The Wastelanders

by K. S. Merbeth

  “Seriously?” he asks. “The fucking Queen, guys! She was a huge deal! People said all roads lead to her palace, she was stunningly beautiful and widely beloved, etcetera? She disappeared a short while ago and nobody knows why? None of this ringing any bells?”

  He looks around at his men, who shrug and shift uncomfortably. Finally, though, Eyepatch brightens up.

  “Oh, oh, is she the one who bathed in blood to stay beautiful forever?” he asks.

  “Y’know, I have heard that,” Jedediah says, nodding. “And that she had some way of purifying water, but that one’s gotta be bullshit. You know how these things get twisted up.” He shrugs, and turns back to the huge palace. “Anyway,” he says, “the point is, this place is fucking awesome. It’s the perfect home for the new ruler of the western wastes.”

  XXV

  The New King

  This place may be impressive on the outside, but the inside is like something out of a horrifying fever dream. The Queen’s former abode was clearly once luxurious, but apparently the Queen losing her throne was not a peaceful matter. Now the place reeks of death and fear. The front doors are ripped off their hinges. The entrance room is coated in blood, the paintings on the wall splattered with it, the tile’s color indistinguishable between the bloodstains and the dust blown through the open doors. A toppled statue rests in the middle of the room, riddled with bullet holes. And of course, there are the bodies, decomposing in the heat. The place reeks of rotting flesh, so thick that I choke on it.

  Jedediah’s crew is quiet and grim as they enter the building, guns at the ready, expecting trouble. But Jedediah strolls ahead, humming loudly as he walks through the carnage. Tiny drags me along just behind his leader, following as Jedediah walks right over the grisly scene at the entrance and through a set of ripped-apart double doors on the other side.

  Through those doors is the throne room. I recognize it only by the huge painting on the wall, depicting a gorgeous woman seated on a dignified chair. The Queen and her throne, I presume. Now, though, the room is less defined by the throne than by the piles of bodies.

  Whatever happened in here, it must’ve been huge and wild and vicious, and of course there was no one left to clean any of it up afterward. There are bodies everywhere, some evidently raiders and others wearing a crown emblem, along with other unidentifiable wastelanders. Jedediah picks his way among the half-decomposed bodies, making his way to the center of the room, where he stops abruptly. He turns in a circle, surveying the room, and stops facing us. He spreads his hands wide once more.

  “Ta-da!” he says. “Our new headquarters.”

  His words echo around the room, emphasizing just how silent and dead this place is. His crew shifts uneasily, much more disturbed by the carnage than their leader is. Jedediah’s smile fades, and he lowers his hands.

  “Don’t you love it?” he asks, puzzled.

  “Er, yeah, it’s great, boss,” Eyepatch says. He clears his throat. “It’s just … a bit messy.”

  “We’re going to clean it up, of course. The place stinks,” Jedediah says with a roll of his eyes. “Well, rather, you guys are going to clean it up. I have other important things to do. Plan-making for conquering and such.” He turns his back to us and finishes his stroll across the room, where he plops down onto a dilapidated wooden chair. After a moment, I realize that must be the throne, though it looks absolutely nothing like the portrait on the wall behind it. It’s just a shoddy wooden thing, one leg half-broken so the whole thing slants forward, and clearly has never been as grand as the throne in the picture. Jedediah leans back in the chair, placing his hands on the armrests and crossing his legs at the ankle. He looks very, very pleased with himself. “See? It’s perfect.”

  There, sitting in his “throne,” Jedediah Johnson finally looks like the man I always thought he was. I may have been surprised when I first saw him, and surprised by him many times since then, but now it finally fits. A man sitting on a throne in a room full of bodies, and smiling about it. That’s the real Jedediah Johnson. That’s who he is. Not the man the legends say he is, and not the Jed I traveled across the wastes with, but this man.

  I stare at him as his crew spreads out, grabbing bodies and wreckage to drag out of the room. They’re quiet as they work—not happy about moving into a new place occupied by half-rotted bodies, I guess. Or maybe they’re finally realizing that their leader is a complete lunatic who has gotten them in way over their heads. Either way, they still do as he says.

