“Found this on the ground over there,” Sunny said. “Thought maybe it belongs to you?”
Sunny watched the distrust morph into surprise, then gratitude. “Wow, thanks,” the man said, sitting up. “Care to join us? You need some food or something?” He reached into his bag for pretzels.
Sunny didn’t like the way he said ‘need,’ but she wasn’t gonna turn down free pretzels. She was grinning and reaching for them when a big cockroach ran over the guy’s arm, startling him. Both him and the girl jumped up, letting out startled cries as they patted themselves down. When they were done, the man reached into his bag of pretzels and took a bite. He paused when he saw Sunny hovering over them, a little frown coming over his face. Around pretzel crumbs, he said, “Who are you?”
He was back to looking like he thought she was about to rob him. Disgusted, Sunny walked to the road and hunkered on the sidewalk, waiting for her sister.
Daphne pulled up just over two hours later, sometime past one o’clock. Her royal purple floater was gleaming and new—one of the perks of having a husband who ranked third in the Dome Police—and Sunny could tell by the floral smell that she’d recently washed her hair. Wistfully, Sunny remembered those days. Shampoo, soap, an hour to soak… Now, she was pretty much reduced to sleeping in Bertha and dunking herself in an ice-cold waterfall now and then.
“You stink like wet dog,” was Daphne’s greeting. “And you look like you got into a fight with a grizzly bear.” She gestured for Sunny to get in the floater. “Is that blood ?”
“It’s been a long week,” Sunny said.
Daphne looked unsure. “Yeah, but… You look like you need a doctor.”
“What I need is to get to C and 39th before they tow Bertha.”
“Why would they tow it?” Daphne asked, pulling away from the curb. “They make more money on emissions tickets.”
“She got ripped in half.”
Daphne’s eyes went wide. When Sunny didn’t recant her words, Daphne raised an eyebrow. “Are you, uh, sure you want to do this?”
Sunny felt her face darken. “Absolutely.”
“Sounds dangerous. This thing doesn’t know where you live, does it?”
“Nah.” Sunny waved a hand.
Daphne gave her a much too long, analyzing look. “Take care of yourself, okay, sis?”
“You take care of Jake,” Sunny said. “I’ll take care of the rest.”
“You know, now that I’m thinking about it, I think Jake’s had a really bad cough lately that might need a trip to the doctor.”
Sunny grinned. “Sounds good.”
Daphne gave her another long look. “You don’t look like you’ve been eating.”
Thinking of the pretzels, Sunny’s stomach twisted in longing.
Daphne must have heard it. “Sunny .” There was that Mom tone again. “When was the last time you ate something?!”
Sunny couldn’t actually remember. “I dunno. The day before I road-hauled Cthulhu.”
“Which was?”
Sunny squinted, trying to remember. “Two days ago.”
Daphne cursed and immediately veered off the highway, heading into a busy merchant district. “We’re getting you something to eat.”
“I don’t have any money.”
Daphne gave her a look and Sunny shut up. She took Sunny to a roadside café and sat down. The hostess spotted Sunny, her face tightened in a grimace, and she started trotting towards them.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the hostess said to Sunny, hastily reaching their table, “we have a dress code and we’re not allowed to serve—”
Daphne stopped the woman with a hand on her arm, smiling up at her politely. “You bring my sister a goddamn burger or I’m going to go into the back, grab one of those kitchen knives, herd all you little people into a freezer, lock you inside, and set this place on fire.” Daphne gave a huge smile. “You may or may not still be alive when my firemen buddies come to piss on the ashes.”
The hostess stared at Daphne with wide, stunned eyes. “What kind?” she babbled.
Daphne was still smiling. “What kind of what, you makeup-caked skank?”
“Of burger?” the woman whispered.
“Oh.” Daphne released her victim with a growl. “Bacon cheeseburger. Heavy onions. Be sure you write it down on your pad, along with the table number.”
The hostess stared at her.
“Write it !”
Hastily, she did.
“Now tear the sheet loose and hold it in your hand.”
“Ma’am, if this is a robbery—”
“Tear out the sheet!”
