by J. S. Bailey
He frowned. His flight from Pelstring Four to here had also contained one elderly Earth couple and a younger family with four small children, all of whom had checked into Hotel Richport as well. Were the children roughhousing down there?
Now someone was yelling.
Chumley wavered to his feet and walked in a sort of meandering arc to the door of his suite, then poked his head out into the hallway.
The staircase lay several meters to his right. The man he recognized as the hotel manager stood at the top of the stairs holding an honest-to-god flamethrower like a tough guy in an old action movie.
While Chumley watched, a ten-foot-tall walking plant strode up the staircase. The hotel manager let loose with a gush of flame that took the plant right in the chest.
The chest?
More walking plants appeared in its place, their long, jointed limbs reaching out toward the manager, who tried in vain to fire the flamethrower again, but it seemed to have jammed or run out of fuel, for it made a feeble clicking sound.
The plants stepped over their burning comrade, and the one in front plucked the manager right off his feet and bit into his neck with vampiric ferocity. Blood spurted across the floor, the walls, the ceiling, the potted ferns standing sentry on either side of the hallway, and even across Chumley’s own face.
The champagne glass slid from Chumley’s hand and rolled across the carpet, and it took him too long to realize that the screaming he heard now came from his own mouth.
Dalton had retired early after drinking himself into a stupor following the morning’s jaunt to Falcon Ranch. He’d kept Doris company until two dozen villagers arrived with all the extra-tall fencing the hardware store had on hand. They’d spoken for a while, but he was so shaken by what he’d seen that he had no recollection now of the things he and Doris had said to each other.
He hoped it hadn’t been something embarrassing. He had an image to keep.
Dalton had just started to drift off into sleep when a faint whine from somewhere outside made his eyes snap open. Frowning, he rose and slid open his bedroom window to confirm what he already knew.
The town’s sandstorm sirens were wailing like hell’s banshees. (Did hell have banshees? He felt too drunk to remember.) Scowling, he slid the window closed and latched it. Sandstorm season wasn’t due for another month, and though there was the occasional outlier, he had the hunch that the only reason they could possibly be going off now was if someone had set them off manually.
The moment Dalton lay back down on his bed, his comm unit crackled to life. “Hey, Dalton? Are you awake?”
It was Cadu. Dalton snatched the comm off his bedside table. “I’m awake,” he growled, anger masking his profound concern. “What the feck is going on out there?”
“It’s the Greens again,” Cadu said. “I heard screaming outside, and once I knew what was going on, I rushed to the station and switched on the alarm. Carolyn is going door to door warning people to stay inside.”
A wave of dizziness nearly sent Dalton sprawling as he hopped up and jammed his feet into his boots. Realizing it would be best to put on trousers before leaving the house, he kicked his boots back off, plucked that day’s outfit out of the laundry hamper, and dressed as quickly as inebriation would allow.
Cadu was still saying something to him, but Dalton could hardly follow his words.
“I’m coming,” he said, his voice slurring. “Hang tight.”
He’d already reloaded his water pistol upon arriving home that afternoon. Giving it a superstitious pat, he clambered into his trench coat and fled the house on foot, wishing he’d brought the police quad home with him, although then he would have had to pull himself over for Driving While Intoxicated.
The sky flickered off to the west, right over the downtown district, and the acrid smell of smoke wafted through the night air. Dalton realized he’d left his comm in his bedroom. Too late to go back and get it now.
As he passed the post office, Dalton was nearly flattened by a small armada of land rovers packed full of fleeing people who evidently had not listened to Carolyn. Swearing, he got his bearings and rounded a corner onto Main Street, where the mighty Hotel Richport, which had stood strong for fifty years, was more ablaze than Methuselah’s birthday cake.
Hotel Richport had not been constructed of adobe. Its painted, wooden walls had gone up like kindling. He could feel the heat from it even a block away.
Screams filled the air in a bone-chilling chorus. Citizens dashed every which way, some of them with scorched clothing. Marsha Soderberg, Richport’s only firefighter, had hooked an extra-long garden hose to a tap in one of the buildings across the street from the burning hotel, and the weak spray of water hissed uselessly in the flames, like someone trying to tame an erupting volcano with a plant mister.
Dalton didn’t see Greens anywhere. He saw only masses of distraught people, which made his scowl deepen.
The sandstorm sirens continued their earsplitting wail. Cadu sidled up beside Dalton in the street, his face long.
“What’s going on here?” Dalton demanded. “Where are the Greens?”
“I don’t know.” Cadu swallowed and glanced up at the three-story hotel. “I only just got here from the station. Should I have turned the alarm off?”
“Doesn’t matter. How did this fire start?”
“I think someone inside the hotel must have tried to stop the Greens with a flamethrower, and it got out of hand.”
Dalton continued to regard the burning building as the roof caved in. A few volunteers were dousing the neighboring adobe buildings with buckets of water to help prevent marauding flames from spreading next door.
Since no Greens appeared to have survived the blaze, Dalton felt himself relax.
But only a little.
“Oh, it was simply awful.”
