The Seventh Day

by Scott Shepherd

  But Laura was nowhere in sight and Joad’s hope diminished with each loping stride. He shared his concern with Fixer and Sayers; they too were filled with anxiety and exasperation as the massive crater and the bizarre object that created it came into view.

  They hadn’t even dismounted before they started yelling her name. By the time they hit the ground, Laura’s voice was calling back.

  “Joad… !”

  Her voice lacked its normal dose of enthusiasm. There was something painful in it—along with a good dose of fright.

  For a brief second, the girl calling for him instead of her stepfather threw Joad. He felt Sayers glare at him, but paid it no attention. Joad was concerned only for Laura and quickly approached the crater edge.

  Even Joad was thrown by what he saw.

  The ship lay below the rim and there was the girl, trapped in the clutches of the long-thought-dead Retriever.

  She saw Joad first and cried out.

  “I … I only wanted to see what was inside….”

  Joad felt a tightening in his chest. One wrong move and they might never see her again. He did everything in his power to hide his concern and offered her a confident smile.

  “It’s okay, Laura. We’ll get you out of there.”

  Fixer and Sayers came up behind him and stopped dead in their tracks.

  Laura, seeing all three of them, reached out instinctively for help. The movement caused the tentacle to shift.

  “Laura! No… !”

  But Joad’s words were for naught.

  The Retriever snapped inward and Laura dropped out of sight, as her screams echoed in their ears.

  19

  Secundo and Trey had been arguing for the better part of an hour. Primo was growing tired of their incessant bickering; he told them to keep up, as they were lagging behind. Trey had been adamant about not continuing through the lavender field. He was lobbying to head back through the woods, retrace their steps down the mountain, and return to The Flats.

  “We had it pretty good out there,” he said. “It wasn’t until we grabbed Fixer that things went south on us.”

  Primo couldn’t disagree. It had been smooth sailing on the pirate ship for a number of years. The brothers had lived quite well off the Remaining on the Flats, striking fear into their hearts and taking anything their victims held near and dear as their spoils. When they’d come across Fixer and his little red Corvette doing circles around him, Primo had been convinced they’d hit the mother lode. Cells—the precious commodity that actually made things work—would make the brothers even more formidable. The goal had seemed simple: beat Fixer within an inch of his life until he gave up their location.

  It had proven disastrous, resulting in the death of their beloved youngest sibling. Which made Primo more resolute than ever; he wanted revenge for their fallen brother, and he wanted cells as a bloody reward. They had gotten neither one, and after almost losing Secundo in the confrontation with the Rider in the woods, no one would blame Primo for retreating before more damage was done. Trey’s inclination to pack it in was a natural reaction. It was a sensible way to go.

  But Primo was unwavering in his pursuit of the Rider, Fixer, doctor, and the girl.

  For reasons he was loath to explain.

  This didn’t help matters with Secundo. His bulky blond-haired brother shared the same desire for revenge as Primo. The problem was that Secundo wanted them to head in a totally different direction.

  “There’s no cover in these fields.” Secundo pointed at the endless pasture of lavender, then nodded back toward the forest. “If I were them, I’d duck back into the trees and stay hidden near the edge. Ride south for miles.”

  “In the opposite direction they’ve been headed,” Primo replied. “Doesn’t make sense, even with us chasing them.”

  Of course, Primo couldn’t tell him the real reason. Secundo would’ve thought him completely insane.

  So, Primo rode along as long as he could without exploding. Trey kept up his prattle, yearning for the “good ol’ days” in the Fields. Secundo continued to insist they were going the wrong way. Finally, Primo couldn’t take it any longer and whirled on his brothers.

  Clouds rumbled, a preamble to his roar.

  “Enough!”

  Trey’s horse reared as lightning flashed directly above their heads. Neither brother doubted where the sudden change in the weather had come from.

  “We are continuing through the lavender fields,” Primo quietly seethed. “End of discussion.”

