Sondranos: The Narrative of Leon Bishop (20 page)

I’m supposed to say I don’t
regret my actions; instead, I regret not having control over them.
Though, I’m also certain this is my way of asking for a proper
excuse for driving away from Covenant Street, or not doing
something to save Lancaster.

Regret begets excuses; excuses
beget regret.

In the dark, those two are
always the same.

Chapter
Nine:

The Birth of
a Present Moment

Melanie
stopped the car in
the middle of a
plateaued region of the crests, at Annalise’s insistence. The sun
had finally broken through the cloud cover from beneath; the crater
nibbled at the edge of the light when Melanie pulled to the side of
the road. It may have been later in the afternoon, but from within
a crater, sunset always came early. Orange light lit the dirt to a
tangerine shade, and turned the grass into sepia stalks. Melanie
muttered: “God, I hope we can get this thing started
again.”

“
I’m certain
we will,” Annalise said as she opened the door. She stretched her
legs through the opening of the passenger side door first, and then
climbed out. She looked to the north. Her shadow cast long and
thick on the soil, pointing away from where the crags now basked in
shadow. Back the way we came, the trees were hardly visible. They
vanished even more as sunlight fled than behind the rising and
falling of the landscape. Covenant Street only existed in our
memories, and I found myself turning a blind eye to the still cover
of clouds above.

Davion climbed out, and I did
the same in tandem with Melanie. Only, Melanie turned back around
and bent into the driver’s door – I stopped her before she could
say anything to Kayt. I waved my hand, intending for her to
translate it as ‘Leave the girl alone,’ and Melanie seemed to
understand. She nodded and came back out. Kayt remained in the back
of the car, silent. I couldn’t imagine what she was going through,
but I know talking about it after such a short time would have only
made her question if she could have done anything.

The four of us walked around to
the trunk, where Annalise pulled it open and started hoisting the
bags out. We’d all silently agreed to continue surviving. We
weren’t ignoring Lancaster’s death, but we were acknowledging how
raw the wound would have been for the young girl. Davion set his
hand lightly on Melanie’s shoulder and whispered loud enough for us
to hear: “I knew you were capable.”

She smiled and blushed. Davion
clapped her lightly on the back and walked away from the car,
casually walking into the centre of the road.

Annalise placed one bag on the
ground and let it tip over. The bags I’d retrieved tumbled to the
edge. Annalise then pulled out some convection foil and some of the
meat she’d taken from the refrigerator.

She held them both up and
grinned. “Pop the hood, would you Mel?”

“
What
for?”

“
The engine
overheats,” Annalise grinned.

Melanie rocked onto her heels,
then the toes of her shoes. She hesitantly looked back to the
still-open door of the driver’s seat.

Davion retrieved the fallen
bag. He carried it to the front of the car. “Go ahead, Miss Nesbit.
I feel Lise has been struck with inspiration.”

She turned and ducked back
inside the driver’s seat door. I trampled a bit of grass nearby,
along the edge of the road. A tangle of roots that had crawled
through a crack in the pavement to reach the sunlight, but had died
and dried long before I’d arrived.

“
I think
we’re going to cook something up,” Melanie offered.

“
I don’t know
how much longer I can take this,” Kayt said.

“
We’re all
out here, sweetheart.”

“
Not
all
; not
anymore.”

“
Would you
rather I leave you to your thoughts?”

“
I keep
seeing him there. Why did we leave him behind?”

Melanie leaned forward, placing
her knee on the foot-well. She sighed and stammered before trying
to explain what she wanted to convey. “We would be dead right now.
You have to understand, Lancaster knew what he was getting into.
Before he left, Davion and I tried convincing him not to go. We
were almost done with the engine.”

“
You should
have tried harder,” Kayt rasped.

“
He lied to
us, Kayt. He told us you three were captured, but that nobody was
guarding the group. Davion told him not to risk it, and Lancaster
agreed – he said he was going to keep watch and let us know if
there were any changes. The next thing we knew, Lancaster ran out.
We finished the car as fast as we could.”

