Chapter 264: The Sky Was Still Being an Asshole

DOVE’S POV

Dove’s first thought was that the van had better not float away after everything she’d traded for it.

Her second was that she should probably worry about the red rain before she worried about upholstery.

She crossed to the window beside Edrik. Water ran along the motel’s gutter, carrying leaves, a crushed cup, and a thin red foam toward the lowest part of the parking lot. The van stood on slightly higher ground, but the road beyond it was beginning to disappear beneath the runoff.

"We’re moving it," she said.

"Get your shoes. I’ll bring it to the door."

She packed while he went outside, keeping the radio and ready bag out where they could reach them. She took the yellow clothespin off the curtains and slipped it into her clothes pocket. Edrik had laughed when she packed such a tiny thing, and she intended to remind him how useful it had been the next time he did.

The sealed drinks stayed in storage. So did the food, clothing, and bedding that would be useless if she let dirty water soak through them.

*Sprout, is that rain dangerous to touch?*

*I cannot identify an unknown substance from its color.*

*Can you identify why my life keeps looking like a horror movie?*

*Your current circumstances are outside customer support’s preferred range.*

Dove snorted despite herself. *Fine. Assume it’s dirty water, don’t drink it, don’t put it in a cut. Anything else useful?*

*Your stored supplies remain separate from the runoff. Your vehicle does not.*

"Working on it," she muttered, and carried the bags to the door.

The motel keeper was outside in boots, trying to clear leaves from a drain with a rake. Dove asked whether the side road climbed out of the low ground. He pointed past the laundry yard toward a row of houses on a slope.

"Follow that until the old toll road. Don’t take the underpass. It floods when the drains back up."

Dove thanked him, then saw his youngest boy standing barefoot in the office doorway. She pulled a spare pair of socks from the clothing bundle and handed them over. They were too large, but they were clean and dry, and she wasn’t using every pair this morning.

"Put shoes on him before he goes out," she said. "I don’t know what’s in that."

Neither did the keeper. His expression told her he was glad somebody had said it plainly.

Edrik brought the van around. He held the door while she climbed in, then wiped his hands before touching her face. That small care nearly undid her more than the rain. She caught his wrist, kissed the inside of it, and told him to get in before she started being embarrassing.

"Too late," he said, but he got in smiling.

They left before the water reached the motel steps. Dove drove up the side road with both hands steady on the wheel, pleased in a grim way that she wasn’t waiting for somebody else to decide when she was allowed to leave. The van was theirs. The supplies were theirs. They had choices, even if none of them included telling the weather to fuck off successfully.

At the top of the slope, the rain thinned. They stopped beneath the concrete roof of an old toll station, where the abandoned booths stood beside lanes no one was paying to use anymore. Two other vehicles sheltered there. A father was changing a tire, and an older man sat on a cooler with a bandaged arm.

Dove parked behind the last booth, leaving room to pull forward. Edrik checked the road while she took out breakfast and a dry cloth for his hair.

"Sit," she told him when he came back.

He looked at the passenger seat, then at her. "You do enjoy saying that."

"And you enjoy getting your hair rubbed. We’re both very easy to please."

He lowered his head while she dried it. His hand settled on her bare knee, warm and familiar, and she let herself enjoy the little domestic victory. Then somebody at the other vehicle asked whether they had come from the eastern road.

The older man’s bandage was clean, but his shirt was torn across one shoulder. He described a roadside shelter with a hole through its loading wall and people trying to move the injured before the roof came down.

"A man threw something bright," he said. "Not a grenade. Came out of his hand. He couldn’t do another straightaway. His friends had to drag him back."

Dove stopped drying Edrik’s hair. "How long ago?"

"Yesterday afternoon. We left before dark."

The man wasn’t asking her to save the whole shelter. Others had stayed, and a truck had gone for help. He was warning travelers because the men who’d attacked it were still on the road.

Dove offered a sealed bottle in exchange for marking the location on their map. He tried to refuse payment for a warning. She told him to drink it anyway, and he did, carefully, as though he didn’t want to seem greedy.

She hated that he felt the need.

Edrik listened while the man described the attacker: tall, fox ears, a burn across his left sleeve after the bright burst. He asked about the road, the number of men, and which way they had gone. No grand promises. Just the things they could use.

Dove marked the damaged shelter and chose the western fork. They would lose another hour, but she wasn’t driving toward a man who could knock holes in buildings because she disliked being late.

The father changing the tire asked whether she had seen the low road. Dove told him exactly where the water had reached and which turn the motel keeper had shown her. He changed his plan without asking Edrik to confirm she knew what she was talking about. She noticed that, too. It was a pleasant change from explaining that the woman standing beside a large man still had functioning eyes.

Before leaving, she checked the radio. The operator at the diner answered long enough to take their new direction and confirm the evening relay. Then the signal broke apart.

A truck passed the toll station as Edrik closed her door. A small recovery sign hung behind its windshield. The passenger turned to look beneath the roof, and Dove recognized the man who had used the black stun device at the diner.

He saw her too.

The truck kept going toward the western fork.