Sunny with a Chance of Monsters: An Urban Fantasy Action Adventure (Sunny Day, Paranormal Badass)

by Marlow, Shaye

  Working on the wall paid ten cents a ton for moving the blocks from the rail to the seawall using the resonance remote. It was better pay than most projects, because the seawall blocks were larger than most edifice blocks, so she could make more per trip. She was actually bringing home a hundred and twenty bucks a day lately, even on days she started with a bad resonance unit.

  Sunny went back inside, leaving her airhorn by the front door. She got dressed in her dirty overalls from yesterday, tugged on her old leather shoes covered in powdered gray rock dust, and dragged a comb through her dirty, beer-stained black hair. Thanks to Marie the Chronic Window Burglar, she didn’t have time to shower. The Dome Commission contractors always started work promptly at seven in the morning in the all-day light of summer, and if people didn’t show up on time, other blockkers happily took their place—there was literally no end to the people needing work, and whole days sometimes went by when Sunny didn’t get to the work lines fast enough and wasn’t in the first wave of hires.

  After that morning’s hires were picked and the resonance devices were all passed out, the only way more blockkers got hired during the day was if other ones died or went to the hospital, but a lot stayed in the lines anyway, on the off-chance they could take someone’s place.

  Sunny usually allotted herself five minutes in the bathroom, and she was already two minutes behind, so she skipped it—she figured she could pee on break. She threw her old denim coat over her shoulders, grabbed her keys, and headed to her old blue Ford pickup on the curb.

  She got in, buckled up, and put her key in the ignition.

  Please don’t be a hairy Chinese buttplug today, Bertha, she prayed, as the diesel’s glow plugs warmed. Once the light went out, she turned the key.

  Bertha choked, sputtered, and died. Cursing, Sunny turned the key in the ignition again. She got three full turns before it died again.

  “Rusty piece of shit!” she yelled, pumping the gas and trying again. She needed to get to work today. Even if she counted out every cent in her change dish, she only had four hundred and eighty bucks for rent, a hundred and twenty dollars short, and her landlord—who was a number-worshipping accountant asshole—was always looking for reasons to kick people out because there was no shortage of desperate blockkers willing to pay twelve hundred bucks a month for a place to sleep.

  The truck engine rolled over and sputtered out. “Fuck!” Sunny slammed her hand against the steering wheel. “Bertha, I’m gonna tear you apart and sell you to Tommy for parts!”

  “Quiet out there!” Janelle shouted at her over shrieking heavy metal.

  Even though her first impulse was to go upstairs, kick the woman’s door in, and dump her cheap beer on her stereo, Sunny held her temper in check. She dialed up Tommy, whom she just happened to know was awake.

  “Yeah?” Tommy asked. “What you want?”

  “Hey, this is Sunny at Gruening Circle, just down the road. Can you get over here and give me a jump?”

  “Usual’s thirty-five, but I was in bed. Gonna be extra.”

  The usual was not thirty-five, it was twenty. Sunny suppressed a little surge of rage at his lie and fought down the impulse to tell him she knew he wasn’t in bed because she’d just seen him prying at her window and she might as well just press charges, since she knew he wouldn’t remember it anyway. “Dude, I got rent in six days. Twenty’s all I can spare.”

  “Make it forty and we’ll be in business.” Meaning, of course, that he was out of drugs, which would have been the same reason he had shown up for her early-morning Pry-A-Thon.

  “Goddamn it,” Sunny said, taking a deep breath to keep from screaming. She couldn’t afford a floater—or the liability coverage that came with it—so the trip alone was gonna cost her forty bucks in diesel, putting her down eighty before she even started making money for the day.

  Living this far from the Dome, however, she didn’t have a choice—private floaters were expensive, and the free ones given by the Republic to any Desirable family who wanted them weren’t allowed out of the Dome. Even privately-owned floaters were banned from leaving the Dome system unless their owner bought prohibitively expensive replacement insurance…or signed an exemption bond. The bond that said that, should the vehicle or its bankstone mechanism ever fail to appear for parole inspections, five million dollars of the owner’s assets would be forfeit to the state until the stone-of-record was returned to the authorities. And, if the five million penalty couldn’t be paid—either by insurance or one’s own estate—then the price was extracted in labor, instead.

