Chapter 6

"De nada," Kobra kept saying as they followed the highway north. "It's nothing. It will be over before we know it."

Ghoul knew that he was talking a lot because none of the rest of them seemed to want to take up the slack. He didn't mind all that much. Kobra had a low, pleasant, purring voice, and it felt good rattling around inside Ghoul's throbbing head. He was pretty sure he had a black eye, though no one had said anything about it to him. Poison wasn't apologizing, and Jet wasn't looking him in the face, and Ghoul had decided he wasn't going to give a shit anymore.

All they had to do was drop off the suitcase, and then everything could go back to normal.

It was nice to imagine it happening like that. Like a clip locking into a gun or a tire settling into a rut in the road, something would snap into place and then it would all feel right. But none of them had ever even known what normal was, or if they had, it had been too long ago to hold out any hope of going back.

Ghoul looked out the window, watching night fall over the land. He'd been shuffled into the backseat again, and all the angles seemed different and wrong. Occasionally, a car would come by, going the opposite direction, and its headlights would briefly illuminate the inside of the Trans Am, turning the windows into mirrors. In those moments, Ghoul could see his own face, pale and unsmiling, lashed with bruises. He barely knew himself, and he despised what little he could recognize.

"Everything will be fine," Kobra said. "El won't cheat us. He never cheats other Americans. He's in with the cartels, you know. It's not like they respect him, or even like him. They just let him have Salton because it's a small, shitty, uncertain market. Don't repeat that to him. He likes to pretend he's a big man."

"He sounds like a great guy," Ghoul said.

"He's a fucking parasite."

"I wasn't being serious."

"I was."

Kobra sighed, folding his arms so that his jacket was bundled around him. "He doesn't even speak Spanish beyond like three words. He's lived here almost twenty years now, but he never even bothered to learn. He hates this country, but he likes being an American who isn't tied down by America. What else can we do, though?"

"I don't know," Ghoul said.

"I mean it," Kobra said quietly. "Because you don't actually think I like doing this, do you? You don't think Poison and Jet like it, right? But as long as there are people who hate living in the Zones, and as long as there are places like Salton that even the cartels have written off as a loss, then there will be money in this. That's good enough for me, and if it isn't for you…"

He shrugged, trailing off.

"That's enough," Poison said abruptly. "He understands that already. No one wants to listen to a lecture tonight."

"Sorry," Kobra sneered, and, for no real reason at all, Ghoul wanted to apologize too. Only not to Poison. What he really wished was that the Manskinner would appear in front of him for just a moment, just long enough for Ghoul to tell him how sorry he was, for everything, before he vanished once again, forever.

It was fulldark by the time they got to the river. Poison cut west off the highway before they came into view of the water and drove parallel to the bank until he found the well-worn road that led up to the ford. He took the Trans Am out into the black water at a crawl. The river surged up over the wheel wells, halfway to the windows, and then it leveled out. Water began to trickle in through the cracks around the doors, and Ghoul snatched the suitcase off the floor and held it in his lap.

"Take it easy," Jet said. "It's going to smell like a sewer in here."

Poison took them across slowly. The steering slipped on the loose sand, and the engine started to growl as water got in under the hood. Then the front tires bumped up onto solid ground, and Ghoul's breath left him in a silent sigh of relief.

The feeling soured quickly though, once he realized they were back in the Zones.

"Keep your eyes open," Poison said. "Nothing's going to go down, but if it does I want everyone awake, and sharp, and with their batteries charged."

It had not occurred to Ghoul until that moment that Poison might have his own misgivings about being back here. Until he realized that, it had not occurred to him to be afraid, either.

Poison found the smugglers trail that wound through the brush. They were a hundred miles out from Battery City, but Ghoul could see the lights on the horizon like a dusty gray stain. He was gripped by a sudden sense of sick dread, a humming in his ears and a tight sinking in the pit of his stomach. The words – wait, stop, turn around – came to his lips and stuck there. He wanted to say them, and he felt that at any moment he would, but he never got the chance.

They passed under a low overhang of red rock, and both the front tires exploded. The hood of the Trans Am lifted a few inches off the ground, and then sank back onto with a bone-jarring bang. While Poison fought to bring the car back under control, the rear tires burst in turn. Ghoul braced himself against the seat and clutched the suitcase close. The Trans Am rattled along on its rims for another few feet, and then came to rest, buried up to the bumper, in a sand dune.

Then engine was still running, but otherwise it was weirdly quiet. No one had made any sound at all during the crash, not even to curse or cry out. Poison cut the ignition and tucked the key safely into the pocket of his jacket.

