The Wastelanders

by K. S. Merbeth

  The only thing not catching is the wall, huge and metal and imposing. Suddenly it seems that it’s not keeping the raiders out, but keeping us in, trapped with the fire.

  “Clementine,” Jed shouts in my ear. “Snap out of it!”

  I pull out of his grip and shake my head to clear it. Jed looks from me to the growing blaze behind him, his face lit by the flames. Unlike everyone around him, he doesn’t look afraid. His face is sharp and calculating. For a moment, I think of Old Creek, the town burned to the ground, and wonder if his father looked at the fire there in the same way. I banish the thought from my mind.

  “This place is done for,” I say. Jed’s attention snaps back to me.

  “Well,” he says, “I think it’s about time to try things my way.”

  “What?” I ask, frowning—but he turns and takes off without answering, pushing through the flood of townies around us. I cast one last look at the growing fire and follow him. I keep pace with him as he runs, thankfully away from the fire and toward the front gate. “What do you mean? Where are we going?”

  “Well, Clem, so far on this little escapade we’ve done things your way,” he says, half-shouting to be heard above the terror and confusion all around us. “By ‘your way’ I mean mostly shooting people and making everyone hate us. And, no offense, but your way kind of sucks and has nearly gotten us killed several times now.”

  That successfully renders me speechless. My first instinct is to punch him, but I manage to restrain that and consider what he’s saying. Ever since I lost my home, my way has been the only option for staying alive. But Jed is different. He’s good with people. He proved it by getting us into this town in the first place, which I’m not sure I could’ve managed on my own. Maybe he sees an option I don’t. Because between this town crumbling, the mob of raiders outside, Jed’s father and his crew coming for us, and the poachers likely still on our trail, I’m not really seeing a way out of this.

  “So your plan is what, exactly?” I ask, slowing as we approach the front gate—and the heart of the chaos. Some townies are trying to raise the gate to escape from the fire, while others staunchly defend it, wanting to keep the raiders out. I tighten my grip on my gun. This situation is right on the verge of boiling over. I’m sure Jed sees it too, but instead of backing off, he turns and grins at me.

  “The plan is … we make some friends!” he says, splaying his hands wide and looking far too pleased with himself. I stare at him, so baffled by the words that I momentarily forget everything else going on around us.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” I ask, but a moment later, he walks into the mob of townies at the front gate.

  Swearing under my breath, I shove my way through right behind him. A half circle of terrified townies has formed around the crank for the front gate. Amazingly, the gate still holds. I have to get closer before I can tell why: The crank is being guarded by a councilwoman. It’s the elderly woman, the one who seemed to truly be in charge, and even in the midst of this uproar she seems level-headed. By her side is the guard woman who initially let us into town. She stands with a gun in her hand, not actually firing, but swinging it around whenever anyone gets too close. The mere threat of it seems to be enough to keep the townies at bay. Her face is pale, her hand shaking, but she manages to keep everyone away from the crank.

  “We need to stay calm,” the councilwoman yells, her voice barely audible above the other noise. There’s shouting from the townies, gunfire from the watchtowers, banging on the metal gate from the raiders outside. Even I’m barely able to keep my cool in this situation. My senses are all wrought out and singed, and my trigger finger itches, especially with a noisy mob pressed in so close around me and the constant threat of the fire. I want to shoot, to kill, to escape from here—but I hold my bullets, for now.

  Jed stands beside me, one hand gripping my arm to make sure neither of us is pulled away by the movement of the mob around us.

  “I know things are bad in here,” the councilwoman says, “but if we open the gate we’ll be slaughtered. If we wait for the guards to thin out the mob, then—”

  “If we wait we die!” a woman wails from beside me.

  The townies shout and press inward in response. But the councilwoman stays where she is, planting her feet and setting her jaw. She shows no sign of being intimidated, and that seems to give the townies pause. Despite the chaos and panic, they still recognize this woman as their leader.

  “Give us a chance to fight!”

