The Wastelanders

by K. S. Merbeth

  I sit down heavily. If Pretty Boy is relaxed enough to start looting, that means it’s over. I strain to hear any gunshots or commotion, but there’s nothing to hear. The townies are all still holed up in their homes, and the Queen’s men must be either dead, hiding, or gone. Judging from the state of things, Dolly and Tank must have been busy picking them off. And Wolf …

  Thinking about him getting shot makes me feel like something cold and sharp is poking into my chest. I suck in a breath through my teeth, let it out slowly, and force myself to my feet again. His body must be nearby. Not far away, I can see the scorched earth where the bazooka’s rocket exploded, surrounded by pieces of charred bodies. But as for Wolf, there’s no sign of him. I walk over just to make sure, and ignore how the smell of the burnt bodies makes me a little hungry. Wolf’s body is gone. I saw the Queen shoot him right here—did the guards take the body? Or …

  Just on cue, I hear a familiar low whistle from behind me.

  “Wow, what a fuckin’ mess. You do all this yourself, Kid?”

  I turn around and there he is, as alive as ever.

  “Wolf!” A surge of relief fills me and overflows, and I can’t stop myself from running over. I slam into him, making him stumble back a few steps, and wrap my arms around him in a tight hug. He pauses, looking baffled, and roughly shoves me off. I fall on my ass in the dirt and scramble up again, still grinning. “You’re alive!”

  “Of course I am, dumbass,” he says. “You think I would go into a situation like that without a plan?” He rips off the remnants of his tattered shirt, displaying a black vest underneath, and grins. “Bulletproof vest, motherfuckers.”

  He does a double take at me, and his triumphant grin fades slightly.

  “You look like you massacred a small village with your bare hands. What the hell happened?”

  “Yeah, umm. I killed the Queen. With a shotgun.” I rub the side of my head self-consciously. “It was a little messy.”

  “We-ell, look at you, Kid.” His grin is back in full force. “Killin’ people and runnin’ around covered in blood. A lil’ baby shark, eh?”

  The baby comment chafes a little, but I still smile. He takes a look at all the dead men spread across the ground and the bloody remains of the Queen.

  “I’m not even gonna ask what happened,” he says. “’Cause I’m not sure I wanna know. But I’m proud of you, kiddo.” He punches me in the shoulder. And as silly as it may be, I feel happiness welling up at his words, covering up all my shaky feelings over killing the Queen. He’s proud of me. Hell, even more than that, I’m proud of myself. For once, I did something on my own. I smile like an idiot and can’t stop, even after Wolf has walked away and started checking the bodies for weapons and valuables.

  A hand claps me on the shoulder, and I turn to see Pretty Boy. In his outstretched hand is my trusty old knife. I take it.

  “Forgive me yet?” he asks.

  “Ain’t that easy,” I say, “but it’s a start.”

  He smiles a little, but then turns serious.

  “I’m, uh … I’m sorry. About, you know, what happened. I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Nope, you shouldn’t have.” I stare down at my feet, my smile fading away.

  “I’ve been a real shithead to you, and you’ve treated me way better than I deserve. I mean, you came and saved me even after everything, and that’s really …” He trails off, and when I look up at him his cheeks are turning red. “You’re a good kid, is what I’m trying to say.”

  “Thanks.” I don’t know what else to say. “You … um … you’ve got potential to be a good guy someday. Maybe.”

  He laughs, and for once it doesn’t sound fake or mean.

  “Thanks,” he says. He’s about to say something else when he’s interrupted by a very loud and distinctly Tank-like whoop of excitement.

  He and Dolly emerge from one of the nearby towers. He’s lugging the bazooka with him, and Dolly is carrying an impressive-looking sniper rifle with all the delicateness of holding a child.

  “Did you see me with that bazooka? Did you see?” Tank asks Wolf excitedly. “Damn, that was fun.”

  “Told you the plan would work,” Wolf says. “We didn’t even fuck anything up for once.”

  “You guys didn’t!” I butt in. “Pretty Boy and I spent the whole time running away!”

