Морин Макхью - Wastelands - The New Apocalypse

What, indeed. I don’t know the first thing about the care of any animal that doesn’t have an engine instead of a heart. Start to wonder if maybe I should leave them here. I might make it further without the weight of them slowing me down. Maybe the old man and the girl would know better than me how to keep them alive.

I start to say all that, but I’m cut off when Molly sprints back into the cabin and slams the door shut.

“Pa, there’s men… getting out of big black trucks… coming up the hill,” she says between gasps for breath. I wonder if I can make it out the door before the old man shoots me in the back. The girl hands me the jug of dirty water, so I start to down it, then change my mind and pour it into the cup of my hand for the kittens. They cluster around and drink it greedily.

Pa looks over to me. “Gunter’s boys?”

I nod. “Must be.”

“Molly, get down in the crawlspace.” She moves to a corner of the room, rolls back a rug and some boards, and starts down a ladder into the darkness. The old man covers it up real quick. I get the feeling this ain’t the first time they’ve had to hide her away.

I force myself up and stagger to the door and peek out between the boards. Shouting outside startles the kittens and sends them scattershot through the cabin. Four of Gunter’s goons are hunched over, hustling up the hill, guns pointed our way. How they managed to find me, I don’t know. What I do know is I can’t run any further.

“Maybe you should get down in your hidey hole with your daughter,” I say. “This is my mess.”

“Not my daughter, not really. Just another stray. Seems I’m a magnet for them in my old age. Anyway, not sure I could live with myself if those brutes eat the little ones.”

“I’m sorry to drag you into this,” I say. I mean it. These people have been nothing but kind to a strange man they found dying in the dirt and sun, and now I’ve brought Gunter’s brand of brutality to their door.

“If we’re lucky, there’ll be time for apologies later,” Pa says. “Now what are we going to do here?”

“Do you have any other guns?” I ask.

“Nah,” he says, growling. “And I only got five shells for this old thing. Half likely to blow up in my hands if I fire it anyway.”

Five shells, four men, each with enough ammo to kill us five times over. Trying to think quick, but my brain’s moving in slow motion, my eyes fixed on the henchmen climbing up the hill. All I have is the trick from before, but hell, if it worked once, it might work again.

“Mister,” I say, “keep that gun ready. When one of them turns their back to ya, shoot him. Shoot him only if you know you’ll kill him,” I say. I slip along the floor quietly, looking for one of the kittens. I grab Bloodthirsty, trying not to think about how I’ve named him and now he’s my favorite. I crack open the door and wait for the men to make it up the hill. As they crest it, they stop and catch their breath, and then Saul, the biggest tough among them and a bastard who always hated my guts, starts walking toward the cabin.

I shove Bloodthirsty out the door, pinching his tail hard enough that he cries out. My oil- and rust-crusted heart nearly breaks, but the kitten tears out across the hilltop, headed straight past the bewildered thugs. Saul shouts orders over his shoulder and keeps coming. Shit , I think, and reach for my wrench; only I must have lost it sometime in the night because it’s gone. Pa opens fire, gun roaring and spitting buckshot, cutting down two of them before Saul busts through the door.

I do the only thing I can think of in the moment and lurch straight up into his solar plexus, tackling him to the ground and flailing around to pin his gun arm. He’s much stronger than me, but he wasn’t expecting me to come flying at him so I have the element of surprise. More gunshots ring out and I can see out of the corner of my eye that Pa’s plugged the last gunman, only I think he’s used up all his ammo but I can’t seem to count so good with three hundred pounds of thug-beef trying to crush the life out of me. Saul elbows me in the face, dropping me to the dirt floor, then grabs Pa by the throat and throws him against the wall, where he collapses in a groaning heap.

Now it’s just me and big-ass, hulking, eats-glass-for-fun Saul. Right about now is when I take the worst beating of my life.

Saul works my upper body like I’m a ball of dough, and my ears, nose and mouth start gushing blood like my own bodily fluids can’t take it no more and have decided to seek their fortunes elsewhere, the traitors. Pain, I’ve experienced it, but this surpasses anything I previously knew about pain. This makes my previous pain cower in the corner and beg for mercy.

I try to bring my arms up to shield my body from the blows, but I’m so weak that he bats them aside and goes for the prize (my face). I’m staring at a fist coming straight for my nose, certain it’s the last thing I’m going to see, when I spot a streak of gray and white coming straight toward us. Someone lit a firecracker , I think, then there’s a burst of stars from Saul’s fist pulverizing my nose. But when my vision clears, Saul’s standing there, his eyes bleeding, trying to tear Bloodthirsty off his face.

God damn, what a beautiful sight, but it all turns to shit too fast for me to really appreciate it.

Saul hurls the kitten to the ground so hard I hear a crack. The whole room goes dead silent for a moment and I never felt more rage and despair in all my miserable life. I grasp a broken splinter from the door and throw all my weight behind it, coming up low, under his ribs. He totters, tilts over backwards; I fall forward with him, giving my shard more momentum, driving it deep into his chest, my head right in his stinking crotch.

So this is the last thing I get to see, I think, right before the darkness wraps me in a cold blanket. It sure was a pretty sight, seeing that kitten with its claws half-way to Saul’s teeny brain.

This time I come to, I’m more cautious, and crack open a blood-caked eye first—see I’m still in the cabin with a pleasing buzz of relief. Old man Pa sits next to me, a goofy look of worry cutting across his bruised face. He looks like he’ll live, but regret it. Molly sits in his chair, cradling something in her arms. Tears roll down her face, and before I know it, despite that I was sure I ran out of tears a long time ago, I’m crying too.

We bury Bloodthirsty behind their cabin. I use my lucky wrench as a tombstone—turns out that the old man had taken it off me before I woke up the first time. I mumble a few incoherent words at the graveside, nothing proper really, and head back into the cabin to help clean up the mess I made.

Just before I set off again for Shantyville, I pick out the prettiest kitten and hand it to the old man and the girl, all of us all red-eyed and puffy. They say nothing, and neither do I. Sometimes the gift of a cat is better than words.

A story I read once, back before we’d burned up all the books for kindling, ends with a line that I never quite understood: “a boy loves his dog.” Not sure I know what love is, not sure if love even exists anymore. I sure as hell ain’t never loved a dog unless I was hungry.

I set out again, nearly broken down as much as my late, lamented ride, and at first I’m not even sure what’s keeping me going anymore. But as I walk I remember that line and an idea forms like a perfect drivetrain in my mind, propelling me forward.

I don’t know much that isn’t about grease, gears, and gasoline, but what I can tell you is this: seeing the look on a person’s face when you give her a feisty ball of fur is one of the last good and pure things left.