What the fuck is a tree?
I was somehow surprised that these two women appeared to know each other. I mean, I shouldn't really be that shocked since Dune is supposed to be from around here but when you know somebody like her... well, it's just hard to imagine Dune knowing anybody outside the few other destitute animals we occasionally saw hanging around Wilson's place.
Dune scrambled off the hood of the car and Ardith flung herself forward. Their embrace was fierce. I thought they might crush each other's bones in the tight hold.
The redhead pulled back, bandaged hands cupped around Dune's jaw. I couldn't see the scav's face but I could see that the woman clutching her tightly was wasting aqua cola from the eyes and smiling at the same time. It made no sense to me, she must be confused.
"You look... Different."
"Ey, been fifteen years. Ya look weird too but... Good?"
"Ha, not as weird as you look, Sis!" Ardith laughed and so did Dune.
This was the most bizarre reunion I had ever seen, but I was learning as I went that what I knew to be normal and correct might have been just the place I was raised up. Being a war boy was all I knew, being a war boy meant when you came back after getting lost on a walkabout you were scorned, scrubbed raw, shaven and then reconstituted into the fold after suffering your prayers until the soul is cleansed. You aren't grabbed and looked at and held like a lost pup newly found again.
Then something happened that I recognized. They pressed their skulls together, nose to nose, breathing each other's breath. I've done this, or at least had it done to me a few times. Whenever I got low and that one time when I came back after leaving to see what ever became of home. She'd smiled, took a hold of my head, and dragged me in for one of these. I'd been too tired to fight it.
I found myself leaning over the steering wheel to watch them, trying to glean some kinda meaning out it. Dune turned, a hand still curled around the woman's sleeve. She looked to me and I saw the cola clinging to the deathly bags under her eyes.
"This is Ardith, my initiate sister. And Ardith, this is Slit. He's a friend, a partner... In crime I mean." Dune supplied the introductions with caution in her voice.
I didn't leave the car. I was taken aback at being introduced like this. I've been called a lot of things, friend isn't one of them. Ardith jabbed at Dunes side, laughing again.
"Well look at this, replacing me with a man?! Tsk tsk, Dune." She seemed to say it jokingly, I didn't get the joke. It just made my face twist up into a scowl.
Dune rolled her eyes. "Slit's bettah than a man."
"...not as good as peaches, though. Right?"
At Ardith's words, Dune smiled fondly. It was another joke I didn't understand, something personal between them. I could tell, Dune was remembering. She was somewhere else up inside her skull.
She shook her head. "Nah, he's good as peaches. Maybe bettah than them too."
"Oh?" Ardith lifted her chin and stretched up to look over the top of Dune's head at me. She looked curious now, and I felt another scowl etch itself onto my face. I didn't care for the way I was being scrutinized. She lifted her brows at me and then turned back to the scavenger. "Let's get ya home... Hey, Dune? What is that on the roof?"
"It's mum."
"Your- What?!"
"Gonna put her to rest, love." Dune supplied honestly. She even seemed a little put off by such a strong reaction on Ardith's part.
Seemed that Dune had been alone so long that she no longer realized the morbidity of a dried up corpse sitting in an upright position on the roof of a car. She probably had no idea how problematic most of her behavior was if we're being honest. The more you think about it the more you realize that Dune is about as close to that feral line as a human could get before giving in to the sand crazy and going rabid.
"Um... Alright love. Alright. We'll git'er home faster than a jack rabbit on a date. Promise. I'll show you both the way."
-
Those poles the crow woman walked on were slid into the car, most of their length hung out of the front window. I was irritable about it. They were covered in mud from where she dropped them into the slop to greet Dune. It's not like the upholstery in this rig was ever great but mud on top of huge black blood stains wasn't a good look for my wheels. The blood couldn't be helped, Dune had to whack the previous occupants to get the car and the goods inside years back, but this redheaded wench could have wiped the muck off her stilts before throwing them on my fucking seat where asses go.
