Chapter 17

  Rebecca Carter

  Rebecca Carter drove the ALL-Rover through the mist. A bottle rattled in her cupholder, iced tea mixed from a powdered sugary flavor. Alan sat next to her, fogwatching. That was a word she had come up with: fogwatching. An increasingly popular pastime here on the ALL-Rover. Catch random snippets of the thoughts and memories of your fellow passengers. Elmer and Leah had even made it into a guessing game: whose dream or memory was that? And there was something compelling about it—particularly if anyone onboard was actually asleep. They had learned to park the vehicle for sleeping.

  “Should be soon,” said Alan.

  Christmas, that’s what he meant. ‘Should be soon that we meet this mysterious individual who’s been arranging all of this.’

  She grunted in response and swerved to avoid something that looked vaguely like a Styrofoam dinosaur. It was placid and simply turned to watch them pass. That would be Leah’s. That girl made more things in the fog than any of them. She didn’t make the worst things, though. That award went to Dwayne Hartman.

  Rebecca reached to the dash and clicked on the camera feed from the main cabin. Elmer was jumping up and down in the middle, excited about something. Amelia sat with Dwayne Hartman, who showed her something on a piece of paper. He laughed at something she said, and Rebecca heard his laughter even up in the insulated driver’s cabin. Leah sat on Amelia’s lap. That girl was getting along with everyone, thank god. Rebecca didn’t approve of children, but she had to concede that Leah was cute, while lacking many of the accompanying drawbacks plaguing most children. She wasn’t spoiled, or selfish, or stupid. She was god damned curious, but Rebecca was hardly in a position to find fault with that. Rebecca’s brother, her ex-husband, and her niece all shared that characteristic. And Leah Walker had taken to Dwayne Hartman after hearing him sing. For some reason Rebecca could not fathom, Leah had begun following Dwayne around and hanging on his every word. A bit troubling, since most of his words had to do with God.

  Michael Whyte leaned against the wall while Amber Jane spoke in front of him, her eyes bright and her hand movements animated. The boy smiled stupidly, and Rebecca wondered how much of AJ’s speech was actually getting through to him.

  Rebecca pulled the wheel abruptly to the left, jolting the ALL-Rover into a sudden swerve. She watched the camera feed, not the road. AJ fell against Michael, who reflexively caught her in an embrace. They remained together for a moment, even after Rebecca corrected their course. Then AJ righted herself, blushing.

  Michael, proving again that he was cannier than he seemed, cast a suspicious glance directly at the camera.

  Rebecca chuckled and was surprised to hear Alan join her mirth. “Like watching turtles race, isn’t it?” he said.

  Rebecca slowed down to swerve off the road and rumble around a broken-down truck. If she had to guess, she’d say the truck was real, meaning it had existed before the mist. It wouldn’t dissolve. Getting harder and harder to tell, though.

  “Alan Walker,” she said. “Were you as overcautious with the ladies as that young man back there?”

  He scoffed. “That,” he said, “was not a problem I had. Maybe I could have used some of it, though…” He scratched his pepper-gray beard, which was filling in nicely. “What about you? I suppose you were a pure and delicate flower back in the day?” Like AJ, he meant.

  That made Rebecca give a deep, hearty scoff. Had anyone ever come close to describing her like that? Not by a long shot. “Why, yes,” she said. “Sweet. Demure. The young bucks for miles would come running when I batted my eyelashes.”

  “Hmm.” Alan nodded. “I can see it now.”

  Rebecca took a pull from the iced tea. Too sweet. Like AJ. “You know, I shot a man when I was her age.”

  “Only one?”

  She snorted, almost coughing up her next gulp of tea.

  Alan went on. “I used to think women would be impressed by my ability to physically remove my competition.”

  It was Rebecca’s turn for a wise nod of affirmation. “Survival of the fittest. The natural way.” She took another drink, on guard this time against unexpected clever remarks. “Did it work?”

  He shook his head. “Strangely enough, the ladies never seemed impressed when I won a barfight. Maybe it was all the blood. No, I had to rely on my good looks.” He apparently meant this as another self-deprecating joke, but Rebecca thought his looks were a fine start. Perhaps they had aged well. She tried to imagine Alan’s face twenty years younger. And yes, it didn’t have quite the same rugged appeal.

  “Were you ever in love, then? Really in love?” It was maybe a bit forward, but Rebecca had never let that stop her and she wasn’t about to start now. She remembered saying to Riley, ‘and what about the sex?’ shortly after their engagement. The man had looked at her like he’d forgotten that was part of the deal.

  Besides, the days of lustful passion and youthful romance were some distance behind both Alan and herself. The years were a buffer; a cushion. Their young selves were practically different people, to be gossiped about impersonally.

