I stalk the amassing man through hell, eager to harvest the spores growing in his belly. Soon, I’ll have enough money to leave the wasteland behind and begin a new life.
Standing on a steep rock formation, I scan the horizon with a tarnished brass spyglass and smile with satisfaction when I spot my prey in the distance. His flesh roils with blue-purple fungus, hardening his joints and weakening his muscles. Hollow-spiked growths, each as long and sharp as a whetted knife, form a dense crown around his chest and shoulders. When he dies, the growths will spew ripened spores into the sky, unless I harvest them first.
“It shouldn’t be long,” I say to my little gray donkey. “Another day, maybe two. Then we can finally leave this place and start a kempi fruit orchard. Would you like that?”
The donkey drops her ears and nuzzles me, and as often happens, I hear my uncle’s words in my mind. You’re not tough enough to survive out here. He hated my affection for the animal and would have eaten her if I had let him.
Working quickly, I pull a pencil and paper from one of the sacks my donkey carries and sketch a route to the amassing man. The wasteland is as harsh on the eye as it is to traverse. Thorny scrubs as tall as a man form a natural maze. Dotted here and there, fulgurites stretch to the heavens, missing the lightning that forged them. Most distressingly, mutant cacti guard small glades, their waving arms hunting for animal blood and the water within.
As I finish my sketch, a gunshot booms somewhere behind me, and a burst of fear heightens my senses. I fetch my spyglass again and sweep the wasteland until I spot a boy with dirt-crusted hair and gray clothes firing a rifle wildly at a stout older man. Nearby, a young girl with long black hair lies on her side, partially disrobed. The gunfight ends with three holes in the man’s chest.
“Lucky,” I say and hear my donkey scratch the dirt in agreement.
Unsure of the children’s intentions, I watch and wait. The boy holds the girl close to his chest and helps her dress. Afterward, they collect the contents of a spilled knapsack, and I grimace at what I see—spore masks like my own.
“They’re after our prey,” I growl at the donkey. “We’ll have to kill ‘em.”
•••
I decide to murder the children by firelight.
In the hours between, I track the amassing man, rehearsing the prayers and procedures my uncle taught me. I must ask the Small Gods to bless my mask, copper needle, and crank pump. With steady hands, I’ll plunge the needle into the man’s distended belly and extract the milky-white substance so I can sell it to an apothecary.
As the sun fades and the world turns amber, the amassing man halts his shuffle-walk. I hold my breath, waiting for the moment to come. The man attempts another tentative step but collapses before his foot hits the ground.
“He’ll make it to dawn, but not much longer,” I tell the donkey. She brays her pleasure, and I treat her to the last of our kempi fruit. When she’s finished, I stroke her side. “Time to get to work.”
Using severed cactus arms and scrub, I form a man-shaped mound and cover it with my canvas bedroom. After, I light a fire.
“Easy target,” I say to the donkey, and stroke her side, hating what comes next. “Time for the hard part, girl.”
Years back, we were attacked by rock wolves in the middle of the night. Since then, she’s been terrified of the dark and hesitant to move too far from our nighttime campfires.
I tug at her lead. Unsurprisingly, she doesn’t budge and looks at me like I’m trying to swim across the desert.
“Come on, you big baby,” I say, pulling harder.
I try a third time, and when she doesn’t budge, I chastise myself for giving her the last of our kempi fruit. She’d follow me anywhere for a taste. Instead, I pet her again and babble-whisper into her ear. “That’s a good girl. You’re a brave little donkey. Do you know that?”
It’s a slow process, but we eventually find a hiding spot among a thicket of scrub about thirty paces from the fire. I stake her down and pull out my rifle. It feels heavier than usual, though I know it’s impossible.
“You have to be mean to survive the wasteland,” I say under my breath, hearing my uncle say the same words in my mind.
The children emerge from the darkness hours later, silent as a held breath. They slink forward, weapons drawn, a rifle in the boy’s hand, a rusty utility knife in the girl’s. As I aim at the boy’s chest, a beam of moonlight illuminates the pair, and I pause.