  It takes me a moment to realize that shout came from Jed. It’s followed by more shouts and cheers of agreement. Encouraged by the support of the townies, Jed presses forward, moving through the mob and over to the councilwoman. I follow in his wake, elbowing and shoving townies aside. I don’t know what he’s trying to do right now, but I have no choice but to trust him. I stop on the edge of the crowd, but he moves farther still, until he’s just a couple feet from the woman, face-to-face, eye-to-eye.

  “I’d rather die fighting than helpless in here,” Jed continues, with the support of the mob at his back.

  “We can handle the fire,” the woman says. Her voice is composed despite the situation, and she meets Jed’s eyes with her own level gaze. “We just need to stay calm. If we let panic take hold—”

  “Handle it?” Jed asks, cutting her off. “Have you seen the fire? A blaze like this will destroy the whole town. It’s out of control.”

  “We have precautions for—”

  “For what? A simultaneous raider attack and fire in the town? I don’t fucking think so!” Jed says. The mob is eating his words up, their energy hardly contained. They still don’t move forward, not yet ready to commit a total uprising against their leader, but they’re clearly on the verge of doing so. “Let us out before it’s too late! Let us out!”

  The mob roars in response. But the woman seems to hardly notice them. Instead, her eyes search Jed’s face, her expression growing puzzled.

  “What are you doing?” she asks. Her voice is softer now, so I doubt many people other than Jed and me can hear her. “You’re not this dumb. You know you’re advocating suicide.”

  “Nope,” Jed says, very cheerfully. “I’m not dumb at all.”

  The woman’s eyes widen suddenly.

  “Traitor,” she says in a harsh, low voice, and my skin prickles with alarm. Whatever Jed is trying to do, if this woman announces that he’s a traitor, the townies aren’t too far gone to listen to her. The councilwoman raises her voice to a shout. “This man is trying to—”

  In one smooth motion, I un-holster my gun, raise it, and fire a bullet right between her eyes.

  Jed turns to face me, his mouth forming an “o” of surprise, as the woman’s body falls. For a moment it seems there’s only him and me, our eyes locked. He looks at me—a long, searching look—the same way he looked at the fire as it consumed the town. I stare back at him, utterly shocked at myself for what I just did, and how easy the decision felt in the moment.

  Then the townies surge around us, full of noise and movement. For a moment I think they’ll come for me, but instead they swarm over the body of the councilwoman, overtake her guard, and fight for control of the crank. Jed pushes past them, and they let him take hold of it. I stop beside him. My hands are shaking, my heart pounding in my chest, as I replay that bullet sinking into the townie woman’s forehead again and again. Necessary, I tell myself. I have to believe that.

  “This is your idea of making friends?” I ask Jed, still unsure what he’s trying to do. I don’t see how opening this gate can do anything good—but nonetheless, I don’t stop him. “That woman was right. You just ruined whatever chance this place had left.”

  “I didn’t say we were making friends with the townies,” Jed says, and pulls the crank.

  Slowly, haltingly, the front gate begins to rise. I find myself holding my breath. The townies push toward it before it’s even high enough for anyone to get through, rushing the gate in a mad frenzy to escape.
As soon as it rises high enough, they surge forward—and surge back as they find the raiders waiting right on the other side.

  Complete madness follows. Both sides fight—one to get in, one to get out. People fall, crawl, get trampled; they fight and die; they struggle against the flow, one way or another. The raiders and the townies are soon one indistinguishable mob of people tearing and clawing at one another, most quickly becoming too immersed in the flood of people to remember which way they’re trying to go. I grab Jed’s arm and yank him back, away from the thick of the mob. We stare at it wordlessly. I feel sick to my stomach.

  Next to me, Jed lets out a low whistle.

  “Well,” he says, “this is a shitfest.”

  “Were you planning on turning on the townies the whole time?” I ask, dreading the answer.

