Five days had passed and Jackal was still picking bits of shrapnel from her stomach and side. Some of the smaller pieces were lodged deep under her skin and would never come out, but others sat nearer the surface. If she gritted her teeth she could hook a fingernail underneath and tease them out.

Devlin had blocked much of the blast, the poor bastard. Not that he had intended it. From what little she knew of him, he would have used her as a shield if the opportunity had presented itself. No great loss.

Erik, however, was another story. She had never met anyone quite like him. He had ideas. He wanted to talk about them. He was naïve and she couldn't believe he had survived as long as he had. Like Otto, he didn't want to carry a gun or a knife, even to use in self-defense. That she just couldn't understand but still wished them all the best. They might even meet again some day, maybe at the next swap. If there was a next swap. She had escaped the last one with her life, but barely. The MPD. Once again they made it their business to shit on her life.

And what a life it was. Her mother showed her how to shoot. Her father knocked her senseless teaching her how to fight. Both pretended not to know what her uncles did to her after sundown and, after they finished and left her alone, she would fantasize about her revenge against all of them. They had made her into something hard and sharp, like a thorn—no a fang—and she planned to show them one by one the strength of her bite.

The MPD robbed of her of that right. Like any other morning, she had trekked down to the water to wash the filth from her body when the MPD fell onto their encampment. She had no idea who fired first, but did it really matter? She watched from hiding as the guards dumped her families' bodies into the river and picked through their belongings. They left a few scraps of food and some old clothes she stored in an tin box they hadn't looked hard enough to find.

Mentally, she drew a line under that part of her life and vowed never to be a victim again. She even gave herself a new name: the jackal. One of her uncles had called her that as an insult. She liked the sound of it.

She roamed all of Rivertown, north to south and back again, everything west of the Lake Lawrence to the river and beyond to the shadows of the old freeway. Once she even slipped inside Summerland for look around, pinching anything she could without getting caught. She would fall in with all kinds of travelers and would stay with them until she got bored or they were too much trouble. She played up her innocence and frailty and encouraged them to play parent or protector, whatever role suited them best. They put themselves between her and danger—dogs, rundown fiends, MPD, whatever—and she gladly let them. The older ones, those who lived in the world before it all fell down, had the largest soft spots. She liked them the most.

Like Otto. He had been good to her, and gullible. She thought it was all over when he caught her sneaking back to their camp, covered in blood. She had been out hunting again and things got a little out of hand. She had a four or five rifles stashed around the city. She once got too bold and dropped two guards walking the strand of beach, and she had been damned lucky with that second shot. The guards patrolling the streets heard the gunfire and closed on on her faster than she guessed and they nearly penned her in. But no one could keep up once she scampered into the ruins.

Otto had almost busted her once. They'd camped near the thoroughfare between Ol' Federal and Concord the the MPD guards used when they had a taste for whores. It was a broad avenue that was flooded in moonlight, perfect for hunting. Patience prevailed as she saw a trio of men staggering westward in the middle of the night. She tracked them for a block before squeezing off the first round. She put down the second guard with a fine shot. The third was disappearing into the shadows so she rattled off a burst and hoped for good fortune. She got him through the legs and he went down in a heap. That's where should have left it. But instead she tucked the rifle back in its hiding place and went to loot. Turns out the last one still had some fight in him and she had to finish him with her knife. It got ugly. She hoped to change her clothes while Otto slept and ditch them later, but her luck turned when someone started the building across the way on fire, he woke up, and she had to think quickly. But she did that well too.

But now she had a new hobby. As she escaped the swap, one of the attackers fell and practically threw his sniper rifle with its fancy see-in-the-dark scope at her feet and now she wanted to try it out. From a rooftop. Jackal picked a building with a strong-looking drainpipe. Confident it would hold, she began her ascent.

It was breezy and cold on top of the building and she was careful not to step where the roof had collapsed. She made her way to the north-facing ledge and knelt. She was four blocks south of the Tombstone but through the scope the green silhouettes of the guards walking the tower were crisp and clear. At that distance they would have no idea where the shooter was, and she could scale down the side of the building in under a minute.

She hummed a tune while she followed the rhythm of the gun, gently swaying as it cycled her between targets. Would she try it tonight? Or tomorrow? The rifle took special ammo so she would need to make every shot count, because when she was done, she was done. It was a little breezy out, but not terrible. The only question that remained was: did she feel lucky?

For the moment, Jackal contented herself by humming, imagining the rifle was dancing to the tune she called.