I stare at him, then at the Queen’s men. They all look to her, but she’s too shocked to give orders. Nobody moves.
I take a timid step away from the guards.
“Umm, so, I’m just gonna go ahead and—” Before I can finish my sentence, the nearest guard lunges at me. I jump backward to avoid him, slip, and fall to the floor hard. As soon as I hit I crawl for the door. Somebody fires a gun, and the bullet whizzes right past my head.
At the first sound of gunfire, Pretty Boy immediately loses his composure. He shoves the Queen forward and takes off, running out the door and leaving me in the dust. I scramble to my feet and follow, the Queen’s furious screech sounding off behind me.
I can’t see where Pretty Boy went; he got out of here way too fast. I run blindly, avoiding open ground, instead climbing fences and squeezing through tight alleyways I hope they can’t follow me through. My heartbeat fills my ears. I can’t tell if I’m being chased, and I’m too scared to turn and find out. The streets are all empty of life. I don’t even know where I’m going or what my plan is. I just run until I can’t run anymore.
Finally I stop in a narrow space between two hovels and crouch there. My chest and legs burn.
When my wheezing breath finally quiets down, I strain to hear any voices or footsteps. The town is dead quiet. Either I lost them, or they found someone else to chase. I catch a whiff of smoke and look up to see a cloud of it growing above the town. It’s impossible to tell where it’s coming from. I wonder who’s setting fires: the Queen’s men trying to smoke us out, or one of my friends spreading chaos?
Movement catches my eye. The cloth covering a window above me shifts, and a pair of sunken eyes stares out suspiciously. As soon as I look up, they disappear.
I have to keep moving. The mayor claimed he’s not on anyone’s side, but I wouldn’t put it past him to give us up, especially with his town getting wrecked. I force myself to my feet, choose a random direction, and start moving. Once I reach the edge of the building I peer out. There’s no one in sight. I hesitate, unsure what to do next, when I hear a gunshot from somewhere to my right. I instinctively head that way. I could be walking toward all the Queen’s men… but then again, if there’s gunfire, it means at least one of my friends is there.
I dash from building to building on my way, ducking behind houses and rusty piles of metal and garbage. I pass a few burning buildings on the way. The fire moves quickly, spreading around town, eating through cloth and wood and anything it touches. I pause to marvel at the blaze before continuing, and use the smoke as cover. I’m painfully careful to make sure no one sees me, sometimes crawling on all fours between shelters. I don’t encounter a single person on the way. By the time I get closer to where the gunshot came from, I’m completely out of breath and feeling pretty silly about my efforts to be sneaky. Around the corner I hear voices. None are familiar, which makes my stomach turn to knots.
I make my half-crouching way over to the rusty remains of an old car and duck behind it. I hide there for a few seconds, making sure there’s no change in the voices I hear, and rise up to peer over the hood.
On the other side is a wide open strip of land between two of the towers. A handful of the Queen’s men are there, a ragged bunch clustered in a circle. The shadow of one tower falls across them. They look torn up already, nursing wounds and dripping blood in the dust. One’s gun hand seems to be dead, but he’s dutifully clutching it in the other one, limp arm hanging at his side.
At the center of their circle, tied up and blindfolded, is Pretty Boy. He’s slumped onto his side on the ground, with one side of his head bloodied.
“We’ve got one here,” a guard says into a walkie-talkie. The response is too full of static for me to understand. “No, he’s by himself. Any sign of the others?” More static. “Dunno where they are, but they’re giving us hell.”
All I can think about is Pretty Boy trying to save me back there. I know there’s not much I can do, and I really should turn my back and run… but how can I leave him? Even with all of the confused feelings I have about him, he’s a member of our crew. Seeing him like this melts away my anger. I can’t turn my back on him.
I duck behind the car again and pat down my pockets, searching for anything useful. I have no gun, no explosives, not even my trusty knife. There aren’t any big rocks around to throw. All I have is my backpack, which contains a half-empty canteen and little else.
