Chapter 445 (1/2)
Huddled down with the babies, her face turned toward the firewall, her upper body shifted so that it was between the outside and the babies, Aunt Fenn shrieked when the white light seemed to fill the air, almost like it was streaming through the firewall. Nee and the unnamed baby took the opportunity to bite her arm, the baby just gumming and gnawing, Nee sinking her little teeth deep into Fenn's arm. There was a loud explosion, a sharp crack like a glass pane meters thick breaking in half on a cold winter's day, with another flash of white light. Then red light.
The car suddenly rocked up on the shocks, tilting slightly.
It wasn't a noise. It was a pressure that squeezed, combined with heat that made her pant and slicked her fur with sweat that ran down her face. The car slammed back down with the squeak of overstressed shocks, then rocked slightly.
”STAY IN THE CAR!” Dambree yelled.
Aunt Fenn hold the babies closer, the bite from Nee no longer hurting. The taste of blood had made Nee close her eyes, made her jaw relax, as her feral little brain released endorphins.
Fenn squeezed her eyes shut.
Don't cry! she heard her niece yell at her in her memories. Then the deadpan voice, leeched of all emotion. Let it turn to something else.
Part of her wanted to start screaming. Part of her brain kept trying to show her all the memories. The squelching sound of the sharp metal rod popping the male's eyeball as Dambree jammed it into his eye socket. The crunch of bone under the sound of the can hitting the square base the rod was attached to. The dead look on her niece's face, as if she was merely hammering a nail into a board. The way she had gone into the house alone, covered the bodies, and came out as if she had merely gone upstairs to check on a sleeping sibling.
The dead expression on the girl's face since the sirens went off.
She felt like she had failed. Not only her poor niece, who had been trapped on the surface during the long war, but her sister, dead since the initial invasion. The baby nuzzled her and she shifted to keep it from biting her chest.
There was words, painful sobbing gagging words.
THWACK!
She could hear something burning, smell burning synthetics and scorched metal and the odd tang of ozone, light a computer that was dying.
More words.
Fenn thought it sounded like someone begging.
THWACK!
”There's one crawling into the field!” Tru yelled out.
”Get back on the floor,” Dambree's voice was hard.
Long seconds passed.
THWACK!
Fenn could hear footsteps and cringed.
She didn't know if she was afraid one of those people with the bruised looking eyes were coming up to the car.
Or if she was afraid of Dambree.
The car buzzed a few times, then clicked, then started pinging.
There was a thump at the back.
”If you have to get out and pee, do it now,” Dambree said. ”We need to charge and get moving.”
”I have to pee,” Meglee said.
”Go around the back of the car, lean against... you know what, Tru, show her how to road pee,” Dambree said.
”What if the boys see my thing?” Meglee protested, but she was still getting out.
”It won't be the last time,” Dambree said.
After a bit Tru and Meglee got back in. Inkee got out, then got back in.
There was a tapping on the window and Fenn looked up.
”Get out and go pee. I'm not stopping for a couple hours,” Dambree said.
Fenn whimpered, but was afraid to say anything.
Her niece's shirt and face were splattered with blood.
When she got out she buckled the two babies into their safety seats, then looked around.
Broken pieces of machinery were scattered around a crater in the ground big enough that Fenn could have curled up in it, the pieces popping and burning. She could see several dead bodies on the ground.
Two of them were missing their heads, their necks surrounded by shredded meat and blood.
She could see an ear attached to part of a scalp.
”Go pee,” Dambree said suddenly, looming out of the darkness.
To her credit, Fenn didn't wet herself.
Dambree watched her aunt stumble away, moving behind the vehicle so she could lean against the trunk while she peed.
Good. Learn fear. That's the only thing that will keep you alive, Dambree thought. She waited till Fenn got back in the car before going around to the trunk. She popped it open and looked at the cargo net attached to the inside of the trunk lid.
She had two equipment belts she had taken off of dead Terrans from the strikers.
One was missing one of the four grenades.
She took another one, looking at it.
M-67A3 Anti-Matter Fragmentation Grenade with Phasic Jacket was steniciled on it in yellow, the same color as the band that went all the way around it with a purple line in the middle of the band.
She dropped it in her pocket.
Save enough for yourself and the kids, the Terran, dead years, whispered in her memories, coughing up blood after she had hit him with the car.
She shut the trunk and looked around.
The sky to the southwest looked like it was on fire. The clouds had moved back in after the detonation had pushed them away, and lightning flickered in them. Dambree's retinal link flickered for a second as she walked back to the car.
When she sat down her retinal link reboot.
Mister Mewmew climbed up over the seat, flowing down the seat and into her lap as she started the car. She had to tap her ripperchip wafer twice to get it to work again, but the HUD came up and she punched in the correct boxes.
Mister Mewmew made an unhappy sound and Dambree glanced down as she put the car in gear.
He flashed a green trefoil on the black macroplas triangle on his forehead.
”I know,” Dambree said.
Two bars. One that started blue, moved into green, then into yellow, finally into orange then red. The other one was topped out at the green, only a single bar beneath yellow.
”That bad?” Dambree asked.
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”I know,” Dambree said, reaching down and stroking Mister Mewmew as she drove with one hand. She looked at her aunt, who had gathered the two babies back up and was huddled up on the floor. ”Them?”
A blue trefoil.
”Good.”
She reached down and grabbed one of the big Terran cans of Liquid Hate, putting it between her thighs and holding tight while she popped the cap.
”I warned you” the can squeaked, making her grin.
She lifted it up and took a long drink. The cold fizzyness soothed her throat, the thick liquid settled her stomach, and the alcohol swept away the urge to wipe her mouth with her sleeve and pushed her headache back.
She turned a corner and the destroyed truck was gone.
She took another swig, driving down the dirt road, paying attention to the HUD in her vision. Her vizlink (retinal link) shuddered a few times, but stabilized out.
She almost burst out laughing when she realized something.
It had been heady, exciting, when her boyfriend, Alkree, had driven one handed, that her excitement had been tempered with worry at how fast he drove and how careless he seemed.
Now she was driving down a dirt road, at night, without her headlights, steering with one hand, drinking a Terran fizzystimbrew with the other, and going through a navigation HUD and GPS locator with her retinal link.
All of it without a license or a single lesson in how to drive.
”What's so funny?” Aunt Fenn asked her from the floorboards.
”I'm not the girl I was,” Dambree said. She shook her head and took another drink. ”I'm not the girl who snuck out to go to a makeout spot with my older boyfriend.”
”You're still Dambree, and I still love you,” Aunt Fenn said.
Dambree glanced at her and saw the sincerity in her eyes.
”I know. I love you too,” she said.
To Fenn it sounded mechanical, with just a hint of menace in it, almost like she was saying it begrudgingly.