Angels From the Neon 2
Part 1
Sometimes Gerard curls up in the backseat of the car while Mikey drives. It always looks as though it hurts to Mikey, because Gerard isn’t that small and the backseat isn’t that big and he won’t move a muscle for hours. The first time he did it, Mikey hopped three zones in almost as many hours while shooting his brother concerned looks in the rear-view mirror. Gerard had been staring at the rip on the back of the passenger seat and Mikey can’t remember having seen him blink.
Other times, Gerard hangs out of the windows of the car while they’re ‘running, shouting into the desert things that get taken away by the wind before Mikey can hear them and that’s okay too.
He gets used to it, in time, all of it - the hours of silence and staring and the waking screaming from nightmares Gerard pretends he doesn’t have and the cackling mad laughter that sometimes just seems like it bubbles out of him, no place to go other than away, free and open. Mikey thinks that laughter like that is better not locked up inside. It sounds like the sort of laughter that sends people crazy.
These are just the things his brother does sometimes that Mikey doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to understand and then he remembers that they’re ‘running so that he’ll never have to.
***
Home in the zones changes regularly, they nest in whatever empty abandoned buildings they can find. Mikey always makes sure they’re alone though, the last thing he thinks they need are other ‘runners asking questions about them, about Gerard.
At first they found a broken down old Pegasus set back from the dusty road. It’s been stripped clean of anything worth selling long before they found it, but it’s still standing, and the shelves and counter - although chipped and faded - are still bolted to the floor. They sleep in the back room, away from the wide cracked windows even after they’ve found enough scrap wood and bent nails to board them over.
Gerard spends his time ripping up old magazines. Mikey wants to tell him that he’s wasting their gas money, the magazines are so old they’re printed in colour, totally unlike the greyscale ones that come from Battery City and he knows that there’s a market for them. People in the zones are willing to pay a price for anything that keeps their minds from their everyday lives.
Mikey keeps his mouth shut though, because he can see the look on Gerard’s face as he shreds the shiny paper and divides them into piles of colours - blues, reds and greens in stacks on the faded Formica counter weighed down by old cans and rocks. He knows this is how Gerard keeps his mind busy and he’d much rather have him here like this instead of curled up in the backseat of the car staring at nothing.
When Gerard finds a sealed bottle of thick white glue, still sticky even after this long, his eyes light up like Mikey hasn’t seen since he used to get out of the clinic and discover that things other than the whiteblackgrey of the City existed.
Gerard spends hours working on the collage, painstakingly sticking the tiny pieces of paper to the splinter-ridden boards covering the windows. Mikey can’t even begin to imagine what it’s meant to be a picture of - it looks like it could be a face, but if it is then Mikey can’t make out any features apart from the eyes, deepwide and fathomless staring out of the scraps of paper like it’s watching him. Sometimes he feels uneasy but he knows it doesn’t matter what he thinks.
After that Mikey keeps an eye out for art supplies. He trades batteries and bottles of water they probably can’t spare for worn-down coloured pencils and scraps of blank paper. They drive dangerously close to the City to find more glue and magazines, and in every single place they find to sleep for a while Gerard creates his collage.
***
Gerard knows that life in the zones is better than anything they had back in Battery City. It’s not a hard distinction to make at all, even with everything that happens out here - the Drac patrols BL/ind send out just to fuck with all the ‘runners, the scraping for all the things they need, the dust and wreckage of buildings - it’s so much better than the drugs and fear and confusion of his previous life that it’s almost hard to remember that they ever had to deal with them at all.
Sometimes he even finds he almost loves it, a feeling like a punch to the gut when it’s just him and Mikey and the car and music pouring from the radio drawn out of old records by a DJ with a voice like something thick and sweet and inbetween, when it feels almost like Gerard can see the notes spilling from the speakers and down the road behind them like their vapour trail. That’s when he thinks that this life could go on forever and it would only take one more piece of a puzzle to slip into place and he would be in love with it for real and ever and always.
He spends a long time trying to find that puzzle piece.
There are places they will always find other runners. There are bars and Dead Pegasus stations that still have gas and tiny impromptu markets right out in the middle of the desert where water and food and guns and stories are swapped and bartered for. Gerard and Mikey keep to themselves mostly, but sometimes they need parts for the car or a drink or fuel so they have to end up somewhere with other people.
Mikey doesn’t talk to anyone unless it’s directly about the business they’ve come for, keeps himself to sharp nods and ‘How much?’, but Gerard knows there’s still a piece of his puzzle missing and he tries to find it. He’s quiet too, but he finds the time to say things like ‘Yes’ and ‘Please’ and ‘I want’, groaning into the sides of ramshackle buildings and rusty cars as someone behind him pushes their hands into his jeans. Always behind him.
None of them have ever been the piece of the puzzle for Gerard; they’ve been nothing but a distraction.
They can’t make him love anything if he can’t even look them in the eyes.
***
The Drac’s bike skids to the left as the blast from Mikey’s ray gun snaps the masked head back.
“Drive!”
“What the motherloving fuck do you think I’m doing!” demands Gerard, but pushes harder down on the Trans-Am’s accelerator anyway. The bike, now on its side and smoking, retreats into the distance. Mikey hangs out of the window for a few more miles, but nothing else appears on the long low horizon.
Finally slumping back into the passenger seat, he glances over a Gerard, who keeps flicking his eyes away from the road and up to the shattered rear-view mirror.
“We’ve lost them.” Mikey says, as calmly as he can. “There was only one and I ghosted it good, Gee.”
Gerard’s hands are white-knuckled on the steering wheel, but he loosens them slowly, grinning over at his brother with a crazy smile. He laughs.
“Let’s get off the road for a while.” Mikey suggests. “I think we could both do with it.”
***
Jet’s is miles out in the zones, up a dusty track that might have had a bigger purpose in life before, but now just serves as an approach to one of the safest Zonerunner bars out there. There’s a still set up in the back, constantly dripping with the nastiest, harshest spirit in what’s left of the world, but the desert is open for miles around and there’s electric and sometimes water and Jet Star is enough of a presence in the bar to keep most of the fighting outside.
Grace is drawing on the boards over the windows when the Trans-Am pulls up, Mikey doesn’t know where she got the markers from, all the ones he’s found for Gee had dried up long ago, but the colours are bright and Mikey thinks she’s caught the spray of blood from the Drac’s neck quite well.
Gerard pulls his bandana away from his face as he grins down at her, “That looks shiny, kid.” He says, and means every word.
Grace smiles back, shading her eyes with her hand as she looks up.
“Where’d you get the markers?”
“Jet Star traded Bouncer for them. For a can of gas.” She sounds proud, but then makes a face, “I’ve only got three though - I bet I could make a much better picture with more.”
Gerard laughs again. “I’m sure you could.” He says, “But hey, it’s three more than I’ve got.”
***
The first time Ray met Poison and Kobra; he thought they might be insane. The second time, he KNOWS they are.
Poison has flame red hair and spends his time knocking back whatever Ray can sell him and fluctuating between breathless mania and staring blankly at the bare wall of the roadhouse, hardly blinking.
Kobra, at least, is consistent. He drinks sparingly but steadily, always has a slight half-grin on his face like there’s someone whispering jokes only he can hear in his ear and very rarely says anything to anyone who isn’t Poison.
