Strike

by Delilah S. Dawson

  “Like a bad damn penny.”

  “Why’d you set me up with the Wipers?”

  His smile is amused, liked he’s pleased I picked up on a subtle joke. “Now, whyever would you accuse me of setting you up, darlin’? In this war, I need as many soldiers as possible. Even mouthy ones.”

  He’s trying to goad me, and I know it, so I do the opposite of what he wants. For once, I’m not mouthy at all. I just shrug.

  He walks over to the dead guys and pokes them with the pointy toes of his black snakeskin boots before pinning me with a dark glare. “Not that I liked these particular fellers very much, but they served their purpose. And that’s what we all do here at the Citizens for Freedom compound. We serve our purpose. Now, I’m pretty sure we sent you out to get medicine, so would you care to explain to me why I’m missing one driver, have two drivers dead at my feet, and am now staring at you without a single bottle of fish antibiotics to save your friend’s life?”

  I throw back my shoulders. “Oops?”

  Leon steps close, too close, his nose almost touching mine. He smells like cloves and gunpowder. He is no longer amused. “ ‘Oops’ is never the right answer.”

  “You said that theft would be punished. So we saved you some bullets. Tuck says this trailer is ours now. Is that correct?”

  Leon’s nostrils flare with rage. He swallows it down and points at Wyatt. “Son, you want to tell me where your driver is? Because the car is here, but he ain’t.”

  Wyatt shrugs. “I did what you asked. Groceries are in the car still. Whatever that asshole did once we got back here isn’t my business.”

  Leon exhales and steps back, stroking his beard.

  “No, I don’t argue that both of those dead boys deserved what they got. Y’all are not the first guests from whom they’ve stolen. But I had a job for them, and as you’re taking over their trailer, you can take over their duties as well.”

  “I don’t want to kill anyone else,” I say, too fast.

  Leon grins and jerks his chin at the dead guys. “I’m sure you don’t. But these boys were doing guerrilla work. Underhanded stuff. They’re the ones passing out cards, distributing flyers, planting various instruments of destruction. That’s how they earned their place here. Are you willing to do all those things?”

  Wyatt and I look at each other. “So you’ll give us a car and a list of shit to do?” I say.

  Leon chuckles. “I’m not stupid, sugar. I know that if I gave you a car and money and bullets, you’d snatch up your dog and head off for the hills. I need you here. I need your devil’s luck, if we’re going to take Valor down stone by stone. So you just need to know that I have something you need, and if you want it back, you’d best do what I ask of you.”

  I shake my head. “I want Kevin to live, but I’m not going to kill on his behalf.”

  “Nor would I expect you to. No, darlin’, it’s someone you very much want alive.”

  Leon reaches into his vest pocket and pulls out a rosary.

  My mom’s rosary.

  Or one that looks just like it. I hold out my hand, and he lets the black jet beads puddle in my palm. I breathe it in, and it’s her smell, her favorite Estée Lauder perfume mixed with baby powder. My mom. The entire reason that I’m here, that I’m a killer, that I’ve lost everything in life that kept me solid.

  My voice quavers when I ask, “Where did you get that?”

  “She’s alive. Do what you’re told, and by December first, you’ll see her again.”

  Leon turns to walk away, and I start to raise my gun, but Tuck shoves it back down with a meaty fist.

  “Why can’t I see her now?” I yell through a gush of hot tears.

  “Because you got work to do first. Good things come to those who wait.” He pauses, looks at me over his shoulder, and smiles. “Patsy Klein.”

  “Wait! Why’d you call me that?”

  He doesn’t even stop. Just calls, “Thanks for those laptops, Patsy.”

  Goddammit.

  Wyatt’s arm snakes around me, pulling me to his shoulder. I’m uglycrying, making my horrible snerk noise, but he’s heard it before. Lots. My mom . . . is alive? I don’t know what day it is, sometime in mid-November. Which means December first is close.

  I want to see her. I have to see her. But if I see her, that means she’ll see me. She’ll want to know what I’ve been doing, if I’m okay. I’m not okay. I’ll never be okay. And I don’t want her to know about anything that’s happened since she kissed me good night last week.

  Would I kill every damn Crane here to get to my mom?

