by John Burks
She slid down me and, despite knowing what was coming, I gasped as she took my cock in her mouth. I almost blew it, right there, but I lay back and tried to relax as one of Jenna’s hands roamed my body and the other cupped my balls in her hand. I could get used to this. I could get used to having her around me. We were almost like it was before it all went to shit. With enough work we could probably make it really seem like it was before. Hell, we could even leave the city. The future was right there but I was going to fuck it up the first chance I got.
I lay back and let her take me fully in her mouth. When it finally did come, it was the most powerful ejaculation I’d ever felt. It was almighty.
She wiped her mouth and kissed me on the cheek silently. She then lay in the crook of my arm, one arm across my chest, one leg across my mid-section. I didn’t know what to say, but at that time, nothing needed to be said.
The words would come in the morning. And they would not be sweet nothings.
Jenna slept so hard that, as I affixed the chain to her wrist, I thought for a moment she might be dead. I listened to her mouth intently and nodded in satisfaction when I heard her breathing. She didn’t stir as I moved the contents of the room, taking away anything she might use to escape. She didn’t move an inch as I brought in the bucket, water, and cases of MREs.
I sat patiently at the edge of the bed waiting for her to wake up and I couldn’t help but stare at her. It was only when I started taking pictures of her, especially of the number tattooed on her arm, that she woke up.
She didn’t notice the chains, at first.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m so sorry,” I told her. Those words would not fully describe the extent of the guilt I felt.
Jenna then noticed the ten-foot chain that affixed her arm to a solid stud in the wall. “What… I thought…”
Her confusion caused me pain. I’d rescued her from one situation just to put her back into the very same circumstances.
“You don’t have to do this. I came to you willingly. Why are you doing this?” The disappointment in her eyes was hard to look at. I’d broken her heart, again, in a single evening.
“I’m sorry Jenna. It’s not anything personal. I can’t begin to tell you how much I appreciate what you’ve done for me.”
“But,” she started, angrily. “There’s always a ‘but’, right?”
“But I can’t exist without those seals. Big Woody didn’t take them.”
“I know Big Woody didn’t take them. I told you that.”
“So I have to get new ones.”
The realization clicked for her. “You’re going to give me back to Fortress. You’re going to trade me for what you need.”
I nodded in agreement. There, it was out on the table. She knew the monster I was. She knew exactly what I’d done, what I planned.
“There’s another way, Jacky. You don’t have to do this. I came here with you willingly because you are a good guy. This isn’t you. I can feel that. You don’t want to do this.”
I ignored her. “You can use the bucket there to do your business. You’ve got enough food and water here for a few days. I’ll be back then, after… after I arrange the trade. They’ll take care of you better than I can. It will be okay.”
Jenna burst from the bed with a strength I didn’t think she had and was at the end of the chain, just out of reach of me, in under a second. I stood calmly, watching her.
“But I did that… for you,” she said, resigned to the fact she couldn’t get past the chain. “I sucked your dick.”
“I know. I wasn’t going to take you, not like Big Woody. But you came in and did that. I didn’t ask you to. But I can’t have you here. You’re a distraction to me. You’re going to get me killed.”
“I can help you,” she insisted. “I can help you find more seals.”
“You’ll get me killed. Thinking of you will probably get me killed. You’re… you’re a distraction to survival. I’m sorry.”
She threw a case of MREs at me and I ducked out. I heard her scream all the way down to the tenth floor. I hoped she had enough sense, once she calmed down, to stop shouting.
There were guys, in the ruins, that if they somehow found her, wouldn’t be nearly as easy going as I was with her.
No Seals, No Deals
I stood in the street for a while, helmet off, idly listening to see if I could hear her screaming from the penthouse. I couldn’t and hoped that was because of the distance and not because she’d stopped. She would stop. She had to stop. She’d have time to come to grips with her fate. I was sure the people of Fortress would take care of her. Jenna was valuable, a commodity to be treasured. She’d obviously come to grips with her role as a… I couldn’t bring myself to call her a sex slave. I couldn’t admit, to myself, that I was going to end up dragging her back to Fortress so she continue a life of rape.
