Raid

by K. S. Merbeth

  I raise my arms and twist, so the blow glances off my forearms. It should hurt like a motherfucker, but I barely feel the sting through my adrenaline spike. The townie is taken off guard by my choice to take the hit, and I take full advantage of it by bringing my wooden board down on his head. He crumples to the floor. I grab the bat from his hands as he goes limp, and swing it at the next townie with a satisfying crack. Something hits one of my legs, and I fall to one knee, but keep swinging.

  I send another townie to the floor with a hit to the knees, and the next stumbling backward with a blow to the stomach. The successes barely register through the sound of Jed screaming from across the room. I rise to my feet, half-dragging my injured leg, and swing my way through the crowd of townies toward him.

  Finally, I’m able to get a glimpse of Jed—on the floor, crawling on his hands and knees away from a townie woman with a knife. As I watch, one of the men grabs him and hauls him back, dragging him to his feet and pinning his hands behind his back as he struggles. The townies close in like a noose around him, and the woman steps forward, raising the knife. A moment later I’m on top of her, digging a thumb into one of her eye sockets. She’s screaming—and then she’s not, as I slam her head against the concrete. I grab her knife, slash at the first hand that grabs at me, and lurch to my feet, toward the man still holding Jed. Eyes going wide, the townie jerks the smaller man in front of him like a shield.

  I don’t hesitate, stepping forward and thrusting my knife right through the narrow space between Jed’s arm and torso. He lets out a rather undignified squeal as the blade grazes his side, just before it sinks deep into the gut of the townie. The man releases Jed, who scoots quickly aside, and I rip the knife back out. The townie falls to his knees.

  I take a deep breath, and turn to see a crowbar swinging toward the back of Jed’s oblivious head. I yank him toward me, and the bar swooshes right through the space where his head was a moment before. I slash the throat of the townie holding it, spraying blood out in a wide arc. Jed promptly slips in the resulting puddle and crashes to the floor, nearly taking me down with him. My own feet slip and slide. When I finally catch my balance, I plant myself there, standing over the ungainly pile of limbs as he tries—and fails—to get up. I lash and hack at every townie that comes near us—slashing at an arm, cutting off a finger, slicing through an ear. One by one, I cut them down.

  And finally, they stop coming.

  I stay braced, knife held ready, my body tense. I look around, taking in the room and the bodies strewn across the floor. It’s a bloody mess. Nothing moves, except for me and Jed, who’s still on the floor, his chest heaving.

  It’s over.

  I force myself to relax, consciously loosening each muscle, letting my arms fall to my side and the knife clatter to the floor. It’s hard to make myself stop after a fight like that, to let the adrenaline and rage drain out of me. I shut my eyes, breathing deeply, and the roar of blood in my ears gradually fades. When I open my eyes again and look down at myself, I realize that I’m utterly drenched in blood. My hair has come loose from its ponytail and hangs in messy waves around my shoulders. I push it out of my face with a bloody hand, and look down at Jed again.

  He’s staring up at me like he’s never seen me before, his eyes very wide in a blood-splattered face. I reach out a hand to help him up. He hesitates a moment before taking it, and carefully climbs to his feet again. We study each other; me trying to gauge his reaction to what he just witnessed, him presumably deciding that I’m a complete psychopath.

  I’m starting to feel sick to my stomach now that I see what I’ve done. These were townies … just townies. I’ve never killed townies before today. A lump rises in my throat, and I swallow hard.

  Jed’s spent his whole life around ruthless raiders, and even he looks shocked after that display. I’m all too aware of his gaze traveling from my face to my blood-soaked clothes to the utter mess of my hair. He’s silent for a few seconds.

  “My hero,” he says softly, and smiles.

  The words sent a jolt of shock through me. I stare at him, my mouth opening slightly, some warm and unfamiliar feeling bursting in my chest. I never thought anyone could ever look at me like—

  Someone clears their throat.

  I automatically step between Jed and the intruder and grab my gun off the floor, holding it tight despite the lack of ammo.

