Strike Read online

  I perch on a recliner. “So that’s one less thing to worry about.” Wyatt sits on the arm, leaning against me. Things almost feel normal.

  “What else is there?” Gabriela says. “We did their little hazing trip. Was that not enough?”

  My jaw drops at her naïveté. “Oh my God. Are you joking? Do you seriously think these douchebags just wanted us to pass some test, and then we’d be honorary Cranes with full bathroom privileges? Hell no. They’re going to use us like Valor used us. Leon already said we’d have a new assignment in the morning, and the way he said it made it sound dangerous. We’re young. We’re expendable. We’ve got no parents to stand up for us. There are no police, no laws. We’re like those little kids in shoe factories in third-world countries. They are going to use us until we’re dead.”

  I’m crying again, but I can’t stop it. I keep seeing blood bloom on that guy’s belly, his friend going down in a hail of bullets. It occurs to me that when he burst out shooting, I cared more about killing him in a haze of rage than I did about keeping my own body alive. There are holes in the wall behind the door. From my gun. And I need to reload in case I have to do it again. The walls of this trailer may feel safe, but they can’t stop bullets. Sure, it felt cozy for a while, me and Wyatt behind a locked door, but it’s all just a big joke. There is no safety.

  Gabriela points her Pop-Tart at me. “Wait. Is that a new assignment for you guys tomorrow, or for everyone?”

  I know my smile is wrong. “Funny, but Leon didn’t say.”

  Chance puts his feet up on the couch, but it’s not my couch, so I don’t care. “And if we’re supposed to be earning our keep, what are all those other people in the tent city doing? The middle-aged ones and old ones? Because they sure as hell didn’t get sent out to plant Wipers.”

  When I think on it, he’s right. There’s got to be more than a hundred people outside of our group who live here, but I’ve never seen them do anything except line up at the house for food and showers. But I haven’t really watched them closely, either, and we haven’t been here long. I’ve been too busy just trying to stay alive. They’re not out of their tents a ton, though, which makes me wonder if Leon’s got them doing something quiet, masked by nylon walls, or if maybe they’re doing something out in the woods, where I know the Cranes have other buildings. But the thing is—they’re doing something for Leon, for the CFF.

  Because in this world, nothing is free, is it?

  “I guess we’ll find out tomorrow,” I say. “Now, unless you want to bring up any more conspiracy theories, can we please go to sleep?”

  Gabriela smacks Chance’s feet off the couch. “Come on, bro. I think they want to get it on.”

  Chance hops up and smacks Wyatt on the back. “Love in the time of capitalism?”

  Wyatt turns red and shoves Chance away. “A man’s got a right to be tired after a fistfight and a gunfight in one day.”

  Chance and Gabriela look at each other, break into laughter, and swagger toward the front door muttering, “A man’s got a right,” and, “I punched a man for looking at me wrong,” in their best cowboy voices. I smother a giggle but am glad to close the door on them and slide the table back in place.

  “Can we go to bed now?” Wyatt asks, rubbing his eyes.

  I hook my thumbs through my belt loops and drawl, “A man’s got a right.”

  He picks me up, tosses me over his shoulder, and throws me on the bed.

  12.

  Not that anything exciting happens in the freshly made bed. Like all our days together, this one feels as long as a week, and it’s easy to forget that I was in a store being interrogated by a cop just a few short hours ago. We stare at each other, grinning, but neither of us makes a move. At the very least, I want to brush my teeth and put on my pajamas, because I feel beyond gross, so I roll off the bed and head for the bathroom with my backpack.

  I look like crap, but that’s become normal. My eyes are bloodshot from crying, and my hair’s a filthy mess. But I’m standing in front of a shower, so what the hell? I close the bathroom door, turn the shower on hot, step out of my clothes, and lose myself in scalding-hot water. Maybe if I stand here long enough, I can wash all the grit and roughness and sadness off my skin. Unlike my last shower, stolen from Château Tuscano, the only shampoo here is the kind of crappy two-in-one that guys use to smell like angry werewolves. But I want to be clean, so I use it anyway. My armpit hair is out of control, but I doubt Wyatt’s going to complain. In just a week, the stubble on my legs has grown lush, and I poke it, wishing I’d bought razors. I always figured that when the apocalypse hit, body hair would come back in style, quick.