She did.
“Now go.” Daphne made a dismissive gesture.
The woman went. Ten steps away, she paused, shook herself, glanced down at the paper in her hand, then shook herself and continued into the back kitchen.
Once she was gone, Sunny stared at her sister, eyebrow raised. “Better hope Gary never finds out you have a dark side.”
“Oh, he knows.” Looking Sunny over, Daphne gave her a commiserating look. “You have to deal with that a lot?”
The hostess brought the burger a few minutes later and set it down in front of Sunny. “Anything else, or will that be—” Then she seemed to see Sunny’s attire for the first time, because she paused. “Ma’am, we have a dress code—”
“Leave,” Daphne said.
The woman must have seen something scary in Daphne’s eyes, because she did. Sunny—who had lost her hardhat and gloves—nonetheless took off her jacket to better fit in with the rest of the shorts-and-tanktop-clad domers patronizing the place. As she ate her burger, Daphne was content to watch.
“So how’s life been treating you?” Daphne asked. She winced and gestured at the bruises. “Aside from the obvious.”
“Like the gods got together and decided to use me to plunge the toilet of reality,” Sunny said. “Pass the mustard?”
“I miss hanging out with you,” Daphne said.
Sunny grunted around masticated meat.
“Gary’s really a nice guy. He’s got such a big heart…”
Sunny’s face darkened. “Don’t push your luck.”
Daphne sighed and leaned back to watch in silence after that.
After a long lunch of two burgers and plenty of catch-up chitchat, they drove the rest of the way to the North Dome. Sunny made notes on their visit using the little notepad that her sister had started carrying around after Sunny had convinced Daphne that she didn’t remember their visits. It was four o’clock by the time they reached C and 39th .
“Holy crap, what happened to her?” Daphne whistled, once Bertha came into view huddled on the side of 39th , bed ripped off.
“Told you. Tentacle monster,” Sunny said.
“But you said it was stuffed inside the body of a man,” Daphne argued. “Whatever did that was huge .” She pointed to the palm-sized suction-marks on the paint.
That was the one thing that Sunny hadn’t quite worked out. “Yeah… I don’t know. I can only tell you what I saw.”
“So, what, it’s like it’s using an interdimensional pocket or something? Like a bag of holding?”
Sunny had to grin, remembering her time playing D&D with her sister as kids. “We should do Dungeons and Dragons again sometime.”
Daphne sighed, giving Sunny a heartfelt look. “If you could forgive Gary, a lot of shit could change.”
Sunny felt her body tense. “Not happening.” She reached for the door.
Daphne sighed. “Well, you have a place to stay if you want,” she said.
Sunny, who hated being a mooch, and who especially hated the idea of mooching off of a Neolithic pedophile like Gary, immediately said, “No, I’ll be all right.”
“Sunny…” Daphne complained.
“Thanks for the ride, sis.” Sunny got out of the floater and shut the door hard enough to make the floating vehicle sway. Daphne gave her an irritated look through the tinted glass, then drove off.
Sunny walked over to Bertha and found the keys in the ignition. Someone had kindly turned the ignition to the OFF position, which meant that she might actually have some diesel left.
That same person had left a note on her dash.
Do Not Impound - Official Business
Khaz Basuchandra
BPI
Department of Paranormal Security
On the seat where she’d left it was her cell phone. It, too, had a note on it:
Call me if you’re still alive.
Sunny snorted and discarded the note and climbed into the truck. Well, the cat was out of the bag, now. If Khaz hadn’t known every intimate detail of her life before, with her license plate and her phone number, he most certainly did now. What was worse, as soon as he saw the picture associated with her driver’s license, he was going to connect the dots, and she’d be screwed.
She twisted the key. The truck roared to life.
Not chugged, not sputtered, but roared .
Sunny narrowed her eyes and got out. She popped the hood and looked at the engine. She had to stare at the too-black battery for several moments before she realized it was brand new.