"Everyone is going to get out at once," he said quietly. "Jet, you get the tires patched. The rest of us are going to cover you. Ghoul, you watch the road we just came up. Kobra, the road where we were going. I'll stay on him while he does the repairs. Something is going to happen. It's just a matter of what, and how soon."

Ghoul realized he was still holding on to the suitcase. He tucked it under the back seat, feeling the wet carpet squish beneath its weight. He touched his pistol in its holster like a talisman. Kobra and Poison slid out of the Trans Am in perfect tandem. They left the seats propped forward so Ghoul and Jet could climb out in their wake. The cold, dry night air stung them through their clothes.

It was dark under the shadow of the stone ridge, and the sides of the road were overgrown with thorny bushes making it hard to walk. Later, Ghoul would come to grudgingly admire how well-chosen the spot had been for an ambush, how much planning must have gone into it. Whatever else they might have been, they were at least professionals.

Jet swung out of the backseat and immediately started for the trunk where they kept the jack and the tools. He'd only made it a single step when a single beam of light illuminated the night. It was bright enough to blind them, sudden enough to disorient. Ghoul reached for the side of the car to steady himself. From somewhere beyond the corona, a woman's voice said, "Keep your hands out of your pants, boys. I wouldn't want you to shoot your balls off by accident."

Ghoul's hand fluttered before his face in a futile attempt to shield his eyes from the light. He fumbled at his side for his gun, but found only an empty holster swinging loose against his ribs. A woman's voice, very close to his ear, said, "I'll hold onto your toys for now, kid."

He turned, bringing his arm up to shove her away, but a hand closed around his wrist, forcing it down again. The fingers were small, tapered, deceptively strong. She forced him to turn so his back was to her, drawing his arm around and twisting it up behind his back. Her booted foot struck him in the back of the legs, making his knees unhinge. He pitched forward as he fell, and his forehead hit the door of the Trans Am.

He saw stars.

Kobra hit the dirt next to him. He landed hard on his shoulder, and made a little hissing sound between his teeth. Ghoul's eyes were starting to adjust to the harsh light. He could see the source of the blaze now: a motorcycle parked hard to the side of the trail, with a florescent spotlight mounted between the handlebars. It was one of those spindly, 1950's Triumph bikes, freshly chromed and painted, looking like it was brand new off the lot.

Ghoul leaned back on his knees, but the barrel of a gun pressed into the back of his neck brought him up short.

"Stand up slow," the woman said. She sounded like she was about to burst into laughter.

Ghoul got to his feet, and the woman took him by the shoulder with that brittle, no-nonsense grip of hers and threw him back onto his ass in the dust, away from the car now, out of the way. There were three more Triumphs hidden back beneath the shelter of the rock. The one closest to Ghoul was royal purple in color, with the words "GO GALT" written in neat ivory capitals on the engine frame.

Before Ghoul had time to contemplate that, Ray hit the dirt on his right side. Ghoul flinched away from him, just in time for Kobra to land on his left, half in the sand and half in Ghoul's lap.

"Watch it, shithead," Ghoul muttered under his breath, shoving him off.

Kobra straightened himself out with as much dignity as he could manage. "Try to keep your big ass out of my way next time…"

"Shut up!" the woman snapped. She stood over them with a pair of revolvers in her hands. Tall and thin, rigged up with a great deal of lean muscle cording her arms and a great deal of silvery-blue hair spilling down her back. She wore a short denim skirt, thigh-high boots, and a motorcycle jacket left unzipped and open over her naked chest.

Ghoul noticed that Ray was staring at her, like he'd never seen a pair of perky tits in their natural environment before. But, no, it wasn't even her tits he was looking at.

"Angela?" he said, in a tone that suggested he hardly believed it himself.

The woman turned her sharp eyes on him, and her expression abruptly softened.

"Ray," she said tenderly. And then she booted him in the face.

"Astor, what have you got over there?" The woman who had been manning the spotlight stepped out into the open now. She was another beauty, dressed in fitted motorcycle leathers, with a puff of curly hair the color of cotton candy. A shotgun was braced in her arms, with both barrels thumbed back.

"Bunch of pretty boys," Astor said, watching at them down the unwavering barrels of her revolvers.

"This one ain't so bad either." Pink-curls shouldered her shotgun and came forward. Ghoul craned his neck to follow her progress, and when Astor jerked one of her revolvers at him, he just bobbed his head so he could see around her.

