Page 1 of Gunslinger Girl
PART ONE
CHAPTER 1
They dragged in the dead scrounger in the fade of the afternoon, tied to the last truck in the convoy. Dust clouds billowed after the vehicles like a fog, blanketing the compound’s entrance in ochre twilight.
Pity squinted and pulled her bandanna over her nose. She wandered into the commotion, eyes half scanning the jumble of vehicles and riders for her father but mostly letting her feet carry her over to where the scrounger lay. Flies alighted on him and on the trail of wet muck he had left behind. The body was facedown, though when one of the convoy guards kicked him over, Pity reckoned that was no longer an apt description, as there wasn’t much face left to speak of. She swallowed the sourness that rose in the back of her throat.
The guard, dressed in a weathered Transcontinental Railway uniform, sniffed and spat. “Shoulda left the trash outside for the crows.”
“What’d he do?” Pity toed the scrounger’s mangled hand. There wasn’t a lot to be made of the body. Male, certainly. Maybe young. Maybe not.
“Thief. Found ’im sneaking around camp this morning. Nearly made off with an armful of solar cells.”
Brave, she thought, but dumb. It was one thing to pick through the abandoned landscape, another to steal from a Trans-Rail convoy.
A hand clamped around her arm. “Get yer ass away from that!”
She grimaced beneath the bandanna, careful not to let the emotion touch her eyes as she turned to her father. Three days’ worth of dust and grime from riding motorcycle escort to the convoy did nothing to diminish his chill air of authority. The guard mumbled a quiet “Sir” and hurried off, but her father’s slate-hard gaze never left her. Pity took an involuntary step back and spotted the commune mayor, Lester Kim, standing behind him, along with a sharp-featured man she didn’t recognize.
The stranger’s eyes slithered over her. “This her, Scupps?”
Her father nodded. Pity flinched when he reached out again, but he only yanked the bandanna down. Strands of acorn-brown hair fell across her cheeks. She pushed them back.
“She don’t look much like you.”
“Serendipity favors her mother.” Lester’s head bobbed up and down on his scrawny chicken’s neck. “In the good ways, mind you.”
“You mean like my aim?” Pity stifled a smirk as Lester stiffened. She also pretended not to notice the narrowing of her father’s eyes, a sign that she should be silent.
He shoved his pack at her, sending a fresh cloud of dust into her face. “Get home and clean my gear. We’re back on the road tomorrow morning.”
She hesitated, eyeing the stranger still considering her like a piece of livestock.
“You gone deaf while I was away? Go!”
Pity obeyed, plunging into the mess of workers unloading crates, each one etched with the Confederation of North America seal and destination marks for Pity’s commune, the 87th Agricultural. The smell of exhaust tinged the air, clamorous with labor and barked orders. It was a familiar enough scene, save for an aberrant oasis of order at the center of it all. Set away from the rest, a pair of sleek black trucks idled, gold logos emblazoned on their sides. Pity slowed.
Drakos-Pryce.
Corporate cargo.
She wandered closer, curious. In matching black uniforms—none of which looked like they’d seen six months on the road—the Drakos-Pryce team moved with precision and order, stacking their delivery in neat piles. The commune and Trans-Rail workers gave them a wide berth, tossing only the occasional awed look their way.
Except for one.
Hale looked up as she spotted him, waving her over to where he stood before an open case. “Pity! Take a look at these.”
“What—” Her breath caught as she spotted the rifle. It was a model that couldn’t even generously be called recent, but it was still better than anything she had seen in person. “Those are for the commune?”
He nodded. The settlement’s head firearms instructor, Hale was also responsible for everything that came and went from the armory. “Security upgrades.”
Pity’s hands itched as he lifted the gun out of its container. She longed to feel the exquisite balance, to look through its scope and gently wrap her finger around the trigger.
Inhale, aim. Exhale, shoot.
The memory of the words came with the pungent scent of cheap home-still, along with the vague sensation of her mother’s touch as she made some small adjustment to Pity’s form. Pity could still feel the warmth of the sun bleeding into her skin, see round after round of targets as she cut them down. Never quite as well as her mother, not yet, but creeping closer and closer with every—
No. Pity’s hands tightened around her father’s pack, an anchor to reality. Her mother was gone, and her daddy would sooner grow feathers and lay an egg than allow her anywhere near a weapon like that. Not that he’d get one, either. They’d be issued to the wall-walkers, the men and women who patrolled the commune ramparts and crop field fences. Her mother had been one of them once—the very best, sober or not.
