The Saffron Malformation (33 page)

             
All in all, Richter had been good to him but he was a wild animal and the leash was starting to agitate him.  He hadn’t told his boss about the bounties or The Angels of the Brood.  That was coming out of his pocket.  He had the money, plenty enough and more, for Richter treated him like a normal man with appetites that could be eased through possession.  It was clear Richter would never understand him.  Money meant nothing to Sticklan, it was blood and chaos he craved, and finally, using the vast majority of his salary paid over the years, he’d purchased it.

             
Another thing Richter would never understand was why he’d pulled the trigger that night.  It’d been three in the morning when the van had pulled up.  The two girls inside, they were diminutive things each as feisty as the other.  He saw the van idling outside the gate surrounding the Crow estate while they waited for the boy.  Something had gone wrong in their plan and they had to shatter a window to get him out and that set off the alarm.

             
Sticklan recalled that night with clarity.  Richter had given him the go ahead, taking him off his leash but the man was also sloppy.  He’d let emotion get the better of him once again.  There was no doubting who was responsible for his son running off in the night.  His own daughter, Viona Crow.

             
“And after I let her back in here, promised her visits.  Forgave her!” he screamed, slamming his fist onto the top of his desk.

             
He’d sent Sticklan out with men from his personal security, three assholes who had the subtlety of a tornado.  They tipped the girls off at every turn, racing in with roaring engines and screeching tires.  They began firing wildly from too far away, thinking these two little bitches were going to spook easy and stand screaming and crying while they rolled up on them with ease.  Fools.

             
Finally Sticklan was fed up.  He put a round in each of them and went after the girls on his own.  When he caught up with them he felt exhilaration.  All those years ago when he’d first come to work for Richter the girl had been a tiny thing not yet in the thralls of puberty, still she had fire in her.  The boy, Leone, didn’t even exist back then, he realized.  Since then, particularly after the death of her mother, he’d seen the girl grow into a determined young woman.  The thought of breaking her, of watching the fire extinguish seethed inside him, and when he’d found them in the parking lot of the cheap motel along the highway he’d been without his pill for two days.

             
He watched the two girls, dressed in black with caps over their heads until the driver pulled hers off.  Short dark hair fell free around her face and he moved his crosshairs to the passenger.  ‘Must be blonde under that hat,’ he thought.

             
The worst of him took over and before he knew what he was doing he was firing a rifle that could put a hole through concrete into the passengers side of the shitty van.  He saw her head jerk forward and her body slump.  He saw her brains and blood spray across the fresh hole in the windshield like a sneeze, red and thick and lumpy, and then the van screeched and the engine roared and he was firing at taillights vanishing into the distance.

             
Sticklan pulled his device from his pocket and rang Richter.

             
“Viona’s dead,” he’d reported.

             
Richter’s eyes reacted to the news about his daughter.  “You’re sure?” he asked and Sticklan nodded.  It was true, in the dark the girls had been just silhouettes to him, one behind the wheel and the other in the passenger seat, but still he was sure.  He’d spent years studying her, watching her grow and then blossom and fill with that pesky fire.  His regret was in that he hadn’t been able to watch her eyes as it went out.

             
That had been years ago, five he thought, and he hadn’t gone off his pill since.              Sticklan was in a motel, sitting on the edge of a bed that was too soft for his liking, sipping a whiskey that was too watered down while he scanned the maps.  If the Moonshiner had been telling the truth, which he was inclined to believe at this point, he needed to figure out where she could have made it to over the last few days.  In the morning he’d tip off The Angels of the Brood.  He wanted them to find her, but there was more to it than that.  The signal was buzzing with tales of increased raid activity.  Nothing could burn and no one could die if they weren’t looking.  This was, after all, his vacation, bought with twenty years of meaningless salary.

             
Sticklan shook the thought and returned to the task before him.  The girl, Rain, had made a mistake.  She’d used one of Viona’s codes to one of the accounts she thought she’d kept secret at a bank machine.  She used it to grab a little cash a few months back and the security systems had alerted Richter Crow of the transaction.  They figured Viona had given her the code in case something happened and the girl had only now mustered the courage to use it.  Now, the trail that had run cold the night he shot Viona was lukewarm and heating up once again.  This time he’d find this Rain bitch and the boy.  This time he was off his leash but still on his meds and there’d be no twisting the heads off kittens, so to speak.  This time he’d get to do all the nasty things he’d wanted to do to the daughter.  This time he’d get to watch the fire die.  Still, he knew, it wouldn’t be the same.