They’re nine or ten years old—the same age I was when my uncle first took me into the wasteland. I remember how scared I was when he sneered and told me about the other boys who never returned.
Looking more closely reveals their struggles. The children’s faces are sharp from malnourishment, exaggerating their broad noses and sunken eyes. Torn, ill-fitting gray shirts billow about their thin frames, making them appear larger than they are. They’re orphans or runaways or both.
“So young,” I say, easing my finger off the trigger. It’s different seeing the children up close. They’re real, not an abstraction.
As my rifle drops, my uncle’s voice fills my mind. He tells me not to be weak, to put a bullet into their chests, mark their skin with my sigil, and leave their corpses to rot as a warning. This is the wasteland!
I don’t want to kill them, but my uncle is right. I can’t risk the children beating me to the amassing man or shooting me in my back. One shot each, then. Quick, easy, mostly painless.
I raise the rifle—
A terrified bray shocks me, and I twist around in time to see my donkey kick at a heavy-bellied snake before yanking free of her stake. She flees for the dim fire and my entire body tenses with dread.
“Come back,” I call out, terrified the boy might shoot my friend. A half second later, I cleave the snake’s head from its body with my utility knife, and I scramble after the donkey, using scrub and rock to hide my approach.
A gunfight is coming; I feel it in the air the way you feel a storm in the wind. If they hurt my donkey, the children’s deaths will be slow and filled with every depravity my uncle taught me.
Peeking out from behind a scrub, I spot the children standing near the fire. The girl has wrapped herself in my bedroll, and the donkey is eating something out of her hand.
“Don’t,” the boy snaps. “We need it.”
“She’s hungry,” the girl replies.
“So are we.” Then to the wasteland, “You can come out! We have your donkey!” There’s no malice in the boy’s voice, no threat.
My mind tumbles. Don’t they realize this is an ambush? Why haven’t they fled? They must be new to the wasteland.
“Drop your weapon and move away from the donkey,” I say, emerging from the shrub, rifle raised.
The girl yelps and drops her knife. Her brother does the same with his rifle and then slides between me and the girl, a noble act that proves my assumption. Nobility is for people who don’t spend their days hunting other men.
“What did you feed my donkey?” I bark and then startle in confusion as my friend hee-haws and places herself between me and the children.
“Move, you dimwitted sack of rocks,” I growl.
The donkey ignores my command and shakes her head in defiance. If I didn’t love her, I’d shoot her myself.
I’m about to circle around the animal when the girl’s soft voice floats up from behind her brother. “I gave her some kempi fruit. She really likes it.”
I snort at the girl’s words, annoyed more than anything. Of all the donkeys I could have befriended, I’m stuck with a stubborn runt with a bottomless well where her stomach should be.
Moving deliberately, the boy steps out from behind the animal. “We have money. We can pay.”
I don’t have a clue what he’s dickering about. All I know is he’s dangerous. “Like you paid the man you killed?”
“He deserved it,” he says, voice as sharp as a butcher knife. “He tried to hurt my sister.” He gestures for the girl to join him, and she does, trembling slightly.
“What’s stopping me from killing both of you and taking your money?” I ask.
The girl raises her eyes to mine. “Your donkey likes us.”
I startle for a second time in as many seconds. The girl is putting a lot of faith in my little fickle creature and a handful of kempi fruit. I pause a moment to think the situation over, more than a bit charmed by her innocence.
“Fair enough,” I say and lower my weapon. Maybe something good can come out of this after all. “Boy, I killed a snake that way. Go get it and my supplies.”
“I won’t leave her alone with you.”
“Then she can go, and you can stay here as my hostage.”
“I’ll do it, Levi,” the girl says, and my stomach turns.
“No names!” I shout. In the wasteland, it’s easier to kill without names, easier to survive. “Get going.”
The girl lights some dry scrub and heads into the dark. While she’s gone, I instruct the boy to get the fire roaring. It’s crackling pleasantly by the time the girl returns with my gear.
