by Tim Waggoner
He made no move that Alice could see, but the bike engine revved once to underscore his point.
“You ought to ask your Master to set you up with a sweet ride like I got,” Mr. Goatee went on. “Beats holy hell out of the busted-up Olds you’ve been driving.”
Alice could only see her captor’s back, but she heard the sudden tension in his voice as he said, “You’ve been watching me.”
“I’ve seen you drive down the Way a time or two, yeah,” he confirmed. “That billboard makes a great hiding place. No wonder cops used to use them, huh? I know where your Master’s lair is, too. Great choice, by the way. Between you and me, your Master’s got a great sense of humor—more than mine, that’s for sure. Mine lairs out in the boonies, in the basement of an old farmhouse. I mean, shit, how clichéd is that?”
Alice’s captor paused a few seconds before saying, “Nice shotgun.”
Alice expected Mr. Goatee to reach for his weapon, but he kept his arms folded across his chest. “Sure is. Got it off some fat schmuck I found wandering around out here last week. Can you believe my luck? Asshole took a shot at me, but he missed by a country mile. Guess he was nervous. That, or he never actually fired a gun before. Idiot. Easiest prey I ever took down. One punch and he folded like an old lawn chair. Must’ve had a glass jaw or something. He came to just before we reached my Master’s lair and did the usual begging-for-his-life routine.” The biker’s mouth formed a sly half-smile. “He had an original spin, though. He claimed that another thrall had been bringing him to his Master, but for some reason the thrall—who’d been driving a piece-of-shit Oldsmobile—had pulled over and let him go. The thrall even gave him a shotgun to protect himself and then he asked the feeb to crack him on the head with the gun butt. The guy didn’t know why the thrall asked this, but he did it—hit him a good one, or so he said—then took off running. I figure the thrall wanted to make it look like the guy escaped so he wouldn’t get in trouble with his Master. What do you think?”
The entire time Mr. Goatee had been talking, Alice had been slowly edging out from behind her captor. She had a bad feeling that the two men were going to start shooting at each other soon, and she wanted to make sure she was out of the crossfire. She had a better view of her captor now, and she saw him slowly begin to squeeze his gun trigger.
“I think you must have a pretty strong death wish to be telling me this without a gun in your hand.”
The shotgun holstered on the biker’s back swiftly spun around until it was pointing barrel up, and then it rolled forward over his shoulder and clicked into place, now pointed directly at her captor. It was double-barreled—over and under, Alice thought it was called. Each barrel could be fired separately if the shooter wished.
The biker grinned. “Who needs hands?”
The shotgun was held by a chrome mount that protruded from the man-machine’s shoulder. Small metal rods, almost like fingers, were attached to both sides of the shoulder mount and reached to the gun’s trigger.
“Nice,” her captor said with grudging admiration. “But what makes you think you can kill me before I can get a shot off?”
“I don’t,” Mr. Goatee admitted. “You wouldn’t have survived out here this long if you weren’t handy with a gun. But if I wanted to shoot you, I’d have done it when I first rolled up. I’m here, like the old game show, to make a deal.”
“I’m listening.”
“The Masters are powerful, but they’re not all-powerful. If they were, they’d know what their thralls were thinking all the time. But they don’t.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“Are you kidding? You know how many times I cussed out my Master in my mind? Not once has she ever made a move to punish me.” The biker chuckled. “Believe me, if she knew the things I’ve thought about her, I’d be dead right now.”
“Let’s say you’re right. What’s your point?”
“My point is that I know where your Master’s lair is, remember? I’ll ride straight there and tell him that you set your last offering free…unless you agree to help me out from time to time.”
Alice saw her captor’s jaw muscles bunch, and for an instant she thought he was going to start firing on Mr. Goatee. But he said, “What kind of help are we talking about?”
“I don’t know why you wussed out on your last run, and I don’t care. I see you brought a tasty little morsel this time. You let me have her for my Master, and from now on you bring two offerings whenever you come through. One for your Master, and one for mine. You do that, and I’ll keep my mouth shut. Believe it or not, I’m not doing this because I’m a bastard. Well, not only. It’s getting harder to find unmarked people out here, and while I love my wheels, it’s hard to sneak up on folks when I roll into a town.”
