CHAPTER 40
Susan
Alive.
Gautierre was
alive.
She—Susan Elmsmith,
would-be TV journalist and dateless wonder, Prisoner of Big Blue
and much-put-upon best friend of the Ancient Furnace—had been
mourning a live boyfriend.
What a colossal waste
of time! Also: he had a lot of nerve letting his sorry self get
captured by the likes of that horrible, psychotic, pseudomaternal
thing, Ember Longtail.
Once she realized
exactly what Jenn’s crazy-spooky half-sister had been saying, Susan
had immediately gotten down from the roof, made her way through the
lobby (mentally marveling that shock had stiffened her limbs, so
she marched like a run-down robot), and headed home. Not her latest
apartment, but her actual house.
She hadn’t been there
in over a year, and it certainly had seen better days: a white,
two-story “3 BR, 2 BA” Cape-Cod-style house with yellow shutters.
The lawn was an ugly yellow, almost sidewalk-to-sidewalk dandelion
remains. It was a good thing her dad must be spending most of his
time at the air base; otherwise, he’d weep bitter tears to see the
state his lawn had come to.
Yes, Dad, you’re better off outside Big Blue. We’d all be
battling bad guys and trying not to croak under a freakin’ poison
moon, while you’d be raiding hardware stores for cases of Weed Git
Out.
Back when the last
winter had approached, she’d been here to raid the pantry and haul
away anything that could be used for food or medicine or split
ends—the baby aspirin she’d outgrown a decade ago, the can of Nacho
Cheese Soup that dated back to her dead mother’s precancer
days.
Nothing from the
basement, though.
Nothing from the
reloading bench.
At the time, it had
made sense. Reloads weren’t as safe as regular ammo. With the odds
stacked as they were after Big Blue arrived and plenty of new ammo
available at the time, she hadn’t wanted to add to their troubles
by supplying scared green kids with ammo that might or might not
work. But things were different now.
Everyone else had
their own fish to fry, what with stopping Skip and fixing the moon,
so no one would be available to stop her or talk her out of this.
Talk her out of it? Chances were nobody’d even notice she was gone.
Which would be intensely irritating 99.9 percent of the time, but
not so much right now.
She was an innocent,
a normie. Not the heroine. Good for a humorous quip, or a pithy
observation.
“Now, good for Sucky
Sundays.” She hurried into the backyard toward the gazebo, where a
spare key had been hidden longer than she’d been alive. Even now,
she thought of the key before a more expedient solution, like a
brick through the dining-room picture window. “I cannot believe
those Sucky Sundays are gonna save my boyfriend’s
life.”
The basement, always
gloomy and gross, was even more so after so long unattended. As she
came down the steps she could hear mice scurrying. Mice. Prob’ly be
reduced to trapping and eating them if they couldn’t get out of Big
Blue anytime soon. Mice Surprise. Filet de Mice. Mice on a shingle.
Yergh.
She tried the light
switch at the door—nothing. Blown fuse, probably. She rummaged
through her backpack, hauled out the flashlight, flicked it on, and
left the bag open as she approached the reloading
bench.
Even here there was
dust and dirt everywhere. Dad would have a nervous breakdown if he
could see it. She flicked the beam over the reloading press, the
trays, a stack of empty ammo boxes, then trained it on what she had
come for—well, on some of the things
she had come for.
She checked a couple
of the boxes to be sure. Dear Old Dad was as methodical as he was
distant, and everything was as expected.
She began raking the
boxes into her open backpack.