  Another flicker of lightning accompanied this declaration. Secundo and Trey exchanged a quick look. Primo was satisfied to see them shrink lower on their horses’ backs.

  Satisfied, because it kept Primo from explaining why he was so sure they were on the right path through the lavender patch that went on as far as the eye could see.

  It was because of The Husky.

  He’d seen it only twice before this morning.

  As Primo willed himself to calm down—tempering the storm above them—he urged his mount forward and thought back to the first time he’d encountered the dog.

  It wasn’t long after The Seventh Day. Maybe a couple of weeks; a month, tops. It had been hard to keep track of time directly after the Purple, and difficult to pinpoint when day yielded to the aurora borealis that lit up the sky all night long. At first, the days just blended into one another as the Remaining got used to this new world order. It had been hard enough coming to grips with the idea that pretty much everyone you ever knew had disappeared from the planet. Consequently, the time of day was just a sticking point.

  Primo had been stumbling with Quattro through what was left of the city, his damaged eye socket seeping and oozing liquids he found it hard to believe were being secreted from his own body. The stuff looked more like remnants from a squashed piece of fruit or jelly that had sat out in the sun way too long. He had wandered the empty streets in a stupor, desperate to find something to ease the excruciating pain emanating from what had once been his eye. Bad enough to be half-blind; his injury had him hovering near death’s door, and made him wish he’d been plucked up by The Strangers and taken to their place. Wherever the hell that might be.

  Instead, The Husky appeared.

  Primo had been out of it, lying on an iron-cast bench outside a wrecked supermarket. Lost in a feverish dream where he’d been playing Kick The Can with his three brothers in a Wichita sandlot, he was roused by a dog barking. He turned his aching head to see the most amazing creature, less than three feet away.

  To call it just a dog would have been a misnomer to the nth degree. Even labeling it a husky would have been unfair. Maybe its breeding started there, but the end product was a humongous animal, twice the size of any husky that had walked the Earth prior to The Seventh Day. It wasn’t quite the size of a horse, but a saddle would have fit on its back, and the dog looked strong enough to support a rider. Even more incredible was the color of its fur: Viking red. Bright, blustery, and bushy, the animal clearly had the shape and texture of a husky, but one on steroids. Its eyes, were two different colors: The left was as blue as a clear summer sky, while its mate was the dark lustrous green of a polished emerald.

  The blue-and green-eyed beast inched closer, its mouth open wide. Primo let out a moan, partly from fear of the razor-sharp teeth protruding from the canine’s huge jaw; the rest from his raging fever. There was nowhere for Primo to go. He bumped up against the back of the bench and brick wall behind it.

  As the dog lunged, Primo screamed.

  It gripped his shirtsleeve between its teeth and pulled. But it did so rather gently, with just enough force and urgency to be persistent but not threatening.

  Primo’s first instinct was to yank away, but the animal wasn’t about to let that happen. He stared into the dog’s blue and green eyes. He was hovering on the edge of an infectious delirium, and it felt like the creature was calling him.

  Though words weren’t spoken, Primo could feel them deep inside.r />
  Come with me.

  He glanced across the parking lot. Quattro was asleep atop the hood of a bashed-in Ford, oblivious to the whole thing.

  Primo started to call out, but then felt the pull of the red-haired beast.

  Come with me.

  Again, no voice. Only a feeling. Inexplicable.

  It just seemed … right.

  Primo went.

  He followed The Husky past six blocks of abandoned storefronts and unoccupied homes. It eventually led him into what was left of a strip mall, to one particular corner store with a smashed-in window.

  LensCrafters.

  Within seconds, Primo was scrambling through the store debris left behind by scroungers and scavengers. He yelped for joy when he came across bottles of eye salve and solution. Which was followed by a huge sigh of relief after he applied them to his infected socket. Comfort was instantaneous. Moments later, The Husky was nowhere to be found. Primo, already feeling like a new man, searched the entire deserted neighborhood, but there was no sign whatsoever of the dog.

