The Wastelanders

by K. S. Merbeth

  “I’m okay.” I realize my eyes are still closed and force them open. The back of the truck is an absolute mess, the boxes now scattered all over the floor. I stand up and brush myself off.

  “All right,” Tank says. He steps over fallen boxes and supplies and makes his way to the back doors. He places a hand on the latch and turns to look back. “Kid, you run up front and make sure Wolf’s crazy ass is still alive. Dolly and I will cover you.”

  “Got it.”

  Tank opens the latch and pushes one door open. He pauses for a second behind the other door, waiting for gunfire, but none comes. He nods at us and steps outside. Dolly slips out after him. I follow with my pistol held ready.

  The room outside is full of dust. I wave a hand as I step out, trying to get a clear look at anything, but it’s impossible. I can’t even tell how big the room is. I pull part of my shirt over my face to avoid breathing in dust and inch along the side of the truck, using touch to guide me. I keep my gun out. By the time I reach the front of the truck, the dust is starting to settle. The vehicle is a wreck, the hood dented in where it smashed into the wall, and the windshield is shattered. I struggle to pry open the door, and it falls off completely.

  Wolf is in the driver’s seat and looks relatively unharmed, which means his ridiculous plan actually worked. He’s covered from the neck down in pillows. Pillows of various shapes and colors, all strapped to his torso and limbs for protection. It makes him look like a giant, fluffy scarecrow. He has a blanket over his head, too, which kept all the broken glass off him. He got pissed at us for laughing at him while he was tying them on, so I try to refrain from laughing now, but it’s hard. He’s struggling to undo his seat belt. He can barely even move around in his seat, and the seat belt is stretched as tight as it can go across him.

  I reach over to undo the seat belt and grab one of his pillow-arms, half-dragging him out of the truck. Once he steps down, he stumbles for a second before falling flat on his padded stomach. It releases a soft fffshh of air as the pillows beneath him deflate slightly. He shakes off the blanket covering his head, dispatching shards of glass with it, and I can no longer stop myself from laughing.

  “Fuckin’ told you it would work!” Wolf says gleefully. He sits up with visible effort, and needs my help to stand.

  “Yeah, it’s … genius,” I say, laughing again at the sight of him. His arms and legs look ludicrously thick, and the padding on his stomach makes him look fatter than Tank.

  With the dust all settled down, the room we destroyed becomes visible. It’s small, some sort of entrance lobby. It’s plain aside from a few paintings on the wall, one of which is now dangling crookedly and about to fall off. It looks like our truck smashed right through the front desk, and there are at least two mangled bodies in the wake of the tires. There’s no sign of anyone alive. After sweeping the room and checking all the corners, Tank and Dolly return to us.

  “This is a bit of a letdown, honestly,” Wolf says. “I was expecting a gunfight right off the bat.”

  “Yeah, what a shame, that getup would have been real intimidating,” Tank says.

  “Fuck you. Safety first.” Wolf waddles over to the truck, which is releasing an alarming amount of smoke from under its hood. He grabs a sawed-off shotgun and a metal baseball bat for himself, and a heavy-looking backpack, which he tosses at me. I scramble to catch it, but it hits the ground. I bend down to pick it up.

  “Whoa, Kid, watch it. That thing is full of grenades an’ shit.”

  “W-What!?” I nearly drop it again. “Well don’t be throwing it around like that! And why do I have to carry it?”

  “’Cause everyone else has big-ass guns to worry about. Just remember, you mess up and you’ll blow us all to hell.”

  “Gee, thanks.” I secure the straps around my shoulders. It isn’t as heavy as I expected, but I feel nervous with it on my back. “I feel like a suicide bomber.”

  “Don’t worry, that’s only our last-resort plan,” Wolf says. He starts removing his pillows one by one. Before I can figure out how serious he is, or he can finish de-pillowing himself, a door near us bursts open. The three others immediately turn their guns toward it, and I fumble to get my pistol out of my belt.

  A man’s head pokes out of the doorway. A burst of gunfire follows as Tank, Dolly, and Wolf all open fire. The man retreats hastily, leaving a door riddled with bullet holes.

