by Katie French
“But you did,” he says quietly.
“I did.”
“I’m not trying to get her to love me,” he says. “Just so you know. I just want her friendship again.”
“That’s good,” I say. “’Cause I really didn’t want to have to kick your ass.”
He gives a quiet laugh. “You didn’t have to come up here and talk to me, but you did. I appreciate it.”
I tip my hat. “Just be ready for watch at three a.m. I’m givin’ you the worst shift.”
He nods, turning to stare out the window, his knees wrapped in his arms.
With the rest of the building patrolled, I head up to the roof where I’ll take my first shift. From six stories up, I can see pretty near the whole damned city. Or what’s left of it. Destruction for miles around. No sounds, lights, or signs of life. It’s like the whole world is dead and we’re the only ones left.
But you can’t think that way. Instead, I set up my rifle. The night scope will come in handy.
Footsteps have me spinnin’ around with my gun in my hand until I see Riley’s head appear behind the roof door.
“You takin’ first watch?”
“Thought I would. Let y’all sleep.”
She walks over to me. Moonlight playin’ on her features makes her achingly beautiful. She’s cut her hair short again, but nothin’ can take away her beauty. I watch her walk toward me, the gravel crunchin’ beneath her boots. She’s wearin’ a soft white T-shirt and loose black jeans that hang low on her narrow hips. Bits of skin peek between shifts of fabric as she comes. I feel the thrill of it as my hands wrap around her waist and pull her into me.
She puts her arms around my neck and I tilt my head down, gently pressin’ my lips to hers. The knot in my chest cinches, and then loosens the same way it does every time she’s this close to me.
There’s no truth in what Nessa said. There could be a million women stretched from here to eternity, and no one could turn the key like Riley does. She unlocks me, opens me bare, and fits inside like we were carved from the same whole.
“Thought I’d help you pass the time,” she says, breathin’ into my neck.
“What a nice way to make the hours go,” I say rubbin’ my thumbs against the bare skin at her waist.
“I know this isn’t easy,” she says, pullin’ back until she’s lookin’ at me. “Being with me has never been easy.”
“Nope, not easy.” I lean down and kiss her again. “But you’re worth every struggle.”
She settles into me. For a while, we hold each other and look out at the moonlit ruins.
“Tomorrow we go?” she asks.
“Tomorrow we go,” I say. “You could stay here and—”
“Clay.”
“Thought not.” I plant a kiss where her neck meets her shoulder.
“And Doc?” she asks.
I can feel her body tightening. At this I tread carefully. “We can’t spare good help, Ri.”
“Is he good help?” she asks, her tone risin’.
“’Til he proves otherwise.”
She stiffens further. “Hasn’t he already?”
Rubbin’ my hand down her back, I try to soothe her. “Let’s not, tonight. Okay?” I kiss her neck. She angles her head to present me more skin, her eyes closin’. I trail kisses down the flesh there. “Let’s forget it all right now. We get this moment.” My hands pull her closer to me. Her breath hitches in her chest. “We get to be together right now.”
“Right now,” she repeats, her hands in my hair.
This time when she kisses me, there’s nothing between us but the poundin’ of our hearts.
It takes two days to get us road ready. We have the solar car and the truck, but finding fuel is the problem. It isn’t until day two that Riley and I stumble onto the dead Butchers’ cars. Siphoning the fuel and getting it back to the truck takes most of the day, but when we’re fueled up, I get that urge to start drivin’. Livin’ in this city is like bunkin’ up in a morgue. Everywhere we turn is death. Just today we found two bodies hung from trees, their eyes pecked out, their shoes stolen. I itch to get everyone out. Open road might be perilous, but ain’t nothin’ like livin’ in between the dead.
So once we’re packed, we get ready to go. Takin’ everythin’ we can from the surrounding area that’s of any use, we tie it in bundles and lash it either to the top of the solar car or on the back of the Mack truck. It ain’t much, what we got. And the water’s nearly gone. With so many mouths, it goes too damn fast and makes me nervous. Then, just before we leave, Doc comes back with all our jugs full. He holds them up triumphantly to Riley, almost like this will make up for his betrayal. I watch his face as he realizes it changes nothin’ for her. Heartbroken, that’s what his expression says.
