Page 31 of The Pale Rider
T
he change in Aeron was pretty fucking drastic. He was still locked up tight when he came to telling me anything about him, and he was still acting like he didn’t have a last name. He wasn’t telling me anything about my past, and I got that part. I totally did. I got that it was the apocalypse and people were renaming themselves, but maybe it would trigger something if he would just tell me more about himself. I still had no idea what we talked about in that chatroom.
Still, even though there were things that were a big nope with him when it came to a discussion, Aeron had become a chatty bastard since that kiss. He was pointing out things on our ride and explaining my surroundings instead of taking me on a ride through the unfamiliar and leaving me to figure it out.
I could just make out something in the distance. It looked like a broken-down car and a woman holding what looked like a baby on the side of the road.
“Look, Aeron. I think there’s someone in trouble up ahead.”
Aeron’s hand tightened on my waist.
“No, we’re the ones in trouble. That’s not a helpless woman on the side of the road with a broken-down car. She’s the bait, and she’s holding a weapon in those rags disguised as a baby. Her gang is probably in the bushes waiting to ambush us.”
What a cynical fuck.
“How do you know?”
“People don’t survive on their own anymore. Rage Heads outnumber humans, and if you don’t have someone at your back, some living are even worse than the dead. The only way to survive now is to align yourself with a gang or community. She would be dead or a Rage Head now if it were just her and a baby.”
“You’re not part of a gang,” I pointed out.
“No, but I know who the gangs are, and I’ve made allies with communities all over the country. I help them, and they help me. Gabriel’s Haven is not the only place they have given me a home.”
“Maybe her community needs help.”
“More like her gang saw a man and a woman on a horse and wanted to steal the horse. I know most of the gangs, but I don’t know all of them. Humanity has gone to shit, Speedy. These people will kill us for our supplies and Meremoth, and that’s not the worst thing they could do.”
“I believe you, Aeron. So, what do we do? Go around them?”
“No, indeed. The successful gangs have booby-trapped the surrounding woods to cut down on the Rage Head population. That was another reason I went straight through Scooter’s territory instead of around.”
“Booby traps. It’s the fucking apocalypse; of course, there are booby traps. So, what exactly do we do?”
“Remember when you asked me if Meremoth was a normal horse?”
“Yes, and you said he wasn’t. You won’t tell me what he is, just that there are only four like him.”
“Do you trust me?”
“Are you about to do crazy shit where the horse starts murdering things, and I’m scared I will die?”
“You’ll never die when you’re riding Meremoth, Speedy. Meremoth will get us past that little trap alive.”
“Okay, then. Do it.”
“Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!” Aeron yelled loud enough for everyone to hear.
The woman ran to the center of the road and started frantically waving at us. I knew I should have recognized Aeron’s line from somewhere, but I couldn’t remember shit. As soon as he finished, Meremoth took off running. If I thought that horse ran fast before, that wasnothingcompared to what he was doing now. I flung myself across his neck as my surroundings became a blur.
We were headed straight for the woman in the middle of the road. I wondered what was going through her head as a petrified woman clutching a blue baseball bat and an insane man waving a sword and screaming like a cowboy came barreling at her at this pace. Was she going to move? Because I already knew Meremoth had no intention of stopping.
Aeron was right. She was the bait, and we were the prey. Her gang saw we had every intention of running her over with this huge horse going impossibly fast and started spilling into the street screaming at us. Most of them had knives, and I saw some machetes, but only a few of them had guns. I didn’t have to speak to know they didn’t want to waste ammo on us. They would have used the guns to threaten us, then killed us with one of their sharp things.
One of the men tackled the woman as we flew by them. Someone took a shot at us, but Meremoth was running so fucking fast, they were soon long past us. Meremoth slowed to a trot, and Aeron was laughing like a crazy person. He patted Meremoth’s neck fondly while I was still draped across it shaking like a leaf.
“He loves it when I let him do that.”
“I think you enjoyed that too, you crazy son of a bitch.”
