Desolation Station: A Jimmy Blue novel (The Jimmy Blue Series Book 4) Read online

  DESOLATION STATION

  A Jimmy Blue Novel

  IAN W. SAINSBURY

  Desolation Station

  Copyright © 2022 by Ian W. Sainsbury

  Published by Fuse Books 2022

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Also by Ian W. Sainsbury

  Chapter One

  Eagle Springs, New Mexico

  When the doorbell rang, Lydia Garcia had been asleep for less than an hour, dreaming about Snuffy and a talking dolphin. For a few seconds she stared at the ceiling in confusion, half of her still exploring the underground city where the dolphin lived. Snuffy turned out to be an excellent swimmer, which was surprising, as she didn't have any legs.

  Where was Snuffy, anyway?

  Lydia's flutter of panic receded when she felt the lump under her back. She shifted to one side and scooped up the tatty, faded, soft toy.

  "Sorry, Snuffy. Did I squash you?"

  Snuffy said nothing. Her fabric face stared back in the half-dark. When Dad said the toy rabbit looked complicated, Mom laughed. Lydia hadn't understood what was so funny about being complicated, even when Mom said the word was constipated. Lydia didn't know what that meant. It didn't matter, anyway. Dad was wrong. Snuffy wasn't complicated or constipated.

  Lydia kissed the rabbit's nose, listening. Dad was talking to someone at the front door, his voice louder than usual. Lydia slept at the rear of the bungalow. A central corridor led from her room to the front door. She slept with the door open. Snuffy didn't like to be shut in. So Mom and Dad kept their voices low when they were in the hall. But Dad spoke loud and clear tonight.

  "Honey? We have visitors."

  Lydia's body went cold. She clutched Snuffy. A long time ago, Dad had been a police officer. And he had been hurt. When Lydia asked, he explained most people were good, kind, and honest, but not everyone. Some people were bad. The bad people hurt other grown-ups, children, and even animals. Dad told Lydia she might live her whole life and never meet one of these bad people. But she should be prepared, just in case. He told her if any bad people ever came to hurt him, Mom, or Lydia, he would say a word that sounded normal to everyone else, but not to the family.

  Mateo Garcia never used pet names for his loved ones. He called Lydia Lydia, never sweet pea, or pumpkin. He called Mom Angélica, or Mom. Never dear or darling. Dad insisted their names were beautiful, which is why he loved saying them. But he had just called Mom honey. Lydia understood what that meant. It meant the bad people were here.

  Lydia had practised what she needed to do now. Dad had made a game of it, but Mom had called him something strange. Something to do with birds. That was it. She said Dad was being parrot annoyed. Adults said some pretty odd things.

  She got out of bed. Her hands were shaking, and she was breathing faster than normal. She took a quick glance down the hall before pulling her head back. No one there, just muffled voices from the kitchen. She wanted to go to them, but she remembered her promise. A promise made to Dad. She must keep that promise. Dad had been right to make her practice, and he was right about the bad men coming. Mom shouldn't have called him an annoyed parrot.

  Lydia's legs seemed locked in place, bare feet stuck to wooden floorboards. She willed them to move, but nothing happened. Her breathing quickened. She remembered Snuffy and looked down into that needy face. She would do it for Snuffy.

  After the first step, it got easier. Right foot forward, left foot forward, right foot forward, left foot forward. The muffled voices got closer, but she couldn't make out any words. She didn't want to think about the bad men, so she tried remembering her dream. The dolphin, the wide underwater streets. But the pictures in her mind disappeared the moment she made them, bringing her back to her bare feet on the floor, pyjamas damp with sweat, arm muscles aching with the effort of holding Snuffy so close.

  She padded along the hall to the closet and pulled the door open without thinking. A coat fell from its hook. The sound wasn't loud, but to Lydia, it seemed as if an explosion had gone off. She whimpered, then pressed the toy rabbit against her lips.

  No one came to investigate.

  Daddy had told her to be quick and quiet. But Lydia wasn't being quick or quiet. And everything was happening too slowly. If the bad men came out of the kitchen they would see her and Snuffy. She had to move.

  Lydia picked up the fallen coat and, standing on tiptoe, slipped it back over the hook. She crawled into the small space on her hands and knees. More jackets and coats hung on a rail inside, and they brushed against her face.

  Daddy had said to close the door behind her, but Lydia left it ajar. She knew what came next, and couldn't bear the thought of doing it in the dark.

  She found the loose floorboard right away, hooking her finger into the hole to lift it. The board pivoted on the wooden dowel positioned halfway along its length. Lydia lowered herself into the darker space beneath, heart hammering.