The two women seated themselves on the nose of the Impala, Ardith giving directions and the both of them talking like old compatriots. It was spooky, they almost talked like... V8, they spoke like Nux and I did when we were young, before the mutual resentment of each other started with his chronic weakness.
They talked about history, such a funny thing because Dune had never once breathed a straight word about history since I'd met the loon. In all of our time putting up with each other I'd learned more about her past from Wilson, now I was delving deeper just by listening to Ardith speak as if they had scarcely spent more than a few hours apart. I learned that they weren't actually sisters, no big surprise there since they looked nothing alike. I'm not sure what the hell it actually meant but they spoke about something called an Initiate Mother, theirs had been named Theta. I think it meant somebody that teaches you shit when you're young, kinda like the pup wranglers back home at the Citadel.
They spoke of something called an orchard, running through more of whatever trees were, eating the fruit, living in the sun, swimming. Sounded like a crock of shit, impossible. Nobody's done any swimmin' since the seas rose up and then disappeared, except the flipper boys that maintained the collection pools and Joe's pipeworks. I wasn't sure if this place could ever have been what they talked like. Just seemed like a ridiculous fantasy. Still, I wanted to hear more about it, I wanted to believe this Green Place used to exist.
"I thought you went North with the rest of the Croc Clan. Why stay, Ardith?"
"Well, my mum got sick. Like your pop got sick after the water went to hell..."
"Cholera..."
"Yeah, but also the radiation after what those bastard's dumped out in the reservoirs... It was all part of the plan. If they couldn't have the green, no one could."
"So it's true. They really dumped barrels of it out there?"
"Yeah. S'why everybody livin' near it started losing their hair. Why the saw faces and their lady fisherman kin are gone... I um... I stayed to see my mum through. By the time she was gone, everyone had already moved on without me."
"How did you survive? Without the water.. Eh.. How?"
"The Sky fishermen took me in. At first, I gathered firewood, washed their clothes. Then I started casting out lines with the others for bigger share of the catch. They know ways to collect safe water. What about you? Did you and the others find new green? Where are they? Carol, Nita, Fanny? The elders? What about your brothers?"
My eyes drifted back to the scavenger, this was all new to me too. I had no idea that Dune and her parent had been with a group when they left here. Before her mentioning it the day before I didn't know she had brothers either. I'd been curious about that before but given that she immediately began to hallucinate after mentioning them, I figured it was better not to ask. Right now, she looked she'd just stepped on a rusty nail.
"Well... I... There was a storm. Mum and I got separated from the others. Got picked up by slavers and... and... then-"
I could see it, the memory of whatever happened chewing on her head from the inside. I tasted the words, they caught and snagged on all the rough edges inside me, making them come slow and jumbled up all stupid like at the back of my throat. Ardith beat me to it, hand grasping Dune's before she could lift her fingers to her ugly teeth to chew holes in the knuckles. That distance in her eyes faded and she was back here in the land of reality.
"Heyl, maybe we'll talk about this later. Yeah? Let's just get you home." Ardith soothed the coming hallucination away as easily as swatting off flies. How was it that easy?
I felt useless. I hated that, and an ugly feeling bit at me. I decided that I wasn't any friend of this Ardith. Sure, she hadn't done jack shit to me but- Nevermind.
Another ten minutes of the drive was carried out in silence. Ardith continued directing the way, I kept on grinding my teeth and grunting in acknowledgment as she slid an arm around my scavenger. Dune seemed comforted. I felt like I was out of a job, shown up, proven inept. Just rust.
I wasn't expecting much from the place Dune was supposedly from. I knew the whole area was nothing but toxic swamp land now, but what I saw when Ardith directed Shirley up a path toward the hills was somewhat fitting. There were crude huts atop many of the low mounds of land. Some were wood, others stone and mud. Made sense that they'd used catwalks and rope bridges to get around. The muck down in the gullies was probably thick and impassable long before the joint went to Hella. All things that weren't made of something substantial were falling to pieces. Looked like wood rot had destroyed most of the structures including some of the bridges linking the taller hills together. Rotting just like her head.
