“You gonna act shy, huh?” The guy rubs himself through his jeans. “Baby, they’re gonna hear you moaning all the way to downtown Atlanta.”
He squeezes between the front seats, barely fitting through. As my eyes adjust to the near darkness, I note Wyatt waiting behind the passenger seat, his face twisted up with rage. For just a second, I’m surprised—it seems like a pretty aggressive place to be for a guy who recently tried to kill me himself.
“You can’t hide, honey,” the guy says. “Don’t even try. It doesn’t have to hurt.”
Before I raise my own gun, Wyatt shoots him in the chest. It’s muffled a little by the guy’s shirt, but the light blinds me for a moment, and the sound is amplified by the metal walls of the truck. The hard scent of gunpowder and metal fills the trapped air, and I rub my nose with the knuckles of my gun hand, stunned.
Shouts erupt outside, but I can barely hear them over the ringing in my ears.
“Dave, what happened, man? Did you shoot her or what?”
I cram myself against the wall of the truck, wishing to hell I was farther away from the slumped figure of Dave. Wyatt crouches in place, still as death, as we wait to see if another guy is going to try the front doors. Behind me, one of the guys jerks on the back door, and I spin as it ratchets open. He reaches for my arm, and I shoot him in the belly before I really know what’s happened.
“Shit, man. Shit. Forget it. Come on!”
The remaining thugs take off, leaving Wyatt and me alone in the back of the truck with a corpse. I’m mostly deaf, white spots dancing in my vision, and the gun quakes in my hand like it wants to jump to the ground and beg forgiveness. I slide down the cold wall and collapse into a ball on the floor.
“Did that just happen?” Wyatt asks, and he sounds as empty as I feel.
“You saved me,” I say, voice quivering.
The reality of what almost happened falls on me like a concrete block. Nearly raped out in the middle of nowhere by a gang of unemployed suburbanites. The guy I shot in the stomach writhes on the wet grass outside, cussing and moaning; his friends didn’t even try to save him or drag him away. On the other side of the house, a car squeals off, without the thumping bass this time.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” I say. “They might come back.”
“What about the one outside? Do we call 911 for him?”
“For the rapist thug? Really?” I wipe away tears.
Wyatt walks across the truck, his steps shaking the metal floor. My hearing must be back with a vengeance, because his bare feet seem to boom. He holds out a hand and pulls me to standing, and I wobble against him on unsteady legs. He wobbles right back against me, and I laugh weakly at how we’ve gone from strong to weak in a matter of seconds. My left hand is on his right arm, and his left hand is on my right arm, and neither one of us has let go of our gun. His skin is warm under my hand—hot, really—and I can feel the veins in his forearm.
“It just seems like the right thing to do,” he says, looking at the body in the shadows. “Calling someone.”
“You are still not getting this.” I have to tilt my head back to look up at him from under the brim of my hat. “He’s dead either way—911 doesn’t work anymore. You call it, and you get a message from Valor Savings. We’re on our own. The police aren’t even going to show up. For at least a few days, you’re pretty much free to have as much anarchy as you want. If there’s anyone you want to kill, just go for it.” He lets go of my arm, and I sink right back down to the floor. “Open season on assholes.”
“I just killed a guy,” Wyatt says, towering above me.
His plaid pants are too big, and I can’t even see where his legs are inside of them. For a moment, I think that he might be utterly insubstantial and unreal, but then I notice that there are dark hairs on his toes, and it strikes me as too weird to be my imagination, that he’s a real person, and that he might be as devastated inside as I am, unable to comprehend a world with no consequences and no safety.
“How do you feel?” I ask.
“Empty? Blank?” Wyatt turns away and pokes his pinkie in a bullet hole in the truck’s metal wall, right behind where Dave was standing. “I have no idea.” He collapses beside me and runs a hand through already-wild hair.
“That’s how I’ve been feeling too. Just totally lost.”
