Last Rites (11 page)

“She can see fine. Stop kidding around. She could see to clock me while you numb nuts sat up there and laughed. Now admit it. I was right.”

“Okay, you were right, CJ. Girl’s got potential. You fill out the form and turn it in at city hall and you’ll get your money. Half now, half if she’s still up and around after a month.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know how it works. Always with the forms. Some shit never changes.”

CJ approached Lucy, though he stayed out of her reach. The man behind her pulled back on the collar to keep her in place. “On your knees, honey,” CJ said. “You did good and I appreciate it, but I’m not gonna take any chances, with you all riled up again.”

The collar pressed on her shoulders and Lucy got down on her knees.

“Hands out in front,” CJ said.

Lucy complied. He unlocked the manacles and stepped away as she got back up.

They walked her forward as the gate opened, then unlocked the collar. Lucy reached up to rub her raw neck. She turned to see CJ and the other guy backing away from her. She snarled at them, just to feel something good in her wretched state, but there wasn’t much point in posturing now: they were safe and in charge and they knew it.

CJ gave a little wave—the mocking kind, with the hand held up, folding the four fingers down as one, then snapping them back up several times. “Bye, bye, darling,” he said.

Prick.

“She know words?” the guard called from the tower. “Take commands?” They must not have heard when CJ whispered to her. Good. The less they knew, the better.

“Yeah. She won’t always do what you say, but she knows.”

“Get inside, bitch.”

Lucy walked through the gate, which slid closed behind her. She sniffed the air again. Dead were around. Some were closer than when she smelled the air before. In the compound behind the fence sat various structures in advanced stages of decay—huts or sheds more than houses, though they might’ve started out as real dwellings once, a long time ago. No more commands came from the tower, which was fine with her, but after a few moments the silence made her anxious. Then Lucy heard some shuffling and scraping from one of the buildings.

A young dead woman emerged from one of the sheds—a girl, really, though she was nearly as tall as Lucy, and had a fuller, thicker body. Her brown hair was done up in two pigtails. Lucy didn’t remember too much of fashion, but she was pretty sure only young girls wore their hair that way—or an older girl trying to look younger.

She had on a very short skirt, ruffled, with stripes, though the colors were so faded, you couldn’t tell what shades they’d been originally; it was also spattered with mud and blood and God knows what other filth. Lucy remembered something about girls in really short skirts like that—they’d dance and jump around in front of crowds, though she couldn’t remember what you called it or what the reason was.

The girl’s top didn’t match, but was made from some thick fabric, like denim or canvas; it had vertical black and white stripes on it and looked ridiculous on the poor girl, like something a person would wear to make people laugh, though this hardly seemed the place where people laughed very much. Well, except for those idiots in the tower, but they’d laugh at anything degrading or ugly. The girl held a bundle of the same fabric in her hands. Lucy noticed she walked with a limp as she approached.

“They’re so funny, how they always send out a girl if it’s a girl, and a guy if it’s a guy,” Lucy heard from the tower. “Like it fucking matters. They eat people, and they care who comes out to greet them? I can never get over how messed up they are.”

The girl was now in front of Lucy, holding out the bundle. Her large, almond-shaped eyes were only a little cloudy, and set far apart on her round face. She must’ve been very pretty, with a voluptuous, young body, and a bright, innocent face. But now she just looked forlorn and stupid, gazing over Lucy’s shoulder with her mouth slightly open, swaying there among the broken-down buildings. Lucy took the clothes from her and nodded slightly. She got no response before the girl turned to shuffle back the way she had come.

“The hot cheerleader’s limping worse,” Lucy heard one guard say. “We’re gonna have to put her down.”

“But she’s so fucking hot,” another one said. “I love watching her walk around. And it’s not like with real girls: you can stare all day and no one cares, no one tells you to stop. You can just sit back and enjoy the show all day long.”

Some chuckles and catcalls. “You’re sick. How can you say shit like that?”

“Hey—what’s wrong with looking? They’re perfect for that. It’s not like they mind. I don’t see any problem.”

