Though Tex had spent some time in deep meditation, trying his best to heal and recover his strength, Gary’s body was like a sack of lead. Tex’s arms ached after only twenty yards. After another fifty yards of dragging Gary, Tex’s back felt as though someone had beaten it, but he did not voice his agony. He did not want to show weakness to Erika.
For her part, Erika kept her head down and looked only at Gary’s feet, her brow furrowed and upper lip still curled as though she had smelled something rank.
They took nearly twenty minutes to get to the watering tank. It was round, steel, and open at the top, standing about four feet tall. The water level was about six inches below the rim. Plenty of water to cover a body.
Tex bent to grab Gary’s shoulders again. “Let us get this done so we can be on our way.”
Erika did not bend. “We should say a few words.”
Tex did not let go. “Now is not the time for a discussion.”
“No. I mean we should say something about him. It’s rude to just dump him in the drink. No funeral. No burial. And his family’s not here.” She stared off across the small meadow and toward the horizon. “They must be worried sick for him by now.” She wiped her eye.
Tex drew in a breath. “We did not know this man. Sentimentality over the death of a person you did not even know is—well, it is a waste of time.” He bent again to grab the body.
“That’s the thing I’ll never understand about you, Tex. You were supposedly created and trained to protect humans, but you sure don’t value human life very much.”
“Perhaps humans have not shown me reason to value them.”
Erika’s eyes narrowed, and her lips were set in a thin line. “Thanks a lot.”
Her voice did not sound appreciative. She is being sarcastic. He had not intended to anger her, yet everything he said seemed to rankle her. “I did not mean offense toward you.” Never toward you.
Her eyes softened, but only slightly. Erika turned her attention back to Gary. “Dear Lord, we’re sorry for what we did to Gary.” She sniffled. “He was probably a good man. Probably loved. And, well, he didn’t deserve to end up this way, so I hope he’s going someplace better than this.” Erika wiped her face. “Rest in peace.”
“Why are you crying over a person that you did not know? He may have been a horrible person, Erika.”
Erika’s lips tightened again. She closed her eyes, sucked in a deep breath, and looked as though she had to restrain herself from hitting Tex. “Sometimes I forget how little experience you have with the world.” She sighed. “My mom just died, Tex. Seeing this dead guy makes me think about her. And thinking about her being dead makes me think about losing my dad. It’s like tearing a whole new hole in my heart.”
“One thought leads to another?”
“Yes. It’s like a new loss connects to an old loss and somehow makes it grow.”
The concept was foreign to Tex. In his mind, each event was unique and not shared with others. Each memory was in its own separate box in his mind. But as Erika described how seeing Gary reminded her of her mother, Tex recalled Xenos flying apart before his eyes, and the memory renewed the ache in his heart.
Tex looked down at the bloated, ghastly white face of dead Gary. “Goodbye, Gary.” His words were stilted, the emotions new to him. He repeated the sentiment Erika had offered though he was not sure he understood the full meaning of it: “Rest in peace.”
Erika nodded and patted him lightly on the arm. “Ready?”
Tex nodded, and they heaved the body upward. Erika grunted from the effort, and Tex let out a loud breath. Erika shoved Gary’s posterior to get it over the rim, and Tex pushed the shoulders. The body splashed them with surprisingly cold water.
Tex leapt back as if he jumped away from a fire. He quickly took his wet shirt off and instinctively threw it to the ground. The cool mountain air prickled his wet skin. He was glad for the sunny day, otherwise the cool air would have chilled him unbearably.
A mocking smile replaced Erika’s grimace. “You look like you were jumping away from a viper’s nest.”
“It is not funny.”
Erika did not stop smiling. “It is a little. You should have seen yourself.”
“I do not need to see myself. I am aware of how I look.”
Erika picked up his shirt and shook off the dirt. The soil had melded with the splash of water, creating muddy streaks that she could not shake out no matter how hard she tried. “You need to lighten up a bit, Tex.” She handed him the dirty shirt and headed back toward the car.
