Lifeless Cradle, Road B10, come from Whitebridge and nearing Tregaron“Hey, neat,” Riley said, bending down briefly to scoop out a gas mask from the old beaten pavement by the porthole-ridden road. She dangled it from its straps, inspecting at it from all angles inquisitively. It
looked reasonably effective, and she gave it a final sniff.
“Smells of ashes and coppery blood,” she mumbled bleakly. In a split second she was grinning and positively glowing as she slipped it through a loop on her belt.
“Perfect.”With a quick jogging stride, Riley caught up with the rest of the troop that had marched by her. Klaus – a hardened man in his last twenties who looked forty – had his cracked and calloused hands tightened around a rifle. It sprouted from his limbs like an extension of himself, and he was slowly swinging it about in a 160º-angle. A scar blazed over his left eye. Riley loped up next to him, one hand lazily tucked into her belt where she could feel the edges of her blades.
“Have I ever told you that you remind me of old Ovin?” “Only a million times.” The words were delivered with a scowl.
Ah. Yes. Klaus was the
unfunny one. The serious one.
“Most people don’t like being told they resemble dead people.”Riley waved an errant finger over her own eye.
“It’s the…” she trailed off, and Klaus turned to face her, never breaking stride. Another scowl. Right. Klaus didn’t like to think about the eye scar.
Maybe it was Unhinged Kevlar whom Riley was thinking about, called Kevlar for his lucky invincible run in escaping crossfires without so much as a scratch over fifteen years, and unhinged because he was, usually. But he made for a good laugh on a bad day.
Oh, no, Kevlar had gotten shot the day before last back in Whitebridge. Bled out on the stone steps while his girl had clutched him willing him back to life.
Turned out he hadn’t been so bulletproof after all.
But Kevlar’s death had sparked the move on B10. They never found the sniper that had embedded a bullet in Kevlar's lung, and Heath had decided that a move was what the band needed, after raiding what they could from Whitebridge. Food, supplies, some ammunition. They had left Farl back on the stone steps with Kevlar. The girl hadn’t wanted to move from the corpse, and the bandits hadn’t wanted to wait. Riley figured she was dead by now. She might have placed bets on how long she would have lasted, but she figured no one wanted to wager on something that would remain unanswered for the rest of time.
Shame on you, Riley, a voice – saner than most – rang in her head. Admonishing. When was the last time Riley had had that tone used on her?
What would your mother say about your morbidity? Nothin’, she chided right back almost childlishly to the disembodied voice.
On the account that she’s dead.
Been dead for eight years. Riley’s reply was sharp and snappish, but she couldn’t lie to herself that the first reproachful voice was something that brought her back from the edge repeatedly. Something that she heard in the dead of night. Something she heard less and less, while her thoughts jumped more and more from thread to thread, leaping further each moment and growing erratic in their game of skipping.
“And my spirit, haunted by vertigo, is jealous / Of the insensibility of nothingness,” she heard herself recite.
“What’chu say?” Riley looked up sharply, to see a boy with a long face peering at her through squirrelly eyes. What was this one’s name?
“Nothin’.” Words darted through Riley's mind, disjointed and confused until she pieced them together.
The Abyss. William Aggeler. Riley had a faded memory of flipping through a book of…poetry. She had scanned through those words, eyes moving carelessly before tossing the bundle of pages into the roaring fire, to roast and burn into ashes with the rest of its bookshelf. Their last night at Whitebridge had been cold anyway, and most books were rotted. And if the burn marks on the library floor and the gaping holes on the shelves had been any indication, Riley and her gang hadn’t been the first to desecrate the yawning hall of knowledge.
The boy squinted narrowly at Riley, put off.
Ah! Nid. That was his name!
“Tell me.”Riley pretended to consider that, whipping out a blade and tapping its point under her chin in contemplative thinking.
“Mm…no.”Nid’s glare became a scorching thing in itself.
“Tell me, bitch, or I’ll – ”It took only a second to tackle Nid to the ground. The back of his head cracked against the road satisfyingly, and the knife that had been pointed to Riley’s skull became pressed into the boy’s windpipe instead. Riley pinned the boy down, from knee to shoulder, and chuckled while he writhed beneath her. Like a fish gasping on dry land after a pond dried up suddenly. There seemed to be a lot of that going around here. Riley had seen at least three of those on this walk alone. Shit place to live, for man and beast.
Nid made to thrash his arm around, but Riley held that down and nicked his throat. Crimson slowly welled beneath the blade.
“Call me bitch one more time and we’ll see just how well I really play.” With her other hand, she clutched his jaw, and watched the fear widen his eyes as her skin grew hot and blazing. Shoving herself off him, Riley got to her feet smoothly and tucked the knife away, looking coolly down at the mess at her feet. The boy was near sobbing, clutching at his neck and making dying sounds when his fingers came away warm and wet and red. Really. It was only a shallow cut.
Riley’s head was beginning to swim as she turned her back on him and strode on. The rest of the bandits walked around him, the stream bending to leave Nid to a vacuum of his own weeps.
“Riley!” Urther called. The man was leading the march. With his stocky muscular build and his hair peppered gray, everyone naturally followed in his wake. She walked up to his side.
“Walk ahead. Signal if you find anything. You know the drill.” His gray eyes matched his hair and stubble. All three looked like iron. No mention of the brawl. Of course not. They weren’t trespasses here.
“Aye, capt'n,” Riley said with a grin and a mock salute, before she jogged off. The moment she walked away however, the cheer crumbled and she winced. Her mind was playing leapfrog inside her pounding skull. But all she could do was clench her teeth and make her way to Tregaron.
Musoka
