Hit

by Delilah S. Dawson

  “They who?”

  Roy sniffles and turns away, roughing up the high-and-tight under his army cap like he’s not about to start crying. Jeremy sighs and lets the shaking gun fall to his side. I let mine fall too.

  “This guy showed up at our trailer. Gave us some card about how my dad owes a bunch of money from his new truck. Said the debt would be forgiven if we . . .”

  He halts. It’s hard to condense what Valor has done to us into one sentence that makes any sense.

  “If you became a bounty hunter.”

  His head jerks up, and he looks at me hard. “Yeah.”

  “Where’s your mail truck?”

  He stares at me like I’m an idiot. “Mail truck?”

  “They gave me this truck. And a stupid Postal Service outfit. And a fake fruit basket so I could ring people’s doorbells for a good reason.”

  “That’s totally gay,” he says, and I reflexively punch him in the arm with my left fist, surprising us both.

  “Don’t say that, asshole. It’s so offensive.”

  He stifles a laugh. “Born a redneck, die a redneck.” Same thing he always says when I get onto him for using ugly words. But it’s different now. Something in me goes tense when he says the word “die.”

  I clear my throat. All joking is gone. “So I’m on your list?”

  He shakes his head, and Roy says, “Unidentified female, seventeen, armed and dangerous in a stolen mail truck. The GPS sent us here.”

  “So you were going to shoot me first, then read me my rights?”

  Jeremy spits a wad of tobacco at my feet. “Read you your rights? Shit, Cowpatty. What do you think? You don’t have any rights. We’re just supposed to kill the ones that bolt before they can kill us.”

  My brain digests it. I’m the alpha squad, and these guys are, what? Cleanup? They’re just a bumbling team of redneck nerds who can barely hit the broad side of a barn.

  “Is this because I messed up or something? Because I broke the rules?”

  Jeremy makes a jack-off motion with his empty hand. “There ain’t no rules. You’re the first person who lived long enough to ask us anything. Which is good, cuz we don’t have any answers.”

  “How many have you done?” I ask.

  “You’re the third.”

  “You know any of the others?”

  He rolls his eyes, shrugs so that his gun goes sideways. “Why would we?”

  So it’s just me, then.

  “What happens if y’all don’t kill me?” I ask.

  The night goes dead quiet. Even the wind stops shivering in the grass. A mourning dove calls, and we all startle.

  Jeremy looks down, rubs a boot toe in the grass. “Then I die, I guess. My family, too. Ain’t gonna happen, Cowpatty.”

  “Even Dotty?”

  The thought of his sweet little sister getting shot dead next to her hand-me-down Barbie Dreamhouse makes my blood run cold and backward.

  He nods, slow and thoughtful, eyes burning into mine.

  “I guess so.”

  “What about Roy?”

  Jeremy shrugs. “He’s my stepbrother.”

  “Will they kill him?”

  “What?” Roy’s voice quavers, and he steps to Jeremy’s side, shaking. “What about me?”

  I can’t get past the lump in my throat, the burn of a meatball sub on the back of my tongue. “If you don’t kill me, are they gonna kill Roy, too?”

  With careful intensity, Jeremy says, “I reckon not. His name was never mentioned.”

  I lock eyes with Jeremy. He’s breathing through his nose, his dry, bitten lips pinned together.

  “Run, Roy,” I whisper.

  And thank heavens that for once the stubborn idiot does the right thing. He turns around and runs into the forest, tripping over shit and catching himself and crashing in the underbrush like he’s being chased by a bear, his forgotten gun dark on the ground beside my bare white foot.

  “What now?” Jeremy says.

  My gun is so heavy, my fingers so slick. It’s like Ashley Cannon all over again. I stare at him, trying to merge the boy I know into the killer in front of me. We struck up a friendship in math class, sitting in back and making fun of the brownnosing preps in the front row. Turns out a smart redneck and a geeky poor girl who don’t want to date make pretty good friends. Roy started hanging around with us as soon as his mom married Jeremy’s dad, and since then, they’ve been a safe source of comfort for me and a reason that work didn’t suck.