  When the hot water starts to run out, I feel a little guilty for using it all, but I guess it’ll recharge if Wyatt wants a shower later. I step out and fumble for a towel, hurrying into my new pajamas. Such luxury, really, to get to change for bed, and while standing up with overhead lights. I wipe off my face, put on moisturizer, floss, brush my teeth, add deodorant, and rub in lotion. All the little luxuries that make me feel less like a murderer living in a stolen trailer and more like a girl who doesn’t want to gross out the boy she’s about to sleep with.

  Wait. Not sleep with sleep with. Sleep beside. Because I don’t know how to sleep alone anymore. I don’t want to remember how. The nightmares are too dark.

  My hair is a wet mess, but I run the new brush through it and scoot my bangs to the side. There’s no hair dryer, because why would three dudes need one? I fetch my mom’s rosary out of my jeans and slip it over my head, where it dangles down to my belly, a strange feeling against my skin. When there’s nothing left to do, I step out into the bedroom. Wyatt’s sitting on the bed, doing a crossword. The lighting is better in here, and he’s not wearing his shirt, and there are bruises all over him. I don’t know if they’re from today’s fight with his driver, from something else, from the way I smacked my fists against him jokingly when he picked up me. I hurry to sit beside him, touching the purple smudges.

  “Are you hurt?”

  He shrugs, as if the question makes him uncomfortable. “Not really. Still amped up a little. Fights do that to me.”

  I find ibuprofen in the medicine cabinet and bring Wyatt a glass of water and two brown pills. He swallows them, carefully sets down the glass, and takes my hand in both of his.

  “Thank you.”

  “No big deal.”

  “No, I mean . . . for everything. I was just sitting here, staring at the page, thinking about how if you’d just killed my brother, you could’ve had a chance at a normal life. You could’ve just walked away.”

  I sit back against the pillows, still holding his hand. “I don’t think that was ever an option. Look what they did to Chance’s family. I don’t think I was supposed to live through that. None of us were.” A few beats later I add, “And neither were our parents.”

  “You think Leon really has your mom?”

  I drop his hand. “I don’t know, Wyatt! How could I know?”

  “Do you want to drive by your house tomorrow? See if she’s there?”

  And that reminds me.

  “Hey, don’t you have that guy’s phone?”

  Wyatt nods, gets it out of his crumpled jeans. I just now noticed he’s only in pajama pants, which reminds me of that time I didn’t shoot him because he had a pajama boner, which reminds me that we are alone in bed behind a locked door, which makes me very much not want to call my mom at this exact moment, but that’s what I’m going to do.

  He hands me the phone, and I dial my house. My hands are shaking so hard that I actually mess up the number and have to backtrack. I press the green button and wait. After a moment, it rings. And rings and rings and rings. No one picks up, and the answering machine doesn’t answer, and that’s the scariest thing of all, because the answering machine always picks up. I should be hearing my voice right now, but all I get is ringing.

  “No answer?” Wyatt asks softly.

  I shake my head and end the call.


  “Did you try her cell? Could she be staying with your grandparents or something?”

  I stare at him like he’s an idiot, because he keeps forgetting that I was broke-ass poor. “We could only afford one cell, and mine’s gone. There’s no one else. Just me and Mom.”

  My eyes are burning, and I wind back my arm to throw the phone at the wall, but Wyatt catches my hand and uncurls my clenched fingers. He puts the phone on the bedside table and pulls me close, and now I’m the little spoon and he’s stroking my wet hair like it’s actually pleasant to touch.

  “It’ll be better tomorrow,” he whispers in my ear. “It’s always better tomorrow.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “Shh. Today is better than yesterday was. Yesterday was better than the day before it. Whatever life was like before last week, now we have to take what we can get when we can get it. And today I’m just grateful that we both lived through that mission and now we have this trailer. I swear, this is the first time in a week that I’ve been able to lie down without my feet brushing something or stand up without knocking my head.”