             
As for Leone, Sticklan didn’t give a shit one way or the other.  The boy was a pansy anyway, might as well have been born a girl for all the strength he had.

             
Sticklan narrowed the possible places to a select few.  He’d send word to The Angels of the Brood in the morning.  For tonight he finished his whiskey and turned off the light before lying back on his bed and closing his eyes.  He was the sort for whom sleep came easily, a man comfortable with the thoughts rattling around in his head.

             
Rain was sitting in a motel room by the window, looking out at the nearly vacant and completely still parking lot, the glowing sign by the road advertising there were still vacancies.  She lifted a glass to her lips and sipped the bitter alcohol within.  It twisted her face slightly and shivered through her, nothing like the Pickens and Zaul shine she’d had a few nights ago, but then again, nothing was.

             
Looking over at the bed she sighed and sipped again.  Leone was there, sleeping between the sheets with the heavy blanket pulled up under his chin.  She lifted her sheet computer and checked the screen.  Sticklan’s car was stopped at a motel and not moving.  There was no communication between him and Richter Crow that night.

             
She knew all of this because the boy had been smarter and braver than the madman and his boss.  A week before the escape Viona had sent a blank device to Leone.  The next time she spoke to him she told him what it was for.

             
“Just keep an eye open for his computer,” she told the boy.  “If he sets it down you connect this one to it and within a few seconds we’ll have a perfect clone, that way we can know every communication he makes.”

             
One night after dinner Richter had tossed his device, folded down, onto the counter in the kitchen in disgust and walked away from it.  Sticklan had been out on business and it was just the two of them and staff in the house that night.  Leone had been carrying the blank computer in his pocket since it came in the mail and, keeping one eye glued to the hallway and ears keenly listening for footsteps, he’d connected to and cloned the device.  As Viona said, it took a mere three seconds, but they felt like forever.

             
When they came for him Viona had run around to the back of the house and up the thin road to Sticklan’s bungalow.  She’d planted the GPS device, small as a pinprick, under his car before returning to the van and signaling for her brother to come to the front of the house.

             
Rain took another, longer, sip of alcohol and felt the burn run down her throat and churn her belly a bit.  For a second she almost threw up but she knew nerves were as much to blame as the booze.

             
“What the fuck am I going to do?” she asked the silent dark as the boy slept peacefully just a few feet away.

             
Less than a days’ drive from where Rain and Leone were held up in a motel, on a black road running north along the coast, Dusty was sitting in the back of Reggie’s blue four-door.  He was sitting with his back wedged against the corner between the seat and the door and Rachel was lying against him.  They breathed slowly, together and rhythmically, as they slept in the car parked beneath a sky full of stars as Geo emerged from the brush and rolled to a stop in the middle of the road.

             
It was morning before anyone noticed the big robot with its flashing light waiting to be loaded up and taken on to the next place.

Last Stop and The Road Ahead

             
Months passed as they do on the road, unnoticed like the slow trickle of a thawing stream.  Seven in all had gone since the group finished up with that business with the Brood in Bravette.  They’d stopped for a tick at the Pickens and Zaul ranch, a modest yet roomy house nestled among the hills on a spill of land that stretched on seemingly forever.  They’d spent a few days there, taking a break from the road and giving Rachel time to rest in a bed as opposed to being cramped in a car.

             
When Quey opened the door the air wafted over him, stale and with a heavy musk, and he felt the sense of alienness that settled upon him at the end of so many moonshine runs.  The soles of his boots fell hollow on the wood floor as he stepped inside and thought that this place was wrong somehow.  Now he realized it wasn’t the place that was wrong, it was him.  He didn’t belong here.  It didn’t feel like home so much as a strangers house he’s been left alone in.

             
The moment fleeted with the realization that he’d never have to do it again.  His days of running shine had come to a close and that was fine with him.  What came next was the uncertainty of the road without the obligation of the shine.  Days ago, as they rolled along the road stopping occasionally to run Geo through a cycle, he’d gone onto the Pickens and Zaul site and announced the loss of that year’s batch of shine.  When he clicked the button confirming the update to the site relief took him.  Now he could choose any route he liked.

