Then suddenly Luke started to twitch, one arm spasming erratically.
“Oh no,” he chirped. He said it so quietly, Laura shouldn't have been able to hear, but she halted and looked back. Nox caught their exchange, the look of embarrassment and shame on the boy's face, the look of worry and exasperation on the girl's. It seemed that both of them said silently: Not again.
By the time Nox caught up, Luke was shaking violently and starting to panic. He took sharp, shallow breaths, and his face was flushed. It seemed like he was trying to fight through, to take another step forward, but his body was fighting back.
Laura raced back just in time to catch her brother as he fell. His arms flailed about madly, his legs kicking against the air. He looked in every direction, avoiding eye contact, until he caught the Coilhunter's gaze and seemed to grow afraid.
“It's okay,” Nox said, attempting to be comforting, but the mask muffled his voice, and the grit in his throat made it come out coarse. He knew it was not okay, but not for the reason Laura thought.
It passed just as quickly as it came, quicker than most times, from the surprise and relief on Laura's face. But the boy was exhausted, barely able to sit, let alone walk to the Rust Valley.
“I'm sorry,” he murmured, again avoiding eye contact with his sister.
She bit her lip. She should've said it was fine, but it wasn't. He was holding her back, slowing her down. She clearly didn't want to say it, and didn't want to feel it either. How many times was this now? How many days had his seizures delayed their journey?
“We can wait a little longer,” Nox suggested. “I'll stay a little longer.”
Laura nodded, then stood up. She looked around, grasping the back of her neck, where her hair was matted with sweat. She stared at the dark mountain of metal in the distance. She took long, deep breaths for Luke's short, shallow ones.
“I'll … I'll just scout ahead a bit,” she said, almost choking on the words.
Luke looked up, but only saw the back of her. “But come back,” he said.
Laura walked off slowly. “Yeah.” She dropped her bag off as she went, her silent promise that she'd return.
Then it was just the boy and Nox. The kid slouched down, hanging his head.
“Well, now,” Nox said. “Isn't this a pickle?”
Luke glanced up at him, but found it hard to keep his gaze. “What?”
“How often does this happen? The seizures.”
“I … I don't know.”
“You're pretty good at it,” Nox said.
The boy's eyes widened.
“And I know why you do it.”
Luke's eyes widened further.
“But you shouldn't lie to your sister,” Nox added.
“I … I … uh—”
“It's okay. I won't tell her. But you should.”
Luke hid his head away again. “I only did it to stop her going west.”
“I know.”
“I didn't think she'd keep tryin'.”
“I know.”
“Or that I'd have to keep doin' it.”
“She's worried about you. And she'll find out eventually. What'll you do then?”
The boy shrugged. “I hadn't thought that far ahead.”
“She might be the only family you've got left.”
“But that's why I don't want us to go in there!”
“I know.”
“Can't you do somethin'?”
“I'm not sure I can. Why, I can't exactly take you hostage.”
“Can't you?”
“Haven't you had enough of slavers?”
Luke shrugged again. He placed his chin on his knee and sighed audibly.
“I didn't mean to lie to her,” he said, pouting. He looked at Nox. “Honest.”
“Well, there's what you mean, and there's what you do.”
“I guess.”
“I don't guess,” Nox said. “I know.”
16 – GOOD OLD HONESTY
The day broadened, but the sun kept its uncharacteristic restraint, saving its scalding rays for someone else. When Laura returned, a little refreshed, Luke almost seemed like he'd have another seizure. But this time he shook a little because he was nervous, because he was afraid.
“Are you okay?” Laura asked, fresh worry filling her face.
“Yeah. It's just ...” The boy looked at Nox, then looked away to the sightless sand.
“It's just what?”
“I need to … I need to tell you somethin'.”
“Okay.”
“Will you promise you won't be mad?”
Laura stared at him for a moment. “I promise.”
“Pinky swear?”
“Just tell me, Luke.”
“I might've been … I might've been ...”
“You might've been what?”
Luke grasped his hair, almost pulling it from the roots. “Lyin',” he murmured. He flinched, as if he expected a smack.
Laura took a slight step back. “What were you lyin' about?”
“Please don't make me say it.”
“Say it, Luke. What were you lyin' about?”
“I didn't want to,” he said. “I didn't mean to.”
“Luke.”
“Don't be angry with me, sis,” he pleaded. “Please.”
“Luke!”
“The seizures,” he croaked.
Laura shook her head. Her brow furrowed. “I don't understand.”
A tear rolled down Luke's cheek. “I was … I was fakin' it.” He bit his lip, but still it trembled.
Laura took another step back, a bigger one this time. “No.”
“I didn't want you to go,” Luke cried.
“No,” Laura said again, shaking her head in large, slow motions.
“I didn't mean for it to get outta hand.”
Another step back. “No.”
Luke stepped forward. “Please, sis. I wasn't thinkin'. I just … please, sis.”
It was painful for Nox to watch, but he knew that lies like this didn't do any good. In the Wild North, they were as plentiful as the sand itself. You couldn't take a step without bumping into one.