  Standing at the bottom of the stairs is a girl, wielding a shotgun that looks far too big for her. She looks from us, to the bloody mess surrounding us, and back to us, her eyebrows slowly rising.

  “What the fuck?” the raider says, each word punctuated with an incredulous pause. At least, I think she’s a raider. She’s dressed like a raider, and carries herself like a raider. She’s just a very small raider, fresh faced and knobby-kneed, who would not be intimidating at all if not for the shotgun in her hands, which is currently aimed right at my face.

  “Woah, relax,” Jed says. “We’re on the same side, here.”

  The girl immediately turns her gun to him, and then back at me when she realizes I still have my gun trained on her, and then back to Jed as she realizes he too has a gun.

  “You two are with the raiders?” she asks, forehead creasing.

  “Of course we are,” Jed says. “I mean, do we look like townies?” I hear him move closer, almost beside me at this point, but I don’t take my eyes off the girl and her gun. She frowns, probably processing the fact we’re both drenched in blood and surrounded by dead townies.

  “Dunno,” she says after a few seconds. “I’m not much in the habit of judging people based on looks.”

  “Smart,” Jed says. “But I can assure you, we’re not townies. About as far from townies as you can get, really.”

  She narrows her eyes, sizing him up. Jed is usually good at talking to people, but right now his charm doesn’t seem to have its intended effect. Quite the opposite, in fact. Seems like the more he talks, the more this girl suspects something is wrong.

  “Our crew came from the eastern wastes,” I say, before Jed can speak again. I ignore his questioning glance and think back to the plan he laid out earlier. “We got brought in to Saint, and then … well … you know how that whole fiasco went.”

  The girl eyes me up and down.

  “So where’s the rest of your crew?” she asks. Still wary, but not with the open distaste she treated Jed with.

  “Dead, probably,” I say. “We got separated. It’s just me and this jackass now.”

  “Hey,” Jed protests, but the girl’s expression softens just a bit. Taking a gamble, I lower my gun. After a moment’s hesitation, she does the same.

  “Sorry you lost your crew,” she says. “Maybe you can come along with mine.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “I’m Cl—” I pause, realizing abruptly that I don’t have a fake name at the ready. “Uh … Cled,” I say. “And this is … Jem.”

  I groan inwardly, but try to look confident. I’ve never been much of a liar. The little raider’s face wrinkles at my words, and she shakes her head.

  “They’ve got some real ugly names in the eastern towns,” she mutters, half under her breath. “But that’s okay. We don’t use real names around here anyway.”

  “So what should we call you?” Jed asks. I don’t miss the slight twist of her mouth when he speaks; for some reason, he really rubs this girl the wrong way. She turns her back to us, heading for the door.

  “I’m Kid,” she says over her shoulder. “Come meet the others.”

  XVIII

  The Crew

  The town is completely overrun by raiders. They swarm unimpeded through the streets, ransacking every building and every box for anything useful. As I walk through town, raiders are everywhere, causing trouble wherever I look. They fight over objects I’m sure none of them really need, smash windows for fun, throw townies’ bodies aside like they’re garbage. My body is a tightly wound spring; I jump at every shout and every gunshot. The fire still rages, but nobod
y pays attention to the blaze. They’re much more concerned about clearing out the remaining buildings before the fire reaches them.

  Every time I make eye contact with a raider, or pass too close to one, I’m sure they’re about to call me out. Surely one of them must recognize me by my burns, or at least catch the scent of an outsider. I feel like every movement screams that I don’t belong here, like my face is broadcasting all of my fear and disgust and hatred. Especially the hatred, which seems to fill me to the brim and leak out of every pore—a hatred so intense my chest feels like it’s filled with fire, each breath singing my lungs.

  “All right,” Jed whispers to me, and I nearly jump out of my skin. “You remember the plan?”

  I glance ahead at the tiny raider, who is too preoccupied with finding her crew to pay much attention to us.