The narrow road was making the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It wound around the hills. Both of the women were leaning out over the grill to check that I wasn't veering too close to the edge. That made me nervous. Don't fucking fall you lunatic. It made me wanna reach over the dash to grab Dune's ankle and drag her back into the cab.
Now there was a new obstacle. Never mind driving along narrow ledges worn in the hills from lifetimes of foot traffic, there was a bridge built from old scaffolding, rope addled with dry rot, and wooden planks. Sure, it was wide enough for a rig and clearly reinforced for this purpose but even a slight breeze made the entire structure sway.
That made the dangly bits climb North in a hurry. I came to a stop, unwilling to risk it.
"There is no force in hell or Valhalla that can get me to drive this car across that wretched-shit." I declared. No fucking way.
"Woman up!" Ardith called out. "We drive across this with the truck all the time."
That made my teeth clench painfully. Woman up. Well, now I had to do it, it was a matter of pride.
Even Dune sort of cringed as she peered over the grill toward the muck far below. "Ah, you sure about that, mate?"
"Yeah, should be just fine." Ardith replied without a trace of concern.
I immediately looked back to Dune. "You. Back in. Now." I was not about to have the nutter be out there if the bridge collapsed under the car.
After motioning her toward me a few times with the flap of a hand she handed her rifle through the opening first. She then started back in through the nonexistent windshield and once seated I reached across her lap and pulled the seatbelt across her legs.
"Aw, you care about me, Ducky. Heh heh." Dune teased.
"Shut it."
I didn't bother with mine. Against my code. Against the code of any good follower of the V8. Don't ask why I wasn't crossing this thing until her belt clicked into place. Just made my guts twist to picture the imp tumbling around in the cab or flying out the front window if this thing came crashing down. I buried that feeling and took a moment for the acid churning in my gut to subside before carefully lifting off the break and letting Shirley crawl forward. The wood planks and crackling materials under the bald tires restarted that sour feeling in my middle, felt wrong as I gave the engine a little gas to keep her from idling at the middle of the bridge.
A scarred up hand grasping my wrist made me realize that somewhere along the way across, I'd grabbed ahold of Dune's right knee with white knuckles. The shine hand gave them a pat...
"...I was fine." I said.
"Yeah, you were shiny, Duck."
That felt weird. I wasn't afraid. I won't sink low enough to be afraid of anything so damn trivial. I used to throw thunder and fire and spit guzz. I'm not afraid of anything... I'm not.
"Just up ahead. You remember the rest of the way, don'cha Dune?" Ardith called, slapping the hot hood as she hopped down and began hauling her stilts out of the car.
Dune leaned forward to squint into the fog, eyes glazing over. "Yeah... Dune remembers alright."
"Good shit. I'll be headed back to the homestead to check on the young'uns. Then I'll come meet you both up at your old place?"
"Right-o. Meet you there." Dune called back after shaking her head to clear out what could be nothing else but visions of that wretched color green.
As the redhead disappeared into the oppressive mist, I looked to the Scav for further instruction but also just to gauge what was going on in her by her eyes. She looked like she was seeing something that made her recoil in disgust.
"You good?"
"Yeah. Good as Dune'll evah get. Down that path, then left. There's a place to park. Then we gotta hoof it the rest of the way. No worries, mud ain't too bad up in the hills like this."
I grunted in affirmative, glancing up and wondering what that meant as far as carrying the dried up old woman on the roof. I'd rather not carry the corpse but I also had my reservations about letting the loon walk around with her dead mother. If we managed to get separated and she was just walking around in the fog with the remains, V8 knows what could happen? This was the reason I wound up carrying the dead thing and Dune carried the shovel with her rifle slung over her shoulder by the strap.
Along we trudged, the ground was still damp and I could feel the dirt sticking in the treads of my boot and all over the foot of the metal leg.
