Chapter 10

  AJ Eddison

  They all found their niche on the first day aboard the ALL-Rover. Rebecca sat up front in the tiny driver’s compartment, though a driver was not necessary, grimly gazing into the shifting fog like a watchman at the prow of a ship. Amelia sat up there with her; the two shared a certain perspective on things that caused them to get along famously. Dwayne and Alan took the far rear, by the bunkroom where Jimothy and Elizabeth slept, where they played cards and reminisced about their lives and experiences, which they found mutually engrossing. Michael sat nearby and listened, having no extraordinary stories of his own to contribute. He looked to AJ like a child getting to sit at the grown-ups’ table, a comparison of which she was at once ashamed. Michael was no child. She knew that quite well enough, for she could not ignore that annoying little sting of disappointment that he was over there with them instead of talking to her.

  AJ had worried at first about Leah. The child was difficult to read; she seldom displayed emotion and spoke with such a deadpan inflection that AJ could never tell when she was being serious. Leah had to miss her parents and her brother, and here she was among a strange assemblage of grown-ups she did not know. But Elmer Sky, unquestionably the strangest of them all, had taken to her at once. She listened to his ramblings, nodding seriously at even the most ridiculous digressions. She smiled when he laughed—a frequent occurrence—and she gaped in amazement when he demonstrated the ability to pull handkerchief-shaped pieces of brilliant blue sky right out of the air and knit them together into a soft quilt for her. Well, they had all marveled at that. Puffy clouds scudded across the seamless blue of one side, and constellations of stars glittered on the deep velvet black of the other. This quilt felt to the touch like a soft, fibrous textile. Alan had tried stabbing it with a knife to no avail, and Dwayne had dissuaded him from experimentally shooting it. Leah was wrapped in that quilt of sky, stacking some of Jimothy’s colored blocks with Elmer, her expression indicating that this was a matter of dire importance, when AJ slid past them to the front of the rover.

  The main cabin of the rover was still that of McFinn’s private jet: spacious for a land vehicle, lined with couches in white faux-leather upholstery, with large windows, TV screens, a concealed weapons locker, a minibar, and a refrigerator. And also Clara, who was like an invisible ninth person among them. She kept revealing new features of the ALL-Rover that no one had known about. Such as the weapons locker. A short hall in the back led to the cramped bathroom and bunkrooms, and at the back end of the hall was a plain wooden door that opened directly into a wall.

  AJ passed the weapons compartment with a dubious glance on her way to the driver’s cab up front. She knocked on the plastic partition, looking through the rectangular window at Rebecca’s feet up on the dash. A muffled voice answered, “No need to knock.”

  AJ slid the door open and stepped in. The soft lights of the control panel and the dim glow of the silvery fog outside lit the interior. Rebecca had not changed out of her standard gear—boots, belt, vest, jeans, leather hat—and it was already becoming difficult for AJ to imagine her wearing anything else. Amelia had selected more casual attire, gray sweatpants and sweater, from the small stash of spare clothes in a back closet of the ALL-Rover.

  AJ paused when she saw Amelia Shape already occupying the passenger’s seat. “Don’t mind me,” said Amelia, her weary tone so similar to Rebecca’s. Amelia slid toward the window to allow AJ room to sit beside her. Amelia leaned her head against the window and gazed blankly out. The fog outside that window coiled and reformed continually into strange shapes. On the other side of AJ, Rebecca’s scarred, leathery face was set in concentration.

  Rebecca and Amelia had been enjoying a moody silence and hot tea in insulated mugs. AJ didn’t have tea, but she joined them in contemplating the gritty silver fog that parted in front of them as the ALL-Rover quietly rumbled along the misty road.

  “The Bitch says she’ll have to stop driving soon,” said Rebecca after a few minutes of silence. “Tea, dear?”

  AJ almost declined automatically, but she checked herself. She did want tea. “Another tea,” Rebecca declared, dropping a fist randomly onto the array of buttons and switches at the control panel. “What kind?”

  “Peppermint?”

  “Peppermint,” Rebecca repeated.

  The Bitch was Clara, their chauffeur. “Still no idea about where we’re headed?” AJ asked.

  “Only that we’re meeting up with Santa Claus.” Rebecca spoke with disdain and then sipped her tea in such a way as to show just what she thought of her ex-husband Riley McFinn, and his drama and his codenames and his annoyingly human-like AI named Clara.

  “Your tea is ready,” said Clara.

  “Good,” muttered Rebecca.

  “I was not speaking to you, Ms. Carter,” said Clara, who seemed to enjoy her antagonistic relationship with Rebecca.