I doubt she will say that when she learns what is coming. “Maybe humans are too light. Perhaps you should take things more seriously, not less.”
She stopped abruptly, and Tex nearly ran into her back. “No, I disagree. I’m thinking that the only thing that’s kept me from going stark raving mad, like seriously over-the-top bonkers through this whole thing, is that I had Ian with me. And even during the worst crapstorm that life throws at us, he makes me stop and laugh. For years, he’s been saying to me, ‘Lighten up, Erika.’ And you know what? He’s right. Life is a daily run through a minefield of cow shite, and the only thing that keeps it from utterly sucking is a laugh with friends.”
She stared into his eyes as if looking for something. Apparently, she did not find what she looked for. Erika threw up her hands, rolled her eyes, groaned, and resumed walking.
“Erika.”
She kept walking. “What?”
“Stop. Please. I need to—”
She stopped and blew out an exasperated breath. “What, Tex? My stomach is doubling back on itself in hunger.”
“I need to tell you something. You will not like it.”
Her dark eyes narrowed on him. “You’ve been keeping something from me? Well? Out with it.” She had one hand on her hip, and with the other, she made a rolling motion.
She will be angry beyond repair if I do not tell her the truth. Most of it, anyway. “When I was interfaced with the Conexus, I learned things about their history. About Earth history.”
Her intense gaze continued.
“The attacks in Europe are definitely not terrorists. It is an attack by an alien species. They call themselves M’Uktah, ‘people of Uktah.’ They come from the far side of the galaxy and have come here using a dimensional gateway.”
“You mean like a wormhole?”
“Yes. They are predators, Erika. Deadly predators.”
Her face grew paler than he had ever seen it. She gripped her stomach and looked as though she would vomit.
He wanted to provide comfort to her and ease her fear, but he had little experience with such interactions and was afraid to attempt to touch her for fear she’d recoil.
She took a deep breath, swallowed, and said, “You knew this all along. From the moment we found you, lying on that table, and you said nothing?”
Tex had assumed she would be fearful from the new information he’d given her, not angry at him. I do not comprehend her.
“Do not be angry with me. When you first found me—when we were at the school—I was not myself. My memories were—still are—confused. But when we heard the announcement on the radio, of the attacks, I knew it was not what they are reporting. I knew it was the alien war that the Makers, and Commander Sturgis, have been preparing for all these years. Do you see?”
Erika closed her eyes and rubbed her brows. Finally, she said, “I understand that you’ve been ill. I get that. But you can’t keep things like that from me, okay? If we’re going to work together—to be a team—you’ve got to be honest with me. Always. Do you understand?”
“It is you who do not understand. I did not want—”
“I didn’t want what? To be prepared to be attacked? To possibly be someone’s dinner?” Her nose wrinkled in disgust.
She was twisting everything he said until even he wondered why he had done what he had. Within the blink of her eye, he was within inches of her, their eyes locked. Only inches separated them
.
His voice was a low whisper. “I wanted to protect you.”
Her cheeks flushed, her breathing ragged. He felt her heart fluttering away in her chest. “Oh.”
Tex stepped back from her, allowing space to come between them. Erika stood motionless as if frozen in place.
“Erika?”
She sucked in a breath. “Yes, well, we should probably get going.” Her stomach rumbled loudly as if to accentuate her point. She stared at him for a few moments more with an expression Tex could not read. Abruptly, she said, “Okay then,” and continued back to the car.
Since they’d disposed of Gary, Tex sat in the front seat. Erika drove but said nothing. She looked deep in thought.
They got back to the main, paved road, and in less than fifteen minutes. a sign announced they were entering a town called Luna, New Mexico. It was more a grouping of buildings at a wide spot in the road than a town. Despite the fact that it was midday, there were no cars were on the streets, no people going in and out of the handful of businesses.
Erika pulled the car up to the pump at a small gas station also serving as a Mexican restaurant and convenience store. Erika said she’d fill they tank while Tex got food. She pleaded with Tex not to kill anyone.