The landscape was just freaky. Big things with dozens of arms reaching toward the obscured sky. The sound of crows squawking and moaning in the distance. The scavenging birds almost sounded like the pewling spawn begging for aqua cola at the foot of the Citadel.
The body was all shriveled up but it still had a really strong funk when it was so close to your face. It made my nose crinkle over the bridge and bile rise up my neck hole. I tried to find a distraction.
"What's that thing you said the place was next to?" I asked, not really that curious but looking for anything to talk about so I wouldn't chunder on her mother.
"...a tree?" She answered with a question of her own. She was several paces ahead of me.
"Yeah. What's that."
"It's that." She said, pointing a finger ahead of us.
There it was, a shipping container on a hill and another one of these towering things that probably had green shit on it at one point. She looked back to me, expression strained but still answering my question none the less.
"That thing standing next to the house. It's a tree... That's my house."
"Oh." It was all I had in me to say as I looked at what she called a house. It had a few windows cut through the corrugated steel, a few additions cobbled together from what I suppose might have once been steel supply sheds. Her parents had built the place to last.
On we went. Dune's steps slowed to a meander toward the general direction of her former home, eyes facing the dirt under her feet. I had to nudge her with an elbow to keep her moving. I felt her fingers prod at my side, then close around the worn leather of my vest. She simply hung on there as we walked. She was afraid, I realized. I'd never seen her afraid before, and of what I couldn't tell.
Nux used to do this way back when we were pups and he was only half as tall as I was at the time. He used to hold onto my belt and cower from one particular imperator. The worst of the scarring on the right of my face tingled at the memory of finding out why all of the youngest pups hid their faces from that man.
I had no idea what to do for Dune. Just as I'd had no idea what to do for Nux. I kept walking and she followed.
The steep hill made it slow going with the peg leg but soon enough we stood at the top, just next to the tree thing. Dune still clung to my vest for a moment, looking around with the middle bend of her knuckle between her ugly teeth as she took in the sight.
"Put ma down, Duck."
I did this, still she didn't let go of my vest. We both stood there, looking down at the body for a long while. The empty sockets seemed to peer up at us.
"You um... Know where you want the hole?"
I didn't really have much experience with this shit. I knew enough to understand that wretched bury their dead (when they don't resort to cannibalism) and since Dune brought a shovel then that must mean her kind did the same thing. Back home, you leave the dead where they lay if they died on the road. Ace performs the ritual and passes the belongings of the dead around to those closest to him. And that is it. That old fucker Notch would cut another mark in his skin for another man witnessed but beyond that there was no time to mourn dead. The general idea was that you'd join them soon enough. War boys that burn out in their beds get shredded up and turned into food for all the green shit.
Dune sighed, letting go of me to take a few steps toward the tree. She pointed toward a stake in the ground with a ratted old hat nailed to the top to keep it in place.
"There. Next to Pa." She said quietly.
I hoped this wasn't a permanent new symptom. It made me nervous, the idea of her staying quiet and half attached to my hip. I much preferred her independence.
I dug where she seemed to want the body put into the dirt. A few hours passed, the hole deepened. Ardith met us up there around the time the hole got to be about thigh deep. She brought two more shovels and jug of aqua that I might have been a little too eager to accept.
Three mouthfuls down the gullet before I thought to ask the all important question.
"This shit gonna give me lumps?"
Ardith just shrugged. "No more than eating the birds around here will."
That's about as comforting as the sound of a car backfire. "...Chrome. Real fuckin' chrome."
Dune had hopped down into the hole and taken a swig before I could pour it out. Fuck it. What doesn't have uranium in it anymore? There wasn't even any guarantee that the waters flowing from the roof of the cave wasn't the kind that slowly made you funny in the head and bumpy.
"I knew Kate. Her mum. I'll help you dig for a bit until I gotta head back. You're welcome to eat with us tonight if you two are hungry." Ardith offered.