  “What now?” I echo.

  He turns his gun over, runs a finger over words stamped in gold. That same finger points to a familiar black button on his camo shirt pocket. “One of us has got to die, Cowpie. Who’s got more to lose?”

  My fingers clench. “Don’t you do that, asshole. Don’t you try to play on my soft spot just because I’m a girl. Don’t you fucking dare.”

  “Just talkin’ sense.”

  “Bullshit. You’re trying to soften me up. And I’m not soft anymore. So cut it out.”

  “I am disinclined to acquiesce to your request,” he says, eyes gone hard and his Southern accent rounding out the words. He tenses a second before I do, and I throw myself to the ground as his gun whips up.

  My arms curl over my head as a shot rings out. Jeremy hits the ground beside me a heartbeat after his dropped gun. I can’t move, can’t pull my hands away from my face and the dirt and tears that appeared there the moment my instincts took over my kindness. My friend’s breath rattles, and he groans and tries to roll over. A heavy form pants out of the darkness, and I wait to feel Roy’s boot in my ribs.

  But it’s Wyatt. Of course it’s Wyatt. Roy’s a coward, always has been. And Wyatt just shot another person to keep me alive. He kicks Jeremy’s gun away and gently pries my arms from my head, pulling me into his lap.

  “Patsy, are you okay? Speak to me. Are you okay?”

  “Means no,” I whisper. “Means no.”

  There’s a deep rattle and then Jeremy whispers, “Means . . . no . . .”

  I spring away from Wyatt and look down into Jeremy’s face. Tears streak the camo paint, but his eyes don’t see me. His acne-­spattered cheeks flash green and black as his head rolls from side to side, and he coughs as his hands struggle to plug the hole in his stomach that won’t stop oozing blood and worse.

  “I’m so sorry, Jer,” I say. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Not your fault,” he mutters. “Least you and Dotty . . . both alive.”

  “But you . . .”

  My tears fall on his smeared paint. He flaps a blood-and shit-­covered hand at me like he always does when I’m being ridiculous. “Broke-ass country boys are a dime a dozen. Just promise me one thing, Cowpatty.” He chokes, and red oozes between his teeth. “Kill at least one of them green-suit Matrix assholes. For me.”

  “As you wish,” I whisper.

  He chuckles blood. “The Princess Bride. Good one, Cowpatty.”

  And then he’s gone.

  I don’t know how I end up in bed in the mail truck, but I wake up amazed to see sunlight, wholly surprised that the world still exists. At my house, I never slept well. The next-door neighbors had a lot of cats, and there were attempted break-ins sometimes, and kids would let off fireworks and get the dogs barking. My mom was always so timid that I felt like I was our only line of defense against the world. Every little bump or creak, even the heater coming on with a swoosh, and I was awake, groping for the old baseball bat under my bed and then lying awake, thinking about how much that heat was going to cost.

  It doesn’t seem fair, that I could sleep so well and so long after watching Jeremy die. But I guess my body gets to the point where it doesn’t so much fall asleep as collapse in rebellion, and all I can do is trust that Wyatt will keep me safe while I’m dead to the world. I know that the truck m
oved sometime in the night, and I’m grateful. Roy’s not a courageous dude, and I’m pretty sure he peed himself as he ran away, but I’m glad he didn’t have the opportunity to come back and get himself killed, messing with us.

  Wyatt is curled around me, and birds are singing outside. For just a moment, I feel safe. Protected. I’m facing the wall, and he’s snuggled up behind me, breathing softly. I smile to myself and scoot back a little, into the welcoming curve of his body, and his arm lazily sweeps over me, easy as pie. I sigh, and I feel him wake up. He makes a happy groan and pulls me even closer, and it’s so perfect it feels like a dream, even if I’m repressing last night so hard that I’m about to grind open a badly done filling.

  “You’re safe,” he murmurs into my ear.

