It was an extreme measure to stay safe, but the tar merited extreme measures. Like Brendan, Logan didn’t get here by being reckless. The paranoia that made him an outcast before the tar was now his greatest strength. He knew how to protect himself, how to sniff out every weak spot in his security. Where other would-be landlords fell to tar infestations, Logan stood tall and became one of the most powerful men in Newhaven.
The rusty speaker declared Brendan clean, and the camera retreated into the ceiling as Brendan’s satchel and clothes slid back through the half-door. He dressed and entered the dorms.
Fortunately, Logan himself sat behind the check-in desk, which meant Brendan’s odds of scoring a free room were much higher. Not all who worked for Logan knew Brendan, or how far back his history with the hotel’s owner went. With Logan, at least, a slim possibility of grace remained.
Of all the indicators of Logan’s success in the city, the greatest may have been his size. He was the only person Brendan knew with no visible ribs. Where others were lucky to go to bed without hunger pangs, Logan could afford to gorge himself—and gorge himself he did. Maybe he only did it to remind everyone of his status.
When Logan recognized Brendan, his face lit up in a crooked-toothed grin.
“If it isn’t Brendan Cobb!” he called across the empty hotel lobby.
The large man stood with a wheeze and lumbered around the front desk. Not only was Logan a round man, he was also well over six feet tall—practically a giant in this new world of skin-and-bones salvagers clinging to life. His mods thudded against the floor under his considerable weight. He hadn’t been able to afford mods in his janitorial days, but as soon as he became Newhaven’s most successful entrepreneur, he found the best money could buy. His gleaming metal legs didn't measure up to the technology Tiger Stripe and his gang had, but they were a good deal better than anything else in Newhaven.
Logan enveloped Brendan in a bear hug. “It’s good to see you, buddy,” he said into Brendan’s ear. His breath was greasy with the smell of onions.
Brendan clapped Logan on the back, even though he was about as excited to see his landlord as he'd been to run into Tiger Stripe. It paid to act friendly, though. He wondered if Logan saw through the charade but didn’t care. To some, faked affection beat no affection.
Logan broke out of the hug and squeezed Brendan’s bone-thin shoulders. He held Brendan’s eyes in a long stare before speaking again.
“All right. What’s my favorite salvager found today?”
Brendan bit his lip, offering a pained half-smile he hoped would tug on Logan’s heartstrings. The fat man might’ve been paranoid, but if he had a weakness, it was sentimentality.
“That’s the thing,” Brendan said with a sigh, loaded with emotion. “I had something great for you.”
Logan released Brendan’s shoulders. “Had?”
Brendan winced. “I met up with some newcomers. I was lucky to get out alive.”
“What are you telling me, Brendan?”
Logan folded his arms. Not a good sign. Time to change tone.
“Listen, Logan. I’m your most reliable customer.”
No response from Logan. Not even a blink.
“I’ve been bringing you salvage for, what, fifteen years?”
“Seventeen,” Logan grumbled. “Since you were a string-bean teen.”
“And I’ve always brought you good stuff. Sometimes...” Brendan licked his lips. “...sometimes even more than you ask from other people.”
“Now hold—”
Brendan held up a hand. The gesture was meant for himself as much as Logan. He couldn't let his emotions rise to the surface. Logan didn't need to feel attacked. “I bring quality salvage every day, and you and I both know people have stayed here for more time in exchange for less.”
“But it—”
“I get it. You’re a business man making business decisions. All I’m saying is your best and most loyal customer must have earned a little free time with all those inflated rates. You took the extra salvage from me because you could, and I won’t fault you for it. That’s just smart. But now I’m telling you a great way to keep me coming back would be to give me one free night. Just one, Logan. Tomorrow I’ll bring you more quality salvage, and we can both pretend this never happened.”
Logan sighed. “Brendan. I can’t let you stay overnight for free.”
“What? Worried your boss will get mad?”
“Ha,” said Logan, with little humor.