Dune nodded, reaching with both hands to trade the water for the shovel I was using as a post in the dirt to lean on.
The redhead hopped into the hole to dig along side Dune. I took a short wander while I was on break, having a look around. The tree thing had letters carved in it. I had to squint and try to work my mouth around the sounds each letter made to understand that they were names.
Katie + Carter
Russel
Flick
Dune
And a dozen others.
"It's the family tree, Slit! Everyone Ma and Pa knew by blood and some they knew thickah than that red stuff too."
Ah. I shrugged and sat. The entire concept of knowing who you came from was lost on me. Pups come from milkmothers and wretcheds and the process of it was only something I was vaguely familiar with. A man and a breeder fuck long and hard until a brat is made, the breeder gets all thick in the middle for a while... After that I wasn't really sure how you got the pup out of the breeder.
I looked at Dune. She wasn't a breeder, something else for sure. Again, wasn't hard to picture her painted in white clay with eye sockets colored black.
The two were talking again. Another chance to hear more about Dune without asking. I couldn't resist eavesdropping but the little shrew was surprisingly great at avoiding herself in conversation. She wanted to hear Ardith talk about herself, I did not.
"So you said about checkin' on young'uns. You got sprogs Arddie?"
"Yeah!" The woman replied with exuberance. "Three of um! Same with husbands too."
"Holy seeds! You're married?" Dune seemed surprised. "Um... Sorry bout your first two husbands."
"Eh, what? Sorry for what?"
"Er.. Your first two men. They died, right? You said you got three of um."
Ardith's brows furrowed. There must have been some sort of fowl up. "No no no! I have THREE. Featherknife, Bones, and Phil. Three. All. One big happy family. They were there when we found you two. Phill's older boy too. But he's not my brat, not technically. Love that kid to beans, though."
Dune's brows just about lifted off her head completely. For no particular reason I found it both hilarious and horrific, that a woman had three blokes running around behind her.
"Holy wheels, she's got a boy harem. Must really be in hell then, everythin's feckin' bass ackwards." It sort of fell out of my mouth, not that I would have thought much about what I was going to say before I said it anyway.
Ardith cocked her head and looked to Dune with her face twisted up like she just got a whiff of shit. The scavenger shrugged before speaking. "Eh, Slit's from the Citadel. Says all kinds'a weird things. Don't mind him, he don't know any bettah."
Her expression shifted and eyes were focused my way. Ardith looked more interested than she should be. "You used to be a warboy?"
I caught Dune cringing at Ardith's tactless, tactless question. Good, at least loony toons finally gets it, time to let the new maniac in on proper etiquette when speaking to the last devout follower of the V8.
"Go fuck yourself, eat a dick, die." And I meant every word.
"Fucking excuse me?"
Oh yes, the battery acid in the redhead's tone was like hearing the Valkyries yodeling their way down from the gates to pick me up and give me a lift home. Yeah, I was taking way too much joy in pissing her off. Too bad Dune seemed so fucking eager to smooth over the conversation.
"Ooomph! Don't take that too seriously. He doesn't like the words 'used to be' very much. Or talked at like he's still is a warboy. He hates both. The whole thing remains very hush hush super sensitive."
"...I'm not sensitive."
"Oh ho! I strongly disagree. You're as sensitive as a clit, Slit."
"What's a clit? I don't like how it rhymes with my name."
"It's this cute little pink thing that sometimes looks like a tiny little cock... Feels good when you mess with it."
"You know what?! I don't need to know about your sex life." Ardith announced through a grunt as she pulled herself out of the hole. Her words left both Dune and I looking at each other like you'd look at a dead lizard stuck in the treads of your boot.
I expected the woman to simply leave but she turned and looked back at me. "Hey, no worries. Phil's got a brand on the back of his neck too. I get it and I won't ask. Please join us all for dinner, I wouldn't mind getting to know whatever madman thinks it's a good idea to hang around my initiate sister."
