by Jody Wallace
“Oh, since you aren’t wearing your array, you probably didn’t hear.” Dixie angled her glowing tablet to shine light on their path. “Riverbend’s horde got torched back to hell by the army’s cleanup crew, as did the one in Fort Berthold. They didn’t disappear like the little hits. We definitely found and killed them.”
Claire shoved her hands in her pockets. “Have Cullin and the rest come up with anything useful yet, or did he spend the day fighting with Ship about math?”
“If you’re about to accuse the Shipborn of wasting time…” Dixie began.
“I’m not, I’m not. Simmer down.” Claire dismissed the smaller woman’s alarm. Adam remained silent except for his boots crunching through the snow. “I know they’re on our side.”
“Sometimes it doesn’t feel like you think that’s true. Did you ever wonder if being such a grouch makes you blind to help that’s being offered?” They cut through the same big field, but headed away from the barracks. Claire hadn’t sent Adam back to the room, so he figured he’d go wherever she went. It was what he wanted to do, anyway.
“I know you’re half in love with Ship,” Claire mocked Dixie. “I’m not allowed to criticize, am I?”
Dixie laughed. “Ship wants me to remind you that she’s not programmed for feelings of romantic love. That only happens with some android extensions, and she doesn’t have one.”
“Doesn’t have anything to do with you putting it on a pedestal,” Claire said.
“You don’t give her enough credit. She’s crazy about you and that baby of yours.”
“Ship’s a machine.” Adam noticed Dixie called Ship a she but Claire didn’t. “Nuts and bolts and blue gooey shit.”
“You are a Philistine.” Dixie reached out and pushed Claire, who didn’t so much as stumble. “You’d be less cranky if you’d get a boyfriend.” While Claire seemed to have forgotten him, Dixie kept shooting him coy glances. He didn’t need sunlight—or his memories—to recognize her interest. “I know it always helps me.”
“Jesus Christ.” Claire halted in the middle of the cold, dark field and threw up her hands. Adam almost ran into her. “Where is this coming from? We just lost eight people to the shades. Maybe more. I don’t care about this shit right now.”
“Your attitude has gotten terrible. It makes working with you harder for all of us,” Dixie said tartly. The tablet lit up her face from below, revealing flushed cheeks. “Especially the past couple days. Wonder why? Leaders can’t just order people around, hon, without listening or being respectful.”
“I don’t have time to—”
“I wasn’t done,” Dixie interrupted. To Adam’s surprise, Claire piped down. The petite blond must be a good friend, because Claire remained impersonal with everyone else. “We all have a load to carry. It would help if you quit taking your bad mood out on other people. Do that, and I’ll quit bringing up methods of stress relief at inopportune moments.” She pretended to notice Adam with theatrical surprise. “Oh, look, it’s the incredibly handsome, popular movie star Adam Alsing, who is tall and blond, just the way I like my men. Tell us, Mr. Alsing, do you find Sheriff Claire Louise Lawson to be a very grouchy ladybug?”
“God, not that book,” Claire said, some of her hostility fading. “Dumb bug.”
“You are that bug.”
When Claire transferred her glare from Dixie to Adam, he shrugged. “You know, Claire, you can yell at us and keep going wherever you’re going at the same time. We’re headed to the Shearer’s homestead, right?”
Her frown disappeared. “Indeed I can. To the garage, then.”
“Come on, Adam.” This time Dixie walked beside him, taking his arm as if he were escorting her down the aisle. “Let’s whisper about Claire behind her back. That parka makes her look sooooooo fat.”
“Stop flirting,” Claire ordered over her shoulder.
“It’s what I do with tall, handsome blond men. You should try it sometime.” Dixie winked at him, but he sensed tension through the pressure of her arm as she tugged him forward. She was clearly pinning a brave front over a worrisome situation.
“Why did Ship want you to tell Claire about caves and rivers?” he asked her. It wasn’t easy for the two of them to keep up with Claire, but Dixie was surprisingly quick for someone whose head barely reached his shoulder.