“Yeah, you wouldn’t. It’s just gross. And besides, she hasn’t been on patrol in weeks. We’re gonna get written up if the inspectors come by. You know the rules.”

“All right. Don’t get all scared of the city council like a bunch of girls. I’ll take care of it.” Lucy heard a metallic click, and then someone shouted, “Hey!”

The girl stopped walking and turned back around. Her big brown eyes were looking right at Lucy, who shut her eye against the inevitable. She only flinched a little when the shot came a second later.

That was another thing about living people, besides their sickening smell: they were always so damned loud, with all their crashes and explosions, gunshots and screaming. Why couldn’t they ever just shut up and be still?

Lucy opened her eye, and took a step forward. The body looked peaceful in the grass there, the eyes looking up at the sky; it had been as quick an end as one could hope for, so there was no logical reason for how much rage Lucy felt at that moment. But if anything, that only increased its intensity. She dug her fingers into the bundle she held and clenched her jaw till it hurt and her ears rang.

“Hey, new meat!” Lucy heard from the tower. She relaxed slightly as she turned toward them, readying herself for whatever new indignity or violence they intended.

“Put the uniform on,” the guard said. “Rules.”

Yeah, they always liked that word—”rules.” Covered all sorts of ugliness that they loved so much. Lucy unfolded the stiff shirt and frowned at it. It smelled good, like dead people, but she still felt funny putting on such a weird piece of clothing. After a moment, she began to pull it on anyway.

“No,” she heard when the shirt was over her head. “Take off what you got on first.”

There were groans and laughter from the other men: “Not that again, you sick fuck! Oh, you can’t be serious! You’re one sick bastard!”

“Hey—you made me shoot my other piece of eye candy! This one’s fine as hell too!” The one man pointed at Lucy. “Hey, honey! When you’re done with that, put something over that mess on your face. I don’t want to see that when you’re sashaying around here. Ruins everything.”

It was extremely difficult and slow, trying to get her dress off without Truman’s help, but Lucy eventually got the buttons undone in the back. She stared at the girl’s body as she worked, at the way the breeze now moved the grass around the corpse; it gave her something to focus on, something to distract from the shame.

Lucy let the dress drop to the ground. Though it had been warm earlier, the air now felt icy against her body.

Rachel kept her eye on Will as the tall blonde led them up the steps of the row house. This Julia character was definitely the kind you’d catch your man looking at the wrong way. Rachel was pretty self-confident in the looks department, and Will had always been more loyal than she, to be frank, but this gal had all those adornments she barely remembered from childhood—the clothes, the makeup, the girly-girl mannerisms. God, that thing she did with her hair, tucking it behind her ear—could she have practiced a gesture more affected and annoying if she tried? Rachel had even caught a whiff of Blondie as they walked around the city—somewhere between syrupy and flowery, but with something animal underneath it. What was that expression? She’d heard her older brother say it years ago, and they’d laughed hysterically at the naughty words. Oh yeah—she smelled like a French whore. That about summed up this skank.

Guys loved that shit, though, Rachel knew. And this gal had it going on every which way. With her height, she’d have great legs to begin with, and she was wearing high heels too. Who wore those anymore? You could barely walk in them, let alone run if you had to. Didn’t seem ladies had to run too much here in New Sparta, if they played their cards right. Never mind the shaved legs and stockings. Rachel had forgotten how women’s legs looked so different that way, it had been so long since she’d seen them. Kind of strange, actually—sort of lean and greasy looking. Rachel could be objective enough to analyze the oddity and unnaturalness of it, but she also knew objectivity was not the point. Attraction was all about difference, novelty. Rachel caught some of the city men checking her out like she was a new, exotic dish set on the table for them, even though she must look like some hairy nature-girl that swung down from a branch, next to this prissy bitch. Will couldn’t help but have the same reaction to a Barbie doll like Julia.