That demand was just as acrid, maybe even intended as some kinda weird threat. Yeah, like she could stop Dune from being up my ass 24/7.
There was a long moment of eye contact, and I wasn't stupid enough to be the first to look away. The high pitch screeching of some pup echoing through the hills drew her attention away and with a sigh she left, but not before a final glare back in my direction.
My silent gloating over my apparent victory in her buzzing off was cut short when Dune's fingers slithered up my pant leg and yanked out some leg hair.
"Ow! What the hell?!"
"You din't have to be such a dick munch, Slit. Dune's known Ardith longer than you've been alive!"
"I'm older than you!"
"Sure, If you call that tripe before meeting Dune a life."
"And you call me an egomaniac or whatever."
"Slit," She grit out between her ugly teeth as she stuck the blade of her shovel into the dirt by her feet like a spear head. Dune leaned on the edge of the hole on her elbows, hands scratching over her face in what could only be seen as frustration. The action smeared her face in dirt. It looked like an exotic configuration of warpaint. "Look. Dune just... Can't play the bickering game right now. She just wants this part to be over with. Just help her put mumsy to rest."
Dune was tired. She sounded like she was completely fucking exhausted. To this day I still don't get why burying a dead parent is such a big deal, pretty sure they're supposed to cark it first anyway. I didn't ask. I did, however, get back into the hole to resume digging. We both worked in silence for another hour or so. I really did try to understand it, I guess the closest I could come to knowing what that felt like was watching older war boys start dropping like flies around the time got old enough to answer the call of the war drums. It wasn't the same, that was for damn sure. We didn't dig graves, we didn't make a big deal out of it, names were never carved into stones. I think most of us thought about our own mortality more than anything else, some even looked forward to the end and the promise of the eternal highway. Dune always seemed to make me question the whole thing, not that it might not be real but the parts that seem missing from the picture. I don't know what normal is anymore. I think having a mother might be normal, war boys might be the odd ones out in that.
"Hey, got a question."
Dune looked up for a second as she flung another shovelful of dirt up over the growing mound at the edge of the hole. "Hm? Shoot."
"What was she like, yir mum?"
That made her stop working look at me again, but her eyes were back on the dirt before long. She was just stirring it around with the blade of her shovel.
"She uh- She taught Dune to shoot n' take care of a weapon. It was um- self defense. We learned so we could protect our crops n' our own. She could peel the skin off an apple all in one like strip with her pocketknife. She sang all the time, loved music. She was an initiate mother. She taught younger people the things they'd need to know to survive. She new how to live in the bush n' said her pa taught her when she was little. She'dve kicked Dune's pants up around her ears for taking you in if she could, bein' from the Citadel n' all. I think she's warmed up to ya though... I've missed her."
It was like she was admitting that her mother had been gone all along, like she really had just been talking to a inanimate corpse for years. I don't know why that made my chest hurt, it just did.
"Ah," She exclaimed suddenly in a groan as she sloppily wiped the dribbles of aqua cola from under here eyes with her sleeve. "Dune thinks Ardith mightah misunderstood elements of the clit talk fir romantic subtext."
Couldn't help but snort at that, it was pretty obvious that the topic had been changed to avoid getting misty about her parent. Honestly I was pretty grateful for it, watching Dune get all wet faced was unnatural and it made my insides twist up weird. Fuck it, two could play at that game, both conversations were about as comfortable as sitting in a driver seat and finding a loose sprint jabbing you right in the sack. There was also something about the way she said that, like she wanted to correct the misunderstanding, somehow that felt kinda like an insult. I wanted out of this topic too.
"You think she got that from the clit thing? You sound crazy even when you sound smart... This hole deep enough?"
"I mean, we don't really need the whole six foot deep thing. Not like there're any animals left to dig'er up and chew on'er."
"What about the pole walker people? Watched a wretched cog fodder eat a human scalp once, hair and all. It was gross." Actually I dared him to do it and told him I'd give him my cola rations for two days if he ate it. Nux chundered all over himself when the greasy old coot was half way through horking it down.
