kaolin fire presents :: writing :: fiction

"sendoff.0"

words

Frank's squeal echoed the tires' shaky grip of the road as Marcy's lead foot careened them down Highway 1. Crisp hundred dollar bills blossomed from his frantic fists and trailed behind like sterile chaos spores, cracking and spinning in the cold, hard wind. A helicopter's blades, unseen, droned their presence into his skull. "We've got to get rid of this evidence!" Frank screamed, barely balancing himself on the railing of the pickup's bed.

Marcy's pre-pubescent screech cut through both wind and blades, and Frank winced at his daughter's control. "You're not tossing that money, mama needs it!"

Thoughts jumbled in his head and a glance caught his hands, bare--where had he put his gloves? "Oh God, my DNA!" Fear halted the excommunication of their ill-gotten gains, while a sharp right slipped the rear of the car off the pavement and bounced it against the rising cliff. His ribs fought valiantly against the bed's side-rail; pain brought dark wetness to his consciousness, spinning and laughing--coughing and wincing, too stunned to do aught else, he slumped back into the bed and prayed for deliverance.

Another squeal jarred him against the tailgate, and his daughter's shrill voice interrupted his prayer, sharper than the shattered rib sawing away at his mediocre musculature. "They ain't gonna be tracking us with that paper money, da! Leave it be, mama needs it!

He couldn't breathe to say yea or nay; he wanted to scream, to roar, to sleep, to cry, to hide, to die. He wanted Desi to be all right, but it was nothing but pain he was bringing her.

Everything hurt. He was on a river, rapids--he could smell the trees, just fresh trees, overhead. And the cold, frothing stream that turned his family's cries of laughter to peals of fear--then folded it back to laughter after each run finished. Even then Marcy was something, steering the raft like their lives depended on it. She had strength and size, no telling where she got them--it wasn't from him, but it especially wasn't from Desi. If only she'd followed directions better, but she was a good girl, she tried.

It's hard to understand the difference between wrong, and really, really wrong, at that age. Their fault, when you got down to it--she'd grown up gridless, she knew that everything they did was wrong. This wrong'd wound up with Desi taking a deep-chest examination of a toxic tide pool. Marcy'd pulled her back in, like a dream, daughter and mother supernaturally different, roles reversed--he found mother as daughter almost more believable than the truth, seeing them together as such; Frank'd stitched Desi up the best he could, but there was no sterilizing the radiation.

The river kept swimming back and forth, tossing him like a bad night's sleep, and he heard shouting over the drone of the water. There was a pain in his side just where he'd stitched Desi up, and the water sounded more like a helicopter, and the shouting was bells clanging--no, the bells were his skull rattled to hell and back and the hollow of the pick-up and the tow-chains beating with the texture of the road. He took a deep breath to scream and choked on it, pain nearly driving him back under the water.

Desi, Desi--they were coming, Desi, just you hold on. They'd fought that radiation, tooth and claw--while her teeth and claws fell out, her skin fell sallow and her eyes yellowed like parchment. Who knew what else was in her, certainly no backwoods nanodoc had a clue. Corps weren't supposed to care about the gridless, anyhow, and Frank knew what they could get away with on cityfolk.

Inertia jammed his skull against the side one more time and silence--dust swam up over his eyes and dropped into his lungs, making every breath just that much harder.

All was still except for the wind tearing over him, and the waves crashing down below. Marcy came round the side of the truck and set her hand on the tailgate, eyes down. "Da, I'm feelin' kinda off. I think the turns've done me in." He couldn't hear the copter.

"The turns, Marce?" he coughed. "I never known you for a queasy stomach."

"I dunno, da, but I'm not feeling mah spark."

Something caught in his throat, and he gurgled before spitting out, "How 'bout the copter?"

"I ain't heard it for a bit, though the truck is awful noisy. Da, are you okay? You sound like mama!"

"I'm fine, we've just got to find your ma. Can you drive some more? You have to." He breathed in the pain and forced himself not to cough.

"I think we're there, but I don't see her. Are you really gon' be okay?"

"Marce," he said, trying to ground himself, trying to think. "Look down the cliff, can you see her?"

"I don't know! My head is spinning some."

"A shape, just a human shape, anything lying down?

"I might?"

"You do. I trust your eyes. Is she moving?"

"I don't think the tide's up to her, and--I see a pile, I think that's wood. Oh, da, I think my stomach's turnin'."

"What sort of queasy are you feeling? Is there a pulse?"

"There--yeah, I think there is, oh, oh, what is it? What's happening, da?"

"You didn't drink no water, right? Nor eat no food?"

"I didn't eat nothin'. I was careful."

"Drink? Did you drink the water?"

She didn't answer.

"Tell me you didn't drink the water!" Nothing. "Fuck, Marce! I told you not to drink the water! Oh, for-fucking-give my fucking mouth, but fuck!" Control lapsed, coughing nearly drove him to unconsciousness; her hand on his shoulder brought him back. "They're tracking us with that water! At best! And who knows what poisons are infectin' you!"

"But da, I don't gotta go, how'm I gonna get it out?"

"You'll go, dammit, you'll go. Your life, your mama, we need you, Marce. Just go!"

She looked around, embarrassed, pulled down her underthings, and squatted to let loose on the ground.

"Wait, no! Give that a proper send-off, too. We'll burn it all, 'cause ma may need some extra tools in addition to a million bucks, who knows." Still on his back, Frank pulled a tin flask of rotgut from his shirt pocket, and thumbed the top off, eyes watering from a million things. He poured the stinking 'col down his throat, hoping it would at least sterilize his heart, then grunted the flask up out of the bed to his daughter. "Shoot in this, and we'll get it to your ma in time. She'll be taking over buddhist heaven before tonight."

"I'll do it, da."

A steamy hiss drove against the tin, and Frank tried hard not to think about his rotgut. "That's a good girl, Marce. Your ma'll get a proper send, you'll see. Just take the flask and lay it on the wood, and take the satchels, too. Set her to going, make sure the paper catches good, and leave me here, just run. Quick, Marce, so the copter doesn't find us nor your ma, not with the evidence. Be quick."

And then he closed his eyes.