Ain't Talkin'

They had arrived back on Terra 1 somewhere in the early afternoon. After some hours of walking the night was beginning to creep in. There was an absence of roads, the two men walked over dry riverbeds, through groves of trees that crumbled like old paper when touched, and graveyards of metal and bone. The wastelands were thick here, and far enough from the roads that they were almost completely deserted. Their only companions were the crows who kept to the trees. Screaming, skinny black birds with hoary feathers and gnarled toes waiting for one or the other or the horse to drop dead from exhaustion or dehydration.

It was almost by a point of obstinance that none of the three obliged the crows.

Dust swirled over the world. Heaps of it and waves in small swirls. Roche collected bits of wood as they moved to save time later, strapping branches and thicker chunks to Lucky’s saddle with a length of cord.

Neither man said much as they moved, obligatory bits of conversation that kept them going and broke up the silence.

By the time the sky had gone the color of a bruise, Roche had stopped in a crook of streambed, long dry. He bunched a small pyramid of the dried wood and struck a match, lighting both the kindling and a cigarette.

The two men passed the water skin back and forth, seated by the fire as the night gripped at the sky.

“You don’t have to come you know.” Alex said finally, swigging from the waterskin and wishing that it was something tougher than alkali.

Roche didn’t respond to that for a few minutes. He just stared into the fire, watching the licks of flame.

“Kid. If you think at this point I was ever just going to leave you behind then you really are stupid. Despite all the smarts.”

“No, it’s fine. I’ll find my way.”

“Like hell you will. My job is simple. I get you, I bring you back. If I can’t even manage that then I ain’t much of a hunter am I?”

“Why?”

“Said it before, kid. Said it before.”

Roche dozed with a smoke for some time. When he remembered to check again, Alex Markus was curled up beside the fire with his jacket over his shoulders and his glasses neatly folded in the dirt.

Roche hadn’t seen a kid like Alex Markus in a very long time. Somehow the hardness of the world had missed him. He’d been coddled and let be for the better part of a lifetime because he was smart enough to be necessary to some people. And here the kid was, still thought that he could do some good to try and repair the bad that he was a part of causing. Kid with a conscience.

All he was to Roche was a job. That was all he could be.

But damnit the kid was a firecracker. The kid needed to get where he was going.

That was his job. Wasn’t it?