Pirates.

Whole damn bunch of them.

There were two trucks. Built like tanks and feasting on a group of strugglers. God knows what the people had been doing trying to cross the forty on foot, but then I guess they’d probably not started out that way. Take the long road and anything can happen.

I tried to gauge the numbers, their distance ahead, but the dirt swarmed back and sealed the future from view.

“Wake up,” I said, loud enough for Sal to bang his head on the ceiling. “We got company.”

He couldn’t see through the dust clouds so he just stared at me. “They don’t look like traders,” I said. “And we look pretty ripe for the picking.” I pulled the wagon off the road.

“So what do we do?” He was panicked. “You think they’ve seen us?”

“They’ve seen us. Pirates tend to pay attention to things on the road.”

I jumped out and pulled my goggles down so I could see. The dust was bad. Real bad. And that was about the only good news out there.

I yelled for Sal to get his fat ass out of the wagon, and I showed him how to shovel at the sand with his fingers.

“Quick now,” I told him, trying to peer through the dust clouds. “Quick as you can.”

As Sal scraped at the side of the road, I set to work on the engine, snapping hoses free and switching pieces out. Then I unloaded the buckets of juice and half the corn, found my book and the bark and stashed them with the pictures and camera inside Zee’s bag. I buried everything in the channel Sal had scooped out. I worked at the ditch with my bare hands, clawing as deep as I could go. Then I poured the sand back on top of the supplies and pounded the dirt flat.

I watched the road ahead.

Still nothing but dust.

I checked the nail gun.

“For all they know, it’s just me that’s out here,” I said. Sal just squinted and pointed his face in my direction. “So I’m saying you should run,” I told him. “Scram. Out there off the road, and lay down low. Just don’t go too far. You’ll not find your way back.”

Sal didn’t budge. I was pretty sure he was going to start crying. Hell, he was probably already crying.

I grabbed him my extra goggles out the back of the wagon, yanked them down over his head. “Pull your shirt up so you can keep breathing,” I said, the dust blowing worse now. Got so you couldn’t see past your nose. But we could hear engines. Two of them. Growling up closer with every stupid moment Sal stood waiting.

“Go on,” I yelled. “Scram.”

And finally he took off running, fast as his stumpy legs would move. I watched him trip and fall, scramble up and keep going. Then I lost all sight of him at all.

I slammed down the hatch to seal up the wagon. I ran to the front where the hood was still gaping wide. And right before I turned back to the engine, I spotted the silhouettes of those two pirate vehicles, their oily color leaching through the dust storm, looming closer with every second.

I had the nail gun tucked at my waist and my shirt pulled down over it. And I kept faking at the engine as the pirates rumbled closer. They had music blasting, a regular party rolling up. The electric sound of guitars split the air as the first truck sank to a stop.

The wind went soft and the dust eased a little. I turned from my engine and made a big deal of peering up at the truck closest to me, flashing the dumbest grin you ever seen. I yelled out, about as loud and cheery as I could manage. Act like you got nothing to worry about. That was my plan.

Each one of those tankers had nine sets of wheels and a solid box on the back, guns spiky off the top and pointy out the side. I studied the lifted tires with rubber knuckle tread, the graffiti, and tinted windows.

The music stopped and the engines sighed, then fell silent.

I waded over to the truck closest, waving my hands in the air, and just as I reached the cab, its door came flying open and all I could see was legs.

Thighs. Holy shit. As strong as they were pretty. The girl leapt out of the cab and stared down her broken nose at me.

Seen one pirate, you seen a hundred. The mohawks and the rubber boots. Three-foot hair and six-inch heels. If she was older than me, there weren’t much in it, but her eyes showed the true mileage, if you know what I mean. A rifle of some sort hung loose off her shoulder. Goggles dangled from her neck, like the dust didn’t bother her a bit.

“Something wrong with your wagon?” the girl said, crossing her arms as she looked me over.

“The power converter.” I shrugged. “Think the fuse is fried.”

“Where you heading?”

“Vega.”

“Alone?”

“Why? You want to come?” I pushed my goggles up and squinted in the dust, as if I might match her in some way. “I could use a little company.”

The pirate threw her head back in the storm and laughed, her breasts rocking inside her fuzzy pink vest. Then she stepped closer to me and lifted my shirt up. “So what’s this for?”

“It’s a nail gun.”

“You always carry it shoved in your pants like that?”

“Not always.”

“Just a regular joker, huh?”

“Just stuck on the side of the road, sister,” I said. “Any chance you got parts for a trade?”

“Why? What you got in the back?”

One of the trucks began blasting its horn at us, voices yelled through the dust. But the girl just raised her hand to silence them. She threw open the back of the wagon, peering in at my bag of tools, the scattered bags of popcorn. I was pretty sure I’d left enough in there to look realistic. Bit of food. Bucket of fuel.

“Grab that,” she said, pointing at the juice.

“What for?”

“You’re bringing it with you. Your tools, too.”

I reached for the nail gun. Panic coming over me. I tried to pull the gun up, point it at her, but the pirate just crushed her knee in my chest and I felt my arms go floppy. She grabbed the gun off the ground and shoved it at my arm, lodged a nail there so fast I’d no time to scream.

I staggered back. Fell. The pain surged through me like my arm had caught fire. My body writhed in the dust. The pirate girl snatched me up with one hand, grabbed my bag of tools with the other, and then she dragged me across the road to the back of her truck. My heels scraped through the dirt, my arm was ready to explode. I just stared back at my wagon, and for some reason, the worst of it was that hatch left hanging wide open, the car filling up with sand. Like the wagon had rolled its last mile and the world was telling me that nothing lasts forever.

Nothing, Banyan. Least of all you.

“Watch out, ladies,” the pirate yelled into the belly of the truck as a hundred eyes blinked shiny from its depths. “This one’s a charmer.”

She hoisted me up and hurled me inside the tanker.

And the tanker was full of bodies.

Nothing but skin and bones, wound tight with terror, painted in piss and vomit. They were slumped in puddles of sweat on the floor. Stinking like week-old shit.

Every lousy part of me screamed and jerked and hustled, and my arm pulsed and my head spun. But there weren’t no escape.

I screamed till my mouth was frothy. Tried to bolt. But the pirate pushed me back until I felt flesh beneath me, fingers clutching me, the slimy mob absorbing me in its gristle.

As the door slammed shut and sealed in the gloom, I squirmed and wriggled and gasped for air. The smell almost stopped me from breathing, but I fought to stay conscious, wrestled with myself to keep my eyes peeled.

For what?

Nothing to see but broken teeth and yellow skin. Nothing but bony flesh. I wound my way up to a wall as the wheels began moving. The music cranked on in the distance, and the squealing guitars knifed through the moans that whimpered out of my mouth and out the mouth of every sucker in there. Every now and then, a voice rose up or a fist pounded at the metal — one of the newer captives, I guess, one of the ones I’d seen stumbling on the road. But mostly the fear suffocated the sound out of everyone. It kept us pressed down, muffled in the dark.