Dalton’s ears perked at the sound of the salesman’s voice, and he turned to see Chumley Fanshaw speaking to a group of haggard onlookers, wearing a singed pink dressing gown and matching slippers. Droplets of blood had dried on his face, though it did not appear to be his own.
“Excuse me,” Dalton said to Cadu, and strode toward the salesman.
Chumley, detecting his approach, turned to regard him. “Sheriff!” he exclaimed. “Thank God you’re here!”
Dalton didn’t smile—like there was anything he could do now that the hotel was turning into a pile of ash. “You were staying at this hotel?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
Given the blood on Chumley’s face, Dalton suspected he knew the answer.
“Plants,” Chumley croaked, red-eyed. “They came up the stairs like people. And they killed the manager right in front of me.”
“How did you get away?”
“I ran track in school.” Chumley appeared sheepish. “I’m such a coward. There could be people trapped in there, and I left them all to die.” He ran his hands over his face and kept them there. “Oh, God. I’ve never watched anybody die like that before.”
Dalton felt a shred of pity for the man. There had been a time in his own life when he’d never seen anyone die before, and he missed that like amputees missed their limbs.
“Is there anyone you can call?” Dalton asked. “Friends, family?”
Chumley shook his head. “I don’t have anyone.” Then his eyes widened. “Oh, no.”
“What?”
“My things! I’ve got to get back up there!”
He started toward the hotel as the second floor caved into the first floor. Dalton grabbed him by the arm before he could get any farther, and Chumley let out a surprised, strangled cry.
“You’re not getting your things,” Dalton said.
Chumley seemed not to comprehend him. “I mean, all my things were in there! All my cash—everything I owned!”
“Are you insured?”
“Surely you have a bank account,” Dalton said.
“Not one I’d prefer to access at the moment. I keep all my cash with me. It doesn’t leave a paper trail.”
Dalton arched an eyebrow. “In that case, I’d call your employer and see if they’ll pay you early. Unless you’re strictly on commissions.”
Chumley let out a giggle tinged with hysteria. “There is no employer.”
“Then where do the tanning beds come from?”
The are you kidding me look returned to Chumley’s bloody face. “Did you see me lugging around a trailer full of tanning beds? I bet you didn’t, because there are no tanning beds.”
Jigsaw pieces were beginning to assemble themselves inside Dalton’s weary head. “You’re a conman,” he said. It was more of an observation than an accusation. Dalton felt much too tired to arrest him.
“Yes!” Chumley exclaimed so loudly that several people still gawping at the fire turned their heads. “So you’d better throw me in jail, because now I can’t even pay for a room!” He stuck his face in his hands.
Maybe it was still the alcohol coursing through his system, maybe it was his deepening fatigue after a long, turbulent day, but Dalton didn’t have the energy to deal with the man anymore. He groped one hand into the inner pocket of his trench coat, withdrew his wallet, and sifted through it until he found a one-hundred-pound note, which he thrust into Chumley’s soot-stained hand.
“Now I don’t know if this is just another con, or if you really did lose everything in that blaze,” Dalton said, “but either way, you can use this to book a room at Sands Inn over on Mission Street. It’s not as swanky as the Hotel Richport, but at least it still exists.”
Chumley’s eyes widened. “How do I get there?”
Dalton pointed at the next intersection to the west. “Turn left onto Mission Street. Sands Inn is on the left. You can’t miss it.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you!” A wave of tears cascaded down the man’s cheeks, and he hurried off, dressing gown fluttering behind him.
Dalton refocused his attention on the glowing remains of Hotel Richport, his stomach tightening.
The Greens had invaded Doris Kelso’s ranch.
The Greens had invaded the hotel.
Why had they begun to move? Would none of his people be safe again?
One thing he knew with a sickening certainty.
This was far from over.
Chapter 3
Dalton’s body felt as though it had been cast from lead when he peeled himself off the top of his bed in the morning. What a dream he’d had! Greens attacking Doris’s animals, and even more of them slaughtering the good people of Hotel Richport? Must have been an aftereffect of seeing Debbie’s lunch.
He glanced at the photo of Darneisha and the girls, showered, pulled on his clothing, and fried up some eggs for his morning meal, wolfing them down on the go since he’d overslept by half an hour.
To his surprise, Cadu, Carolyn, and Carolyn’s personal aide, a small-framed androgyne named Errin Inglewood, were gathered in the police station meeting room when Dalton arrived.
Coffee brewed in a pot in the corner. The smell of it made Dalton’s mouth water.
“Morning.” Dalton plopped into a lopsided swivel chair and plunked his booted feet onto the edge of the table. “Are we talking about that smoke again?”
Carolyn leveled an unimpressed gaze at him. “You’re the one who asked me and Errin to be here.”
Dalton reached into one of his trench coat pockets and pulled out a wooden toothpick, which he stuck between his teeth. “I scheduled a meeting?”
“You did.”
“And?”
“And,” Carolyn went on, her stare unwavering, “I don’t think it’s proper for you to be so damned lackadaisical when six people are dead.”
Dalton bit down on the toothpick so hard, it splintered between his incisors. Very calmly, he removed the pieces and stuffed them back into his coat pocket. “These six people . . . ”
“Were killed when the Greens attacked Hotel Richport last night. You saw the aftermath; you called me from the station after it happened. Don’t you remember?”
