Authors: JL Bryan
Raven thought it over, wondering what the man's intentions were.
"I mean, uh, we'd get two rooms, of course," he said. "If we can. You got any money?"
"I'm not sure." Raven unzipped her backpack just enough to peek inside.
The first thing she saw gave her a quick jolt of fear that kicked up her pulse, but she tried not to show any reaction. She ignored it for now.
In a mesh pocket on the inside of the pack, she found a roll of green paper as big as her fist, all of them hundred-dollar bills. She didn't know how much a motel room might cost, but she estimated several hundred dollars for one night at a cheap place. She lifted out the spool of crisp, bank-fresh cash. "Do you think this is enough?"
"God damn, girl!" Jebbie choked. "Don't go whipping that out in front of people, or someone's gonna rob you. Hell, I'm half-tempted to do it myself." He smiled with nicotine-stained teeth. "Hey, I'm just yanking your paws, huh? But really, put one of them in your pocket, put the rest back for now. That's what I'd do."
Raven took his advice, pocketing just one bill, though that didn't seem like much money.
"You really are into drugs, ain't you? Wandering the highway at night, don't know where you're going, got a big barrel of cash." He cast a suspicious look at her backpack. "You ain't got no drugs in there now, do you? I can't afford to get arrested again."
Raven checked again. The backpack held a few odd objects and some tightly rolled clothing, but nothing like drugs, no powders or crystals.
"No drugs, just clothes." She zipped it up.
"Did you steal that money? Is somebody chasing after you?"
"No," Raven said. "I don't think so."
"You ain't telling me much."
"I just don't know. My memory is messed up, honestly. Because of that lightning, probably."
"Oh, yeah, that was a strange piece of lightning, landing right in the road like that."
Raven wanted very much to change the subject away from herself. She looked over the odd objects glued to Jebbie's dashboard, the watch face, the bobble-headed kangaroo, the black and white photograph of a woman in a 1920's bathing dress and cap. Another picture, very faded, showed a stern-looking old man on the porch of a general store, by a Coca-Cola sign.
"Are these your family?" Raven asked.
"Naw, just stuff I liked." He waved at the collection of junk. "Come from flea markets, mostly. Each one cost a quarter or less, just somebody else's memory that got throwed out. I ain't got much kin left, myself. Did get married once, but that didn't turn out."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't think I was made for it. I'm a man of the road." He nodded, as if confirming this to himself. "She was more into staying home and sleeping with the loser next door. Don't matter. You got folks?"
"I'm not sure. That part of my memory's gone. I remember a girl, we must have been close..." Raven saw flashes of a girl at her side, with freckles and unevenly cut red hair. Raven and the girl were both about twelve years old, racing through a dark alley with dozens of other people, panic on everyone's faces. Behind them, a row of armored bulldozers lit up the night with a barrage of white-hot fire as they razed a crowded slum in one city or another, maybe Seattle, maybe Detroit, indifferent to the screaming residents.
Later, Raven and the other girl sparred against each other. They were fifteen or sixteen and lived in an old factory loft that had been overrun with teenage squatters. Life was fighting, so everyone had to practice if they wanted to survive.
Even later, she and the girl wore gas masks and black-scaled armored jackets. They were part of a team raiding a heavily guarded concrete facility in the desert. The girl unleashed a hail of plastique cartridges from a rapid-fire rifle, decimating the front of the building. Raven shivered.
"Hey, you still there?" Jebbie asked.
"Sorry. I remember growing up in rough places, the big slum-sprawls outside the cities. We were always in danger."
"What cities?"
"I think Detroit was one, for a while."
"Oh, yeah, Detroit, that's pretty bad." He nodded as though he understood her better now. "That where you're headed?"
"It might be," she said, doubting it was true.
"Welp, looks to me like you got more than enough cash for a night at the Big Porcupine Inn. Dinner, too. You hungry?"
"Yes," Raven said. It was a lie--her stomach was full of her own twitching nerves. Eating might be good for her, though, and make her feel a little more sane.
They pulled off at an exit ramp. From signs, she had determined they were traveling north on Interstate 65 toward Louisville, Kentucky.
