Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu: A tale of Atomic Love (5 page)

“Thank you, my Lulu. I appreciate what you’re saying. How much it took you to do it. But it doesn’t matter.”

She turned her face to the window and closed her eyes against her reflection.

“It just doesn’t matter.”

Lu bit the inside of his cheek. Let her cry. Maybe she deserved it, after all. That release. You can’t fault a nearly-murdered woman for crying. It’s a natural part of the process.

A few more days. A few more states. A few more conversations, and then he’d kill her. She’d be grateful for it, in a way, he was sure of it.

But first he’d tell her about his first kill. It would be a gift to her. Something for her to think about while the light faded from her eyes.

And, perhaps, he could give her one more gift, too. Giving didn’t come naturally to Lu. It was a new feeling, stretching wings that were clumsy and ill-fitting and misshapen, but there was a delicious burn to it at the same time. Working muscles that were shrieking out for it.

Yes. A gift for the girl. For Montessa. He’d think on it while he drove. He’d think quite hard.

“Wanna take a walk?” Lu asked. He was tired of driving. His back ached and his legs were cramped and his head was full of cotton or bees or bloodlust. Sometimes it was difficult to tell which.

Montessa hesitated. Lu tossed her a look.

“What? I thought you’d be all over getting out and stretching your legs.”

She swallowed hard.

“Is this a killing sort of walk?”

Lu frowned. He didn’t know why. He felt his lips curl and turn and stretch, felt his eyebrows furrow and his eyes spark. He was slightly offended. A killing sort of walk, indeed.

“Nah, lady. It’s just a walk. A normal, everyday kind of walk.”

“Call me Montessa,” she said, and stared out
the window again.

He pulled over on the shoulder, next to a group of trees. Thick. Leafy. Perfect cover. Wonderfully remote-feeling. The type of place where, yes, he would gladly go on a killing walk. But that made his newly-beating heart heavy, somehow.

“I will kill you, you know. Just not now.”

“I know.”

Her voice, it had that ghostly sound again. Hopeless. Airy. Leaves and trees and dried twigs scratching against her larynx.

“You didn’t seem too concerned about dying earlier,” he said. Accusingly. The emotion of that made him frown again, deeper. He lit a cigarette to cover the shaking of his hands, of his thoughts.

She didn’t answer. He hopped out of the cab, went around, let her out.

“Go on. You can walk in front.”

She blinked, and he realized how pale she was. How filthy her hair and body were. Normally he would have washed her down by now with a washrag while she begged and screamed and prayed, but that seemed invasive somehow. Like he should ask her permission. That wasn’t right. That wasn’t how this game was played.

“You’re not going to hold on to me?”

“I will if you want me to. I just figured—”

“No, you figured right. Thank you.”

“Run and I’ll kill you.”

“I know. You don’t have to keep saying it, Lulu. It’s insulting at this point.”

So she walked ahead of him, gingerly, and he realized she was barefoot, the pads of her feet still cut and bleeding from the rocky beach. The tops and sides were being scraped by roots and pine needles, but she didn’t seem to care.

“The trees smell so good,” she said
, and reached out with her bound hands to touch the pine needles. She sniffed one, bit into it. The bitter taste flooded her mouth, reminding her of when she was a little girl. Why, Montessa didn’t know. She didn’t remember pines. She only remembered dead Mama and sweaty father’s fists and the boys down the street who did things to motherless little girls.

She spit the pine needle out. Filled her mouth with saliva and spit that out, too.

Lu watched her, saw the way her eyes turned colors they shouldn’t be able to. Watched her face go taut and hard and frightening in a way. Her hair began to move of its own accord, blown by a fierce wind he couldn’t feel, and he knew Something Big was happening. Something dangerous.

“Hey,” he said, and when she turned to face him, her eyes were very far away. Frosted over like icy ponds. She held her bound hands in front of her and he saw that they were raw, bloodied. Sticky burns around her wrists that would scar, if she lived that long. And of course
, she wouldn’t live that long. She was a woman already dead, only her body hadn’t caught up with her soul yet.

“Montessa,” he said softly, and her name filled his mouth like the best of his mother’s cooking, like a smooth stone, something like hope.

“Montessa,” he said again, and her eyes thawed. Refocused. Her hair stopped blowing in the Wind That Wasn’t and settled around her trembling shoulders again.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and staggered. He grabbed her automatically by the ropes around her wrists, saw them dig into the wet oozing wound. The body liquid. Pus and despair produced by pain. He cursed and put his arm around her.

“Don’t collapse on me. I don’t feel like hauling you back to the truck.”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, and the strength in her body went. Lu guided her to the ground. Without him, she would have gone down like a gunshot victim.

“Tired? Hungry?”

“I just need a second.”

“Still my demanding little princess.”

Lu squatted beside her. Pulled the knife out of its sheath. Reflected it in the light, back and forth. Back and forth.

“Trying to scare me, Lu?”

He didn’t like this weak voice. It didn’t sound like her, like the girl he thought he knew.

“Are you scared?”

He didn’t like his voice, either. Angry. Maybe a touch of hurt under it all.

He growled.

Montessa smiled at him, briefly. Barely. The tiniest of smiles. The smallest curve of her split and dried lips.

“So angry. Nuclear Lulu. I told you that one day you’re going to blow.”

“What happened back there?”

“Mama always said I was special.”

She closed her eyes, looking perfectly and beautifully and horrifyingly dead. Lu held the knife far above her, tracing it over her veins and cheekbones. He mentally took it to her hair, removed her eyes.

Loss. He tasted it.