“It’s like, I know they deserved it. They were bad guys, and they were going to . . . Well, you know what they were going to do. But I’ve never killed anything bigger than a mouse for my snake, and I always feel a little bad about that, anyway.”
Wyatt’s eyes sweep over to the dead guy by the truck seats, and I can’t help looking too. The body is hard to ignore with our feet almost touching it. Him.
He’s facedown, with a bald spot on the top of his head and these weird spiky things that look like a fence coming out of his scalp, which I guess must be hair plugs. Behind his mask, he probably looks like your average derp. But I’m glad I can’t see his eyes.
I realize my finger is still on the trigger and have to pry it off. I’ve shot this gun three times. I’ve killed three times. Each time, I’ve died a little inside. How much of me is left?
“Why’d you put on your shirt and hat?” Wyatt asks, and my eyes dart up to him.
“I don’t know. I wanted to cover myself. Maybe look official to scare them away.”
And that’s when I realize that the shirt isn’t choosy. It sees everything that I see, maybe more. Maybe someone’s watching. And maybe they’re seeing Wyatt.
Oh, shit.
“Do you trust me?” I whisper.
“No,” he says.
“Good. You shouldn’t.”
I stand up, aim the gun, and pull the trigger for the fourth time.
Light and sound explode again, and the truck rocks when Wyatt slams into the wall. Even before the gun can recoil, I’ve turned, a hand around that bugged button. I pull the shirt over my head and wad it up into a ball with the button in the very center of the shirt and my fist.
“Jesus freaking Christ,” Wyatt says, voice shaky as he huddles on the floor, arms covering his head. “What the hell was that?”
I shove the shirt into the fridge before looking at him—really looking at him—by the light of dawn. His eyes are huge, the pupils tiny pinpricks in the center of speckled brown. Less than a foot away from him, there’s a bullet hole in the truck, with a weird little metal rip around it. I notice that it looks nothing like those fake sticker bullet holes tough kids at my school paste all over their moms’ old sedans. Now Wyatt’s got his hands over his stomach like I actually shot him, just like I shot the guy outside.
“My shirt,” I say, surprised that I can breathe, much less talk. I was cold before, cold and tense, but now I feel hot and quick and hyper, like my wires got crossed and I’m overheating. “I told you it was bugged. The top button is a camera, maybe a microphone. It saw you. And if they knew that you were alive, that you were here in my truck, that you knew what I was doing, what I was sent to do . . .” I pause, my chin quivering. “They’d kill you. Or make me kill you. Maybe they’d send someone else. I don’t know. I was just told not to tell anyone else what I was doing. Hand over the card and leave. Or else.”
He uncovers his head, rubs his ears. “What’s the or else?”
“How would I know? Do you think they answer questions? Do you think there’s a freaking FAQ online where you can go click on ‘Indentured Assassins’ and see frequently asked questions? It just seemed like pretending to kill you would be a lot better than waiting around to see the consequences of letting you live.”
“But you could have shot me!”
“I’m not an idiot, Wyatt. If I wanted to shoot you, you’d be dead.”
“So I’m really not on your list? Like, inheriting my dad’s debt or whatever like you did with your mom?”
He stand
s slowly, his back dragging against the metal. We stare at each other across the truck. At each of our sides, a gun hangs limp. Mine is still warm.
“No,” I say, and I feel like I owe him more, so I tell him the truth. “But your brother is.”
The gun waggles on the end of his arm, like it’s trying to shake loose of him. His face scrunches up, and he rubs his eyes with the back of his gun hand.
“Max.”
“Yeah.”
“So when you saw me yesterday morning and you called me Max, you thought that . . .”
“Yeah.”
“And still you didn’t . . .”
“No.”
He lets his head hang forward. “Shit.”
“Yeah.”
Wyatt sets the gun down gently on my pillow and shuffles halfway across the truck. But then he stops, right in the middle. Right between me and Dave’s corpse.
“Why are you—” he starts.