Dixie kept her voice light, but her arm towed him along. “One of the theories is that being underground blocks the shades from sensors. Ship thinks she’s missing shade blotches since conserving fuel means she can’t maintain constant global monitoring. We disagree. We’re the eyes on the ground, and we never see anything but residue and bodies. Nothing in flyovers, nothing on patrols. There are just no shades out there.”
“Today was the first time you caught any shades in the act,” he said, piecing it together. “How did you find out the shades attacked this homestead?”
“A team visited the Shearers this afternoon on its rounds, collecting tariffs.”
“You charge people to protect them?” A quip bubbled up from his subconscious. “Nothing in this world’s more taxing than taxes.”
Dixie stifled a laugh. “You can say that again, Lassiter.”
“I did it again, didn’t I?” A few folks had pointed out his tendency to quote his own movies. Of all the things that had carried over from his first life, cheesy dialogue wouldn’t have been his pick.
“It’s cute,” Dixie said.
“Speaking of taxes,” Claire interrupted, “the outwallers supply certain goods and services we can’t get as easily in Camp Chanute. It’s barter more than tariffs.” She slowed enough that Dixie and Adam were able to draw abreast of her. “I think there are some psychotic humans going around killing people with shades to freak the rest of us out and turn us against the Shipborn. They’re probably from fucking Chicago. They’re driving everyone out of the buffer zone so they can scavenge it all themselves.”
“I don’t think the warlords would do that,” Dixie said. “They’re just as scared of the shades as everyone else.”
“How would someone transport the shades? Cullin said they can get out of any container,” Adam reminded her. “That would be a death wish.”
Claire snorted. “I didn’t say the psychos doing this were smart.”
They approached a large hangar bright with lights and activity. Several vehicles were parked outside. One, an older model sport car, had its headlights on and motor rumbling.
“Good, they got the Mustang out.” Claire waved at a man in a heavy coat and greasy pants before swinging into the car on the passenger’s side.
Dixie made no comment, just tilted the driver’s seat forward so Adam could slip into the rear bench. The backs of the seats had guns and ammo tucked into nets, a first aid kit, and water bottles. A long whip antenna curved over the car.
“Have them open the gate,” Claire said impatiently. “Dix, take this thing as fast as she’ll go.”
“Snow and ice on the road. You sure?”
“I need to be there yesterday. Don’t wreck.” Claire grabbed the hand strap, her sleeve scrunching back to reveal the blaster band Adam couldn’t remember seeing her without. At some point, she’d had the skin and blisters from the Riverbend melee healed.
“All right, then. Fast it is. You know I love my muscle cars.”
With a big, cheesy grin, Dixie flung it into gear, and they roared through of the gates of the compound. After they passed the razed area that surrounded Chanute, she opened it up. The speed of the car pressed Adam against the seat as they raced down the dark, deserted highway. The Mustang fishtailed on curves, wheels churning on snow, but not so much that Dixie slowed down.
They passed one vehicle in route, flashing headlights at each other. It wasn’t long before they skidded onto another road and into the countryside. They reached a farmhouse, pale and ghostly in the light of the nearly full moon. A barn behind the farmhouse lay quiet and dark, but inside the house, the lights were on. A smallish machine, perhaps a gene
rator, buzzed somewhere in the distance. Two farm trucks and a tricked out pickup with a laser rifle mounted in back filled the snowy drive.
They got out of the low-slung Mustang. This time Claire remembered him and held her seat out of his way. Her face had molded into that set and determined toughness she’d donned at Riverbend.
Adam gestured into the back. “I got a gun. Want me to get the first aid kit, too?”
“Doubt you’ll need either. We’re too late.” Claire inhaled deeply, looking in every direction.
Dixie’s sensor lit up, glinting on her blond curls. “Shade residue, just like they said. Fading fast. Are you going to put a sensor array on?”
“Not if I don’t have to. That’s why you’re here,” Claire answered. “Take me to the bodies.”
Dixie, in addition to her array, carried a walkie-talkie. She flicked it on. “Dix here. I got Claire. She wants to see. Whereabouts are you?”