He pressed the blade against his pad of his index finger. So sweet. So sharp. His blood filled the line that it left, dripped onto the ground, which devoured it hungrily.

“My dad tried to kill me with this knife,” he said. He studied the red on it, wiped it clean on his cargo shorts. “When he found out what I was. What I could do. He called me a demon.”

Montessa opened her eyes. Watched him. Felt the importance in what he was saying. Recognized that he was sharing, and it hurt, and was frightening, and he was more than likely to kill her now than ever. Share, and then murder. Let yourself be vulnerable, and then erase all proof such a thing ever happened.

She hoped that when she went, it would be like releasing her soul to the butterflies. She wished for it fervently.

Lu stared at her. He grinned and his teeth looked very sharp.

“He would have called you a demon, too. A devil girl. He grew up in China and still has some of the old ideas.” He studied his knife again. “I wish he had just said I was special, like your mama told you.”

Her breathing had been fast, frantic, pushed up-tempo by fear and thoughts of her father and her jagged anticipation of Lu’s dagger. She tried to slow it. Thought of Lu as a young boy, as a teenager, as a person who was considered evil by his father.

“My father thought I was evil, too,” she said, and swallowed the words.

“Yeah? Did he try
shamanic medicine? The priest? Try to exorcise the devil out of you? Beat it out?”

“He tried everything.”

Lu sighed.

“So did my dad. None of it worked. I was still…me.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you being you.”

He bared his teeth at her. Maybe it was supposed to be a smile. Neither one of them was quite sure.

“You don’t know anything about me, Devil Girl.”

She closed her eyes again, still weak.

“I know that you’re you. And that’s enough. Your daddy couldn’t ask for more than that.”

He watched her. He touched his tongue to the steel of the dagger. He’d licked it clean before, so many times. Used it to butcher. Used it to eat meals. Used it to dig in the dirt a few times, although he was afraid it would damage the blade, the shining oracle he kept so nice and sharp.

“How many people have the knife that somebody tried to kill them with?” he asked her. And realized that he really cared. This knife, it was supposed to be an ugly thing. A thing of horror, but he had taken it from his father’s clenched fist and done something else with it. Made it work for him. Made it serve him. He stole the terror away from it by inflicting that terror on everybody else who saw it.

The other women. Montessa. She’d never be just another girl, now. He remembered her name,
always would
, he thought, and he seldom remembered names. They just weren’t important.

“This knife,” he said, and
held it out so she could see it, if only she’d open her eyes. “This knife, it’s important. Important in a way that most things aren’t important. Does that make sense?”

“You reclaimed it,” she said, and the word sounded just right. Reclaimed. Taken back. Made his own.

“Yes,” Lu said, and his voice was proud. “I did.”

Her eyes were still closed, her voice tired.

“Is that why you like it so much? To get back at your father? To show him that he didn’t beat you?”

Lu scratched at his chin. Looked at the knife again and put it away. Studied his hands, which were long and elegant. Piano hands, his mother had said, but he had no talent with the piano. Or the violin. Or tailoring tuxedos, which is what his father did. But murder? Peeling skin, neatly and smoothly? Making the cuts neat and tidy, perfect in every way? That was a talent he did have. Something he could share with the world. Something he chose to.

“I don’t need to show him anything, anymore.”

“Why is that?”

Her voice sounded dreamy. Lu realized she was nearly asleep, and that wouldn’t do. Stay too long in one spot and somebody will inevitably stumble upon them. Wonder why the brunette was tied up. People tend to frown on bound women out in the wilderness.

“I won’t fall asleep,” she reassured him.
“I’ll get up in just a minute for you. But the sky, it feels so good. The air. The trees. It isn’t like home at all. And that’s a good thing.” She sighed, a sound like contentment, but it couldn’t be. Not tied up here in the forest with the man who was going to sever her soul from her body.

Lu frowned.

“Stop worrying, Nuclear Lulu. Tell me about why you don’t have to prove anything to your dad anymore.”

He shrugged.

“He’s dead. Gone. Can’t hurt nobody no more.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. She opened her eyes and he saw sincerity in them.

His smile, it was wolfish. His smile, it was sly.

“Don’t be sorry. I’m not sorry. I’m happy. Delighted, almost. It was the best thing that ever happened to me.
Dad
was my first kill.”

Her gaze sharpened, clarified, and something moved in her eyes, then. Something with scales. Something that made him suck his breath in. His stomach twisted in the most painful and delicious of ways.

“You killed your father,” she said, and struggled to sit up. He let her do it herself, not wanting to pull on her bloodied wrists again. When she managed to sit, she put her face uncomfortably close to his.

“Tell me, Lu. Tell me all about it. Please? Please.”

There wasn’t anything he wanted to do more.

“We have a long drive ahead of us. Let’s go back to the truck and get started.
Then I’ll tell you everything.”

She picked her way back, gingerly. He didn’t say anything else until
the engine roared and made angry, roaring sounds. The same sounds Lu had made in his throat when his father had lunged at him with the knife. The growl turned into something else, something primal and loud and unstoppable. A force of nature. A wildfire. He had wrenched the knife from the old man’s hand, making the blade white-hot, and the wrinkled skin had flamed and smoked and charred while the knife was thrust up, under his rib cage, and it was the most terrifying and exhilarating moment in Lu’s young life.

“I was free,” he said, and Montessa watched him with her quiet eyes. Lu realized that he had said “I was free” without any other preface, that maybe she needed to hear the entire story first, but he started with the part that
mattered
before anything else. And being free, that’s what mattered. More than anything. Most of all.