There was a nearby thump that made me jerk, and I looked to see my old backpack sitting next to my feet. Landers stood beside me, looking down at me. “The pixies showed me where it was,” he said. “I thought you’d like it back.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“What’s that?” he asked, indicating the map with his hand.
“A map,” I said. I was ever the scintillating conversationalist. That had been what Louise had been for. She was the one who would have had men wrapped around her little manicured pinkie. Me? Not so much. “They stuck it in the bag for me.”
“That has to something to do with what they want?” Landers asked.
I nodded. Landers sat beside me and presented a mug in my direction. It was steaming hot, but it wasn’t coffee. “It’s herbal tea,” he said. “It kind of tastes like grass but Ignatius says it’s good for you.”
I took it and sipped gingerly. It didn’t taste like grass; it tasted like dirt, and even a little honey wouldn’t have helped it. A jar full of honey wouldn’t have done anything to it.
“What else aren’t you telling me?” Landers asked.
I thought about how to couch it. I suspected Landers would take the map from me and proceed to do the job himself. He would return the items to Theo by his lonesome, whereupon Theo might kill him. Furthermore, I had to figure out how to disable their weapon without killing more people, and I had mermaids to rescue. Plus, there was the whole thing where Theo had manipulated events so that I had come to him. There was a specific agenda there, and I didn’t know what it was.
Did I tell Landers about the weapon and hope for the best? Did I take it on my shoulders and do it myself?
“You need to tell me what it is they…he, wants you to do,” Landers said. “Why did this flake give up his leverage? Why did he just let you prance away?” His words were laced with a heavy dose of suspicion. I didn’t blame him for that; I would have been drowning in suspicion if I were in his shoes.
“Theo wants me to find something,” I said, all too aware that I was repeating myself.
There’s more to that, Landers thought in my head.
“Can you do that anytime you want now?” I asked.
“No,” he said slowly. “It’s different with you. Tell me. You’re making me nuts because you won’t tell me what it is that he wants.”
“Theo wants two code keys,” I said. That was on the map. Ariel had made a note of what they looked like; they were sets of papers enclosed in plastic that were meant to be opened only one time. They were about five inches square, and the plastic was red. They were labeled with the system. In this case, it would say “Project Arrowguard.” What idiot had come up with that title? Why not Project Zeus? Or Project Boom Boom? Why not Project Kiss-Your-Sweet-Asses-Goodbye?
Landers frowned. “Project Arrowguard?” he said with a question in his tone. I realized he was getting that from my thoughts. “Project Zeus? Project Boom Boom? What the hell?”
“The short version is that they’re all trapped there,” I said. “Mostly, they are.”
“Good,” Landers interjected.
“If they come out of the bubble, they go back to being insane,” I said. “Like Tate.”
“Sophie’s not going to be happy about that,” Landers said.
“I didn’t make the rules on our crazy new world.”
“I’d like to meet whomever did,” Landers laughed. “Or maybe I wouldn’t. So what’s with the black doors you keep seeing?”
I dreamed about those. It seemed to happen when I was well and truly stressed. I didn’t know what it meant. I shrugged.
Landers took that with aplomb and asked instead, “So what will he do with the code keys?”
“Turn the machine off,” I said. I could hear the reservation in my voice. I didn’t doubt that he could hear it, too.
“So what does the machine do?” Landers asked carefully.
“It ends the world,” I said sadly. “What else would it do?”
I would have thought that I would have slept better that night, but I didn’t. I was worried. The feeling ripped through my soul like sharp fingernails raking down a flimsy piece of taffeta. I was anxious about a number of things. This apprehension didn’t get any better as I watched the moon rise, full and bloated in a sky full of stars that might have been there for a million years or more.
There was a fire going and people were on guard duty as I limped around thinking about the damned thing under the mountain, thinking about Landers’s sudden interest in me, and thinking about all the good things that would just end if I didn’t do something.
Everything had its own sense of timing. I could hear bugs chirping in the midnight hour. The wind had picked up out of the east and whistled through the trees. I could see the silhouette of the tallest branches as they listed back and forth to a nameless tune. A horse nickered softly, and someone was humming not too far away. I recognized the song and spared a rueful grin. “American Pie” was apropos, and the unidentified man tapped his foot in accompaniment.
I stopped at the edge of the camp and watched as one of the guards smoked a self-rolled cigarette about fifty yards away. Tobacco was another trade item that was becoming more popular. It came over from North Carolina by steam train. I didn’t know what they were getting back, but it was enough that a few former smokers had become born again smokers. Ignatius had also taken the opportunity to reinforce how bad smoking was to them, but then, I’d seen the good doctor light up after dinner on several occasions.
I leaned on the crutch and thought. I wasn’t completely oblivious, so when someone cleared their throat behind me, I wasn’t wholly surprised.
Zizi said, “I don’t know what you said to those people but thank you.”