  AJ grabbed her mug of tea from the drink station and returned. An open-lid mug of hot tea would ordinarily be a risky business in a moving vehicle, but not on the ALL-Rover. AJ often forgot that they were moving at all. Elmer had already suffered mild carsickness because of this.

  A warm, comfortable silence descended: Rebecca Carter stuck in perpetual bitter frustration about everything that had happened and her inability to change it, and Amelia Shape in her default morose brooding. Female bonding time. Yay.

  AJ didn’t mind so much, really.

  “Make a move,” said Rebecca after some time.

  “Eh?” said Amelia.

  “Not you. You and Elmer are just fine. Hrm. Are you married?”

  Amelia appeared only confused. “Married? Whatever for?”

  “Thought so. No, I was talking to Ms. Amber Jane Eddison.”

  “A…move?” AJ asked.

  “Michael,” said Rebecca. She sipped her tea in a way that let AJ know exactly what she meant. “Boy’s got a bit of spine, give him that. But he won’t do it. Has to be you.”

  “E-excuse me?” AJ felt petrified, unable to move, like a character in a horror movie who can only watch as the danger looms closer.

  “You think so?” asked Amelia on her other side, speaking as though she hardly cared. But she spoke like that about everything. “I rather thought he’d work up the nerve. I made a wager with Elmer.”

  Rebecca shook her head lazily and pulled her braid of graying hair over one shoulder. Her eyes never left the road ahead. “Neh. You’ll lose that bet. Dear Mr. Whyte is too noble. Won’t trouble a damsel with his affections when she has so much else to worry about. His shoulder to lean on, not his heart. All that.” A small smile tweaked the corner of her mouth, and now she gazed out into the fog as though seeing a fond memory of the far past. Perhaps she was, out in the fog. The addendum ‘not like that damned Riley’ hovered in the air without needing to be said.

  AJ could not believe they were discussing this right in front of her.

  “So it’s got to be you,” concluded Rebecca. She locked AJ with those steely eyes and clapped a weathered hand on her shoulder. Her hand felt heavy, like she had old iron for bones.

  “Well, whoever it is,” said Amelia, “better be quick. Might be too late any day now. Oh my. A jellyfish.”

  AJ glanced over just in time to see a greenish jellyfish, luminous in the fog, drift past at eye level. But she would not be distracted.

  “Ms. Carter,” she said, keeping her voice even, “I would—”

  “Rebecca, dear, please.” Rebecca turned her sharp eye back in the direction of travel. “Hrm. Fish.” She pointed a finger with the hand holding the thermos. And indeed, a school of neon fish flurried past. They scattered as though spooked by the rover.

  “Rebecca,” said AJ, “there is no need for you to concern yourself with my…” she tripped up on the phrase ‘romantic entanglements,’ amazed that she had been on the verge of putting it like that. She considered ‘relationships,’ but finally settled on “personal life.”

  “We’re all women here,” noted Amelia in her typical listless drawl. “We’re on your side, dear.”

  It was beginning to wear on her nerves the way they both referred to her as ‘dear.’ They did it to most people, AJ knew, but she wasn’t in a mood to give them any consideration. And what did them all being women have to do with it?

  “Drink your tea, dear,” said Rebecca. She demonstrated by sipping her own. “Shark.” A shark, streaked with shining blue as though under a UV light, faded in from one side, kept pace with the rover for a moment, then darted away. “We seem to be having a fishy day.”

  “She must be drawing back there, I suppose,” said Amelia. ‘She’ could only mean Leah. AJ sat in a huff, attempting to sip her tea as expressively as Rebecca. There was no chance of that—Rebecca was an unparalleled tea-sipper—but AJ tried.

  “I was young once,” said Rebecca, finally setting down her thermos on the dash.

  “Verily?”

  “Verily, dear. If you can believe it. Some days I can’t. Then I recall what a fool I was. On many occasions. This, for example.” She turned her head for a moment to better display the tiger-claw scars running down the far side of her face. “And of course I married Riley McFinn.” She laughed, and it sounded like genuine mirth, amusement at the stupidity of her former self.

  AJ watched Amelia distractedly create little jellyfish of light and make them flounce around the cabin. Eventually, Rebecca continued.

  “I was in love a few times,” she mused. “Never worked out. Still worth it, I suppose. I wouldn’t take any of those days back.” She adjusted her hat, flexed her fingers. “I was a hunter, you know. If I wanted something, I chased it. I did not allow hesitation to cause life to slip through my fingers.”

  “Hunter,” said AJ, latching on to what seemed the most offensive part of all this. So she should ‘hunt’ Michael? The presumption of it. “Think Alan Sheppard will be easy to hunt? Can’t be too hard to chase when…he’s…” She regretted it at once.