  I think I would.

  Goddammit. Here I am. Again. Willing to do whatever it takes to save her.

  Because as much as he’s making it sound like I’m the one in trouble, we all know it’s her.

  From far away, Leon yells, “Stay out of the house. Too much bad blood. I’ll send your orders in the morning. Enjoy your trailer.”

  “So what do we do with them?” Wyatt says, and we’re forced to stare at the dead guys.

  “I’ll take care of ’em,” Tuck says. “Have a good night.” He grabs a leg on each guy and drags them off toward the deer-processing barn. I watch for a moment and realize that I seriously don’t want to know what happens in that stark, unlit building.

  “Well, let’s see what we’ve got.” Wyatt hops in the door, gun drawn.

  I drop the rosary in my pocket and hurry up behind him. Tuck said it was clear, but I don’t really trust anyone anymore, except Wyatt. Matty plops in and starts sniffing around like she’s inspecting it, even though she just left it.

  “You coming in?” I ask Rex, who’s picking his fingernails just outside. I’d totally forgotten he was here—but then again, when Leon’s around, he tends to suck out all the air so that it feels like it’s just me and him.

  Rex looks up, cocks his head. “You guys can stay in there. But I was thinking about bringing my tent over this way. Maybe Gabriela and Chance will, too? Seems like we’ll have better luck if we stick together.”

  “Good idea.”

  “I’ll go get my shit.”

  He walks away, and Wyatt and I are alone in the trailer. I was expecting it to be filthy, but it’s just messy. It reminds me a lot of Alistair’s trailer actually, but instead of boxes of paper and map-covered walls, they’ve got laptops and an Xbox and what looks like a stockpile of stolen stuff. In the kitchen, our Pop-Tarts are lumped together with chips and soda and open bags of cookies. The bedroom has a full-sized bed, and it’s not made, but it doesn’t look gross. What I wouldn’t give to fall down and curl up, because I haven’t slept in a real bed since the night the Valor suit showed up at my door and gave me this gun.

  In the closet, I find fresh towels and folded sheets and give a luxurious sigh. That’s the top shelf. But the rest of the closet isn’t full of clothes—it’s stacked with supplies. Boxes of spray paint, matches, ammunition, M-80s, empty bottles and rags and gasoline, which must make up a DIY Molotov cocktail kit.

  Wyatt squats beside me and pokes the red gasoline can. “So if a bullet had gone back here . . . kaboom.”

  I stand, grab the sheets, and close the doors. “We’ve got to get rid of this stuff tomorrow.”

  As I strip the bed, Wyatt helpfully wads up the old sheets and hunts for a laundry basket, which he finds in the kitchen. I make the bed, glad to find no gross stains; the mattress is pretty new at least. Before I can put on the comforter, Wyatt runs and jumps in the center, landing with his elbows out and his hands behind his head.

  “Home sweet home,” he says, and I poke him in the exposed belly.

  “Not until we have our stuff and find Monty.”

  He jumps up like he might’ve accidentally sat on the snake. We eventually find the poor little guy in an old fishbowl in the kitchen, and Wyatt pulls him out and tuts like a worried hen.

  “He’s all covered in Doritos powder!”

  But it could be a lot worse, and we both know it.

 
“Are you okay staying here while I go get our stuff?” Wyatt asks, trying to brush the orange dust off the snake.

  “Sure. I have Matty and a gun. Who could ask for anything more?”

  It takes him several trips to get everything, and on the last one, he’s got Chance and Gabriela helping him drag our tent along to dump it beside Rex’s tent. He’s already got his iPod charging, the cord snaking from the trailer’s outside plug through his zipped-closed door.

  “Did you get the meds?” I ask.

  Gabriela nods, her mouth set in a thin line. “Expensive. And hard to figure out which one was best, so I got a couple of everything.” She holds up the bag. “I’m going in. You coming?”

  “I . . . um . . . I’m not allowed at the house anymore. Apparently the Cranes don’t like it when you shoot their goons and take over their prime single-wides.”

  She smothers a laugh. “Crane boys don’t like uppity bitches, huh? Maybe they’ll kick me out soon too. We’ll bring you some more pizza if they have any. My dumbass brother will bring the tents over. Looks like we got our own little gang now.”

