“You’re lucky if you take out one raider for every three of you,” I grumble. But there’s no real venom behind the words, and the sheriff relaxes.
“I’m not asking you to stay, lady,” he says.
“Yeah, yeah,” I say, with a long sigh. “Tell me what your plan is.”
XII
Defense of the Nameless Town
The sheriff’s plan, as it turns out, is a halfway decent one. We do disagree on some points—he thinks the elderly, children, and anyone else unable to fight should hide, while I think that’s pointless—but ultimately, the man is sharper than I would’ve guessed. He and his people construct a wall at the side of town facing Saint’s former headquarters. There’s plenty of junk lying around town, and the townies drag out all the furniture they have as well. Chairs, beds, all of it—there’s no point in keeping any of this stuff, because if the wall falls, they won’t have much use for it anyway. I spend some time constructing the wall, meanwhile concocting my own plan in my head. After an idea hits me, I grab the first person in my line of sight: a gangly, awkward-looking teenage boy with a tuft of messy hair. He jumps when I grab his arm, and stares at me all wide-eyed and pale faced.
“You. What’s your name?” I ask. He looks around wildly, as if I could be talking to someone else, and gulps.
“Wyatt,” he says, his voice halfway to a whimper.
“Okay, Wyatt.” I toss him my ammo bag, which he barely manages to catch. “Help me find a good spot to shoot people from.”
Despite all of his stuttering and blushing and struggling to form a coherent sentence, Wyatt ultimately pulls through. He leads me to the roof of a nearby one-story building to set up. I can already see the mob of raiders on the horizon, approaching slowly, all on foot.
I recruit townsfolk to help me drag up the junk they can spare. Some splintered boards, a rusty car door, and a couple blankets become my makeshift barricade. I set it up on the edge of the roof and deposit my supplies behind it. The townsfolk ogle my guns and ammo supply, practically drooling at the sight of how much ammunition I have. Luckily they have the common sense not to ask about using any of it. I may be here to help, but I sure as hell am not sacrificing any of my guns in the process. I fought, sweat, and bled for each and every one of them, and there’s no way I’m letting a single piece out of my sight.
From my spot on the roof, I have a good view of both the townies below and the raiders approaching town. The townies are lined up behind their wall. Every able-bodied man and woman is there, armed with whatever they could find. About half of them have guns—better than I would’ve expected—while the others are using knives, metal pipes, broken bottles, and a variety of other objects that could potentially kill someone. They all look nervous, as they should. But the sheriff, to his credit, is doing his very best to hold it together. He doesn’t cry, doesn’t complain, doesn’t despair, and does his best to keep his people from doing those things too. I can see the way he bolsters their morale. No wonder these people followed him across the wastes to settle here. He could’ve been a great leader, and this place a great town, if not for their shit luck. Maybe I could’ve settled here, if things had been different. Maybe this could’ve been home. The thought makes a lump rise in my throat, and I clear it, trying to focus my thoughts on the fight to come.
“Your sheriff is a good man,” I murmur, glancing over at Wyatt. The wiry boy is crouched beside me near the makeshift barricade, looking through my ammo bag. I gave him a quick rundown of the basics, and told him to stay up here to hand me ammo and keep me shooting as much as possible. He seemed more than happy to do the job, especially since it meant he didn’t have to be down there with the other townies on the front line.
“Yup,” he says. “Saved all our asses more’n a few times.” He stands up, peeking around the barricade at the wastes. On the horizon, I can see them coming—a wave of raiders, unhurried but unrelenting. Wyatt looks at them for a long few seconds before turning to me. “Reckon we can survive this?”
I don’t answer. I may be many things, but I’m not a liar.
Chatter from the townsfolk below drifts up to us, but it gradually dies off as the raiders draw closer. My heart sinks as I stare at them. There are so many—just over a hundred, I’d guess. Raiders never work in groups this big. Even Jedediah Johnson’s crew doesn’t have these numbers. But if they were all holed up in that radio tower together, and this was the only direction with towns to loot, I guess they’ve made some kind of truce.
