by J. L. Smith
“Shut her up, will you, Ray?” It was the girl, the one with the dark braid, emerging from the window of the truck. Was the driver dead too?
The leader, who I assumed was Ray, approached me then, tucking his gun hastily away into a holster visible where his black leather jacket met his black denims. “Saff, go check on Kieran.” His voice, like hers, was muffled by their respirators, sounding almost to be coming from underwater.
“He’s fine. Just a scratch. Stef and Susie are there.”
“Just go,” he responded. “I’ll deal with this.”
I heard the girl muttering something, but my attention was on the man. How was he planning on dealing with this?
He walked around the cage, coming to look at me through the open top, which was lying on its side, with me still shackled to the base. I could not find my voice, not for the life of me. He stared at me for a moment and seemed to decide that I was not worth his time quite yet. Instead, he nudged my kidnapper with his black booted toe, utterly unperturbed by the mess coming out of the man’s head. Evidently satisfied that he was, in fact, dead, he knelt beside the man and started rifling through his jacket pocket.
Feeling bruised, shaken, exhausted and perilously close to another bout of tears, I finally found my voice – something I should have done a long time ago with Nita. Besides, if he was intent on killing me, surely I would have been dead already. “Are you going to free me or what?” I looked up at him from my humiliating position in the collapsed cage, every bone in my body seeming to grind against the bars and sand. Usually so restrained, I could not quite believe that I had practically aimed a demand at this man, of all people.
He stilled, looking over at me once more and remaining unpleasantly silent. It was then that he chose to take off his dark respirator mask, goggles and helmet. I think I might have gasped. He could not have been more than a year older than my seventeen years. But, it was not just his age which caught me off guard. It was everything about him. Dark brown hair just touched his shoulders, the long strands knotty and sandy and giving him a carefree look I could never have dreamed to achieve. His dark eyes, almost black, drew me in, making me temporarily forget the way his lips were set in a grim, maybe even patronizing frown. The hint of a beard shadowed his jaw, darkening his already olive skin.
“Usually,” he paused and his eyes, so brooding, seemed to bore into mine, “thanks is a good start.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled. “And thanks,” I added quickly. My voice was edgy, strained from my ordeal. Was I in for more abuse? Who was this gang? Were they even here to help me or was I just a coincidence? “Who are you?”
He answered immediately, his eyes still unsettling me, “Rayder.”
“Why did you rescue me?”
“I haven’t rescued you, yet.”
Suddenly, I was afraid again. Was this another runner? Was I going to be sold off into something even worse than the organ harvesting trade? My voice sounded small, “Are you going to?”
“I’m looking for the keys. Or I was, until you interrupted me.”
I stilled, my heart hammering while Rayder resumed his search for the keys, his hair catching the afternoon light, falling into his eyes as he knelt beside the dead man. It did not take him long to locate them. He made his way over to me, not speaking a word, a frown plastered on his face. It took him a few more minutes, fumbling at my ankles and wrists, to get me out of my chains. Still, he did not speak, unnerving me further. When I was, at last, free, I sat on one of the bars, wedged against the sand, and hugged my legs towards my chest. For hours, I had felt as if my body were stretching impossibly across that cage. It felt good to huddle in a ball for just a short while. I touched the blue bruises on my arms and legs, where the shackles had cut into my skin and where my body had repeatedly been battered against the floor of the trailer.
He was looking down at me, maybe waiting for me to speak. “Thank you.” I whispered it, not quite trusting my voice. “Why did you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Save me.”
He shrugged, “It’s what we do.”
“We?”
“Yeah.” He seemed distracted. “We’ve got to get going. You good to ride?”
“Ride? With you?”
“You can’t stay here.”
“Where’re you going?”
“Home,” he responded, sounding impatient.
I sighed, feeling somewhat irritated with his vague responses. “It’s not home for me.”
“Up to you, then. We don’t have time to take you back to wherever you came from. And, I won’t split the group right now. So, come with us or stay here.” He added rather rudely, “Your call.”
There was really no other option, “I’ll come with you.”
Rayder nodded and, somewhat surprisingly, extended his hand to help me up. I took it and let him lift me from my position in the sand, only then realizing that I was still in my white nightdress. Feeling vulnerable, I pulled away from him, lifting my arms to attempt to shield myself from view. Without saying a word, he took off his leather jacket, revealing a black vest beneath. His arms were covered in tattoos, different images making up the whole, but I barely had time to piece it all together. It was the only thing about him which seemed decorative. Unlike the others, he did not wear feathers or chains. Somehow, I could not imagine Rayder adorning himself with such things. He simply wore black. It made him seem even more dangerous.
He handed me the jacket, “Here.” I took it instinctively and nodded my thanks, but he had already turned to go.
I followed him over to his bike, lying on its side in the sand, all the while conscious that his attention was directed ahead of us. I could see the other bikers in the distance, crowded around their injured friend.
“Will your friend be okay?” I surprised myself and Rayder by asking the question.
He turned and looked at me curiously for the briefest moment, “It’s a scratch.”
“Where’s he shot?”
“Upper arm.”
