Hugh Howey - Molly Fyde and the Blood of Billions

There was no stopping this time. Her pair-bond ran right past the watering shaft and kept up her frantic pace. The Wadi held on with the smallest amount of claw possible, enough to not skitter off her pair-bond’s back, but not enough to cause the pain-smoke. She hated causing the pain-smoke.

What her pair-bond leaked now was urgency. And fear, though not for herself.

This latter wisp of emotion nearly drifted by unnoticed, even though the column was strong and bright to the Wadi’s senses. The problem was: it had become ever-present. Like the twin monsters of light that dominated her old home, that column of fear for others seemed to hang everywhere they went, solid and ferocious. For the Wadi, it was like a giant fang you soon curl your tail around and ignore because it has hung idle in your den for so long.

The Wadi tensed up as her pair-bond turned down another canyon. Odd, these canyons. All at sharp angles and pocked with square holes, all disgorging more large beasts like her pair-bond. Like her in size, anyway, but different in the tendrils of smoke that trailed out from their bodies—exuded from their very thoughts and feelings.

Her pair-bond ran as hard and fast as a Wadi now, her breathing raspy and labored. The Wadi exuded as much calming scent as she could, urging the pounding pulse she felt with her tail to relax itself. She also put out courage smoke. She curled her head around her pair-bond’s neck and released as much of both as she could, forgetting her need to conserve her energy.

She waited to see if her pair-bond would respond.

It was so frustrating, trying to communicate. But she had only herself to blame. With the hell being wrought in her stomach—the ever-present urge to eat and drink and nourish her eggs—it left little energy for anything else. So very little energy. And even less time.

Molly weaved her way through a dense crowd, gasping for breath as she slowed. Ahead of her, the street pinched tight with rubble, leaving just enough room for pedestrians to squeeze through one at a time. Lokians pushed their way single-file, hands urging those ahead while buggies blasted their horns in futile frustration.

Molly veered out of the crush of people and scampered up the edge of the rubble, passing the roadblock. Two younger kids were up even higher, sifting through the rocks and laughing. Beyond them loomed the tail of a Navy bomber, its gleaming hull miraculously intact and leaning out over the street like a sundial. As she scampered down the mound of shattered building, Molly checked the street numbers to the side, looking for the address of the Navy office. Four twenty six. She had missed it.

She turned, looking back over the rubble and down the street where the crowds flowed dense into a tight stream. She felt certain the building number on the other side of the rubble had been—

It hit her. As solidly as the bomber had hit the building she was looking for. Molly looked down at her feet. Her destination was right below her, caked up in the treads of her flightboots.

“No flanking way,” she muttered. She scanned the crowd for anyone in Navy black as the Wadi nudged her chin with its head. “It’s okay,” she told her. Molly held her hand up and rubbed the Wadi’s neck with her finger. “Everything’s gonna be fine,” she lied.

That’s what she loved about having a pet. You could lie to them and they didn’t know any different. Somehow, saying what she knew to not be true made her feel better. It dissipated the bad sensations inside, just as the wind had removed from the morning sky all signs of the downed shuttle. Its great column of white liftoff smoke had hung over the city during her run into town, but now it was gone, scattered across the winds like so many forgotten Callites.

Molly saw no sign of Navy officials, but that was hardly surprising. She wouldn’t be shocked to discover they had made scarce before the façade of their building had done the same. Her last remaining option for help felt like a poor choice; the town’s sheriff had seemed a tad incompetent the last time she’d turned to him in need, or at least not very eager to help her out. But Molly couldn’t think of any alternatives.

She looked around, trying to get her bearings straight. The small town of Bekkie felt huge all of a sudden—there was just so much going on. People running to and fro, clutching precious items against their chests; fires being fought; lights flashing; flames flickering. Behind it all were her friends in danger, the love of her life and her father gone from the universe, her mom telling her to get ready to be alone again, Saunders and his crew and all they’d been through, and so many Callites sent off to their death.

As Molly turned in place, trying to locate the steeple of the great church in the center of town, she felt like her surroundings turned at a different rate than herself, as if the world spun on her while she stood still—and likewise stood still while she spun. Through a haze of smoke, she finally located that central spire of the great church and used it to locate herself. To center herself. She scampered down from the rubble and set off at a jog through the twists and turns of unplanned alleys.

The Sheriff would be able to help her, she told herself. She put one hand on the Wadi’s back so it wouldn’t use its claws, and hoped he didn’t feel the same way about Callites as he had about pets.

Molly approached the town square one street over from Main. She slowed to catch her breath and cut through a narrow alley that should dump her out right by the sheriff’s office. Her skin crawled as she plunged into the crack between the two buildings. The shade trapped between them was cool—the lingering nighttime darkness not yet chased off by the rising sun.

Molly berated herself for her childish terror, but picked up the pace again. The tickling sensation of having something awful right at her back resurrected a nostalgic fear she once harbored for Parsona’s cargo bay. When she was young, she used to run from her bedroom to the cockpit, sprinting ahead of the monsters to the safety of her father’s lap. The sudden recollection clawed at her breath in a way the running couldn’t. Molly burst out of the alley, gasping, tears in her eyes as she remembered the many hours she’d spent curled up against his belly while he spoke softly to himself, his voice muffled by his sealed helmet, his hand always moving up and down her back or smoothing her hair.

“That’s her right there!”

The outburst startled that skittish memory back into the folds of Molly’s brain. The accusatory words had arrived as well-aimed as any bullet, the way utterances can often cut through the din of so much background noise. Molly turned, her ears attuned to the fact that the speaker had been looking right at her as he yelled it.

There, behind the bars on the sheriff’s window, she found two eyes peering right back at her. A hand stuck out between the bars and pointed, the finger trembling with excitement. “That’s the one!”

Molly turned to look behind herself, to see if there was someone else the finger could be indicating. When she turned back, the sheriff loomed before her, seizing her with strong hands and removing any doubt.

“Hey, wait a sec—!”

The sheriff pulled her arm up tight behind her and force-marched her the last few steps she had intended to take anyway. Molly automatically resisted, pushing back against him as he manhandled her forward and through the door.

“Fine piece of detective work there, Sheriff Browne.”

“That’s enough out of you,” the sheriff said to a prisoner in the far cell.

“What’s going on?” Molly asked. She felt cuffs snap down around her wrists before she was handed off to a deputy, who nodded politely and tipped his hat before escorting her toward one of the empty cells. “Am I being arrested?”