  He decided the beast was nothing but a figment of his tortured imagination, and didn’t mention it to Quattro the next day when they returned to the burnt-out LensCrafters and began fashioning a glass eye out of the store’s scraps. Quattro would have thought him completely nuts.

  Primo decided to forget about it.

  Until the next time he saw The Husky.

  It was maybe two months later; at least that was what Primo presumed. Time had basically run out on The Seventh Day, and all that mattered was the body’s circadian rhythm, which informed the brothers when to sleep, forage, or pillage. Primo knew it was after Trey showed up with the fire-snorting horses and way before they got to Newport and found the pirate ship.

  The three of them had made camp on a strip of sidewalk under a neon sign that would never flash again. The street had once been jammed with cars, bumper to bumper with revelers; especially on holidays. Then, the Purple came, and with no one left to party, there was nothing more to celebrate. The massive buildings in which people came from all over the globe to leave their money were gone. What The Strangers wanted with casinos was totally beyond Primo; they were worthless now that the almighty dollar had disappeared along with everything else. Perhaps there was an intergalactic crap game going on in some unnamed universe. If so, Primo hoped The Strangers were losing their shirts. Or whatever the hell they wore.

  They had stopped beneath the Flamingo sign, whose massive shadow provided the only shelter from the sweltering heat. The Strip was a graveyard of ruined cars and empty lots where hotels had once prospered. Primo saw no reason to stick around; he found it depressing. He’d thought Vegas was a pit before it had vanished; he considered the wide-open spaces a vast improvement.

  Trey and Quattro thought otherwise, and begged him to stay the night. So while his two brothers snoozed under the stars, dreaming of jackpots and slot payoffs they’d never collect, Primo stared up at the Flamingo sign, wondering if he would live long enough to see another light come on.

  That was when he saw The Husky, standing by itself in the middle of the deserted six-lane highway that was once Las Vegas Boulevard.

  He started to call out to his brothers, but Primo had trouble finding his voice as his mouth went suddenly dry. The Husky commanded all his attention.

  Its coat was an even more fiery red. The sky blue and emerald eyes seemed brighter than ever. And as impossible as it might seem, the animal was bigger than when last he’d seen it.

  The Husky met Primo’s gaze head on, then turned and walked down the former boulevard of a billion lights. It took a few steps, then half-turned—and caught Primo’s eyes once more.

  Primo got to his feet.

  He didn’t need to hear the inner voice this time. He knew he was supposed to follow the creature.

  They left the city by daybreak. The sun was pounding so hard at noon that Primo couldn’t remember sweating so much in a lifetime. But he paid it no heed; he was too busy wondering where The Husky was leading him.

  The day was at its hottest when they reached the giant stone building in the middle of the desert. Only when they arrived at the massive gate did The Husky cease its purposeful trek. Primo looked up to see barbed wire spread across the upper walls. Broken-down towers that once housed men with guns were situated at its far-most corners.

  As in the city, there wasn’t a soul in sight. No surprise. Take away the money, glitter and girls, and Las Vegas lost its luster. Wiping out the planet wasn’t exactly a boon for tourism either.

  The Husky hovered by the door, pawing at its base. It looked up at Primo as if to say, “You gonna help me here or not?”

  Strange, thought Primo. He had let the humongous hound drag him through the desert like he was a lemming, only to reach their destination and have the animal stand at the mercy of its human companion.

  Primo moved to the gate and pulled on the handle.

  The huge door began to open.

  Chalk one up for mankind and opposable thumbs.

  Primo swung the gate wide.

  His brother—the one right behind him in age, the missing one, the one called Secundo as a child and who would be once again—collapsed in his arms.

  Breathing, but barely alive.

  An uncomprehending Primo whirled to look at The Husky. But it was gone.

  Which seemed almost impossible. The only thing in sight was the stark open desert.

  Primo had been by the gate tending to Secundo for three days when Trey and Quattro caught up. Primo was impressed by Trey’s tracking skills; he was already developing the ability to follow footprints over a long trek of ground. That same know-how had gotten them this far up into The Fields, chasing the Rider and his companions.

