“What kind of trouble?” I ask, glancing over my shoulder. Dolly shrugs. I stand up, reach to put my gun into the back of my pants, and stop as I realize I’m still wearing a dress. “Aw, shit. There’s no way I can fight in this.” I search around for my old clothes, but there’s no sign of them.
“No choice,” she says.
I heave a sigh and nod. When she places a hand on the door, I hold the gun behind my back in what I hope is a subtle way.
The door opens.
Rather than a host of armed guards like I was expecting, I find myself greeted by the face of the red-headed woman I met yesterday: Ruby. She’s wearing clothes this time, albeit scanty ones that strongly accentuate her womanly features. She shows her gap-toothed smile and holds up a tarnished silver tray.
“Brought you ladies some fresh water,” she says cheerfully, “and your old clothes. Though you look much cuter in that, miss!”
I’m too tired to respond. Dolly puts her knife away and steps out from her hiding place behind the door. The redhead squeaks at her sudden appearance, but quickly covers her surprise with a smile.
“Hey there, Dolly.” She glances from her to me. “You okay, miss? You look sick.”
“Hangover,” I answer hoarsely. I may not have experienced it before, but I’ve seen the symptoms enough times to be familiar with them. Now I understand why my papa hated being woken up in the morning.
“Well, drink up, that should at least help a little.” She sets the tray on the bed and gestures to the water. I pick one up. My mouth is as dry as the wastes, and the water looks tantalizing.
“Don’t drink that,” Dolly says. She shuts and locks the door behind her.
“What? Why?”
Dolly doesn’t answer, and advances toward the red-haired woman. The knife is in her hand again. Ruby retreats, raising her hands palms out.
“Whoa, Dolly! What are you—” She cuts off with a squeal as Dolly holds the knife to her throat.
“Where’s Wolf?”
“I don’t know what you’re—” Dolly presses the knife closer, drawing blood and a whimper. The woman loses her composure, eyes filling with tears. “T-The Queen has him! That’s all I know!”
I gape dumbly, still holding the glass of water.
“What do you mean she has him? What’s going on?”
“She betrayed us,” Dolly says.
“But she can’t do that! Isn’t she … what do you call it? Neutral?”
“She’s supposed to be.” Dolly glares at the woman. Her furious eyes are all the more frightening in her icy face. “Why is she betraying us?”
“I don’t know!” When Dolly’s expression darkens, Ruby starts to cry. Her tears leave gunky black trails down her face. “I swear, that’s all she told me! I was just supposed to come here, a-and act like everything was normal—”
“Please tell me there’s not something wrong with the water,” I say, looking longingly at the glass in my hand. Ruby bites her lip and looks away. I sigh. “Aww, man, I’m really thirsty …”
“Why?” Dolly asks.
“She didn’t tell me!” She can barely speak through her tears.
“I think she’s telling the truth,” I say, feeling a pang of sympathy. “You’re not going to kill her, are you?”
Dolly looks over to me, back at her captive, and pulls the knife away. The woman sinks to the floor, whimpering.
“No,” Dolly says. “We need a hostage.”
“You really think that’ll work?”
“Ruby is very valuable.”
“Dolly, you can’t do this to me!” Ruby wails. “This is crazy! Do you know how many guards the Queen has?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Ruby stares at her with wide eyes.
“What the hell happened to you?” she whispers. “How did you end up like this? With them?”
Dolly ignores her. She turns and tosses a stack of clothes to me.
“Oh … right.” I turn my back to them and change into my normal clothes, trying not to think about them watching me. It’s a huge relief to feel covered up again. Still, I shove the dress into my backpack in case I need it later.
“Dolly, you don’t have to do this,” Ruby pleads. “Just go to the Queen, I’m sure she’ll take you back. And she can protect you from this … this … crazy shit!”
Dolly looks down at her, eyes ice-cold and pistol in hand.
“I don’t need protecting anymore,” she says, and points the gun at Ruby’s head. “Stand up, hostage.”
When the woman doesn’t comply, Dolly grabs a fistful of her hair and pulls her to her feet.