  “And getting the shit kicked out of me,” he adds. “And you guys get to have fun with your fancy guns, what the fuck?”

  “And I thought you were dead!” I say to Wolf.

  “Aww, Kid, that’s insulting. Should’ve known better.”

  “Well, you could’ve let us know!” Pretty Boy nods in agreement.

  “No time. You two are both pretty useless, anyway,” Wolf says.

  “Hey, don’t lump Kid in with Pretty Boy. That ain’t fair,” Tank says with a laugh. Pretty Boy attempts to shove him, which has absolutely no effect on Tank’s girth.

  Meanwhile, Dolly comes up beside me.

  “You have blood all over your face,” she informs me quietly.

  “Uh, yeah, I know. The Queen’s.”

  “I saw.”

  “Thanks for shooting those guards.”

  “I ran out of bullets.”

  “That’s okay. I handled the rest.”

  “Yes, you did,” she says. She walks over to the Queen’s body and stares down at it. Her face not showing any reaction, she sets down her sniper rifle, pulls out a pistol, and points it at what’s left of the Queen’s head. I look away just before she starts shooting, and keep my gaze averted until she finishes unloading the clip. I hear her sigh quietly before walking away.

  The others have started looting the bodies already. Wolf goes straight for their weapons, collecting himself quite a pile despite the fact we already have a truck full of guns and explosives. Pretty Boy is smart enough to take their walkie-talkies, which even Wolf admits is a good idea.

  “All right,” Wolf says, trying to juggle a few too many guns in his arms. “Now let’s get the fuck out of here before the townies realize I set those houses on fire.”

  For the first time in what feels like ages, we aren’t running from anyone. Everyone is in high spirits as we set off, leaving Towers behind with a mess of bullet holes and blackened buildings to remember us by. I wonder if the mayor will rethink his policy on dealings with sharks.

  I ride in the jeep with Wolf and Dolly, while Tank drives the big truck with Pretty Boy riding along. Pretty Boy and Wolf each have a walkie-talkie so we can communicate between vehicles. Wolf takes advantage of this by spewing vulgarities and insults at Pretty Boy whenever he gets bored. Dolly spends almost an hour meticulously cleaning her new sniper rifle, and I do my best to clean the blood off myself. Pretty Boy navigates with the help of a map from the townies, and we drive straight through the day. I drift in and out of sleep, relaxed by the movement and the warm air.

  When the sun goes down we pull onto the side of the road to rest for the night. Since we didn’t see any other cars and Pretty Boy judges we aren’t too close to Saint’s territory yet, Wolf lets us have a fire. There aren’t any people to fry up this time, but we bust out a generous amount of canned food. There’s soup, beans, and fruits. Pretty Boy reads off labels and divvies it out to whoever claims it first. I end up with some sliced pineapple and a can of chili. Fruit is always a treat. I save it for last and eat very slowly, savoring each bite with its almost overwhelming sweetness.

  I sit cross-legged next to Dolly on the ground. She’s proving, as usual, to be the only person in existence who can eat straight out of a can without making any kind of mess. By the time I’m done with my meal I have sauce and pineapple juice covering my hands and all down the front of my shirt. My clothes are still caked with blood, and I’m sure my combined smell of that and sweat and pineapples is pretty rank. I find myself wishing for a bath like I had back at the Queen’s, but I guess that’s out of the question.

  Normally I wouldn’t waste the water, but since
we have excess right now, I use some of it to rewash my hands and face after the meal. It’s quiet. Everyone is stuffed and tired and content. For a while nobody speaks, and we all sit around watching the fire and basking in the calmness. It’s too dark to see anything beyond the reach of the firelight, but the wastelands don’t scare me anymore. I feel safe within our bubble of light and warmth.

  Pretty Boy stretches out on the ground and soon dozes off. Tank, still sitting, nods off intermittently. Dolly cleans her fingernails with a knife, and Wolf pores over one of the maps he bought. I don’t know how he could be getting much out of it when he can’t even read, but judging from his furrowed brows he’s doing some serious thinking.