  I chuckle. My old mail van—he barely fit in it, standing or horizontal. Matty waggles to my side and tries to lick me, and I rub her head and tell her she’s a good girl. I didn’t have her last week, either.

  “You’re trembling,” he says.

  “We should sleep.”

  His hand leaves my hip like it’s sorry to go, and he walks across the room to turn off the light and edge the door closed just enough so that we’re in darkness but there’s a slice of illumination from the hall outside. It’s funny—I can’t go to sleep with the lights on, but I hate being fully in the dark now. I like to know no one can sneak up on me.

  Gently, so gently, Wyatt pulls the covers down and back up over my legs to cover me, then slides in behind me, matching his body to mine and pulling me close. I slowly soften, melting like butter, until my eyes flutter closed.

  My dreams are dark, twisted, dangerous things. But they always are now.

  When I wake up, the roof of the trailer is clattering with rain. Wyatt is still curled around me, but he’s awake and tense.

  “What’s wrong?” I whisper, anticipating the worst.

  “I have to pee but didn’t want you to wake up alone.”

  I giggle and plant a kiss on his hand. “Go on, then. I’ll survive.” But I’m touched.

  With him gone, the bed is colder, and I spread out and stretch like a starfish. Matty licks my hand and whines, and then I’m puttering around the kitchen, looking for coffee. All they have is soda. But I’m not supposed to go to the big house, and I doubt a Crane could get my Starbucks order right. I settle for a Pop-Tart and a glass of water, setting out the same for Wyatt on a chipped plate from the cabinet. For, like, five seconds, I pretend I’m a wife or whatever.

  It’s strange how many little things I notice in the kitchen. There’s a vaping kit on the counter, an open box of blood sugar testing strips, a pair of slippers with holes in the bottom. I’m suddenly very aware that I killed people last night, and not because I had to, not because there was a gun to my mom’s chest or a clock counting down. Because they hurt Matty and shot at me. That’s all. Leon seemed to think it was fair, but is that the kind of fair I can live with? The whole point of joining the CFF was to go back to not killing people, but it’s become a habit. All this time, I was trying to hold on to myself, to Patsy. The change was subtle, I suppose. But I’ve become a girl who will kill strangers out of anger. And when I go through last night in my head, I don’t see how I could’ve done anything differently. I put the Pop-Tart gently on the plate before I lose my breakfast like I lost my salad after killing Wyatt’s dad.

  Before Wyatt is done eating, the knock I’ve been dreading comes. Matty barks like she’s actually threatening, and Wyatt and I lock eyes. In pajamas, neither of us has a gun, and he has to be thinking the same thing I am: The guys we shot last night weren’t ready when they answered the door, and that’s why we’re here right now instead of outside in a tent in the rain.

  We tiptoe to the bedroom and fetch our guns, but we’re both in elasticized pajama pants, so there’s no place to hide one. I turn my back to him and slide into yesterday’s dirty jeans, and after a moment of what I can only assume to be sneaking a peek at my undies, he does the same. The knocking grows more insistent, and Leon Crane himself hollers, “Open up or we’ll open it up for you!”

  Wyatt is shirtless and I’m still in my pajama shirt as we approach the door. I kick the coffee table aside while he holds Matty back by her collar. Standing to the side of the door, I open it enough to stick my face out.

  “If I wanted to shoot you, honey, you’d be dead,” Leon says, sweet as syrup and soaked with rain even though he’s holding an umbrella. As punctuation, he sticks a finger through a bullet hole in the side of the trailer. Two Crane goons with black umbrellas flank him, younger guys like the ones we killed yesterday. They’re smirking, but their hands are on their guns, like they’d love a reason to shoot me. Maybe Leon wasn’t lying about how going up to the big house would be a bad idea.

  I open the door and wait, arms crossed, gun in hand. Wyatt is a solid wall behind me, holding back Matty, who’d love to go slobber all over Leon and anybody else. She’s not smart, my dog. If she were, she wouldn’t have followed me in the first place.

  “Got a job for you,” Crane says.

  “What else is new?”

  “We’ve been through this, sugar. You took our money, you killed our boys, and now you’ve got temporary possession of our trailer. You’re members of the CFF now, and you have a duty in our war.”

