Ten floors and Edgar had talked mostly about who he despised among the other men, who were not worthy to be in Wolf’s army, who he thought better to replace them, how he was an asset to Wolf, yet he couldn’t explain why exactly because what he did for Wolf was “private”—what he did was his dirty work, I knew. And so he continued to talk, and I went on wanting to wring his goddamned neck. Instead, I filed every word away in the part of my mind labeled: I Don’t Give a Shit But It Might be Useful Later.
By fifteen floors, Edgar could hardly catch his breath. But somehow, he managed—to my disappointment—to keep up and run his mouth down twenty-five floors where we ran into a few of the other men who had stopped on the stairs to chat.
“Think you can handle it?” one man said as I pushed my way through them; he smiled, revealing the ridicule behind the question.
I stopped on the same step and looked right into his face, challenging him.
The man put up his hands in surrender, and he laughed. “Hey, man, no harm,” he said. “I was just talkin’ about the women.”
“What about them?” I said, indifferently—on the outside I was indifferent, but on the inside, I was raging.
The man dropped his hands back at his sides, but the smile never left his face.
“I’d love to be in your shoes right now, is all,” he clarified.
The other four men standing around, nodded and grinned, expressing their agreement.
“You have any idea where I am on the list?” another man asked.
“I haven’t seen it yet,” I answered flatly.
Another man raised his index finger. “I know I’m high on the list,” he said, and dropped his hand. “I would’ve gotten a wife last week, but the women Marion’s scouting party brought back from Junction City were Rafe’s favorite kind”—he chuckled and shook his head—“so naturally I got left out of the picking.”
“As if Rafe needs anymore wives,” another man chimed in.
“Agreed,” said yet another. “Between Rafe and Overlord Wolf, there might be a lot of accidental inbreeding later on because you won’t know if you’re fuckin’ your sister or not.”
The men laughed. I didn’t. I only pretended to be offended not by their comments toward the women, but by their comments about their superiors.
“You should watch your mouth,” I warned, and they stopped laughing at once.
They weren’t afraid of me, or my upcoming temporary position over them; they were afraid I’d inform Rafe and Overlord Wolf of their disrespectful comments.
“Have a good night, gentlemen,” I said, and then left them on the stairs, rounded the next corner and descended into darkness.
6
ATTICUS
I cut through a parking deck and weaved my way between buildings toward the one I lived in on the corner of Main. What was once a booming American metropolis was now a habitat for all things rural and suburban: clothes hung from lines between buildings; fruits and vegetables were planted on rooftops; wind turbines stood tall on others, giving means of power to the community; abandoned cars littered the streets, reduced to fiberglass and metal skeletons rusted by the rains; weeds meandered through the cracks in the streets and sidewalks; vines had taken over many structures.
The city of Lexington, like most places across New America, was nothing like it was before The Fall. Over four hundred thousand people had been reduced to under five thousand, and they all lived within the downtown buildings rather than in homes on the outskirts of the city. They were safer there from savages and cracks and people from other factions outside of Lexington who would want to take what they had—what they had that wasn’t theirs to begin with; most of it was stolen, pillaged by William Wolf’s men.
Many of the soldiers in Wolf’s army were a lot like Wolf: power-hungry bastards who used the apocalypse as an excuse to take the human race back several hundred years. I never claimed to be better than any of them, but I sure as hell wasn’t the same, either. I enjoyed sex as much as any man, but I fought with my conscience daily with the women who were brought here. Like on this night, as I walked down the sidewalk with my hands buried in my pockets, I contemplated whether to veer left and pay Evelyn a visit at the brothel, or to go home.
The air stank of horse manure as I rounded the corner of North Upper and West Main and passed up my building. Armed guards on horses patrolled the streets day and night, but it was never until early morning that the horse’s shit would be shoveled from the streets by the unlucky residents appointed with the task.
I walked to the oddly-shaped buildings smashed together on the corner. Men and women hung around outside, conversing and flirting. An acoustic guitar played somewhere nearby, a somewhat cheery tune, fitting of the pleasure district. Laughter and conversation and drunken men with loud voices filled the air.
Lexington was one of few cities left with enough tobacco and alcohol stock to last at least another six months. Use was strictly privileged only for Overlord Wolf and the men who fought in his army. One cigarette a day was the limit.
Stepping through the door of the building, I ignored the women who beckoned me as I passed by. I wasn’t interested in them. Evelyn Bouchard was, to me, like a favorite seat in a bar, or a preferred waitress at a cozy diner. I trusted her and respected her and enjoyed her company in ways the other men never came to the brothel for: good conversation and advice.
“I thought I might not see you tonight,” Evelyn said from the doorway of her room on the third floor. She gestured me inside and locked the door behind me.
Evelyn was dressed in a pair of panties and a white see-through button-up blouse with no bra underneath. I watched her as she walked across the room and went toward the table by the window. She was a slender woman of average height, with long, dark hair pinned sloppily to the top of her head. She had been saying she was thirty-years-old for the past three years I’d known her, but I suspected she was closer to forty-something judging by the small lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth, and how her hands had begun to show signs of age. But she was a beautiful woman of forty-something, and I liked her very much.
The snap of a match was brief, and the glow of a flame appeared around her face as she puffed a cigarette to life.
“If they catch you with that…” I said, but I didn’t need to finish.
Evelyn smiled, blew the match out with her Cupid’s bow lips and then dropped it in an ashtray. “I know,” she said, and offered an indifferent expression. “But who’s gonna turn me in?” She took a long drag, the ember briefly giving light to her face. “Certainly not you. And if they smell it on me I have a good excuse.”
This was true. It was easy for a working-girl to pass off smelling like an ashtray when her job to be so up close and personal with so many men who smoked. And she was right—I’d never turn her in. I didn’t love her and knew I never could, but she was important to me just the same. She was my friend.
I sat in my usual chair next to the bed, splaying my legs out into the floor; I brought my hands up and moved them over my face, through the top of my short hair, as if the gesture could smooth away the stress of the day.
“The girls have been asking about you again.” Evelyn grinned.
“Oh?” I said with little interest. “What’ve they been saying now?”