The Saffron Malformation (52 page)

             
Rain felt her heart racing, not from fear but exhilaration because she could finally sleep with both eyes closed safe in the knowledge that there were other pairs to look out for her when she did.  Growing up in the Crow house with her brothers and father, going through the private schools meant to build children into business savvy adults, she’d never known a feeling like this before.  All she knew, all she was shown, was what it took to succeed.  Everyone, ally or foe, would stick a knife in your back if it helped them even a little.  Friends were as fair weathered as they came and should a storm brew in your general direction they would steal your umbrella and leave you naked and alone.  These people, Quey and his group, were another breed.  Their way was to huddle up around you and keep you warm until whatever it was passed.  They looked out for one another because they knew what it took, not to succeed but to survive.  She fell against him and hugged him tight because there were no words of gratitude great enough.  Little more than a day ago she’d given up hope, sure in her belief there was no one in the world that could help her.  Now there was a whole group and they’d come, all of them willingly, not because of what they would get out of it for themselves but because one of their own was in need.

             
She was sobbing against him, knowing there was no way for her to pay this back.  Worse yet maybe was the knowledge that not a one of them would ever ask her to try.

             
“Thank you,” she was repeating over and over but she wasn’t thanking Quey, she was thanking the universe for allowing him and his kind to exist.

             
He must have recognized this too for when he finally peeled her off of him and wiped his thumbs over her tear slathered cheeks, as she inhaled deep through her nose and snorted snot back up her nasal paths, he simply smiled and assured her, “It’s going to be okay.”

             
She nodded and laughed because she believed him.

             
“Now go on inside,” he told her.  “Get some sleep.”

             
She left him alone in the parking lot, sitting on the trunk of Reggie’s car.  Inside her room she ran over to the bed where Arnie was stirring.  He’d been roused by her coming back inside and looked at her with one open eye.  “Where’d you go?” he asked dull.

             
“Just outside,” she replied jumping into bed beside him.

             
“I thought you didn’t want to sleep together with Leone in the room,” he said looking at her and now he noticed her face and recognized she’d been crying.

             
“It’ll be fine,” she assured him.  “I’ll move over in a little bit.”

             
“What’s wrong?” he asked.

             
Smiling she shook her head.  “Nothing.”

             
“You’ve been-”

             
“It’s nothing,” she assured him then gripped his hair and pulled him to her.  She kissed him with longing and passion and she wished they had the room to themselves but alas they were forced to separate and settle for lying together in each other’s embrace.

             
“You’re sure you’re okay?” Arnie asked.

             
“I am,” she replied, then added, “And I think we will be.”

             
Quey sat on the back of the car for a long while, lost in his thoughts.  The immediate was simple enough, get back to Ryla and see what the data says, especially the stuff from the tower, but what then?  Say they discover what he suspects, which is that Blue Moon is incapable of saving the planet, what then?  Broadcast the information to the people, hope they believe it over whatever spin Blue Moon puts on it?

             
“Not much of a plan,” Quey muttered and thought briefly but seriously about finding a stiff drink.  Instead he finished his bottle of water.

             
Say they did believe it.  Say an uprising occurred and say it was bigger than what happened on South Continent all those years back when Reggie was still a young man, still believed in what Blue Moon had sold him, what then?  Even if they weren’t wiped out by superior numbers or better weapons, what would come after the toppling of Blue Moon?

             
Quey felt his taste for a drink grow fierce but took a deep breath instead.  The further he looked into the future the more desperate things became but hiding from it at the bottom of a bottle wasn’t going to stop it from coming for him.  In the end that would just lead to it sneaking up and taking him off guard.

             
His mind spun wildly as fatigue settled on him.  There were questions and they needed to be sorted through soon, but for tonight all he was doing was spinning his wheels in the mud so he returned to his room, took another piss and then collapsed onto the bed.  He barely had the blankets pulled over him when sleep dragged him under.

             
Morning came with a bang and shattering glass.  Quey sprang up in his bed and snatched the gun off the nightstand in one swift motion.  Another set of pops, low caliber something-or-other, followed by more glass breaking.  Cautiously he moved to the window and pulled the drapes back ever so slightly.  He couldn’t see a fucking thing from that vantage point.

             
“Come out come out wherever you are,” he heard a voice shout.  It was familiar too.  It was Render.  “Fucking assholes,” the Brood leader barked.

             
“Fuck,” Quey chided himself for being so sloppy.  The lot where their cars were parked didn’t face the road but they still should have made more of an effort to hide them.  Then another thought crept through and chilled him.  He wondered if Natalie’s call had given them another way of tracking him.  He’d had the UD chip removed from his sheet but it still did link up with the signal and that might give them an approximate area.  Fuck, he wished he knew more about that sort of shit.

             
“We’ll burn this fucker to the ground, just like we did your ranch shiner,” Render shouted.

             
Quey took a moment to think but Render had spent his patience on this long ago.  “Fuck it,” Quey heard the man say and then more glass shattered.  Then his window shattered as a bottle hurtled through and crashed against the wall on the far side of the bed.  It struck just to the right of the bathroom door and spewed flames across the other side of the room.  Remaining calm, knowing he only had a minute, maybe two, before the room was an inferno, Quey looked through the peep hole in the door and finally saw them, standing on the far side of the parking lot behind a car stopped sideways for cover.  He watched one of the Broodlings toss another Molotov cocktail, this one at the room right of his.  The room Reggie was in.