I was trading her for seals for my suit so that I could continue my existence. That was it. It was just a trade and I tried to rationalize it in those terms. She was just another scavenged item from the old, dead world.
I made it a few blocks before I saw the first of the new Preacher logos. They no longer struck me with the absolute fear they had a couple of days ago, but I checked the rifle I carried anyway. There were dozens of them situated around the entrance to another building. If a person had come out of the front of that building, he would have been struck by the dozens and dozens of spray painted images. It was almost as if the painter thought whoever he wanted to see his work lived right there.
Could the logos have been meant for someone else?
I doubted that. If anything, the logo painted where I’d, idiotically, left my armor told me otherwise. Someone wanted me to think the Preacher still lived, though I didn’t know why. And that someone thought I lived several blocks from where I actually did. I had mixed feelings about that. They didn’t know where I lived, yet, but were close. Why me, I wondered. What the hell did they want with me?
It didn’t matter. I wouldn’t be able to fight them without the seals. I wouldn’t be able to do anything. It was bad enough being out here on the streets again, without them. And though the suit itself was comforting, out in the wide open, it didn’t mean shit. It wasn’t anything more that metal armor.
Once I got this all over with, I’d lay low for a long time. Maybe I wouldn’t leave the penthouse for a year or better. They’d give up looking for me and everything would be all right. That’s what I continued to tell myself. I just needed to trade Jenna for the seals and get the hell back to my place. The problem, a far as I saw it, was I needed to make sure they actually would trade seals for the girl. I know that’s what the Banker said, but I needed to hear it from someone else, someone higher in Fortress’ chain of command. I needed the bargain somehow honored.
I needed them to tell me that they wouldn’t hurt her. I had to hear that or the evil balance I’d struck with myself wasn’t going to work. That was my justification. That was how I’d reasoned this. She would be safe in Fortress’s hands, much safer than with me. I could never offer her the protection she needed. That was the best justification I could give myself. It would have to do to sleep through the night.
I continued on past the Preacher’s logs, doing my best to ignore them. I had other business to take care of.
Fuck the Preacher. He was a problem for another day.
The walls of Fortress looked different in the daylight. They were somehow more dingy and trashy looking when you were not blinded by floodlights. The cars and debris that had been used to build the massive walls were rusted, withering away in the weather like the rest of the dying city. Fortress was the barely beating heart of the corpse and all of us scavengers were the bacteria eating away the necrotic flesh.
The guards were still there, though, and looked just as deadly in their black body armor with their assault rifles. If anything, there were more of them stationed at the entrance to Club Flesh. I was pretty sure I knew the reaso
n for that. Big Woody was still having an effect this long after his death. The doors of the establishment were papered in wanted posters and I pulled one off.
The flyer showed Big Woody, in all his glory, fucking the stripper to death, both succumbing to varying degrees to the Preacher’s Plague. It was a hell of a thing to see first thing in the morning. The reward was quite large, though I didn’t think it large enough to purchase a full set of seals for my suit.
“You need something, scavenger?” the main guard asked. I guess he didn’t recognize my armor from the night before. There wasn’t anything strange about that. All military grade bio-armor looked the same, right?
“I want to see the Banker. I want to trade.”
“Oh yeah? It don’t look like you’ve got much to trade there, scrappy.”
The gun never wavered. I knew there were also a couple of snipers somewhere in the wall with sights set on me. I held up the wanted poster, the image of Big Woody out.
“You know where that asshole is?”
“I know.”
“Trading information… that old fucking Banker doesn’t normally do that. I bet in this case he’ll make an exception. But you know what’s going to happen if you are bull shitting, right?”
