Chapter 1 #2
I don’t like anyone who steals food or supplies out of the hands of someone else. It’s been the order of the day lately—beginning with groups showing up with guns to empty out grocery stores even before the asteroid hit—so I’d be happy for any thief or bully to get what’s coming to them.
But the militia are nothing but thieves and bullies too. In a contest between them and the Silver Wolf, I don’t know who I would root for.
The truth is, in such a conflict, it’s the defenseless who get trampled underfoot, so I don’t much care for either side of this conflict.
No one in my section besides the two militiamen has paid for a fuck tonight, so at closing I’m going to have to fuck one of them if I can’t come up with another option.
Cade is still sitting at his table, watching me as I bring a tough, older woman her second drink.
I might as well try. Why the hell not?
I slip past the handsiest of the militiamen and step over to Cade’s corner, leaning down to ask, “Can I get you anything else?”
He shakes his head. He finished his stew and drinks more than an hour ago, but anyone who pays for entry is allowed to stay until closing. Latecomers only get in if customers leave early.
“If you want to stay until closing, I’ll take you upstairs. You’d just need to talk to Nell about payment.”
Cade looks like he’s in his mid-thirties. His hair needs to be cut. It’s falling over his forehead. He stares up at me with those weirdly gray-green eyes.
I wait, but he doesn’t say anything. And I can’t try anything else to seal the deal because someone calls out a complaint about the potatoes at another table.
It only takes me three minutes to deal with the potato issue, but when I turn back to Cade’s table, he’s gone.
He left.
He didn’t want to fuck me.
Maybe he wanted it so little that he ran away.
It’s fine.
I’m decent to look at—Nell wouldn’t have hired me otherwise—but my body isn’t to everyone’s taste. And lately a lot of folks are too focused on surviving to spend much energy on sex.
Maybe he hadn’t brought anything extra to trade with.
It doesn’t matter.
He did leave a tip for me on his table, so I step over to pick up the pretty red apple.
I haven’t had an apple in almost a year.
I raise it to my nose. Rub it with my apron. And slide it into my pocket.
Then I turn back to the militiamen and catch the eye of the younger one who paid for a fuck this evening. I point at him and then upstairs.
He lets out a whoop, which is followed by bawdy cheers from his companions.
I head back toward the bar, rolling my eyes at Pete, who is pretending to be oblivious but sees everything. He inclines his head toward the exit door in a silent question about why Cade left.
My answer is a resigned shrug.
Cade usually stays until closing, so I must have scared him off tonight.
Later, the young militiaman leaves my room after fifteen minutes of basic, unimaginative missionary.
He wasn’t all that big, and he was trying not to be too rough so he wouldn’t be barred from getting a fuck in the future, so I’m not even sore.
I clean myself up and take the used condom downstairs because I don’t like it sitting in the small pail in my room until morning.
Nell has a huge stockpile of condoms and birth control aids, and she doles them out to us whenever necessary. Some of them are past their expiration date, but they still seem to work. I haven’t gotten pregnant or gotten an STD since I started doing this.
One of the hard-and-fast rules in the Pub is that no fucking is done without a condom.
I have no idea what will happen when Nell uses up her stockpile or the ones we have are no longer effective. No one is manufacturing new supplies in this world. Everything we possess was made before Impact.
But that’s a worry for another day.
None of the other girls wanted to room with me when I started working here, so Nell gave me the worst room by myself. It’s barely big enough for the single bed and has a deeply slanted roof so I can’t even stand at full height on one side.
I don’t care. I prefer to have my own room, and there’s a dormer window that opens. When I return to my bedroom, I climb out the window with my sketchbook and sit in my favorite spot on the roof where three slopes come together to form a secure corner.
There aren’t any clouds tonight, so the only thing obscuring the stars is the layer of dust in the atmosphere from the initial asteroid impact.
Even on the other side of the world from where it hit in Europe, we’ve been pummeled by one climate disaster after another in the aftermath.
The entire eastern seaboard has been hit by consecutive hurricanes—so vast and so unending that the whole coast is now underwater.
The hurricanes must still be happening because every month we get heavy rainstorms that last for days.
A lot of the valleys and lowlands are flooded now, even this far from the coast, and no one can live too close to the river.
The Pub is built on higher ground a fair distance from the river, so we only flood when the rains stay too long.
Everything on the planet has changed, but the stars are still the same. I sketch out all the constellations I see, naming them as I do, and then drawing out little scenes from all the stories my grandfather told me about them.
I do the same thing on every clear night, taking an odd kind of comfort from the familiarity, the one part of the universe the asteroid didn’t destroy.
I stay out on the roof, drawing and looking at the stars until I’m too tired to do it any longer.
It’s only then that I climb back into my tiny room and go to sleep.