[Fiction] Welcome to Town

[z-Rheinlander]

Rheinlander smiled and escorted the family away from the work area, assuring them once again that he was supposed to be here, preparing the apartment for the new tenant. That done, he hurried back to the truck and grabbed a shovel. For a baseline, scrambling into the back of the feed-truck would have been an effort, but Rheinlander scaled it easily. He began to shovel the debris pouring down the plastic tube further into the truck bed, making room for all the rubble they were creating.

As the thick drywall dust rose around him, Rheinlander grinned behind his face mask as he considered his plan. Subtle, yet to the point, and he knew that a smart lady like Sandcaster would get the point. Whether she would take it was the question.

The waste rattling down the shoot stopped, and Rheinlander pulled out his phone. "Problem or are we done?"

"We're done, and 'cleaning' the carpets now," Tim replied. "We'll carry those out."

"Release the top of the shoot, and I'll come up to see as soon as I've got this covered," Rheinlander said, tugging on the plastic side of the shoot until it collapsed. He gathered it up quickly, breaking it down and stashing it on top of the trash in the bed. A tarp went over all of it; by the time he had secured three sides of it, they were sliding the last of the rolls of carpet under the end. Once they had secured the fourth end of the tarp, no one would notice anything unusual about a tarp-covered feed-truck, bound somewhere with a load of potatoes or wheat.

Leaving his four-man crew down in with the truck and the van they'd brought for transportation, Rheinlander hurried upstairs to see his work first-hand. Opening the unlocked door, he stopped short before a pleased smile spread over his handsome face.

The freshly-bared studs gathered shadows like a stipped rib cage, marred by the occasional nail left behind when the drywall was torn out. Plywood tiles covered the floor, a mismatched jigsaw of different colored wood. The carpet nails pointed skyward, a sting for the unwary foot. Rheinlander moved cautiously to the kitchen, grinning broader as he saw the missing sink fixtures; with the water turned off, the pipes stuck up despondently, broken stems for metal flowers. Even the light switches and electical faceplates gape openly into the room, naked without their pretty covers. "Welcome to Boise, Sandcaster," he mumbled as he pulled the front door shut with a soft click.

[Sandcaster]

I just drove seventeen hundred miles for this?

The door wide-open, Rhayne, Anne and a completely befuddled landlord looked in on a scene of devistation. The nice, comfortable little apartment that had been shown across an OpLink camera a week ago was nowhere to be found; instead, there was a gutted space that could - if you squinted just right - be seen as ready for rennovators to start work.

After a long, gape-mouthed moment, the landlord sputtered. "I-I-I don't understand! What... this... it wasn't like this, I swear! You saw the pictures; that was live! Why...." The tortured little man looked up at Sandcaster, obviously expecting her to think he was lying. I almost wish I did, thought the former team leader for the Windy City Knights. But nobody had been able to successfully lie to her in a long time, and whatever else was going on here, he was telling the truth. A day ago, this had been a nicely finished little rental; today, for no reason he understood, it was a stripped and gutted wreck.

She signed, and absently reached in her pocket for a small foil wrapper. Tearing open the packet of Alka-Seltzer, she started to do what had become second-nature to her in the previous months. "Alright, Mr. Wendt, if you could be so kind, please arrange for a good crew to start work in here first thing tomorrow morning. Tell them to make it a 24-hour crew; I'll cover the overtime and night salary. Rhayne, please take the car and find us a motel room for the next few nights and give me a call when you find one; I'll meet you there afterward. Also, please let the movers know that we'll need to keep everything on the truck for a few more days." Said truck was outside, the back open and ramp all set to start bringing a household into a home that didn't exist. "I'm going to stay here and get some answers from the neighbors."

[Stormwarden]

Motel Six, it was by no mean the classiest joint in Boise ... far from it and for Boise, Idaho, that was sinking far down the hospitality ladder. Still, the odors here provided a comforting wreath of strangeness that several other establishements lacked.

Stormwarden could make out the strong and multi-layered prescence of hispanic culture here. Their children played here, their domestics cleaned here ... amongst other places, and their laborers provided the monetary stability this place required.

A smile crept to Rhyane's lips as she contemplated that only the greasy, arrogant day manager and her own beloved Anne would be the only Angloes to grace this establishiment in the normal course of business.

