Bite

by K. S. Merbeth

  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 without 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!”

  “Try.”

  I look doubtfully at the gun in my hand and back at Dolly. When she doesn’t say anything, I sigh and plant my feet, assuming what I think is a good shooting pose. Behind me, Dolly laughs quietly.

  “What?” I ask, turning around.

  “Nothing. Go.”

  “Right, right…” I turn back to the target and raise the gun. I suck in a deep breath, blow it out, do my best to steady my shaking hands as I focus on the target. Ready, and… pull the trigger.

  Nothing happens.

  “Safety,” Dolly says.

  “Oh, shit.” I’m turning red already and I haven’t even managed to fire yet. Silently cursing myself, I click the safety off and raise the gun again. I’m already frazzled, heart thumping nervously. I don’t know why it’s so important to me to impress Dolly, but it is.

  I fire.

  I’m not sure where the bullet goes, but it’s definitely nowhere near the target. A defeated sigh leaks out of me, and my arms fall slack at my sides.

  “It’s useless,” I say. “I’m never gonna—” Before I can finish, Dolly places her hand on my lower back and steers me forward a few paces.

  “Again,” she says. When I raise the gun, she reaches over and grabs my hands, repositioning them slightly. “Like this.”

  “Oh. Thanks.” I shoot again. The bullet dings off one of the outside cans and ricochets into the dirt.

  She takes me closer, and closer. She corrects my grip and helps me aim again and again until, finally, I manage to knock a can off the pyramid. I let out a triumphant yell—and am promptly surprised by the sound of smattering applause behind me.

  I turn around and find Wolf, Tank, and Pretty Boy sitting on the ground nearby. All the blood rushes to my face as I wonder how long they’ve been watching me shoot at nothing. Wolf looks thoroughly amused. I’m too flustered to say anything.

  “Nice shot,” Tank says.

&n
bsp; “Yeah, you killed the shit out of that can!” Wolf says, not quite as sincerely. Pretty Boy says nothing, but smirks.

  Dolly pats me on the head. It makes me feel a bit better, but I’m still embarrassed. I hand the gun back to her.

  “I’m done,” I tell her. Louder, to the boys, I say, “Show’s over, get outta here!”

  After I stand there for a while and make it clear I won’t be shooting again, they lose interest and find something else to do. I sigh, push sweaty hair out of my face, and go to pick up the can I knocked over. When it’s in my hands I inspect where the bullet hit. A knot forms in my stomach. If I had this much trouble hitting an unmoving can, there’s no way I’m going to hit someone trying their damnedest to kill me. I’ve been trying to feel optimistic about this radio tower plan, but anxiety is creeping up on me. I can’t leave the others on their own, no matter how little help I may be, but I’m starting to realize the chances of me making it out are slim. I mean, hell, they’re slim for all of us, but most of all for me.

  “Are you okay?” Dolly asks, jolting me out of my thoughts.

  “Ahh, yeah,” I say. “Just a little worried, I guess.”

  “You’ll be fine,” she says. I nod halfheartedly. “I’ll make sure of it,” she says, and places the gun back in my hand. “Practice more. I’ll watch for the boys.”

  I bite my lip and look down at the gun.

  “All right, all right…” I take a few paces away from the target and stop. “But I’m starting from here this time.”

  We practice for at least an hour or two. I get better, but not by much. We take a break when the others announce it’s time for breakfast, and after that Wolf decides he wants to help, too.

  “If you don’t hit it this time, I’m gonna hit you,” he says, leaning up too close behind me.

  “What? No!” I lower the gun and turn to him. “That’s not helpful, Wolf!”

  “’Course it is. I learned like this. C’mon, just shoot.”

  “Well, now I don’t want to…”

  “You have five seconds before I hit you.”

  “Wolf!”