Sidney's Escape

by Nirina Stone

  But this thing is different, Sidney decides as she watches it hop along behind her. The lizards and birds never followed her around or let her touch them for long. They’d never offered her gifts either. This little thing isn’t food. Who’d think of eating such a cute thing? By the time it gets to her, she realizes it’ll likely follow her all the way out the building—maybe even out of the city!

  How will she explain it to the others then?

  When Henry coughs into her mask, she swiftly makes a decision. At least, if we’re out there, I can release it at some point in the Barren, she decides, knowing instinctively that it can survive out there, like all the other red animals they’d seen. Besides, there’s no way it can follow us when we’re traveling in that car.

  So she crouches, pulls off her knapsack and opens it wide. The animal blinks once, twice, then hops into the bag like that was what it expected all along. Then she shushes it silently, pulls the bag onto her back and heads down the rest of the stairs.

  Chapter Forty Seven

  Henry

  SIDNEY FINALLY WALKS around the corner towards him and he stops himself in time from scolding her for taking so long. At least she’s safe he thinks. She walks steadily, no limp or anything.

  “How did you fall?” he asks, watching her gait. Nothing serious, he decides.

  “Gathering eggs,” she dismisses, “in the roof.”

  Right. Though he’s certain she’s a sure climber, he’s seen her go up the most innocuous things and she’s never fallen. He frowns slightly when she makes a sound he’s never heard before. Like a croaking croon sound.

  “What was that?” he says, wondering if she’s coming down with a cold.

  She coughs slightly, then adjusts her knapsack. “Oh,” she says, her eyes darting to Gideon then back to him. “I’m just thirsty. I didn’t find any water. Did you?”

  “No luck I’m afraid,” he says, “but Gideon’s about ready to go. If he has the car rolling soon, he says we should reach the Red Dome within less than a day. There’ll be plenty of water there.”

  That’s true, she thinks.

  They turn and Gideon’s already packed up all he needs from the vehicles behind him. He starts listing what he’s taken but none of it make any sense to Henry. “Will it work?” he interrupts. “Will the car work now?”

  Gideon laughs. “Oh definitely. It’ll be good as new, just give me ten minutes or so to fix it. Any haich-two-oh?” he asks.

  “I’m sorry. Any what?” Sidney asks, a frown on her face.

  “Water,” Gideon clarifies. “Did either of you find any water?”

  “No,” Henry says, though he pulls out the packaged food he’s managed to scrounge from the dome’s cabinet reserves. “These though,” he says. “They’re supposed to last forever, right?”

  “Right,” Gideon agrees then he looks at Sidney. “What was that dear?”

  Henry didn’t hear whatever Sidney had said to make Gideon ask her a question. She does that thing again, where her eyes dart left then right, and left again and she makes that same fake coughing sound. “Oh nothing,” she says.

  Why’s she acting so suspicious, he wonders. What really happened up there? “Sid didn’t find any water either,” he confirms.

  “That’s all right,” Gideon says. “We’ll see if Ariadne will agree on a barter.”

  “Who’s that?” Henry and Sidney ask at the same time.

  “My ally in the Barren,” Gideon says. “She lives out there. She’ll help us.”

  Chapter Forty Eight

  Sidney

  SHE SITS IN THE NOW upright car, much lighter since their water’s been disposed of. Her knapsack rests on the small patch of ground in front of her feet and when it moves slightly, she wishes she’d tried to get rid of the animal after all. With all its little croons and purrs, and its inability to stay put, it’s only a matter of time before Gideon or Henry discover it.

  For now, it’s safe as Henry helps Gideon attach wires and whatnot to make the car work again. Their muffled talk reaches her. She reckons it will be another fifteen minutes before they start so she opens up the top of her knapsack, letting the thing—Lashes, she decides to call it—the moment it pops its head out, paws pushing down the top of the bag. It mewls at her and she says, “You hungry? Here.” She reaches into her bag and takes out the last of the protein bar, then offers it a small piece at a time.