  “No,” he says quickly, and I suppress a sigh of relief. “This was the backup plan, in case the town’s fall seemed inevitable. Which it did, with that fire adding to the confusion.” He glances over at me, tensing slightly as he searches my face for a reaction. After a moment, I nod, and he relaxes. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before,” he says. “I just … I didn’t really want to do this, unless we had to. It was our only option.”

  I nod again. Part of me is still angry at him; he’s the one who pushed me to kill that townie woman, which is something I know will haunt me. But as long as this is part of some plan that will help us survive, I think I can call it necessary and live with myself.

  “So what do we do now?” I ask, assuming there’s a next step to this “making friends” idea.

  “Let’s find somewhere safe to talk,” he says. “This place is going to hell real fast.”

  He’s right. I can’t believe how quickly the town fell apart when it came down to it, and this was a place I almost believed had a real chance against the raiders. The fire certainly made things worse—but that must’ve been something the raiders planned somehow, proving their army is more capable than I thought. And Jed’s little plan to “make friends” may have helped with Fort Cain’s destruction, but like he said, it was inevitable at that point.

  I’m still feeling queasy about our part in this, and about the fact that Jed sprung it on me without warning, but I keep telling myself that all he did was speed it along and prevent us from being swallowed by the madness. And now I know the truth: No one can stand against the raiders. The western wastes as we knew them are done for.

  Still, I hesitate. Part of me wants to stay here and try to help, to rage against this raider army even if it costs my life, but I know my death will ultimately do nothing. The best thing to do now is just survive, and hope that later I’ll have a chance to make up for turning my back on these people who took us in and kept us alive.

  I find a cellar nearby, an old bomb shelter that won’t be in any danger of catching fire. We head inside and down a flight of stairs, finding the cellar empty but for a few empty wooden crates and some broken pieces of furniture. Jed attempts to keep a wooden stool with a broken leg upright, fails miserably, and sits cross-legged on the floor instead. I lean against a wall, staring at the floor and listening to the fight rage on above us.

  “So what’s the plan, exactly?” I ask, after several moments of silence. I’m still reeling from what I’ve done, and what I’ve allowed Jed to do in the opening of that gate. I need to focus, figure out where we go from here.

  “Like I said, we make friends,” Jed says. “This time with the winning side. We’ll pretend to be raiders—well, you’ll pretend, I mean. Seems like the crews have some kind of truce right now, so as long as they think we’re just fellow raiders, we should be safe.”

  “So then, what, we travel with the army?” I ask, raising my eyebrows. “That’s insane.” The mere thought of surrounding myself with my hated enemies makes my stomach flip.

  “No, it’s not,” Jed says, all too confident. “It’s our best bet. You heard the council. My dad and his crew are coming for us. Even if we escape from the raider mob now, we’ve still got that to deal with. But they won’t think to look for us with the raiders. Neither will the poachers, if they’re still alive and on our trail. This solves all our problems.”

  I tap my fingers against the butt of my gun, processing his words. It’s definitely a risky plan, but it does make sense. The only problem is whether I can pull off fitting in with the raiders. If they realize I’m really a bounty hunter who makes a living off killing their kind, they’ll shoot me in a second. And if I am going to pull off the ruse, how far will I have to go?

  “I’m not going to become one of them,” I say. “I can’t. I won’t.”

  “No, no, of course not,” Jed says. “It’s just until we get out of this bind. When it’s safe, we’ll escape.”

  I chew my lip, looking down at my feet.

  “I’m sure they lost a lot of raiders in this assault,” I say. “They should keep thinning out. By the time they reach somewhere like Blackfort, the townies will have a chance. We can turn on them then.”

  “There we go!” Jed says, snapping his fingers and grinning. “We’ve got our plan.”

  I still think it’s tenuous at best, but I keep my mouth shut. No matter how crazy it is, it’s the only plan we’ve got. Another brief silence stretches out, and I try to stay calm and composed. This is the only way to stay alive, I tell myself.

  “Anyway, you okay?” Jed asks.