“Surely it takes more mental energy to kill someone than to simply convince them to give you what you want, doesn’t it?” she’d asked.
He wanted to tell her killing someone was in fact easier because the human body was more intelligent than the human mind. He could “converse” with the body in a way that he was unable to “speak” to most human minds because humans lacked the capacity to interact in that way. He did not tell her that, though, for fear he would offend her even further than he already had. Instead, he simply promised not to kill anyone. This whole business would be a lot easier if I did not need to restrain myself.
Tex donned the large sunglasses and put the cap back on. He had no sooner stepped onto the wooden porch than Erika let out a string of curse words and kicked the car tire.
“While you’re in there, ask them to turn on pump two.” She leaned against the car, her arms folded across her chest, waiting to pump the gas.
Bells hanging from the door tinkled as Tex opened it. The wooden floor creaked, and dust motes filled the air. Short aisles of metal shelves usually filled with snack foods and household staples were nearly bare. The doors of the refrigerated cases at the back of the store were open and the cases empty. Tex’s nose wrinkled at the odor of spoiled milk and rotten food.
No other customers were in the store and no clerk behind the counter. Tex grabbed a bag of something called Funyuns and a smashed package of snack cakes that had gotten wedged in one corner. Then he grabbed two other bags of chips. I will not have to restrain myself from killing anyone, after all. He pushed aside the rising tide of anxiety about why the store had been picked over and left unattended.
On a bottom shelf, he found a bag of red twisted-rope candy of the kind Ian had once shared with Tex. The memory was vivid, as though it had happened the previous day rather than weeks before. He could nearly taste the melted sugary goo in his mouth. He grabbed the last two bags of the candy and headed toward the counter to find a way to turn the gas pump on for Erika.
He rounded the corner and met a rifle barrel pointed at him by a large, middle-aged woman. She wore her wavy gray hair pulled back, but wispy tendrils of it flew about her red, round face.
Tex’s voice was low and calm. “Do not be alarmed. We came for food and gas.” His words did not seem to alleviate her need to point a gun at him. The tip of the rifle was only a few inches from his nose.
She held the rifle steady. “We got no gas.” She eyed him up and down. “No one’s got no gas. Where you from that you don’t know that?”
“No one’s got no gas.” The woman’s words chilled him. And so it has begun.
“We have been… camping. For about a week now. We have not eaten for two days. We barely made it to town.” Tex tried to sound desperate and to soften his features so the woman would want to help him.
She stared down the barrel at him, unmoved by his explanation. The woman pulled back on the trigger and a shell clicked into the chamber.
Erika burst into the place. The door slammed behind her, and the bells crashed against the glass rather then gently tinkling as they had when Tex had come in. She muttered to herself about having to take care of things herself, but she stopped mumbling when she came to the end of the aisle and saw the gun trained on Tex.
He smelled her adrenaline and sensed her fear though he was fairly certain she was not afraid for him but rather for the woman with the gun.
“There is no gas,” Tex said. “She was just filling me in on what happened last week while we were camping.”
“Yeah? So why is there no gas?”
The woman kept her gun on Tex but looked furtively at Erika. “My gas shipment was supposed to get here yesterday, but ’cause of that outbreak of some new virus crud over’n Arizona, they got blockades and crap. Don’t know when I’ll be gettin’ my gas, but everybody ’round here’s freakin’ out ’bout the virus and the terror attacks o’er there’n France. A new damned world war is what it is, and we’ll be sucked into it soon, no doubt.”
“Go camping for a few days, come off the mountain, and the whole world has gone to shit.” Erika shook her head. “Come on, put the gun down. Do we look like we’re from the Middle East or terrorists to you?”
Erika stared at the woman evenly, and the gun-toting woman stared back. “Terrorists? No. But you guys don’t look—well, he don’t look—right.” She used the gun to point toward Tex as though Erika would not know whom among the three of them in the store she was talking about.
