If I closed my eyes and held my breath so that I couldn't smell the dead air of the wasteland, then it almost felt like I was hanging onto one of my brothers and riding through the lush fields of home, not clinging to a broken War Boy.
When I had no choice but to take a breath and open my eyes I could still see the green things haunt my vision like a mirage. I tried to hide my face against the back of Ducky's neck. It helped only a little.
The homestead came into view and I shuddered in surrender to the desire to curl up somewhere warm and dark. I was practically plastered to the battle fodder's back as we passed under the wind-worn columns and arches of stone, then slipped through the easily overlooked passage into the underneath-world.
The rumble of the cycle echoed against the bare stone in here, sending waves of confusion through my skull as we stopped. I moved to swing my leg over and dismount but stumbled when my cooked foot reminded me of how fucking wrecked I was. Walking was a torture but, I was not about to allow myself to be carried around.
I've been to that level of hell before. No one would ever be forced to look after me in such a way again. Never.
My limbs still worked slow, body trembling as if we were having an earth shaker. Slit did not try to help. He knew better, thank the goddess. He let me struggle back to my sleep spot without so much as a single word. He just followed and kept two steps behind my agonizingly slow progress with a lit torch in his hand.
Wouldn't wipe that bothersome look off his face, though. It itched and niggled at my nerves. He didn't look right. He didn't act right either. He brought water, brought clean rags and dumped into my lap the things that Wilson had ordered us to treat the burns on my head and heels with. Then he just stood there shifting his weight uneasily between his flesh and mechanical legs, staring down at me as I sat. When I merely stared back, his lip twitched and crinkled the worst of the scarring on his left cheek. He pushed the knob of his metal leg into the lowest position in its slot and let it collapse under him as he sat and started pulling at my boots. He was going to do it for me.
Something burned white hot in my center and my unfeeling hand of scars lashed out, slapping hard across his ruined mouth. Slit's entire body jerked forward and his reflexes immediately had the strength of his fist crushing around my wrist as the clap of sound had faded into dull echoes. I had meant to say words, not strike. I meant to hiss I'm not incapable but instead, the words caught on my windpipe and had to find another road to escape from me, choosing the path of my arm instead.
Silence fell like a smothering weight in the cavern. We fought with our eyes, the jump of jaw muscles, the twitch of eyebrows, the steady glares of blue and red and green. I wanted a fight. I wanted to expel the feeling that the dream of home left in my chest, I wanted Slit to tear it out of me and make me forget what peace was. He didn't. The failed War Boy grumbled out a noise with a meaning I didn't understand and tossed the boot he'd yanked off my foot into my lap before getting up and stalking down the passage.
Soon I could hear the clank of metal and faint curses. He was tinkering with the car. Sulking. I turned toward Mama, reaching out to brush my fingertips around her hollow eye sockets. After tending to my pain, I gave in to the listlessness that weighed down every limb.
He lay against me, the wind made the grasses around our nest whisper softly. He tasted like fuel, I tasted like dirt. He moved like death coming to claim a disembodied soul. I sank into the soil like a seed throwing down roots.
We lay in the grass, ear to ear, letting thoughts pass between us. Fire, war, death. Scrap, sand, life.
A thunder stick lay in the dirt between us, mama's Enfield sitting across the shaft of wood. Vines grew around them, holding them tight and claiming them for the earth.
He took my hand and pressed my fingers around the shaft of the thunder stick, and when I looked down between us, our arms were dusted in white.
It was just a dream, yet it had felt so real, enrapturing every sense and then a few which didn't have names. Was it a vision? A prophetic dream? I blinked into the darkness as awareness returned. Pain. Oh! Glorious, torturous pain that slithered through my flesh like poisonous serpents. I crumbled forward, hands flying forward to catch my fall into the sand. It was more gravel than it was loose dust, it bit my palms. I hardly noticed the new cuts in the heels of my hands what with the ghosts of flames blazing through my legs. It felt like I had been wearing iron slippers, heated red hot like the ones that the evil queen in Mama's bedtime stories had danced in. I tried to pull my feet up into my lap to see but, the moon was too weak, a waxing sliver in the sky. My whole and feeling hand told me that they were wet with spilled blood but gritty with sand caked into the now torn open wraps.
