by Tom Abrahams
The sun’s bright yellow hue was a smudge beyond the haze. It was late in the afternoon, yet the daylight felt like noon. The wind whipped around Zeke, swirling sand into his face. He tilted his head down, lowering his hat.
“Phil and Gabe will take the truck,” said Uriel as he reached the team. “Raf and Barach will share the Impala.”
Zeke’s attention darted amongst the brooding trio and landed on Uriel. “What about you?”
Uriel ran a hand along the mane of red hair atop her head. “I drew the short straw,” she said, a mischievous twinkle in her green eyes. “I ride shotgun with you.”
Chapter Six
Zeke cranked the ignition, and the purr of his Superbird’s V-8 engine comforted him. He reached over to put on the aftermarket seatbelt he’d had installed, more of a racing harness than a typical belt.
The RPM dial tipped to the right, marking the press of the pedal. He grinned and looked over at Uriel already strapped into her seat.
“Do you put a quarter in this thing to make it shake?” she asked. “I mean, seriously, my brains are gonna scramble.”
Zeke shifted the car into first and slid his fingers across the wheel. He sped up and the car responded, punching forward and sinking them into their seats.
“That’s what you get for drawing the short straw,” he said.
A wash of familiar comfort spread throughout his tensed body. There was something about being behind the wheel of his Superbird. This was where he was most comfortable in the world. This was his weapon, the extension of himself. He’d spent so much time at its controls, the Plymouth was a living, breathing thing. He spoke to it; it listened. He asked it questions; it contemplated answers. He told it secrets; it kept them.
Zeke spun the wheel and peeled around the bar. The truck and Impala awaited him at the shoulder of the highway. Across from him sat the Horde. Zeke reached the lot and downshifted. He held his foot on the brake and motioned toward the Horde with his chin.
“They can’t chase us?” he asked.
Uriel shook her head. “Not this time. It’s against the rules.”
Zeke shifted into the next gear and slammed his foot on the gas. The car shot forward. The tires grabbed and then slipped as he drifted onto the highway before jetting forward. He and his new crew zipped past the Horde, still worried they’d give chase. They didn’t.
The engine roared its approval as he pushed into fourth gear, and responded with a jerk. Zeke relished the sensation of acceleration shoving him back into his seat.
He checked the rearview to spot the truck keeping pace with him. He couldn’t see the Impala, but he assumed it was behind the truck. He noticed the front of the truck was outfitted with a large chrome frame. It was a cattle catcher.
Uriel sat with her knees pulled up to her chest, her feet on the dashboard. She hadn’t asked permission, but Zeke would not scold her for it. She already thought he was a douche. No need to add to that perception by being a territorial gearhead, given her willingness to help him rescue Li.
“Why are you helping me?” he asked.
Uriel stared out the window, through the thin varnish of dust coating the glass, and spoke without turning to face him. Her response, which Zeke half-expected to be fueled by sarcasm, was seemingly genuine.
“Because that’s what good people do,” she said. “They help others in need.”
“I’m not a good person,” he said.
Uriel turned to face him. Her expression was flat, unaffected by what he’d admitted. “So? None of us are. What does that have to do with anything?”
The incongruity of her response struck him as odd. On one hand, she was telling him good people selflessly helped others; on the other, she was admitting her own failings.
“So are you good or bad?” he asked.
She shrugged and looked back out the window. “A little bit of both. One more than the other.”
She didn’t elaborate. Her mood was markedly subdued once they’d hit the road and reached cruising speed. When he’d climbed behind the wheel, he’d expected a nonstop barrage of innuendo, double entendre, and teasing insults.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “Just never been a fan of this part.”
The speedometer swept to the right, reaching ninety-five miles per hour.
“What part?”
“The approach,” Uriel said. “I want to get there, dig in, and do what needs to be done. I don’t have a lot of patience, if you haven’t noticed.”
She spun in her seat to face him. Her heels were on the dash.
Zeke’s attention bounced between the road ahead and the woman next to him. There was something intoxicating about her. She was at once judgmental and accepting. Her style was a mix of individuality and trite conformity. And then there was the perfume. Zeke tried to focus on the conversation, on the implications of what she’d just revealed.
He pushed his thoughts about her to the back of his mind, shoving them to the overstuffed part of his brain that held off the unanswered and unasked questions he’d hoarded since falling onto Pedro’s front stoop.
“You’ve done this before?” he asked.
“Yep. A few times,” she answered.
“You’ve gone to rescue the girlfriend of a bad guy from other worse guys?” he asked.
Uriel slid her feet from the dash and sat upright. She tightened the end of her ponytail and draped it over her left shoulder. “That’s specific.”
Zeke tipped his hat back on his head. “You know what I mean.”
“I’ve tried to help people before,” she said. “I never gave much consideration to whether they were good or bad. One, that’s a sliding scale. And two, it’s subjective.”
“Morality’s subjective?”
“Is that all that makes someone good or bad? Even if it is, who’s to say what’s good and what’s not? It’s all perspective.”
