Faded Flare

by L. B. Carter

  “Don’t move yet.” Buster. It was Buster. He wasn’t yelling but his tone had not returned to calm. It was even deeper and wound overly tight like a stripped screw.

  She needed to get up. Run. Henley forced a tiny inhale, as though through a straw rather than the full width of her esophagus, and seemed to seep out the word, “Safe?”

  “No.”

  Without ado, she was hefted and tossed over his shoulder fire-man style. He took off. If it wasn’t safe, she would have anticipated a run. In the case of the Bus, the loping stride made more sense. It also allowed her to, breath by breath, huff more oxygen into her system rather than being jostled around with pressure on her diaphragm. On the other hand, his shoulder was digging into the fresh glass wounds on her stomach.

  “Down,” she demanded, once she no longer felt lightheaded or like her chest was in a clamping vice.

  He dropped her unceremoniously and kept walking. She jogged to catch up as they neared the end of the building, closest to the main office.

  “Wait.” He held up a hand.

  She halted behind him while he peered around the building. “Can’t you use the cameras like you did in Faneuil?” Henley whispered, worrying her bottom lip and tugging at the flaps of fabric that had been ripped loose from her glove.

  “No,” he answered distractedly.

  Henley didn’t waste time asking why not. He wouldn’t answer even if they weren’t cowering in a dire situation. “Can you see them?” She pulled the mangled glove off her bad hand, leaving her modified one somewhat covered, and shifted pointer and middle finger to her throat, feeling her pulse crash through her jugular. Far too fast than should even be considered for cardio. Panic continued to throttle her body.

  “No.”

  “Then let’s make a run for it!”

  “No.”

  “The car. I can jump it again.” She started around Buster, only to have his arm slam her in her recently impaired chest, knocking an oomf from her.

  “We can’t use it.”

  She rolled her eyes. There was so much adrenaline whipping around her veins she felt like jumping up and down, while he methodically analyzed the parking lot. “I think they’ve already found us if you’re worried they’ll recognize it.”

  “It’s unavailable,” he bothered to explain, hurriedly.

  “Unavailable?”

  “This way.”

  He took off toward the foliage behind the motel.

  “Are they coming?” Buster didn’t answer, so Henley fell into step behind him.

  Every now and again, her head would crank over her shoulder involuntarily at every phantom noise and feeling of being watched that snagged her invigorated imagination. She quickly overpassed, the adrenaline powering a brisk walk, her arms swinging like a professional fast-walker, though she had to alter her rhythm once they began to detour over roots, around trees and under branches.

  The Bus, of course, bulldozed right through, carelessly kicking up dead leaves with a rustle and snapping twigs.

  “Do you do anything quietly?”

  “No.”

  She restrained the eye roll as she needed to keep her focus on the uneven ground. “They’re going to hear us.”

  “No.”

  “Don’t no me. Yes, they will.”

  “They’re gone.”

  Henley stopped. “What? They’re gone? Then why are you having us traipse around in the woods, might I ask?”

  “You may not. Keep moving.”

  She didn’t. He shouldered past her. “Why are we hiding if they’re not there? Wait. Where are Sirena and Jen?” Her voice rose at the end.

  He chuffed. “Now you notice? I thought you were perceptive.”

  She harrumphed. “I was a little distracted being shoved out a tiny window and falling on my ass and then being carried cave-man style and then—” Henley’s voice was becoming shrill. “—worrying about who was around the corner and running again into an unknown forest! Thank you very much.”

  “You are very welcome.”

  “For what?” she screeched.

  “Now who’s being loud? For rescuing you.”

  She seethed.

  A moment passed.

  “I didn’t know you were capable of swearing. I had categorized that as a Jen characteristic.”

  “If the situation calls for it,” Henley sniffed. It seemed like something he condemned as truly dirty or inappropriate, and she felt a little chagrin for disappointing him. She shook off the unwanted feeling.