  Rebecca did not look at her, but her words were hard. “That, Amber Jane Eddison, was uncalled for.”

  “Elmer and I wagered on that as well,” said Amelia, interrupting what might have been a tense silence. Both Rebecca and AJ looked over at her. “My drops are on Alan.” She sipped her tea. “Making it happen, that is. Oh. A turtle.”

  “Turtle?” said Rebecca. “Ah, that reminds me of someone. Bit like you, AJ, dear. It was in Moldova, I believe. Or French Guiana. Remarkable how I tend to get those two confused. Her name was Ezelia Patroyovich, yes, it must have been Moldova, and the peculiar thing about her was that she could only sing—I mean sing very well, you know, at a national level—in French. Wait, perhaps it was Guiana. In any case, one fine weekend I happened to be loading the truck…”

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  AJ drained her tea and left. She was not in the mood for another of Rebecca’s rambling tales. She slid the door shut so hard that it slammed.

  She wanted to cook. Cooking relaxed her. But the rover did not come equipped with a kitchen. Nor ingredients. There was always singing, but now she was in a small room with five other people, all of whom were looking her way, wondering why she had slammed the door.

  She ignored them, all except Michael, who sat on a cushy eggshell-white lounge chair with his expensive camera in his lap. He watched her, concerned but not quite enough to ask, in front of everyone, what was wrong. AJ edged past the table where crayon sea creatures flourished under the enthusiastic hands of Leah and Elmer. Then she paused. Nowhere to go. Maybe she could find solitude in the room in back, where Lizzy and Jimothy slept.

  But Michael got her attention with a wave. “Come look at this,” he said. He saw her coming and got up out of the big cushy lounge chair, moving to the couch near Leah and Elmer so he and AJ could sit side by side. Somehow this disappointed AJ. Really, there had been quite enough room on that chair. For the two of them. It was a big chair.

  Michael wasted no time when AJ dropped beside him on the couch. “Look.” He showed her the screen on his camera. “Ever since we got in here, I’ve been thinking this looks familiar somehow. Like déjà vu.”

  It took AJ a moment to realize that what she saw on the camera screen was not a photograph. Or it was, of course, but it was a photo of a painting. And the painting showed almost exactly what AJ saw when she looked up at the interior of the lounge compartment: Leah and Elmer drawing at a table, clothes and gear strewn about, gray fog outside the windows…and even the glowing fish outside—that exact school of blue fish that AJ saw when she looked up from the camera at that very moment. It was there in paint, in bold brushstrokes, with what she had already come to recognize as Jimothy’s signature mastery of shade and lighting.

  “Devastating,” she whispered, which was one of the random words she occasionally said when she didn’t know what else to say.

  “Yeah,” said Michael, which was the same thing for him. Then he said, “I think we should look through the rest of them. Just in case.”

  “Verily,” she said. In front of them, a blue rubber ball rolled across the floor. It encountered a duffel bag, paused, and then circled around it on a journey back toward Dwayne and Alan. AJ ignored it. The ball had already ceased to be a marvel. It didn’t do anything spectacular. It was like a harmless pet. With Elmer, Amelia, and even Dwayne onboard, the ball was honestly one of the least interesting things in the ALL-Rover.

  And Michael, of course. The thought came to AJ, as Michael began searching back through the files on his camera, that this would be a good time to learn about Michael Whyte. To ask him…well, anything. About his interests. What things did he like? What places had he gone? What friends did he have? She wanted to know.

  He asked her a question first, before she could formulate one of her own. “Is there anyone you’re worried about? Back home?”

  AJ spoke the first thing that came to mind. “My neighbors. Ms. Jacobiak and her kids. They are so cute, Michael. I teach them piano. And my mom, naturally. Not that I teach her piano; I’m worried about her. I wish I knew…” she waved a hand vaguely. “You?”

  Michael grimaced. “My mom too. She’s in an assisted living facility. She doesn’t always remember who we are, but Jim and I live nearby and we try to visit.”

  While she considered this, a shuddering thump jolted the ALL-Rover. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to topple a precarious tower of blocks, spilling them over Leah’s crayon aquarium.

  The ALL-Rover slowed to a stop, reminding AJ in dizzying fashion that they had indeed been moving. The door to the driver’s cabin slid open and Amelia stumbled through.

  “Did we hit a fish?!” Elmer exclaimed, apparently thrilled by the idea.

