by J. S. Bailey
“Well, not a bus, exactly.” Dalton grimaced.
“Okay.” Carolyn frowned, briefly. “If you can find your own transport, I’ll lend you a few power packs so you can keep your comms fully charged and remain in full contact with us the entire time. You might be an insufferable bastard, but I really don’t want to lose you out there.”
That might have been the kindest thing she’d ever said to him. “We’ll find transport,” he said. “Don’t you worry.”
“Where are we getting a vehicle from?” Chumley asked when they emerged from Carolyn’s office. The gleaming sun hung closer to the western end of the sky, and the temperature had dropped about half a degree.
“My sister-in-law has a motorhome she doesn’t use but won’t sell. Figure she won’t mind if we take it out for a spin.”
He climbed onto the quad, Chumley getting on behind him.
“When you say sister-in-law . . . ”
“She was my brother’s wife.”
“So, she’s your ex-sister-in-law.”
“Yeah.” Dalton put the quad into gear. “You could call her that.”
Summer Kane lived on the edge of a gully about two kilometers southwest of town, in an adobe house flanked by a grove of artificial palm trees that the late Robert Kane had paid a fortune to have imported from Pelstring Four. They looked real, though, and the sight of them made Dalton’s nerves twitch when he coasted up to the house.
Chumley stood and stretched. “Nice place she’s got.”
“She writes articles for some holistic magazine,” Dalton said. “Don’t be surprised if she gives you a bottle of essential oils to test out for her.”
They approached the dwelling via the curving cobblestone path. Various succulents from Earth grew in pots and in window boxes, reminding Dalton all too much of his former profession.
The front door flew open before Dalton had the chance to knock. A fortyish woman with curly strawberry-blonde hair stood before him in an ankle-length turquoise skirt patterned with swirls and a white tank top that displayed her amply-toned arms.
“Dalton!” she exclaimed. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Pleasure, Dalton thought. Ha. The first time Rob had brought Summer over for dinner, she’d informed everyone that if they didn’t switch over to a strictly organic diet immediately, they would all die of cancer.
She had been wrong.
“We need to borrow your motorhome,” Dalton said, skipping over the small talk he dreaded.
Summer squinted at him, then looked past him at Chumley. Her expression brightened once more—she must not have been in town recently enough to know about Chumley’s antics. “And who’s this?”
“Chumley Fanshaw,” Chumley said, dipping his head. “And you are . . . ?”
Summer scowled at Dalton. “Really, you didn’t even tell him my name? I’m Summer Kane, Dalton’s only living—”
“Can we borrow the motorhome?” Dalton cut in. “It’s for police business. We need to see what’s going on up in the forests, and Carolyn won’t lend me transportation.”
Summer blinked a few times. She wore some sort of bluish crystal pendant around her neck, no doubt to ward off bad vibrations.
“You do still have the motorhome, don’t you?” Dalton asked.
“Of course I still have it!” She let out a little sniff, no longer cheerful. “Not like I’d get rid of it when it was Rob’s pride and joy. I haven’t changed a thing about it, either, so it still has scribbles on the walls inside from Ricky and Chandra. I just can’t believe you’d only come out here to borrow something, and not to see me, your only living—”
“Is it still in the garage?” Dalton asked.
Dalton swore he saw tears well up in Summer’s green eyes, but only for a moment. “Yes,” she said in a softer tone, then brightened a third time, her rollercoaster of emotions making Dalton a trifle dizzy. “Come this way.”
Chumley lifted one eyebrow at Dalton, who set his face into its general glower as Summer headed around the side of the house with the two of them in tow.
“Do you remember the time we all drove out to see the Weird Sisters?” Summer asked as they passed some of the ultra-realistic fake palm trees. “Poor little Chandra had the stomach virus and threw up in front of a whole crowd of tourists.”
“I remember.”
“And Imani tried to climb some of the rocks all on her own, and she fell and cracked her wrist! Darneisha always called that The Vacation from Hell. If only we’d known.”
