Freaks

The sound of her skull bouncing off the rock split the night air with a sickening crunch.

Three laughed and dropped the Freak, letting her floppy corpse hit the floor in a pile of brain fragments and blood.

Three loved doing that. It was his favourite pastime. I sometimes wondered what he would do if he didn’t have some Freak’s head to crush on a rock. Perhaps he would go on living. Although we did not have long to live, no one did. Not us or the Freaks.

I preferred throat cutting. In another life I would have been quite the artist, splattering paint across the canvas of the world instead of dousing the ground in spiralling blood droplets. Throat cutting was so quick, so sudden, so shocking and finite in its result, you didn’t survive throat cutting, it just happened and you were gone.

Beck came out of the hut, leather tunic doused with crimson, his stumpy thick legs flattening the grass as he stomped around breathing heavy through the red hood. It was a muted red, not blood red, I liked that, it made us stand out and it made the blood stand out on us.

“Why did you do that?” Beck said, his gruff voice boxing my ears. He always shouted his words at an unnatural volume, like the whole world needed to hear his waspish voice.  Three turned to him perplexed, two red hoods staring at one another through rough eye holes in the gloom.

“Do what?”

“Kill the girl you moron,” Beck said, still hurling the words out, “I wanted my way with her.”

Beck had his own habits that I didn’t exactly approve of but it was all about dealing out punishment to the Freaks. They had brought the world crashing down about us after all. He had his way of doing it, I had my way and Three had his.

“She’s still here,” Three said maniacally, shaking the corpse so that a shard of bone fragment slid from the Freak and hit the floor in a slurry of blood.

“No one’s stopping you.”

Beck shook his head, “I don’t do that shit, I don’t fuck Freaks once they’re dead.”

He had some rules then, even if it was a simple one. The rest of us had more than him but he had some rules. My top rule was that I never killed child Freaks. I didn’t like the noise they made, or their small innocent faces, it felt like all kinds of wrong to kill one and Three usually did it for me.

I turned away, not wanting to be pulled into one of their famous arguments. Those two had been known to bicker over everything from Freaks, to food, to the next colony to attack. It was endless.

I wiped my blade, careful to get every last drop of red off the steel and stowed it away. I would sharpen it later; sometimes it caught on the bone when you cut the throat, occasionally the Adam’s apple. Either way these minor discrepancies between bone and blade blunted the weapon.

“But you’ll fuck them when they’re alive won’t you?” I heard Three spit with contempt as a scream ripped through the air.

“Someone’s got too,” Beck replied. Neither of them had reacted to the scream. We were used to the sound. I heard Three kick the ground moodily.

“You don’t have too, wasn’t my idea.”

He was talking about Beck’s new idea. About the children. It had been a source of friction between the group, a source of anger and a reason for Beck and Three to get at each other’s throats even more.

I didn’t care, I just wanted to slit throats. Three wanted to bash skulls, he loved the sound they made when they finally cracked, like the sound an old branch makes when it parts from the tree, cleanly breaking from its age-old joint. It was because he wanted to bash skulls that he argued with Beck. Beck always had grand plans, grander plans than just killing Freaks and his plans got in the way of Three’s head bashing.

I don’t really know what the rest thought. I know Luce and Petrus weren’t keen but that’s because I knew they wouldn’t dare voice their concerns, they just stayed quiet, honoured the hood and killed the Freaks.

Another ear-splitting scream punctured the air and I turned this time. Beck and Three stopped their bickering and we looked at one another.

“I hate it when he draws it out,” Beck grumbled. Three nodded, absentmindedly searching the Freak’s corpse.

“He needs to find a way of killing quick, something nice and quick like me and Joy, aye Joy?”

I nodded, “Aye Three, nice and quick.”

We were talking about Rhys.

Rhys didn’t like beating or throat slitting or head bashing, he liked collecting trophies. He was hung with finger bones, he rattled with teeth necklaces and I swear he once tried to put a Freaks’ scalp on his hood. But his most prized accolade was the jar of eyeballs he kept under his tunic. He liked to get the eye ball out in one piece, a nice fleshy orb. To do that he had to get his knife in behind the eyeball and pop it out like a cork. Sometimes he did it when the Freak was still alive.