“Shit, shit, shit,” I hiss under my breath, desperately trying to think of something. I bite my lip and stand up, looking over at the guards.
As I watch, Pretty Boy rolls onto his back and groans. A guard responds with a sharp kick to the side, making me wince. Pretty Boy rolls over and tries to crawl away, but another man pins him down with a boot on his back. The circle laughs.
My stomach tightens and my fists clench at my sides. I can’t just sit here and watch, not even if it’s Pretty Boy. Chastising myself all the while for being such an idiot, I move out into the open.
“Hey!” I yell at the guards, hands still balled into fists. I move toward them with absolutely no idea what I intend to do. “Stop it!”
They turn to me, guns raised in an instant. There’s a confused pause as they try to figure out who the hell I am. One of them finally recognizes me.
“We-ell, you sharks are even dumber than we thought,” he says, grinning and advancing toward me. “Just gonna walk up and surrender, huh?” The rest of the guards leave Pretty Boy where he lies and fan out, moving toward me as a unit. They close around me in a half circle, the car at my back. I hold my ground.
“We’ve got the little girl,” another guard says into his walkie-talkie. Smirking, he takes a few steps toward me and reaches for my arm. “Now c’mere, and don’t try anything stupid…”
His hand closes around my arm as I’m still trying to figure out how to react. He drags me forward and—swoosh. An odd sound, like rushing air.
I freeze. The hand on my arm goes slack, and I step to the side just in time as the man falls forward. He hits the ground, a chunk of skull missing. Blood and brains ooze from the back of his head.
Everybody stares.
“What the hell?” The Queen’s men look as baffled I am. One opens his mouth, and before he can speak there’s another soft whoosh and a bullet hole appears in his forehead. As the second body falls, panic breaks loose among the rest of them. One man turns in a circle, wildly firing his guns at both of the nearby towers. Another points his gun at me. The latter goes down in a second, before he even has a chance to voice a threat.
The last two promptly lose their shit. One falls to the ground and cowers, and the other, the man with the injured arm, sprints away. He falls before he makes it to the shelter of the next building.
“Please,” the last man begs, crouched in the dirt with both hands over his head. “Please don’t kill me!”
I’m the only person left standing. Bodies litter the ground around me. The only other living people are Pretty Boy and the begging guard, both cringing on the ground.
“I, uhh… don’t really have any control over it. Sorry?” I say.
He stays on the ground, whimpering, while I stand there awkwardly. After a few seconds of nothing happening, I walk over to Pretty Boy. He’s still tied up and blindfolded and is valiantly trying to squirm away from the action. When I touch his arm he flinches.
“It’s me,” I say, and slip the blindfold off. He blinks up at me, breathing hard, and looks around at the bodies of the Queen’s men.
“Kid?” he says, taken aback. “What… what did you do?”
“Umm,” I say. “Nothing?”
“Uhh, you sure?” He chokes out a nervous laugh. “Thanks, I guess?”
“You’re welcome, I guess,” I say, imitating his dry tone.
The whimpering of the man behind me stops abruptly. I turn around, expecting to see one of my friends finishing him off.
Instead I find the Queen.
She’s an absolute
mess. Her hair is in disarray, her face smeared with dirt, her fancy dress ripped and stained. She’s completely alone, her usual gaggle of guards nowhere to be found. She looks more like a crazy than a queen, trailing blood and dirt in her ridiculous getup, but the shotgun in her hands demands that I take her seriously. The gun looks too big for her, and her skinny arms are shaking, but I have no doubt she could and would kill me in an instant.
“My Queen!” the man says. He crawls toward her, groveling. “Thank God you’re here, they were—”
“Shut up,” she says, and shoots him in the face. I try very hard not to look at the messy body as it falls. Instead I keep my eyes locked on the Queen as she approaches, reloading the gun.
“Well, well,” she says, in a cracked and lilting voice that makes it pretty clear she’s completely lost it. I swallow hard. “I’ve finally caught up with you two.”
She aims the shotgun at my head.
XXIV
Long Live the Queen
I slowly raise my hands in surrender and otherwise stay as still as possible.
