-Slit-

This is just a dream. I flung my thunderstick, aim true, intent deadly, and it struck its mark. Nux cursed as the Rock Rider's head exploded, the skull meat spraying across his windshield as he swerved quickly to avoid tearing up the undercarriage by running over the bike which now lay on the floor of the canyon behind us. I turned my head to see, a body still convulsing and the bike's tire spinning wildly with no hand to manage the acceleration.

"You're cleaning that!"

"HAH! Suck what?"

"You're gonna suck bumper later when I make you wash the car with your fuckin' tongue!"

"Yeah, yeah. We'll see."

"I'm serious, Slit! It's gonna be stuck on like concrete! An' it's gonna stink!"

"So what, ya could use som'ore brains!"

He tapped the breaks to slam me against the roof and back window on that one. Didn't hurt, happy dreams don't hurt, so I laughed and pounded the roof.

"Isn't it lovely, Slit? Isn't Valhalla great?!"

Valhalla?

"Wait, what?"

"Don't you know? We're dead mate! But alive again! Just like he said!"

Who was lying? Did Joe lie, or did Phil and Dune lie to me about Joe lying? We sped forward, racing faster and turning tighter corners than I remember the Coupe Deluxe ever being capable of. I had to hang on tight to those handrails. We were going so fast that a plume of dust rose so tall and thick that it mimed a sandstorm. Lightning even flickered through the billows of kicked up sand as I watched it climb toward the sky behind us. When I turned back to see ahead, I got worried. I knew this territory, and we were moving too quick though it, causing too much racket. This is scavenger country, and not too far ahead was the patch of dust I knew far too well. This isn't Valhalla.

"Turn back!" I had to bellow over the wailing of the engine.

"Why?!" My driver called back through the roof hatch.

"Too risky up ahead!"

"Are you afraid?! Coward!"

"Shut your cockwasher and listen!"

"We're dead! What can hurt us now?"

"Damn it! Nux, Turn around! Before she hears us!"

"Who?!"

On cue, I heard the thundering echo of her rifle crying. You duck when you hear it, a too late reflex to the sound of a leadslinger's instrument of death. Most go down before they realize they were in the crosshairs, that was just her warning shot. Next came the growl of an engine, another V8, but nowhere near the pristine condition that ours was. I know that sound, it was Shirley, the car a mad scavenger had given me and named for me too.

I saw it come, emerging from the rolling clouds of dust behind us. It was just a dark shadow at first, then a grim wraith come to steal away my pleasant dream. Nux was screaming, ordering me to pick up my thunder and fling it. I saw Dune, standing up through the roof hatch Phil had cut out for us this past week. She had a foot on the dash and the other on the backrest of the seat. Her aim was ruthlessly accurate, I know this, and she had me at the end of her barrel the moment the Impala pulled up next to us. What was happening? Who the hell was driving it? Did she not recognize me? Or did she? Her aim shifted, trained on the back left tire of the Coupe.

"Nitro! Nitro!"

"Take that scav OUT, Slit!"

I can't. I clambered over the roof and down the front glass to the lancers perch and grabbed a thunderstick. Maybe I could take out the driver instead of her before she squeezed off a shot.

"SLIT! TAKE HER OUT!"

"I can't! I can't!" Can't kill her, wouldn't be right. She'd realize who she was aiming at any minute now, right?

I spun and leaned over the bonnet to jab into the driver side at whoever was at the wheel, but what I saw...

Bang!

That wasn't my thunderstick. That was Dune's rifle. Nux lost control, spun the car and began to roll. I was tossed to the gravel. If it weren't a dream I'd be dead. I knew I was dreaming, but I couldn't wake. Everything is going wrong and I can't wake from it!

The impala's breaks screeched, Dune whooped her victory cry from atop Shirley, and another threw open the driver side door to emerge into my nightmare. Fuck. Fuck!

I don't know who I thought might be driving my car with Dune slinging lead for them. I saw a glimpse of it when I froze and couldn't chuck thunder at the driver. It was me, and I needed no more confirmation than to see the bastard wearing my metal leg and pulling my colt from his belt. There can't be two of me! Even for a dream, this was nuts. Rumor has it that you can't see yourself in a dream unless you're about to die, or is it that if your doppelganger kills you in a dream, you really die?

Seemed stupid to agonize over this, try to tease out which legend was the case when another you was glaring down at your sorry face. It had no eyes, the other me, just empty sockets and red hot embers burning in their hollows. I was frozen solid, couldn't move, couldn't breathe. As the thing looked down at me, seemed like it sucked all of the air out of the world just by existing. Every time it exhaled, smoke escaped its mouth and ears.

"Slit!" That was Nux, he survived the crash.

I looked passed the knee of the abomination standing over me. My driver was still in this fight, running my way and loading his sawed-off, pushing two shells into the chamber and flicking up the barrel. He was ready to unleash kamikrazy hell, but he isn't fast enough, he never was. Even before the sickness started to destroy him, I was always faster than him.

"Run you, idiot! Nux! Run away!"

Bang!

The other me, he shot my driver like it was nothing. He just turned, unfurled his arm, took aim, and sent lead right between his eyes. Those eyes still looked at me from where my driver lay in a heap. Two big blue eyes that seemed surprised at what had happened.

"No! Why?" It was useless to cry out, no one seemed to hear me or care.

"Aw Ducky, was that really necessary?"

He ignored her, turning to face me again. Still, I couldn't move, couldn't wake. All the slapping and slicing with my bladed hand couldn't hold him off. Every strike seemed to slide right through him to see the wound fuse back together. He took me by the dust cloth around my neck, lifting me like a pup and slamming me against the flank of Shirley. I still had both my legs and he didn't, why couldn't I fight my way out of his hold?

When he opened his mouth, I saw nothing but a torrent of flies buzzing inside. The hum of a thousand wings hurt my good hear, had me struggling against him as he held me down and smothered me with his hands.

"Shh! Slit! It's okay! It's just a dream!"

I still wasn't sure what was happening, just that hands were on me and I couldn't tell whose. What is real and what is a dream? Instinct had me flipping over, throwing whatever or whoever was on me away, and they couldn't go far, because waking from the dream meant that I was behind the driver and passenger seat of Shirley. Even without the back seat, there wasn't much space. My attacker came back, pressed their mass against me, held me down by the back of the head, but it didn't hurt. I could breathe, but I only knew that for sure after they told me so. After a few more repetitions on their part, it finally got through to me that it was Dune telling me to take in air and shoot it back out, just breathe. I was okay, nothing was trying to kill me.