"They don't really seem like the cannibal type, do they? Plus she's way too chewy to be edible now."
"You'd know." Hah, couldn't resist.
"Yeah, lets not mention that at dinner... I think Ardith thinks we're a thing."
"So?" I replied. It was getting weird again and I really didn't want to talk about it.
"So..." She glared at the corpse. "We're not. We're separate things. Separate plural things that have only ever seen each other naked for practical or medical reasons!"
"You're talking to your mother again, aren't you?"
"No! Yes. Shut up, Slit."
I shook my head. Sometimes I swear that Dune heard voices in her head, mainly her mother. She certainly talked to the body as if she there was another half of the conversation that I just wasn't hearing. Was that why she kept fixating on the thing about being a thing? Were not a thing. Yeah, it was pretty disgusting to imagine the thing thing with dune, but also not that gross? I really just didn't want to imagine Dune as a wife, that fucked up picture was already seared into my skull meat from Wilson's story about how she was supposed to get sold as a wife to Scabrous Scrotus. Her with white garb on was like picturing Corpus Colossus wearing the people eaters suit. The shit just does not fit together. Beyond white garb and vaults I just didn't fucking know what else a wife could be. Well, they could be traitorous wenches who run away with a one armed bitch. Things would change if we talked about this, I didn't want things to change anymore. I've had enough change for all of my half-life.
I let it go. This conversation was over. We both climbed up out of the grave and each of us took a look down into it. Neither of us were really sure how to handle the ritual from there, we awkwardly realized that we couldn't just chuck the old breeder down the hole like a lot of rubbish. Even I knew enough not to disrespect a corpse of any faction. The dead can and do meddle in the lives of the living. One secret glance at the scar on Dune's head could remind me of what the dead could do. If Nux could send her back, then her mother could kill my ass for just kicking her into the hole.
Dune got back down into the grave and I lowered the body over the edge to her with a grip on the smelly blanket wrapped around it like a sling. It seemed like the time to finish this up and start pushing dirt back into the hole came too soon, it was just another act carried out in silence. We could hear what I assumed were Ardith's pups squealing and playing somewhere beyond the wall of still fog.
The hole filled up and we both just milled around, packing down the sour dirt. More surreal silence. Over the last seven hundred and sixty-five days, silence had suddenly become unbearable.
"Are we supposed to say something? or-"
"No. I think it's all been said. Just... Uh... Dune needs a minute."
No, I didn't want to leave her alone too long, but this wasn't something I had any experience with and I wasn't about to get any more involved with it than I had to. Could be bad mojo to hang around. I circled the steel structure she must have been raised up in once, checking to make sure she was still by the graves when I came back around on the other side. She hadn't gone anywhere, she was still standing by that tree, but looking up into the dead branches now. She wasn't chipper but she didn't look all that great either. At least she didn't look like she was having any of those damn green visions. She'd never been harder to read, then again there hadn't been much to read about Dune's normal level of unrelenting enthusiasm for pretty much everything shitty about living in scav country. She just was what she was but what I was looking at in that moment was not her.
She didn't look fragile like before when she was crying about this rusthole and she didn't look absent from herself. She looked just how I felt when I saw Nux on the hood of that rig. She looked like she felt alone. I was finding out that there were just too many things I didn't know how do, maybe if I had known how to do these things... Nux wouldn't have left me behind. Dune was busy over there mourning kin and Nux spent years mourning himself and what do I do? I stand somewhere else and pretend I don't know what's going on.
Well, there was a ladder on this side of the shipping container. The fog was clearing a little too, so I could climb up there and try to see a little further out. Maybe then I could see what Dune missed so much about this damn place, used to be green right? Maybe if you look sideways and squint you can imagine it different. Ah, didn't work. Wound up picturing the Citadel instead. The Citadel did have green shit. I heard Dune making her way up the ladder around the time I stopped trying to imagine this joint looking like anything but a mud dump. She sat down next to me and swung her legs over the edge, heels thumping against the corrugated steel.