  Inside, there was enough room to lie down, but no more. Daddy had left an old sleeping bag down there to make it more comfortable. A piece of string hung above her. All Lydia had to do was pull the string, and the floorboard would slide back in place. But then it would be completely dark. She grabbed the end of the string, but pulling it proved beyond her. She was still breathing too hard. Someone might hear her gasps. Lydia did what Mom did when she practised yoga. She breathed in, held her breath for a count of five. Breathed out.

  The voices weren't muffled any more. Lydia listened. The bad men said bad words. Dad was using the laptop, his fingers tapping on the keys.

  When the bad men said her name, Lydia squeezed her eyes shut, as if doing so would make her invisible. If she had be
en afraid before, this was ten times worse.

  The three bangs were gunshots. Lydia hated guns. Dad couldn't walk because someone shot him.

  After the gunshots, only the bad men spoke. Part of Lydia knew what this meant, but she wrapped that thought into a tiny parcel and pushed it deep down into the dark. Everything would be all right. It would all work out.

  She stroked Snuffy's back. She was too young to remember when Snuffy lost his legs, but Mom had told the story so many times, it was almost like remembering it. At three years old, Lydia found out her father would never walk again, so she had pulled off the toy rabbit's legs and thrown them away. Mom sewed up the holes without comment, although she cried as she did it.

  When the kitchen door opened, Lydia knew the bad men were coming for her. She reached for the string, screwed her eyes shut, and pulled the floorboard into place.

  Darkness.

  Lydia waited.

  When the bad man opened the closet door, she held her breath. He pushed the coats aside, grunted, and left. She listened to his footsteps grow fainter.

  In the kitchen, the second bad man was talking on the phone. He stood so close, she heard the voice on the other end. This second voice said her name.

  In the dark, Lydia's eyes opened wide.

  She knew that voice. She recognised it. The bad men were talking to one of Dad's friends.

  The front door opened as one man left. The other walked around the house. A sudden noise above her made her press Snuffy hard against her face to stop herself screaming. The man pulled coats and jackets out of the closet.

  Then the first man came back. Both men walked towards her bedroom.

  Strange sounds came from the end of the hall. A hiss, a click, a roar. A lion? No. A dragon. It had to be a dragon, because when it roared, her hiding place filled with light—orange light, red light, yellow light. And with the light came heat.

  The voices receded. The bad men were gone.

  She was alone with the dragon. Dragons were enormous creatures. A dragon could never squeeze into Lydia's hiding place. She would stay here. She closed her eyes again as the temperature rose.

  Ten seconds later, animal instinct took over. With no conscious thought preceding the action, Lydia pushed the floorboard away, climbed out, and pushed the closet door open.

  She stepped out into a nightmare. The hallway was bright with flames. Every room was burning, and the shadows cast by the fire shrieked at her. Wood splintered, glass exploded. It got hotter and hotter. Fat drops of sweat on Lydia's forehead dried as soon as they formed, skin tightening.

  She wouldn't use the front door. The bad men might be waiting. Lydia's best chance was the backyard.

  She walked the wrong way. Towards the kitchen.

  Her body tried to disobey, but Lydia was stronger. Mom and Dad were in the kitchen.

  At the doorway, Lydia's eyebrows crackled as they burned down to her skin. She stepped inside.

  Underneath the large kitchen table, a fiery pile of clothes provided extra material for the flames to consume, and they were already burning through the heavy wood above. On the far side of the table were two figures.

  One burning body, yellow-red, purple-black, fizzed and popped like the marshmallow Lydia dropped into the fire at camp. A scrap of red material floated up from the body to the ceiling, and Lydia recognised the pattern from Mom's dress.

  Dad sat in his wheelchair, face tilted backwards, staring up. The chair glowed, and his blackened fingers were stuck to it, the flesh on his hands and arms sloughing off in strips.

  The kitchen smelled like barbecued pork.

  Lydia tried to scream, and doubled over. There was no air, just lungfuls of super-heated dragon breath, hacking and slicing at her insides.

  She stumbled out of the kitchen in agony. At the end of the hall, her bedroom door stood ajar, her bed burning, flames licking up to caress the ceiling. Beyond it, the window had blown out, and the night air fed the fire.

  She picked up speed, forcing her body to straighten as she ran.

  When she burst into her bedroom, Lydia was running at top speed. During the four steps between door and window, the right side of her pyjamas caught alight. Her hair crackled with flames. She held Snuffy to her chest.