“Stop crying,” she commands. Ruby takes a few moments to compose herself, wipes her face with an already-dirty handkerchief pulled from the front of her shirt, and blows her nose. “You will lead us to the boys’ room,” Dolly says. “And I will stay very close to you with my gun. You will not yell or raise any alarm.”
Ruby nods. Her lower lip trembles, but her eyes don’t spill over again.
“Good,” Dolly says. She hesitates, and adds, “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will.”
Ruby says nothing. Dolly presses the barrel of the gun against her back, keeping it held low by her own hip so that it will be hard to spot. Ruby takes a deep breath and stands up straighter. She picks up the tray. Though the rest of her is well controlled, her hands shake, making ice clink against glass. The sound makes my mouth feel drier than ever.
Dolly nudges her with the gun and she starts walking. I shove my gun into the back of my pants, grab my pack, and follow them.
We make our way down the first hallway without trouble. But when we round the corner, we run into two guards standing in front of the doorway to the main hall. They exchange a glance and stare pointedly at Ruby. She slows as she approaches them.
“Good morning,” Ruby says. I can’t see her face from where I’m standing, but I imagine it as fake-cheerful as her voice.
“Morning,” one says. “Where you taking these two?”
“To see the Queen.”
“Why’s that?”
“Her orders.”
They glance at each other again.
“Last I heard, her orders were—”
“They’ve changed,” Ruby interjects. I notice her make an effort to steady her hands on the tray.
A few tense moments pass. Finally one guard nods and opens the door, waving us through. Dolly carefully angles the gun to hide it from their sight as we pass. I smile at the man holding the door, and he squints at me suspiciously.
There are more guards in the main entrance, more than yesterday, and they all stare as we pass. Thankfully, none of them stop us. I’m sweating, perspiration spreading across my brow and beneath my arms. I try very hard to act normal as we cross the room, and find it increasingly difficult. It’s like I forget how to walk normally as soon as I start paying attention to it, and awkwardly shuffle along behind Dolly, smiling weakly at every guard we pass.
We cross into another hallway. This one is empty of everything but a few paintings on the wall.
“Calm down,” Dolly tells me.
“Calm? I am calm.”
“Then why are you making that face?”
I drop my attempt at a smile and wipe a hand across my forehead.
“Did you see all those guards?” I whisper to her. “We’re so screwed.”
“We’ll be fine.”
“How do you know?”
“We have a hostage. And the guards won’t want to kill us.”
“They won’t?”
“The Queen wants the reward. So, she wants us alive. Yes, Ruby?”
Ruby says nothing. Dolly pushes her forward and we resume walking. She stops in front of one of the last doors.
“Here,” she says. Dolly jerks her head in my direction. I nod, sidle up beside them, and knock on the door.
“Yeah?” Tank’s voice comes from within. Relieved, I push through the door. Dolly and Ruby slide in behind me, and w
e shut the door behind us.
The first thing I notice is Pretty Boy, kneeling on the floor over a bucket. He doesn’t look up, and continues retching into it with an unpleasantly wet noise. He seems to have cleaned the vomit off his shirt, at least. Tank is crouching beside him and patting him on the back. He looks bleary-eyed, but not ill like Pretty Boy.
My cheeks color as broken memories of last night dart through my mind. My stomach churns, and I try not to let my eyes linger on Pretty Boy for too long.
“What’s going on?” Tank asks, noticing Dolly’s gun and Ruby’s terrified expression. He straightens up and puts on his tough face. “Who’s that? Where’s Wolf?”
“We’re in trouble,” Dolly says flatly, ignoring his questions. Tank stops asking them. With a resigned and entirely unsurprised expression, he leaves Pretty Boy’s side and lifts his heavy-looking bag onto the bed. He starts pulling out weapons and laying them on the bed: a crowbar, a gun, and a few knives of various sizes.
“So what are we gonna do?” I ask. “We can’t actually fight them, can we?”
“Not much of a choice,” Tank says.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Ruby says. “Do you know how many guards the Queen has?”
“A lot, I’d bet,” Tank says. He shoves the gun into the side of his pants and a sheathed knife through one of his belt loops.
“You people are insane.”
“We get that a lot,” Tank says cheerfully.
