by Orion, W. J.
“How much water do I waste every day, just breathing?” she huffed. “If we could all just not breathe, we’d probably have plenty to drink.”
“Would that make you all fish?” a familiar voice asked from nearby.
Yasmine froze and turned, her hand going up to the handle of the halligan on her back. She looked across a parched piece of flat ground that was a yard once to the residential structure behind it. Leaning against a home in the process of being repaired was the bundled-up, black goggled figure of Trader Joe.
“Maybe. Do you think there are any fishes left?”
“Only if I believe there is water left. More important, if there are any fish left, are they happy about their situation?” he posed.
“I don’t think fishes have a whole lot of say about their situation in life,” Yaz said. “You hang out at night leaning on destroyed houses a lot?”
“Only when I’m trying to engineer a chance encounter with a lady about to embark on a perilous journey,” he said, and chuckled. He leaned forward, and moved across the dirt until he reached the sidewalk near her. He was fluid, graceful and creepy in a pleasant way.
“Last attempt to talk me out of going? Did Brent send you? Oh God. Don’t tell me Kim sent you.”
“I am here of my own accord. I… brought you something.”
“A trade?”
“I didn’t seek you out to trade. Let’s call it a gift between professionals,” he said, and reached into a handmade leather pouch on his hip.
He pulled out a small plastic box the size of his palm, and tossed it to her. She caught it and held it up to look at the clear container. Inside she saw a dozen nine millimeter pistol bullets. They were odd; the tips looked different than other bullet she’d seen, tipped with a round blob of strange green resin. A different kind of metal too, perhaps.
“What?”
“I saw your handgun when the Monoliths came to town. I happened to have a small stash of bullets in that caliber, and I want you to have them.”
“Are these special bullets? They look weird.”
“Yes,” he said with a nod. “They are special. Some from my own make. I don’t salvage everything I bring to Shant. Some of it I can make still. Shhh… don’t tell anyone my secret.”
“I won’t, thank you. This is… super valuable. I’ll make this up to you,” Yaz said, feeling a tremendous weight of appreciation.
“No. This is a gift. A gesture of appreciation for who you are, and what you do. I hope you never have to use them,” Trader Joe said.
“Me either,” she said, looking at the bullets again. Even through the hazy clear plastic the brass gleamed. They didn’t look dangerous at all. They looked… like batteries. Her mind went back to Trey explaining that the alien crabs generated their own electricity, and just like that the idea of batteries became an uncomfortable one. She took in the strange man who gave her the bullets and decided she liked him.
“Go. As the old language says, tempus fugit.”
“Time flies,” Yasmine translated.
“Yes,” Trader Joe said, happy. “Go. Be wise, be brave.”
“Not, be careful?”
“Wisdom makes one cautious. It also informs you when to take risks that are worth it. So I say again; decide what is worth what in your life, and in this universe, and be wise.”
Yaz smiled. “Always.”
She left her weird friend in the dilapidated yard, and jogged off to the Monolith home before they left on their journey back to the city.
Her journey.
Both the truck and the van were started and idling when Yasmine got to the house. Bernie sat in the driver’s seat of the pickup, at the rear of the two vehicle convoy, ensconced behind the wire Faraday cage and the welded-on sheet metal armor, and the busted windshield. He leaned out the window and hollered as Yasmine approached.
“She’s here!”
Knox appeared from behind the van. Tiny as she ever was, she wore the same armor Yaz had seen her wear before, but now also wore an old Army helmet that had lost its camouflage covering. The helmet and the strap under her chin looked enormous on her head. Yaz fought to choke down a friendly laugh.
“Yasmine! I knew you’d come. I could see it in your eyes,” Knox hollered. “You sure you want to do this?”
“If one more person asks me that question…” Yasmine said, shaking her head and rolling her eyes.
“Well, everyone thinks you’re a curious cat about to get killed.”
“I’ll be a satisfied one that came back, if that’s the case.”
“You were raised in the wastes, right? You were what, six years old when the crabs came?”
“Three.”
“Man. This worlds ages you. You’re awfully well spoken for a kid that didn’t go to school.”
“My mom took good care of me. Read to me. Made sure I didn’t go feral, she used to say.”
“You had a good mom.”
“And a good dad. Where do I sit?” she asked, looking at the van. “I’ve never ridden in a car before.”
“Don’t be nervous. You’ll sit in the front seat beside me as I drive.”
“What will I need to do?”
“I’d say buckle your seatbelt, but this heap hasn’t had those since it got set on fire,” Knox said, and laughed. She reached under the electrical cage and pulled open the slider on the passenger side. She gestured for Yasmine to get in.
“This car got set on fire?”
“Just the once,” Knox answered. “Hop in.”
Yasmine felt her mouth go dry as she watched an unfamiliar Monolith climb up into the back of the rear pickup and stand behind a large machine gun on a steel mount. He racked a handle on the side and swung it about to make it ready for an attack.
“On fire?”
“Just the once. Hop in. Time’s a-wasting.”
“Am I going to regret this?”