  Sunny, like every other Alaskan who had lived through Independence, knew it was the cost of keeping such a tiny new country independent and autonomous. Outside governments, especially Canada, Russia, and the Continental Federation, had infiltrated the Icebox—the rest of Alaska outside the Domes—almost as soon as Banks released the bankstone technologies. Even the USA, what little Sunny remembered about it, had smashed itself to pieces on the rock that was Governor Edward Banks, back when the U.S. was trying keep Alaska from seceding from the Union and Governor Banks had nothing but fifteen million people and his bankstone advancements to fight them off.

  But he’d won , and now outside governments were scrambling to acquire those same secrets and technologies. And since foreign agents were always on the lookout for unattended bankstone vehicles, a good portion of the people up North in the Pit were otherwise innocent family men who had lost one of Banks’ vehicles. Same for a lot of the women who made the cut to join the Department of Public Relations. Most were there of their free will and choosing, but a few of the unlucky fools who had lost a floater outdome were working off the debt of misplacing a bankstone on their backs, entertaining Desirables and other patrons with their ‘charm’ and ‘personality’…and anything else their clients found attractive.

  Needless to say, most Domers didn’t leave the Dome with their vehicles, even if they owned them.

  Sunny, who after her fiasco with Dena’ina South had lost her Necessary status and was now a run-of-the-mill Ordinary, got stuck with the shit vehicles, just like she got stuck with the shit jobs. If she kept missing the lines, she was gonna be labeled an Unnecessary B—unreliable—and not even the Dome Commission would hire her after that. Unnecessary A was crippled, maimed, or in some other way disabled and needing government assistance, and they got a stipend and a place to live. Unnecessary B was just plain unwanted and unhirable, usually due to behavioral problems, and they ended up begging on the streets for cash, leaving the Dome to try and make money in the Icebox, or killing themselves.

  She was pretty sure that Tommy was born an Unnecessary B, though. He was probably snorting coke right out of the womb.

  “I got a business to run,” Tommy complained over the phone, one of his favorite lines. “I gotta make money for winter.”

  “Whatever, Tommy,” she managed against the wheel. “I’ll pay. Just get here.”

  Then, dejected and hungry, Sunny got out and propped up the rusty hood of the massive F-350. If she didn’t catch some sort of break, this was going to be the third time she missed the lines in the last two weeks, and all three had happened because of her damned truck.

  Further, blockkers were supposed to show up to the lines and check in at least five days every week, regardless of whether they got picked for a crew that day. Ordinaries who signed up for the Dome Commission projects and didn’t make those benchmarks each week got five strikes in five years before they got blacklisted to Unnecessary B status. Bertha’s tantrums had already made her miss another week this month, bringing it to three strikes in two years, which was bringing her ever closer to a reduction in status. Sunny was trying not to let that knowledge eat a hole in her stomach—it would probably be worth it for her to quit the projects and find work elsewhere rather than get labeled a U/B.

  Tommy got there in under seven minutes, but that was more due to the fact his truck—which he always parked just around the corner for a quick getaway while Marie
jimmied open Sunny’s apartment—was still in the area than to the idea he was rushing because he knew how badly she needed to get to her job at Seawall Project West. As it was, she was dreading the growing prospect that she was going to be late. After all, the drive took somewhere between one and two hours on a good day. On a bad day, if the earthquake-cracked roads had muddied up in the rain or another tree had fallen over the abandoned highway, it could be as much as three.

  When Tommy’s dirty red Chevy finally appeared in the Gruening Circle cul-de-sac, Sunny was already fifteen minutes late to get on the overgrown Parks Highway headed to the Dome, and it was with a sinking feeling that she realized she probably wouldn’t be in the first wave of hires this morning.

  As he pulled up, Tommy rolled down his window, leaning forward far enough for her to see that his front seat covers were lewd depictions of reclining naked women. “Oh lookie, you’re actually here this time.”

  “Just jump my car, Tommy,” she said. “I’m gonna be late for the lineup.”

