The soft sound of a fan finally penetrated the pounding headache. Next was a delightful and cooling mist that settled on Kalico’s skin, followed immediately by a stirring of air that ran down her chest and belly, across the tops of her thighs, and all the way to her feet.
She swallowed hard, the action doubling the pain in her skull. She hadn’t hurt this much since . . . since . . .
Her muzzy thoughts couldn’t quite correlate the data.
“Here,” a voice told her. “You need to drink again.”
Kalico blinked as a hand lifted the back of her head. A glass was placed to her lips, and she sucked down the lukewarm water. Sighed as it hit her stomach. Then her head was lowered; a folded bundle of cloth served as a pillow. Overhead was a single light panel. Had to be daytime because Capella’s beams were spilling in the window to her left. She lay on a low fold-out cot.
She gasped as the gentle mist settled on her skin again. Focusing, it was to see Kylee Simonov using a spray bottle to squirt Kalico’s naked body.
Naked?
“Hey?” She tried to sit up. The blast of pain in her head caused her to whimper and ease her head back to the folded cloth.
“Stay put,” Kylee told her. The kid had her head cocked, tangles of blonde hair falling around her shoulders. “Tal says you’re going to feel like hammered shit for a while. But we’ve got to get you cooled down.”
“Where’s my clothes? Why the hell am I naked? What’s going on?”
“You’re in the science dome at Tyson Station. Stripping you down to the skin is the quickest way to lower your body temperature. No ice or cold water, so I get to squirt you and Dek down, then fan you to cool you off.”
“Screw vacuum. What the hell happened to me?”
“Dehydration and heat,” a weak voice told her from the side. She squinted against the headache, turned her head to the right to see Taglioni, his bone-thin and pale body as naked as hers where he lay on the adjoining bunk. The man looked positively miserable.
Kylee—positioned between them—turned and used her spray bottle, shooting him down from head to toe. Then she used a flat piece of plastic attached to what looked like a length of broom handle to waft air over his body.
“My head hasn’t felt like this since I tried to empty a cask of Inga’s whiskey all on my own,” Kalico murmured. Then: “How the hell did we get here? Last I remember was on the cliff. Feeling sick. Ready to kill for a glass of water.”
“Talina carried you both to the dome while Flute and I kept watch. Muldare made it on her own. She’s asleep yonder.”
Kalico followed Kylee’s point to see Muldare. The marine was stripped down to her underwear, supine on what looked like a lab bench, a fan blowing across her body. Some kind of grease had been slathered over her swollen arm; from the angry-red color it must have hurt like a bastard.
“Drink.” Kylee offered Taglioni her glass. The man finished it off. Set his head back on a small duraplast box that served him for a pillow. Then Kylee stepped over to a sink, set the empty glass under the dribbling tap, and returned with a full one.
Kalico was aware enough to suck it all down. Felt it seep through the empty hollow that was her stomach and into her aching limbs.
She asked, “If we’re at Tyson, where are the Unreconciled?”
“Down at the admin dome,” Kylee told her. “Tal and Flute are keeping an eye on them. Sooner or later they’re going to figure out that the woman Tal shot is missing. When they do, it’s really going to get complicated.”
“What woman?” Taglioni asked.
Kylee turned, spared him one of her glacial-blue gazes. “They had a guard posted between us and this dome. Tal took her out with your rifle. I wanted to. She wouldn’t let me.”
“Took her out with my rifle?” Dek’s expression indicated his confusion. “You mean, Talina shot her?”
Kylee tapped a finger to her forehead. “Pop! And down she went.”
“Wasn’t there some other way?” Dek asked.
“She was a cannibal. ’Cause of her, Mom and Mark are dead. What’s to cry over?”
The cold tone in the girl’s voice sent a shiver down Kalico’s spine.
Meanwhile, Kylee shrugged, walked over, and started spraying Dek’s body again. “Sure. We could have waited her out. Heat stroke being what it is, Tal, Flute, and I could have left your dead bodies down in that hollow. After dark we could have sneaked wherever we wanted. Stocked up on eats down at the garden, drank our fill from the cisterns. Slipped into the admin dome to get to the radio and sent an SOS to PA for a quick pickup down on the south end.”
The girl switched her bottle for her fan, wafting it over Dek’s body as she added, “So the guard is dead, and you, Kalico, and Briah are alive. Are you wishing Tal had played it the other way around?”
Dek’s face had scrunched into an uncomfortable pinch. “Don’t know. Hard to think rationally with this headache.”
Kalico sighed as Kylee turned, sprayed her body again. She repeated, fitting the pieces together: “So, we’re all in the science dome, and they’re two domes away. Eventually someone’s going find the dead guard’s body. See that she’s shot through the head. Realize where we are. This place got a back door?”
“Don’t worry about the guard’s body. It . . . went away. Let’s just say that in the end, Donovan got her. Meanwhile we lay low. And yeah, there’s a back door. But you’re not ready to run. So, my advice? Go back to sleep. Tal and Flute are out there, keeping guard. We figure we’re in the last place the cannibals would look for us.”
“Flute is standing guard?” Kalico asked, delighted by the cool spray on her hot flesh. She felt beads of it running down the long lines of her scars. “What’s he get out of all this?”
“Mostly he’s fascinated,” Kylee told her. “And a little worried.”
“About Batuhan? This all goes sideways, Flute can fade into the forest, and they’ll never find him.”
“It’s the forest that worries him.” Kylee’s face turned grim. “First, he’d be stranded here. If we don’t take him, he’s got no safe way back to his lineage. Normally that would be bad enough, because he’d be a rogue. The local lineages would hunt him down. Try and kill him.”
“He didn’t worry about that when he came here?”
“Sure. But it was only to pick up Mom and Dad and fly out. He wouldn’t have been on the ground for more than a couple of hours at the most. When the airtruck was destroyed, Flute went on alert. Figured the local lineages would pick up his scent.”
“Did they?”
Kylee waved the fan—cool breeze caressing Kalico’s body. “That’s the thing that’s really got him worried. Not only did no local quetzals come after him, he didn’t pick up their scent. Nothing. Not even old sign.”
“I guess that’s a relief.” Kalico laid the back of her hand against her forehead. Wished it would ease the damn skull-splitting ache. Wished she had aspirin. She’d have given a fortune to cut the throbbing misery.
“Anything but,” Kylee told her. “Flute thinks Tyson has been quetzal-free for years. Maybe all the way back to when this base was occupied.”
“Flute thinks the people killed the quetzals?” Dek asked.
“In this mess of rocks and trees?” Kylee asked incredulously. “Humans wouldn’t have a chance at exterminating an entire lineage. Forest is too thick. Hell, Tal’s been hunting Whitey for three years in low bush, and he’s still ahead of her.”
“Then what’s the explanation?” Kalico asked, head hurting too much to work out the intricacies.
“Flute thinks it’s the thing that got Mom and Dad. Says he’s got a memory. Something ancient. From the far west. He says the memory is only an image. A sort of black swinging spear shooting down from the sky.”
“Sounds about right,” Kalico whispered before Kylee put the glass to her lips. As she sucked down the water, her body seemed to give up.
She closed her eyes, laid her head back.
As she drifted into sleep, she heard Dek ask, “So, Flute thinks this thing’s hunted all the quetzals? What can you do about it?”
“It took my parents,” Kylee told him in a voice hinting at rage. “All I have to do is figure out how to kill it dead.”