Someone knocks on the door.
Everybody freezes in place, even Pretty Boy leaning over his bucket.
“Yeah?” Tank calls out after a second.
“A message from the Queen,” a man’s voice comes from outside.
Tank and I draw our guns. Then there’s a lot of nudging and whispering and meaningful glances as we try to decide who should open the door. Eventually Dolly pushes Ruby forward. She hesitates, gives Dolly a long, searching look, and slowly swings the door open.
“Ruby?” The man outside, a broad-shouldered and grim-faced guy wearing the Queen’s emblem, looks confused. “What are you—” His eyes slide past her and spot the rest of us. He reaches for his gun.
The second his hand is on the holster, Dolly and Tank fire simultaneously, reacting faster than I would have thought possible. The bullets whiz just past Ruby’s head and bury into the guard. One only skims him, but the other, likely Dolly’s, goes through his left eye.
The body falls. Ruby screams, loud and horrified like someone who’s never seen a man die before. The quiet that follows makes me realize how loud the gunshots and screaming must have been.
“So much for subtlety,” Tank says. He bends down, grabs Pretty Boy, and throws him over his shoulder like a sack of meat. “Gotta move, now!”
“No,” Pretty Boy says, struggling frantically. “No no no no, just leave me here, I’ll meet up with you guys later and …”
Tank neither acknowledges his words nor makes any move to set him down.
“What’s the plan?” I ask. Dolly grabs Tank’s pack and the gun off the dead man.
“Find Wolf,” Dolly says. “Kill everyone in our way.”
“I like that plan,” Tank says. “Shoot anything that looks dangerous. Don’t hold back, Kid.”
“Me?” I gulp and nod. “Got it!”
“Good. Let’s go.”
We move out, guns ready. Tank carries a complaining Pretty Boy over his shoulder. No guards are in this hallway yet, although the curious faces of other guests poke out of rooms to see who’s shooting who. A few guns point at us out of narrowly cracked doors. We rush past them and through the door to the main entrance room.
There are six guards here, all of them armed, and they stop abruptly when they see us.
Dolly holds her gun to Ruby’s head, yanking the woman against her so she can’t escape. She says nothing, but her hard stare communicates the message well enough.
“Where the hell is Wolf?” Tank asks, his face hard.
The guards hesitate for a split second. Then one raises his gun, and Tank opens fire. I take his cue and do the same, firing wildly in the general direction of the guards. The sound of gunfire booms in the huge, empty space of the room, filling it all the way up to its sky-high ceilings. One guard stumbles into a wall and slides down, leaving a streak of red on the white surface. Another goes down with a bullet to the chest, and a third is incapacitated by a hit to the leg. Three down, but we’re not fast enough to kill the others in time.
Our group scatters as they return fire. I dive behind the nearest statue and crouch there. Bullets bite into the already-crumbling marble, sending chunks crashing to the floor. Dolly shoves Ruby aside and drops to the ground, firing back at the man with his gun trained on her. Her bullet splits his forehead before he can loose another round. Tank drops Pretty Boy on the floor and charges the remaining two guards. He rips the gun out of one’s hands and smashes him over the head with it. The guard reels and falls; Dolly shoots him the second he moves to stand.
One left. I level my sights on his head. Our eyes meet for a moment, and his mirror the fear I’m feeling. I hesitate. Before I can react, the man turns and fires at Tank. Tank jolts and stumbles, obviously hit—but runs forward again, heedless. He grabs the last standing guard by the throat and lifts him up with terrifying ease. He slams the man into a nearby statue, and his skull hits marble with a crack. The sound echoes sharply. Tank smashes the man’s head against the statue once, twice, three times, and lets the body slump to the floor.
The last remaining guard is still on the floor and clutching his leg with one hand. He points his gun in Tank’s direction, his hand trembling. After only a moment he lets it drop and raises both hands in surrender.
The room is still.
I creep out from behind the statue, which is now missing half its head. The one Tank was using as a weapon is dripping blood, and all the paintings are splattered with red and bullet holes. The white tile shows every splotch of blood and brains. A pool is leaking out from the man with the bashed-in head, collecting in the cracks between the tiles and slowly spreading across the floor.