Zeke shook his head. “I get it. You’re avoiding the question though.”
“What’s the question?”
Zeke checked his rearview mirror. The Ford flashed its headlights.
“What does he want?” Zeke asked.
“Who?”
“Phil. He’s flashing his lights at me.”
Uriel undid the harness and craned her neck to look out the back window. Then she sank back into her position, sliding low into the seat. “He wants you to get over and let him lead.”
“Why?”
“Do you know where you’re going?”
“Yeah,” said Zeke in a tone that feigned offense. “The city.”
Uriel put her feet back on the dash and crossed her legs at her ankles. She wasn’t wearing her harness. “Do you know how to get there?”
Zeke thought about it. He didn’t know where he was. Even if he knew where he was going, he didn’t know how to get there.
“That’s what I thought,” said Uriel. “Might want to let him lead.”
Zeke took his foot off the gas and eased to the right lane, the tires humming along the smooth asphalt. Up ahead, the distance warbled from the heat; the low hills danced and shimmied.
The truck’s loud engine roared as the jacked-up rig rumbled past him. The Impala kept its distance and maintained its course along the center of the highway. Once the truck had eased into its spot, Zeke sped up and moved to the center.
He glanced at Uriel. She was nibbling on a fingernail.
“How many times have you done this?” he asked, picking the conversation back up.
“Like I said, a few.”
“Why?” Zeke asked, his attention on the back of the F-150 and the impressive chrome frame on its nose. “I mean, none of this makes sense. I show up. I’m a total stranger. I’ve got baggage. I’m badly hurt. You guys fix me up, give me water, and then offer to help no questions asked?”
“And?”
Zeke slapped the steering wheel. He gritted his teeth, clenching his jaw. There was being coy and then there was being evasive.
>
“Aaannd,” he said, his frustration evident, “that’s weird. It’s just weird. None of this makes sense. I tried to get Pedro to answer my questions. He wouldn’t. If I had a choice, I’m not sure I would trust you, any of you. But I don’t have a choice. Choosers can’t be beggars.”
“You’ve got that backwards, Socrates,” she said. “It’s beggars can’t be choosers.”
Zeke considered that. “Huh,” he said. “That makes a lot more sense.”
“It’s an old saying,” she said. “You’re young.”
“See,” he said, “it’s things like that. Little things that put more questions into my head. Nothing feels right about this. Nothing. Give me something, Uriel. Anything.”
Nothing. Something. Anything.
Uriel sighed, although perhaps it was a huff. She uncrossed her legs and sat up, using her balled fists to push her torso higher in the seat. Unharnessed, she leaned toward Zeke and put her hand on his right thigh.
She was staring at him, the emerald green of her irises hypnotizing him with their rich color. He looked back toward the road ahead and the rear of the truck leading them on a path toward the city.
“Here’s the thing,” she said. “All of us owe Pedro. He helped us when we needed it. So we stick around and help others. We try to help others. Some are beyond help. We try though. It’s just what we do. You should be thankful more than skeptical.”
“I am thankful,” Zeke said.
“What’s that saying? Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth?”
Zeke considered her point. She was right. He was better to take the help and not ask questions about it. It wasn’t often in his life that people had been on his side without there being something in it for them.
“I can’t pay you,” he said. “Not yet anyhow. I don’t have any money.”
“We don’t expect any. That’s not how we roll.”
She tugged at the harness and pulled it back over her shoulders. She buckled the straps and eased herself more comfortably into the seat. They rode in silence for what felt like twenty or even thirty minutes. She continued picking at her fingernails, nibbling at them. What she’d said kept resonating in his mind, replaying like a recording.
Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
Behind him, the sun was beginning to set. It had sunk from its zenith and was slipping beneath the outcropping of jagged peaks beyond the end of the infinite highway he’d already traveled. He’d lost track of time. It had been a long day. Or had it been longer than that?
This didn’t look like the vast Badlands he knew. It had a network of roads, highways remaining between the eastern and western protectorates. They all ran perpendicular to each other. Some were north and south; others traveled east to west. It was a relic network of highways that predated the protectorates and the fall of the United States, to a time when natural farming ruled the central North American economies.
Because the roads, despite being in the middle of the Badlands, were so well-known, they were dangerous.
There were Badlanders, savages who lay in wait all along the routes to ambush and steal the Tic shipments. Also, the protectorate’s Tactical Marine Force from eastern protectorates would try to control access to some of the highways. They would send large contingents of Marines to set up checkpoints in the Badlands. The Badlanders would sometimes challenge them, but given that the Badlanders lived and worked in small nomadic tribes, the Marines most often had them outgunned and outmanned.
The far western protectorate, beyond the mountain range, was a supplier of metals. Iron, gypsum, marble, and titanium were valuable commodities the eastern and southern protectorates needed and didn’t have. The western protectorate needed water. Without snowmelt, and there was little of it now, those city-states in and west of the mountains had no reliable supply. The Tic supplemented the “official allotment” with its own lucrative black-market trade.
Zeke had made the run countless times in large trucks. It didn’t make sense to carry small volumes of anything in his Superbird such a long distance west and east.
