The Wastelanders

by K. S. Merbeth

  Wolf swears loudly from behind me. Careful not to make any sudden movements, I swivel my eyes from side to side to take in the situation. Dolly and Tank are also being held at gunpoint, Tank on the ground and Dolly crouching like an animal ready to pounce. Pretty Boy is on his knees with his hands behind his head, though nobody is actually pointing a gun at him. And Wolf, I can only suspect, is as tied up as the rest of us.

  The fire has burned down to dully glowing embers and the sun is just starting to rise. We almost made it through the night without any trouble. I try to keep in mind that Wolf said we are the trouble, but that’s hard to believe right now.

  “Who the hell was on watch?” Wolf asks. “’Cause I am going to kick their ass.”

  “It was you,” Dolly says flatly.

  “Aw, shit. I take that back about the ass-kicking.”

  “Shut up,” the man above me growls. He’s a stooped guy with missing teeth and a face peeling from sunburn. He jabs me in the forehead with the gun. “Nobody move.”

  He takes a few steps away, still keeping the gun pointed in my direction as he makes his way around our campsite. As his attention shifts to the jeep, I sneak a glance at Wolf. He’s on the ground, held down by a hulk of a man with a wide-brimmed hat. Wolf looks over at me and raises his eyebrows. Maybe it’s a signal, but I have no idea what he’s trying to tell me. I shrug at him helplessly and he rolls his eyes.

  “What the fuck is this?” the man checking out our camp asks. I look over to see him drop a bag, chopped-up townies spilling out as it hits the ground. He recoils, covering his mouth. “Well, looks like we caught ourselves some sharks, boys.”

  “Hey, hey, isn’t there a bounty out for sharks?” one of the others asks. “From them guys out by the radio tower?”

  “Only if we bring ’em in live, I think.”

  “What do they want with live sharks?”

  “Don’t know, but that’s how it is. We could take the jeep, but still, too many of ’em.”

  “So we shoot a couple, bring in the rest.”

  “Waste of good money.”

  As the men eagerly discuss their prize, their attention falters. I look back at Dolly and notice her slowly reaching for her boot, eyes locked on the man above her. She’s so close—but so is his gun, and if he happens to look down at her …

  I don’t think, I just spring up and barrel toward the man pinning Wolf down. I ram into him at full speed. It has all the effectiveness of a pebble against a boulder. But when I wrap my arms around him, he’s forced to let go of Wolf and stand, trying to shake me off. He lets out a furious bellow.

  “Keep it under control, Kid!” Wolf says, and he’s gone. I can’t tell where or why or what’s happening. The man has taken to spinning wildly and trying to tear me off him with his huge, clumsy hands. Everything is a blur of motion, and all I can do is cling. My grip slips. I dig my fingers in like claws, but I can feel myself losing my hold bit by bit. When the man stumbles and falls, he flings me off.

  I hit the ground like a sack of meat. I’m instantly sprawled out on my back, the breath knocked out of me and the world still spinning. I suck in air and look to the side. The huge man is already stirring, head turning in my direction. I flip onto my stomach and crawl away. I block out all the noise and chaos around me, vision tunneling, searching for anything that can help me—a person, a weapon, anything!

  I see the jeep. I propel myself toward it on all fours and worm underneath.

  Though the noise rages on nearby, I feel safer in the cramped darkness underneath the vehicle. I allow myself a moment to breathe, closing my eyes and resting my forehead against the cool sand.

  Something cold and sharp pokes the side of my throat.

  I hold my breath and raise my head agonizingly slowly.

  “Pretty Boy?”

  “Kid? Ah, hell, you scared the shit out of me.” He pulls the knife back, gripping it so tightly his knuckles turn white. He eyes are wide and his chest heaving. “What are you doing?”

  “Hiding. There was this big guy … I got away, but … wait, why are you hiding? Don’t you have a gun?”

  “Just get out!”

  “What?”

  “I’m hiding here, so go somewhere else!”

  “But I—”

  We shut up as a pair of boots appears next to the jeep. We look at each other, and back at the boots. The man outside falls to a crouch with a grunt. One large hand reaches underneath the jeep, groping around near Pretty Boy.