They reached the free-standing adobe garage, and Summer grabbed the handle at the bottom of the metal bay door and yanked it upward with a metallic screech to reveal a shiny silver pill-shaped vehicle sitting on six wide tires with deep treads. “Here you go, motorhome, just like you want. Solar panel on top is still intact, last I checked. It’s got bedding and dishes and everything you’ll need.” Summer gave Dalton a sidelong look. “You want to use this to drive into the forests?”
“It’s not my first choice, but we don’t have any other options.”
“Not even a copter,” Chumley said, shaking his head. “I would have preferred a copter.”
“Who are you again, exactly?” Summer asked him.
“I’m the new deputy. Sort of.” Chumley shifted his feet, uncomfortable. Dalton was glad he wasn’t the only one. “Erm, does it have air conditioning?”
“Of course! But you can’t run it nonstop, or the solar panel won’t be able to keep up and you’ll lose power until it gets enough new juice. It should only take you a couple hours to drive up to the forests, though, so you should probably be fine. I’d give it fifteen minutes of AC at a time with fifteen-minute breaks in between; that always worked for us. Any other questions?” Summer put her hands on her hips and looked back and forth between them.
“I don’t think so,” Dalton said, then added, “Where are the keys?”
“Already in it. Best way for me to keep track of them, not that I need them anymore, do I?”
“You could still travel if you wanted to,” Dalton said, not rising to the bait. He had no desire to Discuss the Past, and Chumley didn’t need to be privy to every last aching detail of his life.
Summer pursed her lips. “With who?”
“Whoever you want.” Dalton stepped forward and opened the driver side door of the motorhome, spotting the keys lying on the upholstered seat.
He turned back to her. She’d folded her arms, and her green eyes glimmered like bits of jade.
“Chumley?” he said. “You can drive the quad back into town while I finish things up here. Meet me at Carolyn’s office.”
Chumley’s eyes had narrowed. “Sure thing, Sheriff—erm, Dalton.”
The deputy turned on his heel and crunched back over the rocky hardpan toward the quad. Once Dalton heard its soft motor sputter into life, he looked Summer in the eye and said, “So, you doing all right?”
Her expression grew a tad colder. “Does it look like it?”
“You know I don’t like talking about any of this,” he said.
“You never liked talking to me about anything to begin with.”
“I don’t like talking to most people.”
“Well, I for one am supposed to talk about my feelings,” she said. “My therapist says so. But nobody wants to hear them. It’s like I was only supposed to be sad for a little while, and now that it’s been five years, I’m supposed to be all back to normal, like nothing ever happened.” Her eyes reddened. “They’re the first thing I think about every morning, and the last thing I think about every night as I fall asleep. Sometimes I just wish I could . . . ” She swallowed. “Forget it all. But that would be unkind to them. Don’t you think?”
Dalton felt a tremble enter his bones. Being around Summer made everything too real again. “I think,” he said, “that Rob and all the others are
beyond caring what anyone thinks.”
“Surely you don’t believe that.”
He shrugged, heaved himself up into the driver’s seat, and slid the key into the ignition, but before he started it, Summer said, “Do you still think about Darneisha and the girls?”
“Every waking moment.” His jaw clenched, and Summer stepped aside when he twisted the key and the solar-powered engine spluttered into life. It wouldn’t hold a charge long here in the shade, so he eased the vehicle forward until it was completely out of the garage and let it idle a few moments in the evening sunlight.
“Thank you for lending us the motorhome,” he said, glancing down at her to see a tear running down her face. “I’ll try to get it back to you all in one piece.”
What an odd family, Chumley thought as he parked the quad behind Dalton’s house and began his walk toward Carolyn’s office. He couldn’t be one to judge, though, as his cousin Bhavisha would spend every family gathering discussing scientific evidence that the creation of agriculture had been the beginning of the downfall of humanity, and his Aunt Priyanka touted an equally-fervent belief that most, if not all authority figures were in fact members of an as-yet-unidentified species of shapeshifting lizard.
