“Someone comes along, we take their wheels off ’em,” she said. “Shouldn’t be too long. Not this time of year.”
“Guess you’d know, pirate.” Crow grinned.
“If it goes against your moral code,” she said, “then you can make a better plan.”
“Moral code?” Crow leaned back on the wagon and it shifted beneath him. “What moral code?”
I’d only salvaged a few of my tools in Old Orleans. Just some spanners and ratchets, a spare set of fuses. But I’d grabbed the telescope. The thing was on the heavy side but I figured it might come in handy, and it came in handy now, all five of us hunkered down and sweating inside the wagon, Alpha checking the road through the scope.
One of the scavengers had tried to pry out the microwave and they’d tried so hard, they’d messed up the wiring. I got it patched back together, but the water was a tougher fix. The tank had been drained empty.
“One bit of good news,” I said to the others. “We got corn and juice buried on the side of the road.”
“Yeah,” Sal said. “And we got the pictures.”
“What pictures?” Crow was stooped and squashed in the back of the wagon, his frame much too big for the space.
Sal pointed at Hina, gesturing at her belly like the woman was no more than a picture herself. “We got shots of each one of them. Every leaf. Her whole body.”
“We need water, though,” I said, not liking the way the conversation was heading. Hina crossed her arms across her stomach and gazed at the floor.
“How you get those pictures, little man?” Crow stared at me, eyes bugging off his melted face.
“You left them behind.” I shrugged. “With your boy.”
“I didn’t leave no one behind.”
“Just wanted me to keep the house safe,” said Sal, peering up at Crow. “Right?”
Crow didn’t say a thing. He was too busy glaring at me and I couldn’t figure out what had gotten him so worked up. Then he turned his gaze on Hina, and I imagined he was thinking that if we had the GPS numbers, then we didn’t need the woman. But Frost had headed off with Hina and Zee along for the ride. Did he need them for something? Why else would he have brought along two more mouths to feed? Even mouths as pretty as theirs.
“Banyan,” Alpha said from behind the steering wheel, her eye pressed at the telescope. “We got company.”
Could have been anyone. Just a slate gray cruiser with a flatbed trailer off the back, rolling out of the west in no particular hurry. I wondered if they’d already seen us, but I doubted our wagon looked like any reason to slow down.
I peered through the telescope at the tinted windows, tried to imagine what face was staring back at me. Then I studied the tires, the good thick tread. Off-road tires. Oversize. They’d be perfect. But they weren’t mine. And here I was getting ready to take them.
“You flag them down,” said Alpha. “I’ll be on the other side of the wagon. Waiting.”
“Right,” I muttered, concealing the pistol down the back of my pants. “What about the others?”
Alpha glanced at the rest of our crew. “Stay down,” she said. “But keep the hatch open. And be ready.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” said Crow, cocking his weapon. “I’m ready every second of the day.”
I popped the hatch and climbed out, wondering how I was going to get out of this one with a new set of wheels but without having to shoot somebody. I got the hood up and faked messing with the engine again, thinking about the last time I’d done that and how it had played out.
The cruiser crept up the road behind me, the tread of its tires clacking at the tarmac. Out the corner of my eye, I could see the barrel of Alpha’s rifle, pointed right across the engine, angled straight into the road.
Wasn’t long before the growl of the cruiser was at my shoulders, brakes tapping and squeaking to a stop. I turned around then, watched the wheels make their last rotation before they eased to a standstill. I stared into those black tint windows. I grinned and waved. And then I just stood there and waited.
Seemed like a month and nothing happened. I glanced at the trailer, but the thing was almost empty. If they’d gone west looking for salvage, then they’d not done too good a job.
“Banyan,” Alpha whispered from behind the wagon. “Go say hello.”
She was right. Standing around was getting me nowhere. So I amped up the grin and waltzed up to the driver’s door. And I’d almost reached the cruiser when the window slid down a crack.
I stopped dead.
The window buzzed a little lower. And the smell. Oh, man. The smell was so bad it made my belly squirm.
“Hello?” I called, not wanting to move an inch closer. “Got a little engine trouble here.”
I heard a voice croak something from behind the wheel, but I still couldn’t see a face through the shadows. I acted like I was scratching at my back but really I was getting the pistol ready. I took a step closer and was sweating like crazy now, and that combined with the sick feeling in my stomach and that awful stench wafting over me, I felt like when I was ill in the mud pit, back stuck in that filthy fever.
I went to say something, but before I got the words out, I saw the driver’s face bobble into the sunlight.
His skin was almost green and his eyes had clouded over, the marks on his face were like moldy bits of corn. The man was trying to speak but his mouth was too thick with spit, his lips too cracked and bleeding.
“Holy shit,” I whispered.
Then I shouted for Alpha.
She came running up behind me as I covered my mouth with my shirt and stepped closer to the cruiser. I peered in at the rest of the man’s body — his clothes soiled with sweat, his right arm missing below the elbow. He’d tied his shirt beneath the stump and it was soaked black with blood that was still dripping. I almost puked right then, but that was nothing next to the far side of his neck. The skin gnawed all the way to muscle. Bits of bone poking through.
Alpha groaned behind me.
“What is it?” Sal squeaked from the wagon. “What do you see?”
“Nothing,” I shouted. “Don’t you come out here.”
Crow, of course, was already on his way.
He hollered at the stink then made a sound like he was laughing. “Not bad,” he shouted, throwing open the doors to the cruiser. “Today be our lucky day.”
“Lucky?” I muttered, staring inside at the carcasses stacked on the rear seat. It was the man’s family, I guess. Three smaller bodies and a bigger one. Nothing left to bury but bones and patches of hair.
“That’s right, little man. Lucky.” Crow held his nose as he slammed the doors shut. “Got ourselves a new set of wheels and didn’t even have to kill no one to get it.”
He was right. We’d take the wheels, though not the cruiser, not as greased with death and poisoned as it was. But as the man went to switch his engine back on, to keep on toward who knows where, I felt Crow shoving me in the rubs.
“Spoke to soon,” he said. “You better take care of business.”
I snatched the pistol from out the back of my pants. But that was as far as I got with it. Sure, I’d waved the nail gun around before, even taken out one of the Harvesters with it, but there was some new thing needed now to pull a trigger in cold blood. And I remembered what my father had told me. About me being a builder. Not a fighter.
“Come on, bud,” Alpha said, stepping past me to fire a shot through the driver’s skull. “It’s just putting him out of his misery.”
She was right. The guy had been all out of time. But that didn’t make killing him weigh any less heavy. He’d been just pushing down the road, I reckon. Just trying to do the right thing. And now he was slumped over his steering wheel. Dead.