“Just one night. Don't tell me every single room in this dump is taken. I’d hate to go looking for another place for my salvage.”
Logan recoiled. It was the most direct threat Brendan had made. No going back now.
Brendan pressed in. “There are at least a dozen people in this city renting out shelter to salvagers, and they’d all love salvage as good as mine. You need me more than I need you.”
Logan’s eyes blazed. “You wouldn’t.”
Brendan held his gaze.
Finally, Logan’s facade cracked. The big man heaved a whistling sigh. “We got a room. No one’s claimed it yet.”
Brendan smiled and started to say something, but Logan cut him off.
“If a paying customer shows up, you’re back on the street. I’m doing you a favor, not the other way around.”
A wave of relief washed over Brendan, but his face remained impassive. He didn’t want to take his business elsewhere any more than Logan wanted to lose it, but it was best if Logan didn’t have that information. Logan’s hotel wasn’t just the biggest shelter in the city—it was the best. All that paranoia and all those resources worked together to make an impenetrable fortress. Even if Logan doubled his rates, it would still be a fair exchange. But until Logan realized where he stood, Brendan didn’t mind taking advantage.
With a self-satisfied smirk, Brendan held out his hand for the keys.
7
Before the world fell to the tar, the rooms in Logan’s hotel would have been shabby at best. No one had replaced the beds in decades. Impenetrable gray tar-proofing covered the windows. There was no staff to clean the rooms after each occupant left, and it showed.
But things had changed. In this new, tar-infected world, hotels were only safe places to sleep. By that standard, Logan’s hotel beat the competition by miles. For Brendan, going without shelter meant sleeping with his back in a corner and a blaster in his hand. Any creak, rustle, or scuff might spell danger, and he woke after every one.
Brendan could count on one hand the number of nights he’d spent his evening without shelter, and he remembered every single experience in a nightmarish blur of anxiety and exhaustion. He’d take Logan’s musty beds and gray windows over those nights in a heartbeat.
Brendan tossed his empty satchel onto the floor and let the twinge of anger run its course as he thought about Tiger Stripe and his gang. He patted down the bed, wrinkling his nose against the rising cloud of dust as he searched for knives or other traps a previous occupant may have left. Once he’d determined the bed was clean, Brendan collapsed into it. He removed none of his clothing, and he kept two fingers on the blaster at his hip. Logan’s hotel may have been safe from the tar, but there were more dangers than infection in Newhaven.
Within moments, Brendan drifted into a half-sleep that ended with every creak near his door and every muttered comment in the hallway. It was the only kind of sleep he’d ever known, and after everything he’d been through that day, it was more than enough.
8
A floorboard creaked outside, and Brendan woke for the fourth time that night. He shifted in bed—not so much that a potential intruder would realize he was awake, but enough to place his hand near the blaster if it came to that.
He’d reacted this way each time he woke, but this was different. This wasn’t the creak of a salvager stumbling to bed after a late night. Someone had frozen at the sound of this c
reak, knowing it would give away his position.
And it happened right outside Brendan’s door.
All of his instincts screamed to draw the blaster, but Brendan resisted. Soft though it might be, the weapon’s whining charge would be deafening in the late night silence. So he waited.
The door creaked open. Brendan’s hand hovered over the blaster.
“Don’t shoot, Brendan. It’s me.”
The lights flicked on, and Brendan squinted in the sudden glow. Logan stood in the doorway, arms crossed. He wore an almost apologetic expression, which told Brendan all he needed to know.
“Paying customer?” Brendan said, already rolling out of bed and grabbing his satchel.
Logan nodded. “Paying customer. Sorry. I really thought you’d get longer.”
Brendan checked the clock on the wall. Great. He’d only managed a couple hours, if that. Usually, Logan received no more customers this time of night. Most people found shelter within an hour of sundown, if not earlier. Of all the nights for a straggler to show up...