Chumley straightened his shoulders, tapped at his chest to reassure himself that his deputy star was still pinned there despite the fact he’d been placed on administrative leave, and held his head high anytime he passed someone on the sidewalk.
It was only when he saw the ruins of Hotel Richport that he realized he’d taken the wrong street. Four people were loading charred boards onto a flatbed lorry, and a folding table had been erected next to it, covered in misshapen objects Chumley couldn’t identify from that distance.
One member of FCU stood nearby, wearing shades and taking notes.
With some trepidation, Chumley approached the workers, who paused to regard him.
“Excuse me,” Chumley said. “I was wondering if—”
“You’re that salesman,” spat one man wearing a hardhat, safety goggles, and heavy work gloves covered in black grime.
“Deputy, now.” He pointed lamely at his star, then flicked his gaze to the FCU representative, who might have been the one named Olivia Newkirk. Surely these dolts wouldn’t try to hurt him in front of a visitor. “Erm, have any of you found anything unusual in the wreckage?”
The worker jerked his head in the direction of the table. “We put the salvageable stuff over there. It’s not a lot. Fire ate through this place like it was made of paper.”
“Oh. Thank you.” His heart heavy, Chumley went to the table to regard its blackened contents. Lying atop it were a comm unit, a hoop earring, three matching candlesticks he remembered seeing on a sideboard in the hotel lobby the day he’d checked in, a set of military dog tags, a wine glass with a hairline crack running down one side, and two datapads.
He slunk back over to the workers, who were lifting a chunk of burnt drywall onto the bed of the lorry. “Excuse me again,” he said. “Did any of you happen to see a small, metal cube, about this big?” He held up his hands to demonstrate the size.
Two of the workers glared at him.
“I was staying here when the fire started,” he added quickly. “The Cube is . . . a paperweight. It means a lot to me, and I was hoping . . . ”
“It’s that way.” The first worker he’d spoken to jerked his head toward the rubble behind him. “Saw it glinting in the sun, but we still have to move a load of rubble before we get to it.”
Chumley’s heart skipped several beats. “You . . . seriously?”
But the workers had continued with what they were doing and chose to ignore him as if he’d never been there.
Before Chumley could advise himself to be careful, he’d vaulted over a fallen crossbeam, crunched through what had probably been the ground floor’s ceiling, clambered over a mound of ash, and saw, impossibly, his Cube, partly covered by yet another fallen board, but wholly recognizable as his most prized possession.
He took a step closer to the Cube, tripped over more rubble, landed on his stomach, reached out one hand, and closed his fingers around the thing he thought he’d lost forever.
His hands shaking as he sat up, he tapped the Cube three times on one side, watched the hidden button emerge from the otherwise smooth surface, and pressed it. The holographic archway he’d yearned for for days appeared before him, and he rose, unable to contain his joy, and stepped through it.
Chapter 11
It took Dalton at least twenty minutes to get the hang of maneuvering the bulky motorhome over the uneven ground, and the shadows grew even longer by the time Dalton made it back into town. In front of Carolyn’s office, Errin Inglewood was setting unmarked wooden crates on the ground next to Chumley, who even at first glance seemed a different man from the one who’d left Summer’s house on the quad such a short time before.
Dalton parked the motorhome along the curb and got out.
“What’s all this?” Dalton asked Errin, who brushed sweaty bangs out of their eyes when they straightened.
“Supplies,” they said. “A little gift from me and Carolyn. Well, mostly me—she’s lending you the power packs, of course. But I thought you could use provisions and a first-aid kit. You never know what might happen out there.”
Dalton peered into one of the open-topped crates and saw boxes of freeze-dried fruit and beef jerky tucked down into it. “Thank you,” he said. Then, turning to Chumley, who wore yet another fresh outfit, he said, “What do you look so happy about?”
