The Butchers

by Katie French

  “Clay? Ethan? Auntie?” I ask the darkness.

  A small body hits me as arms go around my waist. “Ethan,” I say, holding him.

  “It was so dark,” he mumbles into the folds of my shirt.

  “I’m here now,” I say.

  “Riley,” Clay says, stepping out and putting a hand on my cheek. “I was worried you were locked up, too.”

  “It seems that Doc left me free so I could unlock you. I guess he didn’t want us all dead,” I say bitterly.

  “That motherless bastard,” Clay starts. “When I see him next, I’m gonna kill him.”

  “Let’s not worry about that now,” I say. “Is Auntie in there?”

  “Here, puddin’.” Her voice sounds tired. “There’s another, too. Desdemona.”

  “Who?” I ask.

  “The archer,” Clay says. “The one you, um, helped persuade to come with us.”

  “She’s the one who bashed me in the head? Perfect,” a female voice I don’t recognize asks.

  I forgot about the archer. “Sorry about the head bashing. Listen, let’s talk this through where we can see each other face-to-face.”

  Ethan squeezes me. “I hate the dark.”

  Together, we walk the corridor until we make it to the garage area and the entrance. Finally, when we’re just about to the open the outer doors, I stop and turn around.

  The group gathers around me. In the dim light, I can see what a toll the last few hours have had on them. Grimy and covered with dirt, their tired faces stare at me. My eyes fall on the face of the girl, Desdemona they said she was called. Her head cover is gone, but she still wears the rest of her loose sand-colored suit. Her face is lovely, skin the color of chestnut, with full red lips and long thick eyelashes. Her hair is black and curly, radiating around her head like a halo. But she looks hard, too, battle-ready. I remember her arrows as she helped us defeat those two at the fair. I very much want to know her story.

  “Here’s what we know,” I say looking at each face. “Doc and Corra took Mo.”

  Auntie nods sadly. Ethan squeezes my hand. “That’s bad,” he says.

  “Yes.” I take a deep breath, wondering how I’ll tell them the next bit.

  “They took her to Miss Nessa,” Betsy says loudly. Everyone turns to look. Somehow she has more bugs; two are wriggling in her open palm. As we watch, she takes a beetle-looking one and crunches it between her teeth before continuing. “Your monkey baby is at the Breeders.”

  The glee in her voice makes me want to punch her, but I remember that her cut-up brain is half my fault. Taking a few deep breaths, I turn away. “If we can believe Betsy, they’ve taken Mo to Nessa to swap for immunity.”

  “Corra probably knows livin’ here ain’t sustainable, and she’s right. It ain’t no kinda life.” Clay looks over at Betsy, who selects a slug to eat next. He swallows hard and looks away.

  “We know we can’t stay here,” Auntie says. “But going after Nessa in our condition . . .” she whistles through her teeth. “You know how that’ll play out, bug.”

  I was worried they’d say this. “We can’t just abandon Mo. She’s family.” My eyes search the circle, looking for anyone on my side. “We don’t leave family behind.”

  “Leaving behind is one thing, puddin’. Going after the Breeders is another,” Auntie says quietly. “There’s no tellin’ your baby even survived the trip.”

  “She was getting better,” I plead. My eyes find Clay. “What do you say?”

  He looks down, sighing. “I’m not sayin’ we abandon Mo. But you know as well as I do what kind of weapons Nessa’s got. If we had bullets, well . . .”

  “I can get you bullets, Clay,” Betsy coos. She smiles, revealing teeth flecked with black bug carcasses.

  “Where?” I ask, and Betsy’s angry eyes snap to me, but Clay tries a more subtle approach.

  “That’d be real nice, Betsy, if you could.” He smiles at her.

  She practically melts under his gaze, smiling and flirting, fixing her crooked and dirty wig. “Corra doesn’t think I know nothing, but I watch her. I know where she keeps her stash.”

  “Can you show me?” he asks sweetly.

  She nods, tugging on the end of one bedraggled pigtail. Then she beckons for him to follow.