  “I don’t know why you think you know me,” Tommy growled, “but I don’t work for free.” He held out his hand through the window. He hadn’t even gotten out of his truck yet.

  “Oh come on,” Sunny muttered. “I always pay up.”

  Tommy snorted. “What are you, drunk? You keep calling, but you never show up. This is the first time I’ve ever seen your face, let alone gave you a jump.”

  In truth, he’d given her at least fifty of them. Tommy, however, had already turned away to change his radio station, forgotten she was there, and was putting his truck into reverse.

  “I need a jump!” Sunny cried, running up and slapping a hand to his window, startling him. “You can do a jump, right?”

  “Who are you again?” He looked at her like she was thinking of robbing him. His hand was inching for something hidden under the passenger seat.

  “I called you, remember?”

  Immediately, his face darkened. “You’re that Sunny bitch. You like pranks in the morning? I got a twelve-gauge in my cab—see how much you like it shoved up your ass for waking me up.”

  Desperate, now—especially since she’d had this conversation a dozen times before—Sunny said, “I’m here now, there’s my truck, you need the money, just jump my truck.”

  He gave her a suspicious look. “Lemme see the cash first. I don’t work for free.”

  “Fine!” Sunny yanked her wallet out, pulled out a twenty with Edward Banks’s face on it, and slapped it on his hood. “Second half when my fucking truck starts.” She didn’t have time for this. It was already 5:15. If she didn’t make it to the transport depot in the North Dome by 6:45, she would miss the lines altogether, and she’d get that black mark on her record she was dreading.

  “Let me see it first,” Tommy insisted, ever the weasel.

  Sunny showed him the second twenty, hidden in her wallet. It had a picture of the little private airfield where the first bankstone had been found, on the Yentna River out near Skwentna. That area was now under a Dome of its own, which they kept sub-tropical for year-round mining operations.

  Grunting, Tommy got out of his truck, snatched the twenty off his hood, took the time to flex his tattooed shoulders, then located his jumper cables under the passenger seat. Sunny made sure to stay within sight, strategically placing herself in his field-of-vision at all times. She’d learned the hard way that Tommy would stop a jump, mid-jump, and demand she pay again to ‘secure his time,’ and no amount of telling him to check the extra twenty in his wallet would convince him she’d already paid.

  As Bertha started to charge, Tommy idly dug three empty titanium beer cans from his truck cab and tossed them on the pavement, the discarded containers making a tinkle as they hit the cracked asphalt. Titanium was one of the most preferred elements that the Conversion Department made with bankstone, relying on it for most of the building materials and non-corrosives now that the Gaudy Age had passed and nobody actually wanted to live in gold houses or wear platinum clothing anymore.

  Still, they were supposed to recycle them, and each can was worth twenty cents to save the Conversion Department the time of making more. Sunny bent down and grabbed the cans and started to throw them in the bed of her truck.

  Tommy saw her do it. “Hey, what are you doing with those?”

  Sunny prickled. “You threw them on the ground—what do you care?”

  He had that weasel look again. “Those are worth money. You gonna pay me for those?”

  Sunny resisted the urge to haul off and punch him, partly because she knew Tommy was a scrapper, had a reputation of beating up girls, and was a drug dealer who carried a Glock. Mainly, though, because she couldn’t afford another trip to the ER if she broke her knuckles again busting up his rodent face.

  Through gritted teeth, Sunny said, “It’s just sixty cents.”

  “Oh yeah? Then you can tack that on to your bill. You got sixty cents?”

  For a crazy moment, Sunny just stared at him, caught between devastation and humiliation because, in all honesty, no, she didn’t have sixty goddamn cents, and she was reduced to arguing about who gets to recycle a couple cans with the living stereotype of White Trash.

  “Didn’t think so.” Tommy reached into the bed of her truck and retrieved his discards, which he threw back into the cab of his Chevy. “Fuckin’ keep your hands to yourself or I’ll call the cops on you for bein’ a thief.” He punctuated that by lighting a cigarette and blowing the smoke off to one side as he glowered at her, his truck purring like a kitten as it recharged her battery. “Who the fuck are you, anyway? You live here?”

