Savage Drift

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE DEAN

We spent the night in the car.

Astrid cuddled with Rinée in the backseat and I reclined in the front seat.

Jake was crashed out in the passenger seat, snoring like a bear, his head lolling against the window. If I hadn’t been so tired, it would have kept me up.

Rinée woke us up, crying.

“Shhh,” Astrid told her. “It’s okay.” But there was no soothing the kid.

“We’re out of juice boxes,” I said. I rummaged around for something the girl would eat. Actually for anything that would get her to stop crying. My nerves felt like they’d been sharpened on a honing blade and the crying, screaming now, was going to put me over the edge.

“What about a protein shake?” Jake suggested.

But we tried that and she wouldn’t take it.

“Come on, sweetie, let’s take a walk,” Astrid said.

She opened the door and Rinée wailed louder, pushing against Astrid. Astrid set her onto the ground and the toddler stormed away from the car.

“Do you want me to go?” I asked Astrid. She nodded.

The circles under her eyes were starting to worry me. It looked like she hadn’t gotten, maybe, the best night of sleep in the world, curled up in the backseat of a Mazda with a twenty-two-month-old.

I followed Rinée as she wandered around. It was chilly, almost downright cold.

“Let’s go get a blanket, Rinée,” I said. “Come on, Rinée. Gotta keep warm.”

I went to pick her up and she laughed and ran from me. Good, it could be a game. Anything to keep her from crying.

A cup of coffee sounded good to me, even though I didn’t like the way it tasted. I needed something to open up my brain.

Finally she allowed me to scoop her up and I blew a raspberry onto her neck, causing her to giggle. I realized she was wet—really wet.

Coming back to the car, I saw the trunk open.

Jake’s face peeked over the top and he saw me and then dropped back down.

As I walked up he shut the trunk.

“Found these,” he said, holding up a bag of frosted animal crackers. “I thought I’d see if there was anything she might like…”

And he was sort of palming a protein shake behind his back.

He must’ve seen my eyes dart to the shake.

“Breakfast. It sort of tastes like last night’s dinner,” he joked.

I smiled. Nodded. What Jake did was not my concern. He could sneak whisky all day long. I didn’t have to rat him out. I didn’t even have to hold it against him.

“Where’s Astrid?” I asked.

“Went to pee.”

Astrid came back and changed the baby (I was going to have to learn how to do it. And soon. Blecch.) and we got on the road.

I drove, Astrid tried to keep Rinée occupied, Jake sipped whisky out of a protein shake bottle.

It’s a weird thing, to have someone doing something that he’s covering up in your presence. There was this huge lie going on right in the car and neither Astrid nor I said a thing.

I’m sure she could smell the booze. I could.

Jake told us about his days in Texas, back before he moved to Monument. He told us about the championship football games and about the BBQ dinners the backers threw for the team.

Breakfast was cold sandwiches from a gas station. Forty-two dollars. We were getting low on money.

I had the thought that maybe Rinée’s dad might give us a reward or something for bringing her back. Then again, he might think we were kidnappers. Would he believe us, about how we’d found her in the trunk?

Jake chatted on and on. Astrid laughed at his cocky monologue.

I didn’t feel much like banter.

I was thinking of Vinita. What we’d seen and what we might encounter.

I found Rinée’s house by driving to the gas station in Vinita and going from there.

The charred remains of the service station were still smoking, twenty-four hours later. If I had stopped, we could have seen Rocco Caputo’s bloody, skeleton prostrate on the asphalt, but I didn’t care to stop.

What I didn’t see was any trace of the drift. Nothing in the air, nothing skittering along the ground.

I kept remembering an eyewitness report I had read about a drift in a falling-apart copy of the National Enquirer back at Quilchena.

The man’s description of the drift fit perfectly with what we had experienced. Of course it was hard to take seriously, back then, because the story it ran next to was about how aliens had triggered the Megatsunami with a rock-melting submarine.