“
It wasn’t
fast enough.”

“
It was as
fast as faith would allow,” Melanie said. I wanted to intervene,
but the conversation seemed to be going fine. I’d expected yelling
and considerably more cursing. But what struck me as odd was what
Melanie had said, then: ‘As fast as faith would allow’. That wasn’t
Melanie talking. At least, not the one I knew. More had happened in
that garage than she was explaining.

“
The
definition of faith is putting your complete, unwavering trust in
something you’ve never seen, nor have any proof exists. You can
have faith, but I’m not going to be an idiot,” Kayt said. That,
also, didn’t sound like Kayt.

Melanie nodded, reached under
the steering wheel, and popped the hood. She smiled through a
placating grin. “If you need anything, don’t hesitate.” Before she
closed the door, she released a small catch below the door-lock and
the window evaporated. I hadn’t seen windows like those in years –
it was almost enough to make me forget the car was ancient. Melanie
closed the door quietly. “We’ll be out here when you need us,” she
finished.

Melanie noticed me after
closing the door. Inside, Kayt leaned her head down.

“
Poor thing,”
Melanie whispered. “So lost without Lancaster.”

“
Melanie,” I
took her by the arm. The way she turned towards me made it look
like she’d perfected gliding. Annalise had begun walking towards
the engine, and Davion was entranced by what she was about to do,
so I led Melanie casually away. “What happened to the woman who was
out for Davion’s blood?”

“
We all have
our impressions. What matters is how we interpret them,” she said.
“I’m sorry for the impression I left on you.”

Hours had passed since I’d said
the same thing; yet, coming from her, I felt that she meant them in
a far greater capacity than I could have realized. Sipping at Blanc
de Noirs in the cellar of an Abbey just after the city had been
destroyed, or having just escaped a potential massacre – who’s to
say whose story had more importance, and who owned those words?

And who was to say which
Melanie was the kind I would put my faith in? You can’t only know
someone for a few hours and understand their core, no matter how
much you hope to be right.

Regardless, I was certain
Davion had a hand in her change. And that change had happened in
the garage.

Melanie clapped me on the
shoulder and left to the front of the car. Davion watched Annalise,
his eyes wide and his hands at the ready should she need help. She
handed him the convection foil and the steaks, then propped the
hood open. Steam rose from the engine in a mushroom cloud of
white-hot mist. I could feel the heat from a few feet away.
Nightfall had already begun to twinge the air will a cooler breeze,
but the engine made the atmosphere feel like it had never changed
from mid-day. Beads of sweat formed on Annalise’s forehead.

Annalise then took a
rectangular sliver of foil from the packet and set it on the
engine. It stiffened, and small dots of red illuminated around the
base. Annalise set the meat on the foil.

“
Damn it,”
she tossed her hands in the air.

“
What’s
wrong?” Davion asked.

“
Seasoning,”
she said. “I didn’t even think to grab it.”

“
The Good
Lord saw fit to provide us with meat and drink. If He wished for us
to have seasoning, He would have provided,” Davion laughed it off.
Annalise rolled her eyes. Melanie nodded her head agreeably, and I
had no idea what to do.

“
Unless you
have an extra tub of engine grease,” I said, not knowing what else
to say.

I once read –
in another
Arnold Richter novel from 2035
– that engine cooking had become a very popular pastime during the
early quarter of the twenty-first century - ever since a book
called
Manifold Destiny
was reprinted for the Electric Motor crowd and those who were
stranded on the ‘constantly rebuilding’ magnetized strip-ways
started holding roadside barbecues – they weren’t nearly as
reliable as they would become a hundred years later, only having
been installed in cities like Perth, Boston, York, Pretoria, and
Johannesburg. Since then, most combustion engines had been turned
into nothing more than kick-starters for vehicles, especially with
the magnetic locks required to allow the Transit Authorities
control over destination and traffic.