  “So we’re really gonna do this, Wolf?” I ask, pulling my knees to my chest and hugging them. He squints at me.

  “Do what?”

  “Blow up the radio tower.”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “But …” I scuff one boot in the dirt. “I mean, why?”

  “Ain’t got much of a choice, Kid, this Saint guy’s after us.”

  “Well, we could always run or something,” I say. “And, I mean, from an outside perspective, isn’t what he’s doing kind of … good?”

  The silence around the fire suddenly feels uncomfortably thick. I feel the tension growing with each second that passes. Wolf scrutinizes me from across the flames, and Tank and Dolly both watch him and await his response.

  “Let me ask you something, Kid,” Wolf says with a hard edge to his voice. “Do you know what happens when you give one person too much power?”

  “Not really?”

  “Nuclear wastelands, that’s what happens.” He spreads his arms wide to show the empty stretch of desert around us. In the silence after his response, I realize how quiet it is out here. There’s only the crackle of flames and the sound of my breathing. “You know, there used to be plants here. There used to be animals. There used to be people. You think any of them had a say in starting the war? No way. But they paid the price all the same.”

  “But you don’t know if Saint would be like that, he—”

  “Everybody is like that when they get too much power. Look at the Queen: She used to be all right. She stayed neutral, her mansion was a safe place for travelers, and she treated her own people well. But once she got all big and powerful, she got addicted to it. And the second that power started to slip out from under her, she fuckin’ threw away everything to try and get it back. She was willing to betray us, to kill Ruby. She broke all her own rules. And that’s what all people are like. They’ll do anything to gain power, and to keep it once they have it.” He shakes his head, grimacing. “You post-bombers all think the world before was some kind of utopia. It wasn’t. People still killed each other, and assholes didn’t get the punishment they deserved. We had people in charge worse than the Queen, and the whole ‘justice’ thing was a lot slower and a lot less reliable than putting a bullet in someone’s head.”

  Tank lets out an impressed whistle.

  “And here I was thinking we were doing it just for fun!”

  “Well, that too,” Wolf says, the corner of his mouth curving upward.

  “I thought you were just a kid when the bombs fell? How do you know all this kinda stuff?” I ask.

  “My parents talked about it when I was growing up. They were real smart, so it’s gotta be true.” He nods to himself. “My mom was a cop back before, y’know.”

  That raises a lot of questions, like if they were so smart how did Wolf turn out so messed up, but I figure now isn’t the right time to bring that up.

  “A cop? Those were like town guards, right?”

  “Ehh, kind of. It just means she must’ve been right.”

  “Oh. Okay.” I trust Wolf, so I accept it. “My papa used to say some of the same stuff, actually.”

  “Oh yeah?” Wolf looks barely interested.

  “Your papa?” Tank asks, looking considerably more so. “Y’know, you’ve never said … where did you come from, anyway? How’d you end up alone?”

  “Well …” It feels so far away now. Wolf and the crew have become my life. It’s like I shrugged off the past and have been ignoring it ever since I got into that jeep. “I used to live in this town … Bramble, it was called.”

  “So you were a townie?”

  “No. Well, kind of.” I never considered myself one, but I guess I did live there for a number of years. “I mean … I grew up in a shelter. One of the underground ones. My papa and me.”

  “What about your mom?”

  “Oh, she died when I was young. Got sick or something. So it was just me and my papa for a long time.” I fiddle with my empty can, uncomfortable with everyone’s eyes on me. “But he started getting … sick. Not, um, physically.” I don’t have the proper words to describe it. I still remember the way he looked, his eyes so distant and strange all the time, but I don’t really know how to explain that. “I think he was lonely. And we were running out of food. So we had to leave.” I force myself to set down the can, but then I don’t know what to do with my hands. I pick at a hole in my jeans. “I had never been out of the shelter. My papa was scared about radiation; he used to wear a gas mask whenever he went out. I had no idea what it was like out there, and he had no clue where to go.”

  “How old were you?” Tank asks.

  “Umm, twelve, I guess.”

  “So where’d you go?”