I shrugged, which was hard to see in a suit of armor. “Yeah, I can guess.”
It was weird. Usually, at that point, I’d have been in a panic. I’d have been in a panic the entire time out in the open. But I wasn’t. I was tired and I just wanted to get it all over with.
“Head on in,” the guard said as the gates parted. I hadn’t been to Club Flesh but a few times in the ten years since I’d left my father’s house. Now I’d been twice in as many days.
The biggest thing that had changed since I’d been to the club two nights before were the guards. There had never been any guards inside the club before. I guess they didn’t want the patrons to feel uncomfortable staring down guns while they were getting hand jobs through rubber membranes. There were a half dozen guards now, and it was the most people I could remember seeing in one spot since before the Preacher’s Plague. Even without the guns, it was more than a bit disconcerting.
The Banker sat behind his sealed window, without a suit, barely looking up from a plate of food.
“The guards tell me that you have information on the location of the man who attacked our facility two nights ago. Is this correct?”
He sucked at his fat, sausage-like fingers and then wiped the remaining grease on his stained shirt. I wondered what he did before the Preacher’s Plague. What kind of man had he been?
“Yes sir. I can tell you where his body is,” I told him, hoping the suit’s speakers hid my queasiness.
“His body? He’s dead? I’ll tell you, scavenger, that big buck wasn’t going to go down to the plague easily. He fucked one of our dancers to death and then didn’t die himself. He survived multiple gunshots on the way out. Why would I think, after that and evading our forces through the city, that he’d be dead now? What proof of that do you have?”
“The plague didn’t kill him. Lead did. I know where the body is. Once our deal is done, I can take your patrols there.”
The banker nodded in agreement. “And I’m to believe you killed him?”
“Yes,” I lied. “But believe what you want. I don’t really care. But the location of Big Woody isn’t the only thing I’m trading.”
The Banker pushed the plate aside and appraised me, staring up and down at my suit. “I can check the recording of that night, but I’m going to guess I don’t have to. I think you are the one who was here before, trying to trade for suit seals. Am I right?”
“Yes.” There wasn’t any reason to lie to the man.
He clapped the greasy hands together and smiled, broken, black teeth filling his massive maw. “I am so very happy I am right. I like being right. I don’t think, however, that you think the location of a corpse warrants a set of seals, do you? I don’t care how much damage that monster manage…”
I cut him off by dropping the phone into the drawer and pushing it through. He picked it up, looking at me strangely.
“A phone? We have hundreds of these things. They are, for the most part, useless without cell towers. I probably don’t need to remind you that there hasn’t been a functioning cell tower in fifteen years or so?”
“Turn it on. Look at the pictures.”
I waited for him to do just that. I knew when he got to the pictures of Jenna based on how wide his eyes went.”
“You told me you’d trade a Toucher for seals. Is that still the case?”
The banker was silent a few, staring at the photos. “Why yes, indeed it is. She has been your… companion all this time?”
“No, the guy that attacked you had her. I stumbled across them while I was scavenging. She was there when it all went down. I’ve never seen her before then.”
“She looks clean, if not worse for wear. I take it she still lives?”
“I wouldn’t be trying to trade for her if she didn’t.”
“No, I suppose not. Fine. Bring her here and I will give a set of suit seals. I will also give you as much time in the bar as you can stand. You’re obviously aware of what she is and how valuable she is to Fortress. Take care of us in this and you will be taken care of. Bring her to us.”
It was a good deal, but it wouldn’t help me sleep at night.
“No, it’s not going to work like that,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm and level.
“Oh? Then just how is it going to work?”
“I need certain assurances. And I need them from someone higher than you.”
“That’s quite an unusual request, my friend.”
“And this is an unusual trade. How many Touchers do you actually have back there? I want to talk to the man in charge, that’s it. Then I’ll bring her to you and take my seals. You can keep your bar credits.”
The banker grinned at me and I did not like that. I did not like that in the least.
