Dreams of Gods and Men by W.T. Quick

Author:W.T. Quick [Quick, W.T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

10

The change was abrupt. At one moment they were winding down the long miles across the Midwest, bleak fields rolling gently on both sides of the road, lines of half-melted snow startling and white against humped rows of black earth. Then suddenly low metal warehouses, odd pumping stations, and small clumps of fullerdomes appeared. And ahead, barely visible over the horizon but sharp and clear, the tops of the towers of Chicago.

Sadie downshifted and wrestled the bike to the side of the road. “That’s it,” she said. She looked over her shoulder. Toshi had wrapped a moth-eaten blue wool muffler over the bottom half of his face. His hair was patchy and dark, a fuzz over the skin of his skull. His eyes were hidden behind dark aviator glasses. His ears stuck out, and she smiled.

“That’s Chicago. Give it thirty kiloms, forty minutes max, and we can wheel down New Michigan Avenue.”

He grinned. She couldn’t see it, but the muffler moved in the right way. “Hit it, babe,” he said.

She shook her head. “Not so quick, samurai. We got to talk about this. I have… reservations. Know what I mean?”

He shook his head.

“Look,” she said. “There’s a place up ahead. That Seven-Eleven. They got a restaurant, let’s get a cup of coffee and whatever. I’m serious. I’m not gonna head into that den of Wolves without a little planning, okay?”

He pulled down the muffler. His dark eyes were glazed in the hard morning light, their black centers picking up blank pictures of overhead cloud patches.

“Sadie, I know what I gotta do. You don’t really figure in, you know? I mean, it’s been great riding with you, but I didn’t invite you along. You picked me up. And I still don’t understand why. There’s no reason for me to trust you. None at all.” He paused and thought about it. She watched the corners of his eyes crinkle. It made him look old, she thought.

He started to say something, then stopped. Started again. “Can you think of any reason for me to trust you?”

She looked over his shoulder and the highway as it raced like an arrow back toward the North American heartland. She took off one heavy riding glove and blew on her fingers. She rubbed her right eye. “Levin,” she said.

“Let’s get coffee,” he said.

They made their way through the front part of the store, where an elderly pink-haired woman holding a bag of potato chips argued with the clerk about price, to the back where a few spindly white tables and rickety folding chairs clustered next to a wall of food vending machines. This part of the building had a glass wall and the sunlight here was fierce. They sat in a corner, their backs to the windows.

She tugged at the plastic wrapper which the microwave had annealed to her corned beef sandwich. Toshi stirred five packets of sugar and three of cream into his coffee. “How can you eat that stuff? The wrapper tastes better than the sandwich.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.