Jebbie drove into a brightly lit clump of concrete buildings, identified by a tall sign as Big Porcupine Travel Plaza, where he parked alongside a row of other rigs. Another parking area hosted RV's under its glowing sodium lights.
"They got everything here," Jebbie said. "Food, fuel, place you can send mail, everything. There's the motel." He nodded at a dingy, two-story cinderblock structure all the way across the parking lot, ringed by scrubby weeds. "You feel like eating? Or more like sleeping?"
"Both," Raven said, and she relaxed, knowing she would have a safe place to sort things out.
Outside, she passed a small vending machine that sold preprinted daily newspapers, which somehow struck her as quaint. From a glance at the newspaper inside, the
Courier-Journal
, she learned it was October 2013. That didn't feel right at all. She wondered how much time she'd lost, and how long she'd been suffering this amnesia.
Jebbie led her into the Porcupine Cafe, which featured a greasy buffet table surrounded by grimy booths. Though it was approaching midnight, several truckers occupied booths, most of them eating alone.
The food was a sensory overload--chicken floating in blobs of lard, fried steak in gravy, collards, turnips, cut fruit, puffy rolls of bread. Her first instinct was to eat as much as she could cram into her stomach, then take all she could carry for later.
"Good stuff, ain't it?" Jebbie piled his plate high with mashed potatoes and gravy.
"How much can I take?" Raven asked.
"All you can eat, like the sign says." Jebbie chuckled and shook his head.
The idea amazed her. She took a warm plate and filled it with country fried steak, fried chicken, sausage, and every type of vegetable offered--fried okra, fried tomatoes, and fried squash. The entire kitchen must have been one giant deep fryer, she thought.
She sat down in a booth across from Jebbie and caught herself clutching her knife and fork, hovering protectively over her food. She glanced at the women in checkered pink and black aprons who staffed the place, expecting one of them to come tell her she'd taken too much food and had to put some back. Nobody bothered her. At the other tables, most of the truckers ate even bigger piles of food. Everyone appeared very well-fed, even excessively so.
The steak was chewy and slathered in a congealed, greasy sauce, but it tasted fantastic to her, heavy with fats and proteins to keep her alive another day. She chased her food with sweet tea from a tall mason jar, so thick with sugar it almost put her into shock.
"Look at that," Jebbie said. "I never seen a woman so little eat so much."
"Sorry, I'm hungry. It's okay to eat this much, right?"
"Hey, all you can eat."
Raven ate all she could. She finished her meal quickly, eager to get a room and finally study the contents of her backpack.
They crossed the parking lot to the small motel, where the elderly desk clerk looked suspiciously at the two of them. A calendar featuring Jesus and the Disciples hung on the wall behind him.
"Two rooms?" the man asked. "I don't see no wedding rings, and this ain't that kind of motel, hear?"
"Two rooms. What is the rental price for mine?" Raven asked him. She'd broken her hundred-dollar bill to buy dinner and still had over ninety dollars left. It seemed an unbelievably cheap price for so much food, just pocket change. She was equally surprised to learn she could rent an entire room, with her own bed, for under forty dollars.
They walked up the outdoor concrete stairwell, lit by a flickering, greenish floodlight, and followed the cracked second-story walkway to their rooms.
"Here's your spot." Jebbie gestured at her door. "I could, uh, come in, if you want some company."
"No, thank you." Raven slid the key into her lock.
"You sure?" He had a desperate look in his eyes. The man clearly wanted to stay with her. Raven balled her hands into fists, hoping he didn't get too forceful about it. He'd been nice enough so far.
"I'm fine," she told him.
"Be right next door if you need anything." Jebbie scurried into his room, looking away as though he were a little ashamed of himself for even trying, however slightly and ineffectively.
Raven entered her dim motel room and slid the deadbolt behind her.
Chapter Two
Raven's room was small, with musty curtains, a rusty old steam radiator, and a threadbare comforter on the double bed. The heat felt sweet on her cold skin, but it also filled the room with the stench of steamed mildew. The storm had passed over, leaving a quiet night outside.
She drew the curtain, but the size of the window worried her. It didn't have an outer cage or a barred panel to lock for the night, so anyone could break into her room with a brick or a hunk of cinderblock.
