Last Rites (10 page)

Will finally managed to stop staring at her various parts and stood up to greet her. “Oh, hi, sorry,” he stammered, stepping toward her as she took a step into the room. “I was just distracted. Haven’t slept much lately.”

She smiled. Looking and dressing like that, she had to be used to men staring. Hell, he must look like shit, Will thought, but there wasn’t much to be done about that. As he came up closer to her, at least he had an excuse to look back down at her chest, as there was a nametag pinned there. It read “Peterson.”

“Julia,” she said, sticking out her hand, which Will awkwardly took. He wasn’t used to that gesture, either, though they’d do it sometimes back in his old town. “I work for the City Council, Department of Citizen Accounts,” she said.

What the hell was that? Sounded weird, and Julia looked a little less attractive when she said it. “Oh, okay,” was all Will could manage.

Julia craned her long, shapely neck to look over his shoulder at Rachel, and for a moment the attraction came back full force. “How’s she doing?”

“Much better, thanks. We’re so lucky we found you.”

“I know. We’re so glad, too. Could we maybe step out into the hall for a minute, so we don’t disturb—” Julia checked her clipboard, “Rachel? We need to discuss your payment options.” That didn’t sound quite as incomprehensible as “Citizen Accounts,” but it sucked all the attractiveness from her, even though her smile was as broad as before, her eyes as sparkly, her breasts as perky. She suddenly seemed mysterious in a distinctly unsexual kind of way—now there was more of a threatening intractability about her.

“Okay, sure,” Will said as he followed her into the hallway, out of the sunlight in Rachel’s room.

The light in the hall was artificial, and it had that harsh glare Will remembered from childhood. He hadn’t seen fluorescent lighting in years.

Julia went through the various sheets on her clipboard, clicking her tongue as she went. “Now, let’s see,” she said. “You should only be here in the hospital another couple days, and there’s the dockage fee for your boat. Were you planning on leaving after that?”

“Um, yeah, that’s kind of what we planned.”

“All right, then here’s the total.” She got a business card out of her jacket pocket and put it on the clipboard to write some names and numbers on it. “This is my card. You can call me when you’re ready to leave. I’m writing the names of some traders on the back. Call them first and they can meet you at your boat and you all can negotiate some prices for whatever you have to sell, so we can take care of your bill.”

“Call?”

“Yes, on the telephone.” She looked at him and smiled. There was some condescension in the expression this time.

“But I don’t think we really have anything to sell.”

“Oh.” It had that note of deflating finality, like everything had been going according to plan, and there was no other way to do things, no other option, and now something very bad but completely undefined was going to happen.

“Well, let’s see what we can do,” Julia said after a pause. She gave it a hopeful, musical tone, like she could work some magical, impossible feat, if only Will had faith in her.

“Okay.” Will had decided there was no amount of feminine beauty or physical comfort worth this hassle. But he didn’t think he had much choice but to go along with her machinations.

Julia began to fill out a form, and she used a smaller scrap sheet to work out some figures. “Well, we’ll need to put you up in a small house. We have lots of starter homes in town, all ready to move in. Utilities. Hookup fees. Food credits.” More figures went onto the scrap sheet, more lines were filled out on the form, as though she were filling in some high-tech code or occult incantation. “You’ll have to continue paying the dockage fees, unless you wanted to sell the boat?”

Will didn’t hesitate to answer. “No. We need it.”

“All right. You and Rachel will need to find jobs, so for now let’s just fill that in at the average starting rate.” Numbers were added and multiplied. “There. You should have your bills paid off in about a month.”

“A month?” What was she talking about? What did it cost to have the ship tied up? And they’d just gotten a couple bottles of the medicine. How could it take a month for them to work it off?

“Maybe less.” She smiled and blinked once. These people had that stuff ladies put on their eyelashes, too. Will had forgotten the name—masquerade or something. But her impossibly full lashes only distracted him for an instant from all the nonsensical stuff coming out of her mouth and all the seemingly unalterable, arcane symbols on her papers. “And of course, you never know—you might want to stay longer,” she said.