Poison was still on the other side of the car, still on his feet, flanked on either side by a lean, leather-clad woman. Each of them had a hold of one of his arms and a pistol jammed into his ribs. Ghoul could see that he did not look frightened, or even particularly worried. He just watched Pink-curls with a mild, curious expression as she approached.

"I assume you are the Dagnys," he said.

Pink-curls stopped in front of him, looking him up and down. She would have had a couple of inches of height on him even without her heels, but with them on she stood a full head taller. "I'm Rockefeller." She inclined her head slightly, making her curls bob. "That's Astor over there." With another movement of her head she indicated the woman on Poison's left. "Carnegie, and Vanderbilt. What do they call you?"

"Party Poison."

Rockefeller laughed once, harshly. "Oh, I see. Mr. Party Poison, I hope you understand, this is nothing personal…"

"No," Poison said. "It isn't."

There was a knife in his hand where a moment ago there had been nothing. It gleamed, silver and mean in the moonlight, making a tight arc up from Poison's hip to Rockefeller's throat. She moved in a blur, as fast as he was, but fast in a different way. She twitched the shotgun to the side, and Poison's knife clanged harmlessly off the barrel. Before he could correct for a second strike, she jammed the butt of the gun into his midsection, doubling him over. Then she dropped an elbow into the back of his neck, laying him out flat.

Ghoul heard him shuffling in the dust on the other side of the car, trying to raise himself to his knees. Rockefeller drove her boot into the small of his back, stomping him flat.

"Poison…" Kobra said, without any urgency, any inflection, at all.

Ghoul actually felt a little sorry for him. What a goddamn bleeding heart he had.

Rockefeller exchanged a few words with the other two women. She didn't lift her foot from Poison's back. Ghoul imagined him over there, propped up just enough to keep the dust out of his mouth. Unembarrassed and unruffled, and just as patient as he needed to be.

The one called Vanderbilt – a statuesque dark-skinned woman with a fauxhawk like blue-black glass – started around the car towards them. She wore spurs on her motorcycle boots, and one of them flashed briefly as it caught the light. It was a gleam not unlike the gleam of a knife that had once crossed in front of Ghoul's face to rest against his throat.

He flinched. Jet noticed, and set a hand on the small of his back. "Relax," he said quietly. "The Dagnys have been all over the radio lately. They don't kill anyone, really. They just make a nuisance of themselves."

Ghoul loathed him, and his solid paternal comfort.

Astor had overheard. The look she fixed on Jet was not so much withering as it was stern. It was not, when you really looked at it, all that different from the look Jet himself dusted off and plastered on whenever Poison had said something callous and disappointing.

"We've been known to make exceptions," she said.

"I think you just want that package we're delivering," Jet said. "I hope you're being careful. That stuff is dangerous."

Scowling, Astor stuffed one of her revolvers into her belt. She grabbed Jet by the shoulder and, with a practiced flick of her wrist, flipped him over on his stomach. He sputtered a little in protest, but Astor planted a knee in his back. Then, after holstering the other revolver, she twisted his arms behind him and bound his wrists with twine.

"You were condescending back in college too, Ray," Ghoul heard her say.

"It's Jet Star, actually."

"You haven't changed as much as you think, Jet Star."

"Neither have you. You still look great, you know."

"Get a fucking room you two," Kobra snapped. It was the last thing he had a chance to say before Vanderbilt grabbed him and turned him over and started to truss him up. Kobra did not struggle, but he cursed in a low, steady monotone, half of which didn't even seem to be directed at Vanderbilt at all.

Ghoul realized what was coming, and when Astor finished with Jet and turned to him, he didn't resist her at all. He even put his hands behind his back so that she didn't have to get too rough with him. She was pretty rough anyway, but Ghoul knew he didn't have much fight in him anymore. He was glad no one could see him. He could live with the fact that he and become complacent and cowardly, but he didn't want to deal with Poison's contempt, or Jet's pity, or the Manskinner's disappointment, or Kobra's whatever he decided to throw at him.

He kept very still beneath the slight weight of Astor's body, beneath the clever efficiency of her hands. His body sank a little into the sand, and that actually felt kind of nice. Behind him, he could hear Carnegie ransacking the car. She would find the suitcase easily enough, but it sounded like she was rummaging through the trunk and the glove box and slitting open the upholstery too.

"I hope you're not taking this personally," Rockefeller said. Her voice had taken on a ringing, rhetorical quality, like a politician accustomed to giving speeches. "The Dagnys don't do things for personal reasons. We never have. We've rejected the old ways of sentimentality and compromise. In the Wasteland, there is only the individual. His strengths, and her genius. By reason and logic rather than emotion and weak tribalism…"

"Who's she talking to?" Jet whispered.

