Free Cloud Country by Andy Futuro Page B

complete rust slumped ass-up in a ditch, and she crawled on top and stretched. It wasn’t too uncomfortable, no worse than passing out on the streets, and the metal was still warm from sitting in the haze all day. The breeze was kind of nice, tickling across her skin, and she opened her robe and flashed the sky, and thought of other times and other places she’d lain naked with better company. The memories brought smiles and frowns and sighs, and longings to be home. Somewhere among the familiar streets and faces, the outside touches bled away, and the memories turned to dreams…
    *
    Damn it was cold! Saru shivered and yanked the flimsy robe up around her shoulders, provoking a squeak and scurry of rats. She banged down on the hood for a good long minute to make sure all the little bastards were gone, before slipping over the side and feeling her way in what she hoped was the direction of the plane. It was dark, way too dark, and she yelled every form of shit and fuck she could invent at John, who shouldn’t have let her doze off in a creepy-ass junkyard. The only light was from a sky glow (the moon?) diffused throughout the smog cover, so she could see shapes and mounds in different shades of black and almost-black. Fuck, damnit, hell, damn, John! A sandal caught on something and then tore away. She swept her naked foot around to find it and snagged her toes on a coil of barbed wire. Fuck! She sat and cut her thigh on a rusty jutting something—goddamnit!—and then wound up wobbling on one leg while she plucked the teeth of wire from her feet. An agonizing, blind-woman shuffle brought her at last to the plane, which thank God the door was still open, and she poured the last drops of vodka onto her new cuts—goddamn fuck! She slammed the door—or tried to; it would do nothing but glide gently into place—and crossed her arms and sulked.
    John was nowhere to be seen or heard, and she spent a solid chunk of time cursing his stupid ass before the anger fizzled into worry. What if he’d wandered off? Was he coming back? Should she go look for him? But it was cold outside. And what if he hadn’t gone anywhere—what if he’d stubbed his bare toe on a saw blade and bled himself to death while she was napping? Or—or…had he killed himself? Was he that rattled? It was hard to tell. She didn’t know much about Gaesporans other than the few times she’d been forced to interact with ElilE, and the craziest he’d ever gotten was to yell at her and break things. But even glimpsing ElilE’s human side, there was no missing the alien power, the strength and control, and just the gut-cry feel that here was something different. John, he’d lost that underlying sense of control. He felt like a human to her. Acted like a human. He didn’t sparkle, didn’t shine. Voices in his head had led him to this junkyard, and if it wasn’t the ‘place’ he was looking for—which it obviously wasn’t—then would he just give up?
    Fuck it. Saru yanked open the door (tried to) and got out. The wind was gone but still it was freezing, which made no sense to her. Why would it be hot in the day and then cold at night? Why was everything so complicated?
    “John!” she yelled to the air, fruitlessly. Nothing. “John!” Nope. “John, you fucker!” Of course not.
    She grit her teeth and shivered, and then rummaged in the plane for something to wrap around her feet. Nothing but chocolate wrappers and vodka bottles—not even a flashlight.
    “Fine! Fine then!” she yelled.
    She set off tiptoeing, careful, probing steps, shying away from the jagged and rusty armor of the ground and easing her weight in gently, step by baby step.
    “John! Joooohn! Don’t do this to me, John!”
    Saru thought of going back to the plane and abandoning John to whatever dumbassery he’d brought upon himself. She could fly it easily enough—the plane was for rich idiots so its controls weren’t much more than a stick and a wheel, with the computer