Frag Dog

I’ll never forget the tears that were in her jewel blue eyes, how they were already there before I placed the heart-shaped locket in her hand and she closed her fist around it. She had hired me to bring her daughter back, but this is what I returned with instead. I recognized that sandpaper-gut sorrow she was exuding, having been there once, too, and I hesitated to tell her…

The whole thing started a couple days before. I was just passing through on my trek to Kudzu Bluff, doing some scavenging, when I stumbled upon this easily overlooked community tucked behind some woody overgrowth near a boarded-up gas station. The people there were nice enough but teetotal, and the town was completely dry. I was about to leave for good when she approached me.

There was such desperation in her manner that I didn’t even question why the people of her own tribe couldn’t help, but I reluctantly agreed for some meager pay that really wasn’t worth my time in the long run, because I just felt so bad for her.

“Please,” she begged me. “Lissa is such a good girl, and she’s never been outside of camp. She’ll never make it on her own out there.”

Why did she leave? How long had she been gone?

“She just… disappeared. This was weeks ago.”

As my feet pounded the worn, earthen paths snaking through the ruins of crumbling concrete buildings curtained in leafy vines, I pondered the description her mother gave me. Here we have this porcelain-skinned golden-haired young woman, soft and fragile and sweet as the petals of a brickrose’s bloom. Blue eyes, deep as the ocean. A kidnapping was not out of the question, or maybe something more nefarious. Either way, my expectations of being able to bring her back were negligible. But maybe I could at least figure out what happened to her and bring the mom some kind of closure.

A couple miles out, I met up with an incoming trader caravan. From them, I was finally able to get a much-needed taste of rotgut. While the hooch was flowing, I asked them about Lissa. They insisted they couldn’t help, but suggested I follow the railroad tracks west, so once we parted ways, I did.

I continued deeper into the clover-toned shadows that deepened with the waning daylight behind woven layers of towering fernlike fronds. The nocturnal sounds of the native insects swelled, sounding like rhythmic throat hums from some chorus of aliens, and I knew I would have to stop somewhere for the night soon.

A rustling of grass behind me drew goosebumps down my neck, and my hand instinctively readied itself over the machete that hung from my belt. I kept moving, but I was at full attention now. When the sound came again, I froze in place, fingers wrapped around the handle of my blade. I pulled it slowly from its sheath, shifting my stance in preparation. Then there was a thud, and everything went black.

...

I awoke gasping for breath, suffocating under soupy humidity and blinded by boiling noonday sun. The bleached rib cage of some mutated animal fortified with rusty chicken wire was my immediate view, and my sweat-glazed forehead throbbed as I pulled myself to a sitting position. My duffel bag and machete were no longer on me. Once my eyes adjusted and the ringing in my ears subsided, I got a better look at the dried-up gorge I was being held captive in.

A thriving nation had sprung up between the dusty, barren walls of this otherwise lifeless river bottom, populated by the kind of reprobate ruffians and debauched degenerates that were easily identified by their unofficial uniforms– lots of blood, bones, and spikes. Ramshackle residences were nestled into the dirt walls while fires burned God-knows-whatever it was they considered less valuable than the putrid refuse they built their homes from. Mange-ridden polydactyl coydogs snarled at one another over old carcasses baking in the sun, and a nearby group of women all with one or both breasts carelessly hanging free giggled on in sick amusement at them.

“Told you we didn’t kill ‘im.”

I turned to see two men in war-painted faces and leather harnesses deliberating and studying me. I looked them in the eye. “You’d rather I be dead?”

“Some people are more valuable alive than dead.”

I leaned forward, curling my fingertips through the cage bars. “Am I?”

“That’s for Frag Dog to decide.”

They shackled my arms and ankles, and ushered me through the creekbed streets to a pavilion crafted from sticks and logs, stained crimson with blood. Upon a distressed leather bucketseat throne adorned with skulls ranging from beast to human sat a sun-bronzed, muscle-toned woman, her spiked hair dyed an unnatural shade of red and her armored dress heavy with studs and chains. One hand brandished a wooden staff with a spine twisted around it, and the other held the leash to a pair of idly snapping coydogs by her feet. She rested the staff against the column of her pavilion, and tiny flashes of light burned blindspots in my vision as she twisted a shiny metal locket between her fingers. She gazed upon me with jewel blue eyes. Deep as the ocean.

.

.

.

Lissa’s mother was sobbing audibly, looking to me for some words of comfort. I had none. All I had was the locket and the message I was told to pass on:

“Your daughter is dead.”

It was the last kindness Lissa had to offer her mother. I turned away from her and left without my pay. Once I was back on the road to Kudzu Bluff, I shoved all my feelings as far down as they would go and chased it with a swig of my flask. It was no longer my concern.