“You dumb little bitch,” the Queen says. “Do you know how embarrassing it is to chase a bunch of fuckup sharks like you around? This is beneath me. So beneath me.” She chews her lip and glances around the empty area. “And where are all my men? Where? All dead? And fuck if I know how. This isn’t how any of this was supposed to happen.”
“You didn’t have to come here,” I say. “And you don’t have to—”
“Shut up!” she snarls. I clamp my mouth shut. Her lips twist to the side in a scowl. “My mansion is in ruins because of you fuckers. Now the last of my men are dead. I’m not about to let you go, not when you’re my last shot at securing a partnership with Saint.”
I’m really wishing my mystery sniper would step in right now, but no gunshots come. The town is silent and empty: There’s just me, the Queen, and Pretty Boy, and the latter is useless. I meet his eyes and wonder if I look as scared as he does.
“Your highness,” he says, and shifts his gaze from me to the Queen. “Why don’t you just calm down for a second? She’s worth nothing dead.”
The Queen whirls on him and her face contorts. She shoves the barrel of the gun in his face, pushing him flat on the ground.
“W-We!” he squeaks out. “We’re worth nothing to you dead!”
“And you,” she says through gritted teeth, “after everything I offered you, this is how you repay me?” She leans close. Spit flies out of her mouth, peppering his face. He tries to cringe away, but he’s stuck between her gun and the ground. “I could have saved you from all this.”
Her fingers twitch and tighten around the gun, moving as if to pull the trigger, then releasing again.
“But maybe,” she says, and licks her lips, smearing red lipstick around her mouth, “maybe I should keep you around. A pretty face always has its uses…”
Her eyes are locked on Pretty Boy, or maybe staring through him, with the strange glazed look of someone falling apart. She seems to have forgotten I’m still here, crouched right beside the two of them.
“Or maybe I should just kill you,” she says, and her mouth stretches out into a too-wide, creepy smile. “Yes, that would be much more satisfying.” Her fingers start to tighten on the trigger.
I tackle her to the ground. She screams, kicks, and flails, while I use both my hands just to keep the gun pointed away from me. It’s a pretty pathetic fight, a ragged old woman versus a skinny little girl. We’re stuck for a few seconds, her desperately trying to get a clean shot at my face and me desperately trying to stop that from happening. When she realizes neither of us is budging, she drops the gun and lashes out with her hands. Her long nails rake my face like claws. I scream, and her other hand closes around my throat and cuts off the cry. I grab two handfuls of her long hair and yank as hard as I can. We’re stuck for a few seconds, both tightening our grips—she lets go before I do. But with a loud shriek and one big push, she topples me off of her. I get a face full of dirt and scramble away, kicking up a cloud of dust around us.
Through the haze I see it: the shotgun, lying in the dirt. I grab it and jump to my feet, swinging around to point it at the Queen. She’s on her hands and knees still, coughing from the dust. As the cloud clears, I raise the barrel to her head.
She grins up at me. Her dress is ripped further from our fight, and her knees look bloody through the torn cloth.
“Look at you,” she says, rising to her feet. I follow her with the gun, but hesitate to shoot. “We both know you won’t pull that trigger, little girl. You’re not like the others.” She walks toward me, coming just a few inches away from the gun, not a hint of fear on her face. I stumble backward, but she keeps coming closer.
“You really didn’t have to come here,” I whisper.
Her chest presses against the barrel, daring me.
“You’re not going to shoot me,” she says. She starts to laugh, that awful high-pitched cackle.
A few days ago, she might have been right. But not today. I close my eyes and pull the trigger.
The recoil takes me by surprise. So does the blood, a ridiculous amount of it erupting all over me. I end up on my back in the dust, ears ringing, drenched. The gun drops from my hands. I feel numb. After a few seconds of shock, I peel open my eyes. Mistake: The Queen’s body is right in front of me, and it’s not pretty. I squeeze my eyes shut, turn away, and take a deep breath before opening them again.
