Glitter + Ashes

by Dave Ring

  Is that what’d happened to Bite’s mother during the war? When the feds dragged him to a camp, did she take the bait? It was useless to wonder, but that didn’t stop him.

  He also wondered—bitterly, anxiously, and often—whether his plan to find one woman in a great big death trap of a country was a doomed wolf goal. Bite might have had success doing straightforward escort missions, but he wasn’t confident that he and Venom would fare well off the road. And that was assuming his partner even wanted to come along.

  Bite brooded over the fate of wolves for half an hour. Then, with the fuel a quarter gone, heradioed Venom, “We’re five minutes from the trading post. Need anything?” It was the last safe haven before Willowbee.

  “Oh, nah, I’m good,” he said, tapping his grips. “Thanks, though. You?”

  “Good enough to continue.” Speedbikes weren’t exactly built for comfort, and Bite’s tailbone already hurt. He had to look into a more ergodynamic seat before the return trip with a third person. “Let’s get it done.”

  With that, they continued the run. It was a quiet night. Monotonous. To Bite, driving through the desert was kinda like treading water. If the road bent into a giant loop, sending them in circles, would they even notice? Probably not. They’d drive around and around until their bikes broke down. That was a big drawback of the heaven shield. It protected people on Earth from the vaporizer satellites but also stole the stars, which were the easiest, earliest tools of navigation. Although Bite was only familiar with one star—the sun—he felt the absence of the cosmos at an instinctual level, uncomfortable driving under the blackness of a deep pit.

  The alarm over his right ear beeped a couple seconds before he noticed the child running near the interstate. In the headlights, she was a flash of black, brown, pink, and white from the top of her head to her toes. Her eyes met his for the fraction of a second it took to pass. He didn’t need to signal to Venom; they both pulled over, stopping on the shoulder a quarter mile ahead of the girl.

  “Don’t see that every night,” Venom said, shouting over their engines and the redshift low-to-high vroom of a passing car. “What now?”

  With a frustrated grunt, Bite deployed his kickstand and turned off his bike. “She’s in trouble. I’ll keep track of time. You do the talking.”

  Venom, who taught K-12 martial arts at the village, had a way with the youngest generation. In contrast, Bite had once made a toddler cry so hard, her nose started bleeding (he just said she had “nice pigtails”—how was he supposed to know that she hated pigs?) and had since avoided children.

  A couple minutes later, Venom and Bite reached the girl. The hems of her white denim pants were stained yellowish brown by the grit of the Mojave, and her hands were chalky, as if she’d been digging. “Help,” she said. “We need help.”

  Venom removed his helmet and crouched. His thick black hair stuck up in some places and was flat in others, but he somehow made helmet-head look fashionable. To be fair, it would be difficult to go wrong in the hairstyle department with Venom’s high cheekbones and sharp chin. His only facial scar was a fetching line running from brow to temple, the mark of a broken glass bottle that had bisected his thick black eyebrow during a fight. In contrast, Bite’s cheeks were spotted with chicken pox craters. As a kid, bored, feverish and grieving in an orphan camp, he’d scratched his blisters ‘til they bled. Lots of people in the violet village praised his rough skin, claiming the texture made him seem tough. But now when Bite looked at his reflection, he just saw a helpless boy stolen from a mother, who might have rubbed salve into his blistered arms and face instead of letting him bleed.

  Bite left his helmet on.

  “Who needs help?” Venom asked, offering the girl a flask of water. “Tell us what happened.”

  “Me and Grandma were at home—” She pointed to the desert and drank deeply. “—alone, ‘cause Mom and Dad are working in the big city, and we got attacked by men in brown jackets. They kicked down the door and came in like they belonged. With knives. We escaped and hid for I don’t know how long. When the black sky came, Grandma told me to find help. I’ve been running…” She wiped her cheek. “I’ve been running alone. Grandma can’t move. Her leg—I think it’s rotting.”

  “Christ,” Bite said. “Where is she?”

  Again, the girl pointed to the desert.

  “How did you find the road?” Venom asked. “Is there a path?”

