Unfinished Business

Chapter Seven

The night was chilly, though the jovian Gorgon, on the horizon, did radiate a little heat and a bluish light, turning the Outback into an eerie fairy world in front of Zoë. She didn’t feel the chill, though. She had too much liquor and too much rage in her to condescend to a minor inconvenience like chill.

The big man who led her through the desert seemed tireless, his long legs carrying a brisk, constant pace that forced her to take an extra step for every five he took. That didn’t bother her, per se, either. She had slogged through frozen tundra, ankle-deep mud, sand, dust, fertile ground and vitrified urban areas for days, before, often carrying a sixty pound pack, a ten pound rifle, and, occasionally, a wounded comrade. Of course, she had been a younger woman then, and in better shape – shipboard life was not easy, but it did not have the physical exertions the life of an infantry soldier forced upon you.

Despite all of that, Zoë was getting tired . . . and pissed.

Her first reaction to the wild man had been shock, then outrage at his temerity. She would have accused him of making a joke in the poorest of taste, had not his eyes told her how serious and sane he was about the matter. Zoë would have to be about three times as drunk as she was before she started mistrusting the instincts that had kept her alive all of these years, and her instincts told her that the odd fellow was, indeed, serious and truthful in his claim, despite its apparent absurdity.

What does one do when a wild tribesman approaches you out of the gloom and tells you, first of all, that you are destined to save his brother, and then follows it up by mentioning, almost casually, that he carried a message from your dead husband? You either shot him or took him seriously. So when her weapon didn’t pop out and end him, there was but one choice remaining. When he told her to follow, she did.

Admittedly, she had thought he would merely be leading her to a more private locale in which t