by Katie French
She walked to the fire and pulled on her boots, then started the trek to the truck. Scrambling up the ridge was nearly impossible with her useless muscles. Plan B had left her so weak, but fear kept her going. She had to know if he’d left her.
She was practically running now, the panic a stone lodged in her throat. Thank goodness for their footprints in the dirt because her sense of direction was terrible. And every inch of this goddamned desert looked the same. The buttes, the cactus, the rocks—they were all copies. She followed them right to the truck.
It was empty.
“Nolan!” The desperation in her voice was clear. It echoed like a taunt. She opened both truck doors, searching. Some supplies were gone, but not all. Just enough rations to make it seem like Nolan made it here, collected what he came for, and left.
When she looked in the glove compartment, the gun was gone. And Nolan had the keys.
Kindy wrapped her arms around herself.
She sat in the truck for at least an hour trying to decide what to do. The sun rose, the air turning from cool to sweltering. This was the first time in her entire life someone was not around to direct her. At the hospital, there was always someone—Mother, a nanny, a doctor—to order her around. Go here. Do this. Nolan had been there when she’d woken, not so much directing as guiding. Moving them from point A to point B. They were headed to White Sands. Nolan knew the way.
Without him, she was aimless. She was just a carcass with half a breath left in her.
She was forced out of the truck when the water ran out. The river was her only option now. She could last at least a few days there. Maybe Nolan would come back. Or maybe she would die with the sound of running water in her ears.
She grabbed what she could carry—three survival ration packets, a little folding knife, and a rough blanket. Leaving the map and other odds and ends, she headed to the river.
The walk back seemed twice as long and twice as rugged. Worry as big as a house sat on her shoulders. What if someone had found the truck and waited for him? What if he lay dying with a gunshot wound punched through his intestines?
“Nolan,” she cried out.
A bird squawked as it flew past.
“Shut up, bird,” she yelled. “Just shut up!” And then she was crying, loud, choking sobs like a heartbroken child.
“Why is this happening?” She stopped walking. The rations dropped to the ground. What point was there in eating? What point was—?
“Why, hello there, beautiful.”
Kindy whirled.
Standing ten feet away in a patch of shade was a man.
The lean shadow stepped forward. He was average height and build, with brown hair that curled up at his shoulders and a dirty Stetson tipped down on his head. His leather duster was old, but the gun he held in his hand looked new and dangerous.
“A girl like you could get into trouble all the way out here.” His eyes watched her, calculating.
Kindy’s mouth went dry. Her eyes scanned him and then around him, looking for an escape. “M-my friend will be back soon.”
His eyes crinkled up in a humorless smile. “Your friend. Right.”
She pulled back her shoulders, trying to look fierce. “Whatever you’re planning on doing, go ahead and do it. I’m not afraid.”
“You look afraid.”
“I’m not.”
He put the gun in the holster at his hip and clasped his hands. “I ain’t gonna shoot you. I ain’t gonna hogtie you. But you best come with me if you want to stay out of trouble.”
She studied his face, trying to discern his intentions. Things did not look good for her.
He reached into his jacket pocket. She flinched, but his hand drew out a worn metal flask. He unscrewed the cap, put it to his lips, and took a long pull. Then he held it out to her.
She glanced between the flask and the man. Mother had a name for this kind of thing—a moral crossroad.
Kindy reached for the flask and put it to her lips. The swig of bathtub gin burned down her throat, but she liked it.
Nolan
Of all the times to get lost.
Nolan scanned the same dusty, scraggly landscape, a slow panic building in his chest. Where was the river? Kindy?
He was normally good with directions, so when he sprinted to the truck to get supplies, there was no thought he might not know which way to go. But with three hours of searching in the dark, he knew better. “Why is this happening?” he said. “Sam, if you’re out there, show me the way.”
His eyes searched the blanket of dark blue sky. He was a city kid. He knew how to get around the Night Bazaar, how to make his way to the Breeders’ tower lit up with the spotlights. What he didn’t know was how to orientate in the dark in the desert with nothing to guide him. He’d been so excited to find the river, to take care of Kindy and the child—who he knew in his heart was still alive—that he’d ran off in the dark. But he’d been a fool. And now he might be a dead fool.
“Give me a sign, God,” he said with his eyes turned toward the stars. “Help me find her.”
He clasped his hands in prayer, not sure what he was expecting.
But nothing happened.
“I know you’re out there. Let me know this was not all for nothing.”
He paced, barely breathing. Ten seconds. Thirty. A full minute stretched past. His heart began to sink. He was alone in the dark desert. He was going to die.
Light flared up in the distance. Twin beams shot across the desert. Nolan’s eyes flicked up, his heart beginning to pound in his chest.
“Thank you,” he shouted to the sky. Then he ran.
Kindy
She was a bitch, plain and simple.
Getting into the truck with a strange man meant leaving Nolan—wherever he was—alone in the desert. She couldn’t leave a note. If he came back, he’d have no idea where she was.
It’s for the best, she thought. She’d only slow him down. He could blend in somewhere, start a new life. With her, it’d be trouble all the time.