'breathe with me' She said and I leaned into her, where it was safe. I was shaking and I could smell blood. She wasn't the only one there.

"You're alright, Boy. You're alright." That was Phil.

I found myself trying to hide under Dune when I fully came to. The morning had lit up Phil's grease pit, which meant he'd been working. That's why I heard the banging and dreamed of Dune firing shots. Still, I was horrified at what I'd seen inside my skull as I slept. The Scav had her hand on my head, forcing her fingers through the unruly hair there. Phil was somewhere in the tight space within the car too, trying to hold my arms down. When I finally found the strength to open my eyes, I watched red drops fall onto the mats we slept on. It sank down into the fibers until it looked almost dry. I counted four drops. When I looked up, Dune had a bloody nose, but she wasn't angry, wasn't looking at me like she wanted to throw a fit about it. She looked terrified, sad even. I just wanted to disappear. My hands covered my face and all she did was hover closer, patting my head and talking her coddling gibberish.

Full body shakes that are neither from cold or fever feel like nothing else, it's like no matter what you do, you can't control what your meat is doing. I even felt it in my ribs.

"He's dead! He's dead and it's my fault!"

Part of me knew it was just the dream talking, another part argued with logic and told me it was the truth. I pushed him away because I could, because it was easy, because it was less painful than accepting that I couldn't handle his impending death. Dune, the full-life nutter, just stayed where she was, keeping the pressure of her body weight on me as if she knew that I felt like I might float away at any second. I could hear her talking to Phil, but I only caught the gist of it. Phil had to take the pups somewhere to hang around the old ones while everyone else went ahead with the harvest thing. Dune kept on after he left, rocking slightly and curled over me. I knew she was wiping her bloody nose on my shoulder, but that was fine. I probably did that to her while I was still in the dream.

"You okay, Duck?"

I didn't want to say, so instead, I turned my face away. I felt the weight of her skull against mine and she started singing. I really used to hate it when she sang, I thought she couldn't hold a key to save her sorry life. She sang about the sun coming, and the shakes slowly subsided. While she sang, I'd turned myself around so I could feel it on my face through her neck. The sensation was distracting but it soon dwindled to a hum. I don't think she could remember all the words.

"Ah, mate. An' you were sleepin' so good all week. It's a'right. Dune's got ya. You thirsty? Guts gurglin'?" Count on Dune to try fixing everything by facilitating physical needs, probably because her ability to dig deeper and locate other needs was as limited mine. She was right, though, I was thirsty.

I just shrugged, convinced that if I spoke she'd be able to hear how tore up I was over a dumb dream. Her canteen made its way into my hands, and she kept on talking.

"You used to do this all the time when I first brought you home. Never let Dune get close to you though. All she could do was watch..."

Yeah, the wounds both on my interior and exterior were still fresh when we met, could hardly move because the agony of what had slowly become thick scars was so terrible. Back then, I probably didn't have the strength to so much as bruise Dune if she'd been close enough, but the story is different now. How often had she been watching me sleep back at the start of this? The idea of her watching me used to be unnerving, nowadays it was just part of the daily rigmarole. When I moved back to peer up I could see that her nose didn't look broken, so there's that. Only a little red clung to her nostrils and upper lip now.

She looked back at me and sighed. I still hadn't said anything, and if she expected me to she would just have to live with the disappointment. The shakes from coming up out of a nightmare were gone but the sweat left behind made the chill of the morning that much worse.

"You smell,"

"So does your breath, Maniac."

She snorted at that, an amused noise which usually means she's about to crack a better insult. That's not what she did.

"You really did sweat through your trousers, the covers, all of it. Checked you twice to see if you were fevered up but you were cool as a cucumber."

"What's that?"

"They look like big green peckers, good in a salad. They give Dune a rotten arse, though."

"Some of that I didn't understand, the rest gave me really bad imagery."

"Hah."

It was quiet for a bit after that. She let me lay there with my thoughts, but nothing lasts. She slapped at my shoulder to get me off her arm, groaning and flexing her fingers.

"Ohh, how wondrous blood flow to the extremities can be... Let's go get washed up, Duck. Maybe somebody will let you borrow clean slacks."

"It's not like I pissed in um', they'll dry."

"This is why you always smell,"

"As if you've ever sniffed anything that didn't reek like shit, or rot, or burning tires, or wet socks."

"Roasting meat smells very nice."

"So, that's why you pulled me out of that wreck. You were just hungry, cannibal."

"Oof, so what. Pfft! That was the first and last time you ever smelled pleasant."

"Eat it."

We were supposed to be getting up, out of the car, and going inside to ask for the wash bucket. Dune hadn't moved, she just lay on her back looking at the roof with her fingers twisting at the fuzz on the side of her head, which is how her hair always seemed to form cords coiled tightly together. She did that when she was up in her head in a thinking way, not a hallucinating way.

"Was there anything that flowered where you came from? Blooms smell nice too."

She'd probably be pretty underwhelmed by what she would actually see if she was allowed. The few things that flowered at the Citadel were high restriction plants, things that we only got to touch when it was time to take very clean pieces of cotton scraps to touch the boy parts of the flowers and then dab the yellow stuff on the girl parts. The Imperator in charge of the growing operation on those three terraces called those flower parts Stamaroonis and Pistilronos. Really tedious work and the flowers were always tiny, stunted, and didn't smell like much of anything. No one but Joe's most trusted could go there after pollination and we were always told that the reason was that he didn't want to burden us with the sinful temptations which the plants produce. I was questioning everything, every order or wisdom bestowed on us by him. Were we all just property like Phil said?

"You'll just have to see when we get there," I said, unwilling to spoil her enthusiasm with premature disappointment.

"Okay," She replied with a smile, and that gave me a funny feeling.

We got up and went inside. Dune and the Wench only talked for a minute before the redheaded menace was coming my way. I tried to back out of her reach when she lifted a hand but that only got me slapped on the side of the head.

"I'm a mom, I know what I'm doing," she declared as she lay a hand on my forehead after grabbing me by the ear to pull me down to her level.