“Nothing! I mean, we’re taking action. It could help a lot of people.” Chumley’s cheeks flushed. A squarish bulge in the left pocket of his trousers made Dalton arch his eyebrows, but he decided it wasn’t his place to pry.
Carolyn stepped outside to join them, her heels clacking on the sidewalk. “Here, take these,” she said, passing a metal case into Dalton’s hands. “I’m lending you two extra comm units and two extra chargers so you’ll have no excuse for breaking communications with me. I want you to keep checking in once you’ve made it to the forests, you hear?”
Dalton dipped his head. “We’ll keep you up to date on everything we see.”
“Good. Bon voyage, boys.”
Dalton looked over to Chumley, who’d suddenly turned apprehensive.
This was it, then.
“You ready?” Dalton asked him.
“Sure,” said Chumley. “I invade the lairs of man-eating trees all the time.”
“Help me put all of this stuff in the motorhome. Then I’m stopping at home to get a couple changes of clothes, and we can be off.”
Chumley complied by hefting a crate into his arms and carrying it into the motorhome. Dalton looked from Errin to Carolyn, hesitated a moment as he wondered if he’d survive to see either of them again, and proceeded to load the motorhome with the rest of the crates. Once he and Chumley had finished, Dalton gave Carolyn and Errin a solemn salute and hoped they didn’t notice his hands shaking.
“Wish us luck,” he said, then gestured for Chumley to join him inside.
“Isn’t it a bit late to head out?” Chumley asked, strapping himself into the plush passenger seat to Dalton’s right.
“We can get a head start this way, and we won’t have to worry about running the AC so much since it won’t be as hot.”
Chumley mulled this over and nodded. “Don’t forget to pick up the weed killer at your house.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Dusk had fallen. Dalton angled the fully-stocked motorhome so the high beams pointed toward the north. His fingers tightened around the steering wheel as the vehicle idled in place.
“Do you need me to step on the accelerator for you?” Chumley asked.
Dalton shivered. “I’m ready.” He could do this, dammit. He was the bloody sheriff.
He pressed
the accelerator with his right foot. The motorhome eased forward at three kilometers per hour. The dashboard panel indicated that the system held a 75% charge, which would drain significantly overnight but climb right back up again once the sun rose.
He didn’t anticipate there being any problems. The motorhome was only ten years old; it had a good, long life left in it.
“The thing about the forests,” Dalton said, “is that they’re so much cooler than the desert. Once we reach vegetation, we won’t even need the AC as much.”
“Uh-huh,” said Chumley. Dalton could still see the strange bulge in his pocket, even in his peripheral vision.
“It’s just a shame the Greens have to live here at all,” Dalton went on. “This colony could be booming by now if we could live in an area that doesn’t roast people alive. We could have real cities, long walks in the shade . . . ”
“If you hate Molorthia Six that badly, you could leave,” Chumley said. “There are dozens of planets nicer than this one, no offense.”
“Ah, but this one is home.”
Ahead of them, a stray cat slunk from right to left. Dalton watched it stop a moment to sniff at something on the ground before vanishing in the night.
“Dalton, if you need me to drive, I can.”
Dalton twitched, then realized the motorhome was idling in place again.
He didn’t remember braking.
“I’ll manage,” he grunted, feeling a flash of irritation as he pressed on the accelerator. Dalton brought them up to roughly fifty kilometers per hour—a sensible speed far less likely to cause them to bust an axle on uneven ground.
He kept an eye on the dashboard compass so he could maintain a northerly direction. Chumley lapsed into silence beside him. Dalton glanced over and saw that the man’s eyes were shut.
He smiled as he remembered a time when little Imani had dozed off in the passenger seat on one of their longer family trips, then silently cursed himself for allowing himself the emotion.
Dalton slowed the motorhome to forty kilometers per hour when the ground sloped uphill a short distance. Once it leveled out again, he glanced at the power indicator and felt his heart stutter to see it had dropped down to 52% in less than fifteen minutes.