The barkeep moved away and I looked for an excuse to not drink.
“Where does all the fuel come from?” I asked. He had to have a steady supply for the bikes. “I thought fuel was scarce in the Wilds?”
“It is. I’ve got a rig,” he said. Dax grabbed the ale with the fly that was in front of me, flicked the offending bug out and then took a swig. He pushed the other mug my way, obviously expecting me to drink it. “You want to survive, learn to blend.” His eyes shot to the ale.
“A rig?” I asked, more concerned with the mug I was to drink from. All those years in the compound, I never thought I’d miss anything about the place, but clean mugs were making it a close call. My drink, the cleaner of the two, still had a layer of greasy film that coated my fingers as they wrapped around it. I had to make a conscious choice not to throw up as I tilted the fluid back. Surprisingly, it had a nice taste. Not good enough to completely overwhelm my gag reflex but I managed to keep it down.
I placed mine back on the bar and tried to not look at the filth surrounding me so that I could gather up the fortitude to repeat the process, figuring if I had to drink it, I probably had to drink all of it.
“An oil rig. I drill my own. Well?” he asked, and I knew he wasn’t asking if I liked the refreshments. He wanted to know if there was a Dark Walker here.
“No,” I said.
“Don’t let me find out you’re lying.”
“Why would I?” That was believable, since there was no real rational reason to lie that he knew of. But instinct born of long exposure and a deeply ingrained survival instinct told me that the Dark Walkers were not the ones I wanted to cross until I was good and prepared. There was something much larger at work here and I wouldn’t put my life, and that of my friends, at risk for some obscure plan he wasn’t bothering to share.
I geared up to take another swig of filth, while Dax tilted his back until there couldn’t be anything left. He reached for mine and finished that as well before he nodded for the door.
I guessed that not finishing an ale was a huge no-no, but the guy you’re with drinking your share didn’t seem to ruffle any feathers. Good to know.
Following him out, I contemplated what else had just gone down. He’d drunk from the very same mug I had. In the Giant, the girls had said something about swapping spit. And he’d finished my ale like we were a couple or something. He did really want me.
Chapter 16
Tiffy was setting the table for seven people when I walked into the dining area that night. Other than her and a glimpse of Fudge in the kitchen, no one else had shown up yet, but the table was already laid out with food, including a big bird-looking thing in the center.
“You sit right here,” Tiffy said, pointing to a chair to the right of the head of the table. She seemed quite pleased when I did as she told me.
When Fudge walked in the room with another bowl, I backed my chair up to see if she needed help carrying things until Tiffy stopped me.
“No, you stay there.”
“Tiffy, are you being bossy?” Fudge asked as she came in on the tail end of our interaction.
“No, Fudge. I’m helping her.”
“Do you need help?” I asked, but Fudge shook her head and then she shot Tiffy an I know what you’re up to kind of warning look. This didn't seem to so much as tug at the smile on Tiffy’s face. I wished Fudge would fill me in on what she thought Tiffy was up to.
Tiffy sat down across from me and Dax came in shortly after. He looked briefly at the sitting arrangement but didn’t make a comment as he sat down. Tiffy’s grin seemed on the verge of becoming permanent.
Tank walked in with Bookie behind him, both grabbing a seat.
Lucy came in after and then stopped short a few feet from me. “You’re in my spot,” she said.
Before I could respond, Fudge spoke. “We don’t have spots, Lucy.”
“Okay, she’s in the spot I’ve been sitting at consistently every night, if that’s more accurate.”
“I’ll move. I don’t care where I sit.” I pushed my chair back. Of all the things I thought were worth fighting over, this was not one of them. Plus, I didn’t want any delay to the eating portion of the evening.
“No,” Tiffy spat out.
“Lucy,” Dax said at the same time.
Lucy let out a disgruntled moan but sat at the only seat left open at the table.
Tiffy smiled at me, looking quite pleased with herself. Dax didn’t seem to care as long as everyone shut up.
“I found a great book today for my collection when I was going over by the ruins,” Bookie said, trying to smooth out the ripple as Tank was ripping into the big baked bird. Lucy was scooping out heaps of fluffy potatoes. Tiffy kept giving me a look like I was in on some secret but she’d forgotten to tell me what it was.
“You have a collection of books?” I asked, remembering the one I’d seen him holding earlier. I’d thought only the rich had collections. That was how it had been in Newco anyway.
“Bookie is a bit of a bookworm,” Fudge said, smiling at him.
“What’s it about?” I asked, excited that there was a collection of books so close by that I might be able to get my hands on.
“The one I found was about cities, printed during Glory Years. The shit they had was amazing. It’s so crazy to even think about. Do you know that there were so many people that they had to have these big buildings just for the sick? They were so big they could house our community five times over! And they had roads in these big cities that got so busy it could take you an hour to get a mile even though they all drove in cars then.”
“It’ll come back again one day,” Fudge said.
“Not if this plague doesn’t stop creeping back up every twenty years. Jesus, even killing the Plaguers didn’t fix—”
“Bookie,” Dax said.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean that—”
“Not a big deal,” I said, not wanting the added attention that subject brought to me. I might be human but I was still different than anyone here.