Alice spoke without thinking. “I bet it’s a bitch to get inside a building too. Not to mention chasing people up stairs.”
Mr. Goatee glared at her. “Who asked you, shit-for-br—” He didn’t get the rest out, for as soon as he turned to face Alice, her captor hit the ground and fired his gun.
The biker jerked back as blood exploded from his right shoulder, just beneath the shotgun mount. The finger rods twitched and the shotgun roared as it let loose with one of its barrels. Alice screamed and threw herself to the ground. She lay flat to make herself the smallest target possible, but she didn’t cover her head. She had to watch what was happening.
Mr. Goatee’s first blast must’ve missed her captor, because the man showed no signs of injury. He crouched on one knee, gun pointed at the biker. He braced his wrist with his other hand to steady his aim and control the recoil, and then fired again.
This time it was her captor’s turn to fire wide. Mr. Goatee didn’t wait for the other thrall to get off another shot, though. His engine roared, his kickstand flipped up, and his wheels spun out gray dust. His bike jumped forward and Alice knew the man intended to run her captor down. She experienced a strange urge to leap to her feet, rush forward, and try to knock the biker down. But she remained lying where she was. She had no connection to the man in the brown leather jacket, knew that he’d captured her with the intention of offering her as a sacrifice to his Master. The best outcome for her would be if the two thralls ended up killing each other, leaving her free to make her way back to town. There was a good chance—excellent, really—that she wouldn’t survive the journey, but at least it would be some chance, however small.
But despite all this, she couldn’t help hoping that Leather Jacket won.
* * *
“You’re shitting me, right?”
The man was short and pudgy, with curly black hair and several days’ growth of stubble. His gut pushed out the hem of his Jimmy Buffet T-shirt, revealing a portion of snail-belly-white flab. Dan had no idea how the man had managed to stay fat given how hard food was to come by. Maybe he had a secret stash or something, or maybe he’d been so obese before the Arrival that he had lost weight, and it was just hard to tell.
Once more Dan held out the shotgun.
“I’m serious. Take it.”
The man—who Dan thought of as Jimmy because of his shirt—reached out with trembling chubby fingers and took hold of the gun barrel. Dan knew he was taking a chance that Jimmy might turn around and shoot him, but Jimmy didn’t seem like the type. Dan wondered how the man had managed to survive since the Arrival.
They stood on the shoulder of the highway, the Olds parked behind them, doors open, engine still running. They were less than a quarter mile from where Dan’s Master laired. He could see the site from here. He prayed his Master couldn’t see him.
Dan let go of the shotgun, and Jimmy held it out in front of him, as if now that he had it, he didn’t have the slightest idea what to do with it. Dan had cut the man free from the duct tape binding his wrists and ankles, but Jimmy hadn’t pulled the pieces off, and they still stuck to his flesh, like some sort of bizarre World After fashion statement.
Jimmy looked hard at Dan, his gaze
filled with confusion, fear, and a growing glimmer of hope. “Why?” he asked.
Dan had found Jimmy wandering down a sidewalk only a few blocks away from his neighborhood. The man had been carrying a T-ball bat and a plastic garbage bag filled with the carcasses of three cats, all of which had their skulls bashed in. Not all animals had died during the Arrival by any means, but those that had survived had been changed in grotesque ways. These three cats, Dan saw when he examined the trash bag’s contents later, looked normal enough, but they were joined by coils of intestine that protruded from their sides, linking them one to the other.
When Dan pulled up to the curb in his Olds, he didn’t bother asking Jimmy what he was doing because he didn’t give a damn. He’d leveled the 9mm at him through the open window and said, “Get in the backseat or I’ll blow your fucking head off.”
From the scared-child expression on Jimmy’s face, Dan thought the man was going to cry, piss himself, or both. But Jimmy did as he was ordered, and Dan trussed him up, knocked him out with his own T-ball bat, then pulled away from the curb and headed out of town. He didn’t care if anyone had seen him. There was no law anymore save that of the Masters, and of course the most ancient law of all: survival of the strongest, swiftest, and cruelest. Besides, Dan had a thrall-mark. In the World After, that meant he had a license to do whatever he wanted, as long as it was in service of his Master.