  “Oh hell no,” Wolf says. “You ain’t gettin’ away so easy.” He runs toward the door, heedless of the pillows still covering most of him, and busts through. Dolly and Tank follow, and I do the same after a slight pause. But before I can even make it to the doorway, all three of them turn and run back outside, pushing me along with them. The sound of gunfire explodes from behind them.

  “Fuck, that’s a lot of them!” Tank says.

  “We’re so fucked,” Wolf says. “We need to find another door.”

  Dolly grabs a grenade off her belt, pulls the pin, and tosses it through the open door. Everyone pulls to one side. The grenade goes off, and silence follows. We all look at each other uncertainly.

  “Someone check,” Wolf says.

  “Why are you looking at me?” Tank asks. “Just ’cause I’m big don’t mean I’m bulletproof. You go, pillow man.”

  “Do you think pillows will help against gunfire?” I ask, doubtful.

  “Shut up, Kid. You go. As the most useless member of the crew, that’s your duty.”

  “W-What? What about that other door, we can—”

  Before I can finish, Wolf grabs me by the backpack, nearly lifting me off my feet, and shoves me through the doorway. I stumble for a few steps and then freeze, looking around warily. The remains of a few bodies are splattered on the floor and walls, but otherwise the hallway is empty. The whole building looks like it’s falling apart, too. I thought Saint’s headquarters would have the same kind of fancy looks as the Queen’s, but it’s all very plain and simple.

  “Nobody’s here,” I call back to the others. Wolf creeps through the door cautiously, as if expecting I’m lying, with Dolly and Tank on his heels. Dolly stays facing backward, watching the door behind us as we come to a halt in the middle of the hallway.

  “Well, shit,” Wolf says. “Guess we scared ’em off, huh?”

  The door behind us opens and in pours a crowd of armed men and women. They’re a ragtag bunch dressed in scrappy wasteland clothing, each with a red bandana tied to their left arm. Other than that, they look more like well-equipped townies than the trained army I was expecting, but there are a lot of them. Dolly and the others open fire immediately, gunning them down as they try to funnel through the doorway. I panic and run forward, heading straight for another door. Just as I’m about to grab the handle, it opens to reveal another group of Saint’s soldiers. I scream and slam the door shut before they can react. There’s no way to lock the door, and I know I only bought myself a few seconds, so I run back to the others.

  “Behind us! More of them!” I yell.

  “Which behind us?” Wolf asks, turning my way. I point. The other two stay focused on trying to push back the crowd coming at us from the other side.

  “Kid, you have a gun, fucking use it!”

  “Right!” I steady my shaking hands on the pistol and plant myself next to Wolf. With a face of steely determination, he points his sawed-off shotgun and fires. It takes out chunks of all three men in the front of the group. While he reloads, I fire my pistol desperately, catching one man twice in the gut and another in the shoulder. It doesn’t take either of them down, but it slows them enough for Wolf to be ready to fire again. But I can tell we’re not nearly fast or efficient enough, and so can Wolf.

  “We need to move!” he says. “Can’t be tryin’ to fight in two directions!” He gestures to Tank and Dolly, and they move closer to us. Back-to-back, we make our way down the hallway and toward the door ahead of us. We start by taking it slow and steady, until I hear the dull click-click-click behind me that indicates someone’s o
ut of ammo. Tank abruptly turns and shoves past me and Wolf. He takes off running down the hallway and bashes into the group of Saint’s men like a battering ram. Wolf jumps in after him, swinging his baseball bat and cracking skulls left and right. After a few more seconds, Dolly and I drop our attempt to hold off the ones behind us and start running as well. It’s hard with this bulky backpack, but I move as fast as I can. She tosses a grenade behind us, and neither of us turns to check the result. Our crew plows through the group of men, carving a bloody path.

  A bullet hits me in the back. There’s a moment of blinding panic where I think I’m done for. The initial hit feels like being punched, hard, by someone a lot bigger than me—I close my eyes and wait for the worse pain to follow, but nothing comes. I look down at myself and remember the bulletproof vest. Still, being shot hurts. The next bullet hits me in the chest, forcing all the air from my lungs. I stumble and almost fall, but Dolly grabs my arm and pulls me up at the last second. She half-drags me along as I struggle to breathe normally again.

  The hallway is lined with identical doors, no way of telling what’s behind any of them. Wolf dashes to the closest one and tries it: locked. The next, also locked. Finally he finds one that opens and darts inside. He waves the rest of us in before shutting and locking the door. It’s a tiny supply closet, barely big enough to fit all of us.