My face is warm and wet and sticky. I raise my hands to try to wipe it off and realize my hands are covered in blood as well. The smell is so thick I can taste it on the back of my tongue.
I had to kill her. She made the choice to come after us, and to try to kill me. I’m not going to feel bad about it… but my hands are shaking. Taking deep breaths, I scoot over to Pretty Boy and untie his hands.
He sits up and rubs his chafed wrists, with only a slight, wordless nod of acknowledgment. He recovers a lot faster than I do. He gets up, walks over to the closest body, and starts rummaging around in its pockets.
I sit down heavily. If Pretty Boy is relaxed enough to start looting, that means it’s over. I strain to hear any gunshots or commotion, but there’s nothing to hear. The townies are all still holed up in their homes, and the Queen’s men must be either dead, hiding, or gone. Judging from the state of things, Dolly and Tank must have been busy picking them off. And Wolf…
Thinking about him getting shot makes me feel like something cold and sharp is poking into my chest. I suck in a breath through my teeth, let it out slowly, and force myself to my feet again. His body must be nearby. Not far away, I can see the scorched earth where the bazooka’s rocket exploded, surrounded by pieces of charred bodies. But as for Wolf, there’s no sign of him. I walk over just to make sure, and ignore how the smell of the burnt bodies makes me a little hungry. Wolf’s body is gone. I saw the Queen shoot him right here—did the guards take the body? Or…
Just on cue, I hear a familiar low whistle from behind me.
“Wow, what a fuckin’ mess. You do all this yourself, Kid?”
I turn around and there he is, as alive as ever.
“Wolf!” A surge of relief fills me and overflows, and I can’t stop myself from running over. I slam into him, making him stumble back a few steps, and wrap my arms around him in a tight hug. He pauses, looking baffled, and roughly shoves me off. I fall on my ass in the dirt and scramble up again, still grinning. “You’re alive!”
“Of course I am, dumbass,” he says. “You think I would go into a situation like that without a plan?” He rips off the remnants of his tattered shirt, displaying a black vest underneath, and grins. “Bulletproof vest, motherfuckers.”
He does a double take at me, and his triumphant grin fades slightly.
“You look like you massacred a small village with your bare hands. What the hell happened?”
“Yeah, umm. I killed the Queen. With a shotgun.” I rub the side of my head self-consciously. “It was a little messy
.”
“We-ell, look at you, Kid.” His grin is back in full force. “Killin’ people and runnin’ around covered in blood. A lil’ baby shark, eh?”
The baby comment chafes a little, but I still smile. He takes a look at all the dead men spread across the ground and the bloody remains of the Queen.
“I’m not even gonna ask what happened,” he says. “’Cause I’m not sure I wanna know. But I’m proud of you, kiddo.” He punches me in the shoulder. And as silly as it may be, I feel happiness welling up at his words, covering up all my shaky feelings over killing the Queen. He’s proud of me. Hell, even more than that, I’m proud of myself. For once, I did something on my own. I smile like an idiot and can’t stop, even after Wolf has walked away and started checking the bodies for weapons and valuables.
A hand claps me on the shoulder, and I turn to see Pretty Boy. In his outstretched hand is my trusty old knife. I take it.
“Forgive me yet?” he asks.
“Ain’t that easy,” I say, “but it’s a start.”
He smiles a little, but then turns serious.
“I’m, uh… I’m sorry. About, you know, what happened. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Nope, you shouldn’t have.” I stare down at my feet, my smile fading away.
“I’ve been a real shithead to you, and you’ve treated me way better than I deserve. I mean, you came and saved me even after everything, and that’s really…” He trails off, and when I look up at him his cheeks are turning red. “You’re a good kid, is what I’m trying to say.”
“Thanks.” I don’t know what else to say. “You… um… you’ve got potential to be a good guy someday. Maybe.”
He laughs, and for once it doesn’t sound fake or mean.
“Thanks,” he says. He’s about to say something else when he’s interrupted by a very loud and distinctly Tank-like whoop of excitement.
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