  “The Black Hoods,” I say, considering we’re all wearing black hoodies.

  Gabriela snorts. “Uh, no. Y’all are as white as it gets. More like . . . the Cockroaches. Everything goes to shit, but we manage to survive.”

  “Gross.”

  “But accurate.”

  “We’ll have a tribal council to pick a better name tomorrow,” I say, and we bump fists before she heads off toward the house. “Hey, wait!” I run into the kitchen and grab a silver packet of Pop-Tarts and a sleeve of cookies. “Kevin said they weren’t feeding him well.”

  She grins. “No wonder everybody’s so scared of you. You’re a monster.”

  It’s supposed to be funny, but it’s the truth.

  I make a noise that sounds like a laugh. I don’t want her to know I’m hollow inside.

  Soon we’ve got our own tent city out front. Rex’s black tent, one each for Gabriela and Chance, side by side, the big one that Wyatt got for us, which we figure will be a meeting place. The next time I go to take Matty out, I find yet another tent.

  “Who’s that?” I holler.

  The window unzips, just a little bit. It’s Bea. “I’m staying here.”

  My instinct is that no, no, she’s not. She’s a murderer. But then again, aren’t I? Didn’t I do the same thing she did today? If some guy had grabbed me, threatened me, would I hesitate to put a bullet into his chest? Would Wyatt? But we’re not the same, Bea and me. I’ve looked in the mirror, and I’m still me. My eyes are still deep and wet and feeling. And Bea’s eyes are the dead, flat black of sharks. And I’d rather have a shark in my club than outside, hating me.

  “Sure,” I say. “You need any food?”

  In response, she rezips her window.

  It’s bedtime, but I’m so wound up. I never fall asleep easily after killing someone (my God, I killed someone, lots of someones. I’m a killer. I’m a shark), and I should’ve bought sleeping pills at the store when I could, something to knock me on my ass until morning. I’m curled up in bed with the turtle Wyatt got me, staring at a paperback thriller one of the guys left in the bathroom. The first word is “the,” but that’s as far as I’ve gotten.

  Wyatt finishes installing his de-cheesed snake in the aquarium, checks that the trailer door is locked, and shoves a low coffee table in front of it. I guess he’s forgotten that the door opens outward, or maybe he figures it would trip up anyone dumb enough to try to come inside. Matty’s asleep on the floor by the bed, snoring deeply on a ragged old blanket. Wyatt sits beside me, in the curl of my body.

  “You okay?”

  He runs a hand down my back, rubs me gently through the blankets. I’m staring at Matty because it’s easier than looking at him.

  “I wanted to knit her a blanket,” I say, voice tiny. “Out of really nice yarn. Bright colors. I wanted to yarn bomb my dog. I thought we could just walk away from all this Valor shit. Find a better place, a real life. But now it’s like we escaped one spiderweb and walked right into another one.”

  “So knit her a blanket. Didn’t you buy yarn and stuff at the store? I saw a bag . . .”

  I shake my head. “Yeah, but . . . I can’t even remember how to cast on the first stitches. It makes me dizzy now. I can’t concentrate. I just stare at the needles and yarn, and they make no sense. I’m all stopped up. Like when you shake a can of Coke and haven’t opened it yet because it’ll explode on you. I used to make stuff to let out the pressure, a little at a time. But now . . . there’s too much pressure and not enough time and no patience, and I can’t even read this stupid book, much less follow some intricate pattern or count stitches.” I throw the book against the wall, and Matty looks up like she’s offended on behalf of literature.

  I can almost feel Wyatt thinking as he absentmindedly rubs me, and then he jumps up and heads for the closet, where he holds up a can of spray paint.

  “I’ve got it!”

  “You’ve got what?”

  His grin is insanely manic, and it reminds me that I have a heart. “You know what’s faster and more explosive than yarn bombing? Graffiti.”

  “C’mon, Wyatt. You want me to become a graffiti artist?”

  “No, you want you to become a graffiti artist. It’s the same thing you were already doing: making a public statement with art. Making people think. But instead of working on it for four days with needles or whatever, you do it out in the real world in thirty seconds. Bigger. Bolder. Faster. Comes with an automatic power high.”

