[Danger Days] The Wasteland - Chapter 6
Title: The Wasteland
Fandom: Danger Days
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: Fun Ghoul/Party Poison, Kobra Kid/Party Poison
Summary: "It’s built like a tank,” Ray said. “And out on the highway, it’ll fly."
Master Post
Chapter 6
Inside the walls of the suburb, every surface was dry, faded, brittle, and honeycombed with rot. The rows of indistinguishable houses had been stripped of paint down to the gray cinderblocks. Their identical front yards had all become uniformly choked with weeds.
A gauzy colorless layer of sand covered the pavement, crunching beneath their boots with every step, the only sound that could be heard on the deserted street. It was starting to wear on Ghoul’s nerves.
“How long has it been like this?” Ghoul said.
“Under quarantine, you mean?” Poison replied quietly. “Three years. Or four. Not long.”
“Where is everyone?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are they all dead?”
“I don’t know.”
“Christ…” Ghoul whispered to no one in particular. He certainly wasn’t talking to Poison, because Poison didn’t give a shit. “It smells like death.”
“Do you think so?”
“Old death. Like bones and dust. But then, what doesn’t these days?”
“I don’t know,” Poison said.
Ghoul glared at Poison’s back. “What’s gotten into you? All this morning, you couldn’t keep your hands off me. Now you’re acting like you can’t wait to get rid of me.”
“I’m thinking,” Poison said mildly.
“You’re so fucking moody all the time,” Ghoul said, pushing him now, just for the hell of it. “Am I supposed to guess when you want me around, and then just stay out of your way the rest of the time?”
“Be quiet,” Poison said. He did not raise his voice at all, but Ghoul could tell that something final had entered into the words, something that could not be ignored or contradicted. Ghoul shivered, as if suddenly cold, and he shut his mouth.
The streets of the suburb looped and meandered and terminated in dead-ends. It was a fucking labyrinth, a fucking architectural nightmare. Ghoul let Poison lead the way; he seemed to have some idea of where he was going. He brought them to a low concrete wall that marked the boundary of the residential block. Below them, at the foot of a steep gravel slope, was the hub where the freeway exit had once disgorged into town.
There were some gas stations down there, gutted fast food places, a couple of massive supermarkets. Without a word, Poison grabbed the top of the concrete wall and boosted himself over. It was at that moment that the weight in Ghoul’s chest shook loose.
He darted forward, catching Poison’s sleeve before he could lower himself onto the other side of the wall. Poison glanced at him, and for a moment it even seemed that he was startled.
“I’m not… I’m not going to do that,” Ghoul managed to say. “Because I know it’s not really what you want.”
Abruptly, he blushed. The final moments of their last conversation had been replaying themselves in Ghoul’s head endlessly while they had walked in silence. They had still seemed fresh to him. But Poison hadn’t been thinking of that, not him. He probably didn’t even remember...
The lines of Poison’s face softened. It could hardly be called a smile, but it was a definite and subtle shift. He touched Ghoul’s cheek briefly with the back of his gloved hand, and then he slipped over the wall and dropped out of sight.
Embarrassed, trembling as if he had just been in a fight, Ghoul hauled himself over the wall and followed him.
Even now, Ghoul did not know how he had ended up here. How this had happened, or why it had chosen him to happen to. From the first meeting - almost from the first moment - Ghoul had felt that some unspoken need had suddenly been fulfilled, that some secret hollow place inside him had all at once become whole.
But he had not wanted anything before Poison had come along. If they had never met then he would have continued to not want, perpetually and indefinitely. Of that, Ghoul was certain. He did not wish that it had never happened, but he could not bring himself to be grateful that it had. It was simply something he had to deal with, something he had to come through in one piece. Things were no different than they had always been.
At the bottom of the gravel slope, Ghoul stumbled. Poison caught his arm, steadying him. It felt good, the sudden shock of his strength, but Ghoul looked down and was resolutely silent.
They were on a wide road between two massive supermarkets of opposing identical chains. In both parking lots, few decaying cars stood like crooked teeth. The windows that banded the fronts of the supermarkets had all been broken; the automatic doors had been pried open and wedged back with lengths of rebar. The door on the right stood open, but the one on the left had been awkwardly covered with a flat piece of plywood. A string of numbers had been written along the top of it. They were not fresh, but they were relatively new.
