Bite

by K. S. Merbeth

  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 fabric 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.”

  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.”

  “Oh, no big deal.”

  “It’s just kind of how things are, you know?” He doesn’t sound sorry at all.

  “Yeah, I guess.” I think about how Wolf came back to save me in the end, but don’t say anything. Wolf is a bit crazy, after all, so maybe Pretty Boy has the right of it.

  “Well, I’m glad you didn’t end up dead, if it means anything,” he says, and smiles at me. His smile is slightly crooked and way too charming for a guy who almost let me die earlier today. I blush and promptly feel like an idiot for doing so.

  “Uh. You, too?” It comes out an uncertain squeak. I don’t know how to deal with a boy who smiles at me like that.

  “Thanks,” he says dryly. “You’re probably the only one.”

  “That can’t be true!” Sure Wolf gives him a lot of shit, but he’s still clearly a part of the crew.

  “Yeah, Tank might miss me.” He looks over his shoulder at Tank, who has fallen even farther behind than us. “Hey, fatty! Would you miss me if I was dead?”

  “’Course I would! Who would I make fun of?” Tank shouts back. We slow down and he huffs and puffs to catch up with us. Sweat runs down his face and stains the armpits of his shirt, but he looks cheerful. He cuffs Pretty Boy around the neck, and Pretty Boy yells about the stench before wiggling free.

  Having Tank around lifts the tension, and Pretty Boy visibly relaxes.

  �
�So, Kid, how old are you?” he asks.

  “Uh, sixteen. I think.”

  “Oh, wow. You really are a kid, aren’t you? Everyone used to call me young, and I’m eighteen.”

  “Shit, how do you guys keep track?” Tank asks. “I haven’t got a damn clue.”

  “That’s ’cause you’re an old man,” Pretty Boy says, earning himself another cuff.

  “Papa told me I was born in the winter, right ’round when it starts getting cold,” I say. “That’s how I keep track.”

  “Your papa?” Tank asks. “He still around?”

  “Nope,” I say. “Dead. For a long time.” I didn’t see it happen, but I know it to be true. The town took me in and left him out in the wastes. No one makes it long alone. I later wondered if the townies even really let him leave, or if they just shot him when I was gone.

  “I was born on April twelfth,” says Pretty Boy. “Not that it means anything, most of the time. The Queen knows those kinds of things, though, so I can check up on it from time to time. She usually gives me a present.”

  There’s that name again. Seeing as Wolf isn’t around to tell me to shut up and stop asking questions, I try again.

  “So who is this Queen person?”

  “You’ve never been?” Pretty Boy asks. I shake my head. “Ah. She’s called the Queen of the Wastes. Nobody is really sure how she started off, but now she lives in this big mansion with a ton of guards. She runs this place called the Crossroads. All of the trading routes of the main caravans cross there.”

  “Why?”

  “Water, mainly. She lives right next to a river, and has a way to make the water drinkable. So people trade her for it, and now she has just about everything you could ever need. Traders buy and sell her shit along their routes. And people like us, too. Raiders, I mean. Sharks. No discrimination as long as you have stuff to trade.”

  “Wow,” I say. It sounds big and important, definitely more so than anywhere I’ve ever been. “I didn’t know anyone like that existed. I guess I never thought about where the caravans get their supplies.”

  “Yeah. She’s a powerful lady. And a rich one.”

  “So you guys go to her a lot?”

  “Whenever we get a chance. She has a lot of stuff that’s hard to get anywhere else.”