In Edinburgh, the vehicle
hurtling towards my flat’s building had accidentally been severed
from that lock, the first accident of its kind in thirty years. It
brought out cries of more efficient systems and the need for all
vehicles to have unbreakable bonds between Transit and car. I say
this because I did a lot of reading about the Transit Authorities
back on Earth before I gave up my life for Sondranos. I’d hoped for
a chance to convince TA to rebuild my apartment. I’m sure, if any
of the people decrying Transit for more diverse uses had seen her,
they would have applauded Annalise for her use of the overheated
engine. Even Melanie, who cringed as the drops of blood and oil
from the meat formed a polite stream over the block, couldn’t steal
that away from her. The task took me back into the classroom – back
to Glasgow at St. Michel’s.

Daniel chose this moment to
show.

I’ve already
mentioned the times when his voice came into my mind, pervading my
auditory senses like a popped balloon; however, this was the next
stage. Just shy of a mile away, I saw him standing in the shadows.
His short crop of blonde hair, much like Melanie’s, brightened in
the hint of sunlight. He wore what he did when I last saw him:
jeans with holes at the knees, a tee-shirt with St. Michel’s emblem
embroidered over the breast, and slippers. The shadows touched his
rigid cheekbones and gaunt nose, making him look sick, a bit like
Max Schreck in
Nosferatu
makeup.

‘
They act
like he’s not even gone. Like he was nothing more than a barnacle
scraped off the keel of their ship. They would do the same if you
were gone,’ his voice carried across the distance and planted in my
ear. ‘You could be dead right now had you stuck it out near the
Abbey. Why didn’t you? One less person to drag around. One more
dead body in the numbers when all this is over. That sounds about
right. A number. It doesn’t matter if you die now, or had already
died, or when you’ll die because that’s the fullest potential
you’ll ever live up to. Am I right, or am I right, or am I
right?’

I shook the voice out. That
wasn’t Daniel. The last time I’d seen him had burned much more than
his image into my brain; his ploy at getting me to stand up for
myself had seeded into my subconscious, and finally bloomed. The
steaks cooking on Annalise’s engine took me out of it, and I
realized that seeing Daniel had taken less than a second. It was
like a dream – you wake up knowing it happened, but can never hope
to place when.

Shaken, but determined to put
it away for the time, I joined Davion and Melanie crowding the
engine to watch the meat cook. She’d brought two large roasts that
had been cut into inch-thick steaks. They sizzled on the convection
foil. Melanie watched this with bated breath. Kayt stumbled out of
the car, drawing our attention. She’d been sobbing, and her chest
caught with each breath. Her sleeves were wet.

“
Let her be,”
Annalise warned us. Kayt slowly stumbled away from us, and further
along the road.

Annalise dove into second bag,
the one I’d packed. She stopped at a small patch of dirt in the
view of both the headlights, where she sat and pulled out each
item. One box – the half-empty one of crackers – threatened to tip
over. The rest balanced unevenly in the soil. I turned back to Kayt
and watched as she pondered which way to go. She paced away from
the car, in the opposite direction as us, turned around, and then
headed towards the engine. Davion prodded Melanie to sit around the
makeshift campsite before Kayt got close.

Kayt wiped at her upper lip and
came over to us.

“
I’ve never
seen anyone cook using their engine,” she said. She’d tied her hair
back in a tail using a rubber band. A few stray strands waved in
the slight breeze. Annalise, still at the campsite, heard her, and
pulled out a bottle of water out of her bag. She peeled the label
off the front and crumpled it in her hand. I barely caught sight of
the label when she handed the bottle to Kayt with her free hand.
The bottler’s company had a slogan written in mock-cursive that
read:
Never Leave Your Friends Behind;
Never Leave Your Bottle Behind.

Kayt cracked open the lid and
sipped at it.