  Don’t move, I mouth at him. He’s focused entirely on the hand moving closer and closer to him. It brushes his arm.

  He lashes out with his knife, severing two fingers. The man yells and recoils the hand, but his other one shoots under and grabs me by the leg.

  “Pretty Boy!” I squeak imploringly, reaching for him. He pulls back, his face cold. I’m yanked out from my hiding place, hands full of nothing but sand.

  I end up upside down, held by one ankle and swinging helplessly through the air. I catch glimpses of things happening around me as I swing back and forth: Wolf struggling with someone in the dirt, Dolly chasing a wounded man, Tank on the ground and motionless, Pretty Boy wriggling out from beneath the jeep. My heart surges at the latter, but he runs in the opposite direction.

  “Help!” I yell, still trying to find something to hold on to as the man carries me away. “Pretty Boy! Someone! Help me!”

  No one does. And when I turn my head, it’s all too clear where I’m being carried: the fire. Along the way he grabs a container of gasoline.

  “Oh shit,” I say, mind going blank with panic. “Oh shit oh shit oh shit.” I squirm like a worm on a hook. The man looks down at me and grins.

  “Into the fire, little monkey,” he says, gleefully swinging me.

  “I’m not a monkey!” I wail. I latch on to one of his legs and cling there, wrapping both arms around him.

  He stops, grunts in annoyance, and swings the gas can at me in an attempt to dislodge my hold. One glancing blow hits me on the ear and makes my head ring, but I refuse to let go. He drops the can with a curse and grabs one of my arms with his injured hand.

  I act instinctively and bite down on the bloody stubs of his fingers.

  Howling, he drops me, and I get a face full of sand. I taste dirt and blood. I force myself onto my hands and knees, shaking.

  A bang deafens me. The raider stumbles, disbelief spreading across his face as red blossoms on his chest. He almost catches his footing again, but another gunshot goes off and a new wound appears near his heart. He crashes down into our still-smoldering fire pit, and struggles for a few moments before lying still.

  Footsteps approach. Wolf prods me in the side with the barrel of a gun.

  “Y’all right, Kid?” he asks.

  “Yeah. I’m okay.” I pat myself down to verify, checking for injuries and finding nothing substantial. I look up at him. “Thanks for saving me.”

  “Eh, just didn’t want you to get all the glory.”

  I laugh breathlessly and he offers me the barrel of the gun, which I use to pull myself to my feet. My mouth tastes like severed fingers. I spit a couple of times, which doesn’t help.

  “Damn, that was a mess,” Wolf says.

  “Yeah … and what was that about a reward for sharks?” I ask.

  “Y’know, I’ve been hearing rumors along those lines for a while now,” he says. He pauses for a moment, thinking, and then shrugs. “Eh, well. Sounds like a problem for later.”

  He walks off, and I look around to survey the damage. Tank is still on the ground, but stirring now. Wolf crouches beside him, laughs, and pats him on the shoulder, so I figure he’s all right.

  Dolly appears beside me, moving too close like a little kid who doesn’t understand what “personal space” means. Her face and clothes are stained with blood. It’s hard to tell how much of it is hers. I stare at her. After an awkward moment she holds out her hand, clutching something. It takes me a few moments to recognize the dirty piece of fa
bric as my beanie. I don’t even remember losing it.

  “Oh, wow, thanks,” I say. I shake it out and put it back on. Dolly says something I don’t quite catch.

  “What?”

  She leans closer. I step forward and wrap my arms around her, automatically assuming she’s looking for a hug or something. The way she stiffens up immediately informs me that I was wrong about that. After a brief pause she pats me on the shoulder awkwardly, and I pull back, a little embarrassed. But once I let go, she offers a smile for a brief instant before moving on to inspect the bodies of the raiders. When one moves, she shoots him in the face. I look away, grimacing.

  “Anyone seen Pretty Boy?” Wolf yells from Tank’s side. I point in the direction I saw him going.

  “He ran off,” I say.

  “’Course he did. Always runs when things get too hairy. Dolly, find him.”

