The Travels of Scout Shannon Books 1-3

Chapter 7

7

Scout clenched her jaw, focusing on keeping the rover steady at full speed as the treads under them started shaking apart. She was vaguely aware of the canyon walls rushing past them on either side, drawing ever closer as the canyon narrowed. The rattling that echoed through the cockpit was louder than the still-barking dogs. She could feel it in her teeth; they would be chattering against each other violently if she loosened her tight hold on her jaw for even an instant.

There was a slight metallic tang on her tongue. At some point she’d bitten down on something but didn’t give it the attention to figure out if it was lip, cheek, or tip of her tongue. Instead she narrowed her eyes, not letting the rover jump to the side as it propelled out of another dip in the ground. Her arms were aching already. She’d be losing this battle with the control yoke soon.

“Isn’t there a hatch in the roof of this thing?” Tucker asked, pounding a fist against the metal hull.

“The dogs won’t hurt you!” Scout snapped.

“It’s not the dogs. I need to get outside and signal to the others before they plant the incendiary devices. They aren’t responding to my messages.”

“Before they what?” She longed for a stretch of clear ground so she could look back at him.

“Stop the rover,” Tucker said.

“These are your friends?” Scout asked.

“Yes. Just stop. I’ll open the back door so they can see me. But hold on to your dogs.”

Scout slammed down on the brakes, acutely aware of the sound of loose bits from the treads rattling loose, raining down on the baked earth of the canyon floor.

“I asked before. Why didn’t you answer me?” Scout asked, turning to glare at him the moment the rover had stopped rolling.

“I—” But he broke off, glancing at Shadow and Gert as if they were waiting to jump him if he said a word against them. “I told them we were coming, but I guess they weren’t checking their messages. A lapse of protocol.” He tried to shoot her another smile but it quickly died. “Just hold on to your dogs.” Then he vaulted down the steps to the main compartment of the rover.

“I don’t like orders,” Scout said. She got up from the driver’s seat and stood at the top of the steps, blocking the dogs behind her. Shadow pressed his snout between her calf and the rover wall, snuffling loudly. Gert was whining and pawing at the back of Scout’s thigh hard enough to hurt.

“Sorry, but there’s a time factor,” Tucker said, looking around to find the controls for the door. He pushed the button, then stepped back as it emerged from its recess in the wall of the rover and swung open with a clang.

Tucker jumped out of the rover and quickly moved out of view. Scout glanced back at the monitor screens behind her, but several had gone dead, the exterior cameras they linked to now smashed.

“Stay, dogs,” she said as she moved slowly down the steps and past the dining area to stand in the open doorway.

Tucker was standing alone a few meters away, shading his eyes against what remained of the setting sun. It was no more than a red s***h on the horizon now, the first stars already awake and twinkling brightly in the east. The canyon walls now appeared to be only a diagonally banded gray. Scout narrowed her eyes until she too saw the dark shapes moving toward them out of the setting sun.

She had left the rover running, the engine echoing loudly here where the canyon was so narrow, but the sounds of the approaching engines quickly drowned it out. Shadow pressed up against her calf, trembling. He had no love of loud mechanical noises, especially ones that never seemed to end.

Gert was less bothered, and Scout had to reach down and catch her collar before she could jump out of the rover and run to investigate. Scout wanted her dogs near her, inside the rover, just in case she needed to slam the door shut and make her escape. Or at least hunker down in what safety the rover’s thick hull provided.

Tucker raised an arm and waved it back and forth twice. The dark shapes slowly gained form as they approached, becoming ghostly white, flapping figures astride monstrous vehicles like armored dinosaurs. They raced up to Tucker, drawing close enough to make Scout wince, although he just waited calmly as they slammed to a halt on either side of him. A cloud of reddish dust enveloped newcomers and Tucker both.

Gert whined, tugging a bit at the collar still in Scout’s grasp.