The drive south along the Way was uneventful. The thorn-stalks stayed out of his way as they usually did, and he saw no sign of anything nasty lying in wait for him alongside the road. But then Jimmy had the bad manners to come to before they reached their destination. He immediately started pleading with Dan to let him go, that he hadn’t done anything to anger the Masters, he was just out trying to find some food, for fuck’s sake—hence the Siamese triplet felines. But then Jimmy had said the magic words.
You can’t kill me, man! I got a baby at home! I was just trying to take care of my family, you know?
Dan knew.
“None of your fucking business why,” he said. “But I’m going to need you to hit me in the head before you go. You think you can manage that?”
Jimmy looked at him as if he were crazy.
“You want me to do what?”
* * *
“What do you think we should do?”
Alice looked at Jordan. He sat across from her in a booth next to the window, blinds down, slats angled partially open. They were the only two people left in the Pasta Pavilion.
Jordan was staring out the window. Not that there was much to see. People didn’t go outside unless they had to, and the only things that regularly walked the streets now were, well, things. But except for abandoned cars, the parking lot outside the restaurant was blessedly empty.
According to her watch it was 3:20, but whether that was p.m. or a.m. she didn’t know. Like it mattered.
What did matter was that they’d run out of food—again. After Jordan had showed her his solution to their first food crisis they’d both eaten their fill and then some. After they’d finished, Alice had gone back out into the restaurant and—mouth and hands smeared with Fatty’s blood, the front of her blouse drenched with the stuff—she’d grinned at the people gathered and said, in a cheery voice, “Dinner is served!”
The refugees of the Pasta Pavilion then decided en masse that outside was suddenly a less dangerous place to be than inside, and in less than five minutes, the restaurant was empty. Except for Alice and Jordan.
“Pussies,” Alice had muttered.
The two of them had lived off Fatty’s carcass for the next couple days, but without any way to keep the meat cool, it had gone bad. They’d still tried to eat a little more, just to stave off their hunger, and they’d both ended up puking out their guts for hours afterward.
Jordan didn’t respond to her question, so she tried again.
“We need food, Jordan, and we’re not going to find it in here. I think it’s time we went outside.”
Jordan didn’t turn to look at her, but at least he spoke this time. “You know we can’t do that. You’ve seen the creatures that are out there.”
“I don’t see any now,” Alice pointed out. “We can arm ourselves. There are plenty of knives in the kitchen.”
“I know.” Jordan said this so softly, Alice almost didn’t hear it.
“I understand that it’ll be dangerous, but we don’t have a choice. Sure, we might die out there, but we’ll die for sure if we stay in here. We’ll starve.”
Jordan turned away from the window at last. He looked at Alice, eyes filled with sorrow.
“I won’t,” he said, a tear rolling down the left side of his face. His hands had been at his sides the entire time since Alice had sat down. Now he started to bring his right hand up.
Moving far more swiftly than Jordan, Alice brought her right hand up from beneath the table and slashed out with the butcher knife. Jordan’s eyes widened in surprise as the blade sliced open his throat. His blood sprayed the air, splattered onto the table, hit Alice, adding fresh gore to the front of her already bloodstained blouse. Jordan slumped back against his seat, eyes glazing over, crimson still jetting from his wound but less strongly now, for his blood pressure was dropping rapidly. His fingers went slack and the knife he’d been holding clattered to the floor.
Alice watched the blood fountain dribble off into a slow-running trickle, then she brought the knife blade to her mouth and—careful not to cut her tongue—began lapping blood off the metal.
* * *
Dan knew he had only a split second to get out of the biker’s way. He leaped to the left but he was too slow, and the motorcycle’s front tire clipped his right foot. The impact spun him around, and he hit the ground hard as the biker roared past. The breath was driven from his lungs, and he gasped for air as he struggled to get back on his feet. His ankle hurt like hell, and he wondered if it was broken. He feared the ankle wouldn’t support his weight and he’d have to finish this fight hopping on one foot like a child playing some sort of surreal and deadly game. Fortunately, the ankle held as he stood, but then he realized he had another problem: his hands were empty. He’d dropped both the 9mm and the hunting knife when he’d fallen.
The biker’s momentum had carried him onto the Way, and Dan hoped the thorn-stalks would detect the man was wounded and attack. But the biker bore a thrall-mark, and the thorn-stalks moved aside as he braked and swung his back wheel around, preparing to make another go at Dan.