“That one,” Poison said, and started toward the boarded-up supermarket. Without glancing back, he added, “Keep your head up. I’ll do what I can to protect you, but I want you to stay alert.”
“Protect me?” Ghoul echoed weakly. “What are you…?”
But Poison had already gone on ahead, and Ghoul had to hurry to catch up.
At the door of the supermarket, Poison halted abruptly. Up close, Ghoul could see that the plywood had only been nailed down on one side, allowing it to be swung back enough to slip through.
“Well?” Ghoul said. “Are you going in?”
“I don’t know,” Poison replied quietly.
Ghoul shot him a look of disbelief which Poison, typically, did not seem to notice at all. He still felt a gnawing resentment towards Poison for suggesting that he needed to be protected, and so Ghoul stepped forward and grabbed the edge of the plywood and jerked it back.
He heard a faint click, a sound which he could not place immediately but which made his stomach turn over with unease. A hand closed around the back of his collar, and at some point between the moment it jerked him roughly back and the moment he landed on his ass, his head filled with the sound of an explosion and the white afterimage of a magnesium flash.
Ghoul saw in an instant what had happened. One corner of the plywood door had disintegrated into slivers, and from behind it jutted the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun with a finger of blue smoke still trailing from it. A thread was stretched between the edge of the door and the frame, and no doubt it was threaded around the trigger of the gun, tying it back so that it would only take a little pull - the momentum of the plywood door as it was swung back - to fire both barrels.
It was a crude trap, but he had almost stepped right into it. Sobered, Ghoul started to struggle to his feet. A hand clamped down on his shoulder, forcing him back down.
“Don’t move.” Poison’s voice was up against his ear. Ghoul fell still, obeying so easily, so immediately, that it was almost as if he had forgotten he had any other choice.
“Just put your hands up,” Poison continued. “Very slowly.”
Bewildered, Ghoul did as he had said. He felt the weight of Poison’s hand lift from his shoulder, and only then did he feel he could move under his own power. He looked around, and the first thing he saw was the red brand of a laser sight on Poison’s temple.
Poison’s expression was tense, but more annoyed than concerned. There was open contempt in the way he raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.
Ghoul turned the opposite way, craning his neck around, following the sight back to its source. It came from the far edge of the parking lot where, in the shade of a dead tree, a Chevy Impala sat rusting into nonexistence.
The driver’s side door - the one nearest them - swung slowly open. The bead on Poison’s face jittered, leaving scratchy contrails on his skin.
“Un-fucking-believable…” Ghoul muttered.
“Relax,” he heard Poison say softly, in a single exhalation.
The man who climbed out of the car was tall and corded with lean muscles, but there seemed to be something hard-won about the shape of him, the loose fit of the flesh around his jowls, as if he had once let his body sag into fat complacency and then had needed to get back to his fighting weight in a hurry. As he came closer, Ghoul saw that there were lines around his eyes, and the architecture of his face was sinking rapidly with impending middle age.
Though the ambush he had laid for them had been clumsy and amateurish, he could clearly handle the gun that he kept trained on them. It was a pre-war Glock, the kind that fired real bullets. Practically an antique in this day and age, but the stranger seemed to know his way around it well enough to give them trouble if he put his mind to it.
He came across the parking lot to them, but even when he was close enough to speak he made no attempt to. Ghoul was coming to suspect that, now that he had caught them, he had no idea what he was supposed to do.
At last, Poison broke the silence. “We’re just passing through.”
When he spoke, the stranger adjusted his aim subtly, taking aim between Poison’s eyes. “What do you want?”
“I want you to get that fucking thing out of my face.”
An expression of abrupt and wounded surprise flashed across the stranger’s face. With a strange jerky motion, his finger convulsed on the trigger of the Glock, though not enough to pull it.
“You…” he started to say. Ghoul cut him off.
“Listen, motherfucker. If you’re going to shoot him then hurry up and do it so I can fucking wreck your shit. Or, you can shoot me first, and have him make you sorrier than I ever could.”
