed paths while I was evacuating Yuma,” he said.

  Trudy tapped her foot. “Good for you. You want the usual?” she said. Xero was surprised that the waitress didn’t really seem to give a shit that a major territory boss was chilling out in a booth in her restaurant.

  He nodded and handed an old laminated menu back to Trudy. His fingers left streaks on the grime coating the surface of the plastic.

  “How about your lady friend?” she said.

  Xero had to stifle a laugh—she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been called someone’s fucking lady friend. “I’ll have the same,” she said, not really giving a shit about what kind of food came out. Whatever it was, it was probably better than what they had eaten the day before.

  The waitress walked off without another word and Xero turned back to Radar. The first rays of the morning sun were slicing through the window and falling on the right half of his face. With his face spotlighted she noticed that his tanned face was also marked with a network of old, faded scars. This wasn’t his first rodeo.

  He noticed her staring at his face, but she didn’t break eye contact. “So you’re a regular here,” she said.

  He shifted so that his face was out of the direct path of the sunlight. “You could say that. Gila Bend is on many of my regular routes,” he said.

  It made sense—her organization didn’t have much penetration out this way, so it was a definite area that would be appealing for independent operators.