there’s a rickety dock with a few tied-up pontoon boats.
The source of the music – the center of this ‘town’ – and the only solid structure built here is
Trapper’s, a sleezy-looking bar housed in a log cabin, the name proudly displayed along the roof in
sizzling green neon. A row of stuffed alligators line the bar’s wooden porch, their jaws open and
searching. From inside, above the music, I can hear men shouting and pool balls cracking.
‘All right,’ Nine says, clapping his hands. ‘My kind of place.’
The place does sort of remind me of the off-the-grid spots I used to hit up when I was alone and on
the run, places where the tight-knit and gritty locals made it easy to spot out-of-place Mogadorians.
Even so, as I notice a scrawny middle-aged guy with a mullet and a tank top staring at us, chain-
smoking in the shadows of the porch, I wonder if we should find a safer place for us to poke our
heads in.
But Nine is already halfway up the creaky wooden steps, Marina right behind him, and so I go
along. Hopefully this place has a phone so we can at least get in touch with the others back in
Chicago. Check to see how John and Ella are doing – hopefully better, somehow, especially now that
we know the cure-all Five claimed to have in his Chest was a bunch of crap. We have to warn the
others about him. Who knows what information he might’ve been feeding to the Mogadorians.
When we push through the swinging saloon doors of Trapper’s, the music doesn’t screech to a stop
like in the movies, but everyone in the bar does turn their heads to stare at us, almost in unison. The place is cramped, not much to it besides the bar, a pool table and some beat-up lawn furniture. It
stinks of sweat, kerosene and alcohol.
‘Hoo boy,’ someone says, then whistles loudly.
I quickly realize that Marina and I are the only two women here. Hell, we might be the first women
to ever set foot inside Trapper’s. The drunks staring at us range from tremendously overweight to
alarmingly skinny, all of them dressed in halfway-open plaid shirts or sweat-stained wifebeaters,
some of them flashing gap-toothed leers, others smoothing down unkempt beards as they size us up.
One guy, in a ripped heavy-metal T-shirt and with a lower lip stuffed with chewing tobacco,
breaks away from the pool table to sidle up next to Marina.
‘This must be my lucky night,’ the guy drawls, ‘because you gi –’
The rest of the pickup line is lost to the ages because the moment this guy tries to slide his arm
around her shoulders, Marina roughly snatches his wrist. I can hear the moisture on his arm crackle as it flash freezes, and a second later the guy is crying out as Marina twists his arm behind his back.
‘Do not come near me,’ she says in a measured tone, loud enough so the whole bar knows that the
warning doesn’t go just for the dude whose arm she’s almost breaking.
Now, the room truly does go quiet. I notice one guy let his beer bottle slip down in his hand so he’s
holding it by the neck, all the better for swinging. A couple of burly guys at a back table exchange
looks and stand up, eyeballing us. For a moment, I think the whole bar might try rushing us. That
would end badly for them, and I try to communicate that with my stare. Nine, who with his tangled
black hair and dirty face fits right in here, cracks his knuckles and lolls his head back and forth,
watching the crowd.
Finally, one of the other hicks at the pool table hoots. ‘Mike, you dumbass, say excuse me and get
over here! It’s your shot!’
‘Sorry,’ Mike whimpers to Marina, his arm turning blue where she’s touching him. She shoves him
away and he goes to rejoin his friends, rubbing his arm and trying to avoid looking at us.
Just like that, the tension breaks. Everyone goes back to what they were doing, which pretty much
means guzzling beer. I figure scenes similar to that – little fights, stare downs, maybe a stabbing or two – must happen in Trapper’s all the time. No big deal. Like I figured, this is one of those places
where nobody asks any questions.
‘Keep it under control,’ I tell Marina as we walk to the bar.
‘I am,’ she replies.
‘Didn’t look like it.’
Nine reaches the bar a step ahead of us, clearing a space between two hunchbacked drunks and
slapping the chipped wooden surface.
The bartender, who looks just a tad more alert and cleaner than his customers, probably because
he’s wearing an apron, looks us over with weary disapproval.
‘You should know I keep a shotgun under the bar. I don’t want any more trouble,’ the bartender
warns.
Nine grins at him. ‘It’s cool, old man. You got anything to eat back there? We’re starving.’
‘I could fry you up some burgers,’ the bartender replies after a moment’s thought.
‘It’s not possum meat or something, is it?’ Nine asks, then holds up his hands. ‘Never mind, I don’t
want to know. Three of your finest, my man.’
I lean across the bar before the bartender can retreat into the kitchen. ‘You got a phone?’
He jerks his thumb towards the bar’s darkened back corner, where I notice a pay phone hanging
cockeyed from the wall. ‘You could try that. It works part of the time.’
‘Looks like everything in here only works part of the time,’ Nine mutters, glancing at the TV
mounted above the bar. The reception is bad at the moment, a news report swallowed up by static, the
crooked rabbit ears emerging from the set not doing their job.
As the bartender disappears into the kitchen, Marina sits down with a couple of stools buffering
her from Nine. She avoids eye contact, engrossed by the popping static on the TV. Meanwhile, Nine
drums his hands on the bar, looking around, almost daring one of the drunks to say something to him.
I’ve never felt so much like a babysitter.
‘I’m going to try calling Chicago,’ I tell them.
Before I can go, the scrawny chain-smoker from outside squeezes into the space at the bar next to
me. He flashes a smirk that’s probably supposed to be charming, except he’s missing a couple of
teeth, and it doesn’t quite reach his eyes, which look wild and desperate.
‘Hey, honey,’ he says, obviously having missed Marina’s demonstration about what happens when
drunks try flirting with us. ‘Buy me a drink and I’ll tell you my story. It’s a doozy.’
I stare at him. ‘Get away from me.’
The bartender returns from the kitchen, the smell of cooking meat coming with him and making my
stomach growl. He notices the scrawny guy next to me and immediately snaps his fingers in his face.
‘Thought I told you not to come in here if you don’t have any money, Dale,’ the bartender barks.
‘Go on, now.’
Ignoring the bartender, Dale fixes me with one last pleading look. Seeing that I won’t be budged, he
slinks down the bar to beg one of the other patrons for a drink. I shake my head and take a deep
breath; I need to get out of this place, I need a shower and I need to hit something. I’m trying to keep it cool, to be rational about things, especially considering my two companions aren’t acting all that
stable, but I’m angry. Furious, really. Five knocked me out, practically took my head clean off. In that time I was unconscious, the whole world changed. I know I couldn’t have seen it coming – I never
expected one of our own would turn traitor, even a freak like Five. Still, I can’t help but feel it
would’ve been different if I’d had my guard up. If I’d been fast enough to dodge that first punch, Eight might still be alive. I didn’t even get a chance to fight, and it makes me feel cheated and useless. I bottle that rage up, saving it for the next time I see a Mogadorian.