The Butchers Read online

  “Yes. Sit here and be quiet,” I repeat. “It’s the most important thing we can do.”

  At that moment, an inhuman wail erupts from the other side of the room.

  Mo lurches up like a puppet yanked on a string. Her eyes pop, her body twitches. In an instant, she’s up on all fours. Howling.

  “Mo!” I lurch forward, reaching for her.

  “Shut her up!” Sissy says, grabbing onto Doc.

  I cross the room in four steps and sweep her into my arms. “Mo, it’s okay. Calm down.”

  Teeth sink into my hand. Hard.

  Reacting without thought, my arms go loose.

  Mo scampers away, still howling.

  She bit me. She looked at me like she didn’t even know me, and she bit me.

  “You need to quiet her down,” Desdemona says, watching out the window. “They’re going to hear!”

  I rush toward the door, my chest constricting. Following the sound of her howls, I take two flights of stairs and turn down a debris-filled hallway. Here, the plaster from the ceiling has let loose due to water damage and I have to climb over bits of it to get to where her sounds are coming from. When she sees me, her cries get even louder. She hoots like a monkey and flashes her teeth. Her eyes are wild.

  “Mo,” I say, unnerved, “it’s Mama.” She’s never done this before.

  She doesn’t react. Doesn’t recognize me.

  What has Nessa done?

  I creep closer, trying not to panic. Her sounds are no quieter, but I don’t want her to bolt into the city. “Mo, honey. It’s okay. It’s me. Remember?” I crouch down, adopting the most gentle posture I can, palms open, shoulders slouched, head low. With one hand I dig in my pocket and pull out some jerky. Her eyes follow my movements. She’s not howling anymore, but making small grunting sounds in the back of her throat.

  I hold out the jerky. “Here, baby. You have to be hungry.”

  She sniffs, crawling a few wary steps toward me. I’m reminded of when we first met, months ago. How are we back to this?

  She creeps closer and closer, watching me for sudden movements. Finally, she snatches the meat away and gnaws at it angrily. Then she tolerates me touching her arm. After a few moments, she allows me to pull her body to mine. I pick her up, holding her firmly, but gently and walk back upstairs.

  When I get to the room, I shake my head in apology. “I don’t know what’s gotten into h—” I stop, realizing Desdemona and Doc’s posture beside the window. There are guns in their hands.

  Slowly, Desi brings a hand to her lips. Then nods down.

  Carefully, I creep up, holding Mo tight. Down on the street, three men with guns are running toward our building. They’re coming for us.

  What do we do? I mouth to Doc and Desi. Desi hands me a gun. She nods to the wall beside the entrance. I clutch Mo and the gun, centering myself against the wall so I can’t be seen by someone coming up the stairs. Desdemona gives one more look and then walks out of the room.

  Where are you going? I mouth, but she doesn’t answer me.

  Doc grabs a gun and stands on the other side of the doorway, facing me. He looks weak, his plaster-covered face spiked with red from the wound on his head. Here we are again, risking our lives for each other, and I don’t even know if I can trust him. When he tries to meet my gaze, I look away. What if he betrays us again?

  Sissy looks up at us from the other side of the room, her stare floaty and faraway. “What’s happening?”

  I wave her over to me, but she doesn’t seem to budge.

  “Sissy,” I whisper, flapping my hand. “Get over here.”

  She just stares at me.

  I start to move to get her and drag her over to me, or at least move her so she won’t be seen from the hallway, but footsteps inside the building make me freeze. The stairs creak. Someone is coming up.

  Giving Mo the last of my beef jerky, I try to cage her against the wall with my legs while readying the gun. When I do look at Doc again, he’s holding his weapon, but he looks like he’ll barely be able to keep standing, let alone shoot.

  “Up here!” a male voice shouts.

  Sissy’s eyes snap to the hallway. She opens her mouth and starts screaming.

  I tense, waiting for my moment, but the shrieking sets Mo off. She starts howling and struggling against my legs. I reach down to grab her, and she slips between my calves and runs out of the door.

  Lurching after her, I come face to face with a Butcher.

  Bald head. Tattooed. Awful expression on his meaty, red face. The man grabs my arm and pins it with his strength, making my gun clatter to the ground. I reach back to punch him, but then he has a gun in my ribs before I can struggle.

