Remember Tomorrow (33 page)

“I didn’t know you knew that much about it,” J.B. murmured.

“It’s Grant’s plan. I wouldn’t trust him at any other time, but he wants you gone without fuss. He wouldn’t dare fuck with you because of Xander. So I guess we can trust him now.”

She left the room without waiting for a reply, leaving him wondering about the word
we.

J.B.
SAID LITTLE DURING
the evening meal, and made an excuse to go to his room. He packed quickly and let his bag out the window, allowing it to drop to the soft earth beneath. A noise in the doorway made him turn. Olly was standing in the doorway, watching.

“What’s going on?” he asked simply.

“I’m leaving tonight. We all are. It’s got to be this way.” His hand crept toward the sheathed Tekna. He didn’t want to use force, but if Olly got in the way, he’d have little option.

Olly noticed the move. “You really think that’s necessary? I’m gonna miss you, but I wouldn’t stop you going. You don’t belong here and you don’t want to. I won’t say anything.”

J.B. nodded. “I’m glad. For whatever it might matter, you’ll be as good an armorer here as I ever would have been. And although I think a lot of this ville is dangerous, there are a few good people—”

“I know who they are,” Olly interrupted. “Now go.”

He stood aside in the doorway. J.B. looked back when he was at the bottom of the stairs. Olly was watching him. J.B. touched the brim of his fedora, then left without looking back.

Retrieving his bag, he made his way to the healing room, where he found Ella-Mae and Grant waiting. The healer had sent the sec guard away and there were no other staff.

“Won’t Xander get suspicious that we escaped when you’d sent everyone away?” J.B. asked.

“I can handle him—I have been since he was a boy.” Grant shrugged. “Have I bought the farm yet?”

They went into the room where the companions were staying. Although they were glad to see J.B., they were wary of what was going on. Quickly, the Armorer explained the situation. Given Ryan’s reading of Grant’s reaction the day before, things made perfect sense.

“Heavens, a reunion would be emotional enough, without this added circumstance,” Doc mused.

“Talk later, move now,” Jak rapped at the old man.

“Pithy and succinct—and, as always, quite correct,” Doc countered.

Their ordnance restored by Grant, the companions—now including J.B.—followed Grant and Ella-Mae to the rear of the building, where a wag was waiting. Somehow, J.B. wasn’t surprised to see Esquivel at the wheel.

“Should you be risking your neck right now?” J.B. asked.

“Shit, dude, every day’s a risk of my neck.” Esquivel grinned at his friend. “Besides, if I do this, then Grant thinks he has something on me, which means he’ll be easy about me taking the sec chief post. You have to think everything around three thousand times to make sense here, right? Think I’m getting used to it.”

The companions mounted the wag and Ella-Mae went to follow.

“Where d’you think you’re going?” J.B. asked, bewildered.

“See you away safe. Don’t hit me again,” she answered.

J.B. caught Mildred’s quizzical eye, but said nothing.

Esquivel fired up the wag and left Grant standing, impassive, watching them go.

“Where are we actually headed?” Doc asked as they hit the blacktop that bisected the ville.

“Gonna ask you that myself, dude,” Esquivel replied. “Wherever you want, you got—within reason.”

J.B. knew the direction they needed to go in order to get back to the redoubt. With the secret of the lost base gone with the community of Nagasaki, all they had to do was make sure that they were left within a few hours’ walk and not followed. He instructed the sec man, who seemed bemused at driving off-road and seemingly into the middle of the desert, but trusted the man he had come to think of as a friend.

Getting past the sec posts was easy. With Esquivel at the wheel and with the changeover in sec guard at the outlying post, it took just a few words to get them past and into the desert beyond.

They traveled for the most part in silence—the companions unwilling to give too much away in front of strangers; Esquivel concentrated on the road ahead; Ella-Mae didn’t know what to say. It was a relief when J.B. directed Esquivel to turn off the road and head across the wasteland.

They had been driving for three hours when J.B. halted the wag. He stepped out, looked at the clear sky and took his bearing by the stars.

It was the right place.

“Everyone out,” he said simply.

“Where the fuck are we?” Esquivel said as he and Ella-Mae joined the companions. “Dude, this is nowhere.”

J.B. smiled. “Yeah, but even nowhere leads somewhere. You’ll just have to trust me that we’re not wandering blind…not that you’re going to know. This is as far as you go.”

Esquivel grabbed J.B. before he had a chance to object and, despite the sec man’s wiry frame, he engaged J.B. in an embrace that the Armorer thought would pop his ribs. “Dude, you go and have a blast.”

“I will. You, too,” J.B. replied, knowing that he would probably never see this man again, and yet—despite the shared history he had with the others, but because of the memory loss—he was probably the closest friend he’d ever known.

Ella-Mae found it hard to say goodbye. She couldn’t look at the Armorer as she spoke. “You stay out of shit, yeah? ’Cause me and him won’t be there to bail you out,” she said, gesturing to Esquivel.

“But especially you,” J.B. said gently. “Now go.”

The companions watched while Esquivel and Ella-Mae got into the wag. The sec man turned it around and headed back toward the road. He didn’t wait to follow or see where they headed. He just drove.

The rear lights vanished into the dark, the black shape of the wag absorbed by the larger darkness of the wasteland.

When it had finally disappeared, they turned to head toward the redoubt. They had a few more hours of darkness, then the searing sun would rise again. There was little of anything left in the redoubt, but mebbe they could rest and shower before using the mat-trans.

As they marched, J.B. at point, Mildred broke rank to walk by him.

“So what was with the woman, John? Something I should know about?” she teased.

“No, Millie. Just a passing friend. I’ll tell you the whole story sometime soon.”