I had hoped the majority of the mob would be long gone by now, having procured vehicles for themselves or wandered off in other directions, but a good portion of the crowd I saw earlier is coming straight at us. Every time I think the steady stream of them has to stop, more come. They’re in small clusters, their own individual crews, but they move together, all toward one target: this little town, too small and fresh to even have a name for itself.
The raiders have to know that this town won’t have much for them, but I’m guessing they don’t have a choice. The crews with vehicles have the time to skip over this little place in favor of bigger conquests, but the rest of the raiders need to take what they can get as they cross the wastes.
The town is silent. I can hear my heartbeat thudding in my ears, but soon enough that is drowned out by a different sound—the shouting and heckling of the raiders. They’re psyching themselves up for the assault, bloodlust rising to a frenzy as they approach.
“Holy shit,” Wyatt says, peering around the barricade beside me. “There are so many of them.” He looks at me, the whites of his eyes showing. “We ain’t got a chance. We should run.”
“Too late.” I grab my sniper rifle and set the barrel atop the barrier. Once it’s steady, I place the first of the raiders in my sights.
“We’re gonna die here,” Wyatt says.
“Make it worth something,” I say, and fire.
I take down a dozen raiders before they get close enough to start firing back. When they do get in range, I duck down and ditch the sniper rifle, swapping it out for an assault rifle. I shout out quick instructions to Wyatt, who looks on the verge of puking or pissing himself, but he follows my orders nonetheless. Despite my warnings, he can’t seem to help but keep peering around the barricade, watching the approaching raiders with growing panic.
As soon as the new gun is in my hands and loaded, I start firing again. I mow down raiders, but it hardly seems to make a dent in their ranks—there are so many, and they never seem to stop coming. Despite my best efforts, the wave of raiders soon crashes against the barrier the townies have set up. With crowbars and pipes and hands, they make short work of tearing it apart, and the battle starts for real.
It’s a bloody fight, a desperate one for the townies, and quickly devolves into a free-for-all. I fire into the mess, doing my best to handle the worst of the threats. Any raider with a gun I instantly take out, or anyone who tries to climb up to me. But soon they realize I’m the biggest threat here. More and more of them notice me up above, and anyone with a gun starts shooting my way. Bullets ping against the makeshift barricade, or zing through weak spots—it really is a shoddy thing, not sturdy enough to hold up long in a gunfight. I’m forced to crouch down, keeping myself behind the rusty door, and peek around the side to take shots.
“Need more ammo,” I say, keeping my eyes on the messy fight below. When one raider sets his sights on me, I send my last bullet through his face. “Now, Wyatt.” I hold my hand out for it, still watching below for any signs of imminent danger. A few seconds pass, but my hand remains empty. I tear my eyes away from the fight with a hiss of frustration. “Wyatt, what the fuck are you—” I start, and stop. Wyatt is down, a bullet hole through his throat and a whole lot of blood around him. I didn’t even hear him hit the ground.
“Fuck,” I mutter under my breath. “What a mess.”
I pry the blood-splattered ammo pack out of his stiff fingers and haul it over in front of me, searching through and reloading my gun
myself. When I’m not staring down my sights, the battle seems a lot louder, a lot closer, a lot scarier. I’m suddenly aware of all the sounds of people fighting, the cries of the dying. The air smells like gunpowder and death. With adrenaline flooding my body, my senses are all kicked into overdrive, and the battle overwhelms them. But somehow, through everything else, I pick up on one thing: footsteps behind me.
No time to finish reloading. I turn immediately, swinging my rifle in an arc, and catch the approaching man in the side of the head. He lets out a grunt of pain, stumbles, and lands on his ass.
“Oof,” he says, shaking his head. “Ouch.”
“Jed?” I stare at him. I can hardly believe it, but there he is. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“You really ruined my entrance.” He squints up at me, clutching his head. “But, uh, figured you’d be missing me right about now. And you know me, people pleaser an’ all.”