“I get it,” Brendan said, looking everywhere but Logan’s eyes, letting the round man understand his displeasure. “You’re a businessman making business decisions.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Brendan saw Logan shrug. At least he felt guilty.
Brendan couldn’t be mad at Logan. The big, crusty landlord was only the nearest target. Brendan’s rage belonged to Tiger Stripe and his gang, with their shiny, perfect prosthetics, but they weren’t around to take the brunt of the emotion. They were likely dead or infected by now, and if so, they deserved it.
Without another word, Brendan pushed past Logan into the hall. Heavy doors—the only part of the hotel Logan took care to update—lined the stained walls. The single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling barely illuminated the entire hallway, but even in the dim light, Brendan could see the figure at the other end. He was tall and lean, with a gleaming prosthetic arm. His ribs were tattooed with stripes that glowed in the dark.
Brendan whirled on Logan. “That’s the paying customer?”
Mystified, Logan peered over Brendan’s shoulder. “You know him?”
Brendan had to admit, he was impressed. Tiger Stripe had walked all the way into the heart of Newhaven after dark and survived. That counted for something.
“We’ve met,” Brendan said after a hesitation, and then continued walking.
He met Tiger Stripe’s gaze as he exited. If the kid was in Newhaven to stay, he needed to learn Brendan wasn’t to be trifled with. Half the battle of surviving was maintaining the right reputation.
Tiger Stripe may have reached Logan’s hotel alive, but only barely. His shoulders slumped, and his head drooped. It seemed to take his last ounce of energy to stay upright. His chest heaved with ragged breaths, rattling with exhaustion, dejection, and fear. This was not the boy Brendan had met in the abandoned grocery store. This was the shell that remained after Newhaven stole his companions...and with them, his soul.
Something sparked in those empty eyes when Brendan drew near. With great effort, Tiger Stripe lifted his head.
“It’s you,” he said.
Brendan nodded but didn’t respond. He had no pity for this kid. Not when he’d brought all this on himself, and not when his mistakes affected Brendan. He checked Tiger Stripe’s shoulder as he passed.
Logan called to Tiger Stripe from the open doorway:
“This is you. Come on in and get some rest. God knows you need it.”
Brendan glanced over his shoulder long enough to see Tiger Stripe limp toward the room. At the pace the kid was going, he might make it by sunup. As Brendan turned to leave, Tiger Stripe’s voice stopped him. Exhaustion dragged out his syllables and elongated his pauses, but he spoke clearly.
“You don’t have to kick him out.”
Brendan paused.
Logan made a questioning sound.
“I don’t mind sharing my room. That way he doesn’t have to go outside.”
Logan cleared his throat. “You only paid for a single.”
“How many beds in that room?”
More throat-clearing. “One.”
“Then I’m only getting a single.”
Logan stared Tiger Stripe down, determined to get the kid to give up by sheer force of will. Finally, he broke, shrugged, and said, “You hear that, Brendan? You get a room after all.”
9
Brendan almost rejected the room. If he didn’t want Krystal giving him a bed out of pity, he certainly didn’t want that from this scrawny newcomer.
But then he remembered his empty satchel. He remembered the whole reason he nearly spent the night on the street. As far as Brendan was concerned, this wasn’t about pity. Tiger Stripe owed him a room.
At first, neither of them spoke. Tiger Stripe collapsed on the bed, leaving the floor to Brendan. Brendan didn’t mind. The bed wasn’t much softer, anyway. Brendan sprawled on the floor and propped his head under his hands. The two of them lay silent for a few minutes before Tiger Stripe murmured in the half-slur of almost-sleep.
“We thought it would be better here. We heard rumors.”
Brendan almost didn’t respond. He was thankful for a free room, but not to Tiger Stripe. He didn’t owe the scrawny kid anything, especially not conversation.
But, hoping to pass the time more than anything else, he responded.
“Let me guess. First move?”
“Yeah.”
Silence.
“I’d only heard stories about the muck before,” said Tiger Stripe. “But then it showed up in our town for the first time a few months ago.”