  It munches away, watching her and purring a loud purr. Yeah, there’s no way she can hide Lashes for long, she decides, but at least when the car starts up again, all of its noises will be drowned out by the engine.

  Henry starts to make his way around the side of the car, so she bends down quickly. “Lashes,” she says, knowing it won’t understand but still its eyes open wide as if taking in her words. “You need to be very still,” she says, “and you need to be quiet.”

  Then she swiftly zips up her bag the same moment Henry enters the car.

  “Should be good to go!” he yells. The wind has picked up out here since they were in the dome. “Gideon says his rendezvous point with his contact is about an hour from here. We’ll get water soon. Hopefully.”

  “Why ‘hopefully?’” she asks, catching on to his doubtful tone.

  “Oh,” he says. “We just talked about her for a bit there. I don’t know if we’ll have enough things with which to barter with her. Water’s precious out here. Still—we’ll see.”

  AN HOUR LATER, GIDEON’S bringing the car to a stop and Sidney wonders why. It just looks like plain red desert like the rest of the place. She wonders how this is a rendezvous point given there are no landmarks to speak of. Still, they wait for another hour before a loud rap on the glass door.

  Sidney watches as Gideon jumps out, followed by Henry, who suggests she might want to stretch her legs too. “Oh good point,” she decides, quickly grabbing her bag and walking to the back of the car where they can’t see her.

  Then she lets Lashes out to hop around in the red sand, nearly disappearing into it as it jumps around. She hears them talking just a few feet away. If they turn the corner, they’ll just assume she came across Lashes right here. She’ll deal with the repercussions of them not allowing her to keep the thing if it comes to that.

  Chapter Forty Nine

  Henry

  GIDEON’S CONTACT IS tall, lanky, about half a foot taller than Henry, with a croaky feminine voice. Her mask, unlike the ones they wear, only covers her eyes and nose, and Henry wonders how that could possibly be comfortable.

  She says, “So what’s with the kid?” to Gideon, who proceeds to quickly explain how he came across Henry and Sidney in the Blue Dome.

  “Ha!” Ariadne says. “We thought the Blue was taken over by raiders, and you and your family, of course. No one else. This kid must be special.”

  “Something like that,” Gideon says. There’s something in his voice that tells Henry he wants to hide Sidney from Ariadne so Henry keeps his mouth shut. Best let him barter with her, anyway, he reckons.

  “So, what are we talking about today, Smuggler?”

  Ariadne says. Gideon turns to look at Henry, who in turn raises an eyebrow at the nickname but still remains quiet.

  “We could do with a liter of water,” Gideon says. “I have some metal for you I’ve harvested, that might come in handy for the—”

  “Metal!” she laughs. “Gideon, buddy, mate of mine, honey-pie. Surely you know better than to barter metal for water. Out here, of all places. We’ve known each other how long now? Twenty years? You think I’m an infant?”

  Henry itches at the skin around the metal on his chest, feeling the urge to take a look in case it’s somehow infected, but drops his hand away when her head turns to him and she doesn’t turn away.

  “Okay okay,” Gideon says with both hands in the air, his palms towards her. “Come take a look at my pile,” he says, indicating that it’s in the car. “There should be something in there that you can spare half a liter for.”

  “Hmm,�
�� she says, then instead of following Gideon, she moves to stand in front of Henry. “What was your name again, doll?” she says, her voice nearly a growl.

  “Henry.”

  “Henry,” she repeats in a way that tells him she’s being more than friendly. “And who are you to our dear Smuggler, Henry?”

  What does she mean by that? he wonders. “We’re not related, if that’s what you’re asking,” he says, wondering if she knew Gideon’s family. A twenty year relationship. “I’m no one,” he says, “just another Blue Domer.”

  “Oh sweet.” She moves in even closer, so close he moves backwards slightly, uncomfortable with her proximity. “We’re all related in someway or another, aren’t we?”

