1 Chapter 1

The run-gunners roll into the outposts like the very devlars themselves. Wild men, guns blazing in the setting sun, raising a crowd of cheering spectators in the dust that trails them from the wasteland. Trin is in the garage, resting on a stack of balding tires and fanning himself with an oily rag, when the earth rumbles beneath his feet from the growl of their engines. As he stands, his stomach clenches like a fist. Behind him a door opens and slaps shut, a languid sound in the heat of the evening.

“Gunners,” Aissa says, coming up beside him.

“I know.” Trin doesn’t want to think about the men—he’s hot enough already. Running a hand through his sweaty hair to push it from his face, he watches Aissa cross to the open bay doors. When she leans out of the shadows to peer down the road, the last rays of sunlight set her long red curls aflame. Trin wants to call to her, tell her to come back, but what’s the use?

Whether or not they see her, the gunners are headed this way. They’ll dump their trucks at the garage before they head for Blain’s waystation in search of a hot meal, a cold drink, and a soft pallet to bed down in for the night. Blain is Trin’s brother, older by twenty odd years. He was a gunner, too, until devlars got their parents on a run between outposts. Trin was eight at the time and doesn’t remember his mother. In his memories, his father and Blain are the same man. Blain gave up the life and settled down in Arens with the waystation, garage, and a little brother his only inheritance.

Aissa tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and laughs. “Gerrick’s with them,” she tells Trin. Turning, she gives him a wink and suggests, “Maybe finally—”

Trin’s face heats up at her tone. “Stop it,” he mutters. He has a thing for the gunners—strong, brave men who tear through the wasteland, defending the runs against the creatures out there, preybirds and devlars. Gunners travel in packs, like wolves, two or three run-gun trucks barreling down the empty stretches of land that link the outposts together, kicking up hot, blasted sand in their wake.

A couple times a month they come through Arens. Trin’s only seen Gerrick once before but he’s heard the talk and he’s in love with the man. He asks every gunner about him—Blain’s grown tired of his questions and doesn’t even answer anymore. “I’ve told you already,” he’ll say, mulling over the accounts. He isn’t a businessman and it takes him most of the month to keep the books balanced. “I haven’t seen him in years, Trin. I rode with him once to Oriel, once, and that was it.”

“But he likes boys,” Trin will prompt. That excites him, the thought that he might catch Gerrick’s eye if the gunner ever doeschance through Arens. “You said…”

Blain will nod, weary. “He likes them, yes. Now get. You see I’m busy here.”

And now here he comes. Trin smoothes back his hair again and feels the grease in it. Maybe Aissa is wrong. Maybe Gerrick isn’t with the gunners. Can he clean up before they get here? All this time talking him up,he thinks. He hates the smirk on Aissa’s face. Let him keep going, please. Let him just pass right by.Here’s his chance and suddenly he doesn’t want it.

What if Gerrick doesn’t notice him?

What if he doesn’t care?

Down the street, engines roar like caged beasts. Aissa shoves her hands deep into the pockets of her overalls and rocks back on her heels. “The trump owner told you he was headed this way.”

“Yeah,” Trin concedes, “but I didn’t think he was serious.” The old man runs a store at the palisade selling face powders and dehydrated food. What the hell’s he know about the gunners? He was just talking shit to get Trin worked up. “Aissa, are you sure it’s him?”

“It’s his mark,” she says. She has to shout over the sounds now, engines growling, cheers from the crowd, gunfire like caps popping in the heat. “On the side of the truck, Trin. I’d know it anywhere, you talk about it often enough.”

Gerrick then. Here. Here.

* * * *

Aissa is two years younger than Trin and sweet Jesus, twice as mean. She told him once that’s all she has: her hair, her tits, and her attitude, but in this world, that’s a lot. She’s not pretty and she knows it, which is one thing he likes about her—there’s a strawberry-colored birthmark blotched across her forehead that darkens in the sun, and she has a scar above her lip that she claims is from fending off a devlar attack.

Trin knows better. He’s known her since she was six years old—they met right after his parents died. He was sitting on a hitching post outside the waystation, waiting for Blain to arrive, not really feeling much of anything as he watched a scrappy slip of a girl across the street kicking stones. Every now and then he’d turn and stare down the dusty road, but his brother wasn’t in sight. Each time he looked back, the girl was closer, and she had a catty way of looking at him from the corner of her eye that unnerved him.

The next time he glanced down the road, she ran over to the hitching post and pushed him, both hands flat against the small of his back, right the hell off. No reason. Scuffed his knees and hands in the stones she’d been kicking. She got the scar when he pegged a rock at her and it split her lip. He’d never seen so much blood in his life. “It’s alright,” he told her, trying to dab at the cut with the hem of his shirt. The fabric was dusty from where he landed in the dirt, and every time he tried to touch her, she wailed. Her jagged crying was like a saw cutting through his thoughts. “Shh,” he said. The corner of his shirt found her face and she screamed in pain. “Shh, girl. Stop crying, will you? Just stop bleeding already.”

She punched him hard in the nuts and he yanked her hair, and they probably would’ve kept it up if Blain hadn’t stepped in at that moment. Trin hadn’t even heard him ride up. “She started it,” he muttered.