A man’s voice came over the small speaker. “Behind the barn. Monica’s trying to calm down the horses. Looks like they tried to hide in the livestock or something.”
“No kids here, right?” Claire confirmed. “They weren’t fostering?”
“No, but they were on the list for two from Riverbend,” Dix told her.
Claire tramped through snow toward the barn. Adam’s neck prickled madly, like someone was watching him. Here, in this place, people had died. Entities had come and gone with no one the wiser.
Not even his padded jacket could keep out the lance of cold. Bright stars twinkled harshly above. He’d stashed the gun, a smaller handheld than he’d had at Riverbend, in one of the coat’s deep pockets, so he reached inside and wrapped his fingers around the chilly handle.
He didn’t squeeze it after what had happened with the desk.
“I smell ’em,” Claire growled.
Adam sniffed. The scent of corruption, like at Riverbend, came to him as well.
“No, hon, that’s pigs.” Dixie shifted to a businesslike demeanor, no longer holding onto Adam’s arm as if strolling down a sidewalk. “Trust the country girl on this one. They raised pigs here.”
“I know what they did here, and I know what I smell.” They reached the barn. One of the tall doors to the old wooden structure stood ajar, and they entered the darkness. “What do your sensors say?”
“Strong traces, nothing still here.” Dixie used her tablet to brighten their path again. “The entities are gone, like before. I’ll scout out the bits before they fade and show you on a terrain map after we see…what we came here to see. We can maybe figure out where all they slimed around, but I doubt it’ll tell us anything we don’t already know.”
“Look for tire tracks. People who might have been hauling a container full of shades. I don’t care what Cullin said,” Claire ordered. She abruptly swung her arm—not her gun arm. The slicing sound of metal on metal preceded the appearance of a thin rapier, as if it had ejected from her sleeve.
Dixie angled the tablet up, checking out the interior of the barn. The only thing above them was a high ceiling with hay sticking through slats; they must be under the hayloft.
“Where’d the sword come from?” Adam asked, hands in his pockets. The gun comforted him more than the warmth.
Claire glanced over her shoulder, the bouncing shadows from Dixie’s tablet giving her face a hollow appearance, like a stone carving. “Multipurp band. Can turn it into anything if you know the code.” She swished her new weapon across the hay-strewn floor. “You sure you want to see this? You could guard the vehicles. We have issues with dregs sometimes, and if they hotwire the Mustang, there’ll be no catching them. That mother is souped up like nobody’s business.”
“Will what I’m about to see be worse than Riverbend?” he asked dryly. Farming implements and tack hung neatly along the walls, and some of the stalls were occupied by restive horses. The temperature, with the livestock and the hay, increased noticeably. The smell of oats and pigs overcame all other odors.
“No.” She used the sword like a walking stick, though she didn’t need one, and headed for the back of the barn.
A cow lowed in the distance, deep and mournful. Adam’s skin tightened across his cheeks, down his arms, almost turning his fingers into claws. Was there such a thing as cow phobia? While he didn’t sense terror within himself, he did sense strain. A hunger almost. A craving for something to happen.
Anticipation, perhaps. It resembled the drive that had kept him running and leaping and dodging shades in Riverbend, hurling him farther than he’d expected to go. Since it felt like he’d been riding an adrenaline high since his memories began, he might never have realized he could feel normal if he hadn’t spent the rest of the day in his quarters, bored out of his mind.
What he felt now was absolutely different than bored out of his mind.
“The paddock’s back here.” Dixie unbarred the next set of doors. Adam scuffled his boots in near darkness, flexing his fingers to dispel the tension and tightness.
To his right, a black figure that was distinct from its surroundings caught his attention. He halted. Blinking several times, he angled his head to see if the light was just hitting something funny.
No. There was definitely something lurking there, in an empty stall.
“Hello?” Maybe it was an animal. A dog. A big, big dog he couldn’t actually see.
The women’s voices echoed oddly through the barn as they called out to someone named Bill. The noise hit his ears like he was holding seashells over them, and it was hard to hear over the rushing air.
“I’m going to check something out,” he tried to say, but the words froze in his throat.