  Then she taps him on the shoulder, right where the metal from Petra stops, and she moves to follow Gideon.

  After looking through Gideon’s ‘pile’ of what looks to Henry as nothing more a mess of wires, metals, more wires and nothing of actual value, she hands a clear bottle of water to Gideon, says, “Thank you for your business, Smuggler. Till next time.”

  Then she turns to Henry. “See ya later, handsome,” she says, patting him harder this time on his shoulder, then she jumps on a bike, or rather a smaller car than Gideon’s and she rides away.

  Gideon chuckles as he comes back around to Henry. He sees that Sidney’s back in the car already, watching them expectantly, raring to go now that she knows how much closer they are to the Red Dome.

  “Think Ariadne’s into you,” Gideon says to Henry.

  He would think so too, in another time or another world, but in this one he’s certain she knows about the metal on his chest. He doesn’t know what that means, but it can’t be good.

  Chapter Fifty

  Sidney

  AFTER SEVERAL HOURS’ drive, the ground inclines and they ride over a dune when the car makes an discomforting strangled sound, and dies.

  She’s kept herself preoccupied this entire time trying to keep Lashes’ sounds from coming to Henry or Gideon’s attention and a couple of times, she’s certain that there’s no way they didn’t hear it as it purrs so loud in her knapsack, she feels the purr vibrate up her legs.

  But Henry, for whatever reason she can’t ascertain is also preoccupied on something. He hasn’t been the same since their short encounter with Gideon’s friend and she wonders what’s wrong with him. Not for too long since she’s still busy herself, but she does wonder....

  Gideon, on the other hand, has had his eyes on the dunes this entire time, occasionally muttering, occasionally swearing out loud as he bangs on something on the console.

  When the car finally stops, resting just at the bottom of the dune, Gideon turns slightly to them. “Well that’s that,” he says. “She’s done.”

  That finally seems to wake Henry up from whatever stupor he was in. “What do you mean by done?”

  “I mean we’ll have to walk the rest of the way to the Red Dome. Just another couple of hours. The vehicle was far too damaged in that storm to withstand much more, but hey, she brought us this far.”

  Sidney’s fine with this turn of events. A walk through this desert won’t be too bad, she reckons, then she remembers the snake and her babies. “But what about serpents?” she asks.

  “Not to mention any other monsters that inhabit this planet,” Henry adds.

  “Wait,” she says. “Other monsters? Are there other monsters?”

  Gideon laughs. “No, no Sidney, don’t worry. The serpents are the worst things to find out here, but they are all hibernating this time of year. I assure you, we’re quite safe as long as we don’t go crashing into one of their nests again. What are the odds of that happening a second time?”

  Well she didn’t like that they’d done that already, but he’s got a point. They won’t be too noisy taking a quick jaunt across the sand, right?

  “Okay,” Henry says. “Let’s do this since you’re so certain.”

  They pop their face masks on after Gideon reassures them they all have more than enough oxygen to carry all the way to the dome.

  Then they start walking south.

  Chapter Fifty One

  Henry

  HE WASN’T COMPLETELY certain while they were in the car, but now Henry has no doubt that Sidney’s carrying some animal in her bag. He’d wondered why she was acting bizarre, hanging on to that bag even more protective than normal. He remembers how she once had told him it carried everything she had in the world, and nothing would ever make her part with the thing.

  Now, she’s smuggled something: a bird? A lizard? He’s not sure. Still, for now, he leaves it alone because at some point they will have an argument over it—and over the fact she broke her promise to Gideon—and, if he’s being honest with himself, he’s simply not in the mood.

  He still worries about the way that Ariadne had stared at him intently, the way she kept touching his shoulder, definitely feeling metal where his shoulder met with his chest. He’s kept his eyes on the desert, because it’s inevitable he thinks. She’s going to come for him—to do what, he doesn’t know, but he can only think of bad things.