“I want to smash that fucking jar,” Beck said, he flexed his fist, the white knuckles of his hand shining through the pale skin as he squeezed.

The sudden intervention of a handgun going off made us all jump, the sound cut the screaming dead. The bullet echoed about the empty colony sending noise for miles in all directions. I sighed.

“Fuck sake,” Three looked around the darkness for signs of life, holding his torch high so as to spread the light.

“He keeps using that gun he’s going to bring every armed Freak down on us.”

Beck was already striding into the black, heavy feet shaking the ground as he went. He was going to sort out Rhys.

***

We were back on the road within an hour, Rhys in front. Those who were out of favour with Beck went in front and became the vanguard, the worst place to be, we ate their dust on the long road south. There was only north and south now, only the road and the colonies and the Freaks.

“A fucking gun,” Beck kept saying, grinding his teeth as Rhys stalked ahead, shuffling his feet like a naughty schoolboy rent with melancholy after a bad telling off.

Three shook his head, I was glad to see the two of them getting on for once.

“I told you, he needs to find a quicker way like me and Joy.”

“Or a quieter way,” I added.

“Or a quieter way like me and Joy,” Three repeated.

We stumbled on. Luce and Petrus bringing up the rear.

 “We get through these next two miles we’ll be in Middle Country,” Beck said, huffing as he lumbered on, his towering form stomping on through the viscous tarmac.

“Then we can find more Freaks and this time,” he gave Three a shove, “you won’t kill any of the girls before I can have them.”

Three moodily straightened himself, rearranging his hood that had been skewed by Beck’s roughhousing.

“I see, so you want them killed nice and quick but not too quick cos you want to fuck ‘em? I see how it is.”

“How is it?” Beck stopped, Luce and Petrus almost bumped into him as he brought our little parade to a halt in the middle of the highway.

“How is it Three?”

Three tugged at his tunic, suddenly shy when faced with Beck’s wrath but regained his courage quickly. There wasn’t time to dawdle on the road. There wasn’t time to be a coward.

“You want to find some Freak and impregnate her, get us stuck with a kid.”

Beck stood his ground, not talking. You could tell he was thinking of a clever response. I could almost hear the cogs turning in his brain. You got used to reading people without seeing their face. It was what defined us. I hadn’t seen Beck’s face in two years, I couldn’t remember what it looked like. That shit leaves you pretty fast and I ain’t ever seen Rhys’, or Three’s or any of the others for that matter. It was how we worked. The red hood unified us and kept us apart at the same time.

“It’s a bigger plan than that,” he said, pointing a shaking fat finger at Three, “you know it fucking is, you know it Three.”

“I don’t think I do,” Three turned to me, he always saw me as back-up against Beck’s spurious plans.

“I don’t think I do know, and neither does Joy, Joy’s in my corner on this.”

I was in his corner but I didn’t want trouble, I never did. I just wanted to kill Freaks. Beck turned to me. Three and his big mouth had pulled me into this. I sighed.

“I’m not too sure why you want to do it Beck,” I said slowly, “I don’t see the use, why would we want a Freak kid?”

Beck rubbed his forehead through the red hood, his dull brown eyes were wide in the holes, boring into mine.

“It wouldn’t be a Freak,” he said slowly, like he was explaining something with increasing exasperation to a child, “it would be half Freak, half us.”

Three snickered, causing Beck to spin round.

“Half Freak is Freak to me.”

Beck bristled, clenching his fist in the same way he had done when Rhys had fired the gun hours before.

“No it isn’t,” I could hear the teeth in his voice, the molars grinding on each word, the anger in each one, oozing from the syllables like blood.

“If we start fucking the Freaks we get kids like us, we take them in; teach them to hate Freaks.”

He clapped his hands.

“We eradicate them faster.”

It was a stupid idea. I hated it. By some telepathic connection, I could tell Three hated it too and so did Rhys. It didn’t matter what the other two thought cos they would never voice their opinions.  

“That has to be the dumbest idea I ever heard,” said Three stepping forward.

