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“Don’t move or I’ll gut him like a fish.”
The Berserker glares at me like I’ve just insulted his mother. “Whether he dies or not makes no difference to me. You’re leavin’ here with me or not at all.”
“The fuck I am.” My voice, like my arm, is shaking. “You don’t own me.” I plaster my back against the wall, dragging doc Lou with me as I move. I refuse to get closer to the ramp that leads top side. I refuse.
“Not true. Bonded ya. Paid these fuckers for your life.” He crosses his arms over his broad, thermal-covered chest and plants his booted feet hip-width apart. His tangled brown hair is long and falls around his pecs. His brown beard tilts slightly to the right, still disheveled from when he woke up this morning, not that I saw that happen. He’s always awake before I am and sleeps after I fall asleep. For all I know, he might not even sleep. I’ve just gotta assume he does.
It’s been eight days. At least, that’s what they tell me. I don’t know what the Berserker bartered to get us a stay in Trash City foreightfucking days, but it must have been a lot more than a pair of boots.
I’ve gotten medical care each of those days and food, too. I even got a bucket of allegedlydistilledwater to drink and a bucket of rainwater to wash up in one-handedly along with a third bucket that I pissed and shit into.
My left arm’s a goner, held together by metal plates underneath my skin and thread pulling that skin together. It’s bandaged to my chest like a newborn infant. My left leg is doing better than the arm on the same side, but only marginally. Angel has offered to help me with some basic tasks, but I don’t let her. I don’t like to be touched and, these past days, I’ve been touched, mauled and mangled aplenty.
For the last eight days, the Berserker and I have shared that shitty trash room. We don’t talk. We both make active effort not to look at each other, especially when we’re washing up. Anytime he needs to shit or piss or I do, the other leaves the room and waits outside. I’ve learned nothing about him, why he came for me, why he bit me, or what he thinks will happen next. But what I have learned is far, far more interesting.
I might not have learned what he traded them, but I learned what hedidn’t. Hedidn’ttrade them guns.They have enough guns. I overheard Lou say as much. That was right before I stole his scalpel and started threatening to cut his throat with it if they didn’t clear the way to the south entrance, provide me with a gun and promise to give me a head-start.
“With what your Berserker is trading us to keep you alive, you can kill Lou. We’ll recover.” Merlin’s tone is a thousand times harder than any she’s used with me before and it makes me sweat. Literally. It also kinda makes me want to cry.
“You,” I accuse, wanting to throw the dagger at Merlin’s nose, but I’ve only got one hand, so I keep it to Lou’s throat. “You said you were rooting for me…”
“I am rooting for you. But like I told you already, I have to keep all of this alive, too.” She gestures around her at the trash in the walls.
Fury and regret hit me. “You stole my boots and then youtradedme.”
“Don’t you remember what else I said? I said I thought you were gonna die soon. I still kinda do. Not worth sacrificing for a corpse. Well, not your corpse, anyway.” She shrugs, like what she’s saying is the most logical thing in the world. It is, but that doesn’t mean I have to be on board with it.
“Not gonna die, Echo.” His voice cracks like a fist through an old brick, threatening to crumble me just as easily. I hate the cavalier way he uses my name, like he has every right to it. I never gave it to him.
He stands on the gangplank leading up to the light. It touches his right shoulder in shades of white, while everything that hits his left side is doused in the red fluorescents overhead. Red, not blue, because this is the East entrance, closest to Paradise River and Dark City across it. I’m not going with him there.
“You’re right, I’m not. You’re going to get out of my way and I’m going to keep doing what I’ve successfully been doing the past six weeks until you came into my life. Staying unharmed and alive.”
His face does something dramatic then, eyebrows pulling together, grimace cracking into a frown, nostrils flaring. Muscles in his neck bounce and a pulse across his forehead throbs. But he doesn’t answer. He just looks at Merlin and then at my feet where I’ve only got on socks. Sometime in my sleep somebody tossed everything I owned and gave me replacements.
“Give her back the boots.”
Merlin hesitates, but does what she’s told. She tosses the boots across the crowded walkway so that they land in a jumble between my feet and Lou’s. Trouble is, to put them on, I’m going to have to let him go.
I flash a hateful gaze to the asshole responsible for all of this, but his face hasn’t changed out of that confused, kinda tortured expression. I turn my hateful gaze to Merlin then, but she’s just standing there looking annoyed.
“Look, we’ve got stuff to do. We don’t have all day. Everybody here knows you’re not going to kill Lou. You’ve just got that kinda face.”
“What kind?”
“The good kind.”
I frown, tears bubbling to the surface of my eyes that I don’t want anyone to see. I have a sudden, momentary tantrum all to myself and I decide that I hate everything. I push Lou away from me and ignore his loud squawk when he stumbles into Angel amidst a cluster of scavengers gathered to Merlin’s right.
I drop down onto my knees and start fussing with my shoes, but it’s pretty hard to put boots on with only one hand without any practice. The fingers of my other hand keep flinching, desperate to complete the actions they know by heart, but can’t. It doesn’t help that I’m bundled in more layers than I’ve ever owned and all of them are soft and warm and jack up my impulse to cry.
I don’t want to go back outside. I don’t want to be wet anymore. I don’t want to be cold. I’m tired of my best friends, Pain and Fear. I want new friends. And I don’t want those friends to be Alphas of any kind, least of all Berserkers.
Palms cover mine and are so large that they completely dwarf my hand and shoe beneath their surprisingly light touch. I flinch. Silently, he pulls the boot out of my hand and slides it onto my foot, like in some fucked up fairy tale. Efficiency wins out over gentleness as he laces it up quickly, and after, asks me if it’s tight enough. I just grunt. The backs of his hands have scars that gleam like eels swimming through dark, rough waters. I focus on them instead of on his face.
“Too tight?”
“No,” I say, but my voice breaks, giving me away.Thisis why I hate talking.