  “Directions.” The girl held out her left wrist. She wore a smart watch with solar cells in its thick wristband. The green-glowing screen projected a digital compass. “Grandma said to keep the needle on one-seven-zero.”

  “We can retrace her steps,” Bite muttered. “The back-bearing is two-ninety from the point she reached the road. But…”

  Venom stood and turned his back to the wide-eyed girl, whispering, “But what?”

  “May be safer to drive the kid to WillowbeeASAP and return for her grandmother with the next heaven shield.”

  “The old woman probably won’t survive that long,” Venom said.

  They peered into the darkness, listening. Insects hummed; the girl breathed in fast, dry rasps; cars vroomed down the interstate. Nobody else stopped to help.

  “Wait here with her,” Bite decided. “If I’m not back in forty minutes, leave without—”

  “Nah. We stay together.” Venom crouched again, smiling at the girl. “What’s your name?”

  “Alisa.”

  “Alisa, you found the road, which means you’re our new navigator. Let’s get your grandma.”

  “Pack of wolves,” Bite said, activating the night vision function of his visor. “That’s what we are.”

  They crossed drought-cracked earth, playing hopscotch over scorpions. Alisa rode on Venom’s shoulders and continuously pointed in the direction of two-ninety degrees. She resembled a barrelgirl perched on a mast, her finger extended toward land or an overboard crewmember.

  “There!” she shouted. “In that old building!”

  Ahead, there was a long-abandoned gas station surrounded by a couple rusted-to-hell prewar cars and scarecrow-thin remnants of old pumps. The cars had been stripped to the frame and were partially buried by sand. Alisa wriggled off Venom’s shoulders and ran toward the dark building. She lit the way with a dim flashlight app on her watch.

  “Hey!” Venom called. “Careful! Don’t step on a rattlesnake!”

  “Go after her,” Bite said. “I’ll keep watch.”

  He was worried that the men who attacked Alisa and her grandmother couldn’t afford to leave witnesses. If the pair hadn’t escaped, the invaders could have lived in their isolated home for weeks with impunity because neighbors were few and far between in the desert.

  But the men in brown jackets had underestimated the child and Elder. Now, there was a chance that desert peacekeepers would be alerted. Would the men in brown jackets flee? Or would they try to find Alisa to silence her?

  Bite increased the sensitivity of his helmet’s motion detector and crouched beside an old car; with a slow exhale, he closed his eyes and listened. There were two helmet hums, each decreasing in volume, behind him: Venom and Alisa. The nearly imperceptible hums swooping around and above his head were insects. Rhythmically spaced, low hums to the south: vehicles passing on the nearby interstate.

  There was another sound to the left. It had the volume of an insect but the steadiness of something more deliberate. As this hum increased subtly in volume, Bite grit his teeth.

  “We found Grandma,” Venom radioed. “Getting her ready to move.”

  “Just in time. Somebody’s coming.”

  “Friend or foe?”

  “I wish I knew.” Bite isolated and amplified the troubling sound. His tech estimated that the unknown was approaching at a speed of fifteen miles per hour. It could be an off-road vehicle. If they remained at the gas station, it’d reach them in three minutes, give or take. The interstate was a quarter mile away. They couldn’t outrun the unknown with an injured
woman. But a confrontation would be risky.

  What now?

  Closely followed by Alisa, Venom emerged from the gas station with a woman in his arms. The elder was bundled from her shoulders to her knees in a blue shawl. Worryingly, her calf was swollen and red. He couldn’t tell if it was a rattlesnake bite or infected wound.

  “What happened to your leg, Ma’am?” Bite asked.

  “A machete,” Alisa’s grandmother explained, her voice raspy. “Could have been worse.”

  “The home invaders carried machetes?” Bite inferred, passing her his flask of water. “Did they have any guns?”

  The woman drank deeply. In a clearer voice, she responded, “Yes, and I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Were they waving guns around?” he pressed.

  “No,” she said. “Just the twelve-inch blades.”

  “That means guns weren’t their primary weapons. Might give us an advantage.”