The stranger’s eyes darted between them, sizing them up. At last, he lowered the Glock slowly.
“Did you come from out there?” he asked.
“From the desert,” Poison said. “We’re looking for a car. Perhaps further supplies, if it can be negotiated.”
“Negotiated…” The stranger seemed suddenly nervous, and he passed the back of his hand over his mouth. “There’s no one to negotiate with. Just me. I’m the only one who’s left. You might have gotten in here and gotten out without me ever even noticing you. It was only pure chance that I saw you. I was up on the roof. I-“
He broke off abruptly. A helpless look had come into his eyes, as if he wished that he could stop talking but was powerless to.
“You did just what I always figured you would. Came down here, tried to go inside. I hid where I always planned to hide. I’m not stupid, though; I know it was pure luck. You could have gone across the street. You could have broken into one of the houses and gotten what you needed from there. But you’re here, and you’re talking to me. So that means something.”
The stranger paused; then, almost as an afterthought, he added. “I have a car.”
“There don’t seem to be any shortage of those around here,” Poison said in a tone that was, faintly but unmistakably, mocking.
“I’ll give it to you,” the stranger said. “You can have it. But on one condition.”
Poison narrowed his eyes. It seemed that he already knew what the stranger would ask him, and even Ghoul had his suspicions. He hoped that they were wrong.
“Let me see the car first,” Poison said at last.
“All right,” the stranger said. “You’ll like it. It’s a good car. I took good care of it.” He started to turn away, and then stopped short. He came back to face them with a curious jerking movement. “I don’t even know what I should call you.”
“Poison. And Ghoul.”
“I’m Ray.” He seemed to relax a little. “Ray is fine. I don’t really get the name thing…”
“That’s because you’re fucking old,” Ghoul said, and then all at once, he was laughing. Even Poison lifted a hand delicately to his lips and breathed one of those rare, contemptuous, high-society laughs of his. A hurt look moved briefly across Ray’s face. Ghoul noticed it, and realized that he did not care about it in the slightest, which struck him as funnier still.
***
Ray took them back to one of the track houses. The ground floor windows were boarded up, and there was a heavy padlock on the garage. Other than that, there was no way to tell that this house alone was still inhabited, was any different from the others on the street.
The Trans Am, low and curved and scarab-shaped, was parked in the garage. Poison gave the car’s exterior a brief appraisal, then he went around to the open window on the driver’s side and popped the hood. Ghoul, who was mystified by car stuff, kicked one of the tires a few times and then stepped back out of the way.
“I trashed the plates a long time ago,” Ray said. “And I scraped the VIN number off.”
“Why did you do that?” Poison said without looking up from the Trans Am’s guts.
“It… it seemed like a good idea. Don’t you think?”
“It seems a rather futile gesture.” Poison straightened up, and slammed the hood shut. “This vehicle will need a lot of fuel. And a lot of maintenance.”
“But it’s built like a tank,” Ray said. “And out on the highway, it’ll fly. I got it up to 130 once, just on the main drag through the middle of town.”
Poison gave him a flat, skeptical look. He seemed on the point of refusing, which would have suited Ghoul just fine, but Ray just kept fucking talking.
“I’ve got more stuff,” he said. “Supplies. Come out back and let me show you.”
Poison glanced back at him, but it took Ghoul a long time to realize he was asking his opinion. Ghoul just shrugged, and they followed Ray through a chain link gate and around the rear of the house.
The back yard was a narrow strip of colorless dirt. There was a dead tree in one corner and a tin shed in the other. In between were several shapeless lumps of plastic, some of which looked like they had once been patio furniture and others like they had once been children’s toys. Underneath the skeletal branches of the tree, three crosses jutted out of the ground. They had been made in a hurry, out of unfinished planks of scrap wood lashed together with string. The graves they marked had sunken into the ground, and Ray did not spare them a look as he went past.
He opened the shed, and Ghoul could feel the heat radiating from within. Along the walls were stacked palates of canned food, drums of gasoline, five-gallon jugs of water.
“You can have anything you want,” Ray said. “But the deal is still the same. You’ll take me with you. I’m not going to pretend I know what’s going on out there, or that I’ll be much help to you, or even that you’ll like me, but that’s what I want.”