"He's fine." She said, and Dune seemed to relax at that. "Probably just a night terror. Phil has um all the time."

So, it's not just me.

Ardith began giving out orders as soon as Dune and I were finished washing our faces. Dune was to help her clean up the main room, I was to clean up Phil's mess in the garage for him while he was away dropping off the pups. I was still out there trying to make piles of scrap look organized when he pulled up, sans pups. The truck had been gotten into shape to drive yesterday, thankfully. I got sick of giving out rides very quickly.

"My wife has you putting away my toys for me, eh?"

"You gonna help? I dunno where any of this shit goes."

"Yir just being lazy, you know where everything goes, been helping me make this mess all the last two weeks. Hey, people are probably going to start showing up soon. Heads up, a few Buzzards might pop in and pop out. They're, uh, our choof suppliers. Don't lose your head and go to stabby town on um."

"You fraternize with those skid marks?"

He cringed. "Hell no, that's disgusting. We jus' get our guzz and smoke from um."

"What the hell do you trade to them that those spike suckers could want?"

"Medical supplies. They're all crusted up with skin rust. Ard and a couple others cut up old clothes and boil them to make rolls of bandages for um. Sometimes we distill wood alcohol for sterilizin' and they pay out big time for that. I figure they go through a lot of it, what with how much they've bought off us over the years."

No wonder the kids got so into that story I told them, they might have seen or heard about Buzzards before but weren't told much in specifics. The more Phil talked, the less I ever wanted to ponder what lay under those bandages. No wonder Morsov scurried his diggling self out of the sand and tried to pass himself off as a pureblood war boy. We all knew he wasn't from the wretched, no matter how much he tried to fit in. Dirt fucker.

"Slit?"

"What? I'm kinda... tch, stupid-" Got too close to a pile of crap and got something stuck in the shock coil around the metal leg. Just shaking it wasn't doing the trick, had to bend over and pry what appeared to be a twisted up tangle of serpentine belts out of it.

"Ya feelin' alright, now? You were lookin' pretty rough this mornin'."

I looked up at that, shrugged, and tossed the freed belts back into the rubbish.

"M'fine." I lied.

"Good, 'cause we're getting wrecked tonight, Boy. We deserve it, making these two lovely ladies shine again."

Looking over my shoulder at the pickup and the Impala, I had to admit, they both looked like completely different chariots. The pickup, a Ford model of all things, was almost something worth a little pride. It was equipped with long spines over the front glass which almost made it look like it had a thick unibrow, a few welded to the hood, too, and several down her flanks to keep boarders off. After showing Phil that bolt I had found sticking out of my car, we had to run around looking for anyone with a camper cover for the bed, being that this is where passengers were going to be seated, that included the pups. Doors and back gate were armored. We couldn't find much in the way of good metal to do it so we had to take apart a tool shed and use those brown and rusty sheets of corrugated steel to cut to size and fasten on with rivets. Chicken wire over the windows was another trip around neighboring crow camps to find something to protect the passengers even if the glass got smashed. Phil wasn't taking chances. Turns out, the trade-off for this was that Phil was the one transporting all of the youngsters, not just his own. He still had to help get more vehicles running and up to snuff. But these two were a good start.

I didn't want to get sucked into this, but it was easy to be thrown back into this mindset and plan for what looks and sounds like preparing a Citadel convoy. The Impala was going to be the wayfinder and the spotter for the pickup. She had side rails now, a ram bar, a roof hatch, tire shredders on her rims, and finally a windshield. It wasn't a perfect fit because there's just no finding glass from the right model around here and no one to forge a new sheet with the correct dimensions. We had to seal up some parts around the edges with resin and tar.

I'd be driving and Dune would be my gunner. Phil argued that it would be better the other way around, with some thunder equipped for me to sling and Dune at the wheel, but that's just not happening. Phil even took a whack at teaching her to drive yesterday. His diagnosis: Her hands and her feet don't talk to each other because each wants the other's job. She's been riding her mum's old cycle and nothing else for too long, shifting gears with her foot and operating the clutch with her hand. He said it could be remedied, but after Dune almost sent his clutch into catastrophic failure, he called it quits for now. It wasn't all bad, he decided to check the pressure plate and do more tinkering after that.

"Sure, they look alright."

"They'll look better, once we get back to work at home."

Home still isn't a solid thing. It was a shot in the dark and we all knew it, but if it all works out, if we could go home and be accepted there again, we'd have access to everything we used to know. These chariots would get chrome paint, real steel mods. Thinking about this was nice but it also gave me a headache and it's not hard to figure why. Phil was picking stuff up and tossing everything into piles, he had this under control, I didn't want to keep talking about the Citadel.

"Hey, I'm gonna find Dune, see what she's doin'."

"Wait, wait. Got a question. How out of practice do you think you are in regards to tossing around thunder?"

"Ah, fuck man. I already told you, Dune can't drive the Impala and don't go around thinking you can teach her in time."

"Nah Nah! That's not what I'm gettin' at! Look, I lose every damn year at darts to a guy named Eyeball. Fanticular name, huh? I need a man with ace aim."

Darts, I know the game because we had a few dart boards -a ton of darts with bent tips- down in the sparring pits back home and sometimes we would play out of boredom. It's not a hard game.

"Darts is darts, why don't you just practice before a game? And what does that have to do with launching thunder?"

"Well eh, It's a matter if the dart board. Takes four dudes to get it out of the garage, and the darts are as long as Heta is in the tooth if you catch my drift."

A giant dartboard, that sounds like something Phil would come up with, alright.

"Huh, so you're asking me to throw lances."

"Bingo! Heh heh." He was grinning like a rat that just found an unattended block of mothers milk cheese.

"It's been a while..."

"But it'll come back to ya, right?"

"We'll see."

"Knew I could count on ya, Pup. I've got a heap o' scrap on you, ya know."

"Great." I hadn't thrown much of anything since I got blown up and roasted. Dune once tried to get me to show her how chrome I used to be at it to satisfy her curiosity, but I never felt like it. Phil might just lose that bet. Hope he didn't wager anything important.