  Why, though? Was it a matter of ammo scarcity? Of inexperience? Of personal preference? Hell if he knew. Maybe every other week was machete week for those assholes. It didn’t matter when they had less than two minutes to escape.

  “What’s the plan?” Venom asked, calm. Always calm, that one. He turned, trying to see the approaching threat, and the beads across his back glinted in the light of Alisa’s wristwatch. Bite thought about snakes and rattles.

  “Put fear in their hearts,” he said. “Stand back and cover your ears.” He unholstered his gun, aimed at a patch of dirt, and fired. Crack. The desert swallowed his warning. For good measure, he fired a second time, misting the air with dust and gun smoke, and then checked the movement of the friend or foe.

  “They’ve stopped,” he said. “For now. Let’s go.”

  Bite took the lead, using his visor nav system and night vision to keep them on track. Venom, still carrying the injured woman, followed at the rear, while Alisa stayed between the adults. Bite was alternating between navigation and idly thinking about elephants—specifically, how groups of adults protected calves by surrounding them—when he felt a hand on his arm. Alisa was running beside him, clinging to his sleeve for balance.

  She’d been alone on the first race to the interstate, weaving through fanged plants and animals with nothing but a watch to light the way. What had it felt like to survive that terrible ordeal only to be ignored by car after car after car after car?

  Without a word, Bite extended his hand. Alisa took it.

  As they jogged, he remembered—so long ago—walking hand-in-hand with his mother through a garden of wild roses. It seemed obvious now: his decision, his future. He just had to survive the night.

  The interstate and their bikes, thankfully untouched, were within sight when the friend-or-foe hum in Bite’s helmet started again. “Run!” he shouted. “They’re coming fast!”

  During the final sprint, their pursuers gained so much ground, Bite swore that he heard the distant roar of their motor. He threw himself at his bike, unlatching its spare helmet and adjusting the size to small. “Try this, Alisa,” he said.

  She quickly put on the helmet, snapping the chin strap into place. Hopefully, that efficiency meant she’d ridden as a passenger on a bike before because they didn’t have time for training. His helmet screamed: it’s close. Bite glanced at the desert, using his visor to zoom into the souped-up monster of an off-roader that was approaching with a tail of dust. Something small flew out of the passenger-side window.

  “It’s an exploder!” he hollered. “Shoot it down!”

  The drone had a single red light on its belly. Prettily, it zig-zagged as Venom and Bite fired, dodging their bullets with the grace of artificial intelligence.

  “Let me!” the elder said, reaching for Venom’s gun.

  He hesitated, asking, “You know how to use a—”

  “How do you think we escaped those men the first time?” she demanded. “Yes, I can use a gun.”

  “Twenty seconds ‘til impact!” Bite shouted. “Give it to her!”

  Venom handed the elder his weapon, and she dropped to one knee, aiming, her face taut with pain. “Wolf guy,” she said, “on three, shoot at it.”

  “Right,” Bite agreed.

  “One.”

  Bite steadied himself.

  “Two.”

  Aimed.

  “Three!”

  Two gunshots rang out; the drone dodged Bite’s shot and flew straight into the path of the elder’s bullet. Red light sputtering, trajectory chaotic, the exploder spun out of the sky and plopped in the desert between the interstate and the offroader, which first braked and then reversed.

  “Bullseye,” Bite said, grinning behind his visor. “We better haul ass before it explodes. You’re a fine shot, ma’am.”

  In response, she simply nodded and allowed Venom to help her to the passenger seat of his bike.

  Bite counted the seconds as they embarked, pulled off the shoulder, and accelerated. On second ninety-two, a safe distance behind them, the exploder lived up to its reputation. For a fleeting moment, the night was bright, as if a star had burned through the heaven shield and landed in the Mojave.

  “How are we for time?” Venom radioed.

  “Cutting it tight,” Bite said, “but we’ll make it.”

  He was right.

  After reaching Willowbee, checking Alisa and her grandmother into the hospital, chatting with the peacekeepers and filing not one but five “roadside incident” reports—after all that,Venom and Bite hung up their jackets and slumped onto the sofa in their boarding room. They shared a pot of rabbit stew and a stack of tortillas that was still warm from the landlady’s stovetop.

