Blood Water

by J.A. Bryson

The blood on Zip's hands is dried the color of rust and sticks like clay under her fingernails. Mostly, it isn't hers. Mostly, it belongs to the man she shivved, the one who mistook her for an easy mark. Zip is gray-eyed and hunger-slight. She's a lot of things – fast, fierce, speechless since birth – but she isn't easy. The old timers know this. The man waiting at the pits to grab her while she took a piss, he did not know this.

He's a newcomer. His people came when jets rained fire on their homeland. They have no code. They left their children and their old timers to burn.

Their language is violence. One needn't words to speak it.

Outside camp, Zip finds shade in a stand of scraggly pines with peeling bark and sun-bleached needles. She drags her palms over the parched earth. The blood remains. It doesn't flake or rub away. She thinks to spit on it, to make a paste, to paint its warning on her sunken cheeks, but her tongue is swollen with thirst. She hasn't spit to spare.

If it doesn't rain soon, her band will strike up camp. Better to move than to choke on dust – to become dust. She closes her eyes and swallows. Her heart beats too fast.

The man she shivved will die. Serves him right for making her sweat.

Propped against a tree, Zip drifts. She doesn't hear Cat come. She wakes to his rough tongue grazing her knuckles. Groggily, she peeps an eye. The sun is not where she remembers it.

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