A lot of emotions fight for control of my head and my heart, pulling me back and forth between anger and relief and utter bewilderment. Jed should be long gone by now. He should be someone else’s problem … or someone else’s rescue, or whatever is happening right now.
But there’s no time to figure out that mess right now, or argue with Jed about why he didn’t hightail it out of town long ago, so I shut off my thoughts. I turn around, finish reloading, and use one foot to shove the ammo bag in his direction.
“You’re on ammo duty,” I shout without turning around, and set my sights on a new target.
“Yes, ma’am,” Jed says. Out of the corner of my eye I see him kick Wyatt’s body out of the way and grab the ammo bag.
I take raiders down, one after another after another. Each shot is a kill. Jed is quick with the ammo, much quicker than Wyatt, already moving to resupply me before the words are out of my mouth—he must be counting my shots just like I am. He watches the kills, too, shrewd eyes moving over the battlefield. He stays quiet, but every time I glance at his face as he hands me more ammo, he looks more grim.
Despite my best efforts, the town is being overrun. There are too many raiders to handle, and no one other than me is doing much to impede the assault. The townies below go down one at a time. The sheriff is the last to fall. He fights tooth and nail as he goes down, wild and animalistic in his will to live, but he goes down nonetheless. With no one left to stop them, the raiders swarm into town, right into the buildings where the townies who couldn’t fight sought shelter.
Then the screaming begins.
I lower my gun, taking a deep breath. With the front-line gone, there’s no hope of defending this place. The battle is lost. I let that sink in for a few moments, and then raise my gun and resume firing.
“Give me a gun,” Jed says from beside me.
“No,” I say. “No point, we’re leaving.”
“You know as well as I do that we’re going to fight our way out,” he says. “Give me a gun.” His voice is edging on desperate now.
“So you can shoot me in the back? I don’t think so!” I shout without looking at him, too busy taking out as many raiders as I can. When I run out of ammo, I drop the rifle into the bag and grab one of my pistols. I have a feeling this fight is about to become very short-range; the raiders are flooding the town, and soon they’ll find a way to me. Sure enough, I hear footsteps on the back stairs. I turn to face them, steadying the barrel of my gun.
“You try to fight this on your own, you’re dead anyway,” Jed shouts at me. “At least together we have a chance!”
Even if there were five more people with guns, or ten, or twenty, “we have a chance” would be a long shot. But at this point, he’s right—we’re probably both going to die here anyway. I stare at him for a moment, studying his face. When it comes down to it, really, I don’t know much about who this man is at all. I spent most of our journey assuming he was the man who burned down my home and killed my family. It was an easy thing, a simple thing, to hate him. But now, things are a lot less simple. He’s the son of one of the worst raiders the wastes have ever seen … but does that mean he inherited his father’s character? His father’s guilt? I don’t know. But I do know that a gun in his hand could slightly up our chances of survival.
“Are you even a good shot?” I ask.
He grins. With chaos all around us and very probably impending death, he grins.
Part of me is certain that this is a bad decision, but even so, I grit my teeth and force myself to hand over a pistol. He takes it and turns to face the stairs just as three raiders burst onto the roof.
With a gun in his hand, Jed transforms. It’s like the weapon becomes an extension of his arm, and the rest of his body shapes itself around it. My eyes suddenly find taut muscles in his arm, a hard set in his jaw, a shrewd gleam in his eye, things I swear weren’t there a few minutes ago. When he raises the gun, it’s easy to see the raider in him, the bloodline of a devilish tyrant, the instincts of a killer. For a moment, I’m certain I made a grave mistake putting that gun in his hand.
His first shot rings out a half second before mine, his second shot just afterward. All three raiders topple over lifelessly. Jed lets out a whoop of excitement, and in that moment returns to the ridiculous human being I became acquainted with on our journey here, the one who hums when he’s being kidnapped and tells absurd stories to townie children. I guess I can add “smiling while shooting people” to that list of hobbies now.