“All this time,” Laura said, running her fingers through her hair. She turned away, glancing in all directions, except back at her brother. She stopped to look at the Rust Valley in the distance, then turned back to Luke. “We coulda been there!” she shouted. “We coulda been there already!”
“I know,” Luke said, trotting forward. “I didn't want us to go.”
“You coulda just said that, Luke.” She backed away again.
“I did say it. You didn't listen.”
“You might've killed them, Luke.”
He halted, his breath jittering. “Don't say that.”
“All this time you were lyin', stoppin' us from goin'.”
“I didn't mean to do it,” Luke whimpered.
“If they're dead, it's because of you!”
“No,” he pleaded.
“It was months, Luke.”
He looked to the sand.
“You lied to me for months!”
“I only meant for it to—”
“You made me think you were sick, Luke.”
“I only hoped we—”
“No, Luke. No. I don't want any more of your lies.”
“I'm not lyin' now!”
She was about to respond, but cut herself short, and then turned away. She walked off.
“No, sis,” Luke cried, running after her. He grabbed at her arm, but she shrugged him off.
“Go away!” she screamed.
“I'm sorry, sis!” he bellowed, the tears flooding his face. “Please don't go.” He pawed at her, but she pushed him back. He stumbled after her again, slipping as he went. She shoved him harder, until he was left splayed in the sand. He got up, but Nox held him back.
“Let her go,” he said. “Let her cool off.”
The boy turned to him. “This is your fault!” he shouted.
Nox si
ghed.
“You told me to tell her!” Luke came at him, hammering his fists on Nox's chest. “You made me tell her. You made me.” He kicked at Nox's shins, but Nox just stood there, taking the beating.
All the while, that seemingly sympathetic sun was growing a little fiercer, smiling a little broader. Sometimes the land didn't have to get you. You got yourself.
17 – LETTIN' THE MOMENT PASS
Luke sat with his back against the monowheel, cross-armed and scowling. Nox sat farther away. He knew he had to give the boy some space to cool off as much as the boy needed to do the same for his sister. No one was happy. He would've liked to have said that was the product of a lie, but he kind of felt maybe it was from the truth.
“I'm sorry it worked out that way,” Nox said.
Luke responded with a glare.
“I'm sure it'll be fine,” Nox added. He hoped that wouldn't turn out to be another lie.
Luke's face shifted between anger, sorrow, and guilt.
“She'll be back in—”
“I'm not talkin' to you,” Luke said.
“Fair enough.”
“You made everything worse.”
That was the problem with the truth. It might've been the right thing to do, but sometimes a lie helped more. Some of the best lies were the ones you told yourself. If you spent too much time dwelling on the truth in Altadas, you'd go mad. There were many walking testaments to that.
“I meant to make it better,” Nox said.
Luke looked at him. “Yeah, well, there's what you mean and what you do.”
If this were a gunfight, that'd be a killing shot. Then again, sometimes the gun backfired, so you had to be careful what you loaded it with. That kid had filled a whole six-shooter full of lies. It was only a matter of time before someone got hurt.
Nox said nothing. He let the kid have that little win. He needed it, though it didn't do much to make up for that big loss. Nox couldn't count the amount of times he had to indulge one of his own kids after they'd falling out. Siblings had a way of loving and hating each other with equal force. Sometimes it took a few hours to change, or a few days. Then everything'd be back to normal—until the next swing of the pendulum.
But not this.
It took a while for either of them to notice, and it was the boy who spotted it first.
“Her bag,” he said.
“Hmm?”
“Her bag!”
Nox looked around. He didn't see it anywhere. That was the problem.
Luke jumped up in a panic. “She took her bag!”
“Relax, boy. She probably just—”
“We have to find her.”
By now, Nox was telling little lies of his own, mostly to himself. She's probably just scouting ahead. She's probably just taking some time away. She's probably just waiting for the anger and hurt to pass.
But the spectre of truth suggested an alternative: She's probably just not coming back.
18 – THE SEARCH
They wandered out a bit, following the faint trail of Laura's footsteps, but by the time they got a few yards out, the wind was already conspiring against them. It hid her prints and left little decoys in other places, until Nox and Luke were walking in circles.
“We need to find her,” Luke said, placing his hand on Nox's forearm. He no longer sounded angry. That pendulum had swung again, and now it was at worry.
“We'll find her,” Nox promised, and hated making a promise of it at all. They might find her dead, and it'd still be a promise fulfilled, by letter if not by spirit.
They used the monowheel now, circling the area in ever larger rings. The wind tossed the sand more violently, enough for Nox to don a pair of goggles and give Luke another set. When he heard the boy cough and gag on the desert's debris, he offered him his neckerchief, which the boy tied around his mouth.
Another circle, another empty stretch of land, and another bout of worry. As the sandstorm rose, so too did their concern. Laura was out there, caught in it somewhere, assuming she hadn't already walked off too far. In one way they hoped she hadn't, and in another they hoped she had.