  “Yes,” I say quietly. The plan is that I pretend to be one of them. We blend in until it’s safe to leave. “But I don’t know if I can do it. I have no idea how to act like one of them.” My chest feels tight. There are raiders everywhere—raiders looting, killing, celebrating their victory. My gun hand is twitching, my pistol seeming to burn a hole in its holster. I have only a handful of ammo left, salvaged from the floor of the bomb shelter and tucked into my now-tattered duffel bag. But if I could take out a raider with each bullet, perhaps it would be worth it.

  “You’ll be fine,” Jed says, and I force myself to look at him instead of planning a suicidal attack on the raiders. “The best lies have a little bit of truth in them. So, just … be yourself. Kind of. But more raider-y.”

  I put my hand on my gun.

  “But not too much yourself,” he says hastily, glancing around at the raiders we’re passing to make sure they’re not watching us. “Actually, scratch that idea. Just act like you think a raider should act. But, uh, don’t try too hard. If you’re exactly what they expect you to be, they’ll be suspicious.”

  “Jed,” I say through gritted teeth, “this isn’t helpful at all.”

  Jed sighs and runs a hand through his tangle of hair, flecked with blood from the fight. He looks tense, but a moment later he shines his usual grin.

  “Just stay quiet and look tough,” he says. “I’ll do the rest. Trust me.”

  Trust me, he says, as if I have any choice at this point. He’s the closest thing I have to an ally in the middle of a mob of raiders.

  Raiders. They’ve been the enemy since I was old enough to know there was evil in the world. Since they threatened my home, they were the people I was allowed to kill—the people I was encouraged to kill—and so I did. By now, it’s basically a trained response: See raider, kill raider. To see so many of them, so close and yet so untouchable, makes me want to rip out my own hair. I need to fight. Hurt. Kill.

  I imagine gunning them down, or slicing their throats, or bashing their faces in with my fists. I imagine a bitter, violent end for each and every raider I see, my mental body count piling higher and higher as I walk. I start calculating how many of them I could take out before their numbers would overwhelm me. And how is it possible that none of them see that written on my face? Surely someone must suspect that every time I look at them, I’m imagining a brutal death.

  I clench my fists at my sides, my breath quickening. It’s almost physically painful to refrain from drawing a weapon, especially when every step feels like a step further into danger, a step further past enemy lines. Surely someone will see through the ruse … And yet, they don’t. Most of them don’t even spare me a second glance.

  Jed saunters along behind me, humming cheerfully, completely unconcerned. But of course, he doesn’t have anything to be concerned about. He has nothing to fake. He may be a different breed of raider from this lot, but he is a raider, and a son of a raider, and has been around raiders his whole life. He probably feels more at home here than he did with me. It’s not a reassuring thought.

  Almost as if he can sense what’s going through my head, Jed steps up beside me, reaches out, and squeezes my arm. Just the briefest touch, but in that moment it seems to imply a lot. I’m here, it seems to say. And I find myself relaxing my tightened shoulders, letting my hands go slack at my sides. When Jed falls back, I take a deep breath and hold my head high. Nobody knows. Nobody will find out. I have to keep believing that. I’m more concerned about keeping a lid on my anger, which simmers like an itch beneath my skin.

  I steel myself as Kid leads us through town—and then back the way we came, muttering under her breath. She searches for several more minutes, peeking into buildings and apologizing when other raiders glare and shout at her to butt out of their “looting turf.” It seems ridiculous to me, that they could claim certain areas of a town they all worked to take down, but apparently that’s the way of things. Kid doesn’t seem to be looking for a fight, anyway, and briskly moves on to check other places. We search building after building after building, but whoever she’s looking for isn’t anywhere to be found.

  I’m starting to wonder if we made a poor choice of a “friend”; this girl doesn’t seem to have a clue what’s going on, and I’m getting impatient. After all this buildup, I’m getting real tired of waiting to see if we can pull off our ruse, and convince these people that we’re raiders just like them.

  “Fucking shit!”

  The shout cuts through the quiet on the edge of town we’ve wandered to, an abandoned area dangerously close to the still-smoldering fire. Kid breaks into a grin.

