“Nonstop,” Clarissa said with a goofy grin. “How did you survive it with Adam?”
She leaned in as closely as she could and whispered, “I thumped his nose when he did it.”
Clarissa’s perfect features widened with a shocked grin. “You didn’t.”
“Oh, yeah. I kept it light, but it did the job. I only had to do it four times.”
Clarissa chuckled, then placed her nose to her baby’s covered head and said in a cutesy voice, “You hear that, Sweetie? You bite me again, I’m going to do the job, too.”
Nothing came from under the cloth.
Paula briefly smiled, but the fear for her half-cocked husband swept through her again.
“He’ll be back,” Clarissa said bravely. “You’ve got to believe that.”
Paula rolled her eyes despite the kindness. She wasn’t sure if she wanted him to.
Clarissa rose from her chair. “Well, I’m going to try to get this one down for a nap. Maybe I’ll get one, too.”
“That would be nice,” Paula said glumly.
Clarissa eyed Paula’s restraints and nodded. “Look at it this way: in a world gone to Hell, things can only get better. Right?”
Instead of arguing, Paula nodded her friend away, then went back to staring at the teens outside, giving Clarissa’s advice some serious thought.
CHAPTER 8
LION’S DEN
The remains of Denver reminded Didi of the bazaars in Afghanistan, only Cody’s descriptions weren’t this nasty. Merchants everywhere pushed the strangest wares; lizard skins, hubcaps, rubber hoses, barbed wire. Very few had clean water, and those were heavily guarded. The only fresh produce she saw anywhere was being eaten by the leather-clad jexes like Buddy’s guards. Every fourth vendor sold food squarely on Leviticus 11’s no-no list; every tenth dealt in movies and video games, which the city still had the means to power. A few booths peddled scantily-clad women, one with half of her head shaved off and tentacle tattoos down her appendages who sang something from the previous decade that was just as tacky when it first came out. It was like being in Sodom or Gomorrah with electricity and boy band music, and—as much as she wanted to—she was ill-equipped to free any of these doomed souls.
And the clothes—God, forgive them! So many brand name items reduced to dirty-fabulous or flat-out mutilated. Huge, scarred biceps poked through sleeveless Armani blazers. A model-thin woman sported four outfits underneath an overtaxed Vera Wang gown. Didi blessedly found herself a Dolce and Gabbana leather biker jacket in good condition for the price of a clip of pistol ammo, but she reviled the sight of another with sleeves lined by disembodied stiletto heels—oh, those poor shoes—on a guy who wore a silver Louis Vuitton clutch as a hat. She prayed the famous names behind these brands weren’t alive to see this fashion nightmare.
“I feel like I’m-a catch somethin’ just bein’ here,” Isaac groused as he shoved away one of the skinny product women trying to entice him into the next entertainment booth. “How you doin’?”
“I’m trying to look on the bright side,” Didi said as she glanced over a nearby Versace gown in decent condition until an older woman blew her nose into it, “but I’m failing miserably. Donatella Versace would hire hit squads if she saw this place.”
“Imagine what Paris looks like right now.”
“Really don’t want to.” At least the old lady traded a gold bracelet for the defiled gown and took it away, hopefully to give it a proper burial.
“Me and mine looted when the plague started,” Isaac added, “but it wasn’t nothin’ like—Hey, come back here!” he roared as a child ran away from him. “That little shit stole my watch.”
“Let him go,” she said as she removed and handed him the silver Rolex she had found in a Sioux City Walmart. “You can have mine if you want. It’s just stuff to me.”
Isaac glanced between her and the kid, who had long since disappeared, and took her watch. Then his eyes bugged out right past her. “Damn, girl,” he bellowed, “that was you?”
Didi turned to face a booth lined with DVDs, one of which bore her former self looking all lewd. If she still had guts, they would’ve churned. “That was I.”
Isaac shook his head. “Why’d you have to get rid of those?”
“Long story,” she replied, then waved it off and walked on. “Get it if you must.”