I skin and spit the snake over the fire. Across from me, the children eye the meat greedily, and for a moment, I consider sharing but decide against it. If they wanted to eat it, they should have killed the snake themselves.
“Talk,” I say when we’re settled in. The boy is across from me. The girl is nearby petting my traitorous donkey. “Start with the man you shot.”
The boy’s eyes narrow, and his brow furrows. Whatever the man did to him, it was more than going after his sister.
“We paid him to track an amassing man for us,” he says before tapping the middle knuckles on his pointer fingers together, a sign to ward off evil. “He lied…about a lot of things.”
These children should be dead a dozen times. “That man was going to kill you and take your money. You must be careful who you trust.”
The boy chews his lip and nods, and for a moment, he appears decades older and far wiser.
“The money, who’d you steal it from?”
The siblings give each other a knowing glance. “It belonged to our mother. She’s gone now.”
“The Small Gods’ asses it is,” I say. “You’re not from money, or you’d be dressed nicer, better prepared, and you sure as shit wouldn’t have gotten a fly up your ass about harvesting an amassing man. Only fools and desperate people do that. Who’d you steal it from?”
“Does this mean you’ll help us?” the boy asks.
“It means I want to know what I’ve stepped in.”
“The Church,” the girl volunteers. “I did it. Wasn’t even hard. The priest went to sleep, and I took it.”
“They’ll come after you.”
“Not if we’re gone,” the boy counters.
I turn the spit for no other reason than it’s there. “How much?”
“I’ll tell you when you agree to help us,” the boy says.
“Not how it works, kid. But however much it is, it’s not enough. No man would share their harvest if they didn’t have to. Not worth the effort for a pittance.”
The boy sticks his chin out, and his sister imitates him. “We’ll do it ourselves then.”
I’m on my feet, rifle ready, before either can flinch. I hear myself speak in my uncle’s voice. “You go near my prey, and I’ll kill you.”
The boy’s eyes harden, and he clinches his fists. If I hadn’t taken his rifle, the kid might have made a move.
“Nod, if you understand.”
The boy goes first, and the girl follows.
“This is what’s going to happen. I’m tying you up so you can’t murder me in my sleep. And if you don’t like it, you’re free to leave, but I’ll put a bullet in your back. We’ll deal with tomorrow when it gets here.”
The tying is mercifully short. I bind their legs and feet and then dig through their kit. In addition to the two spore masks, there’s an empty canteen, a handful of grain, dried kempi fruit, and twenty pieces of silver. At the bottom, I find a half-empty bottle of unlabeled brown liquid. A whiff tells me it’s whiskey.
I take the bottle and leave the rest. The money’s not insignificant, but it’s not worth pissing off The Church if they come looking for it.
“You take this from The Church, too?” I ask, holding up the whisky. “This is too good for the pair of you.”
Neither answer, which is fine by me.
“This is mine now,” I say and take a long pull. My throat burns, and my eyes water. A bitter aftertaste scrapes my tongue. After a second pull, my body relaxes and my face numbs.
When the snake is ready, I cut it into pieces and start to eat. All I taste is smoke and dirt. Halfway through, I glance up at the kids. Now that they’re tied up and can’t interfere with my hunt, I don’t hate them so much.
“You shouldn’t be out here,” I say between bites. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”
“We haven’t so far,” the boy answers.
“You got lucky.” I waggle snake meat at him. “Are you going to keep doing this? Keep coming back?”
The boy doesn’t respond, so I point the meat to the girl.
“Don’t tell him, Clara.”
“What did I say about names!” I scream and fling a portion of the charred meat at him. It slaps harmlessly off his chest and rolls between his legs. Lighting fast, he snatches it and takes a bite before passing it to his sister.
“You’re not listening to anything I say.” I take another pull of the whiskey and toss the rest of the meat to them as a peace offering.