  Gesturing for Auntie and the others to stay here, I quietly follow Clay as he follows Betsy. We walk the main corridor off of the garage area, but where the hallway splits off, Betsy squeezes herself past what seems like an impassible hunk of debris and disappears on the other side. Clay and I exchange a look. Then he maneuvers himself around the busted bits of wall. I give it a few beats before I do the same.

  This hallway smells of plaster dust and is even darker than the last, but I can hear Betsy and Clay’s footfalls. Soon, the walking stops. I hear someone fumble at a door and then the creak of unoiled hinges. A dim light flickers on.

  “Holy shit,” Clay says.

  I walk quickly up and peer in the room.

  It’s an arsenal unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The room is a small ten-by-ten storage room, but where there would normally be mops and stacks of towels, there are guns. Rows of old guns on pegs on the far wall. On either side are boxes and boxes of ammunition. Clay’s face lights up like a kid on Christmas.

  Slowly running a finger along one of the semi-automatic nightmares, Clay inhales deeply. When he lifts it, I get the sense I’m seeing what his face might look like as he held his firstborn. Not that there will be one of those now.

  “Dear Jesus,” he whispers. “Betsy, this is amazing. Thank you.” He pulls the strange girl into a hug. While she holds him, she locks eyes with me, giving me a look that I’m sure she thinks will send me over the edge.

  But I’m too busy planning our next moves, because, if I know Clay, these guns change everything.

  He lifts as many heavy guns into his arms as he can manage before turning to me. “Can you get the ammo? Boxes of the 5.56 and the CCI stingers. Oh, and grab some of those in the green Remington box. We’ll have to come back for more.” He eyes the shelves as if having a hard time deciding what to grab first.

  I snag as many as I can, wondering if Betsy will try to help, and I feel uncomfortable about having to tell her not to touch the very guns she showed us, but she doesn’t even bother. She keeps her hands in the pockets of her very dirty army fatigues as we walk back to the rest of the family.

  Ethan’s eyes go wide when he sees Clay’s haul. He scampers up, hands out. “Whoa!”

  “Eyes only,” I say scolding. “Don’t touch.”

  He shoots me a look but keeps his hands to himself.

  Desdemona stands up from where she was sitting off to the side and looks over our haul. “Any crossbows?”

  Clay shakes his head. “Didn’t see any, but that don’t mean there weren’t. There’s so much in that room. We’re set for life.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” I say, setting the boxes of ammo down. “We’re not even sure any of these work.”

  “Have to test-fire them all. One from each box. And they need a good cleaning.” He sets his load down carefully. “Ethan, watch these. I’m going back for more.”

  Desdemona watches him carefully. “How many guns can one man need?”

  I shrug. “As many as that man can carry, I guess.”

  She gives me a half smile. “I bet he’ll find a way to carry a hell of a lot.”

  I hold out my hand to shake. “I’m Riley.”

  Turning, she looks me over. “Desdemona. Clay said you were a girl. I wasn’t sure I believed it.” Her dark eyes narrow as she examines my face.

  He told her my secret? I flush with emotion, not sure how I feel about it. “Yeah, I, uh . . .”

  “He figured it was only fair for me to know your secrets since the cat kind of jumped out of the bag with mine when you cracked me on the noggin.” She gestures to her head.

  “Sorry again. Does it help that I was trying to save your life?”

  �
�Marginally,” she says, smirking. “So people really think you’re a bender?”

  “Most.”

  She makes a dubious face. “Any bozo with eyes can see that you aren’t.”

  “I try not to give them much time to look.”

  Her pink lips curve up. “Me too. Shoot first. Ask questions second. Your boyfriend is lucky he caught me without my arrows.”

  “So, are we square?” I ask. “About your head?”

  She rubs a spot above her right ear. “That was a shitty thing to do. But you probably saved my life, too. So, I guess we’re even. Just don’t do it again unless you want an arrow in back.” She smirks.

  I like this girl. Too bad having her around is another liability. Three women on a trek on open road to one of the most dangerous places in the world sounds like a recipe for disaster. But then, she certainly can handle a bow.

  “What’s your plan?” I ask. She arches a dark eyebrow. “When we move out, I mean. You can stay here, but like Clay said, it’s not livable. Neither is the fairgrounds now that the Butchers are out patrolling.”

