Especially when it looked like the gathering clouds would ripen into lightning storms and we were too close to dragon territory for my comfort. Despite the mountain range separating the coast from the inner corridor, coppers could smell the crackle of electricity in the air for miles around, and I kept one eye on the sky, looking for any sinuous metallic shapes.
Nothing gets a dragon hungrier than playing with fire or electricity, and a quick-moving red flash in the shape of a muscle car was pretty much a guaranteed takeout meal to tide one over until it could find something bigger to shove into its maw.
Alexa would kill me if I got her cousin chewed up by a dragon, no matter how much the idiotic Sidhe worshipped the damned lizards and the chaos they brought.
We’d needed to stop and stretch our legs. Or at least I did. But the automat wasn’t in the best location, sitting on a bend and perched on a jut overlooking a deep gulch. The passage wasn’t as tight as some we’d gone through earlier that day, but the steep, crenulated mountains loomed in, their sides thick with brush and boulders bigger than a full-grown elephant. The terrain wasn’t prone to slides, but I was still cautious. Who knew how long those massive stones had been sitting there, waiting for the right sparrow to land on a certain spot to send it tumbling down onto the highway below?
“What exactly is this?” Examining the coconut-marshmallow-covered cupcake I’d gotten out of the autoservers in the convenience stop, Ryder looked like he was about a second away from curling his nose up at the snack. He sniffed it, and apparently that was enough to wrinkle his senses. “It smells like hyped-up sugar.”
“This is one of my favorite things to eat, so if you don’t want it, feel free to pass it over. I’ll be glad to take it off your hands.” I carefully peeled off the marshmallow dome covering the cake bit, sighing contentedly when it came away in one piece. “Okay, seriously… either bite into it or eat those withered grapes you insisted I get you.”
“At least the grapes don’t look like they are made out of pure chemicals.” He handed me the cupcake, pinching its wrapper closed with his fingers.
“Considering they stock this place probably once a week, there’s no telling how long those grapes have been there. For all you know, they started off as raisins, and at some point during their incarceration, they absorbed enough condensation to plump themselves up.” I stood strong against his disgusted glare. Rattling the package at him, I said, “At least these won’t give you food poisoning. Best thing about processed foods? They taste the same no matter if it’s day one or a hundred years from now.”
“I’m not sure that’s something you should brag about,” he drawled. “Especially since you can’t even guarantee that you would’ve digested it after a hundred years.”
“Just remember, you eat those grapes and something happens to your guts, I’m just going to stop on the side of the road and let you out. No looking for bathrooms or anything,” I warned. “There’s not much between here and New Vegas on this stretch, so choose wisely.”
He said nothing for a long moment, staring at the long rectangular building I’d pulled the Mustang up in front of. Despite my precautions, he peeled back the plastic wrap on the grapes’ container and poked at their slightly wrinkled shapes. “There’s a lot of food in there. In that… what did you call it?”
“An automat.” It was hard to talk around the gummy marshmallow, but I didn’t think Ryder was going to dock me manners points. He knew who raised me. Speaking with my mouth full was the least of my faults. “They used to be extinct, but after the Merge, places like these popped up along the roads. Easier than having someone work a counter. Just have a couple of trucks make the route a few times a week to stock up the place, and it runs itself.”
The storm teased and licked at the mountaintops, but I so far hadn’t spotted anything reptilian playing in its depths. Since the automat was pretty much a rectangular tin box with vending machines lining the outer walls and a few low aisles in the middle, we could ride out a hard storm if we needed to, but I’d rather be on the road with the storm behind us, leaving any potential to ending up as a dragon snack in the dust.
“Isn’t it kind of… foolhardy?” Ryder smirked, probably satisfied he’d dug up that chestnut from his Singlish vocabulary to throw my way. “Reckless? To leave all of this without an attendant? What’s to stop someone from cracking open the machines and taking everything?”
“No,” I replied, peeling off the coconut fluff from the second ball in the package. “Any sign of someone messing with the machines, the box locks down and, well, sort of depressurizes. Seals up like a nun’s chastity belt, and then knock-out gas is pumped through the vents. Takes about thirty seconds for the person locked inside to pass out. Sometimes less. An alarm goes off somewhere, and they send someone out to look at the place.”
“Suppose the gas kills them?” The look of horror on his face was comical, because when it was all said and done, Ryder was an innocent babe in the woods compared to… well, an actual babe in the woods. “The food in there isn’t worth someone’s life.”
“A lot of people would disagree with that. Besides, place is easy enough to blow a hole through the ceiling if you go in armed with enough shot and you’re good enough to concentrate on a single spot. All you need is an open hole, and then you’ve got all the time in the world to pick through what you want.” I nodded down at the stretch of highway awaiting us. “Most places like this are a good hour before someone gets here. You can clean a place out in less than ten minutes and be broken out before a guard even reaches the halfway point.”
“And you know this how?” The grapes were forgotten, the one between Ryder’s fingers smashed nearly to juice.
“’Cause humans can’t hold their breath as long as we can. You and I can probably go for a good five minutes past the point they give up and have to suck in some air. Four or five shotgun blasts will tear open that box quick enough, and then it’s just a matter of waiting for the gas to clear out.” I shrugged, sucking the spongy remains of the cupcake’s shell from my fingers. “Sometimes you’ve got to eat and you’ve got nothing in your credit bank but starving moths and wishes. Shotgun shells are easy enough to pack. A couple of drops in the bucket when there’s a lake you can drink from if you only spill it.”
“And Dempsey knew you did this?” He blindly took the napkin I offered him for his wet fingers and tucked the grape into its folds. “I mean, he knew you were… stealing? And he let you?”
“Who the hell do you think put me up to it?” I bit into the last of the nearly stale chocolate cake, sucking on the distinct chemical taste of the cream hiding in it. “Either finish the grapes or toss them, lordling. We’ve got a long ways to go, and you’ve got to get that off your hands before you get into my car. There’s some water bottles in the back. Wash up and let’s get going.”
I learned paranoia early on in my Stalker career. It saved my ass more than a few times over the years, and right now, I was paranoid as hell about the heavy rains and the heavy rocks stuck precariously into a dirt mountain soaked through to the bones.