  Henley surrendered and chased after him, not bothering to silence her steps. In fact, she stomped noisily, intentionally walking through twigs and piles of leaves. She swiped up a branch from the floor and vociferously snapped it. Bit. By. Bit.

  “Your point is acknowledged,” Buster intoned and said no more.

  “We should talk since silence is not enforced. In fact, now is an excellent time to answer my questions.”

  “No.”

  This was a good idea. Since the Bus was so monosyllabic, Henley just needed to phrase her questions as yes-or-no requiring. “What about questions regarding our current issues, like: Did they take Sirena and Jen?”

  “Yes and no.”

  So much for that being useful. “Which to which question? Yes, you’ll answer questions about our current issues, and no, they didn’t take them? Did they head this way, and we’re just catching up?”

  “No.”

  “To whi—?”

  “To both questions.”

  “Oh.” Henley dropped the remainder of stick, ruminating on their loss. “Are we still running?”

  “Yes and no.”

  She gave a scream of frustration. That certainly followed the rule of not-being-quiet. “That wasn’t even two questions! Two separate answers is non-sequential. Do you even know where we’re going?” Henley walked backward to study Buster’s face. It gave away nothing. He could be stationed in Faneuil hall and have people stare at him all day, and they’d be none the wiser that he wasn’t a statue …or an android for that matter. The street performers there had used about the same number of words to speak to her that Buster favored.

  “We are attempting to catch up if you stop diverting us.”

  “Diverting! I’m simply asking you to keep me apprised of our current goal. You are being diverting.” She jabbed a finger at him like a lance, and his eyes dropped to it for a moment. Hers followed.

  The tattered glove was showing glimpses of the material beneath.

  She crossed her arms, sliding it almost into her armpit with the force of her thrust, and swiveled back to the ostensibly random direction in which Buster was aiming.

  Suddenly, Buster detoured sharply to the left, nearly running her over. Henley quickly adjusted her path and paralleled his movement again. His head was tilted, squinting as though he could see something in the distance.

  “What?” She mimicked his pose. All she could see was earthy colors.

  “Shh.”

  “Oh, now I have to be quiet. You are the most infuriating, inconsistent hypo—”

  Stopping his march, Buster’s hand slapped over her mouth. She glared over his palm, but he wasn’t looking at her, his gaze on the trees ahead.

  Honestly, it looked the same as the rest of the forest they’d been stomping pointlessly through—pines, balding birches, the brightly-colored clinging leaves of maples fluttering. Henley tried to pinpoint what might be out of place.

  She peeled his hand off. “Gross. You haven’t washed these, remember? If I get some horrible virus from the T, I’m infecting you back.” The jibe was casual, but her pitch crept up, and she took a few deep breaths, stopping quickly when she began to hyperventilate.

  He didn’t respond, which wasn’t unusual. What did send Henley’s panic flaring was that with her breathing quiet again, she heard a far-off hiss. A snake away in the trees? More worrisome, Buster had broken into a jog again—toward the source. Multiple times in one day, he’d proven himself capable of ph
ysical exertion. He needed a medal.

  Crashing through the organic litter on the soil bed, it took Henley several minutes’ chase before she could truly distinguish the hiss. It wasn’t one belonging to a snake, as that would be limited by the animal’s lung capacity and thus more inconsistent than this one, and likely her movement toward it would incite the predator to switch tactics. This was an unending noise that increased in volume the closer they got like the whine of the tiny old radiator in the far corner of Henley’s lab.

  She had always thought that ironic in a laboratory boasting the most advanced technology—that in the treacherous northeast winter, the students had to hope their project required welding or a furnace in order to keep warm.

  She needed to ask Jen why the winters hadn’t stopped being so extreme, given the planet’s heightened global temperatures. Henley’s science knowledge was limited in terms of atmospheric and climatic feedback mechanisms.

  “Jen!”

  Buster’s frantic shout added a burst to Henley’s speed though her system was functioning on low oxygen levels with her incompetent panting. She should also get a medal. They could give one to each other.

