Page 59 of Fearless
Gunner’s men had dropped off Python’s body at the front gate of Razor Wire’s clubhouse four days ago. We heard no response and hopefully that was good news, but we could never be too careful.
Eventually the bikes disappeared into the horizon and the sound of roaring engines with them. The occasional screech of some bird of prey became the only sound cutting through the breeze. I lifted my face toward the sky, closing my eyes against the bright mid-morning sun.
Gunner’s bird never did come close to me again since that one time we were both up here. Even if it was the same bird that gave me my sight, it didn’t matter. I had no bond with any animal. Although I often wondered how I was able to hear that first bird speak, and why it chose to bestow me with the gift of my sight.
There were so many things I didn’t understand, things I just never learned as I was growing up. One of the first men temporarily caged with me taught me how to read and write. He was surprised I knew how to talk. I’d heard people speak all my life. I just rarely had someone to talk to.
Another man who took the place of the first, taught me basic math and science principles. I must have been in my teens when I learned to add, subtract, and divide. I learned about the concepts of gravity and dividing time into seconds, minutes, hours, and days. He told me how the sun made plants grow, and that it nourished people too.
I became obsessed with sunlight and the sky after that. Feeling a sliver of sunlight on my face felt like a huge act of rebellion. The women would come in, cut me, and leave me bleeding, never noticing that I dared to soak up all the sunlight I could through the cracks in those dungeon walls.
The other men came and went while I was the only constant. They all taught me various things with one overarching concept becoming clearer as I got older—men were good and women were evil.
My time in prison was the start of me unlearning that idea. The male guards harassed and abused me. Jandro was the only male staff member that was kind to me. The female workers were afraid of me. That was the pattern I noticed after spending time out in the real world. I had feared women all my life and now I was the stuff oftheirnightmares.
Jandro kept telling me there was another side to them. Sometimes they smiled and laughed. They would talk softly and listen when I had something to say. If I was lucky, they’d sit in my lap and touch me. The mere idea used to send me into an anxiety attack, but Jandro assured me it was a good thing.
Regardless, none of those things ever happened to me. Even my sexual experiences happened with a sense of dread and fear hanging over me and the woman involved. I didn’t know how to make them feel less afraid, so I just got it over with as quickly as possible for both our sakes.
Once I was with Mariposa, it was like everything Jandro told me had finally clicked. I liked seeing her smile and hearing her laugh, even when it wasn’t directed at me. I realized being with a woman could be enjoyable beyond the fleeting pleasure of an orgasm. Sometimes it just took a while to find that person.
“No. Fuck.”
I set the rifle down the moment I felt my dick begin to swell, and began pacing back and forth on the roof. “God damn it,” I muttered to myself. “Stop this. Stop it. I need to stop.”
There was no way I could tattoo her. Not if I couldn’t stop thinking of that moment every time I heard her name or my mind drifted. I would fuck up somehow if I actually touched her. I always did. Maybe Jandro trusted me, but I sure as fuck didn’t trust myself.
A sudden buzzing sound on the breeze had me cocking my head. It sounded like a bee colony looking for a new hive. I picked up the rifle again, scanning the horizon for the telltale swarm, but saw nothing but blue sky.
My grip tightened on the gun barrel as the buzzing grew increasingly louder. I blew a short, high-pitched whistle between my teeth, signaling to the other guards to stay alert.
A black spot hovering in front of the mountainside in the distance made me squint. It looked like a bird at first, casting a shadow on the ground below, but the shape was wrong. As it got closer I saw the flying, buzzing thing had four limbs connected to a single body in the middle, with the buzzing sound coming from a small propeller on each of the limbs.
The realization made me suck in a breath and bring the rifle butt against my shoulder. I waited until my shot was all but guaranteed before I fired.
My shot hit one of the limbs, sending it flipping over into a tailspin hurtling toward the ground. It crashed with a small plume of smoke just a few hundred feet outside of the gate.
“Someone go retrieve that and bring it to me!” I yelled to the men below. I wasn’t a natural leader, but Reaper left me in charge. Next to him, Jandro and Gunner, I was the most senior SDMC member. The younger members would be smart to obey my orders without question.
The gate slowly opened and two dirt bikes zipped out, zooming across the desert to the crash site. I paced on the roof as I waited. The others wouldn’t be back until tonight. What was I supposed to do in the meantime? I didn’t make these decisions. Reaper did.
The guys retrieved the object and brought it back within minutes. I didn’t want to leave my post in case I saw more, so I had them bring it up to me on the roof.
“Do you know what it is?” I asked Benji, who held the flying piece of machinery out to me. It looked vaguely like a small helicopter.
“I’m pretty sure it’s a drone,” he answered, turning it over in his hands. “You can use it to spy, drop off packages, stuff like that. See this?” He pointed at a small black circle on the central body. “That’s a camera lens.”
My blood turned to ice. I remembered a church meeting where Gunner brought up that General Tash had been looking to buy drones from us, before we found out he was working against us.
“So someone was controlling this remotely?” I asked.
“Yeah. Probably not too far away either. These things don’t work over really long distances.”
“Destroy it now,” I barked. “The camera inside, the navigation system, whatever could send information back. I want every piece of this thing turned to dust.”
Benji hesitated. “You sure? I’m not super techy, but someone here could probably get information off the chips and find out who it belongs to.”
“Did I fucking stutter?” Reaper used that phrase when he got tired of repeating himself. “I already know who it belongs to.”
