Page 8 of The Last True Hero
Three
ADAM SLIDHIS shotgun into the holster on his modified motorbike. The word Yamaha had once stretched across the tank, but now it was bleached clean. He didn't even know what the word meant. A lot had been lost in the years of the Darkening, when the skies blackened with dust from the meteor impact and ash from the wildfires it set off, and the temperatures dropped a few degrees. The only ones who survived were those who had access to underground bunkers or storage sheds, where they'd stayed for nearly six years before the ash cloud settled. Wasn't much left alive then, but food was running scarce, and so the survivors had to adapt.
They said that people showed their true selves then. Some banded together and struck out west across the Great Divide, where there was land to settle after the wildfires swept through and destroyed everything; others stayed in the east under the harsh thumb of the Confederacy that was starting to rise—there were still cities there in the east, some said, though his mind couldn't even conjure what that meant; and others became scavengers.
The Yamaha was his sole relic of the past, and most of it was patched and recrafted. The tires came from the factories down south where rubber trees were found, and there were men here in the wastelands who could craft steel and aluminum, others who'd managed to rig up solar panels, which were worth their weight in gold here out in the Wastelands. People made do. They had to. Any man could own a dozen trades.
Noise and raised voices spilled out into the courtyard behind the public house where he'd taken rooms, but it wasn't his business. Time to move on. He'd shaved his face and cropped his hair, then packed up his stuff, making sure he still had the doll that the little girl he’d spent three years raising as his own once gave him.
He’d lost Lily along with everyone else, and while the ache of that had dulled, it never truly went away.
The only thing he had left in his life was one last quest: to find Johnny Colton, the warg who'd helped turn him into a monster, and bury him so deep nobody ever found the body.
Adam slung a leg over the bike, flipped the choke out, and then stiffened.
Blood.He could smell blood.
That caught his attention. The warg shifted inside him, as if pushing against his skin.
Following the scent, Adam found himself back in front of the bar. He couldn't see Mia, but several jeeps idled in the street, and people were streaming from every other business in town to discover what was going on.
A huge man with a barrel for a chest and blood soaking his sleeve stepped up onto the porch of Mia's saloon, where he could see the crowd. "As you all know by now, a band of about forty reivers hit my ranch this morning and took half my womenfolk and some of the kids. They'll be headed south, where they can sell them at the border towns, and we all know what happens then.
"I've been a part of this town for near on fifty years. I've sacrificed my own blood and sweat to build Salvation Creek, and now I'm standing here asking you folk to lend me your blood and sweat back. They've got a four-hour start on me, but I'm plannin' on gathering some men and going after them. I can't pay you. I don't know if you'll come back. But I need to know... are there any here that will ride with me?"
Several hands shot into the air, but it was clear from the look on the man's face that he'd expected more. Silence became almost thick, and then one hand started to lower, then another.
"Jenny," the man said, looking at someone in the crowd. "Please. They've got Helen, and all the rest of the girls, including my two."
A hard-looking woman in front pursed her lips together. She was short and slim, with gray in her dark hair and dark skin the color of tea-stained paper, but she didn't look scared. More thoughtful. "I can shoot, Ethan, but hell... what are we meant to do against forty reivers? And by the look of that arm, you ain't gonna be much help. Nor half your men."
"I'll go," a female voice called out, and then Mia stepped up beside the man. "That's my sister they've got. That's your niece too, Jen." She looked out over the crowd. "I see a lot of faces here that know those girls, or share some blood with them. What are you all going to do next time, when it's your girls you're crying over? Thwaites is right. We need to stick together."
Mia. That made him stand up straight. He looked around. People lowered their eyes, muttering under their breath. He couldn't stand to see her there alone.
"And what if they come back when everyone's gone?" another woman called. "What about those of us left behind? I'm sorry, Mia, but we've got children here. We need to protect the town."
More voices rose up, a sudden chorus of arguments.
"They won't come back," someone called. "We've got the General on our side."
"The General don't give a shit about us out past the Divide," someone else yelled. "He only rides through when he's got reason to."
"What if they come back—"
"And what if they don't?" someone else called. "How do you look your daughter in the eye, Crane, when you let her best friend get taken off into slavery?"
It was chaos. Adam could almost taste the anger and fear in the air, and the vein in his temple throbbed as his heart started beating a little faster. He could feel the icy cold burn of the amulet against his chest as his inner predator sat up and took notice of all the weakness in the air.
In that moment he was stepping back years into the past, where he'd been forced to step forward and gather together the small tribe of settlers who were being hit hard by wargs in the Wastelands. Those people helped him form the fortified town of Absolution, but they'd needed a push to get there. And while he'd never wanted to put himself forward as a leader—not with his secret—he couldn't leave them there alone. Just as he couldn't keep quiet now.
He stepped up on the porch next to Mia and Thwaites. "That's enough," he said, and though he didn't raise his voice much, it carried, and people began to settle down, turning curious eyes on the newcomer.
They might not know him, but people understood an air of authority. They recognized strength when they saw it, and Adam had long grown used to commanding respect from people.
"A lot of you don't know me, and I don't know a lot of you, but you can't allow this to stand. You can't afford to look weak. The reivers have never hit you this far east, but I grew up in the north. I've spent most of my life hunting these bastards and fighting them off. In the north, we have walls and guns and we look at you down here and call you the 'soft-landers.' Maybe we're not the only ones who think that? Most reivers prefer to raid the Wastelands for the scarcity of the Confederacy enforcers, but it's getting harder to take the settlements up there. Their slave routes are drying up. If they start getting a taste for how easy it is to come a little further out of their way, then do you think this will be the only attack you bear?"
Silence lingered, but he saw several people shifting, not liking what a stranger had to say.