“How would we keep a pregnant Freak with us for nine months, keep the baby alive during childbirth and then raise it to help us? We’ll all be in our twenties by the time it’s big enough to do anything, we’ll most likely be fucking dead soon after that Beck you moron.”

I heard a ripple of agreement from the others.

“Babies get loads of infections too, we have no penicillin, it’s all gone, you remember?  You gonna stop it dying Beck? How you gonna do that?”

“How did we survive then?” he shouted back, there was a dangerous inflection in his voice I had not heard before, the one that heralded angry tears, that cracked the words as you spoke them. He was just a scared kid, soiled with anger, we all were.

Three laughed, it sounded eerie beneath his hood, too muffled, too obscured.

“We are the last children Beck, don’t you fucking get it? The last, fuck knows why we survived but we have no idea why and we sure as hell have no idea how. Everyone else is dead or a Freak.”

Beck didn’t answer, his head bowed slightly. There was definitely some shameful notions going on behind the hood, perhaps the tears his earlier outburst had welcomed were already flowing.

He gave up on crafting a reply, it was hard to find a response to that. He just stomped off, pushing past Rhys and taking the vanguard as though losing that vocal battle had pushed him down the hierarchy and put him out front.

“I just wanted to build something,” he said over his shoulder, “I didn’t just want to kill for a change.”

“He just wanted to get his end away,” Three laughed, Rhys snickered, I heard Petrus and Luce exchange similar sentiments. It had been decided that Beck’s idea was stupid and we would continue on the road until dusk, camp, eat and then find another colony to attack during the night. This time Three would decide on the colony, not Beck.

That’s just how it worked.

***

Rhys’ gun had been confiscated by Beck who, presumably wielding a great deal of anger pent up by the earlier confrontation, used it to batter the head of the first Freak we came across.

The Freak must have been on look-out, shinning an old torch into the darkness and squinting from the doorway of his hut.

Beck beat him until the brains came out of his nose. And then stalked off to find another kill.

Three found a screaming girl, probably not much older than me. He punched her across the face, leaving a streak of blood where her tooth was knocked clean from the gums then grabbed her blonde hair, dragged her from the ground and slammed her face into a rock.

Thump, thump, thump, crack. He’d got it.

I drew my knife and stalked into the next tent.

It was funny. We had just been talking about children and Beck’s idea to have a baby and inside the hut I found one.

It was small, no bigger than a loaf of bread, draped in old blankets and towels and clutched in the arms of its mother.  She had flowing platinum coloured hair that framed a gaunt and disparate face with sad blue eyes.

I had my rules but a Freak holding a baby kind of divided them.

“Beck,” I called, keeping my eyes on the lady Freak. I could see the fear in her stark eyes. They were wide and rimmed with red veins, the bloodshot whites flickering as I pointed the knife at her.

We never talked to the Freaks. We weren’t sure they spoke our language, hell we weren’t even sure what language was, it was all lost in the ages before we were born.

I just pointed my knife at her, the blade glinting, the tip levelled at her child. It spoke words I knew she would understand.

“Beck!” I called again, “get in here.”

I heard the familiar earth-shaking stomps as Beck approached the hut and entered, blood dripping from the gun butt. He didn’t speak, it was like his eyes were drawn to the Freak and her child without words.

I pointed, “it’s a kid.”

Beck just stared.

The Freak’s eyes widened further and her lip wobbled in a soft silent sob, I saw a solitary tear make its way down her face and her hands contracted around the small form of her baby.

Beck seemed dumbstruck.

“I ain’t killing it,” I said hastily, “you know my rules Beck.”

Beck was still silent, he was just staring at the small baby.

The Freak had begun to wail softly, her eyes creased and wet, her mouth oozing spit. It was disgusting to watch I half wanted to slit her throat there and then but the child was still in her arms. It woke, tiny arms flapping, its minute hands clenched into fists as it bawled.

“Beck?” I said.

He was still silent.

“Beck do something for fuck sake that thing is giving me a headache.”

Beck didn’t move. I was tempted to call Three but I didn’t know what would happen with Beck in this kind of mood. He was acting weird, really weird. I strode towards Beck and put my hand around the muzzle of the gun, shaking the piece from his hand.