  I lean back to kiss his cheek. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  He nuzzles my neck, breath hot in that tender place behind my ear. “I was pretty sure that kid was going to shoot you last night. I still can’t believe we got out of there alive. I guess I don’t really trust anything good anymore. I don’t expect it to last.”

  “I don’t want to talk about last night. But I know what you mean.”

  “It’s almost like I don’t deserve it.” He pulls me closer, holds me tighter, like he’s drowning. I turn in his arms and look into his eyes from inches away. The whites are tinged red, maybe from the bonfire or the crying, and it makes little sparks of gold stand out in the brown.

  “Don’t be silly,” I say. “It’s not about deserving. Things just happen.”

  “Sometimes they happen for a reason.”

  “I still don’t know why my dad left or why my mom got cancer,” I say, matching his serious tone and veering toward grumpy. “But I don’t think it’s because I deserve to suffer.” I put my hands on either side of his face, and inside, I’m thrilling at the openness, of touching his sleep-warm stubble. “What’s wrong? Did you have a bad dream?”

  “Something like that. Are you hungry?”

  I smile indulgently as he rolls onto the floor, stands, and stretches, his arms bent to keep from scraping the low ceiling.

  “You’re a walking appetite,” I say, and he grins wolfishly.

  “I ran into a gunfight yesterday.” He rubs his tummy. “Two, actually. A Croissan’wich isn’t asking a lot.”

  My stomach sinks and burbles. Repress, repress, repress.

  I will not think about Jeremy.

  I will not think about crows pecking out his eyes and frost in his mustache stubble.

  I will not think about how he said “green-suit Matrix assholes,” but all the Valor guys wear black.

  I will not think about how I prefer hunting to being hunted.

  There has to be something good left in the world, but I can’t think of it right now.

  Oh, wait. Yes, I can.

  “And we get Matty back today.” I sit up and stretch, my body stiff and aching. With the truck’s back door up a few inches, there’s a chill in the air, outside of the blankets. I’m glad this stupid assignment happened just as fall was getting crisp and not in the still suffocation of summer or the cold steel of winter.

  “You want to knock out the next person on the list first?”

  He stretches again as he looks at the list, and I see his hip bones and the top of his boxers and a line of golden hair. I almost reach out to touch him, but I’m not that brave yet.

  “Alistair Meade,” I say from memory. “Sounds old. Maybe British.”

  “Sounds like the killer in a horror flick.”

  “Maybe he’s an elderly ax murderer, then,” I say. “I just hope it’s . . .”

  “Easy?”

  I wince and hug myself. “Yeah. That last one hurt.”

  “You never told me what happened with Tom Morrison. But he took the deal, right?”

  “Yeah. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. He had a little girl.”

  “I saw her. When they opened the door.”

  “She looked just like me when I was a kid. He’s a single dad. It was a mortgage, or whatever, to buy the house. It wasn’t even that expensive. I just felt bad.”

  Wyatt’s eyebrows draw down. “That doesn’t seem fair.”

  “I know, right?” I put a firm hand over the pillow to make sure the button is muffled, like I’m talking to myself, maybe. “I mean, no offense, but Dr. Ken Belcher buying more fancy cars and expensive countertops and handmade shoes or whatever, guys like him kind of deserve what they get. But Tom was being responsible. Reasonable. He was trying to be good. He was going to pay it off.”

  “So you think guys like my dad deserve it, huh?” Wyatt says, voice ragged.

  “I just mean . . .”

  I look down. We haven’t really talked about what happened that first day.

  “No. I know what you mean. And I get it. My dad’s an asshole. Was an asshole. But say somebody ran up a bunch of debt and then felt bad and wanted to pay it all back. Do they still deserve it then?”

  “Wait. I’m confused. Was your dad paying off his debt?”

  “Forget it,” Wyatt says. He ruffles my hair like he’s distracted and rolls up the truck door.