But he loads up the water anyway, and then crawls sulkily into the truck with me. I’m reminded of how tight we have to ride. Riley has three plus Mo in her solar car. The cab of the truck is small, so it’s just us boys up front—me, Doc, and Ethan. But three across the bench seat is tight, and Ethan ends up crawling behind the seats and sittin’ on a crate of supplies.
We roll out at dusk, hopin’ to avoid trouble by riding at night and it works. We drive five hours at a decent pace of forty miles an hour, which gets us about two-thirds of the way there. I pull us over when I spot a building big enough to hide behind. There ain’t been much. Most of what’s left of Route 550 is what Pa used to call the three Bs—buttes, brush, and bubkes. But a faded red building comes into sight, and I angle toward it, my gun on my lap. Any standin’ buildin’ invites people, and people invite trouble, but as we cruise up, I see nothin’ to worry about. The buildin’ looks like it used to be a post office and stop-and-go all in one.
Pullin’ up, I eye first the dark interior and then the old gas pumps outside. Could there possibly be fuel here?
Two people run out. Pullin’ out matchin’ shotguns, they aim right at us.
“Clay!” Doc shouts in warnin’, but it’s too late.
They have us in their sights.
Chapter 21
Riley
The inside of the solar car is crazy town, and it’s any wonder I’ve been able to keep the car on the road.
Auntie’s been doing her best to keep Mo from tearing everything and everyone apart. She’d finally resorted to pinning her into a cloth sack and clutching her in her arms as Mo thrashed and tried to bite. Auntie took at least two injuries, one of which is bleeding, before Mo tired herself out and fell asleep. All that time, Auntie said nothing, just struggled with her like she was taming a wildcat. I never give her enough credit, my aunt.
And Betsy and Sissy are a trip, if by trip you mean the most annoying people on the planet. I listen to their bickering as I focus on keeping the car on the road and us all alive.
“What is that on your head? A dead cat?” Sissy asks, her voice far from kind.
Betsy huffs. “What’s wrong with my hair?”
“Did you electrocute a poodle?” Sissy asks. “Or weave dryer lint into a hat?
“You are a rude little girl,” Betsy says before muttering a string of rhyming words under her breath, her defense mechanism.
After a while, Sissy pipes up again. “Why do you do that?”
Betsy stops muttering. “Do what?”
“Rhyme like that. Are you a nut job? A lunatic? Three sandwiches short of a picnic?”
Betsy growls. “Don’t call me that.”
There’s a scuffle and some flailing. Someone kicks my chair from behind. The noise wakes Mo, who lurches up, struggling to get away from Auntie. We exchange looks and then, still holding Mo, she turns.
“You two stop it!”
Her voice startles them. The commotion stops behind me. When I look in the rearview, I see them frozen, Betsy’s wig in Sissy’s hand.
Auntie uses her old nanny voice and points an arthritic finger in their direction. “You two need to stop squabbling, or I’ll come back there and knock your heads together. Do y
ou hear me?”
Both girls nod, eyes wide.
Auntie turns around in a huff. Mo has gone quiet in her arms again. Auntie looks down at her, using the arm not pinning her body down to stroke Mo’s wild hair. “It’s like having three babies, ain’t it?”
“You’re telling me. But we can’t leave them.” I glance at the two helpless girls in the rearview.
“You can leave me,” Sissy pipes up. “I can take care of myself.”
Auntie snorts. “Girl, you had better get a grip on reality. Hospital life may have been hell, but it’s a hundred times easier’n what you’ve got ahead of you.”
Sissy stares angrily out the window.
“How’s Mo doing?” I ask Auntie now that the girls are quiet.
She looks down at my no longer struggling child and then out at the road. The buttes roll by on both sides, and then dirt, dirt, dirt. It’s quiet here. And lonely.
“This is Navajo country,” she says, eying the shell of a burnt out car as it goes by.
“What’s Navajo?” I ask, noting that she ignored my question about Mo.