I wound up helping the lot of them haul this dart board out of the garage shack. It had been dismantled and stuffed behind some shelving units. Other crow fishers arrived, ones I had seen at the meeting, and one of them brought the darts that went with this monstrous board leaning against the support struts on the side of the house. A few hours were spent dicking around with it all. The "darts" looked the part, just four feet long and without any kind of fletching to keep it steady in the air, not that you need it at that range or that size as long as it's weighted proper, and they were. The board was just warped layers of ply-wood all glued together and painted up with a target.

Dune and Ardith were stringing up lighties and fussing with an old generator to get everything up and running, I begrudgingly helped them with that. At some point, the nutter asked what they were celebrating the harvest of, and the answer was jack shit because nothing grows here except mildew. It was just an excuse to get wasted, and at this point, I was all for it. The last two weeks had been hell, not even the fun kind of hell where you could test your mettle.

-Dune-

Well, it turned out, Skinktail was still around. At first, you couldn't mop the smile off my happy face Glory to a scav who thought she was the last! Another friend lost and found! But then some of those memories came flooding back, Skink and I were not often in agreement about much of anything, our tastes were very different and so were our moral issues. She hadn't been at the meeting but here she was, arriving with a platter of what I believe where candied cockroaches. Now, I might be a maggot eater, but there was still something about roaches and their wriggly little antennae that got my guts reversing gears, she took full advantage of that, popping one into her mouth and holding another under my nose while I gagged at it. Some things never change, Skink was still as blunt as a spoon

"The one with the uh... Face. That one yours, Dune?"

That didn't sound like admiration or appreciation for the pain and the grit involved in making a face like my Ducky's. Took balls like boulders to get a mouth like that and come out of it still mostly sane like. I really did not like that tone of hers. Nope, nope, nope.

"Why do ya ask?"

She looked at Slit, held tilting slowly while he picked up another big long dart and took aim. Curious how he'd hold out that left arm while he lined up his shot, and the way he'd shout when he let loose and sent it flying at that board. Skinktail was looking at him like a cut of meat on a hook.

"Nice ass on that one, just wanted to see if he was available."

"I dunno, I've got a couple bullets that are available too if you're interested, Skinkbutt."

"Damn. I'm gonna die a spinster, ain't I?"

"Not for lack of available men," Ard put her elbow in my ribs about that, but I just smiled and so did Skink, but neither of us looked too friendly with each other. Back when we were young, we were always trying to one-up each other. Looked like the battle for the title of the baddest bitch was back on.

That's about the spot where things started going screwy. For a while, Arddie wasn't putting up with our ridiculousness, but get a few drinks into her and she's the one encouraging it. So, there we were, trying like mad to figure out who was the nastier cretin of the wastes. Skink always had a penchant for throwing knives, and I was a crack shot, so it was a trial of target practice with a makeshift slingshot made of old pantyhose and Ard's stilts loaded with her good plates. I'd have told her to spare the china, but I was full to the gills with rotgut too and she insisted we use proper targets that make a lovely shatter. 'Not like I'll need plates once we leave here in six weeks!' she'd said. I must admit, the shattering was music to a tipsy-turvy sand sifter's ears. Annoyingly, we always had to wait for Skink to retrieve her throwing knives, which gave me the opportunity to watch what Slit was doing while I berated her for the inconvenience.

"Dune thinks it's lovely not having to THROW AWAY her weapon every time she has to use it."

"And I think it's great having weapons that don't run out of ammo, Sand Hump."

Everyone had a drink in their hand, thanks to Skink too because her mother Theta, mine and Ard's initiate mother, had passed on to her the knowledge of how to brew up spirits for the bottle. I really wonder what the hell she was making it from, being that this place lacked the crops for proper sour mash and there were no potatoes growing here either. Ard, in slurs, assured me that no one would get sick off it, and that Skink didn't actually live around here anymore. She just comes by for the yearly big bash. I wondered if this competitiveness between us was why she never mentioned that Skink was still alive until now.

To our left across the yard, growing group of men and women had gathered around the humongous dart board. Phil was gathering betting tokens and trinkets in an oil pan. The side bets were getting more and more complex, and Slit, well, I suspect that he was either only now getting the hang of throwing the aluminum tipped spears, or he'd been hustling everyone on Phil's behalf. Ard told me that Phil was putting a hefty sum on Slit placing in this backyard tournament, which makes some sense because according to Slit, his old job used to be throwing live black magic on sticks. At some point, he had taken his shirt off. I didn't like the way Skink's eyes were burning holes in his ribs and across my favorite doodles while she walked out down the hill to fetch her blades. Got my skull real hot.

"Arddie, load me a teacup and pull."

The cup went flying and I had my leadslinger up and tight on my shoulder before it reached the peak of its great arc through the air. I waited for it to come down a bit, then took my shot to send an explosion of shattered dinnerware down onto the lizard cunt. Yeah, I was as salty as a goanna shitting tacks. Watching her startle under my scope's glare gave me such a delight.

"The fuck! THE FUCK! ARE YOU NUTS?"

"You bet! An' ya keep undressing that war boy with your greedy lil' eyes and the next shot ain't gonna be for shits an' giggles!"

"You're not the boss of my eyeballs! And y'all ain't attached!"

"That's my business! Ain't yours! Stop makin' assumptions!" That was the moonshine talking. Mostly, the idea of Skink getting into Slit's pants and following us home made me want to shoot off both her feet so she couldn't follow anybody home.

"Hey, I'm startin' to think we're all taking this competition a little too far?" Arddie chided, sitting there and pouring herself yet another drink. "Also ya can't tell somebody to take back a correct assumption, Dune Buggy."

"Traitor."

"Hey, I'm friends with both of you arseholes! I ain't traitoring anybody!" Arddie was shouting now from her seat, trying to come to her own defense.

Ducky entered the argument from where he stood before the dart board, holding a javelin in one hand -it was his turn- while he tried to slap away Phil with the other. Ard's eldest husband was laughing till he was blue in the face, slapping a palm over his knee and leaning on Slit while he damn near killed himself with giggles until he could not breathe. One of the others with a tank of clean air shoved a breathing mask over his face to huff.

"HEY! Could all of ya shut it? You're screwing up my head for this! And stop calling me war boy!"

I had to laugh now too because his face was as red as a cherry, and for once that much more youthful than usual look didn't break my cold scav heart.