“Pardon me a moment,” Poison said coolly, and then Ghoul saw that he was coming towards him. He took Ghoul’s arm and drew him back under the tree, which gave no shade. They were standing right over the first of the three graves, but the day was too damn hot for Ghoul to feel a chill.
“Well?” Poison asked him. “What do you think?”
“Honestly?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Honestly,” Ghoul said. “Honestly, I don’t trust anyone but you. I don’t want anyone else around. I think if it could just be you and me against all the rest of them, then that’s what would make me happier than anything.”
“I see,” Poison replied. He started to turn away, but Ghoul caught his sleeve.
“But,” he said. “I think that guy has more in him than it seems. He said he’s the only one alive here, and that must mean he’s doing something right. Maybe he’s smart, or resourceful, or lucky, or something. It doesn’t matter. I think he’ll be useful.”
Poison looked at him in silence for a moment, and then he said, “Thank you for your candor.”
He went back to where Ray stood. He had watched them the whole time with deep suspicion and almost no hope at all.
“Give me the car keys,” Poison said.
“What…?”
“Give me the keys.” Poison held out his hand. “I am accepting your offer, but I’m going to drive.”
***
They packed what they could fit in the trunk of the Trans Am. Water was the most important; it went in first. Then gas, then food. They filled the gaps with blankets, rolls of toilet paper, insect repellant, duct tape, batteries, and bullets. When that was done and, with some coaxing, the trunk had been closed and latched, Poison motioned for Ray to get in the back seat.
“In a second,” he said. “I have one more thing I have to do. You’d better take the car out on the street, though.”
He handed over the keys, and it did not seem to cause him any pain or regret to do so. Ghoul slid into the passenger seat, and when Poison started the engine he felt a smooth powerful vibration pass through the chassis of the car.
“Guess he took care of it pretty well,” Ghoul said, patting the dashboard. “It’s not practical, but I kind of like it.”
Poison eased the Trans Am down the driveway and into the street. A moment later, Ray came out of the garage, carrying two of the drums of gasoline that they hadn’t been able to find room for in the trunk. He went around to the front of the house, unscrewed the caps, and splashed the gasoline over the door, up the walls, into the dry overgrown brush that choked the yard. Then he took a scrap of paper out of his pocket, twisted it into a long fuse, set fire to one end and tossed it into the pool at his feet.
The front of the house erupted in flames.
Ray watched for a moment to make sure the fire was spreading, then he came down the driveway without looking back. Ghoul let him into the back seat. He felt that he ought to say something, if only to acknowledge what had just happened, but nothing came to mind.
“All right,” Ray said. “Let’s go.”
***
They stopped once on the way out of town so Poison could get cigarettes. Ray pursed his lips disapprovingly.
“Those things kill you, you know.”
Poison shoved the cartons of cigarettes under the seat of the Trans Am. “I am well aware of the risks.”
“Then I don’t get why anyone would choose to-“
Poison whipped around to face him. “Because for twenty-two years I wasn’t allowed to smoke. And now I want to, so I will.”
His voice had sounded strange just then, so strange that Ghoul, who had been watching the fire spread through the block of house above them, turned around to look at him.
“Poison,” he said quietly. “Just get in. Let’s just go.”
A minute, almost imperceptible shudder passed through Poison’s body. He tossed the last two cartons of cigarettes on the dash and slid in behind the wheel. Ray, who was in equal parts confused and shaken, got in the back seat.
No one spoke as they left the burning suburb behind. The silence was smothering. Ghoul reached over and flipped on the radio. Most of the dial was static, but down near one end he picked up Dr. Death’s voice. Ghoul felt a sudden bitter pang of homesickness, as if he had been away for months rather than a few hours.
“Confidential to a certain Killjoy out there,” Dr. Death was saying. “A certain friend of the family.”
Ghoul felt his heart sink, felt his chest constricting, tighter and tighter, until he did not even have the strength to lean forward and switch the radio off again.
“Your comrade and mine has a special message for you. The big Red boss in Battery City says it’s about time for you to cry, cry, cry, cry, cry all the way back home.”