I turned my head slightly and considered the older woman as she stood nearby. I could hear the Caribbean lilt in her voice. It was an exotic accent, and one I never tired of hearing. “I’m not sure if I should be thanked,” I said. “It was probably due to me that you got taken.” Theo had found out about me and decided I was a likely mark. Then he had targeted those who would motivate me. Craig, Zizi, and Clora were all friends. I would babysit for Delphine on occasion, although Clora hadn’t been happy about us playing with knives. (I only let Delphine play with the plastic practice ones.)
“Did you suggest to them that they should do that?” Zizi asked, and then immediately answered her own question, “No, I don’t think so. You’re too hard on yourself, Lulu. I think you always have been.”
I wisely kept my mouth shut.
“There’s something you should know,” Zizi went on.
Did I want to know something? Not really. It wasn’t good. I didn’t need to know what it was to guess that.
“When I touched you before,” Zizi said, “it was like you weren’t there in my head. You know I’ve experienced that before. I don’t always know what’s going to happen.”
Yep. Heard it before. The whole premonition thing had helped Sophie save my life. It had also helped Sophie save Clora’s life. Too bad Penn hadn’t known about that part. I forced the lump down my throat.
“I can’t see as well when I’m in the bubble,” Zizi said. “Bubbles,” she corrected herself. “But it was like a rush of knowledge when I came out earlier today. I touched Delphine, and I didn’t see anything, but I was used to that because her mother wanted her to stay inside the bubble for a long, long time.” It sounded like Zizi had to force down her own lump in her throat. “But once I touched your leg, it was you, too.” And there was another convulsive swallow. “Then Craig helped me down, and it was also him.” She rubbed her hands together as if she thought about praying for what she wasn’t seeing. “I thought it was me, that being inside that awful place had broken me, but it was every…single…person. They must think I’m a little loony today because I went around touching person after person. We don’t have a future. Not anymore. Something happened while we were inside that bubble with that horrible man. None of us are going to
live past a month or two from now.”
I had an answer for that, and it was one I didn’t want to voice. Theo had said they had plenty of time, but he was incorrect. That weapon could go off tomorrow, and it wouldn’t matter how many code keys I found.
No more time. Not for thinking. Not for rationalizing. Not for anything.
“I’ll do my best to change that, Zizi,” I said. “I need you to find me as much portable food and water as you can stick in my backpack. I’m going to saddle one of the horses, so bring what you find to the makeshift corral. Don’t waste any time because I don’t have much to spare.” I limped toward the corral on the other side of the camp, not bothering to see what Zizi did.
I felt a flutter near my ear, and Light alighted on my hair, singing, “What is Dark-Souled-Cutty-Girl doing?”
“Bad things are going to happen,” I sang back. “I’ve got to do something about it. Are you and the girls in or out?”
Light didn’t hesitate. “The sisters WILL SLICE ALL OUR ENEMIES into shreds!” There was an echo of the firefly pixies’ best war cry as they rallied around us. The silver toothpicks came out and pointed heavenward. I couldn’t help the smile that crossed my face: unconditional support really rocked.
I made my way through the mass of tents and stopped only to get my backpack. I knew I could forage on the way to my destination, but I didn’t want to waste any more time than I had. I was aware that Zizi was hurriedly digging through a pile of packs and tossing things aside as she rummaged for useable items. Someone was going to be mad, but I had to make haste. There was also a flurry of guards as they realized something was amiss. People came out of tents to watch what I was doing, but they didn’t make a move to hinder me.
It wouldn’t be long before someone woke up Landers, and he decided that I couldn’t go. Part of my urgency was that I didn’t want to have to put him on the ground for interfering with me.
By the time I reached the corral, Horse and Meka were waiting for me.
Horse shrugged in a decidedly un-horselike manner. He wiggled his oversized ears pointedly. “I have very good hearing,” he said, and then he indicated Meka, “and I couldn’t help but tell my human.”
“Horse likes to gossip,” Meka said.
“Do me a favor and saddle one of the faster horses,” I said. “This is going to be a long night.” I took out the map and looked for the best routes. I mentally compared them to what I knew about the area we were going to traverse.
Meka got to work just as Zizi hurried up with an armful of items to stick in my backpack. It took him about three minutes to finish the job, and the fourth was spent on carefully lifting me into the saddle. We galloped out of the camp in a northerly direction, and when I looked back, Landers was standing near the main fire watching us.
Chapter 20
Lulu Arrives
The Present – Someplace Other Than Colorado
I wasn’t sure exactly where we were. The road had been washed out by a storm some time before, and it had taken all the pertinent signs with it. The good news was that other animals had established a solitary trail through the washout that we could follow, and that was just fine and dandy. However, the horses weren’t happy in that they nickered and pranced a bit. I should have taken that as a sign. I hated signs.
Light and the girls buzzed around my head. “Light,” I sang, “is something wrong?”