-Slit-

If you were a War Boy, you never got to drink much back home. We had a group whose job was to run a set of three massive stills and keep the hooch for trade flowing. They weren't like us, they were captured from some other faction sometime before Nux and I were fully initiated. We seldom got to taste that stuff, unless their Brew Master was off the wagon again and willing to trade for other illicit substances or contraband. I remember how you could get your canteen filled to the spout with the chrome stuff if Brew Master was good and loaded. All you had to do was find a real bar of soap, even lightly used was fine. Sometimes after a real wild raid, us boys would break out the bunk funk and get wasted on that. Feels different than sucking up paint or guzz fumes. The drink makes you run hot, makes you sweat all over. The pressure from Phil to make a decent shot and the fact that he kept refilling the tin can I was drinking out of wasn't helping. Off came a layer and I didn't even care that Phil would see what I didn't much care to routinely remove from myself.

"Hey! Slit, hey! You've got yourself an admirer."

That's what made me stop to look, to see some strange woman -and I don't mean Dune- pulling her little pig stickers from the dirt, looking at me all the while and waggling an eyebrow. Then I got to witness Dune flip her screwy lid. It might have been fun to watch some other sod get the brunt of her crazy if it weren't for the things they were shouting at each other from across the yard. Phil, he was just losing his ass laughing at them, at me, the whole thing.

You know, if I ever fantasized about two breeders fighting over me, it would probably have been two of Joe's wives, soiling their linen whites by wrestling in used motor oil. I'm not saying it's something I've ever conjured into mind when I had the privacy, but I'm also not saying I haven't. This was not something that would or could become featured in a frustrated fantasy. When you're young and stupid you think a lot of your self-praising daydreams would be chrome if they could really happen, then you get older and things like that get less important and if you find yourself in one of those daydreams made real it's just uncomfortable or inconvenient.

I don't like to be touched. I think I've always been like that. Nux was an obvious exception, Dune had somehow bypassed my dislike for it with a chrome hand, and I'll tolerate a few other people once in a great while. Now, I like attention. I always had a craving for admiration and rightful recognition of my strength and skill, so normally I liked eyes on me and the way they would glitter with envy. There's no high like that. The way this woman, Skinktail, was looking at me made me feel like I was being touched all over and not in a shine way. Then there was Dune, practically marking territory around me like she had a claim, half flattering, half embarrassing.

I'm pretty sure I told her to clamp her yellow daggers shut, but that just got me laughed at some more. Dune, the harpy, the old bastard choking on his own amusement, and the two morons he replaced Ike and Dunny with. They were all laughing at something, my pulsing hot face I think. Humiliation breeds anger.

I wanted to put that javelin through something that bleeds, what a shame those buzzards weren't here yet because I might just be able to get away with corpsing one of them. It went sailing through the air with everything I had behind it, a roar left me as the length of wood and scrap found the red target in the center of the board. My throwing arm burned for something else to throw, but somebody was shouting because I narrowly missed their head and the rest had shut up. I was never gonna kill Bones. Scare him? Sure.

"Dayum! First Bullseye of the game! That went right through, too!" Bones, having already forgotten his terror, was jiggling the dart up and down to pry it out. He immediately shoved his finger in and around the hole in the warped wood. It almost struck me as lewd. "Yep, clean through. EY! GET ANGER ISSUES ANOTHER SHOT! Aim gets better the drunker it seems!"

Another shot, unless he meant a shot at his loud mouth, I thought I might pass on that. I was already feeling what I'd had and it was fast going right to my head all at once. You can think one thing and do another, a common problem you encounter after a few drinks is that you almost compulsively continue to consume whatever anyone places in front of you.

I think we won that dart tournament? At the very least Phil and I made it into the higher brackets and at some point also played against each other. I don't actually know who won, my memory started getting fuzzy here and there. Somebody, I think Ardith, pulled a switcheroo on my drink and filled my tin can with aqua cola. That was fine, my mouth tasted like shit and my guts were doing all manner of unpleasant stuff. The cola would help. Phil actually suggested that if I don't hork up what I've got in me now that I'll just continue to get worse off. I honestly have no idea if I took his advice or not. There were a few hours missing from memory and a vague impression that Dune had tried to teach me how to dance. What imagery from that which I managed to actually retain was her attempting to give me a visual demonstration of what I was supposed to be doing with my fee- foot and hips, trying to imitate her because she wouldn't give up on it, and then nothing. When things started getting clearer I could recall looking down into wicked ugly scuffs in the meaty parts of my palms. I was also wearing someone else's pants, still shirtless too but there was a drying layer of crust on me. It was mud.

"Don't fret, we all take a tumble down the hill into the muck at some point or another. Fitting you did so in the middle of a fistfight with a guy accusing you of stealing guzz. That buzzard looked ridiculous when he sat on your back and tried to smother you in the yuck."

Dune was there, and she was the one fretting, not me. Fuck, when did any of that happen? Were the buzzards already here and gone? She had my left hand, grasping my middle finger like it was a handle and scrubbing the grit and filth out of the rawness that I'm assuming came from me trying to catch my fall on this tumble she was going on about. There as also the matter of a few knuckles torn open. I didn't feel a thing, probably still too liquored up.

"It's a lot worse if you take a wino's dive down the slopes when you're on stilts," Featherknife added. "Ask Phil how his drunk ass used to get around when we first got him walkin' tall. Practically rolled around more than he did walk."

Where was Phil? I felt like I hadn't seen him in a while. We were inside now. The music was much more obnoxious in here so when I located him across the room talking to Ardith, I couldn't hear what was being said. The redhead's back faced us so I only saw her hand gestures, she was jerking her thumb back at Dune and I. I could see Phil's face, he looked confused, then surprised, then confused again, and he was looking at me. Dune made herself the center of my attention again when she started tying torn strips of her own scarf around my hands.

"M'not a pup, Nutter."

"And Dune's not an organic mechanic."

"It's just scratches."

"Still, don't want an infection."

She's still paranoid about me getting a rotten body again, all this time later. Dune always scrubbed out any tiny knick on me, meanwhile, she did little more than lick clean any break in her own skin and wipe it off with a sleeve. I really shouldn't enjoy being cared for like this, but I do. Funny, it's easier to admit that to yourself when you're hammered.

"Thanks, Dune."

"You're a different person when you take to the bottle."

It was a joke because she was smiling and winking. Sarcasm, I guess she thought I'd catch rage fever after a few. Well, I could do that under the right circumstances. When Ardith came back she, Skinktail and Dune instantly started gossiping about what two other people whose names I failed to memorize were doing on the other side of the throng of bodies crowding the room.