“No, I don’t think we will. And what about the two people who were with us? They took them.”

“Other people?” Julia checked her paperwork. “You mean the two dead worker units?”

“Well, yes. How do we get them back?”

“Did you get a receipt for them?”

“A receipt? No. Nobody said anything about that.”

Julia’s brow wrinkled. “Those men at the docks are so sloppy and careless with paperwork. Well, it says here the female was taken to the City Patrol camp. She might still be viable after a month, but I wouldn’t count on it. The male was taken to the Dead End entertainment center. He should be fine, unless he was a violent or disobedient one.”

“No, not at all. He was very gentle.”

“That’s good. But without a receipt, you’ll have to pay for them again. They’re not worth much, so it shouldn’t add too much time to how long you have to work.”

“What? Okay. Whatever. But what do you mean that the lady
might
still be
viable
?”

Julia gave what looked like a very well-practiced expression of sympathy or concern. “Just that the City Patrol is very dangerous,” she said. “They’re not going on nearly as many patrols as they used to, but they still lose units all the time. I don’t want you to get your hopes up.”

No, there wasn’t too much danger of Will getting his hopes up anymore—not after this beautiful woman had started talking about payment and filling out forms and acting like they were prisoners in this clean, efficient, orderly place. He’d much rather be around Lucy than this bitch. Definitely a lot more missing inside this one, even if she had all her parts and they were all so nicely shaped and decorated.

“Well, I guess a few weeks will be okay. We can rest and get ready to move out. Get supplies and stuff.”

Julia beamed, an expression somewhat less insincere than her sympathetic one. “That’s great! I’ll write up all the paperwork and you don’t need to worry about a thing!” She shook his hand again, much more vigorously this time. “I think you’ll really like New Sparta! Have a great day!”

“Yeah, you too,” Will said quietly to her retreating back, his gaze immediately drifting down to her swaying hips. As nice as the view was, Will no longer thought he’d like it here very much, and he had no doubts there’d be quite a few things to worry about in this strange, complicated place.

They’d trudged along up shore for some time, with a large wall to their right. The wall was a hodgepodge of different materials—brick, concrete, cinder blocks, wooden planks. In some places it was topped with spikes or barbed wire—or, as Lucy suspected from the glinting she saw at the top, broken glass. It was irregular in height: for the most part, it was as tall as two men, but lower in some spots, higher in others. The place stank, too, of humankind, so there must have been a lot of them behind the wall.

God, why did living people always smell so bad? How could they stand that toxic mix of shit and sweat they always had coming off them? The heady scent of rich blood and succulent meat underneath it all was intoxicating to Lucy, but hardly made up for the more piercing, stinging odors that wafted above it. Better just to smell nothing than their foul mixture, which made her feel hungry and sick at the same time, so Lucy refrained from inhaling, once she’d satisfied her curiosity.

The sun had come out and the day had grown warm as they followed the wall away from the river, into marshy fields with some twisted, thorny bushes in them, and a huge number of flies buzzing around. Only the dragonflies were of any interest to Lucy—big and purple with their wild, zigzagging flights; the rest were just nasty, ordinary flies—mostly black, a few of the bright green kind.

After a while the men started moving away from the wall, following a trail of cracked pavement into the fields, and eventually into a forest of scrubby pines barely taller than Lucy. She thought it was a pretty crappy-looking place overall—boring, stunted, and broken.

They emerged from the woods and Lucy saw a high chain-link fence ahead of them. A gate in the fence was flanked by two guard towers. From these, four rifle barrels were immediately trained on them. The collar pulled back on Lucy’s neck and she stopped moving forward.

“Hold up, you stupid bitch,” the man behind her said. Yeah—they went around pointing guns at each other, and they called
her
a stupid bitch. Dumb fucks. Some of them deserved to die more than others.