  Clearing the trees, Henley burst onto the side of an empty road, the bright white of the coated tarmac blinding her. Henley raised her arm to shield her eyes, blinking quickly to try to adjust her pupils to the exposure. Where did the Bus go?

  “Henley.”

  She turned at his voice and blindly stumbled until she ran into something solid. It was too solid to be Buster. Her arm lowered warily, feeling it up, then prying her lids open in small degrees. Pressing into her stomach was the wing-mirror of their stolen car.

  The front was crumpled like a rejected blueprint against the trunk of a tree, the radiator hissing angrily at its fate, a plume of smoke with noxious fumes billowing up from under the hood.

  And to her right, Buster was leaned over the broken window of the driver door where a figure with long platinum hair was slumped, unmoving.

  ∆∆∆

  “Jen!” Henley also shouted as though the girl was simply ignoring Buster’s first call out of petulance. Henley darted next to Buster, pushing up against his side, trying to see Jen’s face.

  The airbag had gone off, at least, the deflated white fabric hiding Jen’s lap and legs. White powder coated much of the old dash. Jen’s head was dropped forward, and a few drops of red dotted the airbag beneath the curtain of hair.

  Henley slid her arms in the broken window next to his, uncaring when her forearm caught on more glass pricks—she would already have to see to her stomach wounds, and hers were likely pittances next to whatever injuries Jen had sustained in the crash. She gently slid her hands into the soft hair to cradle and lift Jen’s head.

  “Don’t.”

  “The head is the heaviest part of the body. If she sustained any neck torsion during impact, we need to stabilize her spine.”

  “Yeah, but moving her might misalign something broken.”

  Henley resisted her need to see and instead moved to his other side, grasping the door handle.

  “It’s jammed,” he informed her unnecessarily as she jerked, using all her body weight while the door remained resolutely in place.

  “Is she even breathing?” Henley demanded, wildly.

  “Yes.” He hunched further, his shoulders moving under his clothes with his ministrations, whatever they were.

  Henley’s good hand went to her hair and began twisting as she paced back and forth behind Buster. She couldn’t see what he was doing around his bulk. He really was a massive guy for never eating much nor going to the gym—that she knew of. Henley could not really refute that one without having been present to confirm. “What are you doing? We need to get her out of there.”

  Henley took her antsy legs over to the front of the car, inspecting what she could see of the engine from under the folded hood. The hissing continued, reminding her of the times she listened to rain or waterfall recordings through her headphones while working to drown out the goofing off of her peers on Friday afternoons when their attention flagged. Weekends were her favorite time to get work done as most traipsed off to the indoor pool or cafeteria or crowded in someone’s dorm room with drinks and video games altered to be nearly impossible to beat by the computer fanatics—the Bus’s lab-mates.

  Henley experienced a Eureka moment except this one came with a slash of dread. She dodged around Buster to the back door and dropped down to look under the car, wincing when her wounds met the pavement. “I can’t tell if the gas line has been punctured.” She wedged a little further underneath, hoping her sight would acclimate to the darkness better. “I—”

  Buster gave Henley an almighty kick to the ribs.

  She yelped in pain and rolled away instinctively, further under the chassis. “Hey! What the—”

  “Shh.”

  Henley’s temper shot up, matching the heat radiating off the car’s undercarriage.

  “Stay hidden,” Buster whispered, his ‘s’ sliding neatly off the destroyed vehicle’s whistle.

  There was grunting, and Henley twisted her head around to watch the Bus’s big boots clomp around the car. Why wasn’t he hiding? Jen’s pair of jeans-clad legs appeared in view, dropping with a clap of soles to the ground from the car window above Henley’s hiding spot. They began to drag around the front of the car, Buster’s feet preceding them as he pulled her limp body backward with him. She thought he said not to move her. Where was he taki—?

  “Hey!”