Dalton’s eyes closed. He supposed that bad dreams had been too much to wish for.
After a silent count of ten, he said, “What do we know about the . . . situation?”
Errin cleared their throat. Today, the thirtyish, sandy-haired aide had dressed in a pale blue shirt and black slacks so free from dirt and grit that it had to be an optical illusion. “Of the six deceased,” they said, pale face drawn with lines of exhaustion, “three were from Earth, and three lived here in town.”
“Who?” Dalton croaked, sitting up a little straighter and removing his feet from the table.
Errin glanced down at the datapad in front of them. “Horace Kilburn, the hotel manager; Corvus Hightower, a front desk clerk; and Maria Beauregard, who stopped by the hotel to pick up a friend who’d been staying there. The offworlders were Larue Chancy, Krishanna Lopez, and Grainey Kirk, all visiting from Australia.” They cleared their throat and looked up at Dalton, as if silently entreating him to do something. “Seven more people from the hotel are being treated for burns and lacerations including my sister Jeanette, who works in the laundry room.” Their fair skin paled even further.
“Is she going to be okay?” Dalton kept his tone neutral.
“Most likely.” Errin’s expression didn’t change—ever the professional.
Dalton forced himself to breathe deeply for a few seconds even though tension was squeezing his lungs flat. “Do we know why the Greens attacked the hotel?”
“Eyewitnesses said the Greens went for the fountain in the lobby before they did anything else,” Errin said, eyes downcast. “They must have smelled the water from outside and stopped in for a sip before they went on a rampage. If the Rosa had been full, we might never have known they were coming this way.”
“But what brought them into town in the first place?” Cadu asked, breaking his own contemplative silence. “What could we possibly have here that they don’t?”
“Could be they’re at war with each other and the losers turned tail and ran,” Dalton mused, hoping it wasn’t true. “It’s not like we know anything about their society, or if they even have one.”
“They seem to function on basic animal instinct,” Errin said. “They may have tools like sacks and canteens, but their primary focus seems to be on survival. And they eat meat.”
Carolyn scooted her chair forward an inch or two. “I think this is connected to the smoke up north.”
“Forest fire?” Cadu asked.
“It’s possible. We’ll have to put a message out to any incoming shuttle pilots and ask if they see anything on their way down.”
Errin tapped at their datapad and said, “We don’t have any shuttles due today.”
Dalton banged a fist on the table. “We need to work faster than that! If we don’t—”
There came a loud rapping on the frame of the open doorway leading out to the main part of the police station. Dalton swiveled his chair to see who’d had the gall to interrupt so important a discussion and nearly did a double-take when he saw it was Chumley, still in his scorched dressing gown and slippers, his gleaming black hair in disarray.
“Erm, excuse me,” Chumley said, glancing from Dalton to Carolyn and then back again. “I wondered if I could speak to the sheriff.”
Bags hung under Chumley’s eyes. At least he’d wiped the blood off his face.
Dalton gave him a cool look. “About what?”
“I don’t have anywhere to go!” Chumley wrang his hands together in front of him. “The front desk lady at the inn kicked me out this morning when I went down for breakfast and she recognized me from the town squar
e.”
Dalton shook his head. “You need charity, go beg it from one of the churches.”
“But last night you gave me—”
Dalton slammed his fist on the table again, unable to hide his wince at the pain lancing through his joints. “Forget about last night! Now get out of here so we can figure out how to stop the Greens from killing anyone else.”
Chumley’s deep brown eyes welled with tears, and his mouth quivered as if he were a toddler who’d been forcibly removed from his favorite teddy bear. Without another word, he turned on his heel and padded out of the meeting room. Dalton could hear the door to the lobby click shut a moment later.
Good riddance.
Cadu, Carolyn, and Errin regarded him with arched eyebrows. Dalton removed one of the toothpick shards from his pocket and gnashed it hard. “Now, where was I?”
“Dalton,” Errin said with evident hesitation, “there are eight thousand terrified citizens out there wondering when the next attack is going to happen. How are we going to protect them?”
“We’ll establish a watch,” Dalton said.
“Consisting of who?” Carolyn asked.
“Whoever has the biggest flamethrowers. We can use boomstones, too—I saw some out near Lady Liberty that need to be picked up.”
“Are these people going to be paid?”
“That’s not for me to decide.”
Carolyn sighed and gazed down at the tabletop in front of her with a sort of weary resignation. “I suppose we can organize shifts to patrol the outskirts of the city.”
“I’ll start making calls as soon as we get back to the office,” Errin said as they stood. “Dalton, is there anything else you’ll need us to do?”
“You might want to put in an order of extra flamethrowers and fuel.” Dalton patted his holster. “And weed killer.”
“Oh, why did I come to this stupid little planet?” Chumley sobbed as he rounded a corner onto yet another unfamiliar street. He was hopelessly lost in the grid of adobe dwellings, most of which resembled sand-colored boxes of varying heights; and every time he considered stopping and asking for directions, whichever townspeople he’d been about to approach wrinkled their noses and glared as if daring him to give it a try to see what happened.