A wall of skin-color, darkened skin color, would protect them here. Better yet, they could work with the youth that inhabited the area. With some help from allies still in chicago as well as Anne's own educational background ... this could become quite a cooperative home with all the comforts of tribe.

There was much work to be done, but Rhayne was already working on it. She made the introductions, nodded to the senior women in the building as they come home from work and 'allowed' some of the young men help her move in. The top room Rhayne reserved for her personal residience (including the hot tub) and the lower one become the computer center. A few well-placed looks by Rhayne recruited the local after-school help to assemble the LAN set-up for the five systems Rhayne and Anne had managed collect in their time with the WCK.

She allowed the three boys and three girls to make the mini-frig their own. Rhayne reinforced her comment about "keeping it legal" by turning into a wolverine and giving her helpers a strong once over with the Wolverine's keen sense of smell.

All that remained now was for Rhayne to touch base with Anne and let her know were home would be for the evening. At least she could provide Anne with some layer of comfort after a difficult day of a growingly hostile native environment.

[Sandcaster]

Five other apartments. Eight total neighbors interviewed. Eight completely different stories... and every single one told with heartfelt conviction.

Mrs. Landell said that it was an exterminator team, with a nice clean Terminex van and overalls, that had come to take care of a nasty bug problem up in 2C. Mr. Landell argued with her on this point; they were carpenters, complete with circle saws and drywall, there to put in a new wall.

Gretta Marris knew that the last people to go into 2C was the police, supposedly on a drug tip, the flashes of red and blue from the lightbar of their cruiser flashing off the nice woodwork through her own apartment in 1B.

Greg Peterline knew that it was one of those rotten little gangs of high-school squatters that liked to use empty houses and such for their wild parties; he had tried to call the cops of them, but the cops never showed and the kids were long gone.

The stories went on, but two things remained true in all of them: none explained the gutted mess that was apartment 2C, and each was believed to be the gospel truth by the teller.

The acid in Sandcaster's stomach was roiling by the time she finished talking with the police - the real police, rather than what was probably a planted figment in Ms. Marris' mind - and took to the skies on twin jets of sand. Rhayne had called her with the location of the motel she had secured for the night, and there was no point in asking her to drive back across town to pick her up; it would be just as well, Sandcaster thought, to let the city see that their new municipal defender was here... and, with any luck, to put the nova - it had to be a nova, given the levels of mental manipulation to which the residents of the building had been subjected - responsible for her temporary move to other quarters on notice as well.

Soaring in to land on the balcony of the Motel Six was, she thought with a touch of amusement, almost like flying into a tiny slice of Spanish Harlem, lifted bodily and plopped back down nearly three thousand miles away. The smells, the sounds... it was vintage Barrio, Rocky Mountain Style. She garnered as many stares for her pale skin as she did for the sandy texture of same as she walked along the balcony, stepping around lawn chairs and excited residents, until she finally reached the relative haven of room 212.

[Stormwarden]

It was the gentle grinding of her particular silicate that alerted Rhayne that her love had arrived. Still, the level of the local activity didn't giver her much time. Rhayne met Anne in the second level hallway and the shear level of discouragement and anxiety caused Stormwarden's heart to flood with compassion and grief.

Rhayne wrapped her arms around Anne and pulled her into an embrace. 44 years of fighting the impulse hadn't completely vanished and Anne tensed. Despite that, Rhayne kissed her fully on the lips and pulled Anne into the warm folds of her body. Behind Stormwarden, a few shocked youthful faces could be seen peeking out of the doorway. Anne could even pick up one of the girls telling someone else,

"I told you so!" in a harsh whisper.

Rhayne pushed Anne back even as Anne pushed back a bit herself.

"Let's get a bite to eat, see where we are, and figure out our plan of action," Rhayne beamed to Anne, boiling over with confidence.

[Sandcaster]

"Sounds like a good plan of action to me. We're up against a nova; whoever it was played merry hell with the memories of the other tenants." Sandcaster gave a deep sigh; then, her stomach shifted its unending activity from acid to hunger.

"Any thoughts on where to eat?"

[Stormwarden]

"Well", Rhayne smiles with unrepressed joy, "someone's made a horrible mistake messing with you. As for dinner, we've already got three invites to dinner, (she whispers conspiritorially), but I think one of the Mothers involved thinks I would make a fine date for her second son."

Turning back to the young latinoes at the door to what now appears to be some sort of tech room, Rhayne introduces Anne,

"This is Sandcaster ... Anne, my fiancee!"