  “Don’t move, bender.” His breath is rancid. I’m so close I can see his yellowing teeth and the pits in his cheeks.

  “Didn’t anyone teach you to keep your hands to yourself,” I snap back. The gun digs hard into my ribs, but my eyes are on Mo, who another of the three Butchers has snatched up and is wrestling with. “Let her go!” I shout at him.

  The gun jabs so hard into my side, my wind is knocked away. I buckle, gasping for air and then am yanked up by my wrist.

  “Who else is here? This pretty? Anyone else?” He looks past me to Sissy, who is sitting in a ball, crying and holding her knees.

  “The three of us are it. Let us go, and you’ll be paid handsomely. It’s the only handsome you’ll get with a face like that.”

  He doesn’t take my bait, looking at Sissy instead. “Another Breeders girl, eh? Thought we got all of you. Must’ve flushed out when the hospital came down.” He pulls me along, walking into the room toward Sissy.

  There’s a crack. I flinch as the gun goes off close to my head. The man who held my wrist suddenly lets go. As I turn to look, warm hot blood splatters on my neck and face. A fountain has opened up on his neck, spewing everywhere as he clutches at it and stumbles into the wall. More blood paints the plaster. The two men below shout up and start running our way.

  My ears ringing, I turn to Doc, but he seems to have fainted. He’s slumped against the wall, eyes closed. I can’t see the gun.

  Scrambling, I reach under him, fumbling for metal, but one of the two remaining men makes it to me first. Hands pull at my hair, yanking my head back. I swing, hitting him somewhere that makes him oomph, but a blade presses to my throat, sharp and cold.

  I freeze, feeling the steel at my windpipe. Behind me, Mo is shrieking.

  “Finish her,” another voice say behind me. Mo’s shrieking grows closer.

  “It’s okay, Mo,” I say, feeling the bite of the blade against my skin. Something warm and red runs into my collar. “Mommy’s here. It’s going to be okay.”

  But it’s not, I feel the blade begin to slice. More blood pools on my collar.

  There’s commotion in the doorway. A man cries out. The sound of cracking wood echoes, and then the knife is gone. I stumble away, my hands clutching my throat. Lifting my head, I see a blur of sand-colored arms and legs. Desdemona uses her bow to beat the man to the floor. A few more brutal whacks, and he stops moving.

  Applying pressure to my wound, I stare up at her. “Thanks.”

  “You okay?” she asks, coming forward. She helps me apply a bandage to my throat, but pronounces that he only cut a thin layer of skin, and I will be fine.

  I don’t feel fine, but Mo is shrieking, so I go to her in the corner and try to comfort her. She’s so scared she eventually crawls into my arms, though she doesn’t really seem to remember who I am.

  Desdemona is able to rouse Doc. He sits up, looking lost and disoriented. Then she manages to get Sissy to quiet down. When Desi comes back to me, she looks sweaty but triumphant.

  “You saved us again,” I say, holding Mo to me.

  She shrugs as if the comment means nothing. “One over there is still alive.” She nods at the man who had Mo, another bald, tattooed nightmare, this one tall and lank with three missing fingers on his right hand. Desi rolls him over w
ith her boot and he moans. “What should we do with him?”

  “Tie him up,” I say, bouncing Mo. “There’s been enough killing.”

  Desdemona’s eyes lock onto me from behind her mask. “If he gets free, he’ll head back to their base and tell the rest of them about us.”

  I suck in a breath, knowing she’s right. If Clay were here, he’d say the same thing. And this is a Butcher for God’s sake. Who knows how many people he’s killed? But I’ve just never been good at dispensing death like that. In the moment, sure. After the adrenaline has worn off, not so much. He’s a person, no matter how rotten his core has become. And there’s so few of us left.

  Desdemona walks over, lashes his hands with some twine from her satchel, and pulls her face mask down. Then she grabs a handful of hair, yanking up on the man’s head until his eyes pop open. He looks between our faces, terrified.

  “You are part of the gang who call themselves the Butchers, yeah?” she asks.

  Unable to nod because of how hard she’s wrenching on his head, he just makes sounds in his throat that sound like, “Uhn, uhn.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” she responds. “Were you part of the group that took the women from this hospital?”