“You think you know what the wasteland is like, but you don’t,” I say, feeling a bit light-headed. “If you stay out here long enough, one of three things will happen. If you’re lucky, someone like me will put a bullet in you, probably several. If you’re unlucky, the wasteland will consume you. A pack of rock wolves will eat you, or you’ll get lost and die of dehydration. And if you’re very unlucky, you’ll become infected and turn into an amassing man yourself. You’ll make a small mistake extracting spores, and that’ll be the end of you.”
As the words leave my lips, my vision goes black at the corners, and my stomach cramps. A stew of snake meat, whiskey, and bile spurt from my mouth, forming a pool of vomit at my feet. The stench is so foul that I retch again before crashing to the earth.
A cold realization comes over me. I’ve been poisoned. I’m going to die out here in the wasteland. Rock wolves and horn rats will rend my flesh, and the hateful sun will bleach my bones. I was so close to escaping this demented place.
Through blurred vision, I watch as the boy pulls at his sister’s binds to free her, not a hint of surprise on his face. He knew this would happen, knew it as soon as I touched that bottle of whiskey. This is how they stole their silver. The priest went to sleep.
As soon as I think this, an offended laugh—half guffaw, half grunt—overtakes my mind. My uncle is scolding me for such a pathetic death. He tells me I deserve to die because I underestimated the children. I forgot how cruel you must be to survive. His words dissolve my fear and fortify my anger.
Not like this, I think, and then say the words out loud—“NOT LIKE THIS!”
I fight the poison; tell it I’m stronger, that I was raised in the wasteland. I will not die here. I will live a long, happy life and be buried with Patricia, my donkey, in an orchard I grew with my own hands.
Gasping, I force my body to move, just as my uncle would do, and ever so slowly, I rise from the earth and reach for my rifle. I must look like one of the Small Gods the way the children recoil.
The boy’s sister has freed his hands and he’s scrambling to untie the bind around his ankles. He won’t be fast enough. I know how to bind a man; I was taught by the best.
I am so very wrong.
The boy is on me in a heartbeat. He slaps the rifle from my hand and strikes me across the face with a stone. I crumble to the ground, my right eye swelling.
“Don’t hurt my donkey,” I say before I die.
•••
I peel my eyes open and greet a new day in the wasteland.
Inches from my face, a horn rat with over-sized red eyes sucks at a discarded snake bone. It hisses and scurries away as I fight gravity and my weak muscles to sit up. I make it a few inches before crashing back to the earth. My wrists and ankles are bound.
Closing my eyes, I huff in and out, mind reeling. I’m alive, I tell myself, followed by a storm of questions, none more important than—Why? The Small Gods should be wrestling one another for the right to keep my soul for eternity.
This is not the wasteland I know or the wasteland my uncle drilled into me with the back of his hand.
With great effort, I force my eyes open and fling my sluggish body to a sitting position. Blooms of white burst across my vision. Slowly, I examine the campsite, taking in the damage the children caused. My kit is strewn about, and everything useful has been taken. The children are nowhere to be found—neither is Patricia.
Muscle-shaking fear envelops me. Vivid images of what the children will do to her cross my mind. I see my uncle’s hands dripping red. My mouth fills with the phantom taste of donkey meat. Small Gods help me; I enjoyed the flavor.
“Patricia?” I croak and then whistle a come-to-me call.
From behind, I hear hooves. I twist to look and fall back to the ground. She reaches me in no time and licks my face with her muscular tongue.
“Oh, girl,” I say, my heart so full that I’ve lost the ability to form a complete thought.
Tears stream down my face, slowly at first and then more rapidly, until I’m blubbering so hard I can barely breathe. I don’t know if I’ve ever cried this hard, not even when my parents sold me to my uncle and left the wasteland.
Through the sound of my sobbing, my uncle’s voice creeps back into my mind, as it has so many times before. You should be dead! You should be dead instead of me! Get up—kill them!
“Never,” I shout at the voice inside me. They could have killed me, and they didn’t. We are the same, those kids and me. Doing everything we can to escape this cursed place.
I shake my wrists at Patricia. “Help me, or those kids are going to kill themselves.”