  “We just wandered for a while. Lucky we didn’t meet any raiders or anything. We had enough food and water to survive, if barely. Finally we found a town. It was built into what my papa said used to be a school.”

  “And they took you guys in?”

  “They took me in,” I say. The answer sits there, heavy. I don’t need to say anything else. Towns are wary, were warier still back then. They were all just scared, desperate survivors. They didn’t trust outsiders, and only agreed to take me in because I was too young to be a threat. I remember my papa’s big arms engulfing me when we said good-bye. I didn’t understand why he had to go. Part of me hated that he was abandoning me; the rest of me was just grateful to have food, water, and a roof over my head.

  I don’t have to explain any of that. Good thing, because my tongue feels too thick to voice it.

  “Sorry,” Tank says gently.

  “It wasn’t too bad,” I say, trying to shrug off the sadness. “They kept me safe and fed. There were some other kids I played with. ’Course, they both died from radiation poisoning, but nothing anyone can do ’bout that …”

  “Wow, Kid, way to dampen the mood,” Wolf says.

  “Sorry,” I say. “Anyway, it never really felt like home, so eventually I left and I found you guys. The end.” My reasons for leaving run deeper than that, but I’m not quite sure how to explain them—the unwelcome glances, the constant feeling of not belonging, the fear they shot my papa years ago—so I leave it at that. I sit nervously, hands folded on my lap, feeling awfully exposed.

  “Naw, Kid,” Wolf says. “The beginning.”

  XXV

  Target Practice

  When I wake up, the boys are still asleep. Tank is sleeping upright with his head leaning against a box, snoring loudly. Each of us got a couple of pillows, which Wolf was kind enough to grab along with the explosives, but Tank gave his to me. Wolf is sprawled across the open space, leaving only a tiny corner where Pretty Boy is curled up. He looks innocent when he’s sleeping, handsome features relaxed and open. I don’t feel an uncomfortable attraction to him like I used to, nor do I feel embarrassed or hurt or spiteful. I just feel sort of neutral, which is nice.

  I sit up and stretch, cracking my shoulders and back. The crates didn’t make the most comfortable bed even with a few pillows stacked on top, and there’s a weird kink in my side, but I feel rested. Dolly’s absence makes me curious enough to forgo more sleep. The doors are opened a tiny crack, and I can’t see where she is. I slide off my crates and carefully step over Wolf. It’s a challenge getting to the doors wi
thout stomping on some part of him, and I have to hop from space to space to reach the exit. I squeeze through and shut them behind me.

  Dolly is just outside the truck, beside the ashes of last night’s fire. Guns and boxes of ammo are spread out on the ground. She’s kneeling in the middle of it all, inspecting a small handgun. As I jump down from the truck, the small sound of impact makes her instantly turn the gun toward me. I freeze and she lowers it again.

  “Morning,” I say cheerfully, and take a few steps closer. I place my hands on my hips and look down at all the weapons. “Wow, that’s a lot of guns.”

  “It’s enough,” she says.

  I crouch next to one and pick it up, handling it delicately and making sure not to point it at myself or Dolly.

  “Do you know how to shoot yet?” she asks.

  “Well, I mean …” I shrug. “Kind of?”

  She nods, stands, and holds out the handgun she was inspecting.

  “Let’s practice.”

  “Practice?” I repeat. “You mean practice shooting things? I don’t know, that seems a little …” Dangerous is the first word to come to mind. Embarrassing is the second. I’m not exactly the best with guns. Hell, the Queen was right next to me and I still managed to goof it up, getting knocked over like that. I hesitate. Dolly doesn’t budge or react whatsoever. She simply stands there, gun held out to me, until I give in and take it.

  She smiles.

  “Good,” she says, and grabs a pistol for herself.

  We find a spot several yards away from the truck where there’s only open wasteland and no danger of me accidentally shooting anyone. Dolly sets up the target: a pyramid of empty tin cans, the remains of our meal last night.

  “So should I try to shoot it from … what, here?” I ask, standing a few yards away. Dolly shakes her head, places a hand on my elbow, and leads me back quite a bit more. “Seriously? There’s no way I can hit that!”