“Right in the nose! Did you see that? That was disgusting!” he says happily, firing another two shots in the time it takes him to get the words out. I’m about to tell him to shut up and focus, but when I see a body on the ground for each bullet he’s loosed, I figure I’ll let him do his thing.
People have a tendency to surprise me, but it’s almost never in a good way. Jed is different. He’s a damn good shot—almost as good as me—and we fall into a surprisingly easy rhythm. Between the two of us, we take raiders down as fast as they swarm us. I’ve fought side by side with others before, and I’ve always found it uncomfortable. I can never focus knowing there’s another person so close, with a gun they could turn and fire at me at any instant.
But this feels almost natural. There’s a wordless synergy between us—choosing different targets without calling them out, unconsciously planning our timing so we don’t need to reload at the same time, covering each other without needing to ask. It feels like we’re a two-man army, shooting down raiders as fast as they come, and I find myself smiling amidst the bloodshed. This is what I’m good at, the only time I feel right, like I’m exactly where I need to be—blood pumping in my veins, heartbeat thudding in my ears, bullets flying from my gun, walking that fine line between fear and joy, danger and triumph.
And Jed smiles too—smiles and laughs. He feels the rush just like I do; has the same ability to thrive in the chaos rather than surviving it.
Then, as I pause to reload, he turns his gun on me.
I stare at him, my eyes going wide and time slowing around me as I realize there’s no way for me to react before he can get a shot off. His smile vanishes, his mouth becoming a tight line as he fires.
I gasp and jerk as the bullet flies right past my head. After a moment’s pause, I turn to glance behind me, and see the body of a raider facedown just a few feet away, a crowbar still clutched in his dead hand. I blink at the body and look back at Jed.
“Whew, that was close,” he says, an easy grin splitting his face again.
“Guess they found a way up on that side,” I mutter, not sure what else to say. Without another word, we place our backs to each other so we cover all directions.
We manage to keep the raiders at bay for longer than I would’ve thought possible, taking out each one as they come up the stairs—three at a time, and then four, and then more, and then … too many. The buzz of a good fight fades as I remember this is still a losing battle. We’ve held our ground, but the raiders keep coming, and we’re steadily running out of ammo. Next time I pause to reload and look in
to the bag, my heart sinks.
“Jed,” I say, finishing reloading and covering for him as he does the same. “We have to go.”
“What?” he asks, moments before peering into the ammo bag. “Oh.” He looks like a kid whose dog just died, being told the fight is over, but he heaves a sigh and slings the ammo bag over his shoulder. He jerks his head at the side of the building. “Follow me,” he says, and takes off before I can voice my disagreement.
I hesitate. He may not have shot me the second he got a gun in his hands, but that doesn’t mean I trust him. He’s not the man who burned down my home and killed my family, but I don’t have a damn clue who he really is either. But there’s no time to figure it out right now. Jed is already gone with my guns and ammo, so I don’t have any choice except to follow. I fire off one last shot, directly through the eye of a man running at me, before following Jed.
I have to sprint to keep up, dashing across the rooftop and following as he shimmies down a rusty pipe on the side of the building. He’s running again the moment he hits the ground. I rush to match his pace, my steps quickened by the roar of the mob behind me. Thankfully not all of the raiders are on our heels. Most are too preoccupied picking off the last of the townies and pillaging the town. Still, a few stragglers hunt us. I catch glimpses of them as I follow Jed through the ruined buildings.
He dashes through alleyways, climbs through windows, smashes through flimsy barriers. The town isn’t even very large, so we must be backtracking and running in circles, but he seems determined to follow this nonsensical path. I want to shout at him to hold up, but I can’t spare the breath, so all I can do is follow. Twice I’m afraid that I’ve lost him, but I always manage to catch him at the last moment, a glimpse of my ammo bag disappearing around a corner or a straggling shoe disappearing through a window.
Finally, we emerge into open ground on the other side of town. I glance behind us, but we’ve lost the raiders who were chasing us—apparently Jed knew what he was doing with his ridiculous path.
The Wastelanders Page 37