Rachel half wanted to catch him checking out the slut’s firm, slender ass. Make him feel guilty when she caught him, make him feel all eager and more forceful when they made up later. That’d be fun. But no, he was looking nervously at the house, the yard, the adjoining houses, anything but the bimbo’s perfect body. Weird. On the one hand, Rachel didn’t like not being able to figure him out, but on the other—well, it made him kind of cuter, too, that he was so shy and faithful. She leaned closer to him and rubbed his shoulder. He turned and gave her a smile, but it looked strained.

What the heck was he so nervous about, anyway? A guy had to be awfully bent about something to keep his mind off a piece like Julia. She’d taken them to three houses already this morning, and he’d been all mopey and shit. Over what? Rachel was enthralled by everything, even as she kept glancing at that tramp, kept track of her constant flirtations with Will, her subtle putdowns of Rachel. The bitch had to point out that one house had lots of sun—and she said it while looking Rachel up and down, as if implying she were too pale. At the next, she gushed over the large, elaborate kitchen, then asked Rachel if she liked to cook, noting how she, of course, loved to cook for her boyfriend. What the fuck did Miss Boobs-a-Lot think? She knew damn well they’d been living out in the wilderness and Rachel’s cooking skills were more towards the gutting and cleaning end of things. And a supposedly sophisticated sperm bank like Julia knew how much a simple guy like Will would love to hear about her Marsala sauce and shallots and mint jelly.

Rachel had fumed over that, but those indignities paled next to the treasures Realtor Barbie dangled before them like candy or pearls. Rachel had been right about the hot water—my God, you could turn on the tap and have to pull your hand out from the stream of water, it was so hot. Ovens. Refrigerators. Microwaves. Washers. Dryers. Televisions. The city only had one channel, but they’d walked by a couple stores that rented DVDs. No having to ask for fuel to turn on a portable generator, either—the electricity flowed just like the hot water and gas. Even the phone lines were live. Hell—back home, she’d used the handset on her old phone to crack walnuts on the counter, but here you picked one up and it actually had a dial tone. The one house even had a garbage disposal and a dishwasher.

When they’d walked into the living room of another, the room had been stuffy, so the leggy bimbo had sashayed over to the window and turned on the air conditioner. Could you imagine—real air conditioning? Rachel could feel the air blasting half way across the room—nice and cold and damp. Yeah, all that stuff would be worth putting up with some stuck-up bitches like Julia. Besides, a few weeks here, and if Rachel got some nice clothes, underwear, some makeup—she wouldn’t even have to feel self-conscious next to sluts like that.

At each house, Will didn’t seem to see the attractions quite as vividly or desirously as she did. He kept asking about the cost, and since the city’s currency had no real meaning to the two of them, he’d have to ask Julia to figure it, based on how long it would take them to work off the debt before they could leave. So each house was expressed as “five weeks” or “six weeks” or whatever. If the gal hadn’t been such a bitch, Rachel almost would have felt sorry for her, having to crunch the numbers so many times, and for so little a purpose. Rachel didn’t even pay attention to the calculations, she was so busy checking out the fun stuff. What difference did it make? What was the rush? This was going to be like a nice, much-deserved vacation.

Truman and Lucy didn’t need stuff like this, they couldn’t appreciate it one way or another. Set them in a corner, and they’d snuggle and stare off into space and be as happy as they were going to be. How different was it, really, than when she’d been little and they’d gone on a trip and left the dog at a kennel? It didn’t know any better, even if she’d been worried back then that it’d be lonely. It was fine. Real people just needed more, and Rachel and Will had gone so long with so little. It wasn’t their fault if they rested a bit here. Besides, it probably wasn’t so bad, wherever those two were.

They entered the fourth house. A few hours ago, Rachel would’ve said it was the cleanest, most comfortable looking home she’d seen since she was a child. Now it looked pretty humble, after the other ones they’d been in. As Will dragged their slutty guide to the living room to run the numbers, Rachel drifted to the kitchen. Simple. Really small, made worse by having the washing machine in the kitchen itself. Rachel remembered that her grandmother’s house had been set up that way. No dryer. She looked out the back window and saw the clothesline. Well, she never was one for laundry and chores, though seeing Julia’s wardrobe, Rachel vowed to get nicer stuff and clean it up better.