“Navajo are a people. A likely dead people now. They were the first settlers of this nation before the white folk took over and nearly killed them all.”
“And nature did the rest,” I add, looking around. “Pretty soon all that will be left is the dirt and cactus.”
Auntie sucks her teeth. “You can’t think like that. Does no good wallowing.”
I don’t answer her. We’ve had this same conversation a million times. I live for Ethan and Clay and her and Mo. If they were gone, there’d be no point. But I’m tired. Every day is just one big struggle. It sucks at your bones until the marrow’s gone, and you’re walking around hollow and empty.
In the distance I see a building rise up, red against the sea of brown around it. An old gas station or convenience store from the looks of things. Clay’s truck begins to slow up ahead of me. He’ll stop here, scout it out, and, if we’re lucky, we’ll have a place to sleep for the night. My tense arms and shoulders could use a break after driving for hours. And everyone is hungry, though there isn’t much food to go around. Maybe Clay can hunt something—
I see the gunmen too late.
Two of them, a smaller one and a bigger one, jump out of the store and aim at Clay.
“Shit!” Braking hard, I fumble for my gun, but it’s out of reach. And I can’t see into the cab of Clay’s truck to see what’s going on inside.
“Oh no,” Auntie says, clutching Mo.
My hand finds cool steel, and I grip the gun, swinging it up and opening my door. “Stay here,” I tell everyone.
“Riley!” Auntie says. Mo starts to go crazy in Auntie’s arms, hooting and struggling to get free. But I’m already out of the car and shutting the door.
Skirting around the far side of the truck bed, I creep up to where I can get a good look at what’s going on.
Clay’s voice echoes from inside the truck cab. “Hello. We come in peace.”
A man’s voice I don’t recognize answers back. “Peaceful people don’t usually aim guns at our heads.”
“Now, I hate to be a stickler for details, but you aimed ’em first.” Clay’s voice has that even calm that I know can turn on a razor’s edge when he wants to.
I slide up to where the cab of the truck meets the bed and try to see between them, but there’s no direct shot to where the men are. I slide farther, stopping just before the nose of the truck.
The man’s voice is the next to cut through the silence. “Seein’ as how we live here, and you’re passing through, we suggest you keep going, friend.”
“Well, the problem is we need gas. Maybe you’d be willing to barter for some, friend.”
“No gas to spare,” the man’s voice says.
“Well, that’s a problem,” Clay says, his voice picking up the tension.
I’m getting ready to come around and add my gun to the mix when the solar car door bangs open. I hear Auntie shouting, and then a small blur flings itself out of the car and across the dirt.
“Mo!” I shout, staggering out after her.
When I appear around the front of the truck, both men swing their guns my way. Clay shouts something, jumping down from the truck and running for me. I scramble after Mo who tears forward, stopping right in front of the gunmen.
They turn and aim their guns at her.
“Wait, don’t shoot!” I say, running up and dropping my gun. “Please don’t shoot her.”
The first gunman looks at Mo and then at me. Slowly, he pulls the bandana down from his face. His lined face is old and deeply tan. His eyes are narrow, his nose hawkish. I wonder if he is one of the Navajo Auntie mentioned. He lowers his gun and squats in the dirt beside Mo. She looks up at him with wide unblinking eyes.
A slow smile breaks out across his face. “There is much mischief in this one,” he says, holding his hand out to Mo. She bares her teeth and knuckles dirt in his direction.
“Father,” the boy says, “this is what those white men were looking for. The half human, half animal.”
I look at them and back at Mo. “She’s mine,” I say firmly.
The old man’s eyes look up at me, finally scanning my face and body. He lowers his gun and indicates for the boy to do the same. “Come in,” the old man says. “We have much to tell you.”
The men usher us into their home with more hospitality than I’ve seen in a long time.
Clay and I hide the vehicles behind the large red building where they can’t be seen from the road and then lead our crew inside. Five women, a bender, a boy, a genetically modified child, and a gunslinger walk into a post office. It’s like the start of a joke, only none of this seems funny.