"...I've never seen somebody chew off another person's face before."

"That's nothin' you should see Feathers and Bones when they're like that."

For a moment I thought somebody was actually being mauled, so I leaned from where I sat around whoever's hind end was in my way to look. It was a couple older breeders having at each other, but not violently. All grabby hands and mouths. I was staring, too brain wasted to know it, when Phil reappeared.

"Put your eyes back in your head, Pup. Hey, follow me real quick?"

I got up, not sure what he wanted me following him for but too groggered to question it. I ambled along behind him as he took me through the back and out into his grease pit. When did it get dark outside? He clapped his hands together and created some friction between them.

"Good, we're alone. Hah, amazing how word gets around, right? Those crusty rust fuckers aren't even from the same chapter as the ones you thieved fuel from... Ah. So, about you and Dune. That thing the other day when Jackie caught you guys-"

"Why are you bringing this up?"

That must have been what he and his wife-boss were talking about. Fuck, how much did she know? A better question might be: How much did Dune tell her?

"Look here, I'm asking the questions. Was that... Uh, the first time you two ever done anythin'?"

Holy chrome. I had a sudden urge to run, but also a dread that I'd roll down the hill again and actually remember it this time.

"What's- No!"

"Oh thank V8, I thought you two were a couple of thirty-year-old children who just... Cuddle all the time." The old bugger laughed, not at me, at himself like whatever he thought I said was a big load off him.

"NO! Shit, I mean- We haven't done anyth- I meant I'm not having THIS kinda talk with you! And I don't cuddle."

"Oh, so it was the first time you guys got a little friendly?"

"I'm too skunked to deal with this. Would you just, I dunno, stop talking?"

I had to lean back on the wall, a sudden wave of nausea made standing up with only one real leg a royal pain. I really didn't want to chunder on the metal leg, that would be a real bitch to clean. Fuck it, if I have to, I can angle it to the right. I'd rather throw away a good boot and use one of the treadless spares Dune found in the shipping container than clean this damn leg.

"Oh, stop being milk drinker. We're both adults. It's not that big a deal to talk about it."

"Why does this matter to you, senile old bat-fuck?!"

He stooped, pulling down his respirator and pointing at his eyes. Wait, I'm taller than he is, why is he stooping? I was sliding down the wall, thankfully there was a rusted tool chest to catch my ass.

"Look at me... Right here. Look. I want you to listen carefully. You, me, and all our brothers were denied something, okay? Our right to grow up. When I got here I was a thirty-six year old boy. I didn't know anything about the real world. I was still lugging around a mountain of shame over something as normal as wanting to, ya know, sometimes have physical intimacy with another human."

"I don't wanna hear where this is going." This was sobering, but that only made my guts angrier. Something was bubbling up my chest and I couldn't tell if it was a belch or vomit.

He indeed kept going because he's all gas pedal and no breaks when it comes to his mouth. I was phasing in and out. The sobering content of the conversation wasn't enough to keep me attentive while the world tilted side to side. He said something about Joe, used his full name too which sounds incredibly strange.

"...seems odd that while he had five women locked in a greenhouse behind a bank vault door, we weren't even allowed to talk about the better half of humanity. Doesn't that sound pretty fucked up?"

"Pump the guzz on this, I'm really not following."

"Slit, have you ever had sex with anyone?"

"Aw, great Veeight! Fuck off! I'm not answering that."

"So, it's a no."

Still not answering that.

"Did your nosy wife send you after me? Is she in there bothering Dune with the same crap?"

He shrugged, hands turned up. "It's possible. I'm not saying we planned that or anything."

"Ah, shit. Why are you doing this? It's not like rootin' is even an important thing!"

"Wow... Um, okay. That's a very mature thing to say, but you're missing the point. I just don't want you to be afraid of it, that's all."

"Being afraid never stopped you from fooling around with the wretched folk."

"No, but I was afraid. Getting caught meant the beating of a lifetime. I'm a bad example, I didn't love her, but I cared that her an' her friends were starvin'. It was complicated. Sucked major arse being terrified like that all the time, carried that cargo all the way here too. Ardith helped fix that, made it so it doesn't feel shameful."

Shit, I wasn't ready for that. I leaned back, took a good look at his face. He wasn't just yanking my chain. He was really serious about this. Maybe Ardith wasn't all bad and annoying. If Phil ever felt anything like I did the other day when my own maniac decided to suck on my face, then Ardith must really be some kind of shrill-voiced saint if she could make that horror manageable.

"Phil, that's great for you but we're different. I'm not like you, I'm not. I'm just-"

"Jus' what?"

Just what? Just everything. There is nothing about me that any person could want. The dumb leg is a huge liability, I might have been a good chrome war boy but without the white power and the war paint, I'm just some ugly prick with a belt fetish. It didn't seem to matter how much Dune praises things like that, as if they were qualities. I was enjoying this moonshine and debauchery thing less and less, because the more Phil or anyone talked the more I hated myself.

"Just a one-legged, split faced, friggin' freak show... and an arsehole."

"Well, sure you're not a looker like me but you an' Dune aren't that different?"

Hooch unlocks weird spaces in your head. I heard him call Dune as hideous as I am, he might not have said that but that's what I heard. I was standing up before he could finish talking, fists tight and ready to start swingin'. The surge of rage over that slight on the nutter even gave me a shock. No, she wasn't a pretty little waif in white, her teeth were a complete mess, and she had some seriously disgusting habits, but she wasn't ugly. Years ago maybe she had looks going for her, things change and shit happens but she was supposed to be sold to a warlord! A great, famous one who made his younger brother Rictus look like a little pebble. No one here would approve of that type of union, I don't even think I would anymore, but that was in my head the proof that she wasn't ugly. Phil took a step back and had his hands up too, his apologetic grin did nothing for me, he knew he'd misspoken and I was meaning to knock his skull clean off his shoulders.

"Hey, whoa now, I think you misheard what I said."

"Take that back! Don't insult her like that! She was supposed to get wifed off to Scrotus!"