I had been walking yet asleep. Strange. Strange. I had left the safety of my kip under the spell of the sleeping walkabout. What is safety? Just a word.
It was dark and it was cold. How had the chill of the desert night not woken me? Or the tenderness of my heels as I tromped on them through the wastes barefooted? I could barely make out the horizon, thanks only to the light of the stars. I recognized nothing. How far had I wandered from the cavern?
There was no time to let concern float through my head. A voice called out in a tongue I could not understand.
"Привет?"
I shot upright, stumbled and choked on a curse that could not escape as my scorched feet screamed for a reprieve from their duties. I turned my head left, then right, then spun in a slow stumble whilst holding onto my frozen arms.
"Рад тебя видеть."
The voice was not a friendly one. No no no. It was hungry, for what I could not be certain. Two red orbs popped up from over a sand drift, a black form rising from the dirt as if it had been lying in wait like a trap door spider. Eyes. Buzzard eyes.
I palmed at my leg where the sheath of my blade should be. My knife, not there. My backup weapon, not there. No bullets, no blades. Fear closed in tight around me.
I saw starlight reflected in a shaft of metal. Deadly, deadly sharp and swaying back and forth, hand to hand. It moved like a spider too, slow at first, till it was certain had its victim within grasp. It moved like the fucking wind with fangs ready to sink in.
I tried to dodge the mass barreling toward me but my bloody feet had none of it. I fell onto my rear and the Buzzard tumbled over me onto its head, rolled quick to the left and leapt upon me. The blade tickled at where my rotgut filter should be before being parried away. The weapon was tried at my throat next but not intended to kill. No. This was not the scene of a prospective murder, this was far crueler. When realization struck it was only because of the stench of naked and unwashed flesh. I forgot to care that the razor edge of a knife was whispering a death threat into my windpipe, I might be lucky that I hadn't slit my own throat on it. My sharp and yellows sank into something in the dark as I clawed for the blade. It shrieked a curse in its nonsense words as the taste of hot copper coated my tongue and spilled over my lips. Fury roared in my veins. This was not the end of my story, No.
I felt the killing tool drop from its hands, the point leaving a red-hot prick just below my breast bone as the creature tore free of my teeth and fell onto it's back. It was pawing at what I'd nearly bitten off. Stupid. Should have kept a hold of the knife. Should have slashed deep. Should have ended the game with a wet gag and settled for having its way with a cadaver.
If I'd been born with a cock, I'd have scooped out his eye and skull fucked him right there in the sand. Instead, the blade slid in and was twisted both left and right as he choked on his last breath. The danger passed, I slumped into the sand alongside the body, panting out the insidious thrill of feeling the life fade from a man under my hands.
I sat by the corpse for some time, shivering, still waking from the dream if I'm to be completely honest. When Ducky had taken me back to the place I called my territory the day before, I had wanted to fight him, to throw fits and goad him into throwing them back just to feel something besides the ache for my real home. The frantic struggle to defend myself from a dirt dweller did not do what Slit could, I only longed more for the place beyond death, the only way I'd ever return to the Green Place.
I might not have been all in the right order upstairs but I had enough gears and cogs turning in the correct direction to understand the peril of my situation. Eventually, I would have to get up and walk or else the cold would weave itself so deeply into my being that I'd never move again. Would that be so bad? Would I go home again? It would be so sinfully easy. I could hardly breathe or walk as it is. I could just give in to how tired and ruthlessly sore I felt, to succumb to the desire to just stop healing and go still.
No, those that choose death willingly go to the void, not the blessed places after departure from this realm. I made my choice, pulling off the dead one's boots as the sky began to lighten ever so slightly.