“I’m taking this, you decide what you want to do, I’ll give you one minute whilst I wait outside then I’m calling Three and Rhys and you can fight with them about this.”

With relief, I saw Beck nod his head, the hood creasing as he moved.

“Alright.”

I exited the tent.

Outside was all chaos. Petrus and Luce were stamping at the body of a Freak lying on the ground. It wasn’t moving and red rivers sprinted from the lifeless form. Three was inspecting his earlier kill, whilst Rhys, eager to get back into our good books, was using a knife to stab some Freak man in the stomach.

The Freak was gargling blood and a fountain of crimson was spurting from a hole in his side. He was clutching at the wound, I hated that. It was pathetic, so desperate that I started to feel some kind of pity, it was a man who had lost millions of banknotes in the wind and who chased them down the street, desperate to snatch as many as he could back from nature her clutches, knowing he could retrieve but a few.

Three intercepted my thoughts, stalking over to me like he meant business.

“Where’s Beck? Why you got the gun?”

I shrugged holding it out to Three, “I don’t want it, I just took it off Beck he was being weird.”

I pointed my thumb back towards the hut, “he’s in there.”

Three entered the hut. I heard his muffled voice soon after, "no he isn’t.”

I followed him in.

Sure enough the hut was deserted but for the body of the Freak who had been clutching the baby. Her eyes were wide, her mouth agape, a foam of white puke bubbling between her lips. It took me a few seconds to notice that her neck was purple with slowly rising bruises and that her throat was wrapped in a red hood.

 I ran towards her shocked by the sight of the hood and pulled it from her neck.

“Beck’s hood,” I said to Three, pushing the material into his chest.

Three swore loudly.

“He’s used it to grot her, that’s not quick Joy, what the fuck is he doing?”

I gave Three a shove, “never mind that, he’s abandoned his hood and he’s fucking taken the baby.”

“What fucking baby?”

I looked around. The tent was bare, there was a yawning rip in the tent wall, betraying Beck’s exit point. He must have made off into the night.

“There was a baby, the Freak she was holding a baby, I swear.”

We searched the tent, ratting through the Freak’s things. She had so little. Books mostly, blankets, clothes, meds. I looked at the labels, old antibiotics. The type that didn’t do shit now, the type that bacteria had built resistance to, the type the Freaks had misused fucking us all into oblivion.

 “Fuck,” Three threw down the gun, it hit the ground, landing with a dull sound.

“Fuck,” he repeated, “fucking Beck, obsessed with babies, what the fuck?”

What the fuck indeed. Beck had gone and now it was just us.

Rhys was finishing off another Freak with bright orange hair and white skin when we came out, he squealed like a pig every time Rhys hit him and so Rhys hit him until he stopped. He was a mess by the time I came over, Rhys really needed to be a little more subtle.

“Seriously Rhys,” I said, my stomach turning as I looked at the orange haired Freak with disgust, his nose bent, his eyes swollen and closed, his teeth broken fragments in a bloody mouth.

“You need to do things quicker.”

Rhys shrugged and leaned in to pick up a shard of tooth from the Freak’s chest. Another artefact for the collection.

We called a meeting, the Freaks were dead and Beck was gone, our leader with it, the original red hood.

“Well I say we don’t need him.”

“Only cos he smoked you for using that gun Rhys.”

“Fuck you Three.”

Three was doing all of the talking, me, Petrus and Luce weren’t, as per usual.

Sometimes I worried about the other two. They seemed to wait to see how the dice landed before deciding if they wanted to stick with odds or evens. That unsettled me. They shrugged and gave non-committal grunts throughout the meeting, all the time sitting back while Rhys and Three were fighting until eventually I told them both to can it.

“I can’t stand listening to your shit,” I said, standing up, “Three you can be leader.”

Rhys turned to me. I could see his cold eyes through the hood. They burned with some kind of feral anger that we usually reserved for the Freaks but I didn’t give two shits. He wasn’t going to be leader, not on my watch. He would have us collecting the hair and toenails of Freaks if he could have it his way.

