Tess was gritting her teeth so hard that Bill could count the tendons in her neck. She'd already read his nervous hesitation as he stashed in his pack the items he needed from the city that were their end of this month's deal. He flinched when she finally said: "So. The masks?"
Bill hesitated, knowing he didn't have an answer they'd like. Joel filled the silence: "He's travelin' a little light, Tess."
"Sure is." Tess was already raising her pistol. She didn't even bother to raise it all the way to Bill's head, she just had it pointed sideways at his balls, almost lazily. "Want to hand our goods back, Bill?"
"Wait, dammit!" Bill was already backing up, hands in the air. Looked like Tess and Joel had had a rough trip, this time. Tess' entire upper lip was coated in blood, and she had bruises blooming on her cheekbones; looked like she'd possibly broken her nose at some point between the quarantine zone and the old clock tower they were meeting at. Joel's shirt sported its own heavy bloodstains, but then . . . it usually did. Still, Bill knew enough to not test them when the pair clearly still had their adrenaline up from killing infected. Joel and Tess tended to work in a sort of murderous lockstep; cross them, and they'd already be stepping over your corpse. Reloading. "I got the masks. And I got the meds you were talkin' about needing . . . and I also don't got either of 'em."
Oh, shit. Wrong move. Now Joel had a revolver at pointed at him, too. Bill was still reevaluating that when Tess grabbed the front of his shirt and got him into kissing distance with her pistol. "Explain fast, Bill."
He licked his lips and raised his hands higher. "Take the gun out of my face, Tess. You ain't gonna shoot me. I'm your meal ticket, remember?"
"Tess . . . " Joel's tone sounded like an agreement with Bill, though he didn't say anything more than her name.
"Yeah." Tess' eyes were narrowed, but she let go of him. "Yeah, all right." She stared at Bill, toying with the safety of her pistol, then reholstered it. Joel still had that revolver out, but he looked ready to listen, and the barrel was beginning to lazily drift its way away from having a bullet drill its way right through Bill's face. Tess raised her bloody upper lip in a snarl that made her look almost animalistic: "Start talking."
"I fucked up," Bill immediately confessed. "Got some intruders on the outskirts of my patch, set off some tripwires. When I tracked 'em down, they said they were traders, waved a white flag an' all, and I met with 'em to see what they had. They showed me their gas masks – so old they were rottin', you know, not safe any more. Wanted new ones. Then they showed me their meds. They got a stockpile, Tess. I didn't just see the bottles, I saw the pills. Amoxicillin, morphine, really good shit. They are straight-up loaded. I said I'd trade them masks for meds. Figured you'd want the drugs more, anyway."
"Yeah," Tess admitted. She was rocking on the balls of her feet, now, still squinting at him. "And?"
Bill finally lowered his arms so his hands could grab his elbows. This part was hard. "They rooked me," he admitted. "I let my guard down. They got the masks and the pills both, now."
"Christ, Bill," Joel spat at him. "How long you been doin' this?"
"I know. Don't you think I fuckin' know?" Bill could tell his cheeks were burning; he really did feel shame over the incident. He'd agreed to let the two untrustworthy traders stay in one of his outbuildings near the border of his claimed territory, believing that they'd never find all the traps between them and him. But he'd left the masks, bulky to carry, too near their resting spot. And those assholes had made it through the tripwires, found them, and left.
"So you have nothing." Tess was jutting her chin out at him. "That's what I hear you saying, Bill. You got zip and squat."
"No." Bill had his hands out again. "No, I know right where these fuckers are. They got themselves trapped on a rooftop. Three sides of sheer drop, one side of infected trying to climb the wall to the bottom of the fire escape. The traders been building cooking fires up there for four days now. Waitin' for me to stop payin' attention. I shoot an arrow at their heads every time I see one. I got . . . well, I got a watch on them now doin' the same thing." No need to bring up Frank specifically. "They're spooked."
"Sounds like you want help," Joel drawled, finally tucking his revolver back into a holster.
"The take is almost all yours," Bill promised. "Masks and meds. All of it. I just want some clothes they were carrying, and I want 'em out of my hair." Frank was just about out of pants, and the invaders had been carrying some jeans in roughly his size. The crazy bastard had made Bill promise he'd try to get the pants, pointing a shotgun at Bill's head, before Frank had let him leave to meet the smugglers.
"What's your plan?" Joel was rumbling at him, doing that absentminded ammo check that was almost a nervous tic with him. "You askin' us to shoot our way through a wall of infected?"
Bill knew he had them, now. "Nah, nah." He waved his hands dismissively. "They're trapped where they are, but we're not stuck out. We can take the rooftops. They can't. They got nothing over there will let them do that."
"How many?" Tess wanted to know.
"Two. Partners." Bill's jaw was already clenching at the idea of how badly he wanted to hurt them, how much he wanted to punish them for making him feel a fool. For making him look a fool at the end of Frank's shotgun. "They got guns, but if they had anything in the way of ammo, they got to be just about out. They're not even shooting the infected around them or trying to take me out when I check on 'em. You know? They're conservin' everything. Maybe even water."
Tess rocked her hips slowly from side to side, staring at the ground. The metronome of her body was a visible indication of the process inside her head. Bill watched her for half a minute before he looked up at Joel. He nearly laughed before he remembered what a sick joke the world was, now. She was half their size, but both men had their hands in their back pockets, thumbs hanging out, while they waited to see what this crazy-mean woman decided what they were about to do.