Fandom: Danger Days
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: Fun Ghoul/Party Poison, Kobra Kid/Party Poison
Summary: "It’s built like a tank,” Ray said. “And out on the highway, it’ll fly."
Master Post
Chapter 6
Inside the walls of the suburb, every surface was dry, faded, brittle, and honeycombed with rot. The rows of indistinguishable houses had been stripped of paint down to the gray cinderblocks. Their identical front yards had all become uniformly choked with weeds.
A gauzy colorless layer of sand covered the pavement, crunching beneath their boots with every step, the only sound that could be heard on the deserted street. It was starting to wear on Ghoul’s nerves.
“How long has it been like this?” Ghoul said.
“Under quarantine, you mean?” Poison replied quietly. “Three years. Or four. Not long.”
“Where is everyone?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are they all dead?”
“I don’t know.”
“Christ…” Ghoul whispered to no one in particular. He certainly wasn’t talking to Poison, because Poison didn’t give a shit. “It smells like death.”
“Do you think so?”
“Old death. Like bones and dust. But then, what doesn’t these days?”
“I don’t know,” Poison said.
Ghoul glared at Poison’s back. “What’s gotten into you? All this morning, you couldn’t keep your hands off me. Now you’re acting like you can’t wait to get rid of me.”
“I’m thinking,” Poison said mildly.
“You’re so fucking moody all the time,” Ghoul said, pushing him now, just for the hell of it. “Am I supposed to guess when you want me around, and then just stay out of your way the rest of the time?”
“Be quiet,” Poison said. He did not raise his voice at all, but Ghoul could tell that something final had entered into the words, something that could not be ignored or contradicted. Ghoul shivered, as if suddenly cold, and he shut his mouth.
The streets of the suburb looped and meandered and terminated in dead-ends. It was a fucking labyrinth, a fucking architectural nightmare. Ghoul let Poison lead the way; he seemed to have some idea of where he was going. He brought them to a low concrete wall that marked the boundary of the residential block. Below them, at the foot of a steep gravel slope, was the hub where the freeway exit had once disgorged into town.
There were some gas stations down there, gutted fast food places, a couple of massive supermarkets. Without a word, Poison grabbed the top of the concrete wall and boosted himself over. It was at that moment that the weight in Ghoul’s chest shook loose.
He darted forward, catching Poison’s sleeve before he could lower himself onto the other side of the wall. Poison glanced at him, and for a moment it even seemed that he was startled.
“I’m not… I’m not going to do that,” Ghoul managed to say. “Because I know it’s not really what you want.”
Abruptly, he blushed. The final moments of their last conversation had been replaying themselves in Ghoul’s head endlessly while they had walked in silence. They had still seemed fresh to him. But Poison hadn’t been thinking of that, not him. He probably didn’t even remember...
The lines of Poison’s face softened. It could hardly be called a smile, but it was a definite and subtle shift. He touched Ghoul’s cheek briefly with the back of his gloved hand, and then he slipped over the wall and dropped out of sight.
Embarrassed, trembling as if he had just been in a fight, Ghoul hauled himself over the wall and followed him.
Even now, Ghoul did not know how he had ended up here. How this had happened, or why it had chosen him to happen to. From the first meeting - almost from the first moment - Ghoul had felt that some unspoken need had suddenly been fulfilled, that some secret hollow place inside him had all at once become whole.
But he had not wanted anything before Poison had come along. If they had never met then he would have continued to not want, perpetually and indefinitely. Of that, Ghoul was certain. He did not wish that it had never happened, but he could not bring himself to be grateful that it had. It was simply something he had to deal with, something he had to come through in one piece. Things were no different than they had always been.
At the bottom of the gravel slope, Ghoul stumbled. Poison caught his arm, steadying him. It felt good, the sudden shock of his strength, but Ghoul looked down and was resolutely silent.
They were on a wide road between two massive supermarkets of opposing identical chains. In both parking lots, few decaying cars stood like crooked teeth. The windows that banded the fronts of the supermarkets had all been broken; the automatic doors had been pried open and wedged back with lengths of rebar. The door on the right stood open, but the one on the left had been awkwardly covered with a flat piece of plywood. A string of numbers had been written along the top of it. They were not fresh, but they were relatively new.