Petrus and Luce shifted and nodded without conviction but it was enough to make Rhys back down. I knew he would be out front for the rest of the day now. He was back to the bottom of the pack. The liability cast aside.

“What we gonna do now then?” he asked as we kicked our way along the deserted highway, the only sites for miles around being the hulking bodies of abandoned cars and burnt our trucks. It was a lonely way to travel and it now felt worse without the broad figure of Beck, his stomping footsteps, his deep, tawny voice, his waspish habits, they all left a hole which we walked around and looked into. A yawning chasm in the world.

“Kill Freaks, same as,” said Three, who had taken to his new role as leader with an arrogance I had come to expect of him.

“Quit your talk and keep a look out.”

Rhys scuffed his boot on a pothole, a rip in the highway that looked like exploded tarmac.

“I am looking out I just wanted to know about Beck.”

“What about him?”

“How we gonna replace him?”

Three made a fist and squeezed I seemed to be the only one that noticed when he did that. I knew Rhys was testing his patience.

“I’ve replaced him dipshit, I’m leader.”

Rhys turned around, walking backwards, “not leader I mean, well, we’ve lost a member we can’t go on with five when we had six, it don’t work.”

He had a point. We needed six. Six worked and five didn’t. I hated it when he was right. He was the kind of guy that gloated about being right and that didn’t sit right with me.

Three turned, I could see his eyes blink stupidly in the sun. I think under the hood he was giving me a desperate look, looking to me for answers again. I couldn’t provide all of them. That was his job now. I shrugged and kept walking.

“I don’t know Three,” I said over my shoulder, answering the question he hadn’t asked, “up to you.”

Three, reluctantly, agreed with Rhys. We needed a replacement and a good one. Petrus and Luce were basically tools to be wielded, useful but lacking any personality. They could die on me and I wouldn’t care a shit. I don’t think I would even notice the difference. I couldn’t imagine a face under either of their hoods, just blank skin, pulled tight over fresh, scrubbed bone. Mute. Nothing. Blank canvas. Cloudless sky.

But how did one recruit to the group? That was a question Three asked me while Rhys built the campfire. Night had fallen as it did and we were camped at the side of the highway, the moon casting white, dead light onto us.

“Where do we find non Freaks?” he said to me, his frantic whispers hissing through the hood.

I shrugged, “beats me, I don’t remember how we even got together, Beck found me.”

“Beck found me too.”

“Fuck.”

Rhys blew on the embers and a flame was pulled from the nothingness into bright light. I saw him lift the bottom of his hood to do it, exposing a pointed chin and thick lips that bent the air as he funnelled oxygen into our fire. He replaced the hood and turned over to us.

“You two geniuses thought about how we’re gonna find a new Beck?”

His constant questioning was putting me on edge.

“You got any smart ideas? Where do you want to find a new member?”

Rhys shrugged.

“I don’t know,” he said pointedly, an edge to his voice, “I’m not leader.”

Fuck. It was clear Three was clean out of ideas.

“Shut up then,” he shouted, pointing at Rhys.

“You shut the fuck up Rhys, you don’t do nothing but talk or fucking screw things up, you can it.”

Rhys stood, his long shadow falling across me. He looked taller in the firelight.

“You keep talking like that Three I’m gonna have to do something about it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

They stood facing each other like two growling dogs, hackles up. They could bare their teeth and gnash away, I knew that, I knew they could do that all day but it wasn’t clear whether one would actually snap.

Then there was a shot.

A crack that blew the night away. The bullet must have hit the fire because logs went flying in all directions the flames sparking and crackling furiously. I hit the floor without thinking. Three did too. I think Rhys did as well but the other two were slow. Far too slow.

Luce was hit by the second shot.

I saw it spin from his shoulder, going in at one angle and springing out at another, pinwheeling into the black around us. The sound was cancerous. The mechanic whack of the bullet, the ping as it hit the bone, I’m sure I heard that, just before Luce started crying.

He didn’t scream or yell. He sobbed. Crying so much I wouldn’t have been surprised if he wet his hood with tears, the sound echoed. It was broken up by these deep, shuddering breaths, like a young kid. Like a baby.