Astor shrugged. She finished with Ghoul's wrists and turned around and sat on him. "You. She wants you to convert. She wants you to understand our philosophy. Is it working?"

"Is it supposed to be?"

"Give it time," Astor said. She stood up. "This is taking too long. We need to go."

Rockefeller broke off in the middle of her extemporized speech. "Are you going to start giving the orders now?" she said coldly.

"I'm warning you that you're being inefficient," Astor replied. "I don't need to give the orders to do that."

Ghoul felt a weird thrill when he realized that they incubated the same petty rivalries and resentments that he did.

At a word from Rockefeller, the Dagnys rounded up their bikes. Ghoul sat up before they had left, and he worked his wrists against their bonds, trying to restore sensation to his hands. He felt as if a spell had been broken, or a curse lifted. He wasn't afraid, or angry, or even embarrassed that the Dagnys had outmaneuvered them so thoroughly. He was hardly anything substantial at all, as he watched Astor shove the black suitcase into the saddlebag on her bike and swing a leg over the seat.

"Wait," Jet said. He was sitting up too, and scrubbing his cheek on the shoulder of his jacket to remove a smudge of sand. "So, can I usually find you here?"

She looked at him, and laughed, and then gunned the engine of her bike and was gone with the others. The four red taillights were visible for a long time. Ghoul watched them receding. He had forgotten what they were, or why he was here.

Kobra had already slipped out of the ropes around his wrists, he tossed them aside and flexed his fingers and patted his hair back into place. "Well. That went well."

By then Poison had picked himself up off the ground and dusted himself off. As he came around to their side of the Trans Am, Kobra looked up at him. "Nice work out there."

Poison glanced at him and his expression tightened, but he said nothing. He knelt down beside Ghoul and cut through his bonds. Ghoul was slow to react, so Poison slipped his hand under his chin and tilted it back so that their eyes met.

"I'm fine," Ghoul said, and looked away.

"Good," Poison said. "Then get the lantern out of the trunk and help Jet get the tires patched. Kobra, you come with me."

"What the fuck for?" Kobra said. He had fished his crushed cigarettes out of his jacket and was trying to make a broken one stay together long enough to light. "Those girls are long gone. Good fucking riddance."

"Kobra…"

"I'll go," Ghoul said. He still wasn't looking at Poison, but it had gotten hard not to. "I need some air. I mean, a walk. Whatever."

Poison made a little motion for him to follow, and they went after the Dagnys on foot. They didn't speak at all. Poison's eyes were trained on the ground, and when he found the place where the motorcycle tracks broke away from the main trail and lit out into the open desert, he stopped and lit a cigarette.

"I guess you couldn't just do nothing," Ghoul said quietly.

Poison looked at him curiously over the cherried end of his cigarette.

"I'm glad, in a way," Ghoul went on. "I mean, not that they kicked our asses, which they did. I'm not glad we got humiliated. But I'm glad we can't do what we came up here to do. That's not the way I want to live, without any purpose at all. Just to survive. I don't want all of this to have meant nothing…"

He had to stop. His voice was going to break in a second.

Poison dropped his cigarette and ground it out beneath his boot, then he slid his hand up under the curtain of Ghoul's hair, cupping his cheek. "I'm really sorry I hit you."

"I had it coming," Ghoul said.

"People who have the sort of feelings for each other that we do shouldn't hurt each other like that."

Ghoul smiled weakly. "Are you trying to tell me you love me or something, Poison?"

"I wasn't thinking about that, exactly. But…"

"No, don't," Ghoul said. "Don't worry about it. You shouldn't have hit me, but I shouldn't have said what I said. Friends shouldn't say shit like that to each other."

He turned his head just enough to feather a kiss over Poison's palm. He slipped out of his grip and started back up the trail, towards the light.

It took most of the night to get the Trans Am running again. They had one spare stuffed under the back seats, but the other three tires had to be patched and then laboriously re-inflated by hand. By the time they were done, the sky in the east was gray with the coming and there was nothing to do but limp back across the border.

No one much liked the idea of going back to Baja now: it seemed too much like tempting fate, or admitting defeat. But it was closer than Salton, and, it seemed, a better bet to find a sympathetic mechanic than the San Diego Autonomous Region, so Poison turned the Trans Am gingerly and limped it home. He kept it in first gear the whole way, and they never got much over fifteen miles per hour. Crossing the ford was the worst. Safe once more on the opposite bank, they all piled out and pumped the hissing tires full of air for the second time.