She really didn’t want to say that, but she figured someone might as well enjoy it after all her porn career had cost her. Another upside of being dead in this case was that none of her people would watch those videos and think of trying anything with her now, but her perpetual lust and insensate body made for huge downsides.
Isaac quickly appeared next to her. Empty-handed.
“Not getting it?”
He waved her off. “Nah. You look way better now.”
She smiled. “That is such a sweet lie.”
“Call it respect. It ain’t you now, is it?”
If she still had her heart, it would’ve warmed at his sentiment.
“You take it pretty damn well,” he said while moving on. “I don’t know how I’d react if naked pictures of me was goin’ around.”
That wasn’t an image she wanted. He was tasty-looking—er, good-looking—but she didn’t need either of those qualities stoking the fires already burning in her brain. “We all have to live with our mistakes, no matter how long it’s been since we made them. That’s why we should avoid sin in the first place. Wouldn’t you agree?”
He shook his head with an amused grin. “There you go again with the Bible.”
“It still makes the most—”
“The most sense,” he finished with her, nodding with a laugh. “Girl, you are somethin’ else.”
“Only literally.”
“Say, brother,” came from beside them, which prompted them to stop and face three hulking men with hip holstered guns and a familiar gleam in their eyes walking right up to them. “How much for the ride?” asked the one in the middle in a poorly-stitched blue taffeta jacket.
Didi and Isaac glanced at each other with equal confusion. The latter shrugged. “Sorry, man, but we ain’t sellin’ rides.”
The three shared a knowing chuckle. “Naw, brother,” Blue said with a pretty smile despite his condescending tone as he waved his hand up and down Didi, “we mean this ride.”
Didi reached for her sword to teach the jerk some manners, but Isaac blocked her down. “You got the wrong idea, brother. This here’s my partner.”
The three stooges chortled again. “No, seriously, man,” Blue said. “What she go for?”
“She goes this way,” Didi replied as she walked on before she could cut off their heads.
They muttered some insults, but at least they stayed away.
Isaac caught up to her again with a grin. “Maybe we ought’a get you a hoodie or somethin’.”
She almost said something about going with a different skin color when her ear squelched and filled with Nick’s voice. “Didi, do you see anything odd over there?”
She stopped in her tracks and leaned closer to Isaac, pointing at his cell phone. “You mean besides Dawn of the Dead Fashion Show?”
Isaac quickly pulled his phone and clicked himself into the conversation while Nick continued. “I’m seeing signals throughout the city. Some are voice comms, but they’re too short to trace. Two of them were right by you.”
The reasons why filled her brain with dread. “What are they saying?”
“Nothing I understand. Could be code—wait. Got another one,” Nick said urgently, then went silent for a long time until, “It’s gone. All it said was, ‘Prospects acquired’ and ‘WILCO’.”
Didi didn’t like the sound of that. “Where?”
“Somewhere downtown; Seventeenth and Curtis.”
“That’s where we are,” Rachelle said, which would’ve made Didi’s hackled stand on end if she had any left. “There’s just a broken mall here, but it’s packed like a Black Friday sale.”
“Takes on a whole new meanin’ in this city,” Isaac muttered.
Didi left that one alone. “Ron, did you find a way out of town yet?”
“So far, the main highways are pretty clear,” Ron said. “Not too many helpful locals, but one said we can get out if we don’t stop or break any laws.”
“Good. Grab Rachelle and Pepe, then come get us. Hashim, get the bus and the tanker through town. We’ll link up with you on the west end.”
“Wait,” Ron cut in again, “The guy also told me the west highway is full of raiders, some with heavy artillery they bought here. He recommended going south to I-Ten.”
“Very kind of him.”
“Or sendin’ us into an ambush,” Isaac said quietly.
“Sounds risky either way,” Hashim said. “We should stick to the plan.”
Didi shook her head. “The west is surrounded by mountains, but they’re only on one side going south. The latter gives us better options. Link up outside the city. Rachelle, keep your eyes peeled until Ron gets there.”