  Her face gathers a hardness I haven’t seen yet. “Those sons of bitches. If I could kill every last one of them, I would.”

  My eyes widen, but I don’t judge her. I feel the same about the Breeders for what they did to my mother, Auntie, and Betsy, what they tried to do to me. What they want to do to Mo.

  “Did they do something . . . to your family?” I ask cautiously.

  She looks away sharply and doesn’t answer.

  I know better than to pry.

  Clay spends the rest of the day gathering and cleaning guns and stocking ammo. He whistles as he cleans, looking happy as a pig in shit all day. Ethan takes an interest for a while, helping him, but then takes a nap in the shade of the awning when the day is at its hottest. Desi and I scour the rest of the compound for things we’ll need. We come up with spare parts for the solar car and manage to find a tire in okay shape to replace the one I blew. We find their military-issue canteens and start filling them from the tap that still works in the kitchen. Water, as always, will be a real problem, and heavy if we take too many canteens. Desdemona gets excited when she finds a device that supposedly pulls water vapor from the air, but I can’t imagine it still works. I watch her slip it into the sand-colored satchel over her shoulders.

  Last, we raid the food supply, which sends Betsy into a tizzy. There’s a lot of insects either dead or still alive in cages, but not a lot of other food. My guess is that Corra and Doc cleared out most of the other food for their trip. How far have they gotten by now? I worry about Mo. I worry that the Butchers have found them. Then I worry they made it to Albuquerque and Nessa has already started experimenting on her. Fury rises up in my chest when I think about Doc being in on it. I used to think he was my best friend. Now, I think about putting a bullet in his leg.

  “There’s that look on your face,” Desdemona says, looking up from the cage of crickets she’s securing with tape. “The one that says, ‘I’m ’bout to murder someone if they say boo.’”

  “Hmm?” I ask, playing dumb. I pull a tin marked “Insect Flour” off a shelf and put it in my bag.

  “I know that look,” she says, eying me. “You thinking about the people that wronged you and what you gonna do about it.” Her mouth puckers.

  I shrug, setting my bag down and pressing my hands against a countertop. “It’s worse when it’s someone you trust. When it’s some stranger, or a person you know to be shit, you aren’t surprised. This is a sucker punch in the stomach when you’re just standing there thinking everything is hunky-dory.”

  “Hunky-dory.” She nods thoughtfully. “Revenge is the only thing that ever made me feel better. Lots and lots of revenge.”

  I look at her face, taking this in. She must be very hard to survive out there on her own. But then, is there any softness to her? Any love? I think about what I would be like without Clay, Ethan, and Auntie. Probably just like Desdemona.

  “This is all that’ll fit,” she says, hefting her bag. Looking down, she makes a face. “I’ve eaten a lot of crap in the past, but bugs take the cake. Cockroach cupcakes? Beetle buffet? Maybe it’s better to starve.”

  “Hopefully, we won’t need them for long,” I say, picking up my bag. “Clay is a great shot. And with all those bullets, he’ll have meat for us in no time.”

  “You two are together?” She arches an eyebrow. “I mean, I figured since he wouldn’t stop talking about you.”

  Pulling out the gold ring on the chain around my neck, I show it to her. “We’re as together as it gets in this dumb world.”

  “Death do us part? Or until the Breeders snatch you up.”

  I turn and stop her as she’s about to walk out of the kitchen. “Listen, there’s some things we should tell you about the Breeders.”

  “I know. Clay’s ma is the head of it. You, your aunt, and that crazy-ass chick used to live there. Nessa has a vendetta against you for taking her son away. Yadda, yadda, yadda.” She ticks them all off on her fingers and then stops, looking at me. “Did I miss anything? You and Clay are secret siblings with a hidden love child?”

  “You forgot Clay shot her, but she didn’t die. Oh, and she experimented on Betsy’s brain as payback for helping me escape. That about covers it.”

  Desdemona whistles. “Damn, that’s cold. So, the plan is go in shooting. Take her out and free everyone, right?”

  “And don’t get killed,” I add with a sarcastic smile.

  “Right. ‘Don’t get killed,’ is my motto. Right after, ‘Crazy-ass hoes should not run hospitals.’”