Just after dawn, a battered Ford truck pulled over and the driver gave them a tow to the outskirts of the city. He let them off at one of the pastel-colored adobe houses. A woman in a terrycloth robe let them in. She told them her name was Maria, and then left them in the kitchen with a stack of cold tortillas and a pot of fresh coffee.

They could hear her banging around in the yard while they ate, working on the car, but neither Poison, for all his sullen suspicions, nor Jet, for all his protectiveness of the Trans Am, got up to check on her progress. After he'd eaten, Kobra rose silently and went out onto the porch to smoke. Reluctantly, Ghoul followed him out. He couldn't take the goddamn domesticity.

Maria had changed out of her robe and into a pair of coveralls. She had the Trans Am up on a jack and was prying off one of the mangled tires, working steadily and without haste. A cloud of gray dust appeared on the horizon, and Ghoul watched it creepy slowly closer. When he glanced over at him, he realized that Kobra was watching it too.

A creaking, ancient Dodge truck pulled into the yard. Maria looked up, shielding her eyes against the rising sun. The Dodge stopped with its driver's side door facing the porch. The passenger door swung haltingly, laboriously open for a moment, and then banged shut again. Maria yawned behind her hand, and went back to work. The Dodge pulled out, and when the dust it kicked up had settled, Grace was left standing in the middle of the yard.

"Kid…" Ghoul didn't know how long Jet had been standing there in the doorway, but when he caught sight of Grace he bounded forward, off the porch, and knelt down opposite her. Ghoul could see them talking, but he couldn't hear what they said.

Kobra stabbed out his cigarette and went inside with the long-suffering look of a man who is forced to watch other people humiliate themselves.

Out in the yard, Grace broke away from Jet and started toward the house. Her gaze was steady, fixed straight ahead, but she did not even seem to notice Ghoul standing there. She swept past him, Jet trailing in her wake.

"She wants to talk to Poison," he said to Ghoul, and then he followed her inside.

Ghoul stayed out of it for as long as he could. He was exhausted, and sore, and tired of people deciding his next move for him. He felt like an actor who had forgotten his blocking, and who had never known his lines. But, in the end, he couldn't stand not knowing. He went back inside, where he found Grace and Poison facing each other across the kitchen table. She was eating a rolled up tortilla; she finished it in two big bites, with a grim determination that Ghoul recognized at once as the mark of a person who had been without food for a couple of days. Poison was sipping the cold dregs of a cup of coffee. On the table between them, was a stack of crumpled twenty-dollar bills.

"This young lady says she is coming with us," Poison said. Though he did not look up, Ghoul knew that the words were intended for him, to catch him up to the rest of the class.

"I want to go to the Zones," Grace said quietly. "There's something I need to do up there."

Poison set down his coffee cup. "Who told you that we were here?"

"Nobody," Grace said. "I just knew you were going to lose the suitcase like a big clueless idiot, so I knew you'd be here."

"I don't believe that."

"Poison, lay off," Ghoul said. He was surprised that, for once, he'd said it before Jet had.

"We can't take care of a child," Poison said. "We have no business attempting such a thing."

Grace sulked, and tore into another tortilla. "I bought you the money El owed you. He doesn't know that you screwed up yet, but when he finds out he's going to be mad. He has a lot of mean friends, you know. Some of them are a lot meaner than you, even."

Poison reached out and picked him the stack of bills. Folding them over once neatly, he handed them back to the girl. "Our services are no longer for sale."

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

They all looked up at the words. Kobra was standing in the doorway watching, though Ghoul had no idea how long he had been there, how much he had heard. He stepped forward, and snatched the wad of money out of Poison's hand.

"She's a little kid, you bunch of selfish assholes," he said quietly. "She doesn't have anyone else. At least, if she's with us, she won't end up selling it by the time she's thirteen."

Poison's eyes narrowed. "Your opinion on the matter is irrelevant."

"He's right, though," Ghoul heard himself say. He cleared his throat; his voice was suddenly very hoarse. "Being with us is better than snapped up by some asshole to fight some stupid war."

"And it's better than being alone," Jet said. "As bad as we are, I hope we're still better than that."

Poison glanced between them dispassionately. A crease had appeared in his forehead, right where his eyebrows came together. It was the only outward sign that he was annoyed by their sudden coup. At last, he put out his gloved hand to Kobra, who set the money in his palm. Poison folded the bills over and slipped them in his pocket, accepting them, and the matter was decided.