•••
Minutes later, I climb a sloping rock formation and scan the horizon. In the far distance, the amassing man lies dead, his spores ready to harvest. The children are halfway to him, plodding forward at a steady clip. If I run, I can reach them in time.
I stumble off the rock and then rise on shaky legs. I suck in as much air as my lungs can take before starting after them at a slow trot. No more than a dozen paces later, I stop and dry heave. Every muscle in my body screams at me to crawl under a scrub and sleep it off.
Patricia nudges my back, pushing me forward.
“I know. I know.”
Ignoring the pain, I continue, and within minutes, my angry body relents to my will. I force my legs up and down in a stumbling run.
The children are digging through their kits about fifteen paces from the dead man when I reach them. Through the stitch in my side, I cry out for them to stop, to leave the amassing man alone, to wait for me. “Don’t do it!”
Levi hears my warning and pivots toward me, eyes wide, mouth drawn back in terror. With a jerky, awkward motion, he pulls my rifle off his shoulder and aims at me. At the same time, the girl flees, leaving her pack.
“Don’t shoot! I’m here to help!”
The rifle booms, and a bullet zips over my head. I dive for cover behind a thick scrub and wince as two more bullets disturb the branches above me. If Levi were a better shot, I’d be dead.
Nearby, Patricia brays with worry. “Go! Get out of here!” I shout to her, scared she might get hit by a stray bullet, and for once, the little donkey listens.
Seconds tick past, and a heavy silence fills the wasteland. Perhaps the boy has come to his senses. “By the Small Gods, listen to me! You’re going to infect yourself!”
Another bullet whips through my shrub. “The spores are ours!” Levi yells. “I’ll kill you if you com—”
A high-pitched shriek cuts him off, and a chill races down my spine. I squeeze my eyes shut and pray the children haven’t accidentally ruptured the dead man’s spore sack somehow. On hands and knees, I peek out of my hiding spot, and my bowels loosen at what I see. The infected man is still alive. My uncle—the amassing man I’ve hunted through the wasteland—still lives.
He rises under the weight of his deformed body, hollow spikes gleaming in the sun, spore sack undulating under his flesh. Growling with rage, he rushes forward and backhands the boy. The violent sound of meat on meat rings in my ears as I watch Levi smack the desert floor, his rifle tumbling out of reach.
Dread overpowers my muscles, and I freeze. I’d prayed to the Small Gods that this would be just another harvest, that I wouldn’t have to confront my uncle, and yet here he stands, clinging to life, a monument to his own failed harvest. But I have no choice. I’ve already claimed the children. I must act.
“Lend me your strength,” I whisper to the Small Gods and step out from behind the shrub. Never mind the poison, never mind the fatigue. “Get away from him!”
The moment drags as my uncle turns on over-taxed legs and glowers at me. His honey-brown eyes are filled with disgust. “You let children almost take your harvest? CHILDREN!”
I shrivel at the sound of his voice, and terrible memories in me. I feel the weight of his hard fist in my soft belly. I hear the crunch of my nose breaking. I see a steel blade glowing red-orange, and my nostrils fill with the putrid-sweet scent of burning flesh. But I refuse to let my past steal my future. I shove the dark thoughts away and replace them with the dream I’ve held in my heart for so long. I picture a kempi orchard, lush with ripe fruit. Patricia is there, prancing, and to my surprise, so are the children. We’re happy.
“I won’t say it again,” I say, striding toward him.
My uncle barks a distorted laugh and, in a feat I’ve never witnessed before, rips one of the long hollow spikes from his chest. Red-black blood sprays the air, and a tight, predatory smile crosses his lips. “I wasted my money on you,” he says before turning to the boy.
Coming out of his daze, Levi gasps at the massive, discolored man looming over him. He scoots away from my uncle, putting as much distance between him as he can. But the boy can’t escape, not unless he breaks his fear and takes to his feet. “Run, boy! Run!”
