Chapter 6: Down the Highway, Pt. 1

The empty pack flopped against Lily's back as she limped down a half-buried road.

Her skin had tightened over her bones and her cropped hair had grown to nuisance length. There had been some sandstorms. One rainstorm, but the rain had been black and undrinkable. After the food ran out every day lasted a year.

She watched the sand-clogged doorways of the cluster of ruined buildings, cradling her scattergun like a child.

When a man in a tattered grey coat stepped out into the street a few paces ahead of her, she stopped walking and laid the gun down without argument.

"Drop the pack too,” he rasped. A machete shook in his outstretched hand.

Most of them couldn’t talk. Lily was so startled to hear actual speech that she almost forgot to do as she was told.

As she stood there shivering, three more ragged shapes stepped out into the road behind her. One of them grabbed her by the arms and hold her still, which she had anticipated but could barely tolerate.

They scuffled over the gun. Grey Coat bared his blackened teeth and struck another man in the stomach with it. A third crouched to open her knapsack, and something hummed past her ear and into Grey Coat's throat.

He fell, drooling blood, and Lily spun away as the man touching her collapsed too.

Finally.

One of them wrenched the scattergun from Grey Coat's dead fingers and leveled it, but he screamed as another slim metal bolt hit his shoulder with a meaty thud. Lily drove a long knife under his ribs.

The last man cut his losses and ran.

A lack of food and water had taken their toll, and her leg ached, but Lily tackled him to the ground before he took his third step and straddled him as she scanned the decrepit buildings.

"Michael! I got one!"

He stepped out from behind a crumbling wall, crossbow propped on his shoulder. The Wasteland had worn him down until he was all hard edges, lean and sharp and terrifyingly quick.

"Took you long enough," Lily panted. Their captive smelled like he'd rolled in a rotting carcass.

"There were more than I thought.”

He wanted to play with his new toy, more like; he'd found a crossbow back in the last camp they'd cleared out, and spent the ensuing two weeks pretending not to enjoy it.

“Do you still think this was a good plan," Michael asked, tugging down his mask. Grey dust chalked the top half of his face and further lightened his curly hair.

“It was my plan, so yes.” Lily released a little of the pressure on the man’s throat. "You got a stash? Food? Water?"

“I’ll show you,” he stammered, nodding so fast she thought his head would fall off. At least this one could talk. The last three camps had been full of half-human things, barely even bipedal.

She let him up, and collected the scattergun from the bloodstained sand while Michael gathered the rest of his bolts.

He stopped over Grey Coat's corpse, frowning. Lily kept her gun on her captive. "What?"

"This is a Regular's coat.”

"Can't be." Lily shook her head. Then she shook the survivor. "Hey. Where'd that coat come from?"

"Dead," he screeched, covering his face. “All of them!”

Lily shrugged. "There you go. Problem solved.”

Michael looked unconvinced, but he left the body and followed Lily as their guide led them to the nearest building.

"In," he urged, licking his lips.

"Your stuff's in there," Lily prompted.

"Oh yes. Inside.”

She gestured. Michael kicked the man abruptly through the empty doorway into the deep shadows. His scream was cut short, and when Lily peeked in she saw dust crumbling away from the edge of a crude pit.

In the neighboring shed two long carcasses hung gutted and flayed, swaying gently, crawling with flies.

Back home there’d been a saying: don’t eat the steak if you didn’t see the cow. Lily shuddered and shut the door.

Traces of ancient green paint peeled from the siding of the largest building. Heavy canvas covered the doors and windows. They readied their weapons, and Lily tried the handle.

Sand drifted against a rusted counter, half-burying stools still welded to the ground, seats long since rotted away. There was a knee-high mess of bones in a corner, and a double row of plastic jugs lined up along the wall next to a pile of silver tins.

The door thumped shut behind them.

Michael unscrewed the cap from one of the jugs, sniffed, and took a cautious mouthful before passing it to Lily.

She drank long and deep, washing a day of sand out of her throat, then wiped her mouth on her sleeve and handed it back.

"What," she grinned as Michael finished the water off, "do you think is in those cans?"