“What am I looking for?” her pupil asked.
“Radios, cell phones, walkie-talkies, anyone with particular interest in you.”
“That’s pretty much everybody. You know there’s not one single kid in this whole place?”
Didi had noticed that, only now the idea grew eerier. “I thought it was just my bad eyes.”
“You’ll know if someone wants you,” Isaac said. “They’ll move up on you real fast.”
She smirked. “Personal experience?”
“Fuck you.”
She couldn’t help herself. “A little late for that, don’t you think?”
He shuddered. She got a chuckle out of it.
*****
“Just hold what you’ve got until your ride comes,” Didi insisted.
“Right,” Rachelle said into her phone before putting it away. She tried not to be annoyed—or wig out—but everyone in the rundown mall regarded her with the same stunned look in their eyes as that Buddy guy. None of them carried anything to communicate with.
“I don’t see any antennas or satellite dishes,” Pepe said while staring at some short-haired chick dancing on a spotlit pedestal with ratty hair on her head than cloth on her bony body. How was she not freezing? He didn’t look too pleased with her, but his eyes were locked onto her.
Rachelle cringed at a charbroiled monkey on a rotisserie at the front of the mall, which was surprisingly less congested at a glance than the promenade she and Pepe tried to navigate. Old rap music echoed through the pocked walls of the two story structure without a single pane of glass. Christmas lights lined the roof, though half the shingles were missing. This dingy flea market fared better than the rubble piles in the surrounding blocks, but she did not want to stay here another second. “Come on, Ron,” she muttered. “Hurry up already.”
Pepe finally tore his eyes away from Skanky Dancer and gave the neighboring two- and three-story building roofs a glance. “Why do you suppose they have power but not communications?”
She shrugged while scanning the thick, horribly-dressed crowd. Her skin crawled with each new junky-looking survivor locking ghostly eyes on her like she was about to attack them—or vice versa. She didn’t know if it was her clothes, her weapons, or what, but she kept one hand on her sword handle—strapped to her belt where she could see it, just like Didi—and the other on the pistol holstered under her jacket.
A thunderous roar startled her into drawing her weapons, but all she found was a lion pawing at the bars of its cage on a big wooden cart.
“What the hell?” she nearly shouted.
Some dirty old guy came out from behind the cage and yelled, “Hey, you kill him, you’ll owe the Gamesman a new one.”
“The what?” Pepe asked as he stepped beside Rachelle.
The guy looked like the Los Angelino had just asked him what a million six times seventeen was. “You’re kidding. What, are you from Mars or something?”
“We’re new here,” Pepe said. “We’re just passing through.”
The old guy approached the horse attached to the cart. “He runs the games at Mile High Stadium. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up in them.”
Rachelle put her gun and sword back. “What games?”
The scraggly old fart shook his head and pushed the cage cart onward. “You kids better get out of this town while you can, and fast. If the Gamesman don’t get you, the Mountain Men will.”
All this cryptic bullshit was starting to piss off Rachelle. “Mountain Men? What the hell—”
Suddenly, something crushed the back of her neck and yanked her backward. She ended up face to face with some shaved ape in a leather vest, who grinned at her through gnarled yellow teeth. The tall freak was uuuh-gly! She tried to push off of him, but all he did was drop some older guy to the ground and grab her with both hands.
“Young meat,” Ugly said with dark glee, his rotten breath choking her. “Makes me hungry.”
Everyone else in view stared in horror. The old codger whipped his horse to get moving.
“Hey, we don’t want any trouble,” Pepe said as he stepped up with his hands out like some kind of diplomat, but he got smacked hard into a nearby table.
Rachelle drew her sword and smacked that monstrous head with the blunt side. While he nursed his boo-boo, she aimed the blade at him. “Stay back, ugly, or I’ll improve your looks.”
Ugly laughed aloud, then yanked that forty-something man he had thrown to the ground back to his feet. “You hear that, Meat? This little girl thinks she can threaten Mercer.”