  “Nessa is a crazy-ass ho, yes.” I fix her with a serious expression. “Are you sure you want to come? We have weapons, but that hospital has withstood people much better armed than we are.”

  Desi shrugs one thin shoulder. “If I get to shoot bad guys, it’s okay with me. But I might not go in if that’s okay with you. I don’t have one of those”—she points at the ankh brand on my wrist—“and I plan to keep it that way.”

  “I never thought I’d have one either,” I say, looking at my wrist. “But whatever you want. You help us, you call your own shots.”

  When we get to the front, Clay’s got the solar car’s tires changed and most of the car loaded. He squints up at me from the side of the car. “Hey,” he says, cupping my leg.

  “Hey,” I say, leaning down for a quick kiss. “How goes it?”

  “Fine. Car is good. But we got dos problemas.”

  “And those are?”

  “Well, that for one.” He gestures to the blown-up semi blocking the road out. Then he lowers his voice. “And have you considered that, with all these supplies, we can only fit at max four in that solar car?”

  “I’ve thought about it,” I say quietly, flicking my gaze over to where Desdemona sits, sharpening arrowheads. “Clay, what do we do? If we leave Desdemona and Betsy here, they won’t last long.”

  “I ain’t worried about Desi. Besty, now that’s a different story.” He looks at the solar car thoughtfully. It’s the size of a small sedan. “We could maybe fit five if I get creative with storage on the roof, but not six. These jalopies aren’t made to haul that much weight.”

  “So we leave them here, and tell them we’ll come back for them?” I whisper, looking around for Betsy.

  “Betsy won’t like it.”

  “And Desdemona just told me she wants to come.”

  “Plus, the Butchers know someone is here. Someone who blew up their compadres. It won’t take long before they come a-knockin’.”

  I scrub my fingers through my chin-length hair and try to think. “If only we could get our hands on another vehicle. The only ones left are pieces of shit.”

  “That would be a pretty visible caravan,” he says, thinking things over, “but with the guns we have, we could hold off damn near anybody but the Breeders themselves.” He tilts his head and gets that curious look on his face. I follow his gaze and see he’s looking at the bla
sted semi.

  “Clay, we can’t,” I say, following him as he walks over to it. “The Butchers will know it’s theirs. It’ll mark us as enemies from a mile away.”

  He starts kicking the semi’s tires. “You heard the Butchers. All they got is enemies.”

  I shake my head but have to agree with him. With the guns we have, they would be hard-pressed to do much to us. And it would solve our vehicle problem. Still, Corra hit it with a rocket.

  But when we look, it turns out, the rocket hit the trailer, not the cab, though the cab has considerable damage on the back. Clay and I pull away the bodies and manage to get the truck rumbling. We don’t have much fuel, but it should run all the way to Albuquerque if we don’t stop. Clay spends the rest of the daylight checking wires and fiddling under the hood, getting good and greasy. Then he manages, with a few mishaps, to back it up until he can get it to a place where he can detach the destroyed trailer. When he drives back with just the cab, twilight bleeding out along the horizon, I can tell he’s pretty pleased with himself.

  “Let’s go,” he says, jumping down from the open driver’s side door.

  “You haven’t slept,” I say, looking at him.

  “I can sleep when I’m dead,” he says, wrapping an arm around me. “Right now, it’s Mo that matters.”

  He’s saying this for me, and I love him for it. I kiss his dirty lips and walk back to get the others. He calls after me, “You get Betsy.”

  Oh, Betsy. I wave my hand back at him dismissively.

  I get inside the garage and wake up Ethan. Big brown eyes blink up at me. “What’s going on?”

  “We’re going,” I say. “We’re going to get Mo.”

  Doc

  I can’t stop shaking.

  The whole ride to the Breeders, I tell myself it’s going to be okay. That I did this for Riley. Corra was going to take Mo whether I went along or tried to fight her. When Corra came into my room, heavily armed, and told me I had a choice to make, what could I have done? If I had tried to wrestle the gun out of her hands, she would’ve shot me. If I had argued and stayed behind, I don’t think I would be dead, but then no one would be here in the solar car holding Mo.