The dunes shifted, and the monowheel plummeted down new drops and climbed up new slopes. The land was playing with them. Nox knew what the tribes would have said about this, that he'd made the land angry, and was paying the price. He needed to make a blood sacrifice. But the land was always angry. And if it needed sacrifices, well, you'd think all those bodies he racked up would count.
The search was fruitless, right up until the point when they came under the shadow of the Rust Valley, where even the sun abandoned its torment. Through the periodic gaps in the shifting walls of sand, they could see the entrance to that horrid place.
Nox parked the monowheel, but kept the engine running. He hoped the hum of it wouldn't lure out more of those metal-hungry clockwork constructs.
“Did she go in?” Luke asked timidly.
Nox scoured the path ahead. It was faint, but he could see footprints. They weren't his, and they weren't Strawman Sanders'. They were a little smaller. Female.
Nox kept his poker face, trying hard not to shake his head or give away any other tell. He'd learned how to do that well when facing down the hunted. He never quite thought he'd be doing this different kind of hunt. The problem was: the prey was likely already dead.
“No,” Nox said eventually, hoping he hadn't waited too long. It was a lie, a big, black lie, but the truth had allied with the land. It was an enemy now as well.
“Are you sure?” the boy asked. He lifted his goggles and stared into the shadows cast by the carcasses of trucks and landships.
“She's not in there,” Nox said, telling himself he meant: She's in Heaven, boy, if there's any space in Heaven for the likes of us. He always thought he'd go there guns blazing. But now that he was filling his own six-shooter full of lies, he'd probably have to settle for Hell.
19 – DAMNED IF YOU DO
“I think she might've went this way,” Nox suggested, taking them eastward, away from that wretched scrapyard jungle where Laura had disappeared. He knew the boy must've thought he was lying, but maybe he wanted to accept the lie. It was better than the truth.
They passed through the sandstorm again, and out into an open stretch of land. The sun had spent the hours gloating, but now it sank in the west, like a beacon over that silhouette of jagged metal towers.
“It's my fault,” Luke said, clinging on behind him.
In a way, it was. In another way, it was Nox's fault. In yet another, it was Laura's. There was no end to the blame. You could deal it out like cards. Everyone came away with a full hand.
Nox couldn't help but feel that the boy clung on a little tighter than before. If Laura was gone, then he had no one left. That was it. The Rust Valley had claimed them all. It'd saved nothing for the maw of the desert.
Nox had no answers for this. He couldn't shoot his way through this problem. He couldn't bash it up like he'd do with some tight-lipped criminal. This was all outside his jurisdiction. He'd left behind the days of being a parent years before, though he hadn't done it willingly. Now the desert gave him another girl and boy, and here it was again, taking them away.
He couldn't let it take both of them.
He drove back to his hideout, his hidden bunker in the plateaus. They travelled through a maze of passages between the granite cliffs, some open, but many barely wide enough for the monowheel to whiz through. When they arrived at the steel door that led into Nox's abode—which was more of a workshop than a home—the boy was asleep in the back.
Good, Nox thought. Hopefully it's better there, wherever you're dreamin'. Nox knew it wasn't for him. Even after he'd caught the killers of his family, the nightmares kept on coming. He only got a night of rest when he gunned down the terrors of the day.
Nox tried to open the door quietly, but it clanged and screeched. The boy woke, looking around groggily.
“Where are we?”
“Home,” Nox said, t
hough he knew it was not the boy's home. That kid didn't have one.
Luke stretched his arms and jumped out of the back.
Nox turned back to the door, which chugged slowly open.
“We'll rest here tonight,” he said. “I'll work up some new trackers and we can search again in the—”
He heard the monowheel engine fire up. He turned, seeing the boy at the wheel. Luke revved, kicking up a plume of dust.
“I have to find her,” Luke said, his face full of apologies.
Nox made a dash towards him, but the monowheel sprang away. It rocked uneasily under the boy's control, but the Coilhunter couldn't catch it on foot. He aimed his grappling hook, but knew it wouldn't reach. He tapped at his wristpad, but knew it didn't work if the vehicle was being controlled manually. He watched helplessly as Luke disappeared around a bend, as the desert opened up for a second bite.
20 – A FAVOUR
Nox raced into his workshop, firing the lights on and shoving open doors. He fumbled through chests of belongings and piles of equipment. The place was a mess, but then he rarely spent time there. That was just where he regrouped, where he took a glance at the toys he once made for his children, and where he made new ones to take down criminals.
He found a makeshift radio. This was one of the few places in Altadas where the Regime wasn't listening in on your calls, but it was also one of the worst places to get a signal. The desert ate that too.
He adjusted the dial, changing one channel of static to another just as bad. You couldn't even pick up the Regime's propaganda broadcasts. You'd have a better chance of getting some of the illegal music stations run by the gangs, though only when close to one of their dens.
Nox tried to amplify the reach, running all manner of wires together, flinching from the shock. The faint electric lights in his bunker flickered momentarily. People'd kill for that kind of technology, and often had. That's why he had to take a leaf out of the criminals' book and hide away.
Rustkiller - A Science Fiction Western Adventure (The Coilhunter Chronicles Book 2) Page 6