They come by every so often, then head out zonehopping for a while. Grace likes them though, so even if Ray thinks that neither of them is operating on all pistons, he’s usually glad enough to see them.
When they walk into the bar this time, Poison is smiling with what looks like all of his sharp teeth on show and Ray can’t help but think he’s at least in for an entertaining evening.
It just goes to show that the zones still have a way of fucking you over when you least expect it.
***
There are six ‘runners in the roadhouse including Mikey and Gerard when it happens. Jet Star is behind the bar, Grace still hasn’t come in from the desert yet, and the other four are huddled into a corner. Gerard half-recognises them from the zones, but can’t remember their names. He’s staring hard into his glass of murky brown liquid and thinking about how they’re gonna afford their next tank of gas when the door of the bar crashes open, the already fragile wood splintering on the wall behind it. Heads snap up, and there are already several Dracs spreading out.
Everyone pulls their rayguns at the same time, no-one goes anywhere in the zones unarmed, and then everything is just flashes of blasts and noise and Jet Star yelling for Grace and people and Dracs dying all around him. Gerard throws himself behind an upturned table, there’s already somebody behind it - one of the crew from the corner, but he’s on his back with a hole between his eyes, and Gerard suddenly remembers he’s called Lunacy Fringe and they met once a few cycles back in a Pegasus out in zone two where they got into a fight over the last tank of gas and then they might have fucked in the back room while Mikey flipped through magazines and tried to pretend he didn’t know what was happening, but he’s fucking dead now, so none of that really matters anymore, does it?
Gerard screams into the bar, louder than he can remember since... since something happened to him that he can’t won’t remember even if all he can remember is dark eyes watching him through a thin strip of glass and shoots anything he can see dressed in white.
***
When the smoke clears, Ray is standing on the bartop, raygun smoking in his hand. The only other movement in the bar comes from Poison and Kobra.
Poison is crouched behind an upturned table surrounded by bodies of Dracs and runners. His red hair is smoking slightly as though the colour has set itself on fire. Kobra is kneeling down by the body of a Drac lying in the blasted open doorway, fiddling with its raygun.
“Where’s Grace?” Ray demands. “Where the fuck is she!” He stares around at the ruin of the bar again, hoping for her to pop up grinning from somewhere or to hear his voice from wherever she’d cleverly hidden and come running back inside, but nothing happens.
Kobra looks out into the desert and shakes his head. “Dracs.” He mutters, mostly to himself.
“What?”
Kobra finally looks at him. “The Dracs took her, Jet. Grabbed her into the back of their van… Shit.”
Ray can’t seem to process the info for a moment, but he can’t see that there’s any reason for Kobra to lie about it. He likes Grace, he knows that for sure and Ray’s pretty sure he’s friendly enough with him for Kobra not to fuck him around like this. “The Dracs took Grace?” he repeats dumbly. “Why?”
Kobra takes a step towards him, strapping his gun back into its holster. He holds out a hand. “Jet…”
From the corner, Poison starts laughing; rocking backwards and forwards on his knees crouched over the dead body of a Zonerunner and cackling wildly. It shocks Ray into movement, jumping down off the counter. His gun is still in his hand from the firefight and before he knows what’s happening it’s pressed against the side of Party Poison’s head. “What the fuck?” he demands as Poison covers his face with his gloved hands, breathing deeply in between great heaving bursts of laughter. “You think this shit is FUNNY!?”
Ray is pretty sure that his finger was just about to tighten on the trigger, that he was a split second away from ghosting Party Poison right there in his bar when Kobra’s hand clamps down on his wrist and drags his hand away.
“Don’t you fucking threaten my brother.” He says in a low voice. He sounds more dangerous than anyone Ray has ever heard. Somehow though, neither that nor the gun held to his ribs by Kobra’s other hand is what makes him flip the safety.
“Brother?” he asks, “He’s your brother for real?” He’s never heard of ‘runners having family. He grew up in a place out of the way in zone four, sharing the floorspace of an abandoned Pegasus with eight other people, any or none of which could have been his parents. People don’t have ties like that out here. You have a crew, not family.
“For real.” Kobra says, still menacing. “You okay, Poison?”
His laughter is starting to sound more like tears now, but his face is still hidden by his hands so Ray can’t tell for sure.
Kobra turns his attention back to Ray, “You don’t want to get into this with us.” He says. “The Dracs took Grace, and we know she’s your crew and we’re sorry she’s gone, but we’re not the enemy here. Okay?”
Ray holsters his gun and takes a step back. Even through the thick leather of his jacket he thinks he might develop a bruise in his side from Kobra’s threats. “What’s his problem?” he asks, nodding his head at Poison. Kobra ignores him.
“It’s not safe here anymore. We’ve got to go.”
***
Kobra’s filling up the tank of their car from a rusting can when Ray walks out of the roadhouse with his duffle bag slung over his shoulder. He can just see the top of Poison’s bright red hair through the passenger side window. Kobra looks up.
“I have to find her.” Ray says in answer to Kobra’s silent question.
Kobra nods and caps the gas can.
“I’m sorry about, you know… the gun.”
“Just don’t do it again.” Kobra says, shrugging. “I kinda like you, Jet and I’d feel bad if I had to ghost you.”
“Ray.” Ray says impulsively.
Kobra raises an eyebrow.
“I’m Ray.” He clarifies. “You know… for real.” He doesn’t know why he says it, but Kobra’s ‘running with his honest-to-God brother and if Ray’s going to go get himself ghosted looking for Grace, he thinks he’d like someone to have known his real name.
Kobra stares at him for a long while. “We’ve got a place out in zone five.” He says finally. “It’s safe enough.”
Ray glances at his bike. He knows what Kobra’s offering, a new crew to run with - it might be like Rocket and Force and Candy all over again and Ray had thought he’d left all that behind when he found Grace and the bar. But now the bar’s a wreck and Grace is missing and Ray is surprised by how much he wants it. “I want to find her.”
“You know where to start looking?” Kobra asks, but it doesn’t sound like he’s trying to be mean.
Ray sighs. “I guess not.”
Kobra nods in the direction of Ray’s bike. “Follow us then.”
He digs the keys out of his pocket and heads towards the parked bike.
“Hey.” Kobra’s got the door to the car open now, looking at him over the roof and shading his eyes with his hand. “I’m Mikey.” He says. “That’s Gerard.”
Just like that, Ray has a new crew.
***
Poison - Gerard - is awake by the time Ray pulls up beside the Trans-Am behind a broken down diner. He looks up at Ray from the cocoon he’s made on the passenger seat out of ragged blankets and his leather jacket.
“Hey.” He says, kicking the door open and levering himself upright, unfolding out of the hunched over position he had been in. “Welcome to the nest.”
Ray acknowledges this with a nod. He’s not sure how to act around Gerard now that he’s put a gun to his head - and he’s heard stories about the two of them. Mostly just the general bar-room gossip that gets spun about all the ‘runners in the zones - Dracs they’ve ghosted, things they’ve done, allegiances and enemies with other crews - but sometimes the tales he’s been told about Mikey and Gerard have been different. Ones he’s never heard said about the other patrons of his bar and that’s enough to make him feel maybe slightly uneasy.
Of course, they seem okay enough, not operating on all pistons perhaps, but Ray’s hard pressed to think of any ‘runners that are one hundred percent milkshake in the brain department so he’ll give them the benefit of the doubt for now.