This place didn’t look like any of it. The topography was similar, but different.
He glanced at Uriel; her head bobbed gently against the headrest. She looked sweeter when she was asleep. There was still an edge, though. Sleep couldn’t dull that, not with the red mane, the tattoos, and the leather.
Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
As the bright light outside the car diffused into orange and yellow with the setting sun and the distant hills ahead of him came into focus, the proverb Uriel had so expertly proffered was replaced with another one with which Zeke was acutely familiar.
“If it seems too good to be true,” he muttered to himself, “it probably is.”
Chapter Seven
Li couldn’t keep from shivering. Her teeth chattered, her hands trembled, and her fingers were bloodied and throbbed with the sharp, unmistakable sting of trauma. She was crouched in the corner of a dark cell, alone and afraid. But she was determined not to die here and not to give the Tic what it wanted. There was only so much life they could suck from her before she’d bite back. She’d reached that point.
In the darkness of the room, she couldn’t see her wounded hands. She couldn’t see the tray of food they’d left for her two days ago. Or was it three? There was no way of knowing how long she’d been in this room.
Her only company, save the occasional delivery of dry cereal and her thoughts, was the skittering of rodents across the floor on the opposite side of the space. She sank deeper into the corner and pulled her knees tight against her chest.
Li was nude. They had neither clothed nor bathed her. The stubble on her legs was rough on her fingertips as she rubbed them, trying to focus on a sensation other than the throbbing pain that came from her missing fingernails. Three of them were gone, plied from their beds.
She leaned her head back against the wall, inhaled, and gagged. The mélange of odors that clung to her unwashed body reeked. They were nauseating. She held her breath then inhaled, trying to avoid the whiff of stank that coated her bare flesh.
She was exhausted but could not sleep, and she knew dehydration was taking its toll on her psyche. Her mind would drift in and out of reality, swinging from the present to the past and back again.
In front of her, floating in the darkness, was the note Brina had shared with her before using the pliers. It was the note Zeke had left in their bed before he’d disappeared.
It wasn’t real. Nothing about us ever was.
Ever?
He’d loved her. He’d told her that countless times. She’d believed him. Maybe she was the fool.
They were together for over two years. They’d built something together. He’d shown her his world, as filthy as it was, and shared with her the rush of adrenaline that came from clandestine work.
He was a master at his trade. And while she’d judged him for it, she came to admire him for how good he was at doing what he did. It was an aphrodisiac, watching a man like Zeke exude the confidence it took to outrun the law with such aplomb. It sent chills up and down her spine just thinking about it.
The dark cell in which she now rotted was a world away from the place where she’d met Zeke, from the place where they’d first connected. Though, as she thought about it, perhaps they weren’t that far apart at all, despite the passage of time between now and then.
She’d scored a job at a speakeasy on the city’s outskirts a few years back. It was underground, built in the cellar of what was once a butcher shop. The place now exchanged vouchers for engineered fish and modified grain. In the back, behind the storeroom, was a door that led to the secret bar where the Tic’s top generals would meet and make deals to move their wares.
Through a friend of a friend, the speakeasy’s owner hired her. His name was Semion Mogilevich. He looked nice enough, but she knew he was as tough as nails. He had to be to run an illegal Tic-infused bar. There was something about him, the wa
y he carried himself, that gave off the impression he was more important than he wanted people to believe he was. Or maybe it was the opposite. It could be that he wanted people to think he was more important than he was. Either way, he was hiding something. Li saw the layers in people. It was part of who she was. With Mogilevich, there were a lot of layers.
He’d given her an elevator stare when he hired her. She was used to it in the unjust patriarchy that was the post-Dearth world. She’d smiled back at him, her bright red lips spreading into a broad grin that revealed her near-perfect teeth.
He’d hired her with a wink and told her the job was easy if she followed the rules. If she didn’t, the job was likely a dead end. He’d said it in a way that told her he meant the more literal version of the expression.
“There are three things you gotta do,” he’d told her during her first shift, his accent slick with northeastern grease. “Look good, fill orders, and keep quiet.”
“Not a problem,” she said to him. “I’ll do all three.”
“You got the first one,” he said wryly. “The second one is straightforward. That third one, though…”
“Yes?”
“That third one’s the toughest,” he warned. “You’re gonna hear things, sweetie. Some of ’em you will not understand. Some of ’em you might. Either way, best to forget everything. It’s like them three monkeys, you know?”
“Monkeys?”
Mogilevich covered his eyes, then his ears, then his mouth. He looked at her. When she shrugged, he huffed out the answer. “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil,” he said. “Sheesh. Sure don’t gotta worry about you understanding anything. Just look pretty, doll. Let the rest take care of itself.”
Li had pretended not to be offended. He slapped her on her backside and told her to get to work.
The speakeasy was little more than a bunch of tables in a dimly lit basement. At one end of the room was a bar. Behind it was a long table that held a menagerie of cheap liquor. There was a pair of battered stainless-steel kegs sitting on one end of the bar.