  I sink to the floor, trying to catch my breath. It’s hard forcing myself to breathe calmly when there’s so much shouting and ruckus just outside the door. Trying to ignore it, I start pulling bullets out of my vest. Dolly helps with the one lodged in the back. I check myself for wounds, but it looks like I made it out fine.

  The others weren’t quite so lucky. Wolf’s nose is bleeding heavily, making a mess of all his pillows, and as I watch he spits out a tooth. The old wound on his shoulder seems to have reopened. It amazes me that he could swing a bat with that injury. One of Dolly’s arms is dripping blood, though it looks like the shot went clean through. Tank is bleeding from multiple wounds and must have at least a couple bullets in him, though he seems unconcerned.

  “So,” Wolf says, wiping blood off his face, “I’m starting to think this was a pretty fuckin’ bad idea.”

  “You think?” Tank says with a strained laugh.

  “And we crashed our only means of escape, didn’t we?”

  “Pretty much,” I say.

  “’Course we did.” Wolf spits again, leaving a red splatter on the tile. “Hand me that bag, Kid.” I’m eager to be rid of it. He unzips it and searches through the insides. “Well, guess everyone should take a couple grenades. If you’re gonna go down, at least take a handful of ’em down with you, right, guys?”

  “Would you expect anything less?” Tank asks, taking his. Wolf shoves a couple into my hands and I stare at them nervously. I still remember that time I accidentally threw one away without pulling the pin. I’m not likely to make that mistake again, but I’m sure I can find a hundred other ways to fuck it up.

  “So what’s the plan now?” I ask, putting one grenade into my pocket and moving the other from hand to hand. Tank watches me apprehensively.

  “Kill the bastards,” Wolf says.

  “Yeah, well, how?”

  “Still workin’ on that part.” Wolf is just buying time, and I can tell. As I wait for a real answer, the noise outside grows louder. The soldiers are pounding on the door and yelling at us to come out so they can blow our heads off. I guess Saint’s ideal of nonviolence doesn’t apply to people who drive trucks into his base of operations.

  “All right,” Wolf says. “We’re gonna need to split up.”

  “How is that gonna help anything?” I ask. The others are already nodding, but I feel anxiety creeping up on me. I don’t want to split up. If I end up alone, I’m done for.

  “We’re too outnumbered, can’t fight ’em head-on,” Wolf says. It still doesn’t make sense to me; wouldn’t breaking up the group just make the odds less in our favor? I’m pretty sure it’s a bad idea, but now isn’t the time to start questioning Wolf.

  “So we split up, and then what?” I ask, still nervously toying with my grenade.

  “Well, we’ll blast our way out of here and scatter. Try to stay alive, try to pick ’em off, and try to move up.” He points at the ceiling.

  “Why up?”

  “The control room’s gotta be somewhere up there. The building is three stories high, and I reckon it’s on the top one. If one of us makes it there, blow the shit out of it and kill Saint.”

  “And what if none of us make it there?” Tank asks.

  “One of us has to,” Wolf says.

  Whoever ends up making it, I doubt it will be me. That means my role here has been reduced to a distraction. Once I accept that, my nervousness fades. Now that I can do. If I can run fast enough to stay alive for a while and get some soldiers to chase me, I’ll consider it a job well done. There’s a lot less pressure thinking about it that way.

  “Okay,” I say. I stand up, clutching the grenade in my right hand. “Let’s do this.”

  “I like that attitude, Kid.” Wolf gives me a high five. “How ’bout everyone else?”

  “Gotta die sometime,” Tank says. “This ain’t the worst way to go, I guess.”

  “I won’t fail you,” Dolly says.

  Everyone has a look of grim determination. I can tell they must have gone through the same thought process I did. There’s no way we’re gonna make it out, but at least we should accomplish what we came for. We followed Wolf here, and we’ll follow him to the end.

  Still, it feels strange to look around and realize this might be the last time I see one of them, or even all of them. Even though I haven’t been with the crew for that long, and even though things have been crazy, I wouldn’t have done it any other way. Living alone isn’t really living, and they’re the first people I grew to love since my papa died.

  “Umm,” I say, looking up at them. “I just wanted to say … it’s been fun, guys.”