Still, she couldn’t shake the nagging feeling. He would be heartbroken.
“We head south,” the man in the hat said, giving her a sideways glance.
She waved a hand at him dismissively. “Wherever. You got more of that whiskey?”
He chuckled, reaching into his coat pocket. He tossed her the flask. It landed in what was left of her lap. “What about the kid? Didn’t your mama tell you alcohol’s bad for the baby?”
Ice crackled down Kindy’s spine. She shook her head. “It’s dead.”
The man leaned back, raising an eyebrow. “Then how do you get it out?”
Kindy looked up at the truck’s ceiling. “Don’t know.”
“Breeders put it in there?” he asked, starting the truck and putting it in gear with an awful grinding noise.
“Yep.” They were leaving. Kindy tried not to look for Nolan and failed. Where was he?
“Was it alive when they put it in?”
“That’s a lot of questions,” she said, turning on him. “Let’s start with you. What’s your name?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Smith.”
“Unique,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“People know my name. I’m the best damn tracker in the free colonies,” he said, pulling the truck around and bumping them toward the road. His headlights slashed across blacktop as they found the asphalt.
“What do you track?” she asked, not caring about the answers. Her eyes followed the headlights over the cactus and scrub. Was that shadow Nolan coming after her? No, he was probably long gone. Sick of her shit. He had every right to leave.
“Track game mostly,” he said, steering to avoid a part of the road that had fallen away. “I help local tribes find what game is left. Deer. Rabbits. Dogs. It lives, I find it.”
That explained where all the dogs went. “People shouldn’t eat dog.”
“Coming from a girl who got three square meals fed to her on a silver platter?”
>
She turned a burning gaze on him. “You have no idea about my life.”
“Sweetheart, you got no idea about mine.”
She turned away, holding her arms over her belly. What could a man know about worry? They were the top of the food chain, the apex predator. Women were cattle, goods to be sold and traded.
And it pissed her off.
“Where the hell do you plan on taking me?” she asked, not bothering to be nice. She would do well to remember the gun in his jacket, but she’d never had a very strong self-preservation streak.
He sniffed, peering down the long and empty road. The moon was cloud covered. Because of the dark, he wasn’t going very fast. The roads here were treacherous, with the pavement missing half the time.
“Why don’t you let me worry about where we are going? You just worry about keepin’ an eye out. Let me know if you see any movement at all. There are gangs out here that’ll cut ya from smile to asshole just for a pair of intact boots.” He glanced at her. “And you are a prize better than a pair of boots.”
A prize? Kindy stiffened. “You planning on selling me?”
“What you worth?”
She tried her best to be indifferent. “Not much. Dead baby. Broken body. Breeders don’t want me.”
“You ran away. I bet they want you,” he mused, drumming his fingers on the wheel. Then he swerved into the shoulder to avoid a pothole.
“I was too much trouble,” she said, meaning it. “They don’t want me back. Well, maybe to kill me. Or punish me in front of the other girls to keep them in line.”
“You make them Breeders sound like bad fellas. And all this time I thought they was savin’ us. Our beacon of last hope,” he said sarcastically.
For the good of mankind, one baby at a time. They were always talking to the girls at the hospital about the greater good they were doing for humanity. The doctors made them sound like soldiers, leaders, saints, saving the world with their uteruses.
Just another mind-control technique that worked most of the time.
But Kindy had Mother and Mother always told her the real messages behind the Breeders’ words. When the doctors said the girls were heroes, Mother would whisper that it was bullshit propaganda. When the nannies talked about how good exercise was for babies’ brains, Mother would whisper that no one cared if these babies had brains—all they cared about was working ovaries.
Mother made Kindy stronger and angrier than any girl on the hall.
Which was eventually what landed Kindy into Plan B and made into a vegetable.
Gee thanks, Ma.
Smith turned to her, grinning slyly out of the corner of his mouth. “Don’t worry. I ain’t takin’ you to those scum. We go on to White Sands.”
Her ears pricked up. White Sands. That was where Nolan wanted to go. So, it was real and not a myth. It was then the guilt doubled back on her. Nolan. “Do you think…” she asked nervously, “that we could go back for someone?”
He slowed and eyed her. “Who?”
She slowly shook her head. “My… my brother. He’s back where you found me.”
“And you’re only telling me this now?” he asked, an eyebrow arching. “Naw, that don’t sound right. Plus, there’s no more room.” He gestured around the truck cab.
Kindy shrugged, but she was aching inside. Grinding her teeth, she hid her face by staring out the window.
I’m sorry, Nolan. I tried. I tried.
Nolan
Following the lights, he cried out in joy when he saw the smoke of the campfire. Staggering to it, he felt a huge sense of relief. Until he saw Kindy wasn’t there.
He immediately went into a panic and began muttering affirmations.
Trust in the Christman with all your heart and soul. Look upon him with eyes upturned for he will not forsake you. His rod and his staff will guide you all the days of your life.
Dropping the supplies beside the fire, he looked over the dying embers to the indented sand where she had been. There were her footprints leading away. He followed them until they arrived at the marsh. Once they hit the grass, the footsteps died away.