  “Yeah,” Sunny managed.

  “Where? I never seen you before.” Like she was fucking lying to him.

  In silence, Sunny went to her truck and tried the engine. It took.

  Tommy followed her, squinting at her through the open door, now. “Hey, you ain’t here to rob this place, are you?”

  The ridiculousness of that statement made Sunny lose what little control she’d maintained over these last three years of misery. She laughed and shook her head, but tears were coming down her cheeks, unwanted. She got out of the truck, removed the jumper cables, and lowered the hood.

  “You are, aren’t you?!” Tommy shouted, hovering. “Fuck it—I knew it. You listen here. I take care of these people. This is my turf. My people. You fucking keep your distance, skank.”

  Sunny yanked the twenty from her wallet and shoved it at him.

  “Yeah, fuck you and your money. Don’t call again. I got principles—I ain’t dealin’ with criminals.”

  Sunny didn’t wait to see if he took the money or threw it on the ground. She got into the cab of her truck and slammed it shut, then put it into gear and hit the gas. She drove until she was out of sight, then stopped and lowered her head to the steering wheel and cried. Blue Bertha seemed to cradle her as she let it out, like an apologetic aunt that couldn’t help being crippled, one that hated that people had to take care of her, but needed it anyway.

  A call on her cell phone brought her out of her pity-fest. She wiped her face across her sleeve and picked up the phone. It was Tommy.

  “Hey, I’m here at your place and you’re nowhere in sight. You want a goddamn jump or not?”

  Sunny ended the call. Usually she would make excuses or say that her truck started by magic, but today she just didn’t give a shit. She still needed to get to the Dome by 6:45 or she was going to have to wait for the second western rail at 7:00, which was the cutoff time for getting into the lines.

  She popped her truck into gear and drove, pulling the blue F-350 out onto the gravel road leading to the cracked and potholed highway, still torn apart twenty-one years after the Quake of ‘97. Dandelions were poking up through the worst cracks, and every summer, Sunny had to bring a hatchet and trimmers with her to cut brush that grew up or fell on the road. With the 50,000-capacity, twenty-four trips a day, absolutely free Megarail going between Anchorage and Fairbanks, then on to Tok
, Glenallen, and Valdez, then circling down to Seward, Soldotna, and Homer before reconnecting to the Anchorage Dome, not many people used the old highway nowadays. Only idiots, really. Idiots, the stubbornly independent, or the shit-poor.

  Sunny had once considered herself a mix of all three. Now, though, she was pretty sure it was just shit-poor.

  Her phone rang again. Tommy again. He started with a friendly, “Hey, by the way, I noticed you’re never home around here. Was this just a way of getting someone to check on your place for you while you’re gone?”

  “No, I live there,” Sunny said. “Slept there last night.”

  “Oh, okay. Well, you know, I can always lend a hand if you need someone to watch your place, you know, if you’re not in town. Are you really in town? Nobody ever sees you. You can tell me if you’re not. I can keep a secret.”

  Sunny let out an explosive sigh. “All right, fine. I work for the Dome Police Force. I’m an undercover for the Gaudy Quarter.”

  “You’re DPF? Don’t they live inside the Dome?”

  “It’s a special mission. I gotta keep up appearances.”

  “By driving an hour and a half each way?”

  Sunny gritted her teeth. “Just don’t try to steal my stuff, you fucking strung-out window-prying druggie. You do it again, I’ll come for you, your truck, and that ratty-ass pitbull you got chained to your back porch and ass-rape all three of you into oblivion with my service Glock, then set you and your whole fucking junkyard on fire and call it an Act of God and none of my buddies in the DPF will have a single fucking word to say about it because I told them you’re a woman-beating weasel who can’t fill out an XS condom with duct tape, a towel, and a bottle of Viagra.” She ended the call and threw her phone into the passenger seat.

  This time, there was silence from Tommy. She knew she probably shouldn’t have shown her hand—they always remembered phone calls—but she was tired of the chronic break-ins, and there was nothing like the DPF and a bad attitude to put the fear of their own criminality into the minds of feckless people like Tommy.