Viola’s bed was too soft, no doubt about it, but sometimes too soft could be quite nice. Now that she knew she was alone, she showered under the hottest water, washed every item of clothing, and hung them to dry from open locker doors, then crawled between Viola’s covers and slept for what must have been more than a day.
It was divine.
She woke to the sound of Girl’s bark, the cheerful yip-yip she did when she wanted Shadow to play with her. Scout felt her heart clench. All of that was gone now.
Girl yipped again, and Tubbins made a protesting meow. Scout sat straight up, anxious to prevent another mauling, but Girl wasn’t even looking at the cat. Her butt was up in the air, her chin down on her forepaws as she bent forward to touch her nose to Shadow’s where Scout had left his body at the foot of the bed.
Scout blinked back tears, then leaned forward to brush Girl away. “Leave him be, now,” she said. Surely the storm would end soon. Then she could bury her oldest friend beside her newest.
From within the nest of blankets came a sleepy, protesting growl of sound.
“Shadow?” Scout said, her hands shaking. She didn’t have hope left in her heart. And yet . . . “Shadow?”
Shadow lifted his head to look at her. His body shook, his eyes looked strange like he’d been drugged, but he was alive.
“Shadow!” Scout cried, fighting back the urge to scoop him up into her arms. He was clearly far too fragile for that. Instead she moved closer to press her thigh close to his still colder-than-normal body. He lifted his head enough to rest it on her knee with a weary sigh and she stroked his head as gently as she could. “Shadow, meet Gertrude,” Scout said, reaching out with her other hand to scratch the ears of Gertrude, formerly Girl. Gertrude thumped her tail, nearly striking Tubbins, who meowed in annoyance but made no effort to move out of the way.
Scout went back to the showers to dress, then went to the kitchen. She no longer had the desire for any more jolo. Instead she set Warrior’s lens to her eye and found the device that detected poisons. She found the kettle uncontaminated and filled it with water and set it to boil, then located a clean mug and an unopened package of tea. Everything looked good through her lens. She reconstituted some freeze-dried eggs and even turned some of the stale bread from that fateful meal into slices of toast.
Once she’d eaten, she brought more beef stroganoff for the dogs. Shadow was moving a little, but it looked like his joints pained him. He ate some, mostly licking at the gravy, and didn’t object when Gertrude turned to his tray when she was done with hers. Scout fetched a few bits of meat before Gertrude got to them and held them out for the cat to nibble at. He purred contentedly.
“Only a half a day left,” Scout told them, consulting the readings on Warrior’s device. “Then I guess we all roll out of here in Ebba and Ottilie’s rover.”
She reached into her pocket and took out the two data disks. Intelligence reports. The sorts of things that could change the course of a war.
If only she knew who to give them to.
There didn’t seem to be good guys or bad guys. She would do anything to prevent more rocks falling down on the cities, but she didn’t know what that anything should be.
She kept turning those disks over and over in her hands, pausing only to fetch more food for her and the animals some hours later. What was she going to do?
At last she took out Warrior’s tablet. There was another message on it. She had opened a reply window just before she had passed out from lack of oxygen. She had never typed anything, but she had apparently accidentally sent an empty message. Liam had replied. GERT, WHAT’S GOING ON?
Scout scratched at the skin around the lens on her face. She wasn’t quite used to it being there. Not yet, anyway. She looked at the question again. WHAT’S GOING ON?
Then she answered it in great detail. In fact, with every detail she could recall. When at last she ran out of words she touched the send command, turned off the tablet, and pulled the lens from her eye so she could wipe away the last tear she was going to let herself shed.
She had taken action. She was moving forward. No more clinging to the past.
Nothing was resolved, and yet she slept like a baby. In the morning she made more toast, eggs, and tea, then began searching Viola’s station for anything worth taking with her on the rover. Food, medicine, clothing. There were far more things in those crates than Scout had use for, things like children’s toys and decorative figurines from some time before planetfall.
At last the flare detector beeped. The storm was over.
It took a few hours to load up the rover. Gertrude was beside herself, trying to both stay close to Scout and keep an eye on Shadow as he napped. She relaxed only when Scout lifted the little dog up into her arms and carried him back to the surface to nestle him into the nest she had made for him from Ebba and Ottilie’s pillows. He sniffed all around himself but seemed to find their scents satisfactory and settled back down to resume his healing nap.
Scout left Gertrude to stand guard and went down to Viola’s rooms one last time to scoop up Tubbins, pillow and all, and carry him up to the rover. Perhaps he’d be all right on his own in the station, living on vermin and whatnot, but somehow Scout didn’t think that would be his happiest life. She had no interest in a cat herself, but someone in town would jump at the chance of taking him in. He was certainly a handsome enough cat, bright orange with white stripes like an alternate dimension’s tiger, if a bit on the pudgy side.
Something on her belt beeped again and for a moment Scout feared the storm had returned. But it was the tablet. Liam’s reply was direct and to the point: MEET ME, followed by a date, time, and latitude and longitude. The tablet summoned up a map for her to see. He was directing her a little further out into the wilds, but not for three days yet.
Scout settled her father’s hat more securely on her head and brushed red dust from the tunnel from the ragged remains of his shirt. Then she detonated the last of Ottilie’s mining charges, effectively burying the remains of the nine others she had known only briefly but would never forget.
Then she hitched Warrior’s belt a bit higher on her hips, touched her palm to the butt of the gun to make sure it was there, and pulled herself up into the rover.
Three days until Liam came for her. Time enough to find Tubbins a home.
Time enough to go back up into those hills and find herself a certain con artist.