The Belly of the Beast

Ch. 53, The Saloon

A few hours later Nuka slept soundly in the hammock of what he called his "saloon." The room was small, but cozy, with a single bed, a tiny bathroom, and a hammock in the corner. Nuka said before the level was quarantined he had been forced to stay hidden. But now he could go anywhere. The wall behind the hammock had been painted a soft orange so Nuka could, as he said, "always be riding into the sunset." I stared at it now, wondering both how Noni had done it and if a real Old Earth sunset could have been such a strange color.

"We shouldn't have brought him with us," Dagger said, interrupting my thoughts as he paced the small room.

I shrugged, glad he had at least waited till Nuka slept to voice his concern. "Technically he brought us with him." In sleep, Nuka's face had lost the marks of fear and loneliness, looking less like an outlaw and more like the flying boy from the book I'd read. A lost boy. "Besides, we made a deal. We need him." And he needs us.

Nuka had kept up his part of the bargain. When the two of us had feasted over a meal Nuka himself had grown from the remaining gardens and hidden food supplies, he told us exactly how we could win the Jackal trial. I'd had to hide my astonishment. Noni must have been half-crazy to think up such an idea... and half-genius. I wished I could have met her.

"So what do you think of his idea?" I said. With Nuka's plan— assuming we didn't die from it ourselves— we could win the Jackal Letter Trial.

He didn't look at me, flipping over the knife Nuka had given him. "It could work."

"It could also get us all killed."

He sighed. "That seems to be the problem with the Letter Trials."

My shoulders shook, and then, unable to stop it, I giggled. I clapped a hand over my mouth, trying to hold it in. It made it worse. I folded forward and laughed into the blankets, holding my hand over my mouth to not wake Nuka. Dagger shook his head, watching me with that eternally superior look , but I could see that his lips curled up too. When I'd finally quieted, I stretched out on the bed.

"I say we do it," I said, before I had the time to change my mind. "We'll have the advantage. And if the others really are hunting us, then it's only a matter of time before they find us. Better we meet them on our own terms."

"I had a feeling you would say that." Dagger glanced back at Nuka, and his frown deepened.

I followed his gaze. "Can you think of any other way?"

He spun the knife, thinking for some time. "If I could meet them each alone, I could kill them. But when you ran in The Circled Forest, they were already talking about alliances, and— " he suddenly hesitated and glanced at me.

I cocked a brow. "And?"

He sighed. "They were talking about hunting you first. Skull said you were the number one threat."

Wow, number one? Color me flattered.

"They're likely hunting together. We'll be outnumbered." He gave me an appraising look. "How many could you take?"

I almost laughed at the question, even though his eyes were serious. "One? Maybe? If I were lucky and they were drunk." I paused. "We could try to get them to turn on each other?"

"We could, but right now the thing uniting them is hunting us." He sat in a chair opposite the bed and put his head in his hands, rubbing his face. He looked exhausted. He met my eyes. "I don't see another way, but I don't like it."

"Come on Dag, why not trust an unlettered child who thinks he's a cowboy with our lives?"

This earned me a small laugh, maybe the first I had ever heard from him.