“Hush, girl,” Scout said, waiting for the dust to settle. Before it had, the last sliver of the sun slipped below the horizon, taking all its light with it. Scout glanced up at the moonless sky. The stars were bright enough to give the basic details of the world inside the canyon, like a rough pencil sketch, but she needed more than that. She looked at the controls by the door and found one to turn on the exterior lights.

The light was far brighter than she had expected, like the sort of light they used at spaceports to guide in the craft with faulty navigation equipment. Tucker turned back to glare at her but she wasn’t sorry.

The shapes made more sense now in the full light. The wispy ghosts were people dressed in long white dusters to protect from the glare of the sun. They had been driving with hoods up and held in place by the goggles that now dangled around their necks. The skin around their eyes was clean, almost pale against the reddish dust that coated their lower faces and foreheads.

Teenagers, Scout realized, like Tucker and herself. The boy with close-shaved dark hair was leaning in to speak close to Tucker’s ear. The girl stood a bit apart, listening but not speaking. She reminded Scout a bit of Ottilie. Ottilie had worked on the crew of one of the big guns the Planet Dwellers had used to fire into space during the war. This girl was built much the same: tall, wide shoulders, massive forearms. But where Ottilie had kept her silver hair buzzed short, this girl had a sloppy braid of ash-blonde hair wrapped around her head like a crown.

“These are your friends?” Scout asked, pitching her voice to carry over the meters of empty ground between them. Tucker didn’t respond at first, still listening to the boy speaking in his ear, occasionally nodding but more often scowling and giving little shakes of his head. He kept tapping the little screen on his wrist demonstratively.

As the boys argued, the girl raised a hand in greeting to Scout and Scout hesitantly returned the gesture.

The other boy finished talking with an overly elaborate shrug of his shoulders and turned back to climb back aboard his armored motorcycle. The two massive gun barrels ran down either side of the bike, starting at a mechanism that spanned the back of the seat, a belt of ammunition running in and out of a box just behind the rear wheel. The barrels thrust out awkwardly to either side of the front wheel.

“Those must be hard to aim,” Scout said as Tucker walked back to the rover. He gave her a questioning look, then glanced back as the girl turned her bike to follow the boy.

“It just takes a bit of practice,” Tucker said.

“What’s going on? If these are your friends, frankly I’d rather you hopped a ride with them and let me be on my way,” Scout said.

“You’re going to need repairs,” Tucker said. He was looking under the rover as he spoke, examining the treads. Scout hopped down to get a closer look herself, and the dogs jumped down after her.

“I wouldn’t need repairs if you would have said sooner that these were your friends. Or if you had told them we were coming.” The damage wasn’t as bad as she had expected. The treads were still running on their tracks, but barely, and a lot of bolts were missing. She saw a few in the dust behind the rover, but it would be impossible to find them all in the dark, sprawled out across the length of the canyon as they were.

“Yeah, I did try to tell them. And it was no good you slowing down before they knew you weren’t the enemy. I really thought there was a hatch up there . . . sorry,” Tucker finished, giving her a lopsided smile of apology as he rubbed at the back of his neck. Scout didn’t return the smile. “I am sorry. But Bente and Ken will have you fixed up in no time, I promise.”

“How much time is ‘no time’?” Scout asked, picking up the bolts she could see gleaming dully in the starlight.

“Leave those, we have plenty back at the base. And Bente and Ken can have you fixed up just after dinner. I did promise you dinner.” He tried another smile, but Scout still didn’t respond in kind.

“I didn’t accept that offer,” she said.

“Oh yeah?” he said as if he hadn’t remembered that, but his tone wasn’t convincing. “It’s going to be fine, I promise. You’ll get something to eat, and afterward you can go on your merry way. You and your dogs,” he added, looking down at the two still standing close at her sides. He tried his smile on them. They were unmoved as well.

“I don’t really have a choice, do I?” Scout said.

“Hey, don’t be like that,” Tucker said. “You’re going to like the others.”

“How many others?” Scout asked, liking each new development less than the last.

“It depends on who’s home and who’s out on missions,” Tucker said with a shrug. “But I promise we’ll stuff you so full of the best food you’ve ever tasted that you won’t want to leave. Especially since it’s already after dark. You might as well wait for morning to move on.”