  Alan took his time responding. His fingers moved, rubbing together. Like all men Rebecca had known who had taken up whittling or similar as a hobby, he needed something to do with his hands. “I had a few runs,” he said. “Short and hot. Gas-fire romance.” Rebecca smiled at that. “But there was one. One I loved.” He didn’t have to say that she was dead now. It was plain in his tone of voice.

  “Hrm. Still love her?”

  He thought about it. “Maybe. Something like that, do you ever really stop?”

  Rebecca wouldn’t know.

  “You?” said Alan.

  “Gas-fires. A few. If you can even call them romances. Short-lived pretending, maybe. I was young. What I really wanted wasn’t a relationship. It was an experience. A sense of adventure. Sex, of course. Can’t recall anything lasting more than a few weeks. But to be fair, it was always the man that ran off.”

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  “What about McFinn?”

  God, she had even forgotten to include Riley. “Alan, I do not know what the hell I was thinking marrying that man.” Now she needed a drink. “And you can tell him I said that, got it, Bitch?” She knew she didn’t need to raise her voice for Clara to hear, but it felt better. The Bitch didn’t respond.

  They continued for another minute in silence.

  Rebecca growled and said, “Eh, what the hell.” Amelia could just lose her money, or whatever she and Elmer had bet.

  Alan glanced at her.

  “How about another one?” she said.

  “Another…?”

  “Romance. You and me, Alan.”

  “Huh,” he laughed. “Never thought I’d hear something like that again.” He scratched the beard and looked out the window. “What did you have in mind?”

  She shrugged. “Didn’t think that far ahead.”

  “One step at a time, then?” he said.

  “Is there some other way?” Hrm. What did she have in mind? “Long conversations,” she said.

  “With sharp wit and dry humor,” he agreed.

  “We’ll have each other’s back,” she said.

  “Cover each other’s six,” he corrected. “Of course.”

  “We’ll go on a hunting expedition.”

  “Oh, I like the sound of that. Africa?”

  “India. The highlands.”

  He nodded in consideration.

  “Passionate embraces,” she said.

  “Particularly at sunset,” he said, “or when something is exploding behind us.”

  “Naturally. Passionate lovemaking, of course.”

  “But not with the kids around.”

  “I’d settle for a passionate shoulder massage.”

  “I’m told I’m pretty good at those.”

  Rebecca didn’t doubt it. His hands were calloused and strong. Nothing impressive compared to Dwayne Hartman’s hands, but then again, she wanted her shoulders massaged, not crushed like beer cans.

  “That all?” said Alan.

  “All I can think of for now,” she replied.

  He nodded, stood, stretched. “I’ll consider it,” he said as he turned and slid up the door to the main cabin.

  “Y-consider it?” She twisted in her seat to shoot him a fierce look, but he was already retreating.

  Not long after this, Rebecca pulled the ALL-Rover to a halt in front of a cliff. The equipment, and the bouncing ball, indicated that forward was the direction to go, but the only thing forward was a chasm of unknown width and depth.

  This was a problem only for as long as Amelia Shape was unaware of it. When she learned that they needed to cross a gap, she simply came to the driver’s cabin and looked out the windshield. A broad band of steel-blue color appeared before them: a bridge, stretching away into the mist.

  It required a demonstration of the solidity of this bridge (Elmer Sky going out and prancing about on it in front of the ALL-Rover) before Rebecca would accept that perhaps it could be safely driven upon. She inched the vehicle out onto the shimmering blue-gray surface. Once the entire weight of the ALL-Rover was on the span, she gunned it forward as quickly as she dared. The other side of the canyon coalesced from the fog moments later, and they arrived safely.

  The extraordinary feat of creating a bridge large and solid enough to support the ALL-Rover across a sizable gap seemed to take something out of Amelia, who slumped more than usual afterward. Rebecca made careful note of this ability, however. She had already known that Amelia could make pretty shapes to amuse Leah, but this was something rather different.

  She decided to quiz both Elmer and Amelia that evening: what, exactly, were each of them capable of doing? Maybe Dwayne Hartman deserved the same treatment. He wasn’t extraordinary in the same flashy sense as those two, but there was definitely something unusual about him. And on the subject of past romance, he had been married, hadn’t he?

  Rebecca was so absorbed in these thoughts that she almost ran over the figure in the middle of the road. It apparently had been waiting for them across the gap. She slammed the brakes so close to the figure that it stumbled backwards for fear of being hit.

  Who was it? The person was in the fog now; she couldn’t make out the details.

  “Is that Christmas?” said Alan, who appeared at the door. He was armed.

  “It is,” said the voice of Clara from above. “I am alerting Riley McFinn that contact has been established.”

  Christmas stepped forward, out of the fog and into the beams of the ALL-Rover’s headlights.

  Rebecca’s breath caught in her throat. Her heart stopped. Her blood ran cold in her veins. She could only think: No. It can’t be…

  But it was undeniable. The shape of the glasses. The stoop. The awkward, hesitant gait. The person who cautiously approached the ALL-Rover was her brother, Nicholas Carter.