  The scene outside is unfamiliar, a ripped-up old fence and trees. As he lumbers off in the woods to do whatever guys do when they wake up in the morning, I whip out one of my disposable finger toothbrushes and exhale in relief as the dead-skunk morning breath is replaced with perky mint. I want to ask him more about his dad, and about his brother, too. And I know he wants to ask me more about the list and what happens when we get to the tenth name. To his brother. If Wyatt will inherit their debt and be scared of doorbells and fruit baskets for the rest of his life. If his brother will take the deal.

  But we’re both holding back from talking about any of that, and I don’t want to be the one to bring it up. Hell, I can’t even ask him how he’s going to pay for the rest of Matty’s surgery bill, why he has a Valor Savings Bank card in the first place. We didn’t ask how much it was going to cost, but he didn’t flinch when he handed over his credit card. Not like my mom always does.

  I stare at the list and contemplate what kind of guy Alistair Meade will be. I wonder if he lives alone and if his house has a nice shower. I wonder if Valor has taken over Chateau Tuscano as a headquarters, or given it to some high-ranking official. Or maybe burned it to the ground. If there’s one thing I learned from history class, it’s that whoever wins the war finishes the story.

  While Wyatt is gone, I roll down the door and give myself a frantically fast bird bath with shower wipes and slip on a new tank top and panties, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and my other pair of jeans. The whole plain, white uniform is making me feel bland and utili­tarian. The blood-spattered, crinkled postal shirt is beyond pathetic by this point, like some leftover prop from a horror movie. And I have to sew that button back on, quick.

  I roll up the back door, and Wyatt’s standing there, smiling.

  “Oh my God, creeper! Were you watching me under the door?” I say with mock outrage, although secretly I’m amused and can’t stop grinning and blushing.

  “Just your feet,” he says with an answering grin. “I like your blue toenails.”

  He takes the driver’s seat on the hunt for breakfast, which is fine with me. I have my license and have never been in an accident or anything, but we definitely can’t afford two cars at home. I’ve just never been comfortable with driving the way that my friends are, and I always marvel at our delivery guys at work, that they’re perfectly happy doing nothing but driving around for six hours a night, delivering pizza to strangers in cars that permanently reek of cigarettes and greasy pepperoni.

  “Where were we?” I ask as the truck bumps up old asphalt.

  “Just another place I know, where me and Mikey used to hang. I figure that if that Jeremy kid could find us, either your shirt or the truck is being tracked. I didn
’t want to abandon it without discussing it first, so I just moved it while you were asleep. Are they going to keep sending twerpy vigilantes after you? Why would they try to kill you, anyway? Don’t you work for them?”

  I snort. These are the same questions that are driving me crazy, but I can’t come up with any good answers, and I can’t let worry tear me apart when I have a job to do. And that makes me angry. “How the hell am I supposed to know? I don’t have an itinerary with almost get shot by your friends in an empty field after midnight penciled in. All I know is what they told me. And that without the GPS, we don’t know how to find the people on the list. And without the shirt button, I don’t get credit for the kills. And without the kills, my mom fucking dies.”

  He takes it in stride, just absorbs my rage and nods. “Can we just pull the info out of the GPS?”

  I prod the screwed-down machine with a blue-nailed toe. “Be my guest. That thing’s tech is tighter than a turtle’s butt.”

  Wyatt pulls into a different gas station, one in the opposite direction of where my mom and I do most of our business. When they cleared the land to build, they seriously destroyed everything around it, and it looks ugly and unnatural, rising out of the dead yellow grass beside a tree-covered mountain. There’s a long, paved road down the hill that dead-ends into the asphalt, crisscrossed with chains and No Trespassing signs.

  I sigh, the anger draining away. Repress, repress, repress. Who needs yoga or therapy when you can be an ostrich with your head up your own ass? “I always wanted to go sledding down that hill,” I say.

  “I’m in.” Wyatt holds out his pinkie. “First time it snows, we’re sledding here.”

  I hold out my pinkie, and we shake on it. And then I blush hot when I realize that he’s making plans with me for something that won’t happen for at least two months, if it even snows at all this year. That he’s thinking of me beyond the end of this assignment—and in a way that involves both of us alive and not hating or regretting each other. I hop out and follow him into the gas station’s artificial warmth.