Frank's sleeping in the dishwasher again.
"That's bad for open wounds, you know," Mikey says.
"It's not," Frank says, reclining against the warped metal side. "It's a dishwasher. It's clean."
"Maybe it was clean in 2011," Mikey says, "But there hasn't been hot water out here since the fall of the Dakotas."
"Is he aggravating his injury? I'm not stitching you back up again," Ray says, walking by with his welder's torch. Frank sticks out his tongue.
"I like the dishwasher," Frank says, defiantly, though Ray's adjusting the blue flame on the torch and Mikey's dragging over the stool, getting a knee up and yanking down a stash of wires he's kept hidden above the ceiling tile.
"You just don't want to claim a mat in the kitchen because you're saving a spot for Dr. Death Defying," Mikey taunts.
"Fuck you," Frank says, crossing his arms across his chest and regretting it as the movement tugs at the stitches on his shoulder.
"We don't even know if he's in this zone," Ray says and flicks the torch on and off and on again.
"But you hope he is," Mikey says to Frank. Frank scoots inside the dishwasher and grabs the handle, flinging the door down and tucking his hand inside just in time. Despite the warped side, the door still catches and closes him in the dark. He breathes in and imagines he can still smell harsh clean scent of dishwasher soap.
It's been eight days since he's heard anything that had an electric guitar. He doesn't count his own humming. The radio is always on, but there's not always music. Still, static and dead air and the crackle when Dr. Death Defying has something to play means there is always the potential for music. Frank's willing to wait.
He'd been pinned down on a bad curve, road in front of him, road behind and no good cover, because he was a fucking idiot and had gotten himself stuck there. Life's sucked but not so much that he wanted to fucking die like that, alone and covered in sand and taken down by some lame-ass pseudo-villains just because he was stupid enough to get himself backed into a corner.
He'd been stupid since he'd been without a crew. There was no denying it, not with dracs advancing on him. He'd been taking risks he never would have taken if he'd had someone to pull him back. But fuck if he was gonna get ghosted laying down behind a fucking rusted out shed or whatever was cutting into his shoulder. So he put his bandanna up over his mouth and turned to give it his best shot, but before he was up, one of the dracs went down, and Frank saw someone in a yellow jacket standing behind him with some kind of weird glove on his wrist. The two other dracs went down with fire from whoever this other guy was, hidden behind a pretty sweet helmet.
"Fucking thanks, man," Frank had said, standing up. The glove guy held out his bionic hand to shake and Frank held up his hands in surrender, just incase he was reading this rescue wrong. But then the guy laughed, and shook the glove off, holding out his real hand.
"Mikey," he said. "How'd you get their attention?"
It was a kind way of asking whether Frank was a liability. If he told them who he used to run with, they'd probably turn around and leave him. Maybe shoot him like a drac. So Frank doesn't say.
"Blew out the depository," Frank said, because at least that had gone ok. "Was in a hurry and took a wrong turn."
"Aren't many right ones around here," the helmet guy said. "I'm Ray."
Frank shook Ray's hand and said, "Seriously, thanks."
"Wanna lift? Where you squatting?"
"Was squatting at the depository," Frank said ruefully, because, yeah, maybe blowing it without picking a new shelter hadn't been the best plan.