  “Oh! There they are,” she says, and heads right toward the noise. I exchange a glance with Jed, who shrugs back at me, and we follow the girl. She leads us right into a building that seems to be partially on fire, and very on the verge of collapsing. Kid walks in without any apparent concern. Jed hesitates at the doorway, but follows.

  Like hell am I going to be the one too scared to go in. I swallow my fear, brace my shoulders, and walk into the building.

  Inside, a small cluster of people is waiting. Aside from Kid and Jed, there are three others: a stoic Asian woman with bright red hair; a huge, scarred black man; and a white man with long dreadlocks who is currently swearing up a storm for no apparent reason. Kid is looking to the latter, so I look at him as well. He’s a lean man with a pair of goggles pushed up on his forehead and a mouth full of absolutely disgusting teeth. There’s a bandage wrapped around his torso, with a bit of red leaking through on one side, though the injury isn’t holding him back from a lot of animate swearing and hand gesturing. Only when he’s finished spitting out curses does he finally turn to scrutinize Jed and me. He stares at us for a few moments, then wordlessly gestures toward me and looks at Kid.

  “Found them killing some townies,” she says with a shrug. “They lost their crew. Told them they could travel with us for a while.”

  “Oh, is it your fucking job to recruit new members now?” he asks. The ferocious tone takes me aback, but Kid just shrugs again, completely unbothered. Getting no response from her, the man grumbles and eyes me up and down.

  “You look like a woman who knows how to use a gun,” he says. I nod. His gaze shifts to Jed, who smiles. “And you look fucking useless,” he says dismissively. While Jed makes a startled noise of protest, the man looks back at me. I hesitate, and then nod again, and he grins. “Well, whatever. Maybe bigger numbers will keep those bigger crews from trying to fuck with us.” He looks at the large man, who nods his agreement, and the red-haired woman, who stares at me with an unreadable expression. He seems to take that as agreement. “Alright, fine. You can keep with us for a while. But do anything shady, and I won’t hesitate to blow your fucking heads off, got it?”

  “Right,” I say, since Jed seems at a loss for words for once. I clear my throat, and pointedly glance around the room. “Well, now that that’s settled … you do realize this building is on fire, right?” This floor seems fine for now, but I can hear the building creak and groan above us. Everyone looks up at the ceiling as if they just noticed the danger.

  “I’m not a goddamn idiot,” the
dreadlocked man says. “I picked this one specifically.”

  “You picked the one that’s … on fire?”

  “Yeah,” he says without hesitation. “’Cause none of the other assholes are gonna be crazy enough to loot this one, yeah? So I figured we’d grab some good shit.”

  “Huh,” I say, and leave it at that. I guess he has a point … a crazy, barely understandable one that puts all of our lives at serious risk.

  “Unfortunately,” he says, “this place doesn’t have shit.”

  “At least these townies are partially cooked already,” Kid offers.

  “At least there’s that,” he says. “Anyway, on to the next one.”

  He walks out, and the rest of the crew follows. Jed and I linger behind in the slowly burning building. I glance at him, raising my eyebrows, wondering what the fuck we’ve gotten ourselves into. Jed grins back, and we both trudge after the bickering raiders ahead of us.

  XIX

  Fitting In

  We trail after the odd crew until sundown. By that time, the town has quieted down as raiders retreat with their prizes. Over the hours, the fire has mostly died out, though it still smolders quietly here and there, grudging embers that refuse to admit defeat. We pick through the burnt buildings, following our new crew’s leader—Wolf—as he grumbles and curses and shouts that “The good shit has gotta be around here somewhere.”

  As it turns out, the “good shit” was either taken by other raiders, lost in the fire, or never was here in the first place. I’m not sure what they were expecting, really. These western towns are small and poor. I’m sure one town’s loot would be plenty for a single crew of raiders to live on, but a horde of them? No way there’s going to be enough to go around. Then again, Kid seems to carry an unlikely amount of optimism with her, and maybe it’s enough to infect the rest of the crew as well.