by Sam Ryder
I jumped on top of him, pressing my weight on his chest and wrapping my arms around his neck. I pressed my thumbs into his windpipe and cinched my grip, cutting off his air supply.
He went berserk. His body thrashed about wildly, snorting and trying to pull fresh air into his lungs.
I would not let that happen. This guy was done.
I squeezed as hard as I could. Gradually, the Ender’s body slowed, and he dropped to one knee.
“Give up, asshole,” I said to him, sweat dripping down my forehead.
After about a minute of squeezing, which was a hell of a long time to squeeze someone’s neck, the Ender’s body finally crashed to the ground. As I pulled myself up and released my grip, all I saw were stars, some in the sky, some from the effort it had taken to choke him out.
I pushed off him and listened signs of breathing. Nothing—I had won.
It was a proud moment for me. Beating a male Ender without shooting him was unheard of.
I crawled to the ground next to him and stretched out my knee, which was throbbing by this point. I stared down at him, letting my body relax.
The fuck was he doing? What brought him here? How did he find us? And what pissed him off this much? And what was he talking about—about me being on the wrong side? I was trying to help the Enders, for god’s sake.
I expected this from the Rising and even the Guild. If anything threatened them, they would try to eliminate it. So knowing we were moving through the wasteland together—a First, an Ender and a guy with no loyalties—we were a threat to the power they’d managed to consolidate via their secret alliance.
But an Ender? We were trying to help the Enders. Anything we pulled off would benefit them. What pissed them off so much that they would want to kill us?
It was a question I didn’t have an answer to. That bothered me. I liked to know what was going on, where it was happening, and when. Having these questions swirling around in my head unsettled me.
More unsettling was a much simpler question: how the hell are these people finding out about us? How did they even know we’re doing this? Who was talking, and why? Had Elias spread the word about us, or was news coming from the Geneva Council about rogue misfits marauding through their city and giving a beat down to anyone who stood in their path?
I rose to my feet and spit on the bastard’s body before turning back to the wagon.
Let the buzzards fly by and get a taste of him. I need sleep.
Chapter 24
WTF
Like I would get any sleep.
It was hard enough trying to get my body to calm down. My knee was in agony, my heart racing, adrenaline coursing through my arms and legs. I could barely sit still, much less fall asleep.
The women, of course, had slept through the whole event, clueless. I was glad for that.
I curled up on the wagon with my blanket, doing my best to get some rest. I didn’t feel confident that I would. But I hoped that, in the morning, the women would be rested enough to take the reins for a while. Then I could take a nap.
It comforted me that the two of them were sleeping. Chuck, too. It would do us no good if we were all sleep-deprived. I tried my best to calm down, but it wouldn’t happen. All I could do was take comfort that they were resting.
Besides, were there more male Enders out there? Was he part of some clan, the first wave of attack or an overzealous scout? Occasionally, throughout the night, I rolled over and stared out the back of the wagon toward that Ender’s body. The moonlight still wasn’t bright enough to see in the distance, but I listened for any activity. If he was just playing dead, he would lumber too loudly for me to miss him. If any of his friends came by, I would at least hear them dragging him away.
I also had little in the way of defenses. I still had a dagger, but both of my guns were somewhere between the wagon and the body. I didn’t stumble on them on my way back to the wagon. Without them on me, I felt naked. They were a comforting presence.
I always slept with them. Even when I was back at my place. In the wild, wild west you never knew when you need to put a little lead into somebody’s chest. And chances are, if somebody was disturbing my sleep, they probably deserved to get shot.
Sleep felt more comforting when I had at least one gun within reach. Sleeping in a wagon in the middle of the wastelands with no guns? That’s a recipe for a sleepless night.
My body refused to relax in the darkness. Any time I sensed any movement, I shook back into alertness. It pissed me off. All I wanted was sleep, but my ears wouldn’t stop scanning the area for any noise.
But silence filled the night. Nobody came by, and nobody bothered us.
Once the sun rose, I slid over to the edge of the wagon to look around for any signs of life. Nothing. The Ender was still a corpse, and nobody was within view.
It comforted me enough to at least fall asleep. I probably snuck in about an hour of sleep before the others awoke. It was Hannah who finally shook me awake.
“I don’t want to go to school today, Mom,” I joked.
“What? Cutter, it’s morning. Time to go,” she said. “Unless you’ve changed your mind.” Apparently she hadn’t noticed the massive dead corpse resting a stone’s throw away from the wagon or she would’ve probably led with that.
“No change,” I mumbled. “We definitely need to get out of here.”
“What do you mean?”
I pushed myself up onto my elbows, blinking through my exhaustion.
“We need to move as quickly as we can. The Enders know about us, and they’re pissed.”
Hannah furrowed her brow. “What are you talking about?”
“The Enders are trying to kill me,” I said, pushing off my elbows and into a seated position.
Gehn, who was listening nearby, said, “What are you talking about, Cutter?”
“A male Ender tried to kill me last night.”
“Quit fucking around,” Hannah said. I wasn’t angry she thought I was joking. If I was in her shoes I’d have thought the same thing.