  Henley froze in her shuffle toward the light. Though male, that voice wasn’t Buster’s. It was missing his distinctive deep gruffness, not rumbling through her chest like his did.

  “Stop!”

  ∆∆∆

  Henley slithered into the dark, away from the voice. She wiggled, shuffling her prone form sideways, away from the road, toward the grass at the other edge of the car and the woods beyond, in the direction he’d carted Jen.

  Crashing sounded in the woods behind her. Buster was running without her? No; the volume was increasing, heading toward their car.

  “Oi! Don’t move.”

  The crinkling and smashing of forest debris was replaced with heavy breathing.

  A second male? She squeezed her eyes shut. Two on two, with Jen excluded, and they were surrounded. Jen had almost gotten away. They’d almost gotten away. The second newcomer had come through the woods on the other side of the car, trapping Henley between. He had chased them through their shortcut or long-cut, whichever Buster had intended. Henley felt momentarily righteous for trying to be stealthy.

  “We’re friends, you dumbass!” the second voice called.

  Buster was anything except dumb. The insult would just roll off his hard exterior anyway.

  Something hot dripped onto Henley’s shoulder blade and she swallowed a cry.

  A moment later, a pair of shoes beneath jeans appeared next to her head. They were closing in. She halted her breath though the hiss was probably loud enough to mask that noise.

  “Buster, stop!”

  Henley had no idea if Buster followed the order, but she certainly froze at the identity of a third person. Her breath recommenced with a rush. The noisome aroma of gasoline filled her nostrils. The car was leaking as she’d ruefully anticipated.

  “You’re going to hurt her more. We can talk. Just stop.” Henley assumed Buster finally did because Sirena added, “Thank you.”

  One of the guys chuckled. “You begging people to talk is pretty ironic, Rena.”

  Even without the statement proving that they were familiar with Sirena, Henley felt a little kinship at his use of the word ironic.

  Then again, there was a probability Sirena knew them from BTI, and she was being threatened into drawing out her fellow escapees. Henley halted her scuffle toward the road, distressed and indecisive, frustrated tears clogging the back of her throat. She was going to get rub-marks on top of her stab wounds if she didn’t make up her mind, but there was
no clear correct answer.

  “Are they with BTI?”

  Henley kept her gaze on the unknown feet that took a step back, affording her a broader view of jeans-clad shins. The guy was tall though, granted, her angle was skewed. Buster would be a skyscraper from her point of view.

  “No, we’re not with BTI,” the first one said in soothing tones.

  “I’m not asking you.” It was a rare experience when Buster’s poor interpersonal skills were justified.

  “No, they’re not with BTI,” Sirena repeated.

  “Who are they? Why are they chasing us?” Buster was almost in Henley’s brain.

  That was useful as hers was starting to fade in and out a bit. Was she bleeding more than she thought? It was reasonable that she would feel the pain more as her adrenaline faded. Hypothetically, the shock of the drama might also be catching up to her senses.

  “They’re not chasing us. Well, only by consequence. They were chasing me.”

  “But they’re not from BTI.” His voice was flat.

  “No.”

  “Who else would be chasing you?” He demanded when she paused.

  “Look, they’re not BTI, so they’re not a threat. They don’t even want you, so they’re super not a threat to you. Can we focus on getting Jen help first, and we can talk later?”

  There was a heavy pause. Henley listened to the car wail airily, and to her inhales and a soft drip, drip, drip. The gas line.

  Henley finally threw out her other hypotheses, deducing it was the odor that was making her feel weak and faint. She could no longer wait for Buster to decide whether to stay or flee. She had no choice but to trust Sirena even though she was semi-human and had grown up in a lab—even if they weren’t BTI; Sirena’s intuition was undoubtedly impaired.

  She rolled, choosing to avoid sliding further on her tender skin through the thin, borrowed sweatshirt, popping up right next to Buster, facing the first theoretical non-enemy in jeans next to Sirena, then twisting sideways to catch the second guy, standing on the edge of the woods, in her periphery as well.