Light landed on my shoulder, reaching up to yank on a hank of hair to hold her upright. I had found a birdcage about two days after we’d left Landers and the others. The cover was enough to let them sleep through the day, but they didn’t care for the bounciness of being attached to the rear of a horse. The pet shop had also generously provided for cage decoration a resin surfer girl and a skeleton in an old-fashioned brass diving suit. (The Happy-Go-Time Hammock Hut made of bright yellow, fluffy plush material, had been a bust and had been ejected from the cage after no more than ten minutes, plus I think Horse might have let it slip that it was a pet cage not a pixie house.)
“About business as usual,” Light sang back. That could have been good, but it was probably bad. No, that was definitely bad.
Horse brayed softly as it became obvious that he was listening to us. “Something new,” he said.
We’d been on the road for six days. We’d ridden fairly hard, and I’d had to trade horses in a small community on the Utah/Colorado state lines. One had come up with a bruised hoof, and was limping badly, so it was better to give the poor beast a break. A farmer was happy to trade for the horse and some dried food, so it was win-win. Except that the new horse liked to turn her head back and nip me on the hip when I wasn’t paying attention. Horse tried to talk to the bitey horse, but that didn’t really work.
“You do know I can’t actually talk to your horses, don’t you?” Horse had asked me after the fact.
Yes, I had known, but it had been worth a shot.
I was on pins and needles, quietly expectant, and more than a little distracted as we traveled north and then west. I had thought Landers would pop into my head with lamentations and threats, but he hadn’t. I hadn’t heard so much as a peep. There hadn’t even been a demand for information, but since we’d left Zizi behind, I thought that maybe she had filled them in. Landers needed to get them back to Sunshine, and then perhaps he would get back to me. (I couldn’t wait for that conversation.)
Liked me. Hah. Why did I have to feel like I was in the 8th grade again? The resentful part of me said, “You were never like that in 8th grade.” It took me a moment to realize that it was Louise acting out, and I told her to shut the hell up.
“Lulu,” Light sang, “the sisters want to know why the little figure in the suit with the helmet is dead.”
“It’s a joke,” I sang back. I should have put the pirate ship in the cage instead. Or possibly the Stonehenge replica.
Meka laughed. He had picked up some of the pixie language. “Why don’t skeletons get upset?” he asked.
I suddenly prayed for something to happen. I could ride ahead, biting horse and all. There could be a gryphon or a dragon or something we hadn’t seen before. It could eat me, and the horse I was riding. (I had to think of a name for her other than Bitey.) I had Mr. Stabby to make a sincere effort of survival. It would be better than the impending punchline.
Light bit in a nonliteral fashion. “Why?”
“Because nothing gets under their skin,” Meka said and whinnied laughter in a way that made him seem very similar to Horse. His laughter died away when he realized about a dozen firefly pixies were staring at him with blank faces. “You know, because they don’t have skin.” More staring occurred. He sighed and explained, “That’s what happens when you die. You become a skeleton. You don’t have skin.”
“Are there skeletons that are alive?” one of the other pixies asked. “The sisters haven’t seen that yet.”
“NO EYES TO STAB!” one of them shrieked because the lack of eyes was a big downer to the firefly pixies.
“How to kill them?” another one bellowed.
“I’ve always found that decapitating them works,” I said with a quick glare at Meka. “Never ever show them a Harryhausen movie,” I said to him.
“That was Jason and the Argonauts,” Meka said. “Maybe there’s a DVD store somewhere up here we can stop at. I liked that one, but there was a Sinbad one I liked better. And there was one with cowboys and dinosaurs. What was the name of that one?”
“The Valley of Gwangi,” I said. (Poppops again. Remember? Biblical quotes, baseball, old movies, and air shows. I had a well-rounded education.)
“That would blow their little minds,” Meka said referring to the firefly pixies.
Light zoomed up and over to Meka. She landed on his ear and demanded that he explain what exactly would blow their minds and why it would have such an awful effect. An unenviable conversation followed while I thought about other things.
We carefully crossed the washout while Meka explained that it wasn’t litera
l, which was followed by another conversation that discussed the difference between figurative and literal.
I looked ahead and saw the beginning of a long valley curling up into a mountain range. The notes on the map indicated this was part of Uinta Mountains. The map showed it to be part of the Ashley National Forest and the High Uintas Wilderness. I passed just north of here once before when I had followed Sophie across the country to Washington, D.C., but I didn’t remember much of this. I had been in shock because sirens in the Great Salt Lake had nearly lured me in. Good times.
In this place, it would be a winter wonderland when the snow began to fall later in the fall, but now it was craggy mountains and dark green forests that grew where nothing else might. In the distance were snow-covered peaks that showed their icy elevation to all who looked upon them.
We had begun to climb up from the high desert country two days before, and it wouldn’t be long before we found what was indicated to be our destination on the map. The notes said it was a secure facility on government land.
A private place in the middle of a national forest made sense. It was a place where it could be protected and where it wouldn’t be noticeable. At least, it wouldn’t have been noticeable in the 1970s. Then Google Earth would have killed it in the 2000s, and now not so much, given that no one had figured out how to make a steam-powered satellite. Hikers would have been deterred by guards and fences and signs.
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