Chapter 37 - Luna #3
"Did you guys make out okay in town?" I ask, trying to be cordial and ease some of his anger toward Kara. "Some of our guys went in after you left to look for filters."
Dewey goes to speak but,
"What's that?" Briar's voice cuts across whatever he was going to say, loud and filled with concern. She's up on her toes, looking past him at the truck bed. "Is that a person? Is he hurt?"
Dewey's face does an oh shit look and quickly gets replaced by panic, because whatever is in the back of that truck, we were never supposed to see it.
A hand comes down solid on my shoulder from behind, and something hard and round pushes into my back.
"God damn it, Dew." Tanner's voice is right at my ear. "Now what the hell are we supposed to do?"
Dewey shrugs, and then a mean little smile creeps back onto his face.
"Bring 'em with us." He pushes off the fender. "Kills two birds with one stone, don't it?"
Tanner swears once and shoves me forward. "All of you get in the truck and keep your mouths shut."
Cody is standing beside him so he must have come back with him, and his face has gone completely white. He looks at Tanner, then at me in surprise.
"Wait." He puts both hands up. "Wait, wait, no. You never said anything about taking them. That's not, no. I'm not cool with that." He takes a step backward. "Tanner. Tanner, you can’t take them."
I'm already reaching for the light. That version of it that came for me once before, in my basement while a soldier's gun was on me.
It came when I needed it, and now there's nothing.
I reach for that place under my skin where it lives, and there's nothing there at all.
There's no flicker, no spark, not even the buzz that always comes first.
I look at Kara and find her staring down at her own hands with frustration. She looks up at me with the answer already on her face. She doesn't have anything to help either.
"Shut the fuck up and get in the truck." Tanner hisses at him, which is worse than yelling. "All of you, right now, or somebody's getting a bullet. We don't need every one of you to make this work."
Penny starts to growl. It comes up out of her low and deep, a sound I've never heard from her. Her whole front end drops as she backs up a step with her eyes locked on Tanner. She must sense the fear coming off me and reacted to it.
"Penny, no." My voice breaks when I think of them hurting her.
Dewey gets a hand in her collar before she can do anything.
She twists and snaps at him with her feet scrabbling on the concrete while he hauls her across to the Jeep.
He lifts her in by the collar and the haunch, then slams the door on her.
Both front paws hit the glass. Her barking is muffled and frantic behind it, over and over, with nobody in this bay close enough to hear any of it.
Then Tanner's hand is in the middle of my back pushing again to the truck door.
The cab reeks of cigarettes and sweat and I try not to breathe it in too deeply.
Briar goes in first because she's closest, and Kara climbs in beside her without taking her eyes off the gun in Tanner’s hand.
I go in last. The door slams and the lock button clicks.
Outside my window, Tanner says something to Cody I can't hear through the glass.
He's talking fast, close to the kid's face, one hand chopping at the air.
Cody shakes his head, but Tanner says something else that has Cody looking at me through window, so I put my hand flat against it in a silent plea for him to help us.
He looks away from me and then he gets in the front seat with a frown on his face that isn't refusal anymore, and pulls the door shut.
Kara cranes around to see out the back window, and she goes still. Her hand finds my knee and squeezes hard enough to hurt.
"Luna." It comes out as barely any sound at all. "Look. Look at his ears."
I turn around and see there's a man in the bed of the truck, tied at the wrists and ankles and lying on his side with his blood on his head against the wheel well.
He isn't moving. I think he’s unconscious.
He's dressed in dark leather, worn soft and fitted close.
His long black hair is pulled back from his face by a cord woven through small braids and metal hoops catch the light along the pointed tips of his ears.
The flashback memory takes me.
I am standing in a parking lot outside of work with the moon breaking apart above my head.
The air ripples and the buildings across the street are suddenly gone replaced by a field of long grass where they used to be.
A man in leather with two swords on his back comes at me through that grass with hard grey eyes.
One of those swords is pointed right at my chest, and then he dips that sword and bows to me.
The truck rolls forward, bringing me back to the now as we go out through the bay door into all that grey. Behind us the mine gets smaller as we turn on to the road but it’s in the opposite direction from where the town is. All the men I love are somewhere out there in the ash as we drive away.