Sunny lifted her head and looked around her, cautious. Anyone that took the time to replace the battery would have had time to do other things, like put in a tracking device…
She worried about that for five seconds, then said, “Fuck it.” She dropped the hood, climbed back into half-Bertha, and drove home to lick her wounds and plan her next method of attack. Because, damn it, she still had a few hours on her rental agreement before her landlord figured out she wasn’t gonna pay his stupid $100 fee and she wanted to sleep in a bed one last time before she got evicted. At a stoplight near the edge of the North Dome, her phone got a text message. It was from Khaz.
We need to talk.
Sunny threw the phone aside in disgust. He was with the BPI, so he’d just come arrest her if she didn’t cooperate, but right now, she was looking at getting home close to ten or eleven and all she could really think about was sleeping in a bed.
Her phone beeped again. Another from Khaz. I’ve got a tracking device on your car.
What a dick. To Khaz, she texted, Never mind. It got away.
Khaz immediately tried to call. She let it go to voicemail.
Khaz tried calling her three more times on the drive home and she ignored them all. On the fourth call, she put her phone on silent. She was exhausted, she was on her last day before eviction, and the last freakin’ thing she was going to do was waste time talking to some government idiot who apparently didn’t think she was human.
When Sunny pulled up into her cul-de-sac late that evening, it was past six. The front door to Sunny’s apartment was open. Tommy’s truck was parked in the driveway, his naked-woman seat covers peeking over the dash flirtatiously. The bed of his truck was pulled up to the front door. Sunny saw just about everything she owned stacked neatly in the back of Tommy’s truck, including her mattress.
That made her angrier than anything else the two dumbshits were doing. All she could think about for the last two hours driving home was how badly her aching body wanted to climb into bed and pass out for the next month. Now that she was here , and her mattress was there , getting drizzled on in a light rain, Sunny found herself right on the edge of losing control.
She heard Tommy and Marie arguing inside. Sunny wondered why her neighbors were just letting them burgle her, then she realized Janelle was off at her weekly Bingo game and the other two were on a two-week-on, two-week-off shift with the paper mills to the north, and the last apartment had been empty ever since the last tenant had stuffed it full of forty-three cats and neglected to provide a litter box.
Seeing everything she owned getting wet in the back of Tommy’s big red truck, Sunny pulled off to the curb and switched off Bertha’s engine. She picked up her phone.
Seven missed calls. Three voicemails.
“Oh what the hell,” she said, hitting play. What did she have to lose? Immediately, she heard Khaz’s agitated voice on the other end.
“Hi Sunny, I think I have some explaining to do. Can you meet me at the Denali Bean on 6 th and L?”
Sunny deleted it.
“Okay, look, I know you’re probably upset and scared—hell, probably a little of both—but I know you found that brief on you. Ignore it, okay? You weren’t what we thought. Just give me a chance to talk to you.”
So he did know. Screw it. Delete.
The next one was more resigned. “All right. I didn’t wanna do it this way, but I looked up your phone record. I have your address in Willow. Just stay there so we can talk, okay? You’re in extreme danger. I should be there around 6:30. Keep your phone on you.”
Sunny checked the time. 6:09. Twenty minutes to reclaim her stuff from the back of Tommy’s truck and disappear. She sat there stewing on that last message for several minutes. If she hung around, she was going to have to deal with the BPI. If she didn’t, she wasn’t going to have anything left after Tommy and Marie pawned it all.
From inside, she heard Marie snap, “No, I get the toilet paper. I ain’t got no toilet paper.”
Tommy retorted, “You know how fucking expensive that shit is? We should split it. I get half a roll, you get half.”
Toilet paper was one of those things that Sunny hadn’t been willing to give up after her life being raised as a Domer. From what she’d heard, it had once been pretty cheap, but after Alaska had seceded and imports were limited, paper had become one of those household expenses that few could afford. Most outdomers used rags or leaves or nothing at all. After years as an EMT, however, Sunny refused to give up that one little luxury and revert to what she essentially saw as barbarism.
She certainly wasn’t about to give her only roll to a couple of druggies burgling her net worth. She got out of her truck and lightly shut the door behind her so as to not alarm the would-be thieves.
“There’s only one roll, and you already got the dish set,” Marie argued.
