Indigo--Dark Republic Book Two by D.L. Young

Author:D.L. Young
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: D.L. Young
Published: 2017-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

We make our way east across the rolling landscape, navigating around enormous groves of oaks and pines—green and dense and impassable—that cover large swaths of the countryside.

I mess around with the radio distractedly, watching the countryside pass by and searching through the channels the way I’ve done thousands of times: my fingers on autopilot, my ears on auto-listen. There’s idle chatter, but it’s all nonsense talk, intentional static. Nothing about the fireworks in Temple and no more mention of Guzmán’s army. I still have the microphone hidden in my pocket. All I’d need is five minutes of talk time with friendly traders out west to get the latest whats and wheres of Guzmán’s rolling army, but Donovan would never risk letting me say a word over the airwaves. Maybe it’s better this way, better we don’t really know how close they are. The more uncertainty Donovan has, the more likely he’ll be to distance himself from the threat, which is my silver lining as it ends up with me getting home quicker.

Miles pass under the Lincoln’s tires, and I breathe easier as we put more distance between ourselves and the Big Empty. It’s late afternoon; I feel the sun low in the sky behind us, warm on my shoulders and neck. I noodle over what’s ahead of us, and I entertain the idea of maybe making some trade arrangement with Wright when we get back. This little mission might have bought me a fair amount of goodwill, and it might not be a bad idea to cash in on it.

My thoughts argue with one another for some time, weighing the good and the bad of getting into bed with Wright. It’s a tough call, with no easy answer, and at the end of the day it’s as much about survival as it is money. Up in Dallas, the Bullocks and their cronies seem to be weakening by the minute, yielding to Wright’s Fundies and letting them take more and more political control in the southeast while they lose towns and natgas fields to Guzmán out west. Dallas is less a capital nowadays than it is a high-tech bunker for the rich, a golden cage protected by airborne drones. And while it’s not an all-out war yet between the Guzmán and Fundie and Dallas factions, it feels like that’s just around the corner, like everything’s close to a breaking point.

War is coming, maybe the kind of war where everyone has to pick a side. Even traders who hate picking sides.

My tired mind wanders and the concentration I need to make sense of the radio chatter fades. The talk over the trade channels becomes a meaningless blur.

Next to me the ponytailed man fidgets and clears his throat, like he’s about to speak but then decides against it. He’s thin, filthy, and his skin looks like some kind of dried fruit that’s been left in the sun too long, all wrinkled and brown and sagging. Was he that tank woman’s prisoner? Even through all the tiredness, there’s a curiosity I can’t entirely shut off.

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