Malcolm convulses for a moment longer. And when I finally let go, having spent everything I have on him, he crumples to the floor in a smoking heap.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” says Margaret. “What a mess.”
But she has barely finished her sentence when Jude grabs Malcolm’s gun and is pointing it at me.
“Since when have you been able to do that again?” he asks me, face uncharacteristically serious. “Since when have your abilities come back?”
I sigh. “Enough to kill you? A day or two.”
I don’t see the point of lying. He would see right through me.
Jude holds my gaze for a moment that stretches for eternity. His finger is on the trigger. Even if I had some juice left, he would kill me before I could reach him.
But surprisingly, he lowers his gun, never breaking eye contact.
“How long will the repairs take?” he asks Margaret.
“I can finish it tonight. Then you can leave before sunrise.”
“Thank you.”
Jess comes to my rescue and helps me back onto the couch. Her wife watches us warily. As if I would kill the only woman in this room who is showing me basic decency.
“We can get rid of the bodies and their vehicles at night,” Margaret says. “There is a canyon south of here. With some luck, it’ll take them a while to find them. The coyotes will take care of the bodies before that. Come, help me carry the table.”
Jude takes the other side, and they pull the heavy table aside. Margaret rolls the thick carpet, revealing a wide trapdoor.
“Our underground shelter,” Jess explains to us. “We’ve built a reinforced bunker. It helps when an old god walks by and ravages our camp. It happened a few times over the years.”
Now I understand why they’re still here, standing tall in the middle of the wastelands.
They unlock the trapdoor, and there is a second one below, this one made of metal. They push the bodies down the dark hole. They make a heavy noise as they hit the ground below. Jude kicks his dead brother in the face and spits on him before dropping him. There was really no shared love between them.
Jess sighs. “My poor carpet. I just replaced it.”
There is undeniably a lot of blood on it.
“Sorry,” Jude says.
The woman shakes her head and rolls the carpet with the help of her wife before dropping it into the bunker below with the corpses.
“Come now,” says Margaret to Jude. “We need to move their vehicles and cover them with tarps. In case someone else comes snooping today…”
She makes sure that Jess has a gun pointed at me before leaving.
Jess sits on a chair at a safe distance in front of me. I grab my beer, which, mercifully, has survived the fight. Or, should I say, theexecution. I dare say there wasn’t much fighting on their side.
“Are you part of theHighwaymen?” I ask.
Jess shakes her head. “Oh, hell no. But we do work for them from time to time, and so they don’t bother us. We repair their vehicles and find them the parts they need. They’re assholes, but they have their uses. We’re dead in the center of their range of action, which means rarely anyone comes here. And they warn us of the old gods’ movements as best as they can.”
“And Jude?”
“As you have guessed, he’s somewhat estranged from his family. They’ve been hunting him for a while. We’ve known him since he was a teenager. He found refuge here when he finally managed to escape their clutch. We sent him to the Traveling Market, with our son and his friend Perri, to give him a shot at survival.”
I’m not sure why she’s offering me Jude’s story so easily. I doubt he would like that. Which is exactly why I didn’t stop her.
“Love the shirt, by the way,” she says with a knowing smile.
