here?”
I remembered hearing about these men before, men painted with axle grease, raining terror beyond the walls. They’d been ranchers once, or so the story went, ranchers who refused to live by Mother Morevna’s new laws and chose to take their chances in the desert instead of living in a city where a woman ruled and everyone could drink from the same wells.
“Got lucky today,” one of them said to another as they passed us. “What a haul!”
“Too bad about the old man,” said another, carrying what looked like the door of an automobile.
“He shouldn’t have put up such a fight,” said the first man. The top of his bald head was painted with a design of a grinning skull with wings. “But he’s buzzard food now.”
“So these are the people I was supposed to be running from,” Asa whispered, a little too loudly.
Judith clapped a hand over his mouth, but it was too late.
“Did you hear something?” the bald man said. He and the other man stopped, took a step toward our tumbleweed nest. Judith and Zo exchanged glances, ready to come up swinging, shooting. Then the biggest one, their leader, turned. His eyes were hard blue, slivers of pale in his sun-reddened face.
“Quit bullshitting,” he barked. “We got three miles to go.”
“A-all right, Samson,” said the bald man. “I was just checking is all.” He cast another glance at the pile of tumbleweeds, then fell in behind the rest of the group. They trudged onward until they topped the ridge and disappeared into the dark.
Zo and Judith held us there a few moments more, watching. Then, when Zo saw that the coast was clear, she pulled us from behind the rock.
“Good job keeping quiet, for the most part,” said Zo. “It was smart of you. You don’t want to know what would have happened to you if they’d caught you instead of us.”
“I suppose I should consider myself lucky.” I patted dust off my skirt.
“Yeah,” Judith said earnestly. “You really should. If they had it their way, we’d all be wives or something. Always pregnant, always getting hit, until we got too weak or sick to take care of, and then getting eaten when hunting or scavenging is bad.”
“E-eaten, did you say?” Asa gulped.
“So the stories go,” said Judith. “They’re our enemies, through and through.”
I shuddered involuntarily, thinking of all the stories I’d heard passed around in Elysium. Of all the ones to be true, why did it have to be those?
“Wh-what were they doing with those car parts?” Asa asked.
“Out here, we don’t have anything,” Judith said. “So when you’re building your shelters, making your own machines and stuff, whatever you can strip from old cars comes in handy. They use it to make weapons, shields, things like that. And the more parts you got, the better off you are out here. They’ve got a pretty good mechanic, but we have the best one out here.”
“For now,” said Zo, and her voice full of bitterness.
“Is she angry with us?” Asa whispered to me.
But before I could answer, a familiar, dreadful feeling rose up out of nowhere. Nausea, sharpness. The rain was coming, just as it always did, without rhyme or reason. Coming just because it could. Just to show me I’d never be rid of it, never understand it.
Not now! I thought at the rain. Not now, please!
“Sal!” I heard Asa say. “Sal! What’s wrong?” But his voice sounded far away, muffled as though he were underwater, or I was. I fell to the ground, dragging Asa with me. “Help!” he cried. “Somebody help her!”
“What’s the matter with her?” said Judith’s voice.
“I don’t know, I don’t know!” Asa panicked.
“Get out of the way!” Zo flipped me over expertly. Her hands were on me, opening my mouth. “Make sure she doesn’t swallow her tongue!”
I was shaking. The darkness was rising.
“Fight it!” Asa was saying. “Whatever’s happening, fight it!”
But this time, the rain would not be fought back. It rose in my head, the roaring of it like a train in my mind. I clutched my stomach. But as the darkness rose around me and I felt my eyes roll back, I knew I was powerless to resist it.
“Sal!” Asa cried. But I was gone.
I was wandering the edges of Elysium as the walls were being built, my eyes on the horizon. It was that day, I knew. That awful day all over again. The first time I saw the rain.
The sound of hammers and nails filled the air,