by C. S. Starr
“We didn’t die,” Lucy murmured, when she stood beside him also naked a few minutes later. “Don’t look at me.”
“If you want to talk about what happened...” Tal swallowed, as he turned away. “I mean, I don’t know what happened really. But if you want—”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she mumbled, crossing her arms over her chest, as she did her best to wash every bit of emotional grime off her skin. She scrubbed roughly, and wondered why she wasn’t repulsed by being near Tal naked. She hadn’t given it a second thought, stripping down and getting in. He seemed to be in the same place mentally as her, which probably had a lot to do with why she was feeling relatively safe around him. “I’m…I’ll be okay. I hurt him a lot more than he hurt me.”
“I don’t know how he would have possibly hurt you worse than you hurt him.” Tal said, washing the brain matter from his arms. “If they’re any indication of what East is, I have no idea why we’re intimidated by them. Those kids were weak. Stupid.”
“No,” Lucy said, looking at Tal’s back. He was lean, she noticed. And freckly, the kind that almost demanded connecting the dots with a finger. She looked away when he caught her looking. “They were pretty strong. Just stupid. If I hadn’t…I’m not sure anyone could have operated with what I did to that guy, and the other two went off looking for you.”
“They didn’t find me.”
“Idiots,” she said dryly. “I could hear you running. I would have found you.”
Tal found a rock that left him submerged to his shoulders and sat down, briefly submerging himself in the water entirely. It was cold, but it felt good. Better than anything he could remember.
“Where are we?” Lucy asked, when he brought his head out of the water. “I don’t know how long we drove for, and this doesn’t look like it does around home. Is this what West looks like?”
He turned to look at her and she ducked under the water to her chin and squinted in the sunlight and did her best to untangle her hair. “It’s not LA,” he said with a shrug. “I’ve never been to most of the mid-central states. Maybe we’re there.”
“That would make sense if they were from East.” She put her hand over her face to shade herself from the sun. “We’ve got to get back to Campbell.”
“We’ve got to get out of here, that’s for sure,” Tal replied, for the first time questioning what water he was bathing in. “I hope there aren’t gators here.”
Lucy’s eyes went wide. “Fuck.”
Tal’s hands immediately went to his parts, and he started back to shore. Since everything else was still covered in guts and brains, he pulled his boxers on and crawled up on a rock to dry. Lucy watched him cautiously from her position in the water.
“Turn around,” she ordered, doing her best to maintain some air of authority, even though she knew she might crumble at any minute.
“You’ve still got blood on your shoulders,” Tal said quietly, as he shuffled around on the rock, seemingly indifferent to her modesty . She knew that if she needed him to turn around, he’d turn around. Killing three people with a tire iron gave him a machismo pass for a while.
“I think we’re pretty far south,” Lucy said quietly, swatting a mosquito off her arm once she’d redressed. “Regardless, we head north.”
“Agreed,” he said quietly, sneaking a glance at her battered and bruised form as she did her best to dress quickly.
There were certainly worse people to be stranded with in the middle of the unknown with than Tal Bauman, she decided.
Maybe.
Chapter 9
November 2001
Fort Macleod, Alberta
A loud rap on the door caused Lucy to jump to her feet, with Andrew hot on her heels. They’d been half asleep on the couch, watching Beverly Hills 90210 late into the night.
“Who’s here so late?” she wondered out loud, glancing at her brother, who had his newly acquired semi-automatic rifle at the ready. “Fuck’s sake. Put that away.”
Andrew shrugged and shook his head. “No.”
“Put the damn safety on.”
“Fuck no,” he muttered, his voice cracking as he peered through the peephole. “It’s a bunch of guys.”
“What do you want?” Lucy called through the door.
“We’re here for some cows,” the biggest boy called back, peering through the side window. “We heard you got some.”
You paying?” Andrew called back.
“Good money,” was the reply from another boy.
“I’ll blow your brains out if you’re fucking with us,” Andrew replied gruffly, upon opening the door.
The three boys on the other side were giants, Lucy thought, as they shuffled in and took a seat at the kitchen table. Bigger than most she’d seen that were her age. In ball caps and hoodies, they looked like most of the boys she’d gone to high school with.
There were a lot of Indians in Fort Macleod, but she’d never seen any as big as them.
“How old are you?”
“I’m eleven and they’re both twelve,” the smallest one, who was still a good four inches taller than Andrew said, crossing his arms. Lucy had never seen a kid with so many pimples before. She found herself unable to look away from them, shiny against his ruddy complexion.
“You don’t look twelve,” Lucy growled.
“There’s no one left older than twelve, so I guess you’ll have to believe us,” the one with the strange light eyes said with a chuckle. “Honest Injun.”
“Where you from?” she asked, narrowing her eyes in an attempt to be more intimidating than her tiny frame would allow.
The biggest one, a stocky boy answered, pulling his hat off and nodding to the north. “Outside Calgary. We’re Blackfoot.”
“What?” she said, frowning at him. His eyes were dark, and he looked tired. Exhausted. “You from a reserve?”
“Yeah. An hour east of Calgary.”
“Oh,” she nodded. “Gotcha.”