  “A deer, dear,” she replied. Elmer guffawed at this, and a small smile even twitched at the corner of Amelia’s thin lips. “A real creature, I believe. It’s not dissolving, anyway.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” asked Alan Sheppard, suddenly in Commander Mode. He had stood, and one hand strayed toward the hidden catch that opened the secret weapons locker right next to him. AJ suddenly understood why Alan had chosen to position himself in the back, in a spot from which he rarely moved. “Surely a collision with a deer won’t stop…this.” He waved a hand around, indicating the monstrous vehicle in which they sat. AJ had gone outside earlier, had marveled at the treads of the ALL-Rover like everyone else. This vehicle could probably drive directly over a mountain with little difficulty. Hell, since it was the work of Riley McFinn, AJ wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that it could plow through a lake of molten lava.

  “Well there’s rather a lot of them,” answered Amelia. “Running about. And such. Deer, I mean. And such.”

  “Goddamn zoo out there,” Rebecca’s voice shouted back at them. Then, after a brief pause in which she remembered that half of them were likely to be offended by such language, “pardon the French. The Bitch doesn’t want to run them over. Whoops, pardon again.”

  Alan strode forward, ignoring Elmer’s bewildered enquiries about what this ‘French’ might be and what it had done to require pardon.

  Something slammed into the side of the ALL-Rover. The entire vehicle jerked aside hard enough to toss them all from their seats and incite momentary fear of rolling over.

  And that was when they discovered that while Riley’s private jet had shed many parts of itself to become the ALL-Rover, such as wings and jet engines, it had not relinquished its weaponry.

  And after that, they explained to Leah quite firmly that she wasn’t allowed to draw sea monsters, or indeed monsters of any kind, anymore.

  They stopped for the night that evening. Clara explained to them that as the effects of the genesis fog increased, her ability to pilot the ALL-Rover dwindled. She could no longer reliably keep them on the road, nor direct them on her own. This had something to do with the destabilization of objective reality, but there was not a single person onboard who either cared or possessed sufficient knowledge to understand what this meant.

  They gathered for an evening meal of sandwiches, dried fruit, and various non-expirables. They ate communally at Dwayne’s insistence. ‘A family gathering,’ he called it. They agreed, not that they had much choice but to gather together. Alan did not eat with them because he was occupied in the driver’s cab, planning their next day with Clara. That, AJ would later reflect, had been the first mistake of the evening.

  The second was that Rebecca sat down to eat beside Dwayne Hartman, and she did so well-armed with a full bottle of whiskey.

  AJ would later think she should have seen it coming, though that wasn’t necessarily true. She hadn’t known Dwayne was the type to get drunk. She would also think later that once it began happening, she should have stopped it. This was probably true, but she and Michael had been so busy talking that she just didn’t notice until Dwayne and Rebecca were both thoroughly intoxicated.

  They fed each other’s bad habits; AJ had seen it before. And they were alike, Dwayne and Rebecca: gruff and strong-willed, beaten, battered, and toughened by long and eventful lives. They had a lot to talk about, a lot of stories to share, a lot of reasons to drink and many long-lost friends and family to drink to.

  AJ didn’t notice, or at least didn’t pay it much heed, until the booming of Dwayne Hartman called her out like the voice of God Himself reverberating in the cabin. “Amber!”

  She jumped, startled. Rebecca leaned against Dwayne and said, “Amber Jane, Dwayne. Or AJ.” Rebecca did not refer to Dwayne Hartman as ‘dear.’

  He nodded seriously, as though accepting grave news of profound importance. His gaze, usually soft, now fell fierce upon AJ, unnerving her with its strange intensity. For a fleeting moment, she was unreasonably afraid of Dwayne.

  “Amber Jane.” He spoke as though delivering a life-altering judgment before the highest court in the world. “You are a musician? A singer?”

  Those eyes would admit no denial. She glanced at Michael for aid, but he looked just as bemused as she felt. She summoned her courage, wondering why such an admission required courage, and said, “Verily?”

  Dwayne laughed, so loud and unexpected that the sound startled Leah, who jumped with her small hand in a bag of chips. Leah gazed at Dwayne with huge, awestruck eyes, evidently torn between joining the laughter and crying.

  Belatedly, Elmer laughed as well, though it was obvious that he hadn’t been paying attention, had no idea what Dwayne was laughing about, and was simply joining in because he wanted to laugh. He was late, and he guffawed merrily into a strained silence. Amelia sighed dramatically into her trail mix.

  “She teaches music,” murmured Rebecca. Rebecca watched impassively, swirling the whiskey in her glass, clinking the ice, but AJ got the impression that she was encouraging Dwayne. “She teaches singing, in fact.” Dwayne nodded in approval and ran a calloused, massive, tattooed hand down his immense gray beard. Michael had already told AJ that Dwayne was Isaac’s piano instructor, which AJ found hard to believe. With hands so big, how could he play the piano at all?