“Yeah, maybe. But you’re the kind of person who puts ten toes down, right? Level head, lands on your feet?”
“People who don’t know me have such high opinions of me. I don’t get it.”
“No joke. Consider it a compliment. Now hop in.”
“Can we get going?” Bernie hollered from the pickup. “We’ll miss the dawn security window.”
“What do I do if the van catches on fire again?”
“Get out of it,” Knox said, and climbed up into her van.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The Roller Coaster Moment
Unadulterated, sheer horror.
Maybe terror.
Definitely fear.
It sucked.
It wasn’t that Knox couldn’t drive, or that she drove like a crazy person, it was the lack of control over her life that made Yasmine so scared. Feeling each and every bump, ditch, and rut, every piece of debris under the big rubber wheels shake her entire body—and then to have zero control over any of it—froze her entire body.
“You know if you squeeze that door handle any harder you’ll burst a vein. The roads are gonna get a lot worse once we get through the Shant gates and into the actual wastes,” Knox teased.
“I am so uncomfortable right now,” Yasmine squeaked.
“Recline the seat?”
“That’s not what I mean.”
Knox assessed her and nodded. “I know what’s going on here.”
“What’s going on here?”
“Roller coasters. You are on your first ride. You’re all puckered up.”
“This is a van. I don’t get what you mean.”
“Before everything went to hell,” she started saying as they pulled around the last corner inside Shant to head to the steel gate and the world beyond, “there were amusement parks. Theme parks.”
“Rides and food, and fun?”
“Right. The big attractions were roller coasters. Little cars with wheels that sat on rails that went up and down and around. The bigger, better ones made you flip upside down and went really fast.”
�
��And you couldn’t steer them? That sounds terrifying.”
She nodded. “The worst part, is right when the cars got to the tippy top of the first—and usually the biggest—of the hills, you got this feeling in the pit of your stomach. Like someone was pushing your belly button down, and whispering all your secrets to your crush.”
“Yes! That’s exactly how I feel right now. I mean, I don’t have anyone I like, not really, but yeah, that.”
“Not really?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Knox said, and halted the slow progress of the van as they reached the gate.
“Does the feeling go away?”
“After the big plunge, as you’re twisting and turning, you just gotta soak it in. Let the moment take you over. Realize that the fear is just… a feeling. Not a reality. The fear isn’t real, it’s just a reaction to a situation. Being afraid doesn’t change that situation. Just lean back, and soak it in.”
Yasmine leaned out the open window of the van and looked up at the gate house. A nervous Gordon stood on sore feet against the armored railing, his makeshift spear in hand. With his free hand, he waved at her.
She waved back.
He stepped away and a moment later, the mechanics of the double doors of the gate jumped to life, and they opened with their familiar groan.
The flatness of the road led through the gate and away towards the east. Deep in the distance, at the horizon, Yasmine could see the tip of the pillar that was the Monolith’s tower. Somewhere near the top of it, locked in a room full of electronics was Trey.
“Ready?” Knox asked her.
“I don’t need to be ready. Let’s do this.”
She grabbed a thick brick of a walkie talkie from a duffel bag on the floor between them. She held it to her face and spoke.
“Monolith control, this is Patrol One. We are headed home.”
The radio crackled and Yasmine heard a middle aged women’s voice through the static. “Roger that, Knox. Drive careful.”
“No joke, Diane. We’re off, like a herd of turtles.”
Knox put her foot down on the accelerator and the van moved forward. Her left hand produced a black pistol from her side, and she cocked its hammer, then rested the gun in her lap.
Yaz thought of Trader Joe’s bullets in the plastic case.
The sun disappeared behind them, and the convoy pushed forward. Hours passed as they drove through familiar ruins towards the city. Knox’s vigilance during the nighttime journey was astounding. She never took her eyes off the world around them, and maneuvered the vehicle around all manner of dangers to the van as they went. She only had a few spare tires in the back so one flat would be a problem, but two could be devastating. To leave an operating vehicle behind would be a terrible loss for her group. For any group.
Every hour that passed made the dark tower in the wasteland distance larger and larger. Every muted, tense hour revealed another tree in the small forest of buildings at its feet. Yasmine didn’t remember the city… but she had a hard time believing how much… stuff would be there when they arrived.
“How long do we have?” she asked Knox.
“Ha. Are we there yet?”
“I know we’re not there. How much longer?”
“Shant is twenty-six miles from the tower. We go about five miles an hour. We’ve driven sixteen miles.”
“So two hours to go?”
“Mmhm. The worst of it, by the way.”
“Raiders?”
“Yeah, now that the crabs are leaving us be. Most of the groups know not to mess with us, but desperation makes people dumb,” Knox said, eying the top of an overpass as they approached.
“What do we do if we get attacked?”
“We radio the tower that we’re getting hit, and Bernie and I floor it. Squire Todd in the truck in the back starts shooting with the machine gun if he can get a decent shot at whoever is trying to hit us. Usually all we gotta do is shoot at them for a few seconds to scare them off.”
“Why do they call him Squire Todd?” Yaz asked.