“That one,” Poison said, and started toward the boarded-up supermarket. Without glancing back, he added, “Keep your head up. I’ll do what I can to protect you, but I want you to stay alert.”
“Protect me?” Ghoul echoed weakly. “What are you…?”
But Poison had already gone on ahead, and Ghoul had to hurry to catch up.
At the door of the supermarket, Poison halted abruptly. Up close, Ghoul could see that the plywood had only been nailed down on one side, allowing it to be swung back enough to slip through.
“Well?” Ghoul said. “Are you going in?”
“I don’t know,” Poison replied quietly.
Ghoul shot him a look of disbelief which Poison, typically, did not seem to notice at all. He still felt a gnawing resentment towards Poison for suggesting that he needed to be protected, and so Ghoul stepped forward and grabbed the edge of the plywood and jerked it back.
He heard a faint click, a sound which he could not place immediately but which made his stomach turn over with unease. A hand closed around the back of his collar, and at some point between the moment it jerked him roughly back and the moment he landed on his ass, his head filled with the sound of an explosion and the white afterimage of a magnesium flash.
Ghoul saw in an instant what had happened. One corner of the plywood door had disintegrated into slivers, and from behind it jutted the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun with a finger of blue smoke still trailing from it. A thread was stretched between the edge of the door and the frame, and no doubt it was threaded around the trigger of the gun, tying it back so that it would only take a little pull - the momentum of the plywood door as it was swung back - to fire both barrels.
It was a crude trap, but he had almost stepped right into it. Sobered, Ghoul started to struggle to his feet. A hand clamped down on his shoulder, forcing him back down.
“Don’t move.” Poison’s voice was up against his ear. Ghoul fell still, obeying so easily, so immediately, that it was almost as if he had forgotten he had any other choice.
“Just put your hands up,” Poison continued. “Very slowly.”
Bewildered, Ghoul did as he had said. He felt the weight of Poison’s hand lift from his shoulder, and only then did he feel he could move under his own power. He looked around, and the first thing he saw was the red brand of a laser sight on Poison’s temple.
Poison’s expression was tense, but more annoyed than concerned. There was open contempt in the way he raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.
Ghoul turned the opposite way, craning his neck around, following the sight back to its source. It came from the far edge of the parking lot where, in the shade of a dead tree, a Chevy Impala sat rusting into nonexistence.
The driver’s side door - the one nearest them - swung slowly open. The bead on Poison’s face jittered, leaving scratchy contrails on his skin.
“Un-fucking-believable…” Ghoul muttered.
“Relax,” he heard Poison say softly, in a single exhalation.
The man who climbed out of the car was tall and corded with lean muscles, but there seemed to be something hard-won about the shape of him, the loose fit of the flesh around his jowls, as if he had once let his body sag into fat complacency and then had needed to get back to his fighting weight in a hurry. As he came closer, Ghoul saw that there were lines around his eyes, and the architecture of his face was sinking rapidly with impending middle age.
Though the ambush he had laid for them had been clumsy and amateurish, he could clearly handle the gun that he kept trained on them. It was a pre-war Glock, the kind that fired real bullets. Practically an antique in this day and age, but the stranger seemed to know his way around it well enough to give them trouble if he put his mind to it.
He came across the parking lot to them, but even when he was close enough to speak he made no attempt to. Ghoul was coming to suspect that, now that he had caught them, he had no idea what he was supposed to do.
At last, Poison broke the silence. “We’re just passing through.”
When he spoke, the stranger adjusted his aim subtly, taking aim between Poison’s eyes. “What do you want?”
“I want you to get that fucking thing out of my face.”
An expression of abrupt and wounded surprise flashed across the stranger’s face. With a strange jerky motion, his finger convulsed on the trigger of the Glock, though not enough to pull it.
“You…” he started to say. Ghoul cut him off.
“Listen, motherfucker. If you’re going to shoot him then hurry up and do it so I can fucking wreck your shit. Or, you can shoot me first, and have him make you sorrier than I ever could.”