I’m most of the way to Levi when a tiny blur grabs my attention. Something small and hard bounces off my uncle’s fetid torso. A second later, another object bounces off his thigh. Clara! She’s off to the side with my donkey, throwing rocks. “Leave him alone!” she cries, no more fearsome than a mouse caught in a rock wolf’s jaw.
“Don’t worry, little one,” my uncle says, “I’m going to kill you next.”
My stomach twists at the words, and Levi bares his teeth. The boy is going to attack my uncle, and there is nothing I can do about it. Before I can warn Levi off, he launches at the amassing man. “Don’t touch her!”
The fight’s over before it begins. My uncle lashes out with his makeshift knife, slicing a jagged line across Levi’s face. The boy wails and drops to his knees, clutching his eyes. Thin lines of blood trace his cheeks. “What did you do to me? I can’t see! I can’t see!”
The boy’s cries fuel my muscles and quicken my pace. I reach my uncle as he raises his hollow spike to deliver the killing blow. Every instinct within me thrashes my will as I tackle the man to the ground, his spikes piercing my chest and arms. We tumble and roll, and with each rotation, my injuries grow more severe until, at last, we stop.
Straddling me, my uncle drives his hollow spike deep into my right shoulder, pinning me to the ground. Searing pain flares through me, and I cry out. In all my years in the wasteland, I’ve never been injured like this. Panting, my uncle seizes a bloody spike on his shoulder, breaks it off at the base, and presses the tip against my throat. “Why are you protecting them?”
I cough blood on myself. “Because I hate this place, and I hate you.” I close my eyes and wait for death. I’m so sorry, Patricia, I think. The children will take good care of you.
A loud bray and hoofbeats ring out. Galloping at full speed, Patricia strikes my uncle in the side, and he flies off me. I lay there, afraid to open my eyes, afraid to see what Patricia, my only friend, has done.
But you can only hide for so long.
Shivering, I turn in time to see my uncle drive a hollow spike through Patricia’s neck over and over. She falls off away with a whimper and goes motionless, her big black eyes still open.
“Why did you do that?” I wail at Patricia, voice cracking, tears streaming down my face. I’m not worthy of her love and loyalty. I never have been.
My uncle sits next to Patricia, struggling to breathe, legs splayed out in front of him, eyes glassy. The crown of spikes on his head is chipped and broken, and a flap of skin hangs off his cheek, exposing rotten teeth. Groaning, he tries to stand but fails. “We’re not done yet,” he says after his third attempt, and with howling effort climbs to his feet.
Boom!
I startle at the sound of a gunshot and look up to see Clara standing above me, grey dress billowing, lip quivering, my rifle in hand. She’s missed my uncle, but not by much. A second shot clips his bicep.
“Higher,” I say. “Aim for the head, or you’ll rupture his spore sack.”
Clara nods, lifts the barrel, and squeezes the trigger. The girl’s shot bores through my uncle’s throat, leaving a blood hole. Pink-red foam gurgles from his neck for a heartbeat before he spasms and falls one last time. I feel relief for the first time in decades and the tension in my body unknots. I’m free.
Clara drops to my side, and I struggle to sit. My body is slick with blood, and every part of me aches.
“She was a good donkey,” the girl says.
“The best,” I reply.
The moment lingers until Levi calls for help, and Clara starts to go to him.
“Not yet,” I say and point to my uncle’s belly. Already, his spore sack is expanding, preparing to rupture. Time is short. “We need to harvest. I can’t do it myself, not like this.” I try to move my arm, but it’s dead weight.
The girl sniffles, and her eyes bulge. “I don’t want them anymore.”
I reach up and touch her cheek with my bloody hand. Even with all the silver I’ve saved over the years, it won’t be enough to take the children with me. We need more, much more, if we’re to escape and start our kempi farm—and harvesting is all I’ve ever known.
“I don’t want them either,” I say, praying that what I’m about to do will save Clara and Levi instead of corrupting them. “But the wasteland doesn’t care what we want. Now, bring me my tools. It’s time I taught you how to harvest.”
