That old wound reawakens like a sleeping dragon with a forge-hot sword shoved up its nethers. It’s lightning and salt, fire and spear. Werth drops, rolls onto his side.

He whimpers.

He hates that he whimpers.

His eyes adjust. It doesn’t take long.

It’s lit down here. With torches bolted to rocky walls. And a shitload of candles.

Mattresses on the floor. Couple wooden barrels and oil drums – some holding candles, others turned into tables. Posters on the wall: old movie advertisements. Scarface. Taxi Driver. Zardoz, of all things. On the black, wet walls are pink and blue spray paint. GEG. Graffiti images of skates. Some held like guns, as in their mark. Others upright, with blue flame belching out of the top.

Not far away is the shotgun.

Werth reaches for it.

An oxblood Doc Marten stomps down on it. And pulls it away.

Shadows encircle and close in.

Here comes the girl gang.

Faux 1950s punk abounds. Hairnets and garter belts. Polka dots and cherry lips. A whiff of Rosie the Riveter meets the girls from Grease, with a heavy vibe of neo-future dystopian Bettie Page.

A dozen of them close in. Like wolves descending upon a fallen goat.

One steps out past the gang line. Ravensblack hair with a shock of electric blue bangs. Black button down shirt and jeans so tight they may be spray-painted on. Hanging at one side, off the girl’s neon blue belt, is a pair of nuclear pink skates. Hanging at the other side is what looks to be a Bowie knife held fast in its sheath.

She’s a kid to him – he’s got twenty years on her at least – but older than most of the girls here.

Werth knows her. Or, knows of her.

She’s the head of the Get-Em-Girls. Has been for damn near a decade. Kelly McClure is her name.

But she goes by “Skelly”.

As evidenced by the white skeleton stitched into the thighs of her jeans.

And the ink-black skulls stitched into the sides of her hot pink skates.

And the silver skull – mouth open in horror – that tops the Bowie knife’s hilt.

She rests her hand on that silver skull just now. Blue nails clicking against it.

“What’s buzzin’, cousin?” Her voice is a long slow pull of whiskey. Not the gargling glass cheap shit, but smooth stuff. An expensive pour that goes down like warm butter. “You’re Werth. I got that right?”

“Yeah, that’s–” He winces. Even talking sends jags of pain into his hip. “Yeah.”

Skelly looks to another girl: a real dieselpunk sweetie, cherub cheeks and thick hips and a tat of a big-ass fire-wreathed wrench on her one bicep. “Lulu, gimme the gun.”

The other girl tosses Skelly a gun. His gun. The shotgun.

Skelly looks the gun up and down. Then she racks the pump – the shell currently in the chamber flips out onto the hard rocky ground.

She does it five more times. Shells bouncing on stone. Until none are left.