The stranger’s eyes darted between them, sizing them up. At last, he lowered the Glock slowly.
“Did you come from out there?” he asked.
“From the desert,” Poison said. “We’re looking for a car. Perhaps further supplies, if it can be negotiated.”
“Negotiated…” The stranger seemed suddenly nervous, and he passed the back of his hand over his mouth. “There’s no one to negotiate with. Just me. I’m the only one who’s left. You might have gotten in here and gotten out without me ever even noticing you. It was only pure chance that I saw you. I was up on the roof. I-“
He broke off abruptly. A helpless look had come into his eyes, as if he wished that he could stop talking but was powerless to.
“You did just what I always figured you would. Came down here, tried to go inside. I hid where I always planned to hide. I’m not stupid, though; I know it was pure luck. You could have gone across the street. You could have broken into one of the houses and gotten what you needed from there. But you’re here, and you’re talking to me. So that means something.”
The stranger paused; then, almost as an afterthought, he added. “I have a car.”
“There don’t seem to be any shortage of those around here,” Poison said in a tone that was, faintly but unmistakably, mocking.
“I’ll give it to you,” the stranger said. “You can have it. But on one condition.”
Poison narrowed his eyes. It seemed that he already knew what the stranger would ask him, and even Ghoul had his suspicions. He hoped that they were wrong.
“Let me see the car first,” Poison said at last.
“All right,” the stranger said. “You’ll like it. It’s a good car. I took good care of it.” He started to turn away, and then stopped short. He came back to face them with a curious jerking movement. “I don’t even know what I should call you.”
“Poison. And Ghoul.”
“I’m Ray.” He seemed to relax a little. “Ray is fine. I don’t really get the name thing…”
“That’s because you’re fucking old,” Ghoul said, and then all at once, he was laughing. Even Poison lifted a hand delicately to his lips and breathed one of those rare, contemptuous, high-society laughs of his. A hurt look moved briefly across Ray’s face. Ghoul noticed it, and realized that he did not care about it in the slightest, which struck him as funnier still.
***
Ray took them back to one of the track houses. The ground floor windows were boarded up, and there was a heavy padlock on the garage. Other than that, there was no way to tell that this house alone was still inhabited, was any different from the others on the street.
The Trans Am, low and curved and scarab-shaped, was parked in the garage. Poison gave the car’s exterior a brief appraisal, then he went around to the open window on the driver’s side and popped the hood. Ghoul, who was mystified by car stuff, kicked one of the tires a few times and then stepped back out of the way.
“I trashed the plates a long time ago,” Ray said. “And I scraped the VIN number off.”
“Why did you do that?” Poison said without looking up from the Trans Am’s guts.
“It… it seemed like a good idea. Don’t you think?”
“It seems a rather futile gesture.” Poison straightened up, and slammed the hood shut. “This vehicle will need a lot of fuel. And a lot of maintenance.”
“But it’s built like a tank,” Ray said. “And out on the highway, it’ll fly. I got it up to 130 once, just on the main drag through the middle of town.”
Poison gave him a flat, skeptical look. He seemed on the point of refusing, which would have suited Ghoul just fine, but Ray just kept fucking talking.
“I’ve got more stuff,” he said. “Supplies. Come out back and let me show you.”
Poison glanced back at him, but it took Ghoul a long time to realize he was asking his opinion. Ghoul just shrugged, and they followed Ray through a chain link gate and around the rear of the house.
The back yard was a narrow strip of colorless dirt. There was a dead tree in one corner and a tin shed in the other. In between were several shapeless lumps of plastic, some of which looked like they had once been patio furniture and others like they had once been children’s toys. Underneath the skeletal branches of the tree, three crosses jutted out of the ground. They had been made in a hurry, out of unfinished planks of scrap wood lashed together with string. The graves they marked had sunken into the ground, and Ray did not spare them a look as he went past.
He opened the shed, and Ghoul could feel the heat radiating from within. Along the walls were stacked palates of canned food, drums of gasoline, five-gallon jugs of water.
“You can have anything you want,” Ray said. “But the deal is still the same. You’ll take me with you. I’m not going to pretend I know what’s going on out there, or that I’ll be much help to you, or even that you’ll like me, but that’s what I want.”