  As they walk south towards the Red Dome, the sun sets to their left and the moons shine bright in the sky just slightly south west, as if to illuminate where they need to go.

  Then Gideon slows down and starts talking but Henry has to ask him to repeat himself since Henry’s mind is still on that Ariadne lady.

  “I said we’ll need to camp soon,” Gideon repeats. “We’re just an hour or so away from the Red Dome but they’ll be shut down for the night anyway. Curfew, you see. No one in or out as soon as the sun’s down. We can approach them in the morning.”

  Sounds reasonable, Henry thinks. Besides, his legs are tired, and he reckons Sidney must be ready to sleep too. It’s been a long couple of days with short sleeps every now and then. The luxury of several hours’ sleep is more than welcome, as far as he’s concerned.

  So they walk for another half hour until it’s all dark but for the moons in the sky, then they set up camp. If only he’d known how much little sleep he’d get this night.

  Chapter Fifty Two

  Sidney

  THEY’VE SET UP A LARGE bubble-tent—a ten-person version of the rolling bag Gideon had built, just perfect for all three of them to find a large enough personal space out of the elements. She hears something drip on the tent outside. “Just warm Allendian rain,” Gideon explains.

  Rain? “Like the acid rains?” she asks, remembering the way that water would eat away at everything—almost everything—within city limits. The rains were still clean and safe outside of the city in the Blue Dome, but one had to always hide in a building every night when the acid rains hit, if one wanted to live—and she certainly wanted to live. Those are the rains that would keep the silver dust bots around the city separated. Part of the reason why they’re traveling to the Red Dome is so Gideon can have those rains stopped. Soon as they do, she intends to travel as fast as possible back to the Blue Dome—after she’s been cured of this ‘flu’ of course, to find Petra.

  “It’s different actually,” Gideon says. “But it’s definitely something you want to see. Here.”

  He stands to pull a velcroed portion of the tent’s roof down. It’s a small plastic window covering several centimeters, just enough to see what’s going on outside the tent. Sidney and Henry stand to take a closer look and though it’s dark, what they see takes her breath away.

  Calling it ‘rain’ isn’t right, she decides, for what they watch fall out of the sky is more like the dust storm—but slower, and somehow the word “fluffy” comes to mind. She watches soft flakes of red sand fly up into the air, falling apart as it hits other flakes, and causing an almost dance-like movement.

  “Huh,” Henry says as he watches. “What sort of rain is this, mate?”

  “Well it’s not rain really, is it?” Gideon says. “It’s more like the snows that Northern countries on Earth used to have, but it’s not quite snow either. It’s uniq
ue to Allenda.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Sidney sighs as her fingers reach up to the window, as she imagines what they’d feel like. “I wish I could go out there and play with it. Can I?”

  At the same time she utters this, a loud mewl comes from her bag as it rustles and falls to the side.

  “What the—” Gideon says at the same moment Lashes bolts from Sidney’s bag, clearly a stowaway. Lashes hops to the entry of the tent, which they’d already zipped up closed. Then it mewls again, so loud, there’s no mistaking whatever it wants to do is urgent.

  Henry’s already at the entrance, unzipping it to let the thing out as Gideon faces Sidney, his brow furrowed, eyes darkened.

  “What have you done?” he growls under his breath. “You promised me.” She promised him she wouldn’t do anything like this without talking to him first.

  Her breaths are shallow as she fights the immediate guilt, thinks of the right words, but she realizes he’s right, she promised him she wouldn’t do anything like this without talking to him first, and her eyes drop to her feet.

  “It—it followed me,” she sputters out. “It wouldn’t stop following me!”

  “So—what?” Gideon mutters. “You decided to just smuggle it? Did you really think we wouldn’t find out?”

  Henry waits at the tent entrance as he watches the animal do its business outside. “In all fairness,” he says over his shoulder, “we didn’t find out for a while there. Am I right, Sidney?”

  He turns to look at her as she realizes he must have known she had Lashes for far longer than she thought.