Gerard shrugs his jacket back on and stumbles towards the diner. He glances back over his shoulder, “Come on then.”
Mikey’s started making dinner and Gerard is nowhere to be seen by the time Ray drops his bag on one of the cracked tables. He glances around the place; it looks similar to all the other abandoned diners across the zones, long counter and tiny booths, with a wide double swing door leading back into what used to be the kitchen. Mikey has his back to him behind the counter, a haphazard pile of cans next to him jumbled up in a stained sink.
It’s getting dark, but as Ray turns to check his exit strategy he can still make out the giant picture on the wall next to the window. He’s started to walk closer to it before he knows what he’s doing.
The picture is made up of tiny pieces of paper stuck to the peeling boards and it makes Ray feel almost uncomfortable to look at but he can’t quite pin down the reason why.
“It’s Gerard’s.” Mikey says from behind him. Ray wheels around.
“It’s…” Ray starts, but since he doesn’t know what it is, he lets the sentence trail off.
Mikey looks at him. “It’s Gerard’s.” he repeats firmly. It’s actually more of an explanation than Ray would have thought.
“What is it of?” he asks.
Mikey shrugs. “He’s never said.” He turns back to the pile of cans on the counter. “Sleep wherever.” he says shortly, “But you’ll probably be best off staying away from the back room.”
Six hours later, Ray realises that what Mikey meant was that he and Gerard didn’t necessarily want to keep the back room for themselves; they just got it because one of them wakes up screaming. A couple of years living with a kid, even one as self-possessed as Grace makes Ray wake up the instant he hears the noise. Lying on the floor of the diner for a few moments, he wonders what’s happening and if he should go and see if he can help when he sees the shadowy figure of Mikey in the doorway leading to the back room. He stares down at Ray.
“Go back to sleep.” He says, arms crossed over his chest. “It’s nothing.”
It doesn’t sound like nothing to Ray, even though the screams have stopped now, have levelled out to a panicked hitching of breath, but it’s early days yet and he doesn’t want to stick his nose in where it’s not wanted. So he nods, not sure if Mikey can even see him in the dark, “Okay.”
It’s just another thing he guesses he’s gonna have to get used to.
***
The next morning, no-one mentions anything. Gerard emerges from the back room just as Ray’s shrugging on his jacket. He has his goggles pushed up onto his head, making his hair more of a mess than usual. He grins at Ray when he sees him. He seems to have more teeth than anyone Ray’s ever seen before.
“Oh, hey. Hi. Kobra… I mean Mikey I guess, said you were still here. I never really introduced myself, did I? I’m Gerard. We should probably be on first name terms if you’re planning on shaking it with our crew.” He laughs again, but this time it sounds more genuine than back at the roadhouse, an odd honking noise that makes Ray start to smile in return. “Well, I say crew, but two’s not really much of a crew is it? More of a pair, really! But you’re here now, so I guess that makes us a crew now. Do you think we should think of a name?”
This seems like a real question, but Ray gets as far as “Uh…” before Gerard plows on.
“I’m sure we’ll think of something good. I’ll ask Mikey, he’s usually got some good ideas. Are you hungry? We’ve probably gotta go and scavenge some more to eat so I don’t know what we’ve got around. Hang on…” Gerard vanishes back into the rear of the diner.
“Uh…” Ray repeats to the empty room.
***
“Your brother’s insane.” He says to Mikey later on that day. He doesn’t really mean to, it’s not the sort of thing you say to well-armed people you’ve only just met, but it just slips out while Gerard haggles for gas in a Pegasus station in zone three. He’s watching him through the cracked window and it seems to involve a lot of arm gestures. Mikey’s flipping through one of the black and white magazines that Battery City produces. There aren’t any pictures.
Mikey raises an eyebrow. “You wouldn’t be the first person to say that.” He says, but Ray hasn’t had enough practice to be able to tell if he’s insulted or not. He goes with ‘not’ purely because he still seems to be standing.
“Does he actually need to breathe?”
The eyebrow lowers. “You saw him this morning then?”
“Uh-huh. He thinks we need a name for our crew.”
Mikey drops the magazine on the dusty ground. No-one’s going to pay for it. Not even Gerard would want it for the growing collage of colours back at the diner.
“He gets like that sometimes.” That’s all Mikey says before Gerard emerges from the station, giving them the thumbs up sign.
***
When the sun gets too hot to drive sweating in leather jackets, they pull off the route into the shade of a rock cliff and Ray joins them in the car.
Gerard seems closer to normal than Ray has seen before.
“Do you have any idea why the Dracs would have taken Grace?” he asks, passing a canteen full of water back to Ray. He thinks about it as he unscrews the cap.
“Not really.” He admits eventually. “I mean, I guess I could think of a reason for taking her but the whole thing doesn’t really make much sense. They seemed to have made her the priority target. I mean, we barely got out of that place alive. One or two more of them and we would have been ghosted along with the other ‘runners and they must have had that many stay outside to deal with Grace. She bites.”
Mikey nods. “I’ve been thinking the same thing. It doesn’t motor does it? If it’d been just a regular fuck-you patrol, the Dracs would have been better taking out the ‘runners in the bar and leaving one girl. It must have been about her.
Gerard wrinkles his nose. “I really don’t think I’m gonna want to know the reason why.”
They’re quiet for a while as the canteen passes around the car and back to Ray.
Mikey says “She’ll be in Battery City by now, won’t she?”
“Probably.” Ray answers. It’s only logical.
Gerard says nothing, but stares silently out of the window, his drawn-up foot tapping out a nervous rhythm on the dash.
***
That night, Mikey and Ray spread out blankets next to the small campfire they’ve lit in the desert and Gerard sleeps in the trunk of the car. Ray looks confused when he climbs into the trunk and tugs the door closed but Gerard leaves it to Mikey to explain. Mikey never questions his weirdness - he had nodded when Gerard had first wanted to sleep somewhere enclosed and had said ‘Sure. I’ll see you in the morning.’ Anyway, it’s not as though he does it every night. But now, with Ray so close and Grace missing Gerard feels like his brain is about to fly apart and needs some way of keeping it contained.
Gerard thinks about Battery City before he sleeps, he’s in no rush to go back there - but Mikey’s right, the Dracs took Grace alive and that’s enough to believe she’s still alive now. They must’ve wanted her for something, and Gerard’s probably in a slightly better position to imagine what that something is than Ray or even Mikey.
He feels like they should be doing something more, like they should be loading up on batteries and guns and running to the City. If his life was a story he thinks that they would have called together all the ‘runners in the zones and Gerard would have spoken to them, rallied them all together for an almost-suicide mission and they would drive to Battery City together, storming the buildings, shooting their way through BL/ind and liberating not just Grace but the whole City.
Life, however, isn’t a story and persuading all the Zonerunners to do anything they don’t want to is impossible. Gerard hasn’t taken his pills for years and he doesn’t want to die any longer.
***
They don’t talk about Grace for a few days after that, but Gerard starts a lot of conversations with things like ‘What if…’ and ‘We could just…’ before catching Mikey’s eye and falling silent.
It’s not exactly like ‘running with Rocket and the old crew. Ray’s slowly getting used to the differences - Mikey’s stoic silence compared with the way Full Force would talk continually until Candy found a new and inventive way of shutting him up and how things that would have had Rocket draining the batteries of his raygun just tended to make Gerard smile - but he’s slowly getting into the groove.
