Jason Frost - Badlands

Timmy didn't respond. His flat eyes stared into the fire.

Dobbs stood behind Fallows and scratched his head. Christ, this was weird. He'd brought back Ravensmith's gun with the blood all over it. Now Fallows was sitting at the fire, watching the sun light up the edges of the Halo, about as close to sunrise as they got since the quakes. It was OK if you liked an orange and yellow sky. Personally, Dobbs didn't. He liked blue, with white clouds and a yellow sun. When he was a kid those were the three colors of crayon he always ran out of first. Then his folks would have to buy him a whole new set of Crayolas. Not that he liked drawing all that much. Mostly he liked the smell of the crayons, a little sweet. Later he took up assembling plastic models of battleships. He didn't like models any more than he liked drawing, but he liked sniffing the glue, and battleships took the longest to assemble. Glue led to other stuff. Pills. Dust. A little burglary, dropping out of school, joining the marines. And the surprise of his life: It was easier to get dope in the fucking marines than it had been in high school.

Dobbs watched Fallows, trying to figure the guy out. Sure, he was a genius, that much was certain. He kept his two dozen troops-minus a few that Ravensmith had offed-in just about everything they wanted. Food, weapons, booze, women, drugs. If they were around, Fallows not only found them, he figured a way to take them. That was the fun part. But this thing with Ravensmith's kid was, well, goddamn weird. The way he played with the kid's head. The physical abuse, then the kindness. What was the point? The kid was worthless. And now, with Raven-smith dead, he wasn't even any good as a hostage. Dobbs thought they ought to just snuff the brat, but he kept that suggestion to himself.

Col. Dirk Fallows twisted the knife into a flaming log. "Next question, Tim. What kind of cartridge does the Walther P.38 use?"

"Uh, 9mm Parabellum."

"Correct. Muzzle velocity?"

Timmy scrunched his face up in thought. "I don't know."

"Try."

"Eleven hundred feet per second."

Fallows pulled the knife out of the fire and touched it to Timmy's wrist. The skin puckered and sizzled, a wisp of smoke puffing around the blistered skin.

Timmy neither withdrew his hand nor cried out. He continued staring into the fire.

Dobbs winced, wrinkling his nose at the sour smell of burnt flesh. Jesus fucking Christ. There just was no getting used to this. He studied Fallows's face a moment. Sometimes if you stared at things long enough, they'd start to form faces. Like if you stared at clouds, or wallpaper, or linoleum floors in bathrooms. Fallows had the kind of face you might start imagining if you stared at a slate cliff long enough. The long V-shaped head with the heavy chin. The scary blue eyes, so pale they almost had no color at all. That short brushy hair, white as a toad's belly. Hell, the guy was only forty-five, not that you'd know it from that steel body of his, but that premature white hair was still kind of a shock. The mouth was thin as a model's eyebrow. Sometimes it smiled, but even then it never looked like a smile. At best a sneer. Like a lizard after it's eaten a fat grasshopper.

Fallows continued. "The exact muzzle velocity is 1135 feet per second. Hell, Eric knew all this shit. Didn't he teach his baby boy anything?"

"He took us out shooting sometimes, just so we'd know. But he didn't like guns. Didn't want them around the house."

Fallows chuckled at that. "Well, for a guy who didn't like guns, he sure as hell smoked enough guys with them. But that doesn't matter. That was then and this is now. In this world you'd better know about guns. And not just guns, all weapons. So, let's continue the lesson." He stuck the knife back into the flaming log, twisted it as if he were cooking an imaginary marshmallow. "Rate of fire?"

"Thirty-two rounds a minute."

"Length?"

"Uh, 8.6 inches."

"Weight?"

"Unloaded, 1.7 pounds. Loaded with full eight-round clip, 2.125 pounds."

"Effective range?"

"Maximum of fifty-four yards."

Fallows nodded, grinned, patted Timmy on the head. "We'll make a soldier of you yet. The kind your daddy was, only better."

Timmy remained silent.

"See that tree over there?" Fallows pointed with the Walther.

Timmy nodded.

"Well, it's about time you learned how to shoot one of these things. All my soldiers know how to shoot." He released the safety, sighted along the barrel with one eye, and squeezed the trigger. The explosion thundered. A spray of bark puffed from the tree trunk. Fallows flipped the Walther in the air, caught it by the barrel, and handed it butt-first to Timmy. "You try."

Timmy stared at it without taking it.

"Uh, Colonel?" Dobbs said nervously.

"Yes, Dobbs?"

Dobbs stared into the colorless eyes, decided not to say anything. "Nothing, sir."

"Right." Fallows turned back to Timmy, the gun still thrust toward the boy. "Go ahead, Timmy. Take it."

Slowly, Timmy reached out, his thin fingers curling around the thick handle. His face was expressionless.

"Release the safety," Fallows said. "Just like I showed you."

Dobbs backed away a step. Christ, what was Fallows doing?

"Now, all you do is point and squeeze the trigger. Squeeze, don't jerk it. Aim."

Timmy lifted the gun with his right hand, pointed it at the tree.

"Keep your hand steady. It's going to have a bite to it, so be ready."

Timmy's hand trembled slightly as he closed one eye and sighted along the barrel.

"Don't close your eye. Time comes when you'll have to use that gun, you'll need both your eyes open."

Timmy opened his left eye. His finger tightened on the trigger.

"OK, shoot."

Timmy stood still, the gun raised, his finger frozen.

"Shoot, damn it. Pull the fucking trigger."

Suddenly Timmy swung around, the Walther P.38 waist level. He pointed it at Dirk Fallows's chest.

"Shit, kid," Fallows said.

And Timmy pulled the trigger.

"You alive?"

"In a manner of speaking," Tracy said.

Eric brushed some rubble from his chest, noticed for the first time it was daylight. The orange sky filtered through what was left of the Presidential Hotel and he noticed what they hadn't seen in the dark. That the hotel was only a facade now, a lobby and the front rooms. The back half of the hotel had collapsed during the quakes. Only the doors remained. He looked up and saw the door they'd run through to avoid the grenade. The explosion had knocked it off one hinge.

"Quite a drop?" Tracy said.

"Yeah." He nodded at the broken boards and cement blocks all around them. "Good thing we had something soft to land on."

"We're lucky that way."

He looked at Tracy. Pain contorted her natural beauty into a mask of agony. Dust salted her short, reddish hair. She was trying to pull her legs out from under a chunk of plaster wall, not making much progress.

"Can you move?" Eric asked.

She worked one leg free, but her left leg remained motionless. She wiped the sweat from her forehead. "Define move."

Eric climbed over the debris, ignoring the ache in his lower back and the gouge in his right calf where one of his crossbow bolts had dug out a shallow crater of flesh. He hobbled stiffly as he walked, feeling a little like an ape.

"How bad?" she asked.

He hunched over the leg without touching it. He could tell from the angle what was wrong, and that it was plenty painful.

"How bad?" she repeated.

"Broken. In at least one place."

"Well, that does it. You'll have to save yourself, Eric. Leave me here. I'll be OK. It's better this way."

He gave her a look, shrugged. "OK."

"Like hell! What a time you pick to start believing me. Now get me the hell out of here. This baby hurts."