“I don’t want to wait,” Scout said. She was standing closer to the door than he was. She could scoop up Gert and get inside—Shadow could make the leap on his own—then slam the door and just drive away. Leave him behind in her dust.

Only she was pretty sure he wasn’t lying about the damage to the rover.

“That’s fine,” Tucker said, raising his hands as if surrendering. “You want to leave right after dinner, that’s fine. Bente will have you all fixed up by then. She’s a whiz.”

“Bente, that was the girl out there just now?” Scout asked.

“Yes, that was Bente. And Ken. They were on patrol.”

“Patrolling for what?” Scout asked.

“This close to the hills, this far from the cities, there are lots of bad folk hiding out here. Like McFarlane dead back in his hut and whoever killed him. Only these others are quite alive, and they tend to travel in groups.” He glanced past her out the open door of the rover. “That light is like a beacon, you know. We really should get to safety. It’s not safe out here at night.”

Scout bit her lip as she considered the situation. She didn’t like trusting people she had just met. She almost laughed out loud, a darkly self-mocking laugh, at that thought. If she had learned anything over the last four days she had spent trapped underground waiting out the solar storm with strangers, it was Never Trust Strangers.

Still, she couldn’t fix the rover on her own. She had crossed the hills many times on her bike, but farther south where the hills were the turf of only the rebels, and they kept themselves hidden. She didn’t know if Tucker was telling the truth about the dangers of this part of the world. He could be lying to lure her into some sort of trap.

Or he could be telling the truth. Because, having just met, what reason could he have for trapping her? If he just wanted to rob her, he could have done that while she was in the hut and her rover had been standing unattended several meters away.

Scout crossed her arms and gave him an assessing look. There was only one question that really mattered. Did he have a reason to lie to her? But she had no way to answer it. And she could scarcely ask him.

She had no facts. All she had was her gut instinct.

“All right,” Scout said at last, and Tucker let out a whoosh of held breath and tried yet one more weak smile. “I’m not happy about this. If you had said something before they destroyed my rover treads, I wouldn’t be in this mess. I don’t like feeling like I’ve been manipulated away from making my own choices.”

“I understand,” he said solemnly. “I didn’t mean for that to happen. I did message them before we got to the canyon. And after that . . . well, I’m not used to dogs.”

Scout rolled her eyes.

“I am sorry,” he persisted. “Can I show you something?” She nodded, then pulled back in alarm as he reached for the fastening on his pants. “Don’t worry, it’s just my hip,” he said, pulling down the waistband on one side. There were marks there, so faint they would be invisible on the sun-damaged skin of his arms, but they contrasted sharply against the pale skin of his hip.

“What is it?” Scout asked.

“Dog bite,” he said, fastening his pants back up. “When I was a kid. A really little kid. Like, two? It’s my earliest memory. I literally remember nothing else until I was like six. But that memory, of the dog coming out of nowhere to knock me down and then sinking its teeth into my hip . . .” He gave himself a little shake. “My mother had to chase after that dog to get me back. I was sick for a long time after; I guess one of its teeth chipped my bone or something. I don’t remember that part so well. But being under that dog, its breath on my face, the inescapable largeness of it? That I can never forget.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” Scout said. “My dogs are good dogs.”

“No doubt,” Tucker said earnestly. “That dog was a stray, probably starving with no better options. But you guys are cool, right?” He put his hands out to the dogs again and they drew closer to lick at him. He looked up at Scout through his lashes and her stomach did that flip-flop again.

“They seem to like you,” Scout said. She kept the steely tone in her voice although all of her anger was floating away from her. “You’re sure we can roll this thing to where we’re going with all the damage?”

“Sure,” he said briskly. “Just keep it at a slow, non-jangling roll. Bente and Ken will let the others know we’re on the way. Shall we?”

Scout stayed as she was, arms crossed protectively over her chest, even though it made the bruise throb, for another beat, but then she relented and hoisted Gert into the rover.

She really hoped she wasn’t going to regret this.