He’s even getting used to Gerard’s particular brand of crazy and it’s not too long before he finds himself with a saddlebag full of magazine scraps and nubs of wax crayons that he’s saving for him and occasionally catches himself feeling proud if he recognises one of the pieces in Gerard’s ever-growing collage.
They sleep in the diner if they’re close enough or out in the desert if they’re still ‘hopping. There’s a rhythm to their days, scavenging for food and anything they can trade for a tank of gas to keep ‘running, either dodging the fuck-you patrols BL/ind send into the zones or ghosting them if their batteries are full and they’re feeling cocky enough. He rides with Gerard and Mikey sometimes, Ray tells himself they’re conserving gas, but Mikey can tune the radio to the frequency if it’s playing. A DJ’s voice, smooth like five miles of good road playing music no-one remembers.
Ray finds it comforting and listens to the news reports of cheap gas, patrols and ‘runners he can’t quite put a face to. The DJ mentions his bar once or twice, or rather the lack of it, and seems to know that he’s ‘running with Gerard and Mikey.
Ray knows they all want to find Grace, but none of them know where to start looking beyond Battery City and passing the city limits in the beat-up Trans-Am is probably the fastest way to commit suicide that Ray can think of.
It’s as good as it can get without Grace, Ray thinks, which is why he’s not really surprised when they’re ambushed at a boarded-up store by a van full of Dracs.
***
The store’s completely empty when they break in. They pick hopefully through the wreckage of empty boxes and collapsed shelves for a little while but apart from a handful of empty tin cans they turn up nothing. Sighing, Gerard crawls back out into the desert through the broken window behind Ray and Mikey. He glances around at the dead scrub of the zone surrounding the concrete of the small parking lot.
“Oh.” He mutters half to himself.
“Gee?”
Gerard raises a hand and points at the small raised water tank on the roof. ”What do you think?”
Mikey peers up. “Worth a try.”
“I think I’ve got a rope ladder on the bike.” Ray says. “I’ll go and look.”
Gerard smiles. “Not such a wasted journey if it’s full.”
“Don’t spend your gas money before we check.” Mikey says. “It could be dry.”
“Might not be. Have we got something to carry it in?”
“Probably. I don’t think we moved those bottles out of the car.” Mikey follows Ray back to the road, leaving Gerard to stare up at the tank.
The only warnings he gets are a droning noise, a cut-off yell of alarm from Ray and the fizzflash of a blaster shot that explodes the water tank in a shower of sparks and causes all the water in it to rain down over the parking lot.
Gerard’s drawn his gun before he turns round to face the five or six Dracs fanning out from their van parked in front of Ray’s bike.
Gerard starts firing.
Gerard rolls and comes up shooting, he can hear the rayguns of the Dracs and of Mikey and Ray all around him, they sound so close that he’s surprised to notice Mikey far far off to his left, heading out into the desert with a couple of Dracs following behind and Ray huddling down behind the relative safety of his bike and firing over the back of it. Gerard’s shot fades off harmlessly into the distance and the next pull of the trigger clicks on the battery. Empty. He drops the useless weapon onto the flooded concrete. ‘All that water’, he thinks wildly, ‘we could have sold it for gas and driven wherever we’d wanted.’
The Drac in front of him is now advancing slowly and Gerard’s alone and unarmed - unarmed except for his knife anyway, but he doesn’t fancy his chances against a Drac and a raygun with it. Gerard keeps backing up as the Drac walks forward, its hand at its holster strapped tight to its thigh, but it hasn’t drawn the weapon yet, the pale gloved hand is trembling near the handle though and Gerard wonders if it’d been injured by one of his wild shots after all. The back of Gerard’s boots hit the low step of the building as the Drac steps into the puddle of water. One more step back and that’s as far as he can go, his back hitting the boarded-up door. Gerard swallows, hardly daring to take his eyes from the hand that’s now shaking uncontrollably.
Maybe the Drac’s waiting for him to draw his own gun.
Then he notices the neon still flickering. Although some of the bulbs had blown, it’s still suspended by ropes attached to the porch of the building and it’s anchored right next to him. The neon is swaying slightly in the breeze and hanging right over the spreading puddle of water.
Everything seems to slow down as Gerard’s brain makes all the right connections. Flickering neon meant the power pack hadn’t totally ghosted. Power meant electric and electric and the puddle of water that should have been gas money meant he might have a chance against the Drac after all.
The Drac is shaking harder as Gerard drops the knife into his palm, and he almost wonders if it knows what he’s planning, but he has one chance before the Drac catches up with the game he’s playing and he isn’t going to let it go to waste. He swings out with the razor sharp knife and severs the rope. The neon drops and smashes on the concrete.
It was less impressive than Gerard had expected. The Drac didn’t explode like he’d kinda been hoping; it didn’t even make a noise, just crumpled silently to its knees. Gerard let out a breath he’d been holding for too long. The Drac doesn’t move, just kneels in the puddle with its head down and Gerard takes an uneasy step forward.
He’s never ghosted a Drac with electric before, so he isn’t sure if it’ll stay down. He needs to blast it away just to be positive, but his gun’s still empty on the concrete and although the neon’s stopped flickering now Gerard doesn’t know enough about electric to know if it’s safe to stand in the water.
A quick glance around reveals Mikey far out in the desert but walking slowly back towards him and Ray kneeling on the road next to his bike struggling out of his jacket, left shoulder torn and smoking slightly, he looks like he’s in pain, but Gerard knows Ray’s had enough blasts in his time and as long as he’s still moving then it’s all milkshake.
He takes another step down onto the concrete, sidestepping the tendrils of the puddle. A Drac lies ghosted close by, its raygun on the floor next to it. Gerard thinks he can grab the gun and blast the Drac in the puddle just to be sure, but meanwhile he’s not taking his eyes off it.
Five steps away from the gun though, the Drac’s fingers twitch and Gerard freezes, an unbelievably stupid thing to do, he knows, but all the adrenaline had left him in a rush about eight steps ago and now he’s popped on nothing but his own fear.
The twitch turns into a clenching fist, but Gerard’s on the wrong side of the Drac to see if it’s finally going for its weapon.
Mikey’s still out in the desert, Ray’s trying not to bleed to death and Gerard is frozen, staring at the Drac like every kind of pill-munching Battery City wavehead he thought he’d left behind years ago. He’s going to die.
“MOTHERFUCKING OW!”
Gerard blinks. The Drac’s hand is moving now, up to the side of its mask, clutching it like it’s fighting a headache.
“Motherfuckin’ FUCKING SHIT!”
Gerard’s never heard a Drac swear before now. Hell, he doesn’t think he’s ever heard a Drac SPEAK before now, but the noise somehow kicks him back into movement.
He lunges for the abandoned gun but as he comes up with it, swinging it round and setting the sights on the kneeling Drac, it does something even more surprising than swearing like Dr D on a bad day, and pulls off its mask.
Like hearing a Drac speak, Gerard’s never seen under a Drac’s mask before now, and he’s never felt the need to check the ones he’s ghosted, but as this one grabs at the side of its head and turns to look at him, Gerard thinks that he might start looking if they all look like THAT under the white painted faces. It’s a wildly inappropriate thought, but the Drac stares down the barrel of Gerard’s raygun, blinks once and raises its hands in surrender.