Dolly climbs to her feet, brushing herself off. She points her gun at Ruby without even glancing in her direction. She freezes where she is. Tank leans against a wall, breathing heavily.
“I am way too hungover for this,” Pretty Boy groans from the floor, clutching his head. He doesn’t seem to have moved since Tank dropped him.
“Are you okay, Tank?” I ask. I step over a couple of bodies on my way over to him and pause to take the gun from the still-living guard, who cringes away and makes no move to stop me. “You got shot, didn’t you?” My stomach knots with guilt. If I had taken that shot, I could’ve prevented it.
“No big deal,” he says. “Guy was scared, missed anything vital.” He holds up his arm and shows me the hole in it, up near his shoulder. I wince. “Clean through, no problem.”
“Wow,” I say earnestly. “You’re so brave.”
“Nah, just been shot a lot.” He smiles at me, but his face hardens again instantly as he turns to the remaining man. He walks over and shoves the barrel of his gun into the cowering man’s face. “Where’s Wolf?”
“W-With the Queen,” the man answers quickly, not even trying to act tough.
“Where?”
He doesn’t answer, but looks at the huge set of double doors directly across from the entrance door.
“Okay,” Tank says. He shoots the man in the head.
Ruby lets out a loud sob. I realize with a guilty twist in my gut that I’m not even bothered by things like that anymore. I’ve grown used to it, mostly. Maybe I couldn’t shoot a man while looking him in the eyes yet, but a random death no longer has any effect on me. I guess I really am becoming one of them: a raider, a shark. For a second I feel conflicted, but a swell of pride overwhelms the uncertainty.
Tank turns to the big set of double doors. He yanks on the handle, but of course it’s locked. He raises one leg and gives it a hard k
ick. The room booms with the noise, but the door barely moves. He stops and stares at it contemplatively, scratching his head.
“Well, I’m out of ideas,” he says.
“What do we do?” I ask. I catch myself looking around for Wolf before remembering he’s not here.
“Move,” Dolly says from behind me. I take one look at her and scamper out of her way. Tank doesn’t take long to follow.
She opens fire the second we’ve moved, an assault rifle jetting out a stream of bullets. I instinctively duck behind one of the barely intact statues. I peek out at the door from my hiding place, watching as bullets pepper the wood. At first they don’t seem to have much effect, but as Dolly unloads relentlessly, holes start popping up. Soon bullets shred the wood like paper, making the doors look more and more flimsy. She doesn’t stop until she runs out of bullets. The doors look worn down, but they’re still standing. She reaches for a second gun. Tank stops her.
“I got this,” he says. He walks over to a statue, crouches down low, and lifts it off the ground with a grunt of effort. Obviously straining, he waddles over to the doors. He plants his feet, pulls the statue back, and swings it forward like a battering ram. It blows through a whole chunk of the already-weakened wood. A second blow makes half of one door fall, leaving an entrance big enough for any of us. Tank drops the statue, and bits and pieces of marble break off as it thuds to the floor.
“There we go,” Tank says triumphantly. I creep out and peek through the hole, but not much of the room is visible. All I can see is an expanse of empty white tile. I’m too afraid to actually stick my head through.
The others seem similarly hesitant about stepping in, but soon we don’t have a choice. The sound of footsteps and voices comes from first one, and then the other door, and then from the entrance as well. Guards are coming, and a lot of them. The only way out is forward. Tank drags an unwilling Pretty Boy up from the floor and pushes him through, and the rest of us file in one by one, Dolly dragging Ruby along at the rear.
We step into the Queen’s throne room.
It looks like a much, much larger version of the entrance room, with the same stark white tile and pompous decorations. I notice, with a sense of baffled amusement, that all of the decorations here are obviously modeled after the Queen. The numerous statues and busts bear a striking resemblance to her, minus the wrinkles and other not-so-appealing parts, and the paintings depict her posing dramatically and dressed in her over-the-top fashion. Several of them are done in a crude mockery of older styles, mimicking other paintings I’ve seen in the building. Even I can tell they’re pretty poorly done. They’re embarrassing to look at.
The Wastelanders Page 13
