The Saffron Malformation (55 page)

             
The big man looked to Rachel and they both agreed with a nod.

             
It had been risky, leaving the cars parked at the motel for so many hours, since apparently no one could be trusted these days, but they hadn’t had a choice.

             
Rachel spent most of her time in the hotel room watching over the three sleeping bodies on the bed, taking the pills Natalie had given her a bit more often than she needed.  She thought briefly about how if things had gone differently…

             
She looked at Quey and imagined that’s how it’d gone for her Dusty.  She saw him sleeping on that bed and how desperate with worry she would have been.  Worried to the point she probably would have spent some time angry with him for getting himself shot.  Worried to the point where her stomach would churn and her chest would tighten and she wouldn’t be able to breathe.  She would have traded anything for that worry without hesitation.

             
It was worse later, when the others returned and the sun went down and the time came to get some sleep.  Rachel went into her room and the instant the door closed she felt alone.  The room seemed hollow, every object in it devoid of meaning or even purpose.  She collapsed onto the bed and it was so cold.  For the first time in many years there was nobody there to help her warm it.  Nothing warm to settle against.  Nothing to complain about how cold her feet were.

             
“If you’re going to put those ice cloppers on me at least let me have a respectable amount of blanket.”

             
She heard his voice clearly in her head and that shattered her.  Her face twisted with agony and she buried it in the flat motel pillow and wept hysterically.  She begged for him to still be alive.  She demanded to know why.  Then she flew into fits of anger because she knew why.  She hated Quey and Reggie… but it wasn’t their fault.  She hated that stupid little bitch Rain… no she didn’t.  Stupid little rich bitch with her stupid little made up name.  Viona, wasn’t that what she was really called, it sounded stuck up.  It sounded like the name of a selfish girl getting people killed because her daddy didn’t buy her a fucking pony…

             
It wasn’t her fault.

             
It was someone’s fault.

             
It was all their faults.  She’d been hurt in the raid of Fen Quada.  The Brood had pursued them then and still she and Dusty stayed on the road.  In Northshire when they got the call from Arnie she could have said no, any of them could have.  Any of them could have gone their own way at any time.  Just this morning at the motel… she could have gone out first.  Maybe she would have looked both ways before crossing the street.

             
Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered.

             
She wept for a long time, not sobbing but whimpering as tears poured from her eyes.  She thought she couldn’t breathe sometimes.  Sometimes she wished she couldn’t.  That night she didn’t sleep.  By morning she was out of tears.  She was out of pain and sadness.  She made coffee in the tiny pot and allowed Natalie to look over and clean and dress her wounds.  She felt like a robot, a creature going through the motions of habit despite the dead world around her.  She drank coffee slowly while sitting at the table in her room.  She didn’t think about anything.  She didn’t feel anything.

             
Later, when she thought she could hold it together around people she joined the others.  When the time came it was she who took the initiative and talked with Natalie.  They went over the things Quey had told her at her kitchen table again only this time she had questions about what their plan was and what was going to happen next.

             
“We’re going to the Robotics compound to make sense of it,” Rachel said dryly.

             
After that Rachel told her what she knew of Sticklan Stone, the man who had been in her house.  Telling her his name was enough, however, for Natalie had seen the news feeds.  “If you want to be mad at us, fine.  If you want to think we ruined your life, we did.”  Rachel shrugged, “But how long was it really going to last.  A few measly years at best.”

             
Natalie sighed.

             
“I’m sorry,” Quey said weakly from the bed.  Rachel and Natalie looked over at him.  Leone and Reggie had taken Amber out for a bite.  Rain and Arnie were in another room now.  “I didn’t mean to get you into this.”

             
Natalie shook her head.  “I don’t know what to do,” she said exhausted.

             
Rachel clasped her hand and said, “You come with us then.”

             
Quey sat up on the bed and said, “When we get back to the Robotics Compound we’re going to figure out what to do with this data.”  Natalie looked over at him.  “Very soon, everyone will know.”

             
She huffed a chuckle and shook her head.

             
“We understand if you have to make a go of it on your own,” Rachel said.  “Just be careful.  Stone and the Brood will probably be keeping an eye out for you.”

             
Natalie closed her eyes and thought.  None of this was real, it couldn’t be, it wasn’t possible.  Finally she nodded, “We’ll go with you.  Rain’ll need looking after.  Someone has to help you for a bit longer,” she added to Rachel.

             
Quey smiled briefly and went to sleep again.

             
“’Sides,” she said after a long patch of quiet.  “Not like we have anywhere else to go.”

             
Rachel woke Quey sometime after dawn.  He sat up, a dull pain stabbing through his shoulder, and winced.  She was sitting on the edge of the bed, her large green eyes staring down at the floor.

             
“We have to do something with him,” she said softly.

             
Quey understood and he asked, “What are you thinking?”

             
Her eyes shimmered for a single instant, the features of her thin heart shaped face winced and she said, “I can’t just leave him somewhere.”

             
Quey nodded.  “I think it’s a fine idea,” he told her softly.

             
Rachel looked at him and he could see there was something different in her eyes now.  She was a different person in some deep and fundamental way.  “You don’t think he’d mind… I mean… is it something he’d want?”

             
Quey smiled at her and said, “To stay with you,” and nodded.  “Yeah, reckon he couldn’t come up with a finer idea his own self.”

             
She chuckled a bit and that was good, that small hint of a smile it brought to her lips lightened her.

