I just hoped I could find that fight within me.
Chapter 14
Makara and I woke with the sun. After eating, we set off. It was our goal to reach Oasis by nightfall.
Any tenderness Makara showed last night was completely gone. She did not smile, and her face assumed a hard, stony expression.
“This makes me nervous,” Makara said.
“What?”
“It’s so empty. No signs of human life.”
“Isn’t that normal?”
She shrugged. “I prefer to see my enemy.”
“Do you think they’re following us?”
“I
I smiled. “I still can’t get over the fact that you guys use batteries as money.”
“They’ve been the currency of Raider Bluff for the last ten years. When you have a lot of goods going through a place, you need something to use as money, or things bog down.”
“Raider Bluff?”
“It’s the biggest city in the Mojave, on the Colorado River. Five thousand people, mostly slaves.”
“Slaves?”
“It isn’t pretty, but someone has to man the farms, or everyone starves.”
“Still…who runs this place, anyway?”
“The Alpha. I haven’t been to Bluff in a while, but last I went, the Alpha was a man named Char. I used to raid with him. He’s a good man, for what good is worth around here.”
“Why wouldn’t he be Alpha anymore?”
“Because if you’re Alpha for over a year, you’re doing pretty damn well.”
“Then why would anyone want to be Alpha?”
Makara shrugged. “Everyone thinks they’re special, that they won’t die from an assassination attempt.”
It was hard to imagine how thousands of violent Wastelanders could cooperate long enough to build a city. But I guess even raiders needed a safe place to lay their heads for a while.
I guess there was a lot of things topside I’d have to get used to. Like, the fact raiders were tracking me because I was carrying a lot of batteries in my backpack. If only Makara knew how many rechargeable batteries there were in Bunker 108, she just might turn around and try to raid it.
“We better hurry, then,” I said.
“We can only go as fast as our weakest link.”
“What? Is this slow to you?”
“We should be running, given the circumstances.”
“I can try harder, if that’s what you…”
Makara held a hand up, and ducked. I fell to the ground with her.
“What is it?” I asked.
It was quiet for a moment. A gust of wind blew over the rocky ground.
“Nothing,” Makara said. “Just a feeling.”
“You fall to the ground because of a feeling?”
Makara stared pointedly at me. “You don’t trust your gut out here, you’re dead. It’s a mistake most people only make once.”
We waited a couple minutes. At least it was a chance to catch a breather.
I looked behind and saw nothing but the flat, red expanse we had already traversed. Some low hills rose on the southern horizon, along with several mesas against the backdrop of the sky, pink in the morning light.
It truly did seem like we were the only ones alive.
“We’re not going to wait here all day, are we?” I asked.
Makara heaved an exasperated sigh. It looked like she wanted to hit me.
“Come on, brat.”
We got up again, and headed in the direction we had been going.
“We have to be careful,” Makara said. “There are only two of us, which makes us prime targets. Raiders go after the guaranteed kills. If I were raiding, my eyes would pop as soon as I saw us two walking across this plain.”
We ascended a hill as we drew close to a narrowing in the valley, about a mile off. It was mid-morning. It seemed brighter than usual, for some reason. The weather had been more placid in the past couple days. Maybe the dying down of the wind affected how much dust stayed in the air.
Makara pointed ahead.
“See there, beyond that ridge of mountains?”
I could barely see them above the hills, but they were very tall.
“Yeah.”
“Oasis is past them. It’s just like it sounds. There’s an oasis there, and a big town grew up around it.”
As the morning went on, I thought of Makara, being a raider. I was traveling with a raider. Someone who had stolen. Someone who had killed.
Maybe someone who had murdered.
I didn’t know why I was not afraid. I also didn’t know why I was so quick to believe her story about Bunker One. Everything seemed to fit, I guess.
“So, why did you really decide to leave that group?” I asked. “It must’ve been pretty bad if you’d rather go with me.”
“It was simple, really. Brux is a bad man, even for a raider. Most raiders kill because they must. Yes, raiding turns them bad. But Brux loves killing. He’ll do it even when there’s no reason to. Raiding is your only choice when you don’t have a home. Most of these settlements won’t take in outsiders. For good reason. Most outsiders are trouble. The settlements learned from their mistakes. Raiders will pretend to be nice, or hurt, or whatever, to get inside settlements and scout them. It takes an amazing feat to be accepted into a settlement these days. Either that, or plenty of batts. In a way, it just makes the problem worse. Good people who could contribute to settlements are turned away. They have to eat, too. So they become raiders.”
“Is that what happened to you?”
Makara was quiet for a moment. “Sort of.”
Suddenly, Makara stopped.
“What?” I asked.
She pushed hard down on my shoulder. Both of us fell to the ground and scurried behind a boulder. She held a finger to her mouth. She poked her head around, and quickly pulled it back. She rolled her eyes.
“I don’t believe it…” she whispered.
“What?”
“Somehow, they got ahead of us.”
Chapter 15
A gun went off, sending a spray of chipped rock at my face.
“I thought they were behind us!” I said.
“Same. They probably guessed where we were heading, and went to cut off the only way there.”
“Where are they? I didn’t see anything.”