Gerard drops the raygun and starts crying.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Part 3
Sometimes Gerard curls up in the backseat of the car while Mikey drives. It always looks as though it hurts to Mikey, because Gerard isn’t that small and the backseat isn’t that big and he won’t move a muscle for hours. The first time he did it, Mikey hopped three zones in almost as many hours while shooting his brother concerned looks in the rear-view mirror. Gerard had been staring at the rip on the back of the passenger seat and Mikey can’t remember having seen him blink.
Other times, Gerard hangs out of the windows of the car while they’re ‘running, shouting into the desert things that get taken away by the wind before Mikey can hear them and that’s okay too.
He gets used to it, in time, all of it - the hours of silence and staring and the waking screaming from nightmares Gerard pretends he doesn’t have and the cackling mad laughter that sometimes just seems like it bubbles out of him, no place to go other than away, free and open. Mikey thinks that laughter like that is better not locked up inside. It sounds like the sort of laughter that sends people crazy.
These are just the things his brother does sometimes that Mikey doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to understand and then he remembers that they’re ‘running so that he’ll never have to.
***
Home in the zones changes regularly, they nest in whatever empty abandoned buildings they can find. Mikey always makes sure they’re alone though, the last thing he thinks they need are other ‘runners asking questions about them, about Gerard.
At first they found a broken down old Pegasus set back from the dusty road. It’s been stripped clean of anything worth selling long before they found it, but it’s still standing, and the shelves and counter - although chipped and faded - are still bolted to the floor. They sleep in the back room, away from the wide cracked windows even after they’ve found enough scrap wood and bent nails to board them over.
Gerard spends his time ripping up old magazines. Mikey wants to tell him that he’s wasting their gas money, the magazines are so old they’re printed in colour, totally unlike the greyscale ones that come from Battery City and he knows that there’s a market for them. People in the zones are willing to pay a price for anything that keeps their minds from their everyday lives.
Mikey keeps his mouth shut though, because he can see the look on Gerard’s face as he shreds the shiny paper and divides them into piles of colours - blues, reds and greens in stacks on the faded Formica counter weighed down by old cans and rocks. He knows this is how Gerard keeps his mind busy and he’d much rather have him here like this instead of curled up in the backseat of the car staring at nothing.
When Gerard finds a sealed bottle of thick white glue, still sticky even after this long, his eyes light up like Mikey hasn’t seen since he used to get out of the clinic and discover that things other than the whiteblackgrey of the City existed.
Gerard spends hours working on the collage, painstakingly sticking the tiny pieces of paper to the splinter-ridden boards covering the windows. Mikey can’t even begin to imagine what it’s meant to be a picture of - it looks like it could be a face, but if it is then Mikey can’t make out any features apart from the eyes, deepwide and fathomless staring out of the scraps of paper like it’s watching him. Sometimes he feels uneasy but he knows it doesn’t matter what he thinks.
After that Mikey keeps an eye out for art supplies. He trades batteries and bottles of water they probably can’t spare for worn-down coloured pencils and scraps of blank paper. They drive dangerously close to the City to find more glue and magazines, and in every single place they find to sleep for a while Gerard creates his collage.
***
Gerard knows that life in the zones is better than anything they had back in Battery City. It’s not a hard distinction to make at all, even with everything that happens out here - the Drac patrols BL/ind send out just to fuck with all the ‘runners, the scraping for all the things they need, the dust and wreckage of buildings - it’s so much better than the drugs and fear and confusion of his previous life that it’s almost hard to remember that they ever had to deal with them at all.
Sometimes he even finds he almost loves it, a feeling like a punch to the gut when it’s just him and Mikey and the car and music pouring from the radio drawn out of old records by a DJ with a voice like something thick and sweet and inbetween, when it feels almost like Gerard can see the notes spilling from the speakers and down the road behind them like their vapour trail. That’s when he thinks that this life could go on forever and it would only take one more piece of a puzzle to slip into place and he would be in love with it for real and ever and always.
He spends a long time trying to find that puzzle piece.
There are places they will always find other runners. There are bars and Dead Pegasus stations that still have gas and tiny impromptu markets right out in the middle of the desert where water and food and guns and stories are swapped and bartered for. Gerard and Mikey keep to themselves mostly, but sometimes they need parts for the car or a drink or fuel so they have to end up somewhere with other people.
Mikey doesn’t talk to anyone unless it’s directly about the business they’ve come for, keeps himself to sharp nods and ‘How much?’, but Gerard knows there’s still a piece of his puzzle missing and he tries to find it. He’s quiet too, but he finds the time to say things like ‘Yes’ and ‘Please’ and ‘I want’, groaning into the sides of ramshackle buildings and rusty cars as someone behind him pushes their hands into his jeans. Always behind him.
None of them have ever been the piece of the puzzle for Gerard; they’ve been nothing but a distraction.
They can’t make him love anything if he can’t even look them in the eyes.
***
The Drac’s bike skids to the left as the blast from Mikey’s ray gun snaps the masked head back.
“Drive!”
“What the motherloving fuck do you think I’m doing!” demands Gerard, but pushes harder down on the Trans-Am’s accelerator anyway. The bike, now on its side and smoking, retreats into the distance. Mikey hangs out of the window for a few more miles, but nothing else appears on the long low horizon.
Finally slumping back into the passenger seat, he glances over a Gerard, who keeps flicking his eyes away from the road and up to the shattered rear-view mirror.
“We’ve lost them.” Mikey says, as calmly as he can. “There was only one and I ghosted it good, Gee.”
Gerard’s hands are white-knuckled on the steering wheel, but he loosens them slowly, grinning over at his brother with a crazy smile. He laughs.
“Let’s get off the road for a while.” Mikey suggests. “I think we could both do with it.”
***
Jet’s is miles out in the zones, up a dusty track that might have had a bigger purpose in life before, but now just serves as an approach to one of the safest Zonerunner bars out there. There’s a still set up in the back, constantly dripping with the nastiest, harshest spirit in what’s left of the world, but the desert is open for miles around and there’s electric and sometimes water and Jet Star is enough of a presence in the bar to keep most of the fighting outside.
Grace is drawing on the boards over the windows when the Trans-Am pulls up, Mikey doesn’t know where she got the markers from, all the ones he’s found for Gee had dried up long ago, but the colours are bright and Mikey thinks she’s caught the spray of blood from the Drac’s neck quite well.
Gerard pulls his bandana away from his face as he grins down at her, “That looks shiny, kid.” He says, and means every word.
Grace smiles back, shading her eyes with her hand as she looks up.
“Where’d you get the markers?”
“Jet Star traded Bouncer for them. For a can of gas.” She sounds proud, but then makes a face, “I’ve only got three though - I bet I could make a much better picture with more.”
Gerard laughs again. “I’m sure you could.” He says, “But hey, it’s three more than I’ve got.”
***
The first time Ray met Poison and Kobra; he thought they might be insane. The second time, he KNOWS they are.
Poison has flame red hair and spends his time knocking back whatever Ray can sell him and fluctuating between breathless mania and staring blankly at the bare wall of the roadhouse, hardly blinking.
Kobra, at least, is consistent. He drinks sparingly but steadily, always has a slight half-grin on his face like there’s someone whispering jokes only he can hear in his ear and very rarely says anything to anyone who isn’t Poison.