Then I remembered we were all kids. I didn’t know how old he was but he could be young. Like really young.

Petrus hit the floor next to his friend.

“Shut him the fuck up,” I hissed across our camp as a third shot hit the highway and ricochet upwards into the night. It drowned out my words and kept our heads firmly to the ground.

Three must have fired back with Rhys’s handgun because the sky above me exploded with noise.

I don’t know how long we lay there but when Three pulled me back up the firing had stopped and Luce was dead. The bullet had gone through his shoulder and out the back of his neck. We could see the hole burnt into his hood.

“He would have died anyway,” Three said as we checked the body over for anything useful.

“That got infected he was fucked.”

Luce had a knife and a long bat made of some kind of stainless metal. I took the knife, Three took the bat and told Rhys he should learn how to use it.

Rhys didn’t answer. He hadn’t spoke since the firefight. Neither had Petrus but then again he didn’t speak much anyway. I don’t know what this feeling was but a dead one of us and no dead Freaks felt like the strangest thing. I didn’t much care who had fired at us, just that they had now gone and that I had escaped without dying.

That was it.

“Should we bury him?”

“What?”

Rhys had finally spoken, “when I was a kid my Ma buried Da under our family tree, I remember it, about the only thing I can remember.”

“Why?” I asked.

He shrugged in the way that he did, “fuck knows.”

“We burn him,” said Three decisively, looking the body over before letting it slump to the ground, sticky blood peeling from the hood. The sun was up now and the blood was turning a strange vermilion colour as it congealed. I had never been around a body this long. We usually left the dead shortly after making them.

“We burn him and we keep heading south.”

“Why south?” Rhys asked.

“I said so that’s why.”

We pulled the body to the burnt out remains of our fire and did what we could to make Luce a part of it. I poured a can of gas on him, Three pilled blackened logs about him and the rest just hoped.

Petrus came up behind us. He still hadn’t spoken. Pushing past me wearily he knelt beside Luce and pulled off his hood. I hadn’t thought to do it. The hoods were so much a part of Luce I forgot that there was something under it.

“Fuck,” I heard Petrus breathe.

Luce was a white kid with a broad forehead and prominent brow that jutted over his other features. The hair was flat and mazy, tight to his head and somehow neat even in this chaos. His, blue grey eyes were wide in death and his chin was brushed with patches of adolescent facial hair. He had a set of perfect teeth, yellowed, but set so neatly in his mouth.

I couldn’t help but admire the detail of him. It was so strange. Why I had I thought he was nothing? What was nothing? Who really was Luce? I killed beside him each day, yet just looking at his face I felt like I knew so much more about him already.

Petrus sniffed, “just wanted to know.”

He threw the hood back down. Three sniffed too, lit a match and dropped it. The blaze erupted. We didn’t turn back. We just kept ongoing.

“Now you have to find two members, where they gonna come from?”

“Fuck off Rhys.”

“Tell me.”

“I said can it.”

“You saying can it, ain’t getting us two new members.”

The bickering and squabbling was endless.

I started walking next to Petrus it got so bad. He trudged on silently as he had done before. It was like Luce had never existed. Like an artist had drawn our group, depicted us along the road but then decided to rub out the figure of Luce, paint over him.

Petrus spoke only once that whole day. His jagged voice, a sound like cut glass underfoot, and what he had said, made me wish he had kept quiet.

“You see Luce?”

“Yeah.”

“You think he looked like a Freak?”

I missed a step and almost tripped on the highway, my left boot dragging on the ground.

“You fucking what?”

“Nothing.”

But he’d said it now. The bullet had been fired and I felt the shards in my brain. They couldn’t be pulled from it. Luce had looked like a fucking Freak. We walked till the sky was black, peppered with white stars, framed by a ghostly half-moon. The only light we could enjoy.

And Petrus was right. Luce had looked like a Freak.

I tried to fight that thought with logic and found it was impossible to do so. Logic didn’t work here. Each time I set out my stall, argued the case, found reasons and understanding, it was bulldozed by a colossal realisation, the realisation that he was a fucking Freak. No question.

