The Saffron Malformation (47 page)

             
Rain looked at the big man hesitantly.

             
“She can shoot,” Leone answered before she could and she looked at him.  There was something that passed between them.  ‘We’re not supposed to talk about that,’ might have been it.

             
“Yeah,” she finally agreed, her voice was a ghost of its former lively self.

             
Reggie handed her a rifle then asked, “Can you handle a handgun?”

             
She nodded so Reggie handed her one.  Quey looked at her and it saddened him to see the situation had stolen her animated presence.  Looking at her now he saw nothing in her that resembled a cartoon.  She was simply a woman, worn ragged by a rough patch of life, struggling and doing her best to keep her and her brother alive.

             
“Here,” Quey said, pulling a small pistol from his bag.  After checking the chamber he flipped it in his hand, caught it by the barrel and handed the butt of it to Leone.  “Shooting starts,” he began and Rain interrupted him with an emphatic, “No!”

             
Leone was staring at the weapon with wide eyes.  His heart was racing.  Quey started again.  “Shooting starts you get in that closet over there,” he indicated the door along the wall behind him, “and you sit tight.  You don’t come out, no matter how long you hear nothing until someone comes to get you.”  Rain was watching him.  He could see her face shifting through a range of emotions.  She cycled through angry, sad, worried, terrified, hopeful and hopeless with each tick that passed.  “That door opens you don’t wait, you open fire because if one of us means to open it we’re going to knock, three two one on the door first, copy?”

             
Leone was staring at him, breathing heavily.

             
“Copy?” Quey asked again, firmly.

             
The boy nodded and Quey jabbed the gun at him.  The boy took it and set it in his lap.

             
Quey noticed that at some point Rachel had crawled to the window and was peeking out at the main road.  “What are our friends doin’ out there?”

             
Rachel shook her head.  “Sitting.”

             
He joined her and took a gander of his own.  “Seems like less than what rolled into town.”

             
“Probably some stayed back to have a poke around,” Reggie offered.

             
Quey settled next to the window with his back against the wall and his knees drawn up a bit.  It reminded him for a brief moment of his time spent sitting outside the robotics compound.  “Looks like we wait.”

             
“They’re splitting up,” Rachel almost shouted.  Quey looked up and over his shoulder at the main road where two of the bikes and one of the cars rolled ahead and slowly vanished down the hill and into the trees.

             
“They’re being thorough.  Rigs probably still back in town giving it a good once over.”

             
“What about them?” Rain asked, indicating the cars sitting on the road.

             
“Eventually they’ll come rolling around these parts looking for anything out of place.”  Quey could see the nervousness jittering through her body.  He smirked and added, “But they won’t find anything.”

             
“It’ll be just like that time we spent at Gozen pier,” Dusty said and a moment later he and Quey were both laughing.

             
“Oh man,” Quey said as his laughter subsided.  “I hope not.”

             
“It wasn’t so bad,” Dusty protested.

             
“Not for you, you weren’t the one who got shot.”

             
“You lived,” Dusty smirked and they both laughed again.

             
“What happened at Gozen Pier?” Rachel finally asked.

             
“Yeah, I haven’t heard this one,” Reggie said with a smirk.

             
“Nothing,” Quey replied.  “Just played peek-a-boo with three very angry men.”

             
“They weren’t angry,” Dusty interrupted, “Until they caught you in that shed.”

             
“That was a misunderstanding,” Quey protested.

             
“How did they misunderstand exactly?” Dusty asked.

             
“You know good and well I wasn’t looking to find that guy’s wife in the bath?”

             
“I don’t think it was the husband that cared so much, seemed to me it was her brother doing all the shouting and chasing,” Dusty added.

             
“Yeah, suppose you’re right.  Though it didn’t help, you making those derogatory observations regarding her weight.”  Dusty laughed again as Quey thought for a moment and said, “You know we never did find out why that third guy was so mad now did we?”

             
Dusty laughed and shook his head.  “No, but he was shouting crazy.”

             
“His face was so red,” Quey added, gesturing with his hand.  “Man I thought it was going to pop.  Literally, I said to myself, this guy’s head is really gunna explode.”

             
“He just kept shouting and shooting his gun.”

             
Quey shook his head, “Yeah, never have been back since.”

             
After a moment Reggie piped up and said, “I can’t believe you almost got yourself shot over a fat chick.”

             
“She wasn’t fat,” Quey corrected.  “Chubby maybe.”

             
“What were you looking for?” Leone asked.

             
The laughter subsided and Quey and Dusty looked over at him.

             
“In the shed.  Why were you in there?”

             
“Crime,” Quey said bluntly.

             
There was a moment of silence.  “You been shot a lot?” Leone asked.

             
“Once or twice.  Nothing I can recommend.”  The air was heavy and so he decided to lighten it a bit.  “Of course that was nothing compared to Dusty here, who’s never even been almost shot… save one glorious time.”

             
“You’re not telling this story again are you?” Dusty asked with an embarrassed groan.

             
“What happened?” Rachel asked.  He shot her a glance and she shot a playful one back.

             
“Almost got himself shot by a man in a dress.”

             
“It was a woman!” he protested.