“Because I have to. Quit asking me that.”
“I was asking something else.”
He looks so open and wounded, standing there in his pajamas. If I wanted him dead right now, I wouldn’t have to shoot him. He’s as dumb as one of those cows people are always talking about tipping over. I could just walk over and nudge him, and he’d topple to the floor like a dead tree. I’m pretty sure I did that, too, when I went outside to catch the bus to school and saw the mail truck parked on the curb, no postman in sight. The keys were in an envelope on the worn welcome mat in front of our front door. Funny how my last mail delivery was an actual mail truck.
But I was home alone then, when I stood woodenly, dumb as a cow. There was no one there to push me over. No one to watch me fall.
I didn’t even get to tell my mom good-bye. Now that I think about it, there was no reason she should have been gone. She didn’t have to pretend to be at work anymore. So did she leave on her own, or did Valor make her? Did they take her? A tiny part of me wants to believe they set her up with a doctor’s appointment. The rest of me knows that her being gone wasn’t a coincidence or a mercy.
I was alone. And in my heart, I know they planned it that way.
And I’m pretty sure we’ve been standing here for a year, Wyatt and me, taking up all the sulfur-tinged air in the back of the truck. I want him to move first, to speak first. I don’t want to ask the next question. I really don’t want to answer it.
“What now?” he finally says.
“You keep saying that.”
“You keep not answering.”
I can’t help a small smile. Bantering with him is fun, if painful. It would almost be flirting, if it wasn’t about death and guns. If I didn’t feel so empty inside.
“I have to get to the next house, Wyatt. You can do whatever you want.”
There’s a little lilt at the end that escapes before I can stop it.
“I’m going with you. I can’t let you out of my sight.”
It takes a few breaths before I realize what he means, why he suddenly looks sharp and hard again.
“So you’re going to stop me from going after your brother. Is that it? That’s what you’re going to do?”
“If you want to look at it that way.”
I stare at him, taking stock, wondering if he could actually do it. Right now, he’s got one of my guns— my dad’s old gun, the one that my mom kept in her underwear drawer, which I hope Valor doesn’t know about. And he did shoot a guy. Is he still in shock, like I was after I shot his dad? Could I get the gun back from him if I needed to? Is he as strong as he looks?
And that’s when it occurs to me.
“You can’t leave, anyway. You have to come with me.”
“And why’s that?” he asks with the same amused, flirtatious lilt I had a minute ago, back before I realized how thoroughly his presence had screwed up my situation.
“Because if I let you out of my sight and you tell your brother what’s up and he runs, then I can’t make my entire list, and then my mom and I are . . .”
Even after everything, I can’t say it.
He just nods, lips pursed, considering. Not agreement. Almost understanding.
“So it looks like we’re stuck together.” I try not to sound too pleased. It’s been hard, doing this alone, not being able to tell anyone or talk to my mom without her breaking down into tears and useless apologies. Just having someone to talk to changes everything—I hope for the better.
“But what about Max? What do we do when it comes down to that?”
I snort. “I’ve got to get through seven more before then. Maybe one of them will be gone, or maybe someone will shoot me first, or maybe Valor will get whatever they want and cancel the whole stupid job. Maybe they’re just trying to make a point, incite anarchy so that they can squash us. Maybe someone will storm Wall Street, take it all back. Stage a rebellion. Maybe something will change.”
“I wouldn’t have pegged you for an optimist,” he says.
“You don’t even know me.” I aim for flirty, but it comes out a little sadder and more woe-is-me-ish than I had hoped.
“Who’s next on the list?” he asks, mercifully ignoring the very thing I would have ignored if he had said it.
“Ashley Cannon,” I say.
We drag Dave out the back and dump him beside his friend. They’re as anonymous as china dolls behind their matching masks, and I’m grateful that I never saw their faces. The high grass is jeweled with dew around them as they disappear in my side mirror.