“Hardy, he says that a lot of people were really miserable back then,” Bookie continued.
“Who’s Hardy?” I asked.
“He’s a philosopher,” Bookie explained.
“He’s a drunk,” Dax added.
“Okay, he might be a bit of a drunk but he’s very interesting. He’s got a theory about why a lot of people were depressed during the Glory Years. He thinks the way the world had become, so many people were doing things so opposite from our hunter-gatherer ways it messed with their inner inclinations. He says at heart, we’re all still hunters or gatherers.”
“I hate that hunter-gatherer shit,” Lucy chimed in. “Just because I don’t have a dick the men on this world think I should be out gathering berries.”
Bookie shook his head. “Girls can be hunters. Me, I know I’m more of a gatherer. Dal, what do you think you are?”
For some reason, the whole table stopped what it was doing to look at me and hear my answer. I was a hunter. I knew it down to my very core—even when I was throwing the knife and it clattered to the ground, it had still felt so right. But I also knew what I looked like, so instead of being honest, I said, “Gatherer, probably,” and was immediately mad at myself. I’d told them what I thought they’d expected because I wanted them to like me. I’d wanted to fit in. “No, I take that back. I’m a hunter.”
A couple of shrugs and a random nod and they were back to chewing. It hit me then that they didn’t really care. It was like at the compound. They were too busy surviving themselves.
I glanced to my left, where Dax was. He wasn’t looking at me but he was smiling.
Bookie started talking about some other geography book he’d found and Dax went to answer a knock at the door.
No one seemed alarmed by a person just coming to the door, but unexpected company still registered in my brain as a problem. I gripped the knife I was using to cut my meat a little too tightly as I watched a stout man in
his fifties walk in and stop right inside the front door. He was the guitar player from the feast and looked a lot less jovial than when he’d been singing. I saw the stranger’s eyes shoot to the table and pause on me.
He was talking in a low voice with Dax, who seemed to grow tense as the guitar player spoke. Dax nodded and was shutting the door behind him before he walked back to the table.
Fudge was the first person to speak up when he came back. “Everything okay?”
“Fine,” he said, shutting the subject down. If something was wrong, Dax wasn’t sharing.
The subject was forgotten as Lucy took up Dax’s stance and started arguing how Hardy was a drunk for the rest of dinner.
* * *
It was an hour before the time Fudge had warned me the generator for the house would be turned off, or nine p.m. for everyone else in the area. I was curled up on the window seat in the bedroom, staring off at the forest. As far as rooms went, it was perfect. I already missed this room and I didn’t even know for sure when I was leaving. I wished I could have a place like this of my own, no strings attached, but wishing didn’t change anything. I’d learned that a long time ago. You had to do things for yourself in this world and I would. I’d build an even better home and room.
Footsteps alerted me to someone climbing the stairs and my pulse picked up. Was it Dax on his way to my room? They sounded like they were retreating in the opposite direction and I went to peek around the door I’d left slightly ajar. I saw Lucy’s back as she went inside her room.
I went back to my seat without closing the door. After getting over the novelty of being able to shut it when I wanted, I’d started to enjoy that I could also leave it open.
Bookie had gone to his room an hour ago, and Fudge had gone to hers with Tiffy. I’d found out at dinner that Tank had the basement when Lucy had called him the Basement Troll. It left one door unaccounted for.
I didn’t think he’d come up yet but there was a suspicious light underneath. He had to be in there but why hadn’t he come to me? Maybe I was supposed to go to him.
Or what if he wasn’t interested? What if Lucy had been completely wrong and he wanted nothing to do with me other than finding Dark Walkers? But at dinner, Dax had backed Lucy off to keep me seated by his side.
The girls at the compound had always said there wasn’t a single guard that would turn down a sexual invitation. I should go to him. Yes, I was doing this. I wasn’t chickening out. How many nights had I told myself that if I got out of that place, I’d live every second to its maximum capacity? Sleeping alone was a world away from max capacity. Moobie slept with people all the time. This was a part of life outside and I should know about it.
I took a deep breath and prepared for my evening. I ran my hands through my hair and then had to smooth it back down after I realized I might already have the tousled look. I tugged the shift nightdress Fudge had given me down on one shoulder. I was still skinny but I looked a little healthier than when I’d first gotten here.
I walked out of my room and straight to his door. Knocking might draw the attention of everyone else, so instead I leaned close and whispered, “Dax?”
“Yeah?” I heard from the other side.
“I’ve come to see you,” I whispered back.
There was a long pause but I heard shuffling inside. Maybe that was the delay? He’d been getting his room ready for me.
I heard more noise as I waited outside the door, but when it finally opened it was a woman that appeared. I’d seen her at the feast and also in the gardens, pretty brown hair, quite a bit older than me but nowhere near Fudge’s age. She had a warm feeling about her and nothing horrible floating in her past, which was a nice perk.
“Hi, Dahlia. We haven’t met yet but I’m Becca. I was just leaving, so you go on in.” I took a step back as she exited, smiling and patting me on the shoulder as she did.