             
Inside he booted the house, restarting the main computer systems.  It took almost a minute and it stuttered a bit at first.  Leaving a house in rest for that long wasn’t recommended but there were systems that had to run daily and so he could never shut it down completely.  The refrigerators needed to run, the stills needed to churn and of course the watering systems needed to trigger on and off again twice a day and the filters needed to run if rain happened.

             
That night they ate steaks Dusty had picked up during their last stop before starting down the long single lane that stretched on for too many miles, off of which was a dirt trail that led to the ranch.

             
“It’s beautiful out here,” Rachel had commented as she stepped from the car and took in the surroundings.

             
Quey took a long breath and scanned the landscape as if he’d never seen it before, and agreed.  It was a fact he’d somehow managed to ignore for a long time, and he was sad that he had.  Looking at it now, seeing it in a way he hadn’t for some time, the way he probably had when Cal first took him in, he actually felt a touch of sadness at having to leave it.  “Come on,” he said and led them inside.

             
That night Quey slept in his bed for the last time.  He put Dusty and Rachel in Cal’s room and he and Reggie heard them giggling like teenagers for a good ten minutes before the room went silent.  Reggie and Quey exchanged a look and smiled, chuckling awkwardly.

             
“I’m gunna turn in,” Quey said and headed off to bed.

             
That night he slept deep, wreathed in nostalgia.  He dreamt that Cal was still alive and coming along for the ride.  The bald plump man with the magic mash was behind the wheel and he was beside him.  Reggie, Dusty and Rachel were there as well, though he wasn’t sure how they’d all managed to fit in the cabin of a single truck.

             
When they stopped for food or a rest other people would suddenly be along for the ride as well.  His parents made an appearance.  He hugged his mother and looked into her eyes and told her he was sorry.

             
“You did what you had to son,” his father said.

             
“I wish you could be proud of me,” he replied.

             
“Still plenty of time for that.”  They were the gaunt shells with pale skin stretched over weary bones they’d been at the end when they said that to him.  Then they were not there anymore.  He looked for them briefly but there was a loud beep behind him and when he turned he saw Geo stuck in a child’s sandbox.  After that he didn’t look anymore.  His mind had moved on.

             
Ryla walked over to the bot in her thin slip of what should have been cotton but had become lace.  Sunlight shone through it, revealing the gentle curves of her subtle frame as she lifted Geo without effort and set him free of the sandbox.  She turned and looked at him with eyes sunk deep in her skull.  No, he realized, they weren’t eyes.  They were lenses.

             
He heard Rain laugh and looked for her.  There she was, a shape in the distance and there was another shape as well.  The second was further to the left, a well-groomed man in a finely tailored suit.  Quey made for Rain eagerly but someone always got in his way.  Reggie asked him if he wanted some barbeque.  Dusty tried to show him a new card trick, something he hadn’t done in years.  Quey continued to look, but she wasn’t there anymore.

             
Finally it had become night and it was just he and Cal in the cab of the truck, the others forgotten for the moment.  The headlights cut through the black and spilled a dull cone of light across the world ahead.

             
“It’s been a good run,” Cal said from beside him before adding, “How about one more.”  Then the world beyond the road was gone leaving nothing but blackness.  He was behind the wheel now and Rain was beside him.

             
“Where are we going?” she asked.

             
“Far away from here,” he replied and he reached for her hand as the road vanished into stars and they were driving through an endless sky.  He wasn’t sure if he’d managed to lace his fingers through hers before the sense of falling swarmed through his guts and woke him.

             
That next day Quey, Reggie, and Dustin spent the better part of the afternoon loading the back of the truck with Quey’s belongings, the few bits he didn’t mean to part with anyways.  When they were done Quey couldn’t help but stand staring into the truck and chuckling.  It wasn’t even half full and that was perfect, because that’s the way his life had been since his parents died and he ended up at the camp.  Drifting and listless with nothing but what was necessary to carry him forward.

             
Reggie clapped him on the back and said, “Come on.  Smells like Rache has that barbeque nearly done.”

             
Quey turned and watched his three companions setting places for dinner on the back porch, overlooking the garden that spread out over two fenced in acres covered with the rain filtering system, and smiled.  The truck might never get any closer to full than it was now, but when it came to his life, he was working on it.

             
After dinner they drank, just a bit, and laughed plenty before turning in early.  In the morning they loaded some shine onto the truck, just enough to balance out the truck and have a bit to pass out or crack into along the way.  Nowhere near enough to make it worth selling.  Quey went back inside one last time to collect the money from the safe, more than he thought he’d ever need to spend at this point, and loaded it into a pair of cases.  Then he took one last look back before they moseyed along, back out on the road and off to the next place.