So I simply told my story, finishing by pointing toward the body. While Hannah and I watched, Gehn hopped off the wagon and jogged over to the body. She rolled it over and inspected it.
She walked back to us to confirm, a faraway look in her eyes. “That’s an Ender, all right,” she said. “I don’t recognize him, but then again, a lot of the male Enders look alike. He’s definitely an Ender though.”
“Tell me something, Gehn,” I said. “Why the hell would Enders have a problem with me? We’re trying to help them. Why would an Ender try to kill me? Don’t they know we’re on their side?”
Gehn shook her head, her expression disappointed. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “We’re with a First, and they must know by now the Guild is working with the Rising. You know the Rising and the Enders don’t get along. I wear this hat to hide from other Enders just as much as I use it to hide from the Rising. This whole thing must piss a lot of people off.”
I crawled to the edge of the wagon, processing the information. It made sense. My entire body aching, I swung my feet around and dropped to the dirt. I grunted at the pain from my knee, limping in a futile effort to walk off the pain.
“I get all that, but how would they find out?” I asked. “We’ve hardly talked to anybody beyond a couple bartenders.”
“No, but they’ve seen us,” Gehn said. “They all saw us in Geneva. They figured out pretty quickly that we were an unusual group. All it takes is one person to go back to Paris and say something. Enders like to talk. They probably think I’m a traitor and that you’ve brainwashed me somehow.”
Enders like to talk. Great. She implied that the whole city of Paris was on watch for us. Not exactly a comforting thought.
I sighed.
“So now we’ve got Enders pissed at us too? I guess it’s us against the world at this point. Awesome.”
Gehn turned away from me. She knew the answer.
“Can you tell me something?�
� I asked. “Why the hell did you pull me into a situation where literally everyone in the Ends will want to kill us? Is this really any better than just letting the bunch of idiots kill each other?”
She closed her eyes. “I’m telling you, this is the right thing to do. I trust the vision I had. We will figure this out. The dream reader will tell us exactly how we’re supposed to go about this. It will make sense.”
“Yeah, it’ll make sense only if we survive,” I said. “Anybody who exists seems to want us dead. We’ll be lucky to get two steps inside the city before we’re attacked, much less finding some mysterious dream reader we know nothing about.”
“They won’t,” she insisted.
“How do you know?”
“I can’t explain it.”
I gritted my teeth, frustrated. I was used to dealing in real information, not dreams and Ender intuition. Then again, she’d generally been right so far, her sixth sense saving us from sure disaster on more than one occasion. I’d be a fool to stop trusting her now.
I pointed to the wagon. “Then let’s get going,” I said. “We can’t stand around here and waste any more time. We’re less than half a day from the city limits. The faster we find the damn dream reader, the better.”
Before we left, however, I had to find my girls. I walked in the direction of the body until I saw the glint of gunmetal in the dirt. Alpha was lying about halfway between the wagon and the Ender, half buried from being slung down. Still no sign of Beta.
I kept walking closer and closer to the body. Once I reached it, the ugliness of my attacker startled me, revealed in the daylight. He was a hideous bastard—all male Enders were. Even though I knew what he looked like from seeing a few before, he still looked worse than I expected, his body bloated and turning purple.
Lying about two feet from his body was Beta. I could have reached her. If I had known, I would’ve made short work of him, and I wouldn’t have had to absorb so much punishment. But that wasn’t the way the cards had been dealt.
I grabbed my weapon and holstered it, feeling whole once more. Before I turned to walk back to the wagon, I glared down at the body.
You picked the wrong guy to mess with. Congratulations on being one of the few Enders to lose a fist fight with a human, asshole!
We climbed onto the wagon and made our way toward Rome. I hated this whole thing by now. I wanted to defend Gehn. I knew she believed she was telling the truth. But Christ, I had figured the Enders would at least be on our side. Perhaps they didn’t want peace any more than the Rising or the Guild. Perhaps everyone liked the violence at this point. It was beginning to feel like the Middle East back when America was the land of opportunity. Now America was the land of opportunity to be killed.
The ride was quiet at first, each of us lost in our own thoughts. We were almost to the city limits when I broke the silence.
“Gehn, do you just have the one dream?” I asked. “Now that I’m with you two, are you having any other dreams?”
“Yes,” she replied. “The dreams are changing.”
Dammit. Why hadn’t she told me sooner. I didn’t want to lecture her, but I was tired of not having all the information and suffering because of it. “What’s happening?” I asked. “Are they good or bad?”
She shrugged. “I don’t really know how to answer that. I see blood. Carnage. War. A lot of fighting. Violence breaking out across the Ends. In my latest dream, I’m standing in a field, surrounded by people fighting. Enders are fighting Enders. Humans are fighting other humans.”
“Am I there?” I asked, feeling a chill run through me despite the warmth of the sun quickly heating up the day.
Gehn nodded. “You’re leading the charge. In every dream I’ve had, you’re leading the charge. Everyone defers to you. You are the leader of one of the sides.”
“So we’re all in the middle of this violent war. Am I winning? Am I kicking lots of ass?” It was a half-joke.
“I cannot see the outcome,” she said. “I believe the outcome remains uncertain.”