They come by every so often, then head out zonehopping for a while. Grace likes them though, so even if Ray thinks that neither of them is operating on all pistons, he’s usually glad enough to see them.
When they walk into the bar this time, Poison is smiling with what looks like all of his sharp teeth on show and Ray can’t help but think he’s at least in for an entertaining evening.
It just goes to show that the zones still have a way of fucking you over when you least expect it.
***
There are six ‘runners in the roadhouse including Mikey and Gerard when it happens. Jet Star is behind the bar, Grace still hasn’t come in from the desert yet, and the other four are huddled into a corner. Gerard half-recognises them from the zones, but can’t remember their names. He’s staring hard into his glass of murky brown liquid and thinking about how they’re gonna afford their next tank of gas when the door of the bar crashes open, the already fragile wood splintering on the wall behind it. Heads snap up, and there are already several Dracs spreading out.
Everyone pulls their rayguns at the same time, no-one goes anywhere in the zones unarmed, and then everything is just flashes of blasts and noise and Jet Star yelling for Grace and people and Dracs dying all around him. Gerard throws himself behind an upturned table, there’s already somebody behind it - one of the crew from the corner, but he’s on his back with a hole between his eyes, and Gerard suddenly remembers he’s called Lunacy Fringe and they met once a few cycles back in a Pegasus out in zone two where they got into a fight over the last tank of gas and then they might have fucked in the back room while Mikey flipped through magazines and tried to pretend he didn’t know what was happening, but he’s fucking dead now, so none of that really matters anymore, does it?
Gerard screams into the bar, louder than he can remember since... since something happened to him that he can’t won’t remember even if all he can remember is dark eyes watching him through a thin strip of glass and shoots anything he can see dressed in white.
***
When the smoke clears, Ray is standing on the bartop, raygun smoking in his hand. The only other movement in the bar comes from Poison and Kobra.
Poison is crouched behind an upturned table surrounded by bodies of Dracs and runners. His red hair is smoking slightly as though the colour has set itself on fire. Kobra is kneeling down by the body of a Drac lying in the blasted open doorway, fiddling with its raygun.
“Where’s Grace?” Ray demands. “Where the fuck is she!” He stares around at the ruin of the bar again, hoping for her to pop up grinning from somewhere or to hear his voice from wherever she’d cleverly hidden and come running back inside, but nothing happens.
Kobra looks out into the desert and shakes his head. “Dracs.” He mutters, mostly to himself.
“What?”
Kobra finally looks at him. “The Dracs took her, Jet. Grabbed her into the back of their van… Shit.”
Ray can’t seem to process the info for a moment, but he can’t see that there’s any reason for Kobra to lie about it. He likes Grace, he knows that for sure and Ray’s pretty sure he’s friendly enough with him for Kobra not to fuck him around like this. “The Dracs took Grace?” he repeats dumbly. “Why?”
Kobra takes a step towards him, strapping his gun back into its holster. He holds out a hand. “Jet…”
From the corner, Poison starts laughing; rocking backwards and forwards on his knees crouched over the dead body of a Zonerunner and cackling wildly. It shocks Ray into movement, jumping down off the counter. His gun is still in his hand from the firefight and before he knows what’s happening it’s pressed against the side of Party Poison’s head. “What the fuck?” he demands as Poison covers his face with his gloved hands, breathing deeply in between great heaving bursts of laughter. “You think this shit is FUNNY!?”
Ray is pretty sure that his finger was just about to tighten on the trigger, that he was a split second away from ghosting Party Poison right there in his bar when Kobra’s hand clamps down on his wrist and drags his hand away.
“Don’t you fucking threaten my brother.” He says in a low voice. He sounds more dangerous than anyone Ray has ever heard. Somehow though, neither that nor the gun held to his ribs by Kobra’s other hand is what makes him flip the safety.
“Brother?” he asks, “He’s your brother for real?” He’s never heard of ‘runners having family. He grew up in a place out of the way in zone four, sharing the floorspace of an abandoned Pegasus with eight other people, any or none of which could have been his parents. People don’t have ties like that out here. You have a crew, not family.
“For real.” Kobra says, still menacing. “You okay, Poison?”
His laughter is starting to sound more like tears now, but his face is still hidden by his hands so Ray can’t tell for sure.
Kobra turns his attention back to Ray, “You don’t want to get into this with us.” He says. “The Dracs took Grace, and we know she’s your crew and we’re sorry she’s gone, but we’re not the enemy here. Okay?”
Ray holsters his gun and takes a step back. Even through the thick leather of his jacket he thinks he might develop a bruise in his side from Kobra’s threats. “What’s his problem?” he asks, nodding his head at Poison. Kobra ignores him.
“It’s not safe here anymore. We’ve got to go.”
***
Kobra’s filling up the tank of their car from a rusting can when Ray walks out of the roadhouse with his duffle bag slung over his shoulder. He can just see the top of Poison’s bright red hair through the passenger side window. Kobra looks up.
“I have to find her.” Ray says in answer to Kobra’s silent question.
Kobra nods and caps the gas can.
“I’m sorry about, you know… the gun.”
“Just don’t do it again.” Kobra says, shrugging. “I kinda like you, Jet and I’d feel bad if I had to ghost you.”
“Ray.” Ray says impulsively.
Kobra raises an eyebrow.
“I’m Ray.” He clarifies. “You know… for real.” He doesn’t know why he says it, but Kobra’s ‘running with his honest-to-God brother and if Ray’s going to go get himself ghosted looking for Grace, he thinks he’d like someone to have known his real name.
Kobra stares at him for a long while. “We’ve got a place out in zone five.” He says finally. “It’s safe enough.”
Ray glances at his bike. He knows what Kobra’s offering, a new crew to run with - it might be like Rocket and Force and Candy all over again and Ray had thought he’d left all that behind when he found Grace and the bar. But now the bar’s a wreck and Grace is missing and Ray is surprised by how much he wants it. “I want to find her.”
“You know where to start looking?” Kobra asks, but it doesn’t sound like he’s trying to be mean.
Ray sighs. “I guess not.”
Kobra nods in the direction of Ray’s bike. “Follow us then.”
He digs the keys out of his pocket and heads towards the parked bike.
“Hey.” Kobra’s got the door to the car open now, looking at him over the roof and shading his eyes with his hand. “I’m Mikey.” He says. “That’s Gerard.”
Just like that, Ray has a new crew.
***
Poison - Gerard - is awake by the time Ray pulls up beside the Trans-Am behind a broken down diner. He looks up at Ray from the cocoon he’s made on the passenger seat out of ragged blankets and his leather jacket.
“Hey.” He says, kicking the door open and levering himself upright, unfolding out of the hunched over position he had been in. “Welcome to the nest.”
Ray acknowledges this with a nod. He’s not sure how to act around Gerard now that he’s put a gun to his head - and he’s heard stories about the two of them. Mostly just the general bar-room gossip that gets spun about all the ‘runners in the zones - Dracs they’ve ghosted, things they’ve done, allegiances and enemies with other crews - but sometimes the tales he’s been told about Mikey and Gerard have been different. Ones he’s never heard said about the other patrons of his bar and that’s enough to make him feel maybe slightly uneasy.
Of course, they seem okay enough, not operating on all pistons perhaps, but Ray’s hard pressed to think of any ‘runners that are one hundred percent milkshake in the brain department so he’ll give them the benefit of the doubt for now.