“I’m James, and this is Corey and John.” He nodded at his friends, who gave a little wave. “Maybe put the gun away, bro?” He gave Andrew a friendly smile. “We’ve got nothing. It’s all in the truck.”
Cole appeared from downstairs where he’d been asleep and sat on the floor beside Lucy. Andrew put his gun down. “So you want a cow?” Lucy asked, searching her mind as to why James looked so familiar when she was certain they’d never met.
“We’re trying to get something going on our reserve with some cows. We got a couple, but we need a bull, and people say your bulls are nice.”
“They’re not our bulls,” Lucy said. “But we know the girl who has them.”
James smiled at the girl across the table, and he knew he’d come to the right place. She had a presence that was much larger than she was physically. He’d been looking for her for days. “You’re Lucy.”
“Yep,” she said, with a shrug.
“I’ve been dreaming about you,” he said quietly, as his friends continued their negotiation with Andrew over Angela Duncan’s cows. “Every night for a week. You and the cows.”
“I don’t dream,” Lucy lied, blinking at the boy in front of her, who was suddenly very familiar. He had a gentleness about him that conflicted with his large frame, and she remembered being caught off guard by the contrast when she recalled their meetings in her mind.
“Your nightmare,” James replied, his eyes wide. “I’ve walked through before, to find you. It’s ugly in there.”
“We cut him down last week, Bull,” Lucy said, her eyes welling up with tears as she found herself remembering a little more about the time they’d spent together and the name he’d asked her to call him. “And threw him in the river.”
“Did you do the other thing I told you to?”
“We did,” she nodded, thinking of the effort it took to hold him in place while they severed his head with the hacksaw. “Andrew did.”
“Good,” Bull said, with a smile. “You should move so he can’t find
you.”
Lucy shivered at the thought of her grandfather’s disembodied soul tracking her down. “Maybe?”
“It’s okay for now,” James said, looking around. “He seems to be gone like the rest.”
“…you can stay, but you sleep in the living room, on the floor,” Andrew said loudly. “You,” he nodded at Bull, noticing the attention he was paying to Lucy. “Stay away from my fucking sister.”
“Shut up,” Lucy snapped. “And you don’t tell him what to do. He’s a friend.”
“You don’t know him,” Andrew sneered. “Just because he’s nice to you doesn’t mean he’s a friend. You should know that. You’d think you’d—”
Bull looked at Andrew in a way that made him stop mid-sentence and practically cower in his chair. “I am a friend. To Lucy.”
September 2012
Somewhere south of Campbell
When she was younger, Lucy Campbell didn’t like being underestimated. She found it insulting to her intelligence, and it irritated her that usually people thought she was weak simply because she was a girl. Now, she realized that being underestimated was a great gift, because it gave her a distinct advantage in a lot of situations. That day was no exception. She’d sobbed and cried and they’d thought her weak.
And boy, had she shown them.
“I need to brush my teeth,” she remarked, once again feeling her skin crawl at the thought of Ski-mask’s hands pushing against the back of her head. No amount of gargling pond water was going to make that go away.
“I need to bleach my brain,” Tal countered, shaking his head as he purposefully walked two steps ahead of her through the forest, presumably in the direction of the corpses and the car. “I never thought—”
“I never thought anyone would be stupid enough to try and kill people without any guns, and fail so fucking hard when they had a clear advantage. I never thought anyone would be stupid enough to put their dick in the mouth of someone they didn’t know, who had just broken their knee. People are always going to surprise you Tal, and it’ll rarely be in a good way.” She knew he came from a different world than her, but his whiny response to doing what he had to was starting to grate.
“Ah,” he nodded. “So that’s—”
“Don’t talk about it,” she clipped. “And stop feeling so fucking sorry for yourself. It’s done, and you’re alive. Poor you. They’d trade places with you in a minute.”
Tal sighed loudly and picked some twigs out of his chest hair as they emerged from the ditch to the spot off the road where the blood-spattered car was parked.
“So what now?” he asked sharply. “Since you seem to have all the answers.”
She rolled her eyes and walked around the car once before opening the driver’s side door. “We drive until we figure out where we are, or until we run out of gas.”
Tal opened the passenger side door and sat down, since she’d made it clear that she was driving. “Fine.”
“Do you have a better plan?” She pulled the seatbelt around her and raised her eyebrows. “Or would you rather walk to fuck knows where.”
He reached in the back and pulled a book bag onto his lap. “Go ahead. You seem to have everything under control.”
“Look, if you want to part ways, have a great fucking day.” She nodded at the door. “We don’t have to do this together.”
“Why do you get the car?”
She turned the key and the car started. “We’ve got like a quarter of a tank. They must have known there was gas somewhere close.”
“Well, let’s go find it then,” Tal replied, pulling a wallet full of old American bills out of the bag. “I guess wherever we are takes these.”
“What else is in there?” Lucy asked curiously, hopeful for a change of clothes. Despite her impromptu bath, she felt disgusting.
“A couple of t-shirts, a few pairs of gym socks, a retainer, some painkillers—”
“Give me the pain killers,” she demanded. “And a t-shirt.”