I wasn’t sure I liked my future boyfriend having women in his bedroom, but she seemed so nice I decided I’d let it slide with her.
I walked into the room where Dax was walking out of an adjoining bathroom with only a pair of pants on.
“What’s wrong? You needed to talk to me?” His eyes flickered over me and I thought he liked what he saw, but then he became more interested in looking at a clock he had on a table beside his bed.
“Why was she in your room?” I blurted out after I’d decided to not be one of those jealous girlfriends.
He looked up at me and I could see the surprise. “We were working on something.”
I nodded. Garden stuff, maybe? I’d thought I’d heard her name in connection with plants.
He ran a hand over his short, dark hair. “What did you need to talk to me about?”
I knew I was naïve to this sort of thing, but something about this situation wasn’t feeling right. Shouldn’t he be trying something or moving closer to me at this point? I wasn’t going to chicken out either, though, as I kept remembering how the girls said the guards never turned sex down. None of the guards looked like Dax but I’d taken it to be a generalization about men.
I surveyed the room and the bed that seemed to be partially unmade. There was also a couch that sat under a double-wide window.
Couch or bed? Moobie would be all balls. Bed it was.
I sat down, flipped my hair about and then leaned back on my elbows with the best come-hither smile I could conjure up.
“What are you doing?” he asked, watching me.
Maybe my come-hither look was wrong? Switch positions. I turned on my side and rested my head on my palm and then used my other hand to raise my shift up my leg slightly.
“Dal—”
“I know what you did. How you claimed me and offered me your protection.” I flipped my hair back and then decided to just go for broke.
I dropped back onto the bed, my arms spread at my sides and eyes closed. “I’m here to let you use me for your manly needs.” When I’d read that in the sex book Margo had gotten, it hadn’t sounded so weird. Maybe it was the saying it out loud part that made it not sound as sophisticated. Still, it got the point across, so not so bad.
As I waited for him to ravish me, I thought about how after tonight, I’d be a woman. His woman. I’d know what love to a man was all about.
Nothing happened. It could be he wasn’t understanding what I was offering but I was certain I’d made it pretty clear.
I opened my eyes but didn’t have the nerve to check the room to see where he was or what he was doing. I settled on, “Dax?”
“I think you might have misunderstood.” And then there was silence again.
I closed my eyes and didn’t want to open them again, like maybe ever with the way I was feeling. Wow, this might have been the worst idea I’d ever, ever had, because that did not sound like he wanted to sleep with me. Okay, I needed to get out of there and pronto. But that meant I’d have to open my eyes.
Unless maybe I could do it without looking? No, that might even top coming here as my stupidest idea. I was going to kill Lucy. He hadn’t looked disheveled because of me that night, he’d been doing it with someone else, probably the woman I’d just chased out of here. Why had I listened to her?
“What you’re feeling, it’s just a crush. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Now I really needed to get up. He thought I was still waiting for him. Oh geez, this was getting worse and worse.
I sat up like the bed was burning, and not from the hot love I’d thought we’d be making on it. One look at his face and I felt about two inches tall. Pity was written all over him. Of all the times he decided to show me how he felt and he couldn't keep that stuff shuttered?
He might be rejecting me but I didn’t need his pity. Without even thinking, I stood a little straighter and kicked into defensive mode. “I am not a child. I’m eighteen, two years past legal adulthood in most countries. I’m a little old for crushes.” Shit, that hadn’t come out like I planned. Now it sounded like I was begging him.
; I tried to find the quickest way out of the room, because I knew my skin was on fire, while simultaneously trying to avoid looking at him. I never got like this. Years of being called a dirty Plaguer rolled off my back and now I was laid low by a rejection from this man.
His hand gripped my wrist as I moved forward. “Dal—”
“It doesn't matter. You’re right. It didn’t mean anything. I just thought, you know… Actually, I wasn’t even thinking.” I yanked my wrist free. “Really, I’m fine.”
“It can’t happen. Not with us, not in this world. You don’t understand.”
He looked like he regretted it but it didn’t matter. He was like everyone else and I was a Plaguer. “I might not have experienced what goes on between a man and a woman and I might have misjudged this situation. Sometimes I might not use the right words or know every intricacy about the Wilds, but don’t tell me I don’t know how the world works. I learned that very well a long time ago. I know plenty.”
We stood, not even a foot away from each other, and I saw some sort of emotion flicker across his face. The woman in me, and she was in there whether he acknowledged it or not, liked to think maybe he was regretting a hasty rejection. Or maybe it was uncertainty, that he’d misjudged me and the depth of who I was. Of that I was sure. I’d spent years in a man-made hell but those devils had forged me into someone special, whether he saw it or not, whether he wanted me or not. If he couldn’t see past the Plaguer label, I didn’t need him.
I lifted my chin and walked out of his room.
“Dal, it’s not—”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. I always am.”
Chapter 17
I was humiliated. Why had I thought he’d wanted me? In all those years at the compound, not once had a single guard tried anything with me. They hadn’t ever even flirted, and it wasn’t just because I was a Plaguer. Most had known me long enough to know I wasn’t contagious.
The Wilds Page 13