             
Later, Quey and Rachel took Natalie’s van up the road and purchased a few items from a general store they would need.  They bought a spade shovel, some lighter fluid, some clean burning logs for a fireplace, and a roll of aluminum foil.

             
“Is this going to work?” Rachel asked.  Quey shrugged.  It was the only time they spoke during the trip.

             
That afternoon Quey dug into the field behind the motel, a shallow oval hole just deep enough, he hoped, to keep the wind from scattering the ashes.  To help with that he parked the van to block the slight breeze coming from the east, then he lined the hole with aluminum foil and laid out a row of logs.  They’d burn hot and long and leave little of themselves behind.  He was just finishing up as the moving truck pulled up and Reggie opened the back door.

             
“I want to do it,” Rachel said, resting a hand on the big man’s shoulder.

             
“I’ll help you,” he replied softly, but when he turned back around Quey was standing in front of him caked in dirt and sweat and he stepped away.  Together Quey and Rachel lifted the sheet containing Dusty’s body from the back of the truck and carried it to the foil lined hole and set it down carefully on the logs.

             
Reggie cracked into a bottle of shine and took a long sip.  “You know,” Reggie began with a bit of nostalgia in him, feeling eyes training on him.  He smiled a bit before he continued.  “They used to call me regulator all the time in Fen.  Old habits die slow I suppose.  This was before that ‘I don’t discriminate I regulate bullshit.’” He took a moment to clarify.  “There was this drunk guy in the bar, some asshole tourist who kept asking if anyone could play something sad on the piano.  Anyway, this guy turns to us and asks, ‘Regulator?’  What the fuck do you regulate?’  Without missing a beat Dusty spun in his stool and said, ‘You should know, it’s your mothers asshole.’”

             
Everyone laughed a bit.

             
“I guess that’s how it all started, that nonsense about regulating shades of ass.  Come to think on it, might be he had a hand in that end of it as well.”  Reggie took another sip from the bottle and passed it to Arnie.

             
Arnie looked nervous and admitted, “Oh, okay, well I don’t really have a funny story-”

             
“Then shut up and bring the bottle here,” Quey said with a bit of humor.  Arnie nodded, and hurried to Quey who winked at him and said, “Take a sip.”

             
Arnie held up the bottle and said, mostly to Rachel, “Admittedly all I know of him isn’t much but what I do know makes me regret that fact.”  He took a drink then and Rachel smiled at him.  He looked down at the body resting in a caldron of foil and remembered how he’d helped him through the incident in Bravette.  He thought about how he’d come to help him even though Arnie had flaked on them all.  To the body lying in the hole he said, “Thank you,” and handed Quey the bottle.

             
Quey took a long drink and then a moment to collect his thoughts.  “Oh, the stories I could tell,” he said and there was a brief chuckle.  After a thoughtful set of ticks he said, “and oh the stories I shouldn’t tell,” this time there was a laugh.  “I’ll tell this one,” he said, running through it in his head.  “Because this was the moment I knew we were brothers.”  He took another drink and began.  “We were in this little market once and this guy was really getting in my face, being stupid.  He wanted to start something, I still don’t know why, probably wanted money or something.  Anyway, Dusty wasn’t… he was there but not close enough to hear anything.  I remember I finally shoved the guy.”  Quey shook his head, lip pouted and shrugged.  “Dusty didn’t hesitate.  He took out the guy’s leg and decked him.  Some guys’ll have your back in a fight but usually they’re curious as to why they’re fighting before they do it.  Dusty didn’t ask until later that night and even then it was an afterthought.  ‘Why did we beat the crap out of that guy anyhow?’  I could have given any answer because it didn’t matter.  I was his crew and that was enough.  That was all he needed to know.  Loyal sonofabitch, probably to a fault because even if we could take it back and tell him everything I think he’d still go with us.”

             
Anymore was going to be too much for him so he took a long swallow from the bottle and passed it to Rachel.

             
“No one made me laugh like he did,” She said after a long silence.  She smiled broad and something between a laugh and a sob shuddered through her.  “He could be so stupid.  And vulgar,” she added.  “He’d say the most, just horrible things but the way he said them… you knew he wasn’t being mean.  And you’d laugh.”  Her mind ran though a thousand things at once and suddenly she realized they were all the parts of him he only showed her.  She didn’t know when she’d started talking again but she was.  “I love the way he would talk when it was just the two of us and I knew he didn’t feel like an orphan who’d grown up in the streets.  That he felt he could just be who he was and I guess that’s why who he was, was a big kid.”  There were tears now and she was sick of them.  “Fuck,” she sighed and wiped at her eyes.  “No one made me laugh like you darling, but you’re a fucking asshole for making me cry like this.”

             
She turned to Quey and when she spoke again he looked down at her and it was everything he could do to keep from breaking down himself.  “He envied you, you know.  You and Cal, that you found Cal.  He tried to fit in with the two of you but he knew that wasn’t ever going to work.  He was happy for you.  You found what he’d really spent his life looking for.  A family,” she finished and instead of taking a sip she dumped the bottle over his body and fished the matches out of her pocket.  She looked at Quey and he nodded, it’d burn.

             
The blaze came quick and burned hot.  Reggie got into another bottle and they passed it around.  This time when Quey was finished with his sip he went to Rachel and said, “Have one with us.”

             
She leaned close and whispered, “I can’t.”

             
Quey looked at her and knew.

             
She nodded.  “Coming on three months now.  Maybe a drink wouldn’t hurt it but I’m only getting one chance at having one of his and so I’m not gambling anything.”