Before I post this story, a brief explanation of how it came to be.
This got some thoughts percolating in my head, which brewed into the following story that features the Charlie Brown and Snoopy of the picture - as well as a few other characters you might recognize.
It was one of those fine spring mornings where ugly purple clouds come boiling out of the west, making you run as fast as you can for the nearest town, pausing just long enough to fish your gas mask out of your pack. Fortunately I was only five miles outside of Greenfield, which had a well-stocked and relatively hospitable municipal shelter.
The outskirts of the town had been long abandoned, but the buildings closer to the center of town were still occupied by the town's surviving inhabitants. I hurried past the tightly shuttered shops of Main Street, and brought my rifle to my shoulder when I saw what appeared to be a coyote feasting on the bodies of dying starlings on the old town common – anything that could survive in this poisonous atmosphere was bound to be dangerous. But the coyote ignored me, so I went on by and turned left onto Federal Street, ducking into what had once been a brewpub. The shelter entrance was in the basement. I cycled through the airlock and pulled off my mask as I descended the stairs into the warren of tunnels that ran under the old town.
The manager at the desk wasn't happy to see me. Townies were never thrilled to have wandering mercenaries breathing their air and drinking their water during an emergency. But she couldn't turn me away – I had an account with the town, which still owed me for a job I'd done for them a few years before, clearing out a nest of cannibals that had set up camp down by the river. So she grudgingly showed me to a small dimly-lit alcove off of one of the storage caverns.
It wasn't much – just a narrow spot between crates of machine parts. And I wasn't the only one in it, either. A large, mostly-bald man in a tattered yellow shirt had made a makeshift bed on two large crates. His gear was on the floor next to him, guarded by a large black-and-white dog. The man was idly tossing an old football up into the air and catching it, lost in his own thoughts. He glanced over at me as I dropped my gear on the opposite side of the alcove from him, and nodded. I nodded back. The dog glanced up at me, sniffed me once, and then went back to the comic book it was reading.
We knew each other, from years of working in the same territories. His name was Brown. He was older than me – how much older I couldn't be sure, because our line of work tends to age people quickly, but I got the impression that he was my elder by a couple of decades. He had a reputation as a hard but honorable man. We'd actually been hired by opposite sides of the Brattleboro civil war three years before. Out of professional courtesy we hadn't targeted each other.
He didn't look like he wanted to be bothered, so I didn't strike up a conversation. Instead I opened my pack and pulled out my tools and some electronic components I'd picked up after a job in New Hampshire the month before. Then using one of the crates as a workbench, I laid out the chassis of a small robot, opened up one of the access covers, and got to work. It was something to pass the time. I was likely to be down here for a few days before the air cleared enough to go out again.
After a few minutes, I heard Brown grunt. “You still trying to get that thing to work?” His voice was deep and gravelly.
I shrugged. “His memory is intact. If I can ever figure out what's interrupting the boot sequence, he ought to start up.”
The dog gave a skeptical snort. Brown echoed it. “How long you been carrying that thing around, anyway?”
“Don't know,” I said. “What year is it now?”
Brown shook his head sadly and tossed his football up into the air again. “I suppose I've got no room to talk about carrying around useless junk.”
“So why do you carry around that old football anyway?” I challenged.
The dog gave a low growl, but Brown put a hand on its head to quiet it. “Reminds me of a girl I used to know,” he said.
I grinned. “Not so useless then, is it?”
“We used to play football together. 'I'll hold the ball, and you kick it.' Then she'd hold it, and I'd come running up to kick it. Except at the last second, she'd snatch the ball away and I'd go flying and kill myself. Every single damned time.” Brown gritted his teeth. “And then the next day she'd talk me into doing it again, and I'd fall for it. Again. Every single goddamned time.” He sighed, and squeezed the football tightly with both hands. “And for some reason I want to remember that. Does that make any fucking sense at all?”
I was quiet for a few seconds, and then said, “Yeah. Yeah, it does. That actually makes perfect sense to me.”
“Huh,” Brown said. “Whatever. You knew a girl like that too?”
“Sort of, yeah.”
“Is she the girl you're always looking for when you aren't on a job?”
“What? Uh, no,” I said, stuttering a bit in surprise. “No, I'm afraid not. She's not – I mean, there's not much point in looking for her.”
“Oh,” Brown said. “Sorry.”
“No, I'm looking for someone else.” I reached into a pocket and pulled out a tattered photograph. “My age, about five-foot-three, curly red hair. You seen her?”
Brown stared at the picture silently for a long time. Then, almost too quietly to hear, he said, “No. I'm pretty sure I'd have remembered seeing a little red-haired girl.”
“Oh. Okay then.” I put the picture away. “So, I'm guessing your football girl had red hair?”
The dog sat up and growled. Brown just stared at me.
“Sorry, man,” I said hastily. “Didn't mean to touch a nerve.”
“She would never have pulled the football away from me,” Brown muttered.
“Well, you know, if you want I could keep an eye out for her...” I offered.
“She was in Cleveland.”
“Cleveland? Oh, I guess... Maybe not then. Not much point... I mean...”
Brown closed his eyes, then rolled over on his crates so that his back was to me. “You talk too much, Reed,” he said.
I left him alone after that, to dream of his lost red-haired girl. Me, I'd keep looking for mine. If she was out there, I'd find her. And if she wasn't... I'd keep looking anyway.
I really didn't know what else to do.
