Scott

Scott wakes with a start.

He remains seated on the bed, drenched in sweat, eyes open and breathing out of control. For several seconds he does not recognize the room. All he sees is rain, an alley, blood dissolving in water, a pistol trembling between his fingers, and eyes looking at him from the ground. They are still alive. He blinks.

The image disappears.

The familiar wooden wall is back in front of him, the room where he has stayed many times, and outside, a morning breaking hot over the horizon.

Sunlight passes through the old cream-colored curtains and draws a burning strip across the floor. At this hour, the heat is already beginning to take over, even inside the building.

Scott rubs both hands over his face. He does not want to go back to sleep. He knows what he will find in his dreams if he does.

“Again?”

The female voice comes from behind him. Scott does not answer. Carrie lies on her side, naked beneath part of the sheet. She watches him in silence.

“Scott.”

“I’m fine.”

“I didn’t ask you that.”

He turns his head. Carrie’s hair is disheveled, and her eyes are still heavy with sleep.

“It was a nightmare.”

“I know.”

Scott looks away.

“Rest.”

He places his bare feet on the wooden floorboards. Carrie sits up and approaches him from behind. She wraps her arms around his torso and rests her cheek against his back.

Scott closes his eyes. His breathing finally begins to slow. One of Carrie’s hands moves across his chest.

“Looks like you’re not the only one who woke up.”

Scott smiles for the first time.

“If you do that, you know perfectly well what happens next.”

“That’s the idea.”

Carrie wraps her legs around him. Scott caresses one of them. The skin is soft. When he moves his hand toward the other, the texture changes. It is rough and irregular, but he already knows every one of those scars.

They climb from her right leg to her torso and continue along her arm, shoulder, and neck. Part of her cheek has the same hardened surface. The ear on that side is incomplete, and hair never grew back in one area of her scalp.

Scott knows what happened to her. They never talk about it. Carrie has never told him.

“Stay,” she says.

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.”

“Not today.”

Carrie pulls away slightly.

“You always say that.”

“Not always.”

“Often enough.”

Scott turns to look at her.

“They could finish the generator today.”

She looks at him without much enthusiasm.

“So?”

“What do you mean, ‘so’?”

“It’s a generator.”

“If it works, we might have electricity again tonight.”

Carrie raises an eyebrow.

“We’ve never had electricity.”

“You’ve never had it.”

“That’s exactly what I just said.”

Scott smiles.

“Auriga has been without electricity for thirty-eight years.”

Carrie becomes thoughtful.

“Thirty-eight?”

“That’s what they say.”

“Then I’ve never seen it.”

“That’s why I want to be there when it happens.”

“And what’s going to happen? Will the walls start glowing?”

Scott laughs.

“Something like that.”

“I prefer candles.”

“Because you don’t know anything else.”

Carrie looks at him for several seconds.

“You could teach me tonight.”

Scott understands that they are no longer talking about the generator.

“I’ll come back.”

“If you have time.”

There is something in the way she says it. Scott stops smiling. He takes her by the waist and settles her on his lap.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Carrie?”

She avoids his eyes.

“I don’t want you to leave.”

“I’ll be back tonight.”

“You know what happens here while you’re gone.”

Scott does not answer. He does not need to. The room belongs to the upper floor of the Dionysus bar and inn. Carrie works there. She moves away and picks a red dress up from the floor.

“I’m tired, Scott.”

“I know.”

“No. You don’t.”

She puts on the dress without looking at him. Scott stands.

“Carrie…”

“Go to your generator.”

He approaches. She turns her back so he can pull up the zipper. Scott does so. Then he gently kisses her neck.

Carrie remains still.

“I’ll come back.”

“That’s what you say.”

Scott begins to dress. He puts on his shirt, trousers, and boots. Finally, he picks up his belt. Two large-caliber automatic pistols rest in their respective holsters. A third holster holds a smaller revolver. He carries ammunition in other compartments. Carrie watches him.

“One day you’re going to have to explain why you need three guns to walk through a town of four hundred people.”

“Four hundred and seventy.”

“Ah, seventy more than I thought. Then yes, three guns make perfect sense.”

Scott smiles. He moves closer to kiss her, and she lets him.

“I can’t wait for you to come back,” Carrie says.

Scott raises an eyebrow.

“How many people will you say that to?”

Her face changes completely. Scott knows her. He can read her expressions and immediately realizes that he has made a mistake.

“Carrie…”

“Pay me.”

“It was a joke.”

“Pay me and go.”

“You know I don’t mean that.”

“Eighty.”

“Carrie…”

“Eighty.”

Scott exhales sharply. He searches his pockets and leaves the coins on a small table.

“There.”

She does not look at them. Scott heads toward the door.

“I’ll see you tonight.”

“If I have time.”

He stops. He looks at her but does not answer. Finally, he leaves. Carrie closes the door. The wooden slam echoes behind him. Scott remains in the corridor for a few seconds, then goes down a wooden staircase.

Dionysus still smells of the previous night: alcohol, sweat, smoke, damp wood. Three men are in the common room. One is asleep with his head on a table, another drinks alone, and the third seems not to have decided which of the two things he will do.

Scott tries to cross the room without attracting attention, but it does not work.

“Constable!”

A young woman steps in front of him.

“Clementina…”

“You can’t go out looking like that.”

“Like what?”

She straightens the collar of his shirt. Then she uses both hands to comb his hair.

“Like you’ve survived a war.”

Someone at a table raises a glass.

“I want her to take care of me too!”

Clementina laughs. Scott does not.

“There,” she says. “Now you’re presentable. Go out into the world and protect us all.”

“Thank you, Clementina.”

“Anytime.”

Scott opens the door, and the heat strikes him immediately. He stops.

Auriga wakes slowly beneath a huge white sun that already punishes roofs, walls, and streets. Low structures made of wood, adobe, and reused metal stand on either side of a street that was once paved.

Many roofs remain covered by opaque solar panels, cracked or buried beneath decades of dust. Now they are nothing more than relics. Most of them no longer work.

Some people walk along the street before the worst heat of the day arrives. Everyone greets Scott, and he greets them in return. Everyone knows everyone in Auriga.

In the distance, the water tower rises. Beyond it are the farms. Then the fence. And behind the fence, only a vast and deadly desert covering everything around them.

Scott begins to walk. Tonight, if the old generator cooperates, Auriga might light up again after thirty-eight years of inactivity. He thinks of illuminated houses, of water being pumped, of tools that might work again, of the faces of people who have never even seen a light bulb switched on.

He even thinks of Carrie. Perhaps he can make her smile in a way she has not smiled for a long time. He takes two steps. Then he stops without knowing why. Something has just changed—the wind, perhaps—but he senses it.

Scott turns toward the horizon. The hills that mark the edge of the desert are barely visible beneath a dark band. He narrows his eyes and sees many clouds, too many. They form a true black wall covering the entire horizon. Enormous curtains of rain fall beneath it.

Scott remains motionless. A warm gust arrives from behind. From ahead, however, a much cooler current brushes his face and carries a smell he had almost forgotten: wet earth. He closes his eyes and breathes.

When he opens them again, lightning cuts through the clouds directly in front of him, far away and yet too close at the same time. Scott frowns. The lightning is not white but red. A crimson branch spreads inside the storm and, for a fraction of a second, illuminates the entire horizon.

Many seconds later, the deep, lingering thunder arrives. Scott stops thinking about the generator.

The storm is coming straight toward Auriga.