  “Maybe I’ll drop the name and just start calling myself ‘the King,’” Jedediah muses, tapping his fingers on the armrests. He catches me looking, and grins at me across the room. “Westerners are all about their nicknames. What do you think?”

  “I think it suits you,” I say.

  While Jedediah’s crew busies themselves cleaning up the carnage, I’m dragged along by Tiny, joining Jedediah on a tour of the place once he’s done lounging on his throne. Jedediah insists on checking out each and every room. Most of them are filled with the same gruesome scenes we witnessed in the throne room, but Jedediah grows progressively more excited by each one. In one he finds a small handheld radio, which he insists on carrying with him, clicking it on and off as we walk, though there’s nothing but static on any of the stations. Remembering Saint’s broadcast, I wonder if the Queen ever listened in when she was still around. I wonder how many people are still out there, with no idea what’s happened, waiting to hear his broadcasts again.

  Aside from the gore, the place is impressive. There are guest rooms with real beds, bathing rooms with huge tubs, a dining hall with actual silverware. The latter seems to have had real plates at some point too, though now the room is covered with shattered ceramic and glass, spoons and forks scattered across the floor.

  But all of it pales in comparison to the master bedroom. It must be where the Queen slept, and it’s even more luxurious than the room Jedediah left behind in Wormwood. Thankfully there are no bodies in it, though someone has done some impressive finger-painting with blood on the walls, and the pictures have all been torn down and ripped apart. The dresser is tipped over, the floor covered with feathers from some thoroughly murdered pillows, and the mattress on the bed is riddled with stab wounds, but even so, the room is incredible.

  Jedediah, oblivious to the mess, stares at the room in awe. He drops the radio he was playing with on top of the fallen dresser, crosses the room, and flops down on the middle of the huge bed.

  “Yeah, this will do,” he says, half-smiling at the ceiling. After a moment, his head lolls to one side, and he looks over at me and Tiny. “You can go now, Tiny,” he says, flapping a hand. The huge man hesitates, looking down at me. After a moment, Jedediah’s eyebrows draw together. “I said you can go,” he repeats, his voice growing hard. Tiny releases his grip on my shoulder. He sighs once, loudly, before leaving us.

  “What do you think?” Jedediah asks once the two of us are left alone, and after I spend several quiet seconds contemplating how hard it would be to kill him with my hands still tied. I raise my eyebrows at the question.

  “Does it matter?”

  “Of course,” he says, as if the question surprises him. He gestures impatiently. “Come, sit.”

  I stay where I am. He lets his hand drop and sits up, stretching his arms above his head and scrutinizing me.

  “Are you still angry?” he asks.

  “What?”

  “I asked,” he says, raising his voice, “are you—”

  “Am I ‘angry’?” I repeat, cutting him off. “That I fell for your stupid act? That I started to believe you might not be a total monster?” I grind my teeth, humiliation burning deep in the pit of my stomach. “What the fuck do you think?”

  “Well, ‘monster’ is a little strong. Lying and tricks aside, I thought we kind of bonded,” he says with a shrug. My blood boils. I take a deep breath, trying to force my temper back before I do something stupid.

  “You’re the man who burned down my
home. Killed my family. Did this to my face,” I spit at him. “If I had known that, we would never have ‘bonded.’”

  “And I’m the man who traveled with you across the wastes,” he says. “The man who saved your life, whose life you saved. You asked me about my life and told me—”

  “Because you lied,” I snap, before he can continue. The reminder of those conversations churns my stomach. “If I had known who you were, those things would never have happened.”

  Jedediah sighs again, rubbing at his temples as if to ward off a headache.

  “Well, you kidnapped me from my home with the intention of exchanging my life for money,” he says. “And I forgave you.”

  “You literally fucking planned that yourself!”

  “Well … you got me there,” he says. “But still. You didn’t know that at the time.”