  Dolly gives the raider’s body another kick and dutifully runs off, gun in hand. The sight gives me a flicker of worry for Pretty Boy. I do my best to stifle it, remembering how I almost burned to death while he ran away. Taking a shaky breath, I walk over to the jeep and sit down for a much-needed rest. My heart is still pounding and my hands trembling as if my body hasn’t realized I’m out of danger yet. Tank lumbers over and sits next to me. We smile wearily at each other.

  “What a way to wake up,” I say.

  “I’ve had worse,” he says, chuckling.

  “I don’t even want to know.”

  “Really, I’m mostly disappointed I got knocked out so early. As soon as the fight broke out the guy hit me over the head with his gun, and then … next thing I remember is waking up to a bunch of dead raiders.” He lets out a long sigh. “Missed the whole damn fight. Again.”

  Before I can respond, Dolly marches back into camp with Pretty Boy in tow, gun in one hand and a fistful of his hair in the other. She shoves him in front of Wolf. He stumbles for a few steps before catching his balance, and slowly raises his eyes to Wolf’s face.

  “Well, glad to see you’re all okay,” he says with a flicker of a smile.

  “Shut up.” Wolf waves at him dismissively before turning to me and Tank. “And you two, get off your lazy asses!”

  “Seriously?” Tank groans, hauling himself to his feet. I follow.

  Wolf shades his eyes with a hand and looks toward the sun, which is just starting to peek out over the distant mountains.

  “Time to move out,” he says. “The day’s just getting started.”

  VIII

  Heating Up

  “Well, the jeep’s wrecked.”

  “How wrecked?”

  “Very,” Tank says, shutting the hood with a bang. “Looks like it took a gunshot too many.”

  “Damn.” Wolf begins to pace, running his hands through his stringy dreadlocks.

  “You can’t fix it?” I ask, turning my head from side to side to watch him. I’m in the broken-down vehicle next to Pretty Boy, where we were seated and ready to take off until it failed to start. My hand brushes against his leg and I jerk it away with a whisper of an apology. He doesn’t seem to notice.

  “What? No. Do I look like a fucking mechanic to you, Kid? Don’t be stupid.”

  “Oh. Sorry,” I say sheepishly. He doesn’t respond, but Tank ruffles my hair.

  “I might be able to if I had the right tools, kiddo, but I don’t,” he says.

  “So what do we do now?” Pretty Boy asks. He only glances at me once, and looks quickly back at Wolf. He hasn’t looked me in the eyes since the fight.

  “We get a new one, obviously.”

  “Where from?”

  “Ahh …” Wolf stops pacing and stares into the distance. I picture rusty gears turning in his head. After a moment he snaps his fingers, triumphant. “We go see the Queen!”

  “And how do we get there?”

  “Stop asking stupid questions, Pretty Boy.”

  “Who’s the Queen?”

  “Same goes for you, Kid.”

  Dolly produces a rolled-up piece of paper from a pack and holds it out to Pretty Boy. As he unfurls it, the others gather around him. I join in, peering curiously.

  “Is that a map?” I ask. I can’t read a word of it, but I recognize the shapes of mountains and roads.

  “Again with the stupid questions,” Wolf says. “Of course it’s a damn map. See, it’s got all the towns and shit.”

  “Wow.” This piece of paper holds more of the world than I’ve ever seen, not that it means much. Before I left town, I knew other places like it existed, but certainly not their locations or names. “You guys made this?”

  “Got it off a caravan,” Pretty Boy says.

  “So you stole it?”

  “It doesn’t count as stealing if they’re dead,” Wolf objects.

  “I think it still counts if you killed them for the map …”

  “I never said we killed them,” he says. “And no. That would count as looting, ain’t that right?”

  “Isn’t that worse than stealing?”

  “Whatever.” Wolf silences me with a wave of his hand and gives Pretty Boy a rough nudge. “Where are we off to, then?”

  “All right, well we just came from—” Pretty Boy slides his finger over the map and taps a small black mark. “Here. It was called Steelforge. So now we should be just around here.” He moves his hand up.

  “Is Bramble on there?” I interrupt. He looks up and meets my eyes briefly.

  “Yeah. Of course.” He points it out. It looks like it’s only a stone’s throw away from Steelforge. It felt like so much longer when I had to walk most of the way.

  “That where you’re from, Kid?” Tank asks.