Lucy lowered her head, but let her eye wander about, taking in the scene more carefully. She now saw two larger guns on the towers; these were mounted on brackets and did not pivot toward them, but remained pointed into the enclosure beyond the fence. She also noticed the towers had no stairs or ladders.

Lucy breathed in through her nose. Ah—that wonderful, dry, dusty smell of dead people. This was a much better place, clearly.

She saw CJ out of the corner of her eye, raising his hands. “Hey, just me, guys,” he called to the guards in the towers. “CJ. From the dock.”

“Hey, CJ,” came the reply. “Long time no see. Whatcha got?”

“Smart one,” CJ answered. “Quick too. Thought you guys would be interested. Should be perfect for patrols. She can use tools, weapons. Some crazy hill person had her as a pet. Hardly needs any training at all.”

“Really? Tiny little thing. Doesn’t look like she’d be up to it.”

“Oh, no, she’s a firecracker. Lot of fight in this one.”

“I don’t know, CJ. She doesn’t look it.”

CJ laughed as he came around in front of Lucy. He pulled on two big leather gloves. “You guys,” he said. “Always make me work for it. And it’s just the city’s money! You’d think you’d just hand it over and be glad to have another one for the patrols.”

Lucy eyed him without lifting her head. “Come on, sweet thing,” he said, leering at her. “Show the man what a crazy, fucking bitch you are.”

Lucy gave a low growl. Fuck him. She wasn’t going to put on a show so he could make some money. What the hell did he need money for, anyway? Everyone here looked pretty well-fed and spoiled, as far as she could tell. What the fuck more did they need?

CJ backhanded her across the face. Lucy lifted her head up part of the way and glared at him, but didn’t make a move or another sound.

He squinted at her as the men in the towers laughed. “Not looking good for you, CJ,” one called. “She’s just somebody’s pet. Leave her alone!”

CJ took a step toward her and slammed his left fist into her stomach. Didn’t really feel like much—just a rough sort of pressing into her, not a real pain. But then he grabbed her chin and pushed her head back. She’d have a mouthful of gristly, crunchy thumb right now, if it weren’t for those damned gloves.

“No more fucking around,” CJ whispered to Lucy, his mouth next to her ear. “If you cost me money, or embarrass me, I’ll snap your fucking neck, bitch. Fuck the money.” He pulled back a little, so he could see her eye. “Blink, you cunt, if you understand me, or I’ll do it right now.”

A few more days of humiliation and pain? Or end it now? That is, if the little weasel had the balls and muscles to do it. Lucy half closed her eye. She knew it’d feel good, to have it over with. Real rest. That seemed like the nicest, most desirable thing imaginable. And not having to be pushed around by all the pricks in the world? That’d be incredible, too, better than anything she could imagine. But Lucy also knew she was just like Rachel—or probably like most everyone else who’d faced this kind of decision. She couldn’t let go, even of this ugly, vicious semblance of life. It was just human nature not to. Nothing to be done about it but give in to the weakness.

She brought her eyelid down all the way and raised it back up.

“Good,” CJ said, smirking. “You’ll always be somebody’s bitch.” As he stepped back, he also pulled her kerchief off, just to make sure she’d put on a good show.

All Lucy’s shame—at how she looked, at what she was, at how she couldn’t even will herself to die—erupted into a howl of rage and pain. She swung her manacled hands—once to the left, then back to the right—catching CJ in the face both times, first with her fist, then with the metal band and her other fist. She would’ve lunged straight forward next, would have tackled him with the metal pressing into his throat, but the man holding her collar finally brought her around, pulling her off balance and keeping her from moving forward.

CJ stepped back, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. He wasn’t smirking anymore, at least, but he smiled crookedly, showing his teeth all covered with blood. “Told you, guys,” he said. “Bitch is twice as mean as a rattlesnake and almost as fast.”

There was laughter again from the towers, but this time it sounded more appreciative than mocking. The one guard spoke again. “All right, all right,” he said. “Maybe we were too quick to judge. You sure she can see, though, with her face all messed up like that? I’ve seen lots of ‘em, but none with a face as jacked-up as that.”