  Primo had asked Trey if he’d found them by tracking his footprints or the dog’s. Trey looked at him like he had a screw coming loose.

  “What dog?”

  Primo knew then and there he couldn’t mention The Husky. He had told his brothers he must have been seeing things—mirages in the desert—and turned the storytelling over to Secundo, whose tale of survival was incredible on its own.

  Once again, Primo convinced himself that his mind had played tricks on him.

  Which worked pretty well until early this morning.

  Primo had awoken by the dwindling campfire to see The Husky for the first time in years. It had grown even larger since that day morning on Las Vegas Boulevard, and was now sitting on the lavender field’s edge. Again, The Husky locked eyes with Primo, then turned and walked into the field.

  And disappeared from view.

  In that moment, Primo realized The Husky must be something that only showed up in his most desperate hours, when he needed direction.

  He woke his brothers and insisted they continue their pursuit of the Rider.

  Never mind Trey’s desire to go back to The Fields. Or Secundo’s suggestion they search the edge of the woods looking for their quarry.

  Primo was intent on following The Husky.

  Even though he couldn’t see it anymore.

  The first time it appeared, it had saved his life.

  The second time it had reunited him with his long-lost brother.

  Primo couldn’t wait to see what it had in store for him now.

  20

  Dark.

  Almost pitch black, except for slivers of light as thin as string forming a circle around her.

  As Laura waved her hand, the slim rays bounced off her fingers like fairy dust from a tale no longer told. She had stopped screaming once she realized Joad, Doc, and Fixer could hear her outside the ship.

  That didn’t prevent them from constantly checking on her.

  “Laura! Can you still hear me?” Doc’s voice had a tinny effect, as if it bounced off metal before it reached her ears.

  “Same as five minutes ago, Doc! I haven’t moved. Can’t really see, so I’m gonna stay put.”

  “But you’re okay?” That was Fixer, ask
ing for at least the fourth time.

  “Yes, Fixer. I’m fine. Except for being stuck in a spaceship.”

  The truth was, she really was fine.

  She had given up crying when she didn’t feel any scrapes, cuts, or bleeding, even though she’d fallen more than a few feet. One would have thought she’d really hurt herself, cut herself on a jagged edge or broken a bone when it smashed onto a hard surface. But she had landed on something soft.

  If only she could see what.

  No sooner did the thought cross her mind when something whirred.

  She yelped.

  “What’s the matter?” yelled Sayers, who was standing by the edge of the crater.

  Laura’s voice echoed deep within the buried Retriever. “I’m all right. Just thought I heard something.”

  There was a pause. Fixer and Joad, who had tied a rope around the fingers of the Retriever, traded looks with Sayers. Joad could tell the other two men had visions of spacemen dancing in their heads. He kept calm.

  “What did you hear, Laura?”

  “It was nothing.”

  “How do you know it was nothing?” asked the physician, unsuccessfully trying to hide the panic in his voice.

  “Because the lights are on.”

  Even Joad couldn’t hide the concern on his face.

  They weren’t lights, exactly. More like those tubes she used to see on the sides of the road when she was little and traveling with Doc and her mom, usually after there had been an accident.

  “Glow sticks?” asked Doc from outside, after Laura had described them.

  “I guess so.” These were certainly pretty, she thought. Her own personal rainbow; the colors floating around her as they bounced off the beams of light, as if trapped in a kaleidoscope. Whether they were glow-in-the-dark sticks or a form of alien illumination, it didn’t matter. It was the first time she’d seen something brighten the pitch black since the Minnie Mouse nightlight her mother plugged in next to her bed. Back before the lights went out for good.

  “Don’t touch them!” Fixer shouted.

  Laura had no intention of doing so. But that didn’t stop her from shifting in the tight space to check out her surroundings. There wasn’t much room to navigate, just the flat surface she had landed on. She noticed the glow lights were evenly spaced out, and counted them off on her fingers.