Shivering slightly at his indifference, I took in his black and silver motorcycle as he readied it to go, stunned at the size of the monstrous thing. A skull and crossbones adorned the leather seat that I was attempting to scale with little grace.
“You’ve never ridden one.” It was not a question. When I simply nodded in response, he added, “Hold on tight.”
Within a matter of seconds, we were off, flying across the desert to join his friends. The fact that we were not wearing helmets did not seem to frighten him in the least.
Killing the engine beside the group of bikers, Rayder climbed off the vehicle without giving me a backward glance, “Kieran, you okay?” He strode towards them, clearly confident in his own authority.
Kieran, maybe just younger than me, lay on the red sand, his pale skin clammy, his arm in the final stages of being strapped by a competent-looking blonde girl. A second blonde girl, perhaps her sister, knelt beside him, clearly concerned.
“Oh, you know, just another day on the job.” Kieran spoke through clenched teeth, trying to grin.
The way he looked up at Rayder, I could tell immediately that he idolized his leader. Not for the world, would he admit to any sort of pain in the face of a gunshot wound. His light curly brown hair clung to his sticky forehead and his wobbly smile made him look far too young for such violence.
Rayder knelt beside him, giving him a gentle punch on his uninjured arm. “All good, Susie?”
The girl, apparently named Susie, looked up from tending Kieran’s arm, and I was struck by the blue of her eyes. Freckles dotted her sharp nose and her pale skin was red and splotchy from the sun. “Yeah. I’ve tried to clean it up properly, but…”
The other blonde girl, the one I assumed was her sister given their similarity, finished her sentence for her, not taking her eyes from Kieran, “We need to get him back to disinfect thoroughly. Suse has just bandaged, really.”
R
ayder nodded, “Right. Let’s go.”
He began dishing out instructions, sending an ebony-skinned boy with glasses, Neal, off to siphon fuel from the truck we had left behind.
“And the new girl?”
It was the girl with the braid, Saffron apparently, who spoke. Without her goggles, respirator mask and helmet on, I could get a good look at her. Her pitch black, dead straight hair was pulled back tightly into a thick braid which rested over her right shoulder. Her dark eyes frightened me with their intensity and her porcelain skin seemed almost untouched by the sun. She was breathtaking, the very image of some ancient eastern queen from a foreign dynasty another world ago. Her frown, disdainful and aimed at me, was certainly enough to make me think her royalty.
“She’s the rescue, obviously.” Rayder did not even bother to look at me as he replied. For a moment, no one spoke.
It was Kieran, who asked, “You got a name?”
“Aria,” I spoke too softly.
Rayder’s eyes found their way to mine only briefly and then snapped away, “She’s coming with us.”
Saffron looked me up and down slowly, as if determining my worth. I had a feeling I fell short of some standard. “You got anyone to go back to?”
I met her gaze, “Not anymore.”
There was another brief silence, which Kieran broke once again, “Well, I guess, welcome to The Lost Kids.” So, that was their name. They hardly looked like kids to me.
“Okay, let’s get moving,” Rayder looked to Saffron, as if in challenge. Some unspoken communication seemed to pass between them.
I watched as they made preparations to move off, hitching Kieran’s bike to tow home. Home. Wherever that was. For one strange and fleeting moment, I wanted to forgive Nita and plead to be allowed back to my own home. But, in truth, ever since my parents had died, I had been homeless. A bed and a roof were not the same thing as a home. Once, when my parents still lived, I had known laughter, love. I doubted I would ever laugh again. As for love, I was sure it would only ever be a distant memory.
Engines fired, interrupting my thoughts. I lifted my head to find Rayder standing in front of me. How long had he been watching me? Something about him disturbed me, his dark eyes seeming to see too much. “Ready?”
I simply nodded.
“It’s a long ride.”
“How long?”
“Around three hours.”
“Okay.”
In fact, it was not that okay. I wanted to know more. Where was he taking me? How did they know to find me there? Did they simply drift about the desert killing runners whenever they should happen to find them? Could I really trust them at all? The others bikers were leaving, wheels kicking up waves of red sand as they lurched off towards my new home. Home. I had to ask.
“Where exactly are we going?”
“Territory west of here.” He moved to put his respirator mask on and I wondered whether he would bother giving me one.
“Is that where you all live?”
“For now.” I watched as he positioned the mask securely, obscuring his face as he tugged a pair of goggles across his eyes. Next, he fiddled with his helmet, clipping it into place underneath his chin. Turning his back on me, he opened the dual seat of his bike, apparently locating what he needed. “Put these on.” His voice was muffled once more, as he spoke through the respirator.
I looked at what he held: another pair of goggles, together with a mask and helmet. Swallowing my pride, I asked, “How?”
The truth was, until that morning, I could count on one hand the number of times I had been on a vehicle. A motorcycle was not one of them. I was sure I could figure out the goggles and helmet, but the respirator mask looked slightly trickier.
“Here,” Rayder responded, moving toward me.