  I let out a wordless sound of frustration, unable to put into words how aggravating he is. He looks almost amused.

  “I’m still the same person I was, Clem,” he says. “You’re just mad because you started to like me.”

  “You are not the man I thought I knew,” I say.

  “How so?”

  “I …” I begin, and pause, fumbling for an example. “For starters, the man I knew wouldn’t have shot one of his own crewmates for no goddamn reason,” I say, thinking of Mop.

  “Just because you don’t understand doesn’t mean there was no reason,” he says, and for once he actually sounds annoyed. He sighs and lowers his voice, jabbing a finger at the door. “You don’t know what it’s like to be in charge of these kinds of people, okay?”

  “These kinds of people are your people.”

  “And sometimes I have to make hard decisions to keep them that way.”

  “Hard decisions,” I repeat. “Like burning down Old Creek. Is that what you’re trying to convince me?”

  “Clementine—”

  “Like locking my family in their home and burning—”

  “You killed my father.”

  That shuts me up. I stare at him, words dying in my throat.

  “What?” I ask. He says nothing. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “That raider you killed,” he says softly, once it’s clear I’m ready to listen, “in Old Creek. He was my father.” I open my mouth, shut it again, and he continues. “And I was upset. I was angry. I had just started taking control of the eastern wastes, and my hold was still fragile, and I was … I was young, you know, and I was scared, and I couldn’t …” He pauses. “So I burned Old Creek to the ground.” He leans back, resting his hands against the mattress. He half-shrugs, like he’s trying to act nonchalant and not quite pulling it off. “I’m not proud of it.”

  I search for words and can’t find them. All I know is that my anger is dying down, suddenly and swiftly, to a small shriveled ball of confusion and shame. I killed his father. I killed his father just like he killed my parents, and he forgave me for it. He could’ve killed me a hundred times now, a thousand times, and he didn’t. Even with that knowledge, he was kind to me. He wanted me to stay with him.

  I take a deep breath.

  “I didn’t know,” I say finally, not sure what else to say.

  “Well, obviously. I didn’t tell you until now.”

  “Smartass.” The comment comes out automatically, as if my brain forgot for a moment that things have changed, that we have all the reasons in the world to hate each other. Jed and I pause for a moment. Very slowly, the corner of his lips curls upward.

  He stands up and crosses the room to me. Without hesitation, he takes out a knife and cuts through the ropes binding my wrists. I rub at the chafed skin as blood flows back into my hands.

  “Well,” he says. “I’m going to go celebrate my conquest of the western wastes.” Seeing my questioning look, he shrugs. “So easy I might as well have done it already.” He pauses for a moment, looking up at me. I stare down at him. He’s probably right; there’s no way these western townies or raiders will stand a chance against him. He’ll conquer them as certainly as he conquered the east.

  I could stop it now, before it happens. I could wrap my hands around his throat and squeeze the life out of him. He’d be dead before Tiny or any of his other goons knew what was happening. For a moment I start to raise my hands, but I force myself to stop. Killing him would mean … what? I once thought it would save the wastes, that people would love me for it, call me a hero. I thought it would lead me to a home. Now, I’m not so sure that’s true. Without him, the western wastes will remain in shambles, and perhaps the east will become the same. There will be no home for me there.

  Is it possible there could be one for me here, with Jedediah? With raiders? Is a home worth betraying my past and everything I thought I knew?

  I don’t know what’s right. Not for me, and certainly not for the wastes. I don’t know what the right direction to aim is, not anymore.

  “You know, I really did think about leaving this all behind,” Jedediah says, pulling me from my thoughts. “When I told you that I wanted to stay with you, that I didn’t want to go back, it wasn’t a lie. But …” He shrugs. “People need me,” he says, his voice very quiet and somber. “Really. Even if they don’t know it.”

  He steps past me without waiting for me to respond.

  “You can do whatever you like,” he says over his shoulder, and leaves me there.

