14The endless, endless sunlight has bleached everything. The world is a sheet of white and gray, and he can't hear anything but his own shallow heartbeat, dull and slow. But the ground is shaking. The ground is shaking, and cracks are spiraling outward like the many arms of a massive spider. And from their depths he smells them. The dead. The dead and the dying, their rotting scent on the air. She's down there, he knows. He can see her human eyes, and her dark hair, and her sad, sad face as she pulls herself out, skin peeling, and stares at him. He feels, suddenly, a tug, and he knows he's supposed to be down there with her. With her and the others. How many others. Such beautiful, empty stares. Such cold hands. They tug him lower, and he sinks farther into the astonishing nothing, farther into the abyss. He's crying and shouting, but guilt holds him still as he disappears and–
"Starlin!"
He jerked up, breath hot on his dry tongue. Petey stared down at him with worried eyes, his hair twisted and mussed with sleep.
"Hey, Starlin, you okay?"
Starlin shook his head, and sighed, flattening back down onto his bed.
"No." He rolled over, and yanked his hood over his head. He'd been living with Petey for ten days now, and still they hadn't left the dull serenity of his little encampment. Promises of Heaven's Bridge had died along with Petey's shortlived excitement over having a new friend in Starlin. He'd quickly extinguished all opportunities of what Hanna would call "bonding", and soon enough Petey had stopped trying to get any more information about Starlin's origins or life. "Leave me alone, Petey."
The mystery that was his rescuer just smirked, and rolled out of his own cot, shaking his head.
"Nightmares don't make good sleep, do they?" He said, a little too loud, as he crossed the trailer to the makeshift kitchen. Starlin rolled his eyes.
"Shut up." He yawned, standing. He'd fallen asleep in his jacket, and now it was stiflingly hot.
"Well, Mr. Grumpypants, I'm gonna check the camo-plasma." Petey kicked open the door, holding a cracked mug of too-strong black coffee and a little gray sandwich. "We should be okay to leave in a day or two if it holds."
He'd been saying that for seven days. The rain had soaked the land and dried with the returning sun. Still, Petey made excuses. The camo-plasma was failing, the ground was still swampy, his leg hurt; Starlin didn't understand. Heaven's Bridge wasn't that far. He could almost smell the putrid stench of human in sheer volume, and it was killing him.
Outside, Starlin could hear Petey banging around, muttering about acid levels and solidarity and other terms he didn't understand. For a brief moment, Starlin found himself wishing he was back in town. He closed his eyes, arm over his face, and imagined the graveyard. Thick tufts of fading grass. A patch of silvery shade. Something welled in his throat, but he shoved it back down with a dry swallow. Darkness gripped at the corners of his brain and he was falling back into it, his thoughts unwravelling and spiralling outward...
"Starlin, kiddo, you gotta believe me." The man with the smoking stick leans down, and pats him on the head. The boy hates the smell of the man, the eyes that resemble his far too much, the calculating stare. "Your mother ain't okay. You gotta stay with me, now. I'm your daddy, kiddo."
The boy hates his father. Even as he follows him back, back to the ugly house on the hill, he plots things. How to get rid of him. His mother, dying, used to whisper things at night, and the boy remembers them in shaking anger.
"Just above the heart, or between the head an' the shoulders, honey. Just that. Maybe twixt the eyes or under the chin. All I need. All I need."
He doesn't like knives, though. He likes guns. His new father has plenty. An AK-47, though he gave that to the pretty girl down the road. A pearly-handled pistol, dusty and preserved. A thick, shiny thing made entirely of barrels and seeing-glasses that the boy wants so bad to break.
But he'll wait.
He'll wait until his father knows it is coming. He will have his revenge.
"Starlin, are you listenin'? You gotta be good for me, okay? Be a good boy, now."
He smiles.
It will take years.
The kid, Petey decided, was the strangest person he'd ever laid his eyes on.
He thought about Starlin, brow furrowed, as he scrubbed dirt furiously from the gooey surface of the camo-plasma.
He wasn't really worth robbing: Petey knew it the instant he'd seen him, collapsed in the rubble. But still, he'd checked the kid's pockets and shoes like a good little thief, hoping for a pay-off. Nothing. He was carrying absolutely nothing of worth to Petey, and this had made him scratch his nose and think. Why would a settler be in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but himself?
A fly battered against Petey's back, and he slapped it away, hand balanced on the edge of the trailer.
"Damn it to hell," he muttered, wiping sweat from his neck. It came away brown and silty.
He'd decided to wait until the kid woke up. He hadn't had any company since Salma had packed up, with a single angry shout, and left for Heaven's Bridge. Well, not real company. He'd hit up a settlement nearby for some drugs, and had met a few folks before dashing, but that didn't really count. Especially since he was wearing their watches and eating off of their china plates.
He thought he recognized the kid at first. Dark hair, a thin face. A Coldskin woman in Heaven's Bridge had been looking for someone like that. But he dismissed his suspicions immediately after, realizing she'd been looking for someone older. Some small-town sheriff with an ego and a taste for affairs.
"Poor bastard," he chuckled. "Gonna get his face ripped off." Petey knew quite well what happened to wanted men. Some way or another, they'd end up thrashed good and drained dry.
The fly continued to bomb him.
Petey stopped scrubbing, and blinked. Dirty sweat rolled down his neck.
What was Starlin's name? He screwed his face up, and thought hard for a pregnant moment.
Berks. Bane. Billingsley. Bates. Bates! Starlin Bates, with black hair and blue eyes, and something to hide.
A small-town sheriff with an ego and a taste for affairs.
And black hair and blue eyes.
Petey dropped his sponge. It fell, bubbling, to the hard dirt ground, where a colony of flies had gathered in gleeful gluttony.
"What the hell've you gotten yourself into, Petey boy," he whispered, a tiny smile on his face. "What the hell."