  Sissy’s head snaps up at this. She stares, waiting intently for his answer.

  At first he seems afraid to answer until Desdemona finds the knife of the man who attacked me and starts applying it to his windpipe. More grunting noises seem to confirm it.

  “And you have other women there, yes?” Desi asks, twirling the blade where he can see it.

  He nods, eyes wild with fear.

  Deliberately, Desi draws off her face mask. “Is there a woman there that looks like me?”

  His eyes take in her face and widen. Recognition?

  “Thought so.” She slabs the knife down, burying it nearly to the hilt in the floor boards. She turns to me. “We need to follow their tracks and find their base. I’ve been waiting a long time for an opportunity like this.”

  “Wait a minute. No one said anything about taking on the Butchers.”

  “And why not?” Sissy pipes up. “They have my mom. They have her mom. How many other mothers and daughters are sold into slavery? Who knows what they’re doing to them?” Sissy chokes on the last words as more tears stream down her face. “I want her back!” she yells at the man before burying her face in her knees again.

  Desdemona looks at me like, See.

  I can’t believe what they’re saying. “You think that you, me, Clay, and the rest of our gang are going to take on dozens, maybe hundreds of armed men? There are three of us that can fight between us.”

  “I can fight,” Doc croaks, holding his head.

  I look at his pale face and almost laugh. “You have a head injury.”

  “I can fight,” Sissy says. “Teach me how to shoot.”

  I openly laugh at this. “You have to be kidding me.”

  “I was nine when I learned to shoot.” Desdemona gives me a no-nonsense look.

  I search from face to face, looking for any port in the storm and finding none. Shaking my head, I rock Mo. “Wait until Clay gets here. He’ll tell you what a stupid idea this is.”

  Footsteps sound outside. We all jump up, grabbing for guns.

  But Clay’s Stetson appears before his face. He takes the remaining stairs two at a time, his eyes roving over the three bodies before stopping at the bandage at my throat. “What happened?” he asks, rushing in and falling on his knees before me.

  “I’m okay,” I say, reassuring him. “We’re all fine thanks to Desdemona.”

  Once again, she ignores my compliment. “We all think we should go after the Butchers. What say you?”

  I wait for him to shoot them all down.

  He stands up, hefting his gun. “I think that’s the best idea I’ve heard all day.”

  Clay

  I stand there and take Riley’s growls and pointed fingers as she tells me all the reasons why what I’m proposin’ is a bad idea.

  “—you have any idea what type of army we’ll be up against? How many men? How many guns?”

  “I don’t know, but I can find out. And we have guns, too. Lots of them.”

  She makes that exasperated look, pinched brow and sour mouth. I want to lean down and kiss it, but I know she’ll whack me if I do. “There are only three trained fighters in our group, and the rest are no help at all.” She lowers her voice, lookin’ toward the stairs where the rest of the group is restin’.

  We’ve gathered Betsy, Auntie, and Ethan to add to Desdemona, Doc, and Sissy. And she’s right about not havin’ enough trained gunslingers in our midst. Desdemona has proven her worth and then some. Doc is fine with a gun, but he’s got a concussion and is not much good to us right now. Auntie is about a hundred years old with tremblin’ hands. Ethan is nine, Sissy fourteen. And Betsy? She’s a nut case. I wouldn’t give her a gun if she were the last hand on earth.

  So, yeah, a mess.

  “We can train ’em,” I say. “Ethan’s already makin’ good headway with the gun I gave him.” She shoots me a dirty look, which I ignore. “And Auntie can hold her own when she needs to. Doc will recover and Sissy might prove to be a good addition.”

  “How do we even know where to look?”

  “Sissy overheard ’em talkin’ about Shiprock. It’s a land formation north and west of here. ’Bout three hundred miles.”

  “We got gas to get there?”

  I shrug. “We can find it. Always have.”

  She snorts and folds her arms, glancin’ over at Mo on some rags by the door. We all know she’s worried about Mo, about what takin’ her into a war zone is gonna mean.

  “Sissy thinks they may have taken some doctors with them to their compound. Makes sense. Everyone needs doctors. There could be someone there that can help Mo.”