The massive t-shirts clearly belonged to Ski-mask. Lucy barked at Tal to turn his head as she stripped down to her underwear and pulled it over her. “Give me your belt.”
“I don’t have a belt. I’m wearing what I slept in, remember?” Tal said, reaching for the other t-shirt. “I guess you’ll just have to deal with a shapeless garment. Sorry.”
She reached for the bag and pulled the rest of the things out. Gum, which she promptly stuffed in her mouth, hand-rolled cigarettes, which she left on the dash, two Swiss Army knives, which she kept for herself, and an old ski-hat, which she tossed in the backseat.
“How the fuck is that all that’s in here?” she exclaimed, annoyed at the kids they’d killed earlier for their lack of preparedness. “I thought East kids were perfectly suited to everything they did.”
“I don’t know,” Tal muttered. “These fucking people.”
“I’m going to figure out what the hell is going on,” Lucy remarked, as they headed down the highway. “Because this is pretty far from a normal kidnapping, or at least one that I have ever heard of.”
She thought about it as they drove, and none of it made sense. Why would they kidnap her, if they were trying to barter with Cole? Had all of that just been a clusterfuck to distract her so they could grab her? It was all entirely illogical. Maybe that was East. Illogical. Every dealing she’d ever had with them had been ridiculous.
“There’s some sort of town up ahead,” Tal said, snapping her out of her thoughts. “And the fuel light just came on.”
She nodded, and pulled over. “We need a story.”
“Why, because you look like you stumbled out of a slasher flick?”
She glared at him. “That, and because we don’t know where we are, and I think we should probably keep to ourselves.”
“We’re traveling, murderous circus performers. How’s that?”
Lucy bemoaned the fact that, if life was very different, she might have found Tal funny. His jokes were terrible, but charming in their own way.
“Let me take the lead,” she said, shaking her head at him. “We need to get some weapons.”
“I tossed the tire iron in the trunk for old time’s sake, and there’s those knives in your side of the car.”
Lucy glanced at them. “The iron seems to be your weapon of choice.”
“If I never pick that thing up again, it’ll be too soon,” he said quietly. “What I did back there—”
“Was necessary. Enough,” she shook her head. “What kind of validation are you looking for? Do you want a hug? Because you’re not going to get one from me.”
Tal smiled at her, a real, genuine smile that she’d thought impossible a few hours earlier with all that had happened. “So I’m just supposed to do what you do?”
“Just follow along. There’s no point in coming up with a plan, because we’re just going to have to deviate from it.”
Tal nodded in agreement. “All right. I’ll let you run the show this time, but if this doesn’t work out you don’t get another chance.”
“But what if it doesn’t work out, and you get a chance and fail? Then do I get another chance?” Her eyes twinkled as she batted her lashes. “Then what if I fail again? What is failure, Tal? There are just so many questions I have—”
“You’re a joker, huh?” He shook his head and looked even lighter than he had a few minutes earlier. “I had no idea you were funny.”
“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me,” she replied, raising her eyebrows. “So let’s get through this so I can keep it that way.”
“I’m upset that I killed those people,” he said, as if to affirm he was responding properly to the trauma he’d endured earlier.
Lucy sighed loudly in response. “I’m not upset about anything I did. I’m upset that people thought they should challenge me, because I’ve already earned my stripes. And as far as I’m concerned, you earned some today too. Good for you.”
The town was a place called Champion,
they determined from the bright spray paint on the overpass, welcoming them. It was obviously one of the new names that had sprung up all over the place in the ten years since history and tradition had lost almost all meaning.
“Where are we?” Lucy asked a chubby blonde girl that was probably about fifteen at the dilapidated gas station.
“Champion,” she said, rolling her eyes. “It’s Champion.”
“But where is Champion?” Tal inquired. “Like what area?”
“It’s Champion,” the girl said, deadpan. “That’s the area.”
“Like where on a map though?” Lucy sighed. “Like of old America.”
“Somewhere in the middle, maybe? I wasn’t never no good at map reading,” the girl said, tossing her hair behind her shoulder and giving them the once over. “Where you from?”
“Texas,” Lucy stated, bothered that anyone couldn’t know where they were geographically. “By way of California.”
“Long way from home, ain’t you?” The girl held out her hand for some cash for the gas, which Tal stuffed in her fist. “We ain’t get a lot of traffic through here. How’s Texas?”
“Delightful,” Lucy said dryly. “Where can we buy stuff here?”
“Old Walmart halfway through town. There’s people set up there with stuff to sell.”
“Thanks,” Tal nodded. “You have a great day.”
“You guys in some sort of a cult?” the girl asked, as they headed out the door. “With the t-shirts?”
They exchanged a look. “Nope,” Lucy answered, tugging hers down below her knees. “Just ran out of clothes. Got stuck out in some rain.”
“Good. We don’t like that shit around here. That’s more of a Jerusalem thing.”
Another look was exchanged. As far as Lucy knew, Jerusalem was across the ocean. “Okay, well, see you,” Tal said brightly. “And thanks for the gas.”
“Jerusalem?” Lucy raised her eyebrows as they locked the car doors. “Where the fuck are we? Let’s get what we need and start north.”