We shuffle in, standing in a clump, the strongest of us armed while the others hunker behind. It seems silly to be wary of an old man and his son, but people have taken advantage of us before. There’s no telling if there are others inside waiting to ambush us. Clay hefts his rifle and scans the space while I do the same.
The buildings is a long one-story rectangle that was, at one time, a post office, gas station, and liquor store. On the red siding outside, someone painted an advertisement for Coca-Cola. On the inside, many posters (some fading, some looking almost new) advertise the same product. A few have white bears in scarves on an ice pond. A few have girls in short pants with sweating brown bottles pressed to their red lips. There are plaques with words that hang from the ceiling rafters and a big red cooler with the words plastered on a logo on top.
Aside from the Coca-Cola paraphernalia, the rest of the store seems to have been turned into a residence. To the left is a set of bunk beds pieced together from found wood. In the back a cook stove sits beside shelves stocked with goods. Weapons hang on hooks by the wall, swords and shovels, bows and arrows. Desi’s eyes linger on the sharp arrowheads.
There’s the smell of pine and of dry goods rising over the spread of rot that always lingers in the air. It’s clear they’ve taken care of this place for quite a while.
“How have you stayed out in the open, yet haven’t been taken by a road gang?” I ask the old man, who has folded tiredly into a wooden chair.
He rubs a hand over a stiff shoulder and answers. “No one much comes out here. Nothing to see. Not until the Butchers come.”
The young man nods, his face stoic. He is dark like his father with long black hair in braids at either side of his head. “No one comes out here,” he repeats.
Clay has his gun lowered, but I notice he does not pack it away. “How long have you been here?”
The old man starts to rock, causing his wooden chair to creak. “Our people have been here for thousands of years. But our numbers have dwindled. Ashki and I are the last of our tribe.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, eyeing Ashki. He is maybe seventeen, but his spirit seems much older. He does not sit or lower his gun like his father has done. More wary. Probably with good reason. “What did you mean when you said my
daughter is the one that the others are looking for?” I ask.
All eyes turn on Mo in Auntie’s arms. She isn’t fighting or biting anyone, but she looks wilder than ever—completely naked, dirty and crazy-haired. Her eyes rove around each face and then around the room, nostrils sniffing toward the shelves of goods along the wall.
More animal than human. And it’s getting worse.
The old man gets up, joints popping with the effort, and shambles over to Auntie and Mo. He stops a few feet away and looks into Mo’s eyes. She actually looks back, interested in something for more than a few seconds for once.
“She is one of those they created in the hospital, ain’t she? The girl who is not a girl.”
I nod, swallowing hard. She’s a girl to me. Or was. “Nessa, the woman at the hospital, did something to her. She used to act human. Now she doesn’t even seem to know me.” I don’t know why I’m telling him this, but for some reason he seems like someone who might help.
The old man strokes Mo’s cheek. I expect her to bite, but she accepts the touch for a moment before pulling away and scrambling around Auntie’s neck. The old man clucks his tongue. “What is done can never be undone. She is a wild thing. She will continue to be wild.”
“No, you don’t understand. She was fine. Then Nessa did something to her. I just need her to go back to the way she was.”
He fixes dark eyes on me and stares for a long time. I want to shout at him, tell him he’s wrong about Mo, but I don’t.
Finally, he turns away. “You must be hungry. We will hunt and tonight we will feast. Ashki.” He waves to his son, and, together, they gather supplies for a hunt.
Clay touches my shoulder, making me jump. “I’ll hunt with them. You stay here and keep everyone safe.”
Walking over, I take Mo from Auntie’s arms. She struggles and squirms, but I hold her tight and convince myself that this old man has no idea of what he’s talking about.
With those three on a hunt, the rest of us make ourselves at home. Sissy curls up in Ashki’s bed and goes immediately to sleep. Doc and Desi unload supplies from the solar car while Auntie sits in the old man’s rocking chair, her eyes on me. Betsy walks around the room, touching each object and saying its name and then rhyming it quietly to herself. And Ethan has found Ashki’s knives very interesting, though I’ve instructed him not to touch.