The drift article had discussed a theory that the drifts were a fusion of the magnetic blackout cloud and the blood-type compound. That the thermobaric bombs the Air Force had used to destroy the compounds and the blackout cloud had locked them together.

The “grains” I’d seen were square in shape. Alex had described the blackout cloud as being tiny airborne magnets. There was some force keeping the particles together. Otherwise, they would disperse. It all seemed to make sense.

I wished I could have discussed it with Alex.

The mood in the car grew grim as I turned onto Rinée’s street. The child was oblivious—Astrid had found a pacifier jammed in the seat-back pouch. Even though it seemed small (do they come in sizes?), Rinée was thrilled to have it and was lulled into a daze.

Some of the houses looked fine. Others looked like they’d been in a tornado—windows broken, clothes and junk on the lawns. A car with a crushed trunk sat half on the sidewalk and half in the street.

“This is just wrong,” Jake said. He was fully blotto by now. “The government. To not warn these people. It’s wrong.”

“Yeah, yeah. We know,” Astrid told him. She knew about the whisky. She had to know.

I parked in front of the house.

“If he’s home, we give him the girl and we leave, that simple,” Astrid said.

“And if he’s not home?” I asked.

“If he’s not home, I don’t know.”

I cut the engine in front of the house I remembered as Rinée’s.

There was no body.

There was blood staining the walkway and the dry ground and turf.

There was no body.

But there was a trail.

I made a sound—kind of a moan or some guttural expression of fear and grief.

Astrid put her hand on my shoulder. “You don’t have to go out there alone,” she said.

“Heck, no,” Jake said. He put his hand on the handle to open the door, but his hand missed it. “We’re a team. Me and the Booker.”

Ah, Booker. My old nickname, meaning a nerd and also, somehow, a liberal, like President Booker.

But Jake couldn’t even open the door he was so drunk.

“It’s okay,” I said, patting him on the shoulder. “I got this.”

I pulled up my suit, took my mask out, and put it on.

Astrid leaned forward to help me zip it closed. She put her mouthpiece in, too, just to be sure.

The air looked crisp and clear, but still.

Jake had his face in his hands.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “Something’s wrong with my gut.”

“Hey, it’s okay. I really mean it,” I said.

And I really did. I didn’t have to judge him anymore.

I had stashed the trucker’s handgun under my seat and I picked it up now, my hand shaking.

Rinée started crying. Maybe the masks scared her. Maybe she was picking up on the vibe.

I opened the door.

No whistling from the suit. No red light.

“That’s a relief,” I said.

I took off the mask and tossed it back inside.

I went up the walkway, stepping over Rinée’s mother’s blood.

The trail of matted blood led off toward the next house. It was clear where she’d been dragged.

I knocked. There was no answer. The door to Rinée’s house was unlocked.

“Hello,” I called. “I’m Dean. And, uh, we’ve been keeping your daughter safe. We’re here to give her back.”

No answer.

I just stood there blinking for a while. I was going to have to search this house. I was going to have to search it for Rinée’s dad, who might be dead or hiding.

The entryway showed the chaos and disarray that had overtaken the woman’s mind. There was stuff everywhere, including—dear God!—a ziplock bag stuffed with one- and five-dollar bills and change.

I picked it up. Didn’t hesitate. We needed that money.

I checked each room. The basement. The closets. No one.

Back at the car, I just shook my head.

“Shoot,” Astrid said.

“Let’s just go to Texas,” Jake said. “Leave a note and give my mom’s address.”

“No, we should stay,” I decided. “The air is fine. And Rinée’s dad may come back. There’s no sign of him inside. We’ll stay here and wait.”

Astrid nodded and closed her eyes, her hands on her belly. She looked exhausted. A day or two of rest was what she needed.

“There’s just one thing I want to do first,” I said. “I need to follow a trail. Make sure we’re safe.”