Gerard shrugs his jacket back on and stumbles towards the diner. He glances back over his shoulder, “Come on then.”
Mikey’s started making dinner and Gerard is nowhere to be seen by the time Ray drops his bag on one of the cracked tables. He glances around the place; it looks similar to all the other abandoned diners across the zones, long counter and tiny booths, with a wide double swing door leading back into what used to be the kitchen. Mikey has his back to him behind the counter, a haphazard pile of cans next to him jumbled up in a stained sink.
It’s getting dark, but as Ray turns to check his exit strategy he can still make out the giant picture on the wall next to the window. He’s started to walk closer to it before he knows what he’s doing.
The picture is made up of tiny pieces of paper stuck to the peeling boards and it makes Ray feel almost uncomfortable to look at but he can’t quite pin down the reason why.
“It’s Gerard’s.” Mikey says from behind him. Ray wheels around.
“It’s…” Ray starts, but since he doesn’t know what it is, he lets the sentence trail off.
Mikey looks at him. “It’s Gerard’s.” he repeats firmly. It’s actually more of an explanation than Ray would have thought.
“What is it of?” he asks.
Mikey shrugs. “He’s never said.” He turns back to the pile of cans on the counter. “Sleep wherever.” he says shortly, “But you’ll probably be best off staying away from the back room.”
Six hours later, Ray realises that what Mikey meant was that he and Gerard didn’t necessarily want to keep the back room for themselves; they just got it because one of them wakes up screaming. A couple of years living with a kid, even one as self-possessed as Grace makes Ray wake up the instant he hears the noise. Lying on the floor of the diner for a few moments, he wonders what’s happening and if he should go and see if he can help when he sees the shadowy figure of Mikey in the doorway leading to the back room. He stares down at Ray.
“Go back to sleep.” He says, arms crossed over his chest. “It’s nothing.”
It doesn’t sound like nothing to Ray, even though the screams have stopped now, have levelled out to a panicked hitching of breath, but it’s early days yet and he doesn’t want to stick his nose in where it’s not wanted. So he nods, not sure if Mikey can even see him in the dark, “Okay.”
It’s just another thing he guesses he’s gonna have to get used to.
***
The next morning, no-one mentions anything. Gerard emerges from the back room just as Ray’s shrugging on his jacket. He has his goggles pushed up onto his head, making his hair more of a mess than usual. He grins at Ray when he sees him. He seems to have more teeth than anyone Ray’s ever seen before.
“Oh, hey. Hi. Kobra… I mean Mikey I guess, said you were still here. I never really introduced myself, did I? I’m Gerard. We should probably be on first name terms if you’re planning on shaking it with our crew.” He laughs again, but this time it sounds more genuine than back at the roadhouse, an odd honking noise that makes Ray start to smile in return. “Well, I say crew, but two’s not really much of a crew is it? More of a pair, really! But you’re here now, so I guess that makes us a crew now. Do you think we should think of a name?”
This seems like a real question, but Ray gets as far as “Uh…” before Gerard plows on.
“I’m sure we’ll think of something good. I’ll ask Mikey, he’s usually got some good ideas. Are you hungry? We’ve probably gotta go and scavenge some more to eat so I don’t know what we’ve got around. Hang on…” Gerard vanishes back into the rear of the diner.
“Uh…” Ray repeats to the empty room.
***
“Your brother’s insane.” He says to Mikey later on that day. He doesn’t really mean to, it’s not the sort of thing you say to well-armed people you’ve only just met, but it just slips out while Gerard haggles for gas in a Pegasus station in zone three. He’s watching him through the cracked window and it seems to involve a lot of arm gestures. Mikey’s flipping through one of the black and white magazines that Battery City produces. There aren’t any pictures.
Mikey raises an eyebrow. “You wouldn’t be the first person to say that.” He says, but Ray hasn’t had enough practice to be able to tell if he’s insulted or not. He goes with ‘not’ purely because he still seems to be standing.
“Does he actually need to breathe?”
The eyebrow lowers. “You saw him this morning then?”
“Uh-huh. He thinks we need a name for our crew.”
Mikey drops the magazine on the dusty ground. No-one’s going to pay for it. Not even Gerard would want it for the growing collage of colours back at the diner.
“He gets like that sometimes.” That’s all Mikey says before Gerard emerges from the station, giving them the thumbs up sign.
***
When the sun gets too hot to drive sweating in leather jackets, they pull off the route into the shade of a rock cliff and Ray joins them in the car.
Gerard seems closer to normal than Ray has seen before.
“Do you have any idea why the Dracs would have taken Grace?” he asks, passing a canteen full of water back to Ray. He thinks about it as he unscrews the cap.
“Not really.” He admits eventually. “I mean, I guess I could think of a reason for taking her but the whole thing doesn’t really make much sense. They seemed to have made her the priority target. I mean, we barely got out of that place alive. One or two more of them and we would have been ghosted along with the other ‘runners and they must have had that many stay outside to deal with Grace. She bites.”
Mikey nods. “I’ve been thinking the same thing. It doesn’t motor does it? If it’d been just a regular fuck-you patrol, the Dracs would have been better taking out the ‘runners in the bar and leaving one girl. It must have been about her.
Gerard wrinkles his nose. “I really don’t think I’m gonna want to know the reason why.”
They’re quiet for a while as the canteen passes around the car and back to Ray.
Mikey says “She’ll be in Battery City by now, won’t she?”
“Probably.” Ray answers. It’s only logical.
Gerard says nothing, but stares silently out of the window, his drawn-up foot tapping out a nervous rhythm on the dash.
***
That night, Mikey and Ray spread out blankets next to the small campfire they’ve lit in the desert and Gerard sleeps in the trunk of the car. Ray looks confused when he climbs into the trunk and tugs the door closed but Gerard leaves it to Mikey to explain. Mikey never questions his weirdness - he had nodded when Gerard had first wanted to sleep somewhere enclosed and had said ‘Sure. I’ll see you in the morning.’ Anyway, it’s not as though he does it every night. But now, with Ray so close and Grace missing Gerard feels like his brain is about to fly apart and needs some way of keeping it contained.
Gerard thinks about Battery City before he sleeps, he’s in no rush to go back there - but Mikey’s right, the Dracs took Grace alive and that’s enough to believe she’s still alive now. They must’ve wanted her for something, and Gerard’s probably in a slightly better position to imagine what that something is than Ray or even Mikey.
He feels like they should be doing something more, like they should be loading up on batteries and guns and running to the City. If his life was a story he thinks that they would have called together all the ‘runners in the zones and Gerard would have spoken to them, rallied them all together for an almost-suicide mission and they would drive to Battery City together, storming the buildings, shooting their way through BL/ind and liberating not just Grace but the whole City.
Life, however, isn’t a story and persuading all the Zonerunners to do anything they don’t want to is impossible. Gerard hasn’t taken his pills for years and he doesn’t want to die any longer.
***
They don’t talk about Grace for a few days after that, but Gerard starts a lot of conversations with things like ‘What if…’ and ‘We could just…’ before catching Mikey’s eye and falling silent.
It’s not exactly like ‘running with Rocket and the old crew. Ray’s slowly getting used to the differences - Mikey’s stoic silence compared with the way Full Force would talk continually until Candy found a new and inventive way of shutting him up and how things that would have had Rocket draining the batteries of his raygun just tended to make Gerard smile - but he’s slowly getting into the groove.