Great.
Then again, that was why we needed to visit the dream reader, who may be able to provide more insight into Gehn’s visions. Until then, we were flying blind.
Despite my exhaustion, I clutched the reins, sleep far from available to me. Gehn rested in the back with Chuck. I knew that’s where I should be, but my mind was like a racehorse, tireless in its plotting and conjecturing. Hannah sat next to me at the front of the wagon to keep me company.
“Are you worried?” she asked at one point.
“Eh. ‘Worried’ is too strong of a word,” I said. “Look, I’m not afraid to die. So if anyone is out here trying to kill me...whatever. Bring it on. I’ll try to take them out as they try to kill me. It doesn’t bother me one bit. That’s life in the Ends, right? I got used to that a long time ago. What bothers me is that others might die. Innocents. Like you and Gehn. You know what I was thinking while that son of a bitch used me as his personal punching bag last night?”
“What’s that?” Hannah asked.
“I was thinking about you two,” I said softly. “I kept my distance from the wagon. I didn’t want him trying to get either of you. And if something happened...if he killed me...then he might go after you next. Half the reason I fought as hard as I did was because I wanted to keep the bastard away from the both of you.”
Hannah put her hand on my knee. “That’s sweet,” she said, “but you’re wrong about us. We’re not innocent. No one is in this world, because we’ve all been a part of building it. Which is why it’s our responsibility to tear it down and rebuild it better.”
I liked that. And I liked the fact that she owned responsibility. It made me want to do the same, rather than continue my old ways of looking out only for myself.
We rode on for a while, stopping at a tiny oasis not far from Rome. If we weren’t in the shadow of the city now, I would’ve suggested to Hannah that she join me for another swim. I could use the distraction, and her body could distract me from an army of male Enders charging at me.
I watched as other travelers moved across the wasteland in the distance. It seemed oddly busy out there today. Everyone seemed to be headed for Rome.
But I hadn’t been out this way in a long time. Maybe this was how busy things always were. Then again, maybe word got out where we were and everyone was hunting for us.
Hell if I knew. Even as I soaked my feet in the water, I patted my hip to make sure that Alpha and Beta were still there. I figured I would need them soon.
Chapter 25
Chance Meetings
I wanted to hurry back to the wagon and get going. Still, we took our time at the oasis, relishing the spare moments of peace. They were few and far between these days, and it felt good to refresh ourselves.
Despite our nearness to the city, Hannah stripped off her clothes and lowered herself into the water. As I watched her naked body disappear under the surface, I was tempted to join her. But my knee screamed at me, needing the rest.
So I settled for watching her float, the twin peaks of her chest rising from the water. It was a nice sight, anyway. Gehn caught me staring and smiled. “You enjoyed the last oasis with my sister?” she said.
“Oh. Uh, yeah. I didn’t realize you knew.”
She laughed, and despite the circumstances, it was nice hearing her sound less troubled for once. “Why do you think I took Chuck for a walk?”
I was a dumbass. I should’ve known the two sisters shared everything with each other. “You could’ve joined us, you know,” I said, pressing my luck.
Her face flushed, but she couldn’t hold back the grin. “That’s what Hannah said, but I didn’t want to intrude.”
I was about to inform her that she could never ‘intrude’, but then stopped when I heard a sound. Footsteps approaching in the distance, growing louder with each step. Three weary-looking travelers appeared around one of the large boulders surrounding the oasis, looking haggard and travel-worn.
The second of the three was a male Ender, which was surprising as hell. With his olive-green skin and ogre-like features, he was not exactly a sight for sore eyes. He grunted and stared at me, and I patted my hip again, making sure the girls were ready to go if this guy tried to pull anything. Hell if I would let that happen again. Then again, the whole spectacle was a surprise. The world was changing, and I was still trying to catch up to the new normal.
Finally, another human brought up the rear. This guy was skinny and pale, looking as though he could barely string two more steps together.
“Morning,” I greeted them, glancing back at Hannah in the water. She’d sunk in deeper to hide her nakedness. The two humans nodded at me. The Ender scowled.
“Mind if we join?” the less haggard-looking human man asked.
“Knock yourselves out,” I said, gesturing toward the pool. “Just steer clear of my folks, yeah?”
“Of course,” he said. “Ain’t looking for trouble. Would be stupid considering trouble tends to find folks all on its own these days.”
I couldn’t disagree with that. Each of them removed their worn shoes and soaked their feet in the water on the other side of the oasis. To their credit, they kept well clear of “our” area. Hannah floated closer to me, just in case. For a little while, we all coexisted.
But it was not comfortable. They stared me down the entire time. For whatever reason, they refused to stop scowling at me, particularly the Ender. They each wore a look that said, “I hope you die a painful and agonizing death.”
No one-stud bracelets here. Hell, no bracelets at all. So they weren’t Guild, which made sense considering the company they kept.
Based on their expressions, I assumed they knew something about us. Given they were a mixed group, too, they would be aware of other mixed groups, especially one with a growing reputation like ours. Still, I couldn’t ignore their scowls. I finally lifted my feet out of the water and trudged over to their side of the oasis.