“It was a shit dish set,” Tommy retorted. “Most of the plates were chipped. Can’t sell it like that.”
Sunny walked into her apartment and looked around. This obviously wasn’t the first load of the evening, because Marie and Tommy had taken everything. Aside from the dust-bunnies and a few odds and ends that had fallen behind furniture—pens, coins, a couple feathers—the place was completely empty. Marie and Tommy stood outside her bathroom, having emptied the toilet paper from the spool. Beyond them, through the bedroom, she could see that their favorite window was broken, glass scattered on the carpet.
Sunny walked past them into the kitchen. If they noticed her, she didn’t stay long enough to make them follow. She stopped at the fridge.
There, in a collection of hastily-scrawled notes, phone-numbers, dates, and appointments, was Sunny’s life, pathetic as it was. After contemplating them, she pulled the Things to Replace When Rich List from the magnet that held it. Her eyes caught on the first one and stayed there as the two neighbors continued to argue outside her bathroom door.
New battery for Bertha
She pulled her pen from its clip and scratched it out. In its place, she wrote, New seat protectors.
Then, carefully folding the list, she tucked it into her pocket and walked past the two druggies a second time. They paused, mid-argument.
“Hey, what do you call your truck?” she asked as they gave her a startled look. “I kinda think of it as a Rory. Maybe a Red.”
“Who the fuck are you?!” Tommy snarled.
“Oh, I live here,” Sunny said. She gestured deeper into the apartment. “But then again, so does he.”
When they looked behind them, she walked outside, got into Tommy’s truck, and drove away.
Chapter 11: New Plan
Sunny drove Tommy’s Chevy to the Grilled Denali café in Talkeetna, where she pulled off his seat covers and tossed them in the waste bin outside. Then she went in and, because she felt like splurging, bough
t herself another burger.
It was, quite literally, one of the best burgers she’d ever had. It was so good, in fact, that she was paying more attention to the grease running down her arm as she licked it off her skin than the stolen truck outside, when a Republic of Alyeska Trooper pulled up behind it. She froze when, on a casual glance to make sure nobody was out there stealing her stuff, she saw a woman in RAT uniform beside the vehicle, taking notes.
Burger forgotten, Sunny lunged to her feet.
Though she hated to do it to the sweet old man behind the counter who had made sure to give her extra cheese, she walked out without paying, promising herself she’d come back and pay him later. By the time she got outside, the RA Trooper was back at her floater and calling it in.
“You’re looking for the guy driving that truck?” Sunny asked.
The Trooper turned from her mic and glanced Sunny’s way. “Yes, Ma’am, we have some questions for him. He around here?”
“Yeah!” Sunny cried. “Yeah, he ran around back when he saw you coming! Right over here!”
The Trooper put the radio down and put her hand on her weapon. “Would you care to show me? What’s he look like?”
“Oh, real wiry dude,” Sunny said, staying in eye contact. “Wears a wife-beater. Tattoos. Kinda looks like he belongs in a shitty trailer, not a nice truck, ya know?”
“We have reason to believe it’s a stolen vehicle.”
“Oh man,” Sunny said, leading the woman around the corner of the building. “That makes a lot of sense!” She paused, allowing the police officer to keep walking, then spun and ducked around the corner, out of sight.
At a run, she went back to the police floater, yanked the keys to the navigational controls out, then hopped into the truck, started it, and drove off. She tossed the keys to the police vehicle into the grass off the side of the highway a few miles down the road.
After only a couple bites of burger, Sunny was once again hungry enough to eat the ass end of a skunk by the time she pulled off onto a small side-road and shut down Red’s engine to contemplate Life.
Homeless, truckless—she couldn’t keep Tommy’s for very long before she’d be caught—and penniless, she didn’t have a lot of options. Her attempt to take down Mr. Dortez had twice ended in miserable failure, both times leaving her worse off than she’d been before, not to mention barely alive. She only had enough gas for a one-way trip back to Anchorage.
Sunny with a Chance of Monsters: An Urban Fantasy Action Adventure (Sunny Day, Paranormal Badass) Page 18