  The Queen’s palace is full of shitty whiskey and fistfights. Eastern or western, it seems, all raiders celebrate much the same. Most of the revelry takes place in the throne room, which has been successfully cleansed of bodies and the most obvious of the bloodstains, though the scent of death still lingers. Jedediah left up all of the paintings and sculptures and other decorations depicting the former Queen, in various states of destruction.

  I lurk in the back of the room. Jedediah’s crew cast me suspicious looks, and suspicious double-takes upon seeing that I’m not restrained, but they leave me alone. Maybe they think I’ve joined their side, or maybe they think I can’t possibly be a threat, or maybe they think nothing and just follow Jedediah’s lead.

  The raider king watches the party unfold from his throne, body sprawled out across it in a very unkinglike way. Every so often he raises a half-empty bottle of whiskey to his mouth and takes a long swig—or pretends to, rather. I watch carefully, and note that he doesn’t actually swallow afterward, just wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Every so often, he “accidentally” spills some, so the level gradually lowers.

  Part of me is tempted to go talk to him … or shout at him, or throttle him, or something, but most of me is still too busy processing everything. Our last conversation explained a lot, and also raised so many questions. I’ve held a grudge against him for what he did to my family for years … and he seemingly forgave me in a matter of days for doing the same to him.

  What the hell am I supposed to do with any of this? I don’t need this kind of emotional complexity on top of all the shit I’m already dealing with. I don’t even know why I’m still here. I should leave this all behind, forget about the infuriating enigma that is Jedediah Johnson. I should go … where? To the eastern wastes? So I can go back to barely surviving off bounties, and always feeling like an outsider?

  Maybe I shouldn’t leave. Maybe I should stay, and support Jedediah. Maybe he’s been right the whole time, that having him in charge is better than lawlessness. Maybe that’s what this place needs right now: a ruler with an iron fist, a ruler not afraid to embrace the violence of the wastes.

  Maybe I should stay. Maybe I should kill Jedediah in his sleep, just like I killed his father.

  When someone taps me on the shoulder, I nearly punch them in the face out of sheer instinct. Thankfully I restrain the impulse, because I have a feeling Tiny would hit back a lot harder. As I stare at him, he wordlessly holds up a pack of cards.

  “What?” I say. “Seriously?” He says nothing, just continues holding the cards up. “Did Jedediah send you?” I
ask. He shakes his head.

  For some reason, I’m inclined to believe the quiet giant, and playing cards with him sounds a lot better than drowning in my thoughts.

  Tiny carries a table and two chairs to a corner of the room, and scatters the raiders already hanging out there with a look. Within moments, we have a corner to ourselves. I sit while Tiny deals out cards. No words are exchanged, but I pick up on it quick enough; we’re playing War.

  It’s a mindless, easy game, and I spend most of my time watching Tiny. His huge hands handle the cards with a surprising gentleness—though he’s clumsy, frequently dropping cards and struggling to shuffle them. Despite the rough way he handled me as a prisoner, there’s no hint of anger or aggression toward me now. I’m still suspicious that he’s doing this just to keep an eye on me, but most of the time, he’s watching his leader instead.

  “So,” I say, and Tiny turns to look at me. “How long have you worked for Jedediah?” He shrugs, his eyes going back to the cards. “A long time?” He nods. I pause for a few moments, running my thumb over a card, which has a bloodstain in one corner. “You knew his father,” I guess, and after a moment, he nods again. “You worked for his father, and now for him.”

  “Hmm,” Tiny agrees. I eye him, wondering if he knows what Jedediah knows. I could ask him, but instead another question jumps out of my mouth.

  “Is it true that Jedediah’s father killed his mother?”

  Ever since I found out who he really is, that question has been lurking in the back of my mind. How much of what he told me on our journey was true? How much of that persona was really him?

  Tiny pauses. His eyes flick behind me, toward where I know Jedediah is sitting. For a moment I think he’s going to ignore the question, but just when I’m about to give up and continue playing he gives a small bob of his head.

  So it’s true, then. I almost wish it weren’t. This would be so much easier if Jedediah had lied about everything.