“Pardon me a moment,” Poison said coolly, and then Ghoul saw that he was coming towards him. He took Ghoul’s arm and drew him back under the tree, which gave no shade. They were standing right over the first of the three graves, but the day was too damn hot for Ghoul to feel a chill.
“Well?” Poison asked him. “What do you think?”
“Honestly?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Honestly,” Ghoul said. “Honestly, I don’t trust anyone but you. I don’t want anyone else around. I think if it could just be you and me against all the rest of them, then that’s what would make me happier than anything.”
“I see,” Poison replied. He started to turn away, but Ghoul caught his sleeve.
“But,” he said. “I think that guy has more in him than it seems. He said he’s the only one alive here, and that must mean he’s doing something right. Maybe he’s smart, or resourceful, or lucky, or something. It doesn’t matter. I think he’ll be useful.”
Poison looked at him in silence for a moment, and then he said, “Thank you for your candor.”
He went back to where Ray stood. He had watched them the whole time with deep suspicion and almost no hope at all.
“Give me the car keys,” Poison said.
“What…?”
“Give me the keys.” Poison held out his hand. “I am accepting your offer, but I’m going to drive.”
***
They packed what they could fit in the trunk of the Trans Am. Water was the most important; it went in first. Then gas, then food. They filled the gaps with blankets, rolls of toilet paper, insect repellant, duct tape, batteries, and bullets. When that was done and, with some coaxing, the trunk had been closed and latched, Poison motioned for Ray to get in the back seat.
“In a second,” he said. “I have one more thing I have to do. You’d better take the car out on the street, though.”
He handed over the keys, and it did not seem to cause him any pain or regret to do so. Ghoul slid into the passenger seat, and when Poison started the engine he felt a smooth powerful vibration pass through the chassis of the car.
“Guess he took care of it pretty well,” Ghoul said, patting the dashboard. “It’s not practical, but I kind of like it.”
Poison eased the Trans Am down the driveway and into the street. A moment later, Ray came out of the garage, carrying two of the drums of gasoline that they hadn’t been able to find room for in the trunk. He went around to the front of the house, unscrewed the caps, and splashed the gasoline over the door, up the walls, into the dry overgrown brush that choked the yard. Then he took a scrap of paper out of his pocket, twisted it into a long fuse, set fire to one end and tossed it into the pool at his feet.
The front of the house erupted in flames.
Ray watched for a moment to make sure the fire was spreading, then he came down the driveway without looking back. Ghoul let him into the back seat. He felt that he ought to say something, if only to acknowledge what had just happened, but nothing came to mind.
“All right,” Ray said. “Let’s go.”
***
They stopped once on the way out of town so Poison could get cigarettes. Ray pursed his lips disapprovingly.
“Those things kill you, you know.”
Poison shoved the cartons of cigarettes under the seat of the Trans Am. “I am well aware of the risks.”
“Then I don’t get why anyone would choose to-“
Poison whipped around to face him. “Because for twenty-two years I wasn’t allowed to smoke. And now I want to, so I will.”
His voice had sounded strange just then, so strange that Ghoul, who had been watching the fire spread through the block of house above them, turned around to look at him.
“Poison,” he said quietly. “Just get in. Let’s just go.”
A minute, almost imperceptible shudder passed through Poison’s body. He tossed the last two cartons of cigarettes on the dash and slid in behind the wheel. Ray, who was in equal parts confused and shaken, got in the back seat.
No one spoke as they left the burning suburb behind. The silence was smothering. Ghoul reached over and flipped on the radio. Most of the dial was static, but down near one end he picked up Dr. Death’s voice. Ghoul felt a sudden bitter pang of homesickness, as if he had been away for months rather than a few hours.
“Confidential to a certain Killjoy out there,” Dr. Death was saying. “A certain friend of the family.”
Ghoul felt his heart sink, felt his chest constricting, tighter and tighter, until he did not even have the strength to lean forward and switch the radio off again.
“Your comrade and mine has a special message for you. The big Red boss in Battery City says it’s about time for you to cry, cry, cry, cry, cry all the way back home.”