The filthy Buzzard was even more raggedy and ill kept than most I had seen. No others had appeared, so perhaps it was one of the lonely ones. If a Buzzard is left behind, it's forgotten by its clan as if it had never existed. Pack animals they are, perhaps recognizing one another more by scent than sight as creatures who thrive in darkness and live in the sunken ruins hidden under the sand. All speculation on my part, wild prejudices and fearful musings.
I considered taking strips of the layers and layers of bandages it wore to bind around my viciously throbbing feet but the fabric looked absolutely revolting, caked in dust and salt and very possibly shit. Not that I was spoilt for cleanliness but this was just too grimy to consider. I tore off the bottom of my blouse to try and put a layer between the wounds on my soles and the filth which no doubt lurked in the boots too.
So began the march along the trail I had left in my wandering slumber.
The green. It kept coming back to steal away my sight, It would come as if springing up from the parched earth after a hard rain, something I've only ever heard about in tall tales. The imagined visions would flash before my weary eyes and then dissolve in an instant as I reached out to touch the freshly grown shoots. Oh, no no. This was not helpful.
I got turned around twice, forgetting where I was in the midst of these ruthless, intrusive memories. I found my way back to the trail of my footprints the first two times but, not the third... The sound of a motor roaring through the rolling green hills before me came secondary to the sound of Ma calling from over the next mound of grasses. A little more, just a few more steps and then I'd see her. I hardly cared that I was headed away from the cavern, from Ducky, stumbling east toward the rising sun.
"What are you doing?"
I'm going home.
"STOP!"
No.
A hand tangled into the hair on the back of my neck and pulled, twisting my head back. No! Everything was fading, turning gray and dead and then falling to pieces into the sour dirt! It was gone, the grand, beautiful illusion was gone. The hilt of the Buzzard's blade was still gripped tightly in my fingers, it was lifted high to carve whoever had torn me from my waking dream. Useless, my arm was caught and twisted around until I could no longer hold onto my single salvation from this attack on my person.
Ducky. It was my Ducky, fury written on his face in the language of not quite human expressions.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?! Are you out of your frickin' mind?" He stopped and shook his head harshly at his own words, perhaps realizing the absurdity of them.
"Errrrm. Mmm. Nng." That was a stupid question, Ducky.
He saw the blood, I could tell because his eyes had changed. The anger in his glare slipped away for but a moment as he turned my chin to look at the tiny, shallow cut against the tendon in my neck. He then pulled up the back of my torn shirt to look there. He was searching for a greater wound. Something to explain the blood which was still slick in my palms or the red crusted around my mouth like war paint. His breath was heavy, ragged, I could feel its heat and moisture on my face. An unflattering squeal of sound escaped my throat as he shook me by his grip on my hair.
"What happened!? Say something damn it!" He was shouting now, demanding answers.
"MmMMRR!" S'not my blood.
He let go, shoving slightly with the action and throwing me into a feeble stumble. Paws hurt, and the boots they were in fit too loose. I looked down into the dirt, feeling robbed of the swoon of peace that had held me when I saw lying green mirages sprout from it. A chill crawled up my spine, prickling at my skin as Ducky muttered words of no import.
He threw something with a guttural yowl, a rock that flew into the nothing as he spent up the frustration that I could practically smell on him. A minute later he was slipping out of his vest and pulling his shirt up over his head to reveal the full extent of his healed upper body. He wadded up the shirt and flung it at me, it just slapped against my face and tumbled down my breasts into the sand.
"Put it on, and get in the car." He gruffed, then turned toward the Impala, boot thudding so hard that it left deep pits in the sand alongside the grooves left my his peg leg. He opened the driver side as I carefully guided my burnt head through the collar of the much too large pull-over.
He looked at me from over the hood, face twisting into a scowl that could kill weaker mortals merely from fright. "Get. in. the car.
He's not pissed. He's scared.