I took my swing but hit nothing. My right pant leg snagged on the metal abomination and sent me face first into the floor instead of stepping into Phil's move to evade me. That should have hurt, the floor out here was concrete but I felt nothing. I'll never drink another drop. I knew I'd feel this in the morning. Somehow I could sense Phil leaning over me and I could hear the smartass smirk in his laugh.

"Oh, you're adorable."

"Piss off." On that note, I picked myself up off the ground and started stumbling off to find an escape route away from Phil.

"Hey, you DO know where pups come from, right?"

"Oh, shut your cola hole."

I almost got away but that guy, Eyeball, leaned out to say something that just couldn't be ignored.

"Hey, your wife is doing her impression of a flamethrower again."

"Shit!"

Phil had his mask back on and was on his way inside as swift as he could go. I tripped over the threshold and stumbled my way in just in time to watch Ardith spew rotgut over a lit road flare, sending a plume of flames up toward the hole in the plastic roof. Some parts were already singed and the room stank of melting plastic.

"Ah, this is why I fell in love with that woman. She leaves me in a constant state of scarousal." Phil declared, grin mostly obscured by his breathing apparatus, but you could see it in how his eyes squinted.

"What?"

"Scaroused. I mean scared and horny, Slit."

Another tower of flames, this time so large that you could feel the heat on your face from across the room. Phil seemed to go tense at that.

"Uhh, actually, this is how we lost the thatch roof a couple years back. Ard! Honey..."

He was off, pushing his way through the group of onlookers to put an end to that brand of fun. In the confusion, I spotted Dune inching toward the front door to slip away from the crowd with a dark red face and a look on it which told me she had something to escape from. Couldn't let her wander in the dark on her own and I was almost sober enough to keep an eye on her. I followed her out, watched her scurry off across the bridge and into the mist toward to her old home.

Phil's prying and invasion into my private life or lack thereof was still annoying me. Never once have I had a single perverse fantasy that featured Dune, but maybe that was because he was right in a roundabout way about our kind.

Before I wound up in the scavenger lands, any contact I've ever had with another person which wasn't innocuous co-sleeping or beating the snot out of another war boy in the sparing pits was anonymous. If you do anything with anyone else, you do it in the half-flooded derelict tunnels deep below where we lived and worked. It was dark, you never saw faces, no one pays attention to who goes down and who comes up, and if you go at night, you're bound to bump into another warm body down there. I never once had to remember a face, feel any connection, or deal with the innuendo. It was easy, nothing to put any thought into. I never let them touch me beyond what I went down there for, and if they tried to feel their way around and discover the telling scars, I'd grab their greedy fingers and give um a good bend backward. No one wants broken fingers when all they came to do was the most unnecessary, worthless, useless thing imaginable. No one wants to explain how they got their fingers snapped if they were deep in the darkness there when it happened.

Now, I still can't put the shit that happened down in the ankle deep, three times used water trickling back into the dead rock next to what happened with Dune or even in the same category as what she does with her shine hand. It's not the same thing. I still caught the same feeling following her back to that shipping container that I used to back when I was crawling down into dark places for a quick one. Shame. Damn Phil for being right all the time.

-Dune-

She'll be fine. Apparently, she does this all the time. Thank the goddess on her throne of seeds that Arddie was bragging about her fire-breathing trick earlier in the night. I might not ever have gotten away from that conversation if I hadn't been able to talk her into showing off for us. All I had to do was tell her I thought she was full of it, that she couldn't really breathe fire. I still had the stench of the burnt tarp in my nose as I crossed the bridge and went back into my old house. At least here, I wouldn't have to be interrogated by Ard and Skink about... I'm not sure what.

Oh hell, the past week had gone so well. Ducky was sleeping through the night, I hadn't seen anything green since I lost it on Slit in out in the mud and beat up some poor unsuspecting dead car. Now? A sober Arddie didn't ask questions like that, drunk Ard wanted to know how and why I was living with some bloke and letting him curl up in my lap every night like a sad wee seedling, yet it was not a physical... Thing. I mean, I physically touch him, mostly his face, he likes it and passes right out like a little kid. Oh gods, I think I preferred thinking of him that way, like a small boy instead of a grown person who was technically older than I am. It made everything about why we were close simpler and less weird if I thought of him as a child, a child soldier who needs help and care.

"Aw gawd, you've been infantilizing a grown man, Dune. A large, dangerous, grown man who wanted to kill you at first. Are you fucking psychotic?"

"Oh, definitely,"

I spun, shrieked, chucked the first thing within reach. Too late, I became aware that I'd been followed by none other than the subject with which I was re-evaluating my tendencies toward. He yelped and then growled like a kicked dog. I'm not quite sure what I threw but it felt heavy.

"Slit?"

"Yeah, OW, it's me. I didn't catch everything you said. You talking to yourself?"

"Always talkin' to herself, what else is new?"

I sat, lighting up the oil lamp left in here many nights back so I could see. He sat too, leaning against the wall next to me.

"What's new?" He said. I could hear the annoyance in his voice, just a touch of fear too. "Phil is a big mouthed, big nosed, pain in the arse."

"He cornered you too, huh?"

We looked at each other which was all we had to do to know where this conversation would conclude. His lips thinned into a rigid line.

"Ardith put her nose in your business?" He grunted, so I grunted back.

"And Skinktail, too. Asked all kinds of dumb questions, like how you act at home, how I act at home. Shit, Arddie had the brass to ask if you were a eunuch... Uh, you ever heard of cunnalingo? Skink and Eyeball offered to show me so I could tell you to do it."

"Uh, no. I haven't heard of that... She picked up the guy with the scar on his forehead that looks like a third eye?"

"Yup, last I saw they were hanging all over each other and gettin' sloppy."

"Gross."

"Yeah."

We sat there, saying nothing more for a short time. We both probably just needed to get away from all the ruckus. Slit still looked way out of whack. He should try to sober up as much as he could before going to sleep tonight.

"Hey, uh, what's infantilizing mean?"

Uh oh, he must have heard more than I thought on his way in here. What should I tell him? That he's easier to live with if I look at him and see no adult there? That's unfair, and it's getting hard to see him as anything but the responsible party, I'm the one that needed constant supervision these days.

"Um, it means-" I sighed, maybe still too woozy from the boozy to hold my tongue. "...means I treat you like a baby because it's easier than treating you like a man."

"...Ouch."

"Oh, I didn't mean to bludgeon you, Slit. Just didn't hear you come in."

