8 JUNKIES
We arrive at the camp just as the sun is setting. Destroyed cars are piled up around the entrance of an overpass, which makes a good spot to hide in for the night. Tee is tired as she has insisted on carrying her pet lizard all day long.
"Hold it! I've got a gun on you!" The local lawmaker shouts from the passenger seat of a car, high on the piles of junk. I reach out towards Tee to stop her and nearly lose my fingers to the winged creature she holds.
"We've come to trade," I say, the eternal free-pass to civilization.
The lizard hisses madly and as we take a few steps closer it frees itself from Tee's arms and flies off into the twilight. Good riddance. Tee looks after it longingly and I crouch down beside her.
"Stay close to uncle Russ ok?" and she looks at me and nods. We climb carefully over the junk and into the makeshift camp. There are four of them, junkies by the looks of it. One of them jabs a needle in her arm as we climb down. I have a nasty feeling about this place.
"Who wants to trade," I say, holding of a handful of iguana by the tail.
"What have you got?" one of them says, standing up from the fire. An emaciated woman, with dark circles under her eyes, obviously hungry.
"I need water. You need lizards?"
"How about the girl?"
"She's not for trade," I say and look at her sternly. She stumbles backwards a step. My practice in the mirror as a teenager had obviously paid off.
"Everything's for trade," one of them says from the fire pit, and they all laugh like the junkies they are.
"Not her," I say.
"You can't be wandering with that," and the woman crouches on her knees, "come here little one. Did you miss mommy?" Tee hugs my leg even tighter, obviously scared.
"I say she's for trade," one of the junkies stands up and points a shotgun at me. Shit-fuck.
"Hands on your head, wanderer."
I think about going for my single shot pistol but I don't have a chance with these odds. Several more of them point guns at me, not bothering to stand. The woman in front of me grabs Tee away from my leg violently, holds her by the scruff of her clothes and lets out a hollow laugh. Tee is too scared to move.
"Look, you can take what I got, but she's my daughter and she's mine,"
"We'll take what you got, and your daughter you son of a bitch!" the leader says as he waves his shotgun in my face, his putrid breath makes me gag.
"Tie him up, and the kid."
Out of the dark night there is an inhuman scream, a flash of wings and the woman falls down dropping Tee and writhing in agony, a dark welt spreading on her exposed shoulder. I grab the shotgun out of the hands of the junkie with strength out of nowhere, turn it on him and fire. I reach out and grab him by the throat, holding him up as several bullets slam into his back, bullets meant for me. There is surprise in his eyes as I drop him to the filthy needle covered ground. Two shotgun blasts later we are safe, surrounded by the dead and Tee is crying and clutching my leg.
"Hold it wastelander," Crap, the lawmaker.
I turn around and there she is, perched in her sniper nest, high on the pile of junk cars, gun pointed at me.
"Those were my friends," she says as I eye the dark barrel of her rifle. But she points it at the sky and smiles.
"They were shitty friends," and she laughs and laughs.