He’s even getting used to Gerard’s particular brand of crazy and it’s not too long before he finds himself with a saddlebag full of magazine scraps and nubs of wax crayons that he’s saving for him and occasionally catches himself feeling proud if he recognises one of the pieces in Gerard’s ever-growing collage.
They sleep in the diner if they’re close enough or out in the desert if they’re still ‘hopping. There’s a rhythm to their days, scavenging for food and anything they can trade for a tank of gas to keep ‘running, either dodging the fuck-you patrols BL/ind send into the zones or ghosting them if their batteries are full and they’re feeling cocky enough. He rides with Gerard and Mikey sometimes, Ray tells himself they’re conserving gas, but Mikey can tune the radio to the frequency if it’s playing. A DJ’s voice, smooth like five miles of good road playing music no-one remembers.
Ray finds it comforting and listens to the news reports of cheap gas, patrols and ‘runners he can’t quite put a face to. The DJ mentions his bar once or twice, or rather the lack of it, and seems to know that he’s ‘running with Gerard and Mikey.
Ray knows they all want to find Grace, but none of them know where to start looking beyond Battery City and passing the city limits in the beat-up Trans-Am is probably the fastest way to commit suicide that Ray can think of.
It’s as good as it can get without Grace, Ray thinks, which is why he’s not really surprised when they’re ambushed at a boarded-up store by a van full of Dracs.
***
The store’s completely empty when they break in. They pick hopefully through the wreckage of empty boxes and collapsed shelves for a little while but apart from a handful of empty tin cans they turn up nothing. Sighing, Gerard crawls back out into the desert through the broken window behind Ray and Mikey. He glances around at the dead scrub of the zone surrounding the concrete of the small parking lot.
“Oh.” He mutters half to himself.
“Gee?”
Gerard raises a hand and points at the small raised water tank on the roof. ”What do you think?”
Mikey peers up. “Worth a try.”
“I think I’ve got a rope ladder on the bike.” Ray says. “I’ll go and look.”
Gerard smiles. “Not such a wasted journey if it’s full.”
“Don’t spend your gas money before we check.” Mikey says. “It could be dry.”
“Might not be. Have we got something to carry it in?”
“Probably. I don’t think we moved those bottles out of the car.” Mikey follows Ray back to the road, leaving Gerard to stare up at the tank.
The only warnings he gets are a droning noise, a cut-off yell of alarm from Ray and the fizzflash of a blaster shot that explodes the water tank in a shower of sparks and causes all the water in it to rain down over the parking lot.
Gerard’s drawn his gun before he turns round to face the five or six Dracs fanning out from their van parked in front of Ray’s bike.
Gerard starts firing.
Gerard rolls and comes up shooting, he can hear the rayguns of the Dracs and of Mikey and Ray all around him, they sound so close that he’s surprised to notice Mikey far far off to his left, heading out into the desert with a couple of Dracs following behind and Ray huddling down behind the relative safety of his bike and firing over the back of it. Gerard’s shot fades off harmlessly into the distance and the next pull of the trigger clicks on the battery. Empty. He drops the useless weapon onto the flooded concrete. ‘All that water’, he thinks wildly, ‘we could have sold it for gas and driven wherever we’d wanted.’
The Drac in front of him is now advancing slowly and Gerard’s alone and unarmed - unarmed except for his knife anyway, but he doesn’t fancy his chances against a Drac and a raygun with it. Gerard keeps backing up as the Drac walks forward, its hand at its holster strapped tight to its thigh, but it hasn’t drawn the weapon yet, the pale gloved hand is trembling near the handle though and Gerard wonders if it’d been injured by one of his wild shots after all. The back of Gerard’s boots hit the low step of the building as the Drac steps into the puddle of water. One more step back and that’s as far as he can go, his back hitting the boarded-up door. Gerard swallows, hardly daring to take his eyes from the hand that’s now shaking uncontrollably.
Maybe the Drac’s waiting for him to draw his own gun.
Then he notices the neon still flickering. Although some of the bulbs had blown, it’s still suspended by ropes attached to the porch of the building and it’s anchored right next to him. The neon is swaying slightly in the breeze and hanging right over the spreading puddle of water.
Everything seems to slow down as Gerard’s brain makes all the right connections. Flickering neon meant the power pack hadn’t totally ghosted. Power meant electric and electric and the puddle of water that should have been gas money meant he might have a chance against the Drac after all.
The Drac is shaking harder as Gerard drops the knife into his palm, and he almost wonders if it knows what he’s planning, but he has one chance before the Drac catches up with the game he’s playing and he isn’t going to let it go to waste. He swings out with the razor sharp knife and severs the rope. The neon drops and smashes on the concrete.
It was less impressive than Gerard had expected. The Drac didn’t explode like he’d kinda been hoping; it didn’t even make a noise, just crumpled silently to its knees. Gerard let out a breath he’d been holding for too long. The Drac doesn’t move, just kneels in the puddle with its head down and Gerard takes an uneasy step forward.
He’s never ghosted a Drac with electric before, so he isn’t sure if it’ll stay down. He needs to blast it away just to be positive, but his gun’s still empty on the concrete and although the neon’s stopped flickering now Gerard doesn’t know enough about electric to know if it’s safe to stand in the water.
A quick glance around reveals Mikey far out in the desert but walking slowly back towards him and Ray kneeling on the road next to his bike struggling out of his jacket, left shoulder torn and smoking slightly, he looks like he’s in pain, but Gerard knows Ray’s had enough blasts in his time and as long as he’s still moving then it’s all milkshake.
He takes another step down onto the concrete, sidestepping the tendrils of the puddle. A Drac lies ghosted close by, its raygun on the floor next to it. Gerard thinks he can grab the gun and blast the Drac in the puddle just to be sure, but meanwhile he’s not taking his eyes off it.
Five steps away from the gun though, the Drac’s fingers twitch and Gerard freezes, an unbelievably stupid thing to do, he knows, but all the adrenaline had left him in a rush about eight steps ago and now he’s popped on nothing but his own fear.
The twitch turns into a clenching fist, but Gerard’s on the wrong side of the Drac to see if it’s finally going for its weapon.
Mikey’s still out in the desert, Ray’s trying not to bleed to death and Gerard is frozen, staring at the Drac like every kind of pill-munching Battery City wavehead he thought he’d left behind years ago. He’s going to die.
“MOTHERFUCKING OW!”
Gerard blinks. The Drac’s hand is moving now, up to the side of its mask, clutching it like it’s fighting a headache.
“Motherfuckin’ FUCKING SHIT!”
Gerard’s never heard a Drac swear before now. Hell, he doesn’t think he’s ever heard a Drac SPEAK before now, but the noise somehow kicks him back into movement.
He lunges for the abandoned gun but as he comes up with it, swinging it round and setting the sights on the kneeling Drac, it does something even more surprising than swearing like Dr D on a bad day, and pulls off its mask.
Like hearing a Drac speak, Gerard’s never seen under a Drac’s mask before now, and he’s never felt the need to check the ones he’s ghosted, but as this one grabs at the side of its head and turns to look at him, Gerard thinks that he might start looking if they all look like THAT under the white painted faces. It’s a wildly inappropriate thought, but the Drac stares down the barrel of Gerard’s raygun, blinks once and raises its hands in surrender.
Gerard drops the raygun and starts crying.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Part 3