“As you wish, scavenger. I will get you your interview with the boss. Afterwards, just remember that it is you, my friend, that requested that meeting.”
“Let’s just get it over with,” I told him. I’d be happy never coming back to Fortress after this.
“If you’ll leave your suit with me…”
I interrupted him again. “I’m not taking off my suit.”
The banker laughed and again I didn’t care for it much. It had the quality of steel on rusty steel. “You may not enter any further than here with it on. You were here the other night. You saw what happened. We’ve obviously had to rethink our security protocols in the meantime. You remove your suit or we have no deal. I can do nothing about the new rules.”
I hesitated.
“You will be perfectly safe. Your escorts will be suited and, once you cross into the park, you will be in containment the entire time. Trust me, if this is real and you have our property,” I cringed when he called Jenna that, “then we wish you no harm.”
I nodded. I didn’t want to take off the suit, but it was useless without the seals anyway, and the banker knew that. I began to take off the bio-armor. I stood there in shorts and a t-shirt, ready to get on with it. The man stared at me quizzically for a moment and then smiled that dark smile again.
“You’re a bit older now.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Older. Oh, I know the picture is old. But you are much older than I would have thought. Living in the ruins does that to you, doesn’t it? It ages you.”
“I don’t have a clue what you are talking about.”
“It is you, isn’t it?” he asked as he pulled a picture from the bulletin board and turned it around, pressing it to the glass so that I could see. “If it’s not you, then the resemblance is uncanny.”
The picture was of me in containment, back in the house with my father. My father would have been the only one that could have taken it. My heart thudded and sweat began to pour down my forehead, running
into my eyes. I didn’t know what to say, knew even less what to think. I felt like I’d just been slapped in the face.
“Where did you get that?”
“It doesn’t matter, Jacky,” the banker said, nodding to the guards. “Take him.”
I didn’t bother struggling. Struggling might mean tearing up the guard’s suits and exposing us all to the Preacher’s Plague. No point in that.
“You know, Jacky. All you had to do was show us your face. We’d have let you in to see the boss any time you wanted. He’s been looking for you a long, long time.”
I really didn’t know what to expect when the guards led me out of the back of Club Flesh. I’d been to Central Park many times as a child and always remembered it being a cross of lush greenery and blowing garbage. It was an odd oasis in the middle of the city, a stark green contrast with the miles of concrete. I didn’t know what was behind the huge walls and, when I finally got a good look, I didn’t know how to react.
The people of Fortress had built a town of sorts behind the walls, but it wasn’t the town I’d envisioned. Instead of pristine suburban style houses, complete with white picket fences and kids playing, there were shanties. The awkwardly constructed houses were made of the same trash and debris that the wall was. People lived in old cars and busses, tents made of dingy white canvas with FEMA logos on them, and whatever other materials they could get their hands on. The small homes were situated about twenty feet apart, mostly enough to prevent the parts of the Preacher’s Plague that caused death. Throughout the park, between the homes, were containment tunnels build of plastic sheeting, glass sheets, and reclaimed lumber. It looked like a spider web of poorly built arteries. People walked in those tunnels, carefully spaced, under the watchful eyes of guards in bio-suits with weapons.
I’d always envisioned the people of Fortress to be happy, safe from the ravages of the dying city behind their walls. But these people did not look happy. Not in the least. They kept their heads down and stared straight ahead, never making eye contact with each other or the guards. They came and went through two-way sealed portals spaced every fifty feet. Many tended to gardens outside the containment tunnels, which were also spread a good distance from each other. The entire settlement was designed so that people could work outside, in the sun, far enough away from each other that they wouldn’t die from the contact. I had to admit, it was ingenious, but I also knew there was way more to it than met the eye. The people were just surviving. They weren’t any different than the scavengers out in the city. They were just more centralized. They didn’t have that sense of community I’d always imagined Fortress would.