"That's not what hurt."

"Oh."

I needed to fix this or explain myself, or something. Everything was so simple before we came here, I could be captivated by his ferocity and awed by how sheltered he was, too. I never had to try looking at the world from his perspective.

"It's just... It's hard, imagining you knowing much outside being part of Joe's boy army. You're naive sometimes, and then you're quick as a whip about other things. It's just fewer considerations to make if you're not a man, if it's just me being the adult instead of both. Ya know we're, ah, not normal. We don't act normal, we act like- I don't know, like Arddie and her men do behind closed doors except no one is naked and we're fine that way. I don't even know what I'm talking about."

"Who said that? Ardith? The bimbo hanging out with you guys? To hell with their normal. Fuck normal. And I know enough."

I was pretty glad that he took offense to that too, but I still had to ask the obvious questions.

"What is, er, enough? H- how much do you know?" I asked.

Initially, he just shrugged the question away and looked at his boot, rotating his ankle with a wince. He probably banged all those joints around on his prosthesis pretty good when he took that tumble with the screaming Buzzard. He seemed to give up evading questions and offered up an answer which only raised a hundred more.

"Did some stuff. It was dark, no names, no faces, hands off the scars. Can't get caught or catch feelings if you never know who."

He must be talking about what went on at the Citadel and it was honestly terrifying to hear. My head came up with a hundred ways a situation like that could go horrifically wrong. I didn't want to let him onto how disturbing it was to imagine him in some dark place, groping in the black gloom and not knowing who was touching him, and he was skittish about touch anyway. I didn't want him to think it disgusted me, it kind of frightened me to picture it, but I wasn't repulsed. It did make me feel a bit dumb for assuming that all war boys were sexless, man-sized children. Eventually, with enough kids going through the teenage changes, somebody is bound to discover the joys below the belt. A new question, if nothing else just to get my head away from that bleak imagery.

"What about lady folk? You know about them?"

He glanced up then, looking a little sheepish. He shrugged again before answering with his shoulders hunched high and forked up lips twitching.

"...Just a little."

"What then? Tell Dune."

"Uh... They look different. Shaped different. They get kinda moody for a week outta every twenty-eight days and, uh, hurt too I think. Softer. Shorter. Better hands, more flexible I mean. They like taking home shiny things, or just smooth rocks or funny color things, whatever looks good to um I guess. Laugh at random shit. Good at knowin' how much of everything there is and what they need to get. They try to fix the broken things they find. Not that much different from men, though."

He didn't describe women, he described me, a person he knows who happens to be a woman. It was somehow sweet yet heartbreaking. I only nodded, I didn't want to let him know he was caught regurgitating only what he'd observed in our time in Scav country. I never gave him enough credit for being so astute, because usually, he seemed so lazy when we went patrolling the territory and watching for an opportunity. I suppose, if his eyes had been closed, then he was always listening.

"Yeah, I only know a tiny bit, too."

He was leaning forward now, elbows resting on his knees and expectant.

"Well, what is it? What do you know?"

I laughed. Oh, it was no surprise that he would want to know what I knew, probably to extract clarification and the hidden answers in whatever story I had in me. It was shocking to find talking about it so embarrassing.

"It was a long, looong time ago. Stupid kid stuff."

"So? You listened to my dumb war boy stuff."

Couldn't stop my chuckles or help but hide my red face here next to the lamp. I scrubbed my face with both hands, peeked at the war boy and for once just saw a man there, not this person I thought that I had a responsibility to repair.

"It happened back when Dune and Mumsy and the brothers were with the caravan. Sometimes people followed us because it seemed like we knew where we were going... He was... Ah... Fun. Made Dune laugh. We were the same age, fooled around some. If Flick and Rus ever found out, they'd have put him in the dirt like a seed. Nothing serious, honest. He just wasn't my type, ya know?"

"You have a type?"

I lifted my eyes from the floor and looked him over. Covered in dried mud with a shiner darkening around his wonky eye. Such a messy, unfriendly looking thing.

"Boy, do I ever have a type. I like um bad, mean, a mess like me."

I saw him smile a little. It wasn't that cocky grin or his cruel snarl. Somehow it made my heart happy, but that tiny smile faded quickly like a shooting star. The small boy had left and the uncertain man had returned.

"Dune, where are we going? What do we do now?"

Oh, that question killed me on the spot. He was looking down at his hands, turning them over and picking at the fresh scabs. I reached out and took one to spare the blood that would flow if he was allowed to keep worrying sore knuckles.

"I- I don't know, but I'm not ready. I don't think you are either. This trip, you took me home. Now you're going home too. We need to recover before we think about this."

He chewed both of his lips together as he nodded, but he wouldn't look at me.

"You're talking in the first person a lot more. I dunno if that's good or bad."

He needed to look at me, or I needed to see him. I took that lovey torn face in my hands and turned it so that our eyes met.

"I told you, ya make me less crazy."

He laughed at that, covering his face and shaking his head.

"Jesus, Dune. C'mon, be serious."

I had to get his attention, make him aware of just how serious I could be. For a second time, I turned his head in my hands and looked him in the eye. It wasn't impulse, it was a calculated move, but genuine. I kissed him. It was quick, topical contact with dry lips and nothing more. I could taste dirt when I pulled back to see that I'd caught him unawares and perhaps put him in a state of abject panic. At least I knew he'd listen to what I had to say now.

"I am being serious. This life is ours, we're gonna live it on our terms. Hey, whatever you decide to do about going home, I'm there. I'll be on your side. And after that, we'll decide what to do about everything else."

He didn't say a thing, he just turned his face into my hands and then pushed at me with his mass until he was dead weight across my lap. My poor war boy. It struck my intoxicated brain, this could be the last time I'd get to hold him like he was a broken little boy. I'd see him differently from now on. I think, after two years and more, this place forced us to finally, truly meet each other, and it's not like a handshake. It's like an explosion, violent and sudden.

He held on tight around my waist, I leaned over his shoulder and circled the brand upon the back of his neck with my finger until my back ached. We slept facing one another that night, and I suppose if we had thought to bind our hands, it wouldn't have been necessary. Our fingers were woven together when we fell asleep and had stayed that way until we woke again. We rose, with many complaints, to Featherknife at the door, muttering about breakfast and saying sorry because the plates died the night before and no one could remember how.