  “Hey, Venom,” Bite said.

  “Yeah, wolf guy?”

  He snorted. “Stop. I’m being serious.”

  Venom put down his spoon and nodded. “Okay.”

  “I think I’m ready to look for her now.”

  A beat of silence. Then, “Your mother?”

  He couldn’t meet Venom’s brown eyes, worried they’d chip away at the sense of determination he’d cultivated in that memory of the rose garden. “Yes. Last I saw her, Mom was in the deep south.”

  “You think she’s still there after twenty years?”

  “I’d still be there, if the situation was reversed.” Bite took a bite of tortilla, using the break in their conversation to steel himself. He didn’t want Venom to be swayed by guilt. So, in the most nonchalant tone he could muster, he asked, “Want to come with me?”

  If the answer was “no,” Bite would shrug his shoulders, imitating the casual disappointment of a guy who’d just lost a hand of cards. He’d promise to return someday, as if one man, alone out there, could promise something like survival. At least he had a better chance than all the cowards in their cars who’d ignored Alissa’s pleas for help. Yeah. It would be all right, even if the answer was—

  “Yes,” Venom said, slinging an arm across Bite’s shoulders. “I’d like to meet your mom.”

  “Cool. Good. Great.” Oh, shit, what a freaking relief. Bite showed his gratitude with a kiss and poured two glasses of booze that had probably been brewed in the landlady’s spare bathtub. “To us,” he said. “And marking days by the gradual infiltration of our jackets by dust. May there be many others.”

  “To us,” Venom agreed.

  Samson Arrita Duchamp stands at the coffee hutch at the edge of the blustery marketplace, watching the industrious little ballet of volunteers swapping the goods in their trailers and truck beds for the crates onboard the candy painted cars of the Carlyle Limited No. 4. The train itself rumbles between hydraulic hisses and belches steam that whips away on the wind.

  She slugs a tin cup of objectively bad coffee, made worse by her recent, singular experience with good coffee. Her colony’s Garden Master, Mr. Acres, had shared a pot with her made from a small pouch of whole beans he’d gotten as a birthday present. He’d doused it with hazelnut milk and a dusting of fairly ancient cocoa powder, and Sam went to work in the St
adium greenhouses that day more or less glowing.

  That had been the sign. A dozen salvaged travel books, a thousand recipes, and four seasons of Anthony Bourdain on a borrowed thumb drive had built the fantasy of life as a traveling food writer, and a single cup of decent coffee had set her off.

  There isn’t much traveling anymore, though. Especially not overseas, not with the storm. This close to it, there isn’t even a sky. And thanks to everything set in motion after it, there are barely even roads. There is, however, the Carlyle.

  “The Currant Dumas occupies two railway cars of the Carlyle and the only mobile restaurant in the FSA,” Sam says into her voice recorder. She shields it from the constant wind with a hand cupped like she’s lighting a cigarette. But damn near no one smokes anymore. “The facade is a mulled red color—I assume—hence the name. DUMAS is painted in elegant, gold letters spanning its entire length. It’s nested between a string of smoke-gray boxcars being loaded with trade goods, and a handful of green cars occupied by the performers of the Cirque Carlyle, known to bring music and stories and feats of magic and general strangeness to the stops on their route.”

  The performers are distinct from the regular train crew in that there isn’t a single faded hoodie between them. Lithe acrobats in wool coats and dancers with glitter-painted faces do light shopping from colony truck beds and disappear inside the warmth of the troup’s green railway cars. Singers and musicians are identifiable by the gloves and heavy scarves they wore to protect the parts of themselves key to their instruments, and the beelines they made to the tea and wax traders. Brawny men with tattooed heads bark with laughter, lounging atop crates and steamer trunks. One of their number approaches the group with a crate of dark liquor hoisted onto his shoulder, and is met with cheers as it was pried open.

  “There’s something almost charmingly Victorian about them,” Sam says into her voice recorder. “They’re comfortable, as if life on the rails was something they’d have chosen in any other time in history.”