They were all marked with the Coalition eagle, but she decided to worry about that on a full stomach. Instead she held one to her ear and shook it. Its contents moved thickly. "Beans.”

Michael turned it to show her the faded label. Black text on white. “Lentil stew."

"Close enough. Help me find peaches." Lily dove back into the pile.

"There won't be any. The Border War—” He crouched beside her, paused, examined a can in disbelief. So close she could smell the dust on him. "Pears."

"That's just as good!”

Food could be found in the Wasteland; insects, hairless scampering things, the occasional balding crow, anemic plants…but water was harder. Usually they had to kill for it.

This was good. The first good thing to happen in a long time.

Lily slid behind the counter and into the back, which looked like it’d been a kitchen before. Something had been cooked there more recently, on a makeshift spit straddling a pit chipped into the blue tile floor. Large blackened ribs jutted from the ashes.

No ammo, no meds. Nothing to explain the Coalition supplies or the Regular's coat.

Michael was opening tins when she returned: beans, pears, meat in a dark brown sauce. He sat stiffly on one of the less rusted stools, and Lily clambered up to perch cross-legged on the counter.

She cleaned her plate without tasting it, without breathing. Hope was a full belly. It was as close to happiness as she could manage.

Michael passed her his plate. She finished what was left there, then asked, “Not hungry?”

He shrugged.

They weren’t friends. Not even the Wasteland could work that miracle, but they were something. Lily didn’t like to think about it.

“I’m glad we found this place,” she said.

As with everything, there followed an unspoken question: will it be enough. Water, food, ammunition, the soles of their boots, their uncertain partnership. Would it be enough to get them to the other side.

As if he’d read her mind, Michael said, “What if it never ends.”

Lily drew in a deep breath. “It will.”

Instead of repeating tired Coalition propaganda, he shrugged again. His hands moved restlessly, then stilled. “I don’t understand how you could come all this way without knowing for sure.”

That was several words, all in a line, without pause. Lily had to take a few seconds to reckon with it. “You’re here too.”

He nodded, unreadable as always. “What made you decide to look for it.”

She’d told him about her destination at length one night: the peninsula, the ocean, a city on seven hills where the bombs never fell and everything was safe and green. A place where she could start over.

He’d let her talk without interruption or comment, a featureless shape in the frigid dark, and when his silence took the wind out of her at last he’d laid down with his back to her, wrapped in his coat, and slept. Or pretended to sleep. It hardly mattered.

“There has to be more than this,” Lily said at last. “This can’t be all there is.”

“Yes,” he countered, and there was almost an emotion in it. “It can.”

Lily unfolded her legs to kick him in the thigh. Not hard. “I’m getting real tired of you.”

To her shock, a minute smile softened his face. A real one. It was gone and done in a second, and he was a thing halfway between Operative and human again. “We should camp here.”

“We need to figure out how to haul all this, too.” Lily slid down, taking care not to bump against him. “I’m going to lay down. First watch is yours.”

He never challenged her; he liked having orders to follow. She waited until he ducked outside with the crossbow before she made a nest of blankets behind the counter and rolled herself up.

She wouldn’t have made it this far alone. The knowledge chewed on her conscience like a starving dog. It would fall apart without him, in ways she was afraid to examine.

It felt like just five minutes before he shook her awake. Lily groaned and threw her arm over her face, words spilling out independent of thought. "We killed everything."

"Not 63. Not the bugs. Keep the door shut, it's storming."

"Nothing's gonna attack—” Lily opened her eyes. Her blood froze.

An Operative leaned over her. Short haired, clean-shaven. Familiar and unfamiliar in the low light.

"In a dust storm," she finished, when she remembered how to speak. “Take the blankets."

She and Michael traded places. He eased into the warm depression she’d left behind and lay his arm over his eyes, going still with a faint sigh.

Lily never would've admitted it, but she’d liked the hair. It had made him into a sheepdog instead of a wolf.

Unease clung to her as she settled in facing the door. Michael’s fear of 63 was mildly contagious. He didn’t find them that night, though, and neither did anything else.