Silence again. Longer this time.
“It got my mom.”
“And you thought you could escape by coming here.” It wasn’t a question. Brendan had heard this story before. He’d lived it.
“We heard the muck hadn’t hit here yet. Guess we were wrong.” Tiger Stripe laughed, but the sound was cold, with all the joy bled out.
Brendan grunted. “Chasing rumors won’t do you any good. Not anymore. Any place the tar hasn’t eaten up won’t be clean long.”
He’d been a child when he learned that lesson. His parents had chased rumors of safety for many of his younger years. He was three when they first skipped town, not much older when they gave up running. Even when the rumors of a clean town checked out, the tar showed up soon after Brendan’s family did. The infection was unavoidable. Newhaven was where Brendan’s parents gave up, where they died, and where Brendan learned to survive.
“Do you think there are any clean cities left?” Tiger Stripe asked.
“I don’t think it matters.”
He could feel Tiger Stripe’s disappointment as silence settled over the cramped room. In that instant, Brendan almost pitied the kid. For all he knew, Tiger Stripe had come from the last safe city on Earth. Now he’d learned what ruined Brendan years ago: This world did not belong to him anymore. No one escaped the tar. They only avoided it until they ran out of places to hide, but soon even that wouldn’t be an option.
Soon the whole Earth would be covered in tar.
10
Brendan and Tiger Stripe woke at dawn, but not to sunshine filtering through the blinds and kissing their cheeks. The tar-proofing over the windows kept the room pitch black, even at sunup. There was only the mechanical buzz of the alarm to rouse them.
The dorms were no luxury hotel. Logan had no patience for guests trying to sleep the day away. He was housing salvagers, not tourists. The more they slept, the less time they had to collect payment for the next evening’s stay.
Brendan was on his feet before the alarm finished buzzing, but Tiger Stripe took a little longer to get his bearings. He hadn’t adjusted to life in Newhaven yet. Wherever he’d come from, it had been a utopia by comparison.
A steady flow of residents made their way down the hallway, and while Tiger
Stripe stirred in bed, Brendan joined the shuffling parade. Some faces here were blearier from sleep than others, but they’d all pulled themselves out of bed the second the alarm sounded. Brendan considered warning Tiger Stripe of the consequences for staying late, but decided against it. He owed Tiger Stripe nothing. He wouldn’t let himself forget that.
Logan was waiting at the front desk. He caught Brendan’s eye and waved him over. Brendan broke from the river of salvagers.
“Where’s your friend?” the big man asked, his eyes tracking the flow of patrons.
“He’s not my friend.”
Logan snorted. “He gave you a room. Didn’t make you pay anything for it, either.”
“He’s not my friend,” Brendan repeated.
Logan shrugged, sipped his coffee, winced at the taste. “Don’t show up here without salvage again. And don’t give me that you-need-me-more-than-I-need-you bullcrap, or you’ll figure out for yourself who needs who here.”
“Is that a threat?”
“Is it?”
Now Logan’s eyes settled on Brendan. Their usual amiable twinkle shifted to a sinister glitter.
Brendan grunted. The salvagers continued their crawling procession out the door.
“Are we done here?”
Logan said, “Get out of here. Find me something good today, okay?”
Brendan didn’t even look at him as he stepped back into the crowd. He was almost to the front door when Logan called to him.
“Brendan!”
Brendan turned. The salvagers parted around him like a river around a rock.
“He seemed like a good kid,” Logan said. “Scared and out of his depth, but a good kid.”
Brendan said nothing, but he arched his eyebrows—So?
Logan shrugged. “He didn’t have to share that room. He could’ve turned you loose and nobody would’ve thought less of him.” Logan sipped his coffee again. Winced again. “Would it kill you to have a friend?”
11
Tiger Stripe caught up to Brendan less than an hour after he left the dorms. He was panting, winded from the jog.
“Hey,” he said.
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