I could hear his eerie breathing through the mask, a lonely and almost primitive sound seeming to come from far away. First, he fitted my mask across my mouth, securing it so that I was sure not one speck of sand could possibly climb in. It was odd breathing through it, hearing my own deep drags of the hot air. I felt instantly claustrophobic, only intensified as he worked my goggles and helmet, clipping and pulling. The world became hotter still, taking on deeper hues through the goggles. Conscious of Rayder looking at me, I felt the beginnings of a blush.
“You need shoes,” he muttered, almost harshly.
“There was hardly time, what with me being kidnapped,” I responded shortly, again surprised that I was standing up for myself at all.
I was sure I heard something close to a laugh. “We’ll get you some.”
I was suddenly struck by how much he had already done for me. He had shot a man for me. “Do you do this often?” I half whispered.
“Do what?” he said, looking off towards the truck.
“Rescue people.” I added quietly, “Kill people.”
There was a beat of silence and then his voice came, hard and unyielding, “As often as I can.” I could only stare. “Look, we need to get going. That dead guy’s got to have a decent pair of boots.”
Shocked, I asked, “For me?”
“I don’t see anyone else without shoes.”
“They won’t fit,” I argued.
Sighing, he said, “Either that or barefoot on a bike. You decide.”
And so, after a brief stop pilfering the dead runner’s boots, where I tried unsuccessfully not to stare at the wound in his head, we were on our way. Although I had no experience when it came to biking, I was fairly sure that Rayder knew his way around our ride. Not only did he manage to catch up with his peers with little obvious effort, but he went on to lead them home. Throughout the journey across that flat, barren land, he seemed alert, his muscles taut beneath my fingertips, as I held him securely about his waist. The intimacy of it was hardly lost on me, but I tried to focus on the scenery, instead of where my fingers lay.
The hours slipped by, the reds and oranges and blues melding into each other. I had expected the scenery to change, but the desert remained constant: flat and still under the throbbing, unrelenting sun. Almost lifeless, I thought, but for the brittle plants with their unforgiving thorns, the gliding birds of prey, their lonely calls echoing across the empty plains.
The furthest I had ever ventured from my home, even when my parents had been alive, was the seasonal fair. A day’s journey by horse, it was a place pulsing with life, as merchants bargained and cheated, their shouts and laughter filling the air. I had always loved visiting the fair, where, even as a small child, my father had let me help run our store. Likely, I was not much help, my grubby fingers smearing the mohair from our Angora goats with sweet treats, something we could seldom afford. Little did I know that, within only a matter of years, I would be running the store alone. The goats would become my sole responsibility, their low bleating my only source of consolation.
Perhaps it was because of my limited experience of the world that I had not quite expected the desert to go on for so very long. Its sands seemed to stretch eternally, blanketing everything, smothering everyone. When I was much younger, my father had told me of another world. A world where the desert did not reign in all her cold, hard glory. A world where people were not quite so hungry, quite so ruthless. There was a time when loyalty extended beyond the home, beyond the bitter offerings given up to the lord of one’s territory, in exchange for a peaceful night’s sleep. There was a time when people knew of love for a city, a country. No such things remained. I could almost imagine the desert laughing at us, as we huddled in our little huts, trying not to freeze during the long winter nights, or melt during the slow and languid summer days.
Just as another of those warm days was done, as the sun was starting to dip below the horizon, a hazy red ball disappearing beneath the sands, I noticed something where the light brushed the earth. With the space between us, I could not quite make it out, but it seemed large, perhaps even welcoming, a refuge from the approaching night. I felt Rayder’s tense
muscles begin to relax slightly beneath my touch and, with his relief, I knew where we were. Home.
Chapter 3
As the last of the light was touching the land, our journey came to an end. But, it seemed another journey lay ahead. I had never seen anything quite like it. Before me stood a double-decker bus, with great wheels made for the desert. It was painted orange, as if to match the sand, but, here and there, were bits of color, a green tree sprouting out from a wheel, an owl hovering near a window. The more I stared, the more I saw, as the bus slowly came to life. There were pieces of what looked to be poetry everywhere. Above a wheel, I read, “Do not go gentle into that good night.” Beside a window, painted in blue, was written, “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” In black paint, near the exhaust, it said, “Hell is empty and all the devils are here.” Strange flowers dotted the wheels; black bats with wide wings drifted near the front lights; foxes scurried beneath the bus. The windows were murky and, through them, I could not make out any seats. It was a mad mix of color and scenes; somehow both frightening and comforting at once.
Surrounding the bus was an assortment of shade cloths, greens and blues and purples, pulled about by ropes and poles and coming up in points and odd angles. Milling around, beneath them, were The Lost Kids. Some were lazing in hammocks, others on multicolored bean bags. A group played cards on straw mats, their hearts and spades dashed across a low table, littered with tin cans and, to my horror, guns. Beside them sat two little girls, beneath a pink umbrella, enacting a tea party in the sand. Kids had painted faces, black and white, red and gold. One boy, perhaps thirteen, was swinging from a tire attached to one of the central poles, strumming on a guitar. I could only stare, taking in the dozen or so kids, ranging from five or six years of age, to their early, even mid, teens.
Looking at Rayder, who seemed to be studying my reaction, I asked, “You live here?”