She closed her eyes and saw herself, fourteen years old, sharing a cigarette with the freckled, red-haired girl from her broken memories. They were dirty, dressed in clothes that were little more than rags, with old-fashioned lead-firing pistols holstered at their hips. They camped in an overgrown rail yard deep in the slum-sprawl of one horrible city or another. They laughed as they smoked. They'd succeeded at some scheme, maybe a petty robbery. It was a happy moment.
She tried to remember the girl's name, but couldn't. She opened her backpack, hoping for clues about herself and her past.
She brought out the clothes first, since she was still dripping wet. There were two pairs of slacks, two collared shirts, a necktie, socks and boxer shorts, and a pair of size 12 brown loafers. Not her clothes. They belonged to a man several inches taller than her, with bigger feet.
She shrugged off her long jacket and felt the flexible metal mesh beneath the tough, leathery fabric.
Battle wear disguised as street clothes
, she thought.
She draped it over her shower bar, then set her boots in the tub and hung her blouse and fatigues over the towel bar. It would all be dry by morning, but she had nothing to wear until then.
She looked at herself in the mirror. Her black bra was frayed, and her gray undershorts had ragged holes. She clearly wasn't rich, wasn't accustomed to running around with a thick roll of money on hand.
Her body was lean, wiry, and marred with scars and burns on her arms, shoulders, torso, legs, and feet. It was the body of a soldier.
I was a teenage child soldier
, she thought, and it made her want to laugh for some reason, like an old joke linked to some happy memory. No specific memory surfaced for her, though.
She changed into a starchy white button-up shirt, too big and long for her, and a pair of boxers that were loose and baggy but dry. She dug into the backpack again, hoping for some object that would trigger her lost memories.
First, she brought out the thing that had startled her when she'd first seen it. It was a gun--specifically, a nasty-looking pistol, its barrel bulky with industrial coils and steel chambers clustered around a central shaft. It was tucked into a shoulder holster made from the same material as her jacket. She brought out a long, narrow, conical piece of metal, girded with more steel chambers.
Without a thought, she snapped the long piece onto the pistol, extending it into a long-range rifle. She checked the clip. It was loaded with a full cartridge, which contained concentrated hydrogen gas and a small fuel cell to power the weapon.
This was a plasma gun, and she knew how to break it down, clean it up, and put it back together in less than thirty seconds. The gun heated hydrogen gas by several thousand degrees to make plasma, like the material on the surface of the sun, and ejected the plasma ball towards a target. A single shot on the lowest-energy setting could burn out a man's chest cavity and leave a hollow, smoking corpse behind.
She knew all about the weapon, but she didn't know
how
she knew or where she'd received such training.
She set it on her bed, followed by a rack of twelve round cartridges, refills for the gun. She brought out pitch-black wraparound sunglasses and tried them on in the mirror. Dark glasses, a wet mop of hair, a shirt that hung on her like a bedsheet, and oversized underwear--she looked ridiculous. She tossed the glasses onto an end table by the bed.
The only other object in the backpack was a small cube that fit inside her palm. It resembled an ornate little music box, but carved from steel and silicon instead of wood. She traced her fingers over the geometric designs on the outside, not sure what they were--buttons, contact panels, or decorations.
She sat on the bed and slumped, disheartened. She'd hoped to find something more useful, clear identification that told her who she was. From the clothes, it was obvious the backpack wasn't even hers. Perhaps she'd stolen it.
Raven packed away everything but the little steel cube, since it remained an enigma to her. She turned it in her hands, pushing and prodding the little raised triangles, squares, and squiggly lines on its surface. Each side had a tiny aluminum circle in the exact center, so she tried pressing the tip of her index finger against one.
The aluminum circle opened like an iris, revealing a black glass lens. A scorching flash of blue seared her eyes, and she grimaced and threw the cube aside. She closed her scalded eyes, waiting for the intense blue afterimage to fade.
She rubbed her eyes and blinked. The cube lay in the corner, projecting a meaningless jumble of grids onto the walls. She nudged it upright with her toe, so that the glass lens pointed toward the ceiling.