He was not a tracker. He had no ability to follow the breaks of twigs and hone in on her scent like a bloodhound. Running in circles, he scanned the horizon on either side. He stopped and cupped his hands to his mouth “Kindy!”
No response.
“Shit!” He never should have left her.
“Kindy!”
His mouth dry, he raced back to the spot where her footsteps ended. On his hands and knees this time, he followed her boot prints from the sand to the weeds. And then he spotted something that made his heart lurch into his throat.
Another set of boot prints. Large. Male.
“Oh no,” he whispered.
The boot prints were headed toward the road. The lights he had seen were headlights.
He started to run, scanning the ground and his surroundings. He startled at every shadow, every sound. Someone could hide behind cactus or tall shrubs. He went long minutes not sure he was headed in the right direction, but then he’d see half a shoe print in the soil. There were two people walking together. Kindy and the other. He couldn’t tell if she was being forced.
She wouldn’t leave Nolan voluntarily, would she?
And a pregnant woman was worth a fortune to the right bidder.
Running his hands over his sweat-soaked hair, he cursed himself over and over. He remembered the gun tucked in the back of his pants. Sam’s gun. He didn’t really know how to use it, but he would if Kindy needed help.
Suddenly, he spotted the tire tracks that cut into the dirt and then angled toward the road.
They’d gone south. That was all he knew.
Pressing his head into his hands, he tried to think. He was exhausted, mentally and physically. The night had drained him to the core. But he didn’t have the luxury of time. If he wanted to rescue Kindy, he needed to move fast.
Did he risk running back to the truck? What if he got lost again? But if he didn’t, what chance did he have to catch up with a vehicle on foot?
His eyes went skyward once again. Prayer had worked before.
Nothing happened.
He stood on the side of the road—Kindy gone, Sam gone, Dah gone. It was hard not to wonder if there was no point to his prayers.
A rumble in the distance. At first, he thought it might be Kindy returning, but this vehicle came from the north.
Nolan’s first thought was to run or hide, but he needed a ride and one was coming. He swallowed hard. Standing where the highway met the soil, he stuck his thumb out.
He was careful to check that his gun was still in the back of his pants and safely hidden.
Nervously, he waited to see who approached.
The car had to be a clunker. The noise it made churning up the road made him wonder if they drove on rims only. A horrible scraping and clanking preceded the one headlight that dashed over the ridge and hit him full on.
They see me. It’s too late to turn back now.
He tried to look confident as he stuck out his thumb. He wished for a beard now more than ever instead of his baby face that make him look fourteen instead of nearly seventeen.
The clunker continued to rattle down the road, slowing before it got to Nolan. When it slid to a stop, lighting him up in the headlight, he was a ball of nerves. They had the advantage. He couldn’t see anything.
Faith and hope.
“Ho there,” called a voice. “What’s your story, friend?”
Someone opened a car door and closed it. Nolan squinted into the light, trying to see who.
“I need a ride. My friend was taken. I need to go find… him.”
Footsteps. A figure appeared cloaked in shadow.
“Your friend? Who took ‘im?”
“I don’t know. He was at the fire, our fire. I went to get supplies. He was gone. I found two sets of boot prints.” If he slipped up and revealed he was looking for a female, he was done for.
<
br /> “Hmm,” the voice mused. “What you reckon, José? Do we give the kid a lift?”
Two men. What had he gotten into?
“Can I come around and see?” Nolan asked. “This light is hurting my eyes.”
“Sure, kid,” the first voice said. “Come around.”
There was something he didn’t like about the stranger’s tone, but Nolan walked toward the car anyway. He could feel the metal of the gun rub against his back.
The man leaning against the old clunker was covered in tattoos. His face, neck, and bald head were a map of blue lines running in swirls and patterns. Nolan couldn’t read the words, but he could make out the gaping skulls on either side of his neck, the blue daggers on either cheek, crude and jagged. Ugly. Horrible.
The man watched Nolan take it all in, smiling with filed teeth. “Pretty, ain’t we?”
The figure inside the car chuckled. He, too, wore the blue lines. When he laughed, teeth whittled to points flashed.
“On second thought, gentleman, I think I’ll walk.” Nolan began to back away from the car, but the sound of a gun being drawn stopped him.
The man standing next to the car aimed the old Ruger at Nolan’s chest. “Hands up. Let’s see what you got.”
Nolan slowly raised his hands. “Let’s not do something we’ll regret.”
“Regret?” the man said, shooting a smile at his partner. “I don’t regret this. Do you regret this, José?”
José shook his head, running the tip of his tongue along his teeth.
The first man smiled his horrible smile. “José don’t regret this. I don’t regret this. Looks like the only one who’s gonna be doin’ the regrettin’ is you, friend.”
Kindy
They stopped at dawn. Smith pulled the truck behind a wayward gas station crumbled to bricks. Kindy lurched awake, clutching the truck’s dashboard. Her eyes swung around the pile of debris, the rusty pumps, and the Coca Cola billboard leaning down until its side grazed the ground.