  I yawn and don’t bother to cover it.

  “What are we doing today? Depositing nanny cams?” Wyatt asks.

  I can’t help smirking. Because the thing is? I would’ve been terrified of Leon Crane last week. But now I know that showing weakness to a man like him is just asking to die.

  Also, he looks kind of ridiculous when he’s holding an umbrella.

  “Thanks to those Wipers, soon there won’t be a working credit card in this county,” Leon drawls, one thumb in his vest like a politician. Wyatt and I look at each other and shrug, unimpressed. “But we’re going one further. You know how they put those little ink packets on expensive shit at the department store? We’re going to make them all explode.”

  “So evil,” I murmur.

  Fast as a blink, Leon slaps me across the face, hard. I stumble back, a hand to my wet cheek. Wyatt’s got his gun pointed at Leon, and Leon’s goons have guns pointed at us, and my face stings, red rage filling me.

  “Don’t you ever forget that you’re nothing but a pawn in this war,” Leon says.

  I spit in the dirt at his feet and see blood in it. “You can’t play chess without pawns, asshole.”

  “Well, I just so happen to have your queen, little pawn, so you’d best get dressed and ready to roll. Now, normally I’d send you out with a driver, but we’re down two of them since your little escapade last night, and Alex has a concussion.” He stares hard at Wyatt. “The kid’s a prick, I’ll give you that, but did you have to bang him up and abandon him in a parking lot? Little shit wandered off into traffic like a lost bunny. She’s rubbing off on you, boy.”

  Wyatt flinches, and Leon concentrates on me. “So here’s what I want you to do. Take your boyfriend’s car out to the new outlet mall off the freeway. There’s two bags full of little cans waiting on the front porch for you. Now, they ain’t like the Wipers—there’s no sticky tape, no button to push. This time, all of that business will be handled remotely. All you got to do is plant one in every store on the provided list. In a shoe box, in the pocket of a raincoat, in a bag, behind a trash can. I don’t care. But I want every one of those cans planted in a store by suppertime. You got that?”

  “Who else is doing it?”

  Leon gives a crocodile’s smile. “Everybody here’s got a job.”

  “Even the old people in the tent
s?”

  Leon chuckles. “Even them. Now, get on.”

  As he turns to walk away, I yelp, “So if we do this, can I see my mom?”

  Leon turns around slowly, his grin lazy, like he knows I’m trapped. “I got one more big job for you after this. After that, you can have your mama. She’s being well taken care of, so don’t you worry a bit. Valor would’ve killed her. But me? I’m just keeping her comfortable. Making sure she gets her medicine.”

  He’s about to head for the house when I blurt, “How do we know these cans are what you say they are?”

  Leon chuckles and rubs a hand through his hair. “Now, how did I know you were going to ask me that? You Valor kids have a reason to be suspicious, I guess, but you’re more irksome than most.” He reaches into his coat and pulls out a can of peanuts, putting it in my hand. When our skin touches, he’s cold as a snake, and I inspect the can like it holds a viper. “Go on. You can open it.”

  I throw it back at him. “No. You open it.”

  He steps close, too close, and shoves his umbrella at me, forcing me to hold it. The rain makes a curtain around us as he pries up the flexible plastic top. I flinch away as soon as the inside of the can is exposed, but nothing explodes. When I look again, he’s pulling out a packet of wires and cells. I’m not sure what a bomb looks like, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t one.

  “You ever seen one of these? No? Well, our tech boy’s a genius. So this is a radio transmitter just like the ones they put in those machines you have to walk through to leave a store. But this one is more powerful, so when we remotely activate it, all those little dye packs just splatter everything. It’s gonna be beautiful. Satisfied?”

  I nod. He nods back.

  “You can keep that, Patsy. Do it by dinnertime.”

  He grabs his umbrella and leaves. Matty barks at his back as he walks away. I deflate, and Wyatt tosses the can out into the rain, gently moves me out of the doorway, and shuts it before drawing me into a hug. “At least we’re not killing anybody,” he murmurs, and I beat my forehead against his bare shoulder.