  Lydia hadn't taken a breath since that last horrible attempt in the kitchen, and her lungs were crumpled tight pockets of pain.

  She reached the window. Jumped.

  Lydia hit the ground hard, rolling over loose stones and dirt. This extinguished the flames in her hair and pyjamas. Smoke rose from her small body as she got to her feet. She shouldn't run anymore. Her body was damaged, every step making her injuries worse. But stopping meant facing the dragon or the bad men, so Lydia ran, and kept running. Out of the gate, across the street and along the dusty track behind the scrapyard to the blue pool where she and her friends paddled every summer.

  When she saw the moon reflected in the water, Lydia threw herself in without slowing. Even at its deepest point, the liquid only reached her shins, so she kneeled down, scooping up water and throwing it onto her face and neck.

  This time, Lydia screamed. The pain was too immediate, too great, and although she was terrified it would bring the dragon, she couldn't prevent it. But her scream emerged as a whisper, a distant wind howling through a narrow street.

  Lydia became aware of parts of her brain shutting down, but she had enough strength left to crawl out of the pool and collapse. She stroked one of Snuffy's ears over and over as the world darkened.

  When she next opened her eyes, the world was grey: black snowflakes falling. Her body—oven-baked clay, rigid and foreign—a badly formed sculpture. Not designed to move. After a couple of attempts, she crawled up the side of the hollow, and looked back at the town of Eagle Springs.

  Her street lay under a pall of black smoke. Some buildings still burned. Blue and red lights strobed underneath the artificial cloud. Distant shouts, and the crackle of radios, underscored the sounds of destruction.

  Police cars, she thought. Ambulances.

  "Help." The word emerged so quietly she barely heard it herself, and the effort cost her. She tried a second time, but speaking felt like coughing up burning coals. She concentrated instead on crawling, making it as far as the scrapyard fence. Lydia leaned against it and waited to die.

  The voices, when they found her, sounded kind enough, their tone suggesting concern and care, but Lydia's brain couldn't translate the sounds into words. The hands that lifted her were gentle, but they might as well have hammered nails into her flesh, the pain was so great.

  She must have slept, because when she became aware again, she was in a moving vehicle. One of the kind voices spoke, and Lydia focused on a face. A woman. Younger than Mom. A uniform. A doctor or a nurse.

  "You've been in an accident. We're taking you to the hospital, okay? Don't try to talk, sweetie."

  Her right hand wouldn't move, but the fingers of Lydia's left hand found the familiar contours of Snuffy. She closed her eyes. She would take Snuffy back to visit the dolphin, and they would dive deep as deep, far, far away from here.

  Maybe they would never come back.

  Chapter Two

  Eight years later

  Charlotte, North Carolina

  Mid-September, ten forty-five, and Donny's Bar pulsed with its slow, Sunday evening rhythm. Sports on the big screens, sound muted. An AOR radio station through the speakers, volume low. Six customers, two of them now shrugging on coats and heading into the night.

  In the parking lot, three vehicles. A dark SUV, Tina's ten-year-old sedan, and Don's pickup.

  Don Tashman was tidying the bar, dropping rubber nipples onto the liquor bottle pourers to stop fruit flies crawling in. Donny's Bar closed Mondays for a thorough clean, ready for another week welcoming the Charlotte's drinkers. Sundays were Don's favourite night, winding down after a busy Friday and Saturday.

  He scribbled in the notepad he kept at the bar.

  Give a younger band a try
midweek? he wrote. Let them keep the door?

  Donny's Bar occupied the hinterland between fashionable Wesley Heights and Seversville. Close enough to be visible from the gleaming glass buildings of Charlotte's centre, but the bar might have been in another state for all the custom it attracted from uptown.

  Tina slid a tray of empty beer glasses onto the bar. "Same again, Don."

  He took fresh glasses from the tray, tilted the first under the tap. Nodded Tina to come closer, away from George, a regular and dedicated drinker, currently staring into his sixth beer. "You told them we close at eleven?"

  "I told them." Tina worked weekdays at a downtown coffee shop, weekends at Donny's. Her son was seventeen. His father had skipped town a six months before Tina answered Don's help ad eleven years ago.

  "They gonna be any trouble?"

  The three men were strangers. Don had worked in bars all his life, and there was something off about the men in the booth next to the stage. No band tonight, and subdued Sunday lighting kept the table half in shadow. The three men had barely exchanged a word since sitting down. He didn't like it. This week's takings were in the safe. Monday morning, Don took the money to the bank. He picked up a glass to polish.