—

Morning dawned still and quiet. The storm had buried the corpses and half the front door, and they dug out to greet a frigid grey-white sky. Lily's breath left her in thin clouds.

"One more day," she said, hands braced against the small of her back.

"One more day," Michael agreed.

After breakfast he tried teaching her to fight instead of brawl. What Lily actually wanted was to learn to move like he did, effortless and fast. She wanted to be untouchable.

Once she’d watched in breathless disbelief as he killed six pitiful Wasteland scavengers in about a minute, one after another, with just his knife. Afterwards he’d cleaned the blood off his hands and face with fistfuls of ashy dirt while she pretended not to be impressed.

Everyone had to start somewhere.

In the relative warmth of their shelter, Lily shed a layer and tucked in her bootlaces, still wishing he hadn’t cut off all his hair.

She tested her footing. “You’re gonna pull your punches, right?”

Michael looked smaller with his coat off. She had tried to forget that he was real, with skin and a body. “Yes.”

“Were you going to before I asked?”

“Yes. Elbows in, right foot back." He demonstrated. Lily imitated him. Satisfied, he nodded for her to go ahead.

She socked him in the ribs and he didn’t even flinch; he watched dispassionately as she hopped back, shaking her stinging hand and cursing. Then he beckoned for her to come closer.

"Like this. Don’t make a fist.” The heel of his calloused hand pressed light against her sternum, and she forced herself to hold position for one heartbeat before leaning back.

She settled into the stance and jabbed at him, and her blow connected with a deep, satisfying thump.

He blinked.

“Better,” he said, voice strained.

Lily was delighted. As the lesson progressed, however, her frustration and dismay came quickly to a head. Michael moved so slowly it seemed like a pantomime. He could've killed her a thousand times over. He could’ve done anything.

“I want to try something else,” she panted, limping to their gear. She jerked 86’s knife out of its sheathe and extended it hilt-first.
Something in Michael’s bearing changed as he took it, and Lily’s cheek throbbed with phantom pain.

He flipped the blade around and gave it back. “No.”

“Yes. Show me.” She feigned a jab at Michael’s stomach, and he disarmed her so fast her hand clenched in confusion around the space the weapon had occupied.

“No,” he said.

Lily knew that pushing him further would be like trying to demolish a brick wall with a spoon. She slid down the wall, extending her bad leg with a grimace. Sweat trickled between her shoulder blades. “Fine, I need a break anyway. How'd I do?"

He passed her a half-empty water jug and sat down an arm's length away. She saw him choosing his words carefully. "You're quick, but you still punch with a closed fist.”

“And?"

"Don't."

Lily tested it. "Feels more solid like this.”

Michael held up his hands and made slow fists. The left wouldn't close all the way, the fingers stiff-jointed. “You can’t throw a second punch with a broken hand.”

“Maybe I’ll kill him with my first punch,” she countered, capping the water jug and sliding it back. “Maybe I’m better than you.”

This smile was something he did with his eyes instead of his face. “Maybe. I wasn’t a good Operative.”

“Bet the pay was good, though.”

Michael considered this. “Room and board.”

“Oh. Shit.” Lily rubbed her shin. “Why’d you take the job, then?”

His face hardened, and she wondered if this had been a step too far. Maybe he’d been a conscript. Maybe he’d lost as much as she had. Wait — had 86 been his brother? They’d favored each other; same hair and eyes.

“I used to be a courier,” she offered, speaking to her boots. “I loved it. I was fast. Made a good living.”

Michael cleared his throat, gesturing at her leg. "What happened?"

She'd never actually heard him ask a question before. Uually he just made faintly interrogative statements, but there it was.

Lily still remembered the sound. The dry snap. Now her left leg was a finger’s width shorter than the right, and under the camouflage of her trousers the shin was as crooked as a water seller. “I fell on the ice, and it…it healed wrong."

Michael studied his hands like they held answers. “Sorry."

"Not your fault." She pulled her right knee up to her her chest. "I was young. Thought I was invincible."

"Everyone does," Michael said, and there was a horrible bitterness in his voice. He rubbed the back of his neck.

There was no more conversation after that, and no more practice either.