  “Hmm?” I look down at myself, unsure if the adrenaline surge made me oblivious to some injury, but I find none.

  “I mean the fire,” he says. “You looked kind of …” He trails off.

  Right. That. My nerves still feel jagged and raw after the rush of terror I felt before, and bad memories stir uneasily in the back of my mind. The flames, the screams—they were a little too close to when Old Creek burned. But I’m calmer now, down here in the shelter and away from the chaos.

  “I feel better here,” I say, and mean it. The shelter feels safe, secure, isolated from everything going on up above. I can still hear it distantly, but it feels very far away.

  “Really?” Jed asks. “Being trapped like this makes me feel caged.”

  “In the early days, when trouble came to Old Creek, we’d hide in one of these under our sheriff’s house,” I say, remembering. The shelter was dark and cold, and a couple times we spent a full night or longer there before we were sure the danger had passed. I’m not sure why I’m telling Jed. Maybe home is just too fresh in my mind right now, but at least this memory isn’t of the town burning.

  “Ugh,” Jed says. “Weren’t you scared in there?”

  “No,” I say honestly.

  “Fearless Clementine,” Jed says, smiling. I don’t offer up the truth: that I felt safe because my parents told me we were untouchable there, and I blindly believed them. Better to let him think I’m fearless.

  All this dredging up of old memories makes me uncomfortable—but it also makes me curious. Jed and I have been stuck together for a while now, but we’ve barely spoken about our pasts. To my surprise, I find myself wanting to know more about his.

  “What was it like growing up with … your father?” I ask, stopping myself from using less kind words. He blinks at me, startled by the question, and then smiles.

  “We were always on the road,” he says. “He never tried to hide what he was—what we were—even when I was young. He explained that this was what the world was like, that raiding was the best way to survive in the wastes. I started getting in on raids when I was about twelve.”

  No wonder Jed thrives in chaos; he was born and raised in it. He was killing and looting when he was just a child. He must’ve believed in his dad the same way I believed in my parents when they told me we were safe in our shelter. If I had grown up like he did, who would I be now? The thought makes me shudder.

  “How old were you when you first killed someone?” I ask, the question popping out before I’ve fully decided to ask it. It’s one of those questions you just don’t ask people, but I h
ave a sudden, desperate need to hear the answer. I’ve never been close enough to anyone to ask; I was afraid to ask my parents and my old sheriff. Somehow, in all of this, Jed has become the closest thing I’ve had to a friend—and I have to know. Is it possible he’s just as fucked up as me? That I’m not the only one who took to killing so easily?

  Jed hesitates. Before he can answer, a sound comes from above. Not from the town, but closer. Someone is in the building above us. Several someones, actually, judging from the cluster of heavy footsteps.

  Jed and I turn toward the stairs in anticipation of company. I move away from the wall, pulling out my gun. Jed stays seated on the floor, but pulls his assault rifle off his back and places it in his lap.

  A few moments later, a group of townies comes down the stairs. There’s a good dozen of them, wielding pipes and bats and other blunt weapons. They’re all looking pretty worse for wear after the fight above, coated in dust and soot and blood. One of them is being carried by two of the others. After a moment, I recognize him as the councilman.

  My eyes shift quickly from one townie to another, sizing each of them up. Individually, they’re not a threat, but all of them together is a different story.

  The townies stop when they see us, fanning out at the bottom of the stairs and neatly cutting us off from the only exit. They set the councilman down, and he looks at us with a puckered expression, like he’s thinking very hard about something and doesn’t like where his train of thought is headed.

  “Well, fancy seeing you here,” Jed says, cracking a grin. With all eyes on him, he slowly, lazily rises to his feet and stretches out his arms, his rifle still clutched in one hand.

  “What are you two doing down here?” the councilman asks, his voice sharp and accusatory. He’s leaning against the shoulder of one of the other men, keeping his weight off one leg. “Shouldn’t you be out fighting?”