  But then Rebecca dropped the final piece into place, with obvious relish. “…at a church.”

  Dwayne Hartman could hardly contain his excitement, if that was what it was. He hummed to himself, pursing his lips. He ran a hand roughly through his beard. He nodded to himself, adjusted his cowboy hat, removed a flask from his coat that looked comically tiny in his hands, popped it open, took a swig. Then he glowered at the middle distance. “Not one of those…” He waved a huge hand vaguely. “Wishy-washy nonsense so-called worship music?”

  Rebecca tried to hide a burst of laughter by turning it into a cough. She stifled it by sipping from her glass. Elmer smoothed his moustaches and whispered a question about what Dwayne meant to Amelia, who was just as flummoxed.

  AJ knew what Dwayne meant. She had to deal with this, exactly this, almost every week at her church. But at least she could answer truthfully and keep him happy. “I lead a choir,” she told him. “We sing hymns.” Not just hymns, but he didn’t need to know that.

  Dwayne broke into a beautiful smile; an entire transformation overcame him, and the pure joy that radiated from his old eyes felt to AJ like a nearly physical sensation. “So you know…” He paused to select one. “Holy, Holy, Holy?”

  Oh no. “Verily,” she said, not liking where this was going.

  “Abide with Me?”

  “Yes…”

  “Higher Ground?”

  “I’m sure she knows all of them, Dwayne,” said Rebecca with an evil, evil grin.

  AJ hadn’t actually known that last one. She did not doubt that Dwayne Hartman’s knowledge of hymnology far exceeded her own.

  “Then we must sing,” he said. It was an observation of the inevitable, as though he had said ‘we’ll have to keep breathing.’ And without more ado, he began to sing. The sound was extraordinary. Everyone stared at Dwayne with some degree of alarm or amazement. It was “Holy, Holy, Holy,” the first hymn he’d mentioned. And it was strangely wonderful. Dwayne’s vocal tone was…well, it was abhorrent. Gravelly, guttural, grating. The worst case of ‘shout-singing’ AJ had ever witnessed, though in this case ‘roar’ seemed more appropriate than ‘shout.’ AJ could not recall having ever heard such a terrible singing voice. Yet, neither could she recall such unabashed enthusiasm. His pitch was rock solid, and his passion was unsurpassable. There could be no mistaking, by anybody, regardless of whether they understood even a single word, that Dwayne Hartman truly meant every line that he sang.

  Even Rebecca Carter appeared taken aback, her glass forgotten and hanging limp from her fingers, surprised at what she had awakened. Up front, the cockpit door slid open so that Alan could cast an incredulous glance back into the lounge.

  Dwayne Hartman beckoned to AJ with a huge hand, urging her to join him as he thundered into the second verse.

  AJ tried to think of how to politely decline, aware that everyone’s attention was shifting toward her. She didn’t really want to sing just then, not in front of all of them, not with Dwayne Hartman, not with Michael sitting right next to her. She knew very well what her voice would sound like if she added it to the clamor of Dwayne’s singing, and it was not musical. It was awkward, embarrassing. But Dwayne, immune to embarrassment, reached over to take her hand, and tears glistened on his ruddy cheeks.

  Another hand intercepted Dwayne’s, small and pale by comparison, and another voice joined the song, not hers. Michael’s. He wasn’t a very good singer either, as he had said, and his voice sounded faltering and hesitant compared to Dwayne’s.

  That was all it took to change everything. Suddenly it was very easy for her to take a deep breath, locate the pitch, and join in.

  Dwayne smiled when he barreled along into the third verse, trailing the two of them in his vocal wake like a steamboat dragging some canoes along for the ride. His expression was sheer rapture, his joy so infectious that AJ too began to smile.

  And Elmer Sky, inspired to join and not discouraged by his ignorance of the text, began to hum along. Leah Walker, who seemed a little confused but caught up in the moment all the same, joined in with words of her own, apparently made up on the spot. AJ caught something about ‘lobsters’ and ‘division.’

  Rebecca and Amelia shared a glance, the former with a raised eyebrow and the latter with a resigned sigh. Amelia shrugged and held up a hand that shed a small rain of miniature green question marks. Rebecca raised her glass faintly toward Michael in salute, though he wasn’t paying attention, mimed clinking it against his, and kicked back the rest of her whiskey.

  They sang a few hymns. Outside, something bright was happening in the fog, but nobody except Alan noticed because in the moment it seemed natural.