Wyatt leaves his car right where my mail truck used to be, hidden behind the abandoned mansion. It’s exactly what you would expect a guy like his dad to give his son—an older gold Lexus with leather seats and a nav system that doesn’t work anymore. My nose wrinkles up just a little bit when I see it, but then I remember how angry he was about his dad. He probably didn’t ask for a fancy-ass gold car. I guess he’s just as much of a victim of his parents’ choices as I am of mine. He’d hidden it a few houses away before he came for me, which tells me how very serious he was when he put that knife to my throat.
It’s . . . chilling.
And it’s weird, having him in the mail truck’s passenger seat, barefoot in his pajamas. I kind of want to ask him if needs to stop by his house for some jeans, because those thin plaid pants are just too flimsy for propriety. At least while he was moving his car, I managed to brush my teeth, put on a sweater, and clean up with some shower wipes. I don’t feel quite so exposed now that I’m put to rights and feeling more like myself. But he looks like I imagine a boyfriend would look after you slept with him—rumpled and open and vulnerable. Just being this close to him feels more intimate than I’ve ever been with a guy. And I can’t deal with that right now.
The mail truck’s special GPS leads us a few miles away, onto the highway. The fall leaves glitter with raindrops, reflecting a pale, shy sun trying to break through dark clouds. We don’t talk, and as I drive, I scan the road for any sign of anarchy or government breakdown. The only hint I see is an abandoned plastic fruit basket just like mine, sodden and crushed by the side of the road. A shudder threatens to yank me apart, but I snap my teeth together and ride it out. It’s like when they say a goose walked over your grave, but this was one big effing goose.
How many people know that the government is no longer the government? Where are the policemen and the ambulance drivers? Will they ever answer the phones at 911 again? Are the oncologists and pediatricians still handing out chemo and lollipops? And what part do the armed forces play in this weird, dystopian takeover? Will tanks soon barrel up the road? What’s happened is like something right out of a sci-fi book or movie, except that it’s happening right now, and nobody knows the rules and aftereffects yet. Will I ever pledge allegiance to the flag again?
But everything just seems normal. We pass by a Starbucks, a Walmart, neighborhoods and fire station
s. There aren’t drones or guns or scorch marks. Just regular people in regular cars, going about their regular business, most of them talking on cell phones, which makes me think that mine was purposefully tampered with. The drive-through at McDonald’s is packed. My stomach grumbles, but I remember how watery and nasty it was losing my salad yesterday and figure I’ll hold off on eating for just a little longer.
In a nagging British voice, the GPS tells me to turn down a scrubby, unkempt road. We pass another abandoned neighborhood where they cleared the land, paved the street, put up the streetlights, and ran out of money after building one lone town house. It looks like a single tooth in an empty mouth, poking up uselessly from the dry red dirt. Beyond that, there’s a rundown redneck compound: a combination mechanic, deer-processing business, taxidermist, and, oddly enough, notary public. And that’s when it gets really country. Wyatt shifts uncomfortably in his seat, one hand holding on to the handle welded to the wall. I can almost see him thinking about jumping out. Poor people must make him nervous.
We turn into a subdivision that has definitely seen better days—probably back in the fifties. The houses are small and crooked, melting back into yards grown high with weeds. Cars on cement blocks flock around them like lost sheep, and the colors are sun-bleached and sad, still dripping with rain. When the GPS snottily tells me that I’ve reached my destination, I park the mail truck in front of a faded gray ranch and sigh, staring at the threadbare Christmas wreath still on the door. One more month, and it will actually be apropos again.
“So what do I do?” Wyatt’s hands shuffle around his hips like he’s looking for jeans pockets, and I wonder where he’s stashed my other gun.
“Stay here, I guess,” I say. “Just stay out of my way. I know what I’m doing now.”
He sucks air through his teeth and leans back against the passenger seat, which is where the driver’s seat usually is. It was weird, driving the mail truck the first time and trying to figure out where the yellow line in the middle of the road was from the other side of the vehicle.
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