Maybe it was hanging around the kitchen at Le Roi’s that gave him the idea—or, more likely, gave other people the idea that this was his idea—but Xavier was on the way to becoming a cook, if not exactly a chef. He started out washing dishes and busing tables, then graduated to chopping vegetables.
But around that time, Momma was diagnosed with cancer, and they simply needed money. Hanging around Le Roi’s, Xavier had gotten to know a few of the boys who, in addition to cooking meals, sold other things people wanted.
Eventually Xavier had started doing favors for them, running out at all hours to pick up or drop off or collect.
When he was eighteen and had been running errands for only a year, he’d gotten caught. Because of the amount of material he was carrying, and the fact that he was no longer a juvenile, he’d been sentenced to six months in the misnamed Harris County Leadership Academy.
It hadn’t been that tough—though it was surely one of those experiences that looked better in the rearview mirror—but it had pretty much screwed him with the folks at Le Roi’s.
And when he got out, why, he found that the knowledge he had picked up running errands made it possible for him to go into business for himself.
Low level. He was never going to get rich. He would be living with Momma until she died (her cancer had gone into remission, but Xavier knew that meant she wouldn’t die today, but don’t look for her to celebrate, say, New Year’s 2022).
His errand work—basically growing and dealing pot—had been so low-level that he’d had to pick up some part-time jobs, mostly construction, but a little plumbing (there was always a market for small men who were willing to climb through shit under people’s houses) and some electrical work.
The electrical work had led to one strange summer where Xavier had helped wire and set up a computer network at an office building. He started thinking that if he enrolled at Remington and got a certificate, he might have a career in IT.
He was looking into it. He’d gone online to check the price and the application dates as recently as last week, right around the time Destiny-7 got launched toward Keanu.
Now he was a fucking refugee again. Wasn’t once enough for a lifetime?
“Shit!” The cracker had started in on a storage place under the seats of the tiny RV dinette. The cushions were still in place, held there by a jagged shard of RV body that had been poked into the interior by some nasty slam on the exterior. Xavier had started his RV search there and quickly given it up.
But the cracker was more persistent. He had tugged the torn cushion out of the way, then managed to push the lid open.
Xavier decided that was worth a look. He tugged himself over there using the former ceiling of the RV for handholds. “Need help?”
The cracker was straining to open the lid far enough to reach inside. His feet kept slipping. “Here,” Xavier said. He braced himself against the opposite wall, back against a stove and an empty refrigerator (at least, it had been emptied by the time Xavier got to it), feet on the cracker’s back.
The cracker was so intent on his work that he didn’t object. And, thus braced, he was able to leverage the lid open. “All right!” The first things he pulled out were two pillows, then a blanket.
“Now you can sleep in comfort,” Xavier said. More useless crap.
The cracker kept reaching in, feeling for something. Out came a first-aid kit, which he shoved at Xavier. “Now we’re talking,” Xavier said. He would have killed for a Tylenol that first day. But he could see that the dusty kit hadn’t been used in a while. Still, even if medications were past their sell-by date, bandages and tape didn’t go bad with time.
The cracker was sweaty, giving up. “That’s it.”
“Got something, at least.” Xavier went back to his work, which hadn’t progressed.
But now the cracker came with him. “Let me.” And he just slid right past him to the cabinet, which Xavier had judged to be permanently immovable…and with a savage kick, broke the fiberglass piece in two.
Which gave both of them enough room to start scrabbling for the goodies inside.
Which turned out to be worth the effort. There was a backpack, a bottle of Lone Star, a half-inflated football and a Frisbee, a bikini top, a half-squashed box of candy bars…
And a shiny Colt .45 pistol.
The cracker let everything go to grab the weapon. Xavier made no move to fight it; hell, it might not even have any bullets. “Now, that makes you wonder,” Xavier said.
“What?”
Xavier indicated the mixed-up pile of goods, twirling the bikini top. “What kind of party did these guys have?”
The cracker laughed but jammed the gun in his waistband. “So, how we going to divide this stuff up?”
“Is that the deal? We’re dividing it?”
“Think that’s fair, don’t you? We helped each other, right?”
“I get a blanket and you get the gun?”
“You want the gun?”
Xavier weighed this. The cracker wasn’t going to give it up. And, really, what the hell was he going to do with it? “The gun is yours.” Xavier looked over the rest of the gear. “I want those candy bars,” he said, grabbing the box. Snickers, good choice.
“Why don’t we just take turns now?”
The cracker smiled, obviously thinking he’d won. “I’ll take the blanket then.”
Xavier took the backpack, though he looked longingly at the Lone Star. Told himself it was flat.
In a minute they were done. “Hey,” the cracker said, “one thing.”
Here it comes, Xavier thought, braced for an argument. But the cracker just indicated the pistol. “Do me a favor and keep this quiet, okay?”
“Got no reason to tell anyone. I don’t know anybody.”
“Good.” The cracker stared at him. “What’s your name?”
“Xavier.”
“Brent.”
The cracker jammed his bundle of loot—gun, beer bottle, first-aid kit, and pillow, all wrapped in a blanket—under his arm and began the tricky business of extricating himself from the squashed RV.
Xavier wasn’t quite ready to leave. He had a few useful items, especially the backpack, but one more search couldn’t hurt.
Staying inside the RV gave him sufficient privacy to unwrap one of the Snickers bars and eat it without drawing attention.
In spite of his heritage and familiarity with Cajun cooking, Xavier was not a sophisticated eater. But at that moment he was sure the biggest fan of the most experimental restaurants on Earth would have agreed with him:
A Snickers bar was food of the gods.
It was torture to limit himself to one, but he had only another ten left in the box. He carefully removed them and zipped them into various pockets of the backpack.
Because Xavier knew one other thing. In an environment where food was something you sucked out of an alien tube, a Snickers bar was going to be better than gold. Maybe better than that gun.
ARRIVAL DAY: HARLEY
“Harls, what the fuck are we going to do now?”
Shane Weldon crouched beside Harley’s battered wheelchair. Rachel Stewart was off to one side; she and Sasha Blaine were surveying the bizarre landscape of this habitat chamber.
It was too hot and sticky for Harley’s taste; of course, he’d grown up in the mountains of New Mexico and never for a moment liked Houston or Florida’s humidity.
There were ominous clouds of something—gnats?—drifting across the landscape like gauzy Predator drones.
Everything smelled vaguely of burned plastic, never one of Harley’s favorite odors.
Shane Weldon didn’t seem to be much happier, though Harley knew that thanks to three tours in Afghanistan a decade or so back, the former Army officer had a greater tolerance for unpleasant conditions.
According to Harley’s watch, they had been on Keanu for a little more than three hours. During that time they had managed to translate (a lovely old NASA term for covering distance by walking or other means, which Harley liked to use to describe his chair-bound locomotion) perhaps four kilometers from the entrance into the habitat to this…big weird building that Zack Stewart called the Temple.