Meat didn’t look like he knew what was going on, even when he was dropped again like the sad sack he appeared to be.
Mercer tried to grab Rachelle again, so she slashed at his arm. He frowned at the wound stretching from wrist to elbow, but those dark, crooked eyes looked more annoyed than hurt. “No little girl bleeds Mercer,” he claimed. “Mercer bleeds little girls.”
He raised his arm to smack her, but she sliced off a big chunk of his oncoming wrist. He howled as he regarded the hand that dangled like a palm frond, then roared and ran at Rachelle.
She aimed the blade forward to dissuade Mercer, but it went through him like Jell-O as his weight tackled her to the ground.
Ugly stared wide-eyed at her, then coughed up some blood and slipped off of her. She yanked her sword back and scrambled to her feet.
The entire crowd ogled her harder than before, jaws dropped everywhere.
She shook all over. Blowing up raiders in an R.V. was one thing, but seeing the bloody mess she made by hand was too real. Omigodomigodomigodomigod…
Meat fell before her feet and kissed them, which stunned her even more than the kill. He thanked her profusely in Spanish, introduced himself as Hector, and declared himself as her personal slave if she would get him out of this city.
She looked to Pepe to make sense of this, but he was out cold.
Out of nowhere, four big guys with shotguns surrounded her. Their metal mesh shirts, gauntlets, and long leather jackets reminded her of Buddy’s guards. Were these jexes?
They were joined by a fifth man in a biker jacket with red snakes stitched on. He was tall and seriously buff. His near-black eyes darted between Rachelle and the late Mercer. His firm, deep voice ordered, “Take her.”
The four brutes tried to rush her, but she swiped at them. They stayed back while she yelled, “What, a girl’s not allowed to defend herself in this town?”
“Not against the Gamesman’s talent scout,” the big one said stiffly. “Drop your sword or you and your friends die.”
The four henchmen cocked their guns and aimed at Pepe and Hector.
Rachelle quickly dropped her sword and threw up her hands.
Two of the leather-clad “cops” drew chains and shackled her while a third searched her, taking her guns and cell phone.
“Time for justice,” the big one said before he turned on his heel and walked away.
His goons muscled her after him.
She glanced back at Pepe and caught Hector slapping his skinny face, muttering something she was too far away to hear before the crowd engulfed them in going about their business. She may have been a defender, but she needed one even more. She needed Didi.
CHAPTER 9
BIG GAME
After pushing through so many dingy, carnival-looking booths, Isaac was happy to find an arms dealer. The scruffy old Asian had a spread that would’ve made any action flick character drool, but the dude wasn’t interested in jewelry; no, it took three water bottles to get twice as many boxes of nine millimeter bullets along with a carbon-copy receipt the codger kept in better condition than anything else in his booth. Isaac wondered what he could’ve gotten for a few cans of that weirdo Nick’s Spam or leftovers of last night’s juicy steaks.
This city confounded him. A small sense of justice lingered at seeing an entire city run solely by his African brothers, but the brutal way this dealer described the great white purge—and the thick-necked jex who earlier offered Isaac an MP5K and five cases of nine millimeter ammo for his “white devil slave girl”—tainted that feeling. He wanted to be impressed, but his people still looked so oppressed. The spoils of victory, no matter what color claimed them.
Of course, none of that mattered to the dead chick, who summed up all she had just heard about how the city rose again after its death. “So, this Gamesman guy called a truce between all the gangs by dividing up the whole city between them, but he’s really the one in charge … and he spends all his time running games.”
The wrinkly coot leaned back on his tire rubber chair with a heavy sigh. “Is Rome all over ‘gain,” he said with a thick accent like that kid in the second Indiana Jones movie. “Dey just no have zombies. Gamesman likes zombies. Use dem for court.”
Isaac flinched. “Court?”
The dealer wagged his finger at Isaac. “You cross a jex, you face his court. Dat da law now.”
Isaac couldn’t help thinking about those Mad Max movies. “Sounds like Thunderdome.”
Exodus Page 8