"I'm an orphan." She said, chewing on her lower a lip a moment after speaking. I'd never heard that word before.
"What's that mean?"
"Means both my parents are dead."
"Ah," I couldn't come up with something to say to that.
Another moment of silence and another chew mark in my tongue from trying to think of what to say.
"Do you remember anything about your mum, Slit?"
I could only answer her honestly. "Nope. I just remember what happened. Not her."
"What happened?"
"She gave me to the lift guardians, and I forgot her."
Dune wrung her hands. There was this itchy, uncomfortable urge to grab one of them and stop her from turning the shine one all red. I refrained.
"It really was beautiful here once. In the morning, there was dew on all the green and it looked like little beads of glass. When harvest came every year everyone danced and drank until they couldn't walk anymore... I wanted to be an initiate mother, like my mumsy."
I shrugged because it wasn't like she totally failed at that. If I understood everything Dune and Ardith had said, then these Initiate mother people are supposed to teach other people shit. "Taught me how to farm maggots... and stuff."
There was more than that, but either I couldn't think of it or it was too weird to talk about.
"Slit," I expected some kind of rebuttal but when I turned, the loon was grabbing my skull and yanking me in like she'd done a handful of times before and like I'd seen Ardith do to her once. Her breath still stunk as bad as the first time she did it to me, but mine couldn't be any better. I felt like a real flat tire for hating Ard so much. When she pulled away the throbbing in my nose from when she broke it was nasty, but in the moment it didn't matter. I didn't care what still hurt. She hadn't quite let go yet, I was pulled in again, this time crushed around the shoulders in her grip. Only a few days ago I would have thrown her off the shipping container for this. Maybe it was relief, I guess I wasn't being replaced.
"Thank you, Duck. For bringing me out here."
"Yeah, no worries... Hey, what's with that? The face, head, nose thing?" I asked and she sighed.
"It's Hongi. Means you're one of the people, part of the clan. I trust you."
I felt my face stretch into a half grin, remembering the first time she did that by the car when she told me I could have it. "Heh... First time you did it, I thought you were gonna beat the shit outta me."
Dune let go, leaning back and slapping her scarred up right hand across my shoulder. She laughed as if I just told the best joke she'd ever heard. "Naaaah, Slit! C'mon, yir my Ducky!"
I used to hate the sound of her cackling, now it wasn't right if she wasn't laughing at something. It made talking easy. "Why, do you call me that?"
She leaned closer with her hideous grin and a smug look. "What is this, twenty questions? Pa used to call me that 'Cause it means... Hmm... Shiny treasure."
"Oh, now you're just trying to flatter me."
She mocked a look of confusion. "Nah, mate. If Dune wanted to make ya flatter she'd just push over a boulder on you!"
This time I laughed. It felt totally unnatural, but not bad. The sound of our voices died and I tried one last time to picture grasses covered in morning dew. It sounded like a story for pups, but I could almost see it this time, almost.
I could hear music. It sounded like it was coming from off to our right where that redhead had vanished off to. It was just like that box with a horn that Wilson played black disks on. We had dug all afternoon and filled the hole in until the evening, the sun was starting to set and darkness was fast overwhelming the fog. I could see a new point of light from maybe the next hill over, fire light creating halos of yellow and orange in the mist. I guessed that Ardith and her clan were celebrating something or other, maybe Dune coming back, who knows with wretched crow eating types.
"They're just goin' off over there aren't they?"
"Yeah."
"Wanna go over there?"
"Nah, not ready."
"Okay,"
Dune leaned into me, using my shoulder as a head rest as we both looked out over a dead world shrouded by a thick gray wall of air. This wasn't something I thought I'd be doing with the scavenger two years ago, but this time it was definitely me that put an arm around the little maniac, not just my flesh suit acting of it's on accord.
"So... You trust me?"
"Yeah, crazy huh?"