             
“Right,” Quey said sarcastically, “If that was a woman, then I’m gunna stick a farm animal in a tutu and have my way with a ballerina.”

             
Quey told the story about how Dusty’s bit of slight of hand during a card game took a turn on him.  The drag queen pulled a small pistol from under the table and fired at him.  It was close range but Dusty wasn’t even grazed.  After that Rachel seemed to sit closer to him as Reggie told a story of his own.  This one wasn’t about being shot.  It was about how boring soldiering can be from time to time.  After that Leone coaxed Rain into telling a story about a creepy guy they met at a hotel once who tried to talk her into making a necklace out of strands of a woman’s hair.  Apparently he’d been collecting them for some time.  She’d refused his request and they left the hotel quickly the next morning.  They talked for a long while, glancing every so often at the two cars and four motorcycles staying put on the main road.  The stories didn’t matter, that they passed the time and gave them something else to ponder did.

             
“Still doing nothing,” Rachel said after another look through the window.

             
“There’s something I need to know,” Rain said, “And it seems now’s as good of a time as any.”

             
“What's that?” Quey asked her.

             
She shrugged emphatically with her lips pulled tight and her eyebrows raised.  She let her hands fall against her thighs and asked, “What are we doing here?”

             
Nodding slowly Quey told her everything that had happened since he met Ryla in the waste.  “Remember the robot in the back of my truck?” he asked and she nodded.  He explained how he was taking it around gathering data from as many points as possible and transmitting it back to the girl in the robot factory.  He told them about her theory as to the lifespan of the planet and watched as their eyes widened and they grew very still.

             
“Blue Moon claims these towers are their way of fixing the planet.  I want to get inside one and send whatever it’s doing back to Ryla, see what she makes of it.”

             
Rain was nodding slowly, her eyes drifting to Leone.  He knew she was counting how old he’d be in five years and it was breaking her heart.  “You think it’s true?” Leone asked.

             
Rain shrugged, “I don’t know anymore.”

             
“I have to pee,” he told her.

             
“I’ll go with you,” she said and they walked out together.

             
Quey’s eyes widened when he saw them stop just down the hall.  Leone said something to his sister and she hugged him tight before he went into the bathroom and closed the door.  “Fuck,” Quey said softly to himself, then stood and went to her.  She didn’t look at him.  She watched the floor.

             
“I’m sorry,” he said.  “I didn’t think.”  He shrugged.  “I forgot.”

             
Rain nodded.  “It’s alright.  I know what kind of man my father is.”  She looked at the closed bathroom door, rocking against the wall with angry nervous energy.  “He does too.”

             
He touched her arm and part of her wanted to let him pull her against him the way he did that morning in the Dine Out parking lot.  With Arnie’s arms around her she felt love, compassion, and a bit of comfort.  That morning in front of the Dine Out she’d felt safe.  It was a feeling she wasn’t used to.  When he tried to move toward her she spoke.

             
“My father is a very bad man.”  Quey started to speak but she didn’t let him.  “I know this.  Not all of his qualities are bad.  Many of them are good.  Things someone should admire.  You are not a bad man,” she looked up at him.  “Maybe in another world you shot the tires out of my van and things are very different now.”  He smiled down at her.  “You gave Arnie the shotgun because he won’t be able to use it,” she said matter-of-factly because she knew it as well as he did.  Quey nodded.  She shrugged and her face softened, reassuring him in a way as she said, “I like that about him.”

             
“I know,” he said.  “I recall you saying something like that and I mean to respect it.  But you’re one of my crew, and that means from time to time I might take an interest in your well-being.”  He grabbed her and pulled her against him.  “Might even give you a hug if I deem you in need of one.”

             
She chuckled, sunk against him and took the comfort he offered for a moment then stepped back and smiled up at him.  “Okay,” she said.

             
The bathroom door opened and Leone stepped out.  “It doesn’t flush,” he told them.

             
“That’s alright,” Quey said.  “Go on back in there.  Something I need to talk to your,” he started to say mother and stopped.  “Rain about.”  He nodded and obliged.  When Quey looked at her she was making fun of him with her eyes.  “What?”

             
She shook her head.  “Truth is,” she admitted, “He probably wouldn’t have noticed if you’d have called me his mother.”

             
“Bet he wouldn’t at that.”

             
“So what’s this thing we have to talk about?”

             
Quey looked at her, a hard seriousness in his eyes that made her take notice.  “I didn’t give him the gun cause I mean for him to shoot anybody.  I gave it to him so he’d understand that if something does happen it’s serious.  It needs to be treated as such.  If we’re going to make it through any sort of conflict we need him to listen and understand.”

             
Rain nodded.  “You’re right.”  She met his eyes with an intensity of seriousness of her own and said, “But I do the bad things.  I handle the ugly stuff.  I do it, not him.”

             
“I should have warned you before we took you on.  The path this crew is set on seems flanked with bad things.  And there’s a whole lot of it left ahead.  After this passes if you want to take your leave I’ll have no qualms about it.”

             
Rain chuckled.  “The Brood’s here on account of me,” she told him.  “Your path’s no uglier than mine.  Least your path comes with a plan and a bit of purpose,” she added.  Before he could respond she was already halfway down the hall.