Erika kept her hands in the air and moved closer to Tex. “My friend isn’t like us.” Her words were matter-of-fact, and the truth of her statement softened the woman’s stare.
“I have a rare genetic disorder.” Tex tried to make his voice calm and soothing. Erika had made up a name for his fake disease. Tex wracked his brain, trying to pull that tiny detail from the fog. As the woman stared at him, he blurted out, “Bender’s disease. That’s what it’s called.”
“He may not look like you and me, but that doesn’t give you the right to shoot him just ’cause he’s different.” Erika injected her words with a righteous tone that made the woman swallow and pull in her lips in shame.
Tex forced his best congenial smile. “Please, put the gun down so we can talk like civilized people.”
The woman stared at Tex as if trying to determine if he was a threat or not. She hesitated a few seconds more then reluctantly lowered her weapon. She looked a bit disappointed to not have cause to use it. “I ain’t never seen you around here before, and I know everybody. Where you from?”
To Tex’s surprise, Erika told the truth. “We’re from Ajo, Arizona.”
“I never heard of it.” The woman’s brow was still crinkled.
“It’s in Arizona. Down south near the border. We’re up here to visit my Aunt Dana. Camped for a few days before going to her place.”
“Aunt Dana? You mean Dana Holt?”
Erika’s brows rose. “You know her?”
“Course I know her. I already said I know everybody round here. If she’s your aunt, you must be—what did she say her niece’s name was, now?”
“Erika.”
The woman slapped her thigh. “Erika! That’s it. I’ll be damned. She said she didn’t figure on ever seein’ you again.” The woman’s face had lost its skeptical sneer.
Erika’s smile disappeared. “Yeah, well, you know, in times like this, family’s got to stick together.”
The woman nodded. “Ain’t that the truth.” She put the shotgun on a shelf behind the counter. “My name’s Dottie, by the way. Come on over. Let me get that stuff in a bag.”
Tex hesitated. She had seemed so ready to put a bullet in him.
Erika grabbed a few bags from Tex’s arms. She put them on
the counter, and Tex slowly approached Dottie and put the rest of the bags on the glass counter.
Erika pulled the bills she’d taken from Gary’s wallet out of her pants pocket.
Dottie waved her hand at the money. “Put that away.” She stuffed the chips and candy into a thin white plastic bag. “Your money’s no good here.”
Erika put a twenty-dollar bill on the counter. “I insist. I’m no freeloader.”
Dottie’s plump hand pushed the bill back. “I know you’re not. But I’m not greedy, either. I’m not gonna charge you for some smashed-up chips. ’Sides, your Aunt Dana’s a good customer and a friend. Hell, she’ll prolly be down here helping me with my generator soon, and it’ll be more than repayment for some junk food.” Dottie winked as she finished bagging the food. “In fact, can you tell her I need her to come down when she gets a chance? She’s the only one that can get my old generator to work when it’s acting up, and I figure I’ll be needin’ it soon.”
Erika flashed a smile at Dottie. “Thanks so much. And I’ll tell Aunt Dana what you said.”
As the bells tinkled behind them, Dottie yelled, “Take care of yourselves.”
Erika had the dark-orange nacho chip bag open and a handful in her mouth before they got back to the car. “Guess we’ll have to ditch the car sooner than expected.”
“How much gas is left?”
Erika squinted at the gauge. “So little that the needle is below the E for empty.”
“How far is it to your Aunt Dana’s? You were telling the truth about going there, right?”
“Yes, it was all true.” Erika’s gaze was far away for a second. She turned the key in the ignition, and the car actually started.
“We cannot leave the car parked here,” Tex said.
“I got an idea of where to put it.” She pulled a lever on the steering-wheel column and drove slowly away from Dottie’s gas station, which no longer sold gas.
9
JACK
Jack had to nearly jog to keep up with Anna as she stormed back to the motel.
H.A.L.F.: ORIGINS Page 6
