Left for Dead

01

"What should we do with her?" A hoarse voice crackled through the dry darkness.

"Why would we do anything with her?" A second snorted. "We leave her, like every other body. The birds and the Bats do cleanup."

"She's breathing!"

"Not for long."

Blinding light, burning, blurred silhouettes. Colors faded slowly, but nothing came into focus. Red sand. Red jacket, light hair. Blue jacket, red hair. Blurs of masks.

"She's looking at you, G."

"She's dying. Leave her."

"What happened to-"

"If you quote that fucking song at me, I'll leave you, too." Red hair snapped, and light hair stayed quiet. Their faces were indistinct blurs, half-covered by masks. "We can't afford another charity case. The last few used up too many resources, only to get killed being stupid, or to sell out, or to steal our shit before taking off. We're not wasting our water and food on another half-dead runaway who won't amount to anything."

There was a beat of silence.

The sunlight burned the blistered, bloodied girl laying in the sand, but something hot burned within her as well. Dry, bloodshot eyes stayed focused on red hair, no matter how blurry he was.

"She's really looking at you." Light hair said. "C'mon, what's one more?"

"She'll be dead by tomorrow. Let's go, Mikey." Red hair turned and started walking.

"Don't call me that, she can hear you." Mikey reluctantly started to follow.

"Dead by tomorrow." Red hair called over his shoulder, not looking back.

The woman's cracked hand tightened around a fistful of sand, blood leaking out from freshly opened scabs, and she tipped from her side to lay face down. The backpack across her shoulders thumped her gently as it settled, enough to force the air out of her tired lungs so she coughed quietly into the dirt. Hearing the scuffle, Mikey glanced back, and decided maybe she really was a lost cause.

He missed a step when she lurched onto all fours, and glared hatefully at the retreating men. She swayed, vomited up bile, and collapsed again.

Mikey released the breath he'd been holding and turned away again, still following his brother. Just another lost cause.

When night fell, the woman moved again. The cold air soothed her burned, blistering skin, and she managed to drag herself toward a cluster of cacti. The bite of the spines almost didn't register in her damaged nerves as she grabbed one, broke it open, and started sucking out the moisture. She chewed the fibers inside, just to fill her stomach, hoping there would be something her body could use.

She hadn't escaped the city just to drop dead. Sure, when she'd run, she'd fantasized about being taken in by the rebels – joining their colorful ranks full of art and music and love. She should have realized they were the same soldiers she was running from, just a different name and uniform. And as she hauled herself, shaking, to her feet, she wasn't done proving soldiers wrong.

It took her four days and a whole lot of luck, but she found an old gas station. She'd traveled at night, when the sun couldn't scald her and she could see headlights coming from far enough off to hide. The color of the car didn't matter to her, all the headlights were the same. Starving had left her thin enough to slide between the broken boards over the missing door, and she found herself in a paradise of dark, dusty shelves.

She wolfed down a water bottle and shoved food down her throat, only to throw it all back up. It taught her patience, to go slow, to let her body adjust. What she wanted and what she needed were two different things.

She covered herself in aloe and burn cream. She still scarred, leaving shiny twists on the web of her thumbs and skidded across her face, neck, and arms, but she healed. She traded out the empty space in her backpack for a light, battery packs, a can opener, and all the water she could fit around the one thing she'd smuggled out of the city.

After a week of healing in the gas station, learning herself and her body, surviving the last of the withdrawal from leaving the tainted city air, she began to venture outside again. She used moth-eaten tourist clothes to shield herself from the sun, learned when the safest hours to travel were, learned what the spiders and scorpions didn't like (anything minty kept them away), and how to avoid the soldiers – both sides.

After two weeks, she was ready to move on. Mirrored motorcycle goggles protected her eyes, over a green bandana already starting to fade from the sun. She had a light rain jacket – bright yellow, of course – as much for the sun as the rain, and a red leather motorcycle jacket she'd scared up in the lost and found. Her boots and jeans had been given a wash & were still plenty good. She was ready.

She really had learned. It had been two weeks since leaving the gas station, and four days since she last found an old building to raid, and she really was thriving. The spot she'd chosen to camp for that day was, for the first time, not totally strategic. She'd found an old mailbox in the middle of nowhere, but... it had been graffitied, almost canonized. Surrounded by candles, flowers, old teddy bears, it was a shrine.

Instead of sleeping, she'd spent the day watching the mailbox from a nearby hill. A few of the rebels had come in, all in cars or on motorcycles, none on foot. They put things into the mailbox, spoke to it, sat around it, then moved on. It was strange, but clearly meaningful.

Dusk had not fallen yet, but she decided to pack up camp early to go inspect the mailbox. It had been hours since the last visitor, she'd have some time.

"I FORGIVE U" arched over an evil eye on one side. Tarot cards had been wedged into seams. "You're dead" jumped out, darker and fresher on the layers and layers of graffiti. The rebels were sending letters to the dead.

Crouching to study the graffiti, she found herself sitting in the dirt, talking to the mailbox as if it could answer. Surprisingly, she'd found she had a lot to say after her weeks of solitude. Hearing an approaching engine, she weighed her options, then stayed where she was. She was in the middle of a conversation, after all.

When the car pulled up and two men got out, she finally stopped talking. They approached cautiously, wary of the woman sitting alone, staring at them hard from behind her motorcycle goggles.

Blue jacket, red hair. Red jacket, light hair.

They approached hesitantly, not sure what to make of this woman. Nobody rolled alone out here, not by choice, anyway. Maybe what they were interrupting was bigger than they realized. Had she lost a whole... crew? Family?

Red hair approached the box, bold, and posted a letter, light hair following to do the same as red hair stepped back to give him space.

"Mikey."

Light hair stared at the woman, alarmed.

"I remember you." Her face was completely hidden, and she hadn't shifted from where she sat next to the mailbox, one foot slightly beneath it, legs splayed, leaning back on her hands to stare up at the men.

"What? How? Who are you?" Light hair – Mikey – was thoroughly freaked, and red hair stepped up behind him, frowning, a hand resting on his holstered ray gun.

"I'm dead. Just another lost cause." She barked a laugh, her first one in a very long time. "Just another half-dead runaway who won't amount to anything."

"What, did we owe you something?" Red hair spat, and behind her bandana she grinned up at him.

"No. But you certainly don't live up to all the stories."

"Never meet your heroes, kid." Red hair snorted, turning away, knowing Mikey would follow.

"Never expect much from soldiers. You're all the same."

Red hair whipped around, Mikey grabbing to hold him back from the woman who still sat, open and unguarded on the ground. "We're not soldiers. We're nothing like them."

She just laughed, and the two men shuffled away.