“Squire is a title, not a name. Anyone who volunteers to stand in the back of the trucks and man the guns we call Squire. Squire Dave, Squire Anisha, Squire Todd. First step on the road to Knighthood.”
“What?”
“Baron Monolith, right? Below him are knights. Think of them as lieutenants. They manage important stuff for the Baron.”
“Why not King Monolith?”
“I’m told he thought that title would be pretentious,” Knox said with a laugh.
“Riiiight. How come you’re not Squire Knox?”
“No interest in being in charge of anything beyond my life, my new hot plate, my shotgun and this here van. I don’t need the title ‘Lord’ for satisfaction. “
“That I get. So if we’re attacked, what do I do?”
“You have a gun?”
“No,” Yaz lied.
“Well you could shoot back if you did,” Knox said. “Call you Duchess Yaz. Eyes and ears then. Look and see everything you can, and then tell me what you see. No need to be a hero. We’ll outrun anyone chasing us most likely.”
“Because we’re faster?”
“Because there are so few cars left. See the roads here?” Knox pointed around with her eyes at the increasingly dense grid of streets they passed. “They’re only clear because we cleared them. And we checked every car we came across, and one in twenty-five worked, and even then only barely.”
“Dead batteries?”
“That and flat tires, bad hoses, seized brakes, animals in the air filters, you name it. Most of the time they were crashed or blown the hell up during the war.”
“You don’t stay and fight if you’re attacked?”
Knox looked at her like she’d said the dumbest thing in the world. “No, we don’t stay and fight.”
“Why not? Why don’t you take a stand and show them how tough you are?”
“That’s the Baron’s job, or a Lord’s job, not ours.”
“Is that why people are so scared of him? A big, bad enforcer? Because he’s the cleanup hitter?”
“You know baseball stuff?” Knox asked, surprised.
“My dad was into baseball.”
“So’s the Baron.”
“Books said it was the national pastime. Not surprising the Baron liked it.”
“If you say so.”
A loud PONG noise erupted from the back of the van.
“Was that a rock?” Yasmine asked.
“I don’t think-“
PONG-PONG came two more loud impacts. The walkie in the dust-filled cup holder jumped into Knox’s hand and went right up to her face.
“Contact left,” she belched into the device and then shoved her foot to the floor.
The old, beaten up van didn’t have a ton of power when it was new, and now, thirteen years after the apocalypse, it had even less. Even so, Yasmine felt pressed against the stained fabric of the seat as if she was in an airplane taking off. Or maybe a roller coaster going down that big first hill.
As soon as the van picked up speed, Yasmine heard more of the loud, metallic impacts hitting the van’s side and roof. At the same time, she could hear a distant, matching echo of gunfire. In two seconds she heard more bullets fired than she had in her entire life.
“Find them!” Knox yelled as she leaned over the steering wheel and stuck her hand with the walkie out. “Tell me where they are and tell Squire Todd to get on the damn machinegun.”
Yasmine didn’t think. Couldn’t think. The roller coaster she was on had gone over the hill.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Taking a Leap
Yasmine leaned over into Knox’s space and looked out the window in the direction of the ambush’s gunfire. Just the act of moving closer to getting shot caused her to lock up, but she willed her body to act.
Do, or die.
Under the light of the white moon she saw buildings. Brick buildings lin
ing the sidewalk, each more than a story tall, but no more than two. Faded signs and wide steel doors told a story about the suburban industry of the city, and the working class that no longer existed. Beyond fallen piles of busted out walls and bent streetlights, there was no cover to be had, and no one stood in the open. The shooters had to be on the rooftops. She tipped her eyes up as the windshield shattered just inches from Knox’s head. A hole surrounded by a spider web of cracks remained. Knox drove like her life depended on it, because it did.
Yasmine tipped her eyes upward, darting them left and right to scan the edge of the flat roofed buildings. An orange star appeared—a blossom of fire—two buildings forward.
“Right there!”
“In the walkie!” Knox barked.
“Squire Todd, above the garage sign, a building and a half up!” Yasmine said into the walkie. She looked backwards through the slit in the armor covering the rear window of the van.
Behind them in the pickup, beyond the yellow headlights, she saw the suicidal maniac gunning for the Baron’s favor turn his body and the gun he manned towards where she commanded. He tilted the bouncing barrel up and squeezed the trigger.
Yasmine’s ears tried to bleed to protect themselves from the deafening fully-automatic gunfire spilling out from his weapon. She turned back and looked up at the building where she’d seen the shooter and watched as the dark outline of the person ducked down. Just below where they’d disappeared, brick disintegrated under Todd’s withering storm of bullets.
Another silhouette popped up on the building ahead and faster than she could blink she saw another bright blossom appear off a new gun barrel. Todd’s fire abated, and she looked back.
He was gone.
The intensity of incoming fire became extraordinary. Yasmine screamed as a dozen holes appeared in the hull of the van, each letting in a tiny beam of the outer moonlight. Bullets whizzed down and through the passenger compartment like they were riding inside a bee hive.
“We gotta get that gun up!” Knox said. “If we lose a tire and stop right here that’s it for us,” she said.