It was thin as denim, light as silk and reacted to bullets by spreading the impact over the rest of the cloth. There were bolts of it in various colors. Some of the things he found were primitive equivalents to equipment he’d had when he’d been light years in the future and half a universe away. He was impressed and a little awed. If the jump gate on the other side of Saturn hadn’t been destroyed in the wars some ten thousand years ago, earth would have been close to joining the rest of the inhabited systems in the galaxy again. He wondered if the scientists knew about it, if they’d photographed its shattered remains. Probably. They had filmed the ancient faces on Mars and if he remembered right there had been a lot of interest in sending probes to Saturn.
He gave the couple and their children the grand tour of the facility, offered to drive them back to civilization but as they did before, they decided to stay. They weren’t trapped anymore. They could leave if they wanted, the white Raptor pickup trucks were out in the parking lot.
Jessie swung by the Three Flags and grabbed Stabby’s Xbox out of the Brutal Retort tour bus. The black paint on the old school bus was peeling off in places and the yellow peeked out. Stabby had bemoaned the loss of his saved games and the characters he’d spent a hundred hours building. Jessie liked the wild front man of the band enough to drive hundreds of miles out of his way. Or maybe he was just doing anything to put off going back. He really should be getting home, back to Lakota but a part of him was dreading it.
He was rudderless.
He shoved aside an empty cereal box and crumpled beer cans then sat on the ratty couch, stared through the dusty windshield.
He didn’t have a purpose anymore and didn’t know what to do with himself. Scarlet was gone. He had no driving urgency to fix things, to correct the mistakes of the past. He wasn’t hunting for anyone and no one was hunting him. He didn’t care about retrieving trinkets for people or settling down in one of the walled cities. He wanted to get away. To be left alone. He missed the little home he’d shared with Maddy on the backside of nowhere. He thought about his short time with Sandy and his mood darkened. He’d thought he’d liked her, maybe even loved her a little but that had been a mistake. She couldn’t get past the way he looked. No one had been able to except Scarlet. And Maddy. He sighed and leaned back, watched the dust motes dancing in the sunbeams.
Bob nosed through the guitars, old clothes, empty whiskey bottles and other rubbish the heavy metal band had left behind. Other than startling a nest of mice, he found nothing of interest and hopped up on the couch with his master. Jessie idly scratched him behind the ears and they both drifted off to sleep in the warm afternoon. One dreaming doggy dreams of rabbits and treats, the other a melancholy wandering through an empty landscape of fog and darkness.
5
Lakota
They knew he was coming before he got there and a small group were gathered at the gate when he arrived. After the mandatory bite check, he let his mom pull him into a long hug and didn’t try to break away. He saw the concern in her eyes and she kept repeating that she couldn’t believe how much he’d grown. He thought the words she was looking for was how much he’d aged. He hugged her and let her mother him. The last time he’d seen her, she’d been dead, curled into a ball in a dirty radiation suit. Most of his old friends were there and welcomed him back warmly. After the first shocked reactions to his changed appearance, they accepted that life on the road was hard.
“Keep on living rough and you’ll be clomping around like Cobb in another few years.” Stabby said. “You should come back home, mate. The wars are over.”
His dad shook his hand then pulled him into an embrace, Scratch told him he was as ugly as ever but said it with a grin.
His old warehouse was still there, his mom hadn’t let anyone move into it although there was new construction all around. She was still finding new residents houses and Eliza was still keeping her spreadsheets. They were expecting a big influx of people soon although it wasn’t general knowledge yet. The Admiral who had taken all the naval survivors to San Clemente island was in talks with Gunny about getting some of the soldiers and sailors back to the mainland. They were overcrowded, they couldn’t maintain the nuclear subs or naval ships and many of the people were wanting to get back to civilization and the safety of the walled cities.
His mom tried to make him promise to stay for a while, not run off and loose himself to the road again.
“Just stopped in for a visit.” He told her. “There’s one last thing I need to do before I settle down for good.”
She smiled but when she looked into his eyes, she didn’t think he would ever stop running from whatever haunted him.
Some of the retrievers were ditching their gas guzzling muscle cars, they were repurposing old