We decided not to build a fire that night but to sleep huddled in the roomy boot of a truck left rusting on the side of the road. It was cramped but warm at least. I fell into an uneasy sleep.

Luce’s dead eyes stared into the sky. His mouth moving out of time with his booming words.

“I’m a Freak, I’m a Freak.”

The stars rained bullets that peppered the ground. Luce’s body burned away into a puddle of blood that swirled about me.

Then Beck was there. Stomping feet, waspish voice, his wide gait looming over me, his large fat hands closing over my hood, snuffing out my voice.

“I’m going to kill you, Freak.”

I woke with a start.

The world was dry and hot. The sun was climbing the clear sky and the car was already a furnace because of it. I moved, pulling on Petrus as I stood. He woke too.

We stared at one another through the hoods, eyes framed by red leather. Suddenly I didn’t see the hoods as the symbols that they once were. They weren’t a powerful unifying face, not a symbol or a gang to hide behind, not a uniform, they were just costumes and we were just kids.

He looked at me and we hauled ourselves out of the car, jumped down from it onto the dry grass and strode off.

I didn’t know where I was going and I don’t think Petrus did either but I felt something between us that was unspoken, something that didn’t need voicing. Each stride took us into a new world that felt ever more unsure, uncertain, unsteady and yet, all the more understandable.

The car was now far off on the horizon but still visible. A metal shell with Rhys and Three still asleep in it. Two wrecking balls who couldn’t work out how to wreck each other without wrecking themselves.

I stopped and sat on the arid ground, tired from walking. Petrus bent down, resting on his haunches beside me.

“You first,” I said.

He shook his head, “nah, you.”

“Same time?”

“Fine but you take off mine and I’ll take yours.”

I nodded and put a hand on the top of his hood and he did the same to mine.

“On three?”

“Yeah okay.”

I took a breath, “one, two, three!”

Petrus blinked stupidly, so did I. It was incredible how much the hood obscured the sun, stopped it reaching your eyes.

Petrus had piercing beetle black eyes that were hooded by worn lids. His skin was dark too and he had a thin mouth, close cropped hair and jagged cheekbones that looked so serrated they could have cut me.

“What do I look like?” he said hesitantly.

I stared, “like a Freak.”

We paused.

“What about me?”

He smiled. I hadn’t seen a smile in years. Or what felt like years. It broke his whole face apart, working the high sharp cheekbones, the strange dark eyes and the tight lips.

“You look kinda funny, you’ve got a big nose.”

My hand automatically came up to feel it before I  shook my head.

“I meant do I look like a Freak?”

My question was blown apart by two gunshots that rent the open air.

First I thought it was Three. Leaning over the back of the truck and taking pot shots with his pistol, lambasting us for leaving, fearful that we had ditched him with Rhys. But then I remembered the shooter from the night before. We hugged the shadows of the rock. It was all we could do.

His first two shots had pummelled the stone and flung off in crazy directions. The third clipped the rock, soared off into the distance and buried itself in the car and its fuel tank.  

It must have got thirty foot of air. That thing bolted upwards like someone had put a giant spring under it. The sound was like thunder across the skyline and I watched as the ball of flame and metal cascaded through the air. I didn’t hear Rhys and Three scream, maybe they both died without knowing, maybe they were asleep when it happened, or maybe they just sobbed quietly when they died, just like Luce did.

The third shot was followed by the sound of stomping, thunderous footsteps and a shadow that fell across me. I could tell from the way he stood that it was Beck.

He wasn’t wearing a hood just like us. He had curly lank hair and a fat, flat nose, two piggy eyes and long, block like teeth that sat on top of his lip. He was as waspish as his voice.

“Fucking Freaks,” he said.

“Beck?”

He lifted the gun.

“Fucking Freaks.”

“Beck no, it’s me, it’s Joy.”

Beck shook his wild head, the look in his eyes was barbarous, inhuman, a gnashing animal bearing its teeth.

“No,” he said, voice shaking.

“No. There are no names, there are no half Freaks, we’re all the same, we are all just fucking, Freaks.”

He took aim. At least I knew it was going to be quick.