             
“Where to?” Dusty asked.

             
Quey looked down the long stretch of road and sighed shaking his head.  “Where would you like to go?” he asked and looked at them.  Both Dusty and Reggie seemed to mull this question over without luck.

             
It was Rachel who understood and answered, “First star on the left.”

             
Dusty looked puzzled and said, “Is it left?  I thought it was right.”

             
Quey laughed lightly and said, “Doesn’t matter.”

             
When they got to the end of the dirt trail and made it to the two lane that extended on for as far as could be seen, Quey turned left and started down the road.

             
They wandered listlessly, east and then north, stopping where they happened to find themselves, staying in rooms of a higher quality than he normally would, when they were available.

             
The first they saw of Metraton was a pale glow over the horizon.  The city was massive, largest outside of Saffron city, a cluster of tall buildings with rail systems running between them, and above it all was the shimmer of the rain catchers.  They were massive and clear, allowing the sun through with only the slightest of obstruction but collecting every drop of rain that might fall on the city and sending it off to the filtration plant so it could be used by the city.  They would schedule wet days as well, when the rain catchers would fill with filtered water and allow it to rain down on the city.  They found early on that a city needs a good rain every once in a while, its cheaper than hiring someone to wash away all that filth manually.

             
It was there, in Metraton, that Quey purchased one of the suites on the top level of the Bolven Hotel for three nights.  It cost more than ten thousand units and he passed it along without batting an eye.  While in the city they ate in fine restaurants and took in shows and realized very quickly that they preferred diners and a good standup comic or a band playing live on beat up old instruments in a town square.

             
After that they drifted west, then north, then east, then south.  At every stop Quey would activate Geo and call Ryla just to tell her.  He’d also call when the robot came back, to give her an update.  She’d tell him about the bit of remote data she was able to collect from him, but swore she’d want to get his samples into her lab before she could claim any conclusion.  Then the conversation would drift on to other things.

             
“Building anything new?” he asked and she stopped, froze actually.

             
“Anything new?” she repeated back to him and it confused him.  “No,” she said.  “Nothing really.”

             
She was lying and she was bad at it.  “If you don’t want to talk about it.”  Her discomfort thickened and so he let it go.  “We saw the most bizarre critter you could hope to see just the other day.”

             
Relief spread over her and she smiled a bit.  “What was it?”

             
“Not sure,” he replied.  “Was quite the bit of contention between us.  Here,” he added then sent her a picture.  “We settled on its either a monkey or a small dog.”

             
Ryla looked at the image and laughed slightly.  “That is a strange looking thing.”

             
“What do you think?” he asked.

             
She scanned over the image and thought for a moment.  “It’s a monkey,” she replied.

             
“You think?”

             
“No, I don’t.  It is a monkey.  I could send you an analysis of its bone configuration in relation to primate verses canine skeletal structures if you’d like.”

             
Quey laughed a bit, and felt a ping of sadness.  She didn’t get it.  The fun was in trying to figure it out, not in knowing for certain. “Its okay,” he said.  “I believe you.”

             
There was an awkward silence after that and Ryla came to realize that those usually meant she’d done something wrong and the conversation was going to end.  They’d say goodbye and hang up and she’d feel disappointed in herself because she never knew what she’d done.

             
“Don’t hang up,” she said, her voice thin.

             
He looked at her, brow furrowed a bit.

             
“I know you want to because I’ve done something that’s made you not want to talk to me anymore but I like to talk and I won’t get better at it if I don’t.”

             
He smiled and said, “Okay.  And you have gotten better.  I’ve even caught you telling a joke from time to time.”  She smiled and he began to tell her about another expensive place they stayed a few days back, and how ridiculously lavish it was.  “The guy actually asked me what type of water I wanted,” he said smiling.  “I told him that I preferred mine to have two oxygen particles to one hydrogen.”  He started to laugh.

             
“You shouldn’t drink that,” Ryla informed him.

             
Quey looked at her and said, “You know I didn’t really ask him for… whatever that would be.”

             
“Hydrogen dioxide,” she informed him.

             
There was another pause then, as he smiled politely and nodded a bit.

             
“You want to hang up again,” she noted, looking down.

             
He watched her for a spell, chewing slightly on her lower lip.  “Do you know everything?”