  Tank smiles.

  “Wouldn’t have been the same without you, Kid.”

  “Yeah, things would’ve gone a lot smoother,” Wolf says. “And don’t go gettin’ all sentimental on us, we’re not dead yet.”

  “Yet,” I repeat. “Good vote of confidence, boss.” I grin at him and turn to the door.

  “Now let’s bash some fucking heads in!” Wolf says. He throws open the door and tosses a grenade into the crowd outside.

  XXVIII

  Alone in the Tower

  The grenade blows a hole in the mob outside, and scatters them enough for us to burst through the door. Not even watching where the others go, I dash between two startled men and down the hall. A burst of gunfire follows me, but I dart around a corner before they can get a good shot at me. Footsteps come soon after, loud on the building’s cracked tile floor. I keep running down the unfamiliar hallway. The long hall is deserted; the soldiers must have clustered around us, so there are none waiting here. I try to open a door as I hear them gaining on me. The first one is locked. Shit. The second also locked. Double shit!

  They’re getting closer. I refuse to look back and see just how close. I can’t let myself panic; I don’t have my friends here to watch my back this time. If I panic, I’m dead.

  The next door is unlocked, but it’s so rusty I have to struggle and waste precious time opening it. I glance behind me to see three soldiers only seconds away, two men and one woman. One has a gun, one a knife, and the last a metal pipe. Any of them would be enough to kill me.

  I run inside and immediately ram into something. I stagger, catch my balance, and get a better look at the room. It’s dimly lit, the only light filtering in from a broken window in the back. Desks and chairs are scattered around the room, and many of the desks have computers on them, some intact but most smashed up.

  Once I have a decent map of the room in my head, I dive behind one of the desks and crawl on my hands and knees toward the back window. It’s low enough for me to escape thro
ugh if I need to, though the jagged, broken glass makes me hope I won’t. Furthermore, the dim lighting and ample hiding spots tilt the odds slightly in my favor. It’s a good spot for me to fight. The best I can hope for, at least.

  I wait behind a desk and listen. I hear the three soldiers enter the room, their footsteps loud in the small space. I hear distant gunshots and the sounds of fighting elsewhere in the building, but this room is quiet besides my breathing and their footsteps.

  “The little bitch is here somewhere,” a deep voice says. I can’t help but be pleased people are finally getting my gender right.

  “Could’ve gone out the window.” This one sounds female, though still gruff.

  “Not enough time. She’s here. Spread out, don’t let her get away.”

  I lean back against the desk, keeping hidden and silent. I try to quiet my breathing to hear better. I hear the crunch of glass as one moves on the other side of the room. Another bumps into something and grunts, just a few yards away.

  Bang! A gunshot deafens me. I nearly bolt before realizing it wasn’t actually aimed at me; they still don’t know where I am. Crash. Crunch. More noises filling the room, coming from various directions. They’re trying to scare me out. I stay where I am, my hands curling into fists. After a few moments the noise quiets down again. I listen intently and hear footsteps coming toward me. The others sound farther away. Guessing I still have a few seconds before the footsteps reach me, I look around for something I can use to my advantage. My eyes land on a nearby computer cord. I reach out and pull on it, testing. It feels almost like rope, and an idea hits me. I draw the big knife Wolf gave me out of its sheath and saw through the cord, cutting off a section about two feet long. I slide the knife back into its sheath and coil an end of the cord around each hand, drawing it tight as I crawl back over to the desk. I slip into the alcove under it and wait. The footsteps are close, very close.

  I hold my breath as the soldier steps around the corner of the desk and pauses. I can just barely see his feet and legs. I imagine him scouring the area—and he moves on, apparently not seeing me. I scoot out from under the desk and creep up behind him, moving slowly and quietly. As something else in the room catches his attention, I jump on him. One hand scrabbling for a hold on his shoulder, I bring the cord over his head and around his neck. A yank draws it tight and forces his head back. A choked cry escapes him. He stumbles around, trying to dislodge me as I pull tighter and tighter. He stumbles into a wall, and then a computer. I hang on doggedly as he bangs me around. Finally he trips on another cord and goes down; I drop to the floor and scramble out of the way. His head strikes the corner of a desk and he hits the ground. His gun clatters to the floor. I snatch it up and run for the door.