             
Gunfire cracked from the motel side of the parking lot and the Brood hurried behind the car.  Quey yanked open his door and dashed out, taking cover behind the trunk of the car.  There was movement left and right of him as he made his way and when he looked he saw Broodlings peeking out from the sides of the motel.  They fired and Quey rolled under the back end of the car.  He was surrounded.

             
Dusty and Rachel had awoken with the first shot and the sound of their window shattering.  The bullet dug into the wall opposite the bed with a thwamp.  They exchanged a glance and hurried out from under the covers and cursed themselves for being caught so off guard.  Both of them were naked.

             
Dusty pulled on his paints and Rachel slid into some jeans and one of Dusty’s T-shirts while Render shouted at the Motel.

             
By the time Rachel was pulling her hair out of the neck of her shirt and tying it into a tail Dusty was handing her a rifle.  She took it, checked the chamber, then pulled the bedside table away from the wall and knelt behind it.  She leaned across the table and propped her elbows on it, using it to stabilize the rifle she aimed at the window.  The drapes had been closed but the wind was coming through the broken glass and they flapped slowly in the breeze.  Through their occasional parting she could see the car parked across the lot.  Then she saw men stepping toward the motel.

             
Dusty had just checked his pistol when shots rang out from their side of the parking lot.  Rachel looked over at him and he shrugged.

              Reggie liked the Brood as an enemy.  They were bad people and they were stupid.  They had a rudimentary understanding of tactics that played to his favor.  When the Molotov cocktail came through his window and shattered on his floor he didn’t hesitate.  He collected his rifle and pistol and moved to the bathroom, closing the door behind him.  There was a good sized window on the wall opposite the door, he’d noticed it when he first checked the room the night before.  Calmly he slid the window up and peeked out, waiting for a minute to determine if anyone was going to shoot at him.  When no one did he climbed out onto a bit of grass.  He stood with his back to the wall and scanned the area.  No Brood.  To his right was the road and to his left was an endless expanse of grasslands.

             
Smiling, Reggie started toward the grasslands, meaning to come around the side of the building to the parking lot.  He paused for a moment at the corner and peered around.  He almost laughed.  Thirty or so steps of wall before there was another corner where a broodling stood aiming a rifle into the parking lot, completely oblivious to what might be behind him.

             
“Hey bub,” Reggie said.  The man spun toward him and his face barely had time to register surprise before the gun in the big man’s hand cracked loudly and the Broodling’s face exploded in a puff of clumpy red mass that splattered to the pavement as he crumpled to the ground.

              Rain sat up in bed as the first gunshots went off.  She looked first to Leone who was looking back at her, eyes wide.  She felt a brief pinch of embarrassment when she realized she’d never made it to the other bed.  Leone knew they shared a bed from time to time, probably knew a lot more than that, but still he hadn’t seen it first hand before.

             
More pops cracked the morning, and the window beside the bed where Leone was sitting shattered.

             
It didn’t matter, she decided, and pulled him from the sheets to the floor between the beds.  She reached over and snatched the pistol from the bedside table and checked it, loaded and ready to fire.

             
“Come out come out wherever you are,” Render taunted.

             
When the bottle with the burning rag stuffed in its neck came through the window and landed on the bed beside Arnie, Rain went to the window and fired.  She ducked down and saw Arnie holding the bottle.  It hadn’t shattered.

Rage spread across Arnie's face and seemed amplified by the light of the cocktail flames shimmering in his eyes.  He crossed to the door with purpose.

              “What are you doing?” Rain asked as he yanked the door open and hurled the bottle back at the car the brood had taken cover behind.  It slammed into the trunk of the car and spilled fire across the vehicle.

              From her position behind the bedside table Rachel saw the flaming bottle arch toward the car.  Dusty had crossed to the wall between the door and window and peeled back the drapes on the one side.  She had a clear view of the flames spreading across the faded green surface of the broodlings car.

             
“Just a can of beans,” she reminded herself.  Dusty braced himself for the roar of the gun and when one of the Brood shifted position behind the burning car Rachel slid the trigger back and the Broodling’s head jerked violently to the left tossing him to the ground like a ragdoll.

             
She nodded, letting Dusty know it was a hit as the report bounced around the room, slowly fading to a dull ring in both their ears.

             
The gunfight happened fast, in a blur of actions, most of them clumsy from adrenaline.  From his spot under the car Quey could do little but listen as bullets pelted the motel and struck the metal of vehicles.  He found himself hoping that there wouldn’t be significant damage to any of their engines.

             
The Brood, of course, weren’t worried about cars, they wanted to kill people, and even though the bounty on the girl insisted she be taken alive—the boy too—Render meant to kill everyone and sort it out later because ‘fuck these assholes.’

             
After dropping the first Broodling, Reggie came to the corner and took aim.  He fired at the car parked across from the moving truck.  A Molotov cocktail came from somewhere and arched through the windows of one of the rooms.  He didn’t think he heard glass breaking but who could tell with all the shouting and shots.  Flames danced in one of the windows and then leapt into the air.

             
Reggie looked across the front of the motel at the far corner, his position on the other side of the building, and saw what he expected, another broodling.  He thought about going around, dealing with him the same as the other, but then he saw a small blur of light skin and darkness streak from the motel and take refuge near the vehicles.  It was Rain, dressed in her dark pants and shirt, her chin length hair streaking back from her pale face.  He didn’t know if she was aware of it but the pavement chipped as a rifle shot struck where she’d been only a moment before.  Reggie saw the Broodling opposite him settle in and take aim.  Next time he would be ready.  Next time he wouldn’t miss.