  “Well, I—”

  “I don’t give a shit about Bramble. We want to see the Queen,” Wolf urges impatiently. I shut up.

  “Right. She’s up here.” Pretty Boy points.

  “Fuck, that’s far,” Tank groans. “All that on foot?”

  “We won’t make it,” Pretty Boy says. “There’s no way. We might have enough food, but definitely not water.”

  “We have to make it,” Wolf says. He regards the map with pursed lips, and then indicates a town sitting between us and our destination. “What’s this one?”

  “Blackfort,” Pretty Boy says. “I’ve heard of it. Not very friendly.”

  “So if we raid Blackfort on the way, we can make it to the Queen, yeah?”

  “Well, we can follow the road … but, again, there’s the water.” He shrugs. “Hard to say.”

  “Great.” Wolf claps his hands together and grins. “That’s the plan, then.”

  “Wait, but—”

  Despite Pretty Boy’s protests, the others begin preparations. As Tank siphons gas out of the jeep and Dolly searches the raiders’ corpses, Wolf gathers up some makeshift packs and tosses them out, shouting orders about how to divide up supplies. I rush to follow his directions, and Pretty Boy joins me. Each of us gets a small ration of food, a jug of water, and some stuff worth trading: gasoline, first aid supplies, weapons. I stuff everything into my backpack, my blanket tucked neatly beneath it. This time they even give me a gun, after a lecture from Wolf about how I better keep it pointed far away from him. Having a real weapon tucked into my waistband is both exciting and nerve-racking.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing, Wolf,” Pretty Boy says, weighing his portion of water and looking uneasy. “This isn’t much.”

  “Oh, cut the whining. We’ve made it through worse.”

  “Yeah, and usually someone ends up dead.”

  “Well, what a coincidence. I’ve been looking for an excuse to get rid of you!” Wolf says cheerfully, clapping him on the back. Pretty Boy looks even more nervous. “By the way, Kid, I don’t suppose you can read?”

  “Nope, sorry.”

  “Damn shame. Relax, Pretty Boy, we still need you around.” Wolf grins at him. “And don’t think I didn’t notice you pocketing the map. Hand it over. That’s way too important for you to carry.”
<
br />   Pretty Boy looks as if he might argue, but another look from Wolf silences him. He purses his lips and pulls out the map. Wolf takes it, gives him a shove that may or may not be playful, and tosses the map to Dolly.

  “Well, guess we’re as ready as we’re gonna get,” he says, and we’re off.

  It doesn’t take long for the going to get rough. Everyone sets off in good spirits, talking and joking, but after a few hours the sun is directly overhead and the heat beats us into silence. The light brings the wastelands to life, and soon heat radiates from both above and below us. The cracked asphalt of the road becomes too hot to walk on, so instead we walk alongside it. The sand is hot, too. I can feel it through the thin soles of my boots, and if I pause for more than a second it feels like my feet are being boiled in them.

  The landscape remains the same in every direction. There’s nothing but dry, empty sand marked only by the occasional old building. The mountains in the distance never seem to get any closer. It’s easy to lose yourself in the wastes. When I was alone I feared they might swallow me, especially with bad memories behind me and Lord-knew-what ahead. I now know why the wastes can make men mad. There are crazies that live in the emptier parts, wild and hungry like packs of dogs. I had a brush with them once with my papa, and I still have nightmares about it.

  Traveling is easier with company. The others carry on with determination and purpose, and I follow their lead. I plunge forward, one foot in front of the other. Despite my best efforts, soon I’m panting and sweating and lagging behind, unable to match the pace of Wolf and Dolly. I end up beside Pretty Boy.

  He stares ahead without acknowledging my presence. One hand brushes sweaty hair back from his face, and he groans a wordless complaint.

  “Umm,” I say after a few moments. “I’m not, uh, mad at you or anything. Just so you know.”

  He looks at me sideways and away again, hesitating before he speaks.

  “Why would you be?”

  “Well …” I bite my lip. “You did, you know, kind of run off and leave me to die.”

  “Ah. Right.” He pauses again, and I sneak a glance at him, not sure if he intends to continue. He clears his throat, still not looking straight at me. “Yeah. I guess I did. Sorry about that.”