  “You seem to know a lot about it.”

  He gets that adorably sheepish look he gets when he talks about his bad-boy days. “Me and Mikey used to do a little tagging. You know that pink cow on the electric box by the church?”

  “Oh my God. I love that cow.”

  “I totally drew that cow. I was high as hell, but it was done with love.”

  “That’s . . .” I grab his hand and yank him down beside me on the bed. Possibilities are slamming through my head. “That’s brilliant. I already had all these ideas for cross-stitch. ‘Debt Sweet Debt’ and ‘Kill Your Valor’ and ‘Pay or Die.’ But your way . . . it’s better. We can say whatever we want.” I pause, thinking. My voice drops. “Even warn people about what the CFF really is. Keep people from coming to the meetings and getting stuck or getting shot.”

  “But . . . the CFF might be different in other places. Like, we have no way of knowing if every cell is insane, or if that’s just Leon being Leon. For some people, the CFF might be their best shot at safety. The point is: You get to choose what you say. And you already have everything you need.” He puts the spray paint can on the dresser. It’s bloodred—perfect for anti-Valor sentiment.

  I pull him into a hug, because he’s just given me the best gift. This is what I need to do. This is how I make myself useful and keep being the old Patsy instead of the new Zooey, although I don’t know how much that name matters if Leon already knows my real name, already has my mom.

  But where is she? I untangle myself from Wyatt, stand up, and twitch back the blinds to look at the lights shining from the big house. The trees obscure my view, but I can see people moving back and forth, lots of people. Maybe they had another meeting at the high school for new recruits. Or maybe they had a family reunion. Or maybe this is just dinner for those who haven’t been ostracized.

  “Do you think my mom is up there, at the house? That that’s why they don’t want me up there?”

  Wyatt’s standing behind me now, and his arms wrap around me, pulling me to his chest. “They should understand you well enough by now to know how stupid that would be. You don’t let anything stand in your way when you want something.”

  I soften and spin in his arms, looping them around his neck and going up on tiptoe to murmur against his lips, “Is that a good thing?”

  He kisses me gently, and his breath smells like mint, all the blood scrubbed away. “It is to me.” />
  Soon my back is against the flimsy wall and my nails are scratching up his spine under the clean shirt. His thumbs plot my dimples, his hands big and warm, cradling my face, holding it just so. I arch my back into him, and he runs his fingertips down my shoulders, my back, my hips. With his fingers through my belt loops, he walks me to the bed, never breaking the kiss. He sits, and for once I’m taller, bending my neck down to kiss him. His hands rove up and down my legs, skimming over my skinny jeans, teasing up my thighs. He kisses down my neck, unzips my hoodie, licks my collarbones, and just starts to kiss under my shirt, toward my bra. All my horrible thoughts are gone, and there’s nothing but him and me and closed doors guarded by garage-sale coffee tables, and I wish I’d put my backpack closer to the bed, because I don’t want to break contact, and this is seriously hot, and there’s a reason I bought condoms at the store.

  Just as I’m pushing him onto his back and crawling on top of him, Matty lurches up and runs to the door, barking. Wyatt and I break apart—not with guilt this time, but with anger. Who the hell thinks they can interrupt this, interrupt us? I don’t want to shoot someone else tonight, but I will if they keep me from Wyatt again.

  “Knock-knock, lovebirds.”

  It’s Chance. Of course. I zip up my hoodie with a sigh, and Wyatt rearranges his clothes and stands, looking adorably rumpled and flushed.

  “I’m getting really sick of that guy,” he mutters.

  I shove the table aside and open the door to give Chance a death glare. But Gabriela’s by his side looking happier than I’ve ever seen her, so I just sigh and step back to let them in. Chance immediately flops down on the flowered couch, and Gabriela goes straight to the Pop-Tarts on the kitchen counter.

  “So Kevin’s going to be okay, I take it?”

  She nods as she chews. “Yeah, they said I got the right stuff. We should know by tomorrow if it’s going to work. There’s a small chance that he’ll be allergic to whatever antibiotics I got, but we’ll see a reaction fast if that’s the case. He seemed pretty jazzed to have the food, too.” She takes another bite of her red velvet Pop-Tart.