Warning prickles pierced his neck and spine. He inhaled a sharp breath at the discomfort. They were icepicks, needles of cold fire. Gun extended, powerful adrenaline surging inside him, he fumbled the half-open stall door, finding the edge before Dix and her glowing tablet exited the barn.
Voices reverberated—not words, just sounds. One of the large back doors opened all the way. A huge bar of moonlight illuminated Adam’s position…along with the blob of endless night flickering gruesomely in the sawdust and hay at his feet.
He rubbed his eyes, but the shade didn’t disappear. It wasn’t a hallucination. He tried to call out, but it swelled like a water balloon and sucked him into the stall.
Everything went icy, cold, and black. His ears roared like they had when he’d stumbled into the shades in Riverbend.
Claire wasn’t here to shoot him free, and he tried to pull the gun’s trigger. The black oil swarmed him, and he leaped back.
The sensation of his head smacking the wooden wall was the last thing he remembered.
Chapter Eight
“Adam. Adam.” Fingers snapped in his face and Adam blinked. He focused on the woman in front of him. Claire.
He’d happily wake to her face anytime, scowling, smiling, or otherwise. But—why had he been asleep?
“What the hell are you doing, wandering around the farm? I don’t have time to be tracking you down.”
“Uh.” Adam was standing in a root cellar. Glass jars of preserves and vegetables lined the walls, and lumpy burlap sacks and boxes sat all over the floor. “Where is this?”
She drew away from him in sudden alarm. “Are you saying you don’t know where you are?”
The suspicion on her face had his tongue moving before he could stop it. “Yeah, I know where I am.” As he lied, it became true, and he guessed his location. Sort of. Things were muzzy. “I was poking around to see if we missed anything. Maybe there were survivors.”
“Poking around in the dark?”
“It’s not that dark.” A small window let in a bar of moonlight, like in the barn right before he’d seen… Hell, he didn’t remember everything. His head throbbed, and he wasn’t sure why.
No, wait. He’d tripped and run into the barn wall.
“It’s darker than it was,” Claire said.
“I guess I’m tired.” His face c
racked in a huge yawn, and Claire stared at him for a minute before cussing at him.
“Dammit.” She yawned, too. “I hate that.”
“What?”
“Catching a yawn. What happened to your head?” She touched his forehead, and he winced. “You’ve got a scrape.”
“I ran into a wall.” Like a massive dope. “You should see the other guy.”
“Guess what we did find while you were wandering around? Another pod.”
So he wasn’t unique. If this meant the pressure would be off him, he was all for it. “Who was in it? They okay?”
“Empty. Looked around for signs of life and couldn’t find anything but shade residue.”
Disappointed, he fingered his wound gingerly. “As in, shades were in the pod instead of a person?”
“No way to tell that, Adam. Not if we don’t see one crawling out of it, and nobody’s seen a single shade.” She frowned. “We just get to see the people they killed.”
He asked about her favorite theory. “What about tire tracks of people who might have transported shades here?”
She shook her head. “Hell, no. If somebody did that, they had an aircraft. Let’s get out of here before the scientists show up to fetch the pod. They’ll run tests on you all night if they get half a chance, and I’m ready for bed.”
“Me, too.” The thought of sleep was blissful. The thought of sleeping with Claire was even more blissful. “I got a bed last night, and you slept on the floor. I hope you don’t plan to do that tonight.”
“Don’t get any big ideas,” she said sternly. “I’m not in the mood.”
He raised an eyebrow, holding open the door of the root cellar. “Are you saying if you were in the mood, you’d—” He broke off, yawning.
“I’m not saying anything.” Her lips pinched together before she, too, yawned. “Apparently I can’t speak for yawning.”
The third time he made her yawn, Claire actually laughed. “Hold your breath or something. I can’t yawn and watch for daemons at the same time.”
On the way home, Adam crawled into the back of the Mustang, feeling like he’d been poured into the cushioned seat. The man who’d been at the farmhouse joined them for the short trip. The guy drove, Claire stared out the window—yawning occasionally—and the blond lady climbed into the back with Adam. There wasn’t much talking after what they’d seen.