How the man could maneuver like that without legs to steady himself, Dan had no idea, but the fact was he could and did. Eyes wild, mouth stretched into a maniacal grin, the biker hit the throttle and popped a wheelie as he surged forward.
“Here.”
Dan heard the girl’s voice in his ear, felt the cool metal of the 9mm as she pressed the gun into his hand. Without pausing to question, Dan raised the weapon, took aim, and started firing. The biker’s shoulder-mounted shotgun let go with its other barrel, and Dan felt hot agony erupt in his left bicep. He cried out as he staggered backward, but he kept hold of his weapon and discharged the rest of the clip. The biker’s grin vanished in a burst of blood and shattered teeth, and the bike wobbled, swerved, and crashed to the ground. The man-machine carved a furrow in the barren gray soil as he skidded to a halt. The engine cut out, and the man lay limp as the front wheel of his bike slowly spun to a stop.
Dan stared at the dead biker for a moment, the only sounds the ticking of hot machinery as it began to cool and the ragged wheeze of his own breathing. His entire left arm felt as if it were on fire. He examined the shotgun wound and saw shredded meat and a glimpse of bone through a ragged hole in his leather jacket.
Fuck. He really liked that jacket.
He remembered the girl then, and remembered that he’d dropped the hunting knife the same time he’d dropped the 9mm. He spun around and pointed his weapon at her, even though he wasn’t sure if he had any ammo left. She stood several paces away, gripping the knif
e handle tight, holding it easily, as if she knew how to use it. He wondered if she’d been in the process of sneaking up on him when he’d turned around.
“Drop it.”
The girl glanced at his wound then met his gaze, defiance in her eyes. “No.”
“I suppose you’re thinking about just standing there and waiting for me to bleed to death, huh? That’s not going to happen. I need to provide my Master with a sacrifice, but it doesn’t have to be you. If you don’t drop the knife, I’ll shoot you and leave your corpse out here for scavengers to feast on. I’ll bandage my wound as best I can, walk the rest of the way to my Master’s lair, and ask to be healed so I can procure another sacrifice. I’ll also ask for another car while I’m at it.” He smiled. “I probably won’t get it, but what the hell? Like my mother used to tell me, the worst they can say is no, right?”
The girl looked at him for a long moment, and Dan hoped she hadn’t been counting the shots during his battle with the biker. A minute passed, maybe two, and then the girl relaxed her grip and the hunting knife slipped from her hand and fell to the ground. Dan moved forward, gun trained on her the entire time. He switched the 9mm to his left hand before bending down to pick up the knife with his right.
“I want you to stand very still now. I’m going to cut off your blouse.”
She looked at him incredulously, then burst out laughing. “After all this you’re going to rape me?”
Dan snorted. “Don’t flatter yourself. I need to make a bandage for my arm.”
“Oh.” She gave Dan an embarrassed look. “Okay.”
He needed both hands to do the job, so he tucked the 9mm into the back of his pants, then pressed the tip of the knife to her right shoulder and began cutting.
* * *
Sweat dripped off Dan’s face, but he shivered as if caught in the grip of a winter wind. He’d wrapped the girl’s blouse tight around his bicep, but crimson had already soaked through the white fabric, and he knew he’d only slowed the bleeding, not stopped it. He walked behind the girl, limping on his injured ankle. It hurt like a motherfucker with every step he took, and he didn’t know if he was going to be able to make it to his Master’s lair. He’d considered taking the biker’s motorcycle, but seeing as how the sonofabitch was merged with the machine, the only way Dan could think of to get him off the bike was to cut him free. There were a few problems, though. One, Dan only had a hunting knife to work with and right now he didn’t think he had the strength to do the job. Two, just because the motorcycle looked like a normal motorcycle didn’t mean it was. It was entirely possible that the machine wouldn’t work with its human half cut free. And third, it would be awkward as hell trying to carry the girl with him. Given the injury to his arm, he didn’t think he could manage her unconscious body as he drove the bike, and he sure as hell wasn’t about to risk riding with her conscious. She had every reason to keep him from reaching his Master and would undoubtedly do her best to wreck the motorcycle to stop him. Sure, there was a good chance she’d be injured in the crash, too, maybe even killed. But that would be preferable to what his Master would do to her.