  When Riley looks up at me next, there are tears in her eyes. It breaks my heart to see her hurtin’ and so often. I pull her into my arms, and this time she relents. Holdin’ her close, I do my best to comfort her.

  “She’s gonna be okay,” I say into her hair.

  “She bit me, Clay. She didn’t even know who I was. What did Nessa do to her?”

  I don’t answer because I got no good answer. Nessa messed with my memories a while back, takin’ chunks of my life away. She messed with Betsy until she became a cuckoo. There’s no tellin’ what she did to Mo. Even dead, my mother still haunts us.

  “I’m not giving up on her,” she says, foldin’ into me.

  “Then we go on to the Butchers. There’s nothing for us here. Nothing behind us.” I grip her shoulders and try to make her see. “If they’re out there, we’ll always have to hide. We’ll never be safe.”

  “So fight and die, or hide and die later?” she asks.

  “I’m hopin’ to leave out the dyin’ part.”

  “We’ve been through tight scrapes before,” she says, “but how long can our luck hold out, Clay? We can’t always get lucky.”

  I offer her a smile. “Good news is, I was born lucky.”

  She rolls her eyes, but a smile climbs up her face. “You were born with an unrelenting sense of self-esteem.”

  I kiss her mouth this time. “And you love it.”

  Slingin’ my arm around her, I walk her back to the others. We’ve left the bodies in another buildin’ on the strip and found one a little bit cozier. This six-story brick and steel tower used to be someone’s house until just recently. Unfortunately, it looks like the owner might be in that pile of bodies in the park square. Fortunately, we found jerky, jugs of water, jarred peaches, and a sack of flour. We also found a flour sack mattress stuffed with straw, a worn blanket, a dull knife, a cast-iron skillet, and a few other items.

  Sissy found an old floppy hat that she tucked her long hair into. Sissy worries me. She and Betsy are about as off the rails as you can get, with good reason of course. But I can’t help worryin’; the number of vulnerable women I guard has now doubl
ed.

  Am I a fool to go after the Butchers? Is it a macho male desire, driven by revenge and blood lust? Maybe. I want to kill those sons of bitches somethin’ awful. But I meant what I said about them needin’ to be dead. They’ll always be on our backs if we don’t do somethin’. And I hate that skulkin’ hidin’ sort of life. I want to be free of it. For Riley. For Ethan. For all of ’em.

  Maybe I thought that, with my mother dead, the worry would go. But her ghost hangs over this place just as the dust still floats on the air. And the sad part is, there are worse than her right down the road. So killin’ her wasn’t enough. Maybe it won’t never be.

  Shovin’ aside my worry and want, I walk through the dusty rooms, takin’ stock of who’s where and what’s happenin’. Auntie has taken on mindin’ Betsy and Sissy, though the two of them don’t really get along. And Ethan has made himself a watchman, holdin’ his gun very serious-like at his post at the front of the room. I give him a nod and a pat as I walk by, and he gives me a serious wink. More and more like a man every day, that kid.

  Riley has Mo in a back room. So, where the hell is Doc?

  I walk up the steps and sweep the second floor. Seein’ nothing out of place, I go up again. When I enter the bare room to my left, there he is, curled in a corner. With the plaster dust still all over him, he looks like a ghost. That is until he turns his still bloody face in my direction. When he sees it’s me, he buries his face toward the wall again.

  I walk up. “All right?”

  “I’m fine,” he says quickly, not lookin’ at me.

  “Need somethin’ to clean your wound up? Auntie’s got a concoction she carries around. Swear it’ll keep the infection out.”

  “I don’t need anything. Thanks,” he shoots back.

  I take a few more steps, leanin’ against one of the walls opposite him. Outside the window, night is fallin’. Without the Breeders’ lights, the city will be dark tonight.

  “I can’t believe it’s gone,” I say, lookin’ out at the pile of rubble. “You know, I used to wish it. I used to picture blowin’ it up or shuttin’ its doors forever, but now that it’s gone . . . I don’t know. It’s almost a little sad. Not that the girls are bein’ taken advantage of or anythin’ like that. But at least with it here, you had a sense that humanity might survive this shit storm. Now, I just . . . don’t know.”