Empire (4 page)

    Death studied the architecture of the house. If there was a human quality that he admired, it was imagination. For him, imagination had no purpose; his entire existence was laid out in black and white. But those idling in this life took wood and rock and metals and forged wonders merely from pictures in their minds. It didn't matter that they would one day depart the mortal coil, nor that their cathedrals and skyscrapers would one day be razed to the ground. Just to have created, that was enough.

    The mowing afterdead had seen him. Death leapt into the trees with barely a whisper, back into the swamp, back to his white steed.

    "Did you go outside this morning?" Confusion was a rare feeling for Lee. He usually kept everything in its place with little effort, especially Cheryl. But he remembered awakening from a drunken stupor at six A.M. and hearing the front door before blacking out again. Cheryl's guilty white countenance confirmed his suspicions. "Where were you?"

    She only shook her head in response. Her clothes were filthy. Lee could tolerate her plump figure when she at least looked clean; he'd send her to the rooftop today to do laundry. Lee's head ached so he plopped down in his recliner, narrowing his glare. Bitch had better not relax thinking he was just going to sit there and nurse his hangover. "You're lying." He said flatly. "I can't believe it but you are. Where the fuck could you have been that you'd even think of lying to me about it?" Lee tapped his index finger against his cheekbone. "Maybe you were with that guy in the next building. Maybe you went over there to suck his cock."

    Cheryl shook her head rapidly. "I wouldn't do that, Lee."

    "The fuck you wouldn't. You've always been a whore. Keeping you in this apartment the rest of your life ain't gonna change you, I know that. Hell, I'm family and I've caught you staring at my cock, Cheryl. You don't care where you get it as long as you get it. You'd probably be on the street sucking dead dick if I didn't keep you on a leash. And..." He rubbed his neck, grunting, fished through his jeans for a couple of white pills. "And just like that, I pass out for a few hours and you sneak out. Break all the rules. I take care of you, Cheryl, why do you hate me so much?"

    Cheryl didn't have the heart to tell her cousin that he'd been unconscious for a day and a half. Actually, it had less to do with her heart than her nose and the fear of having it shattered again. Even if she was the whore Lee said she was, no man would want her like that. He didn't just make her feel ugly, he slapped her around for good measure. How could he possibly accuse her of being hateful when she stayed for that? She wasn't afraid to fend for herself. She made regular trips to Midtown to get his drugs, didn't she? Lee was the one scared to leave the apartment. He only knew that a man had moved into the next building because he'd seen him from the window. And things had gotten worse since then. Lee wouldn't stop talking about the man - whom Cheryl had never even seen - and how she would almost certainly betray her loving cousin for him.

    Loving. She shuddered involuntarily as Lee's glare bored into her. He had his hand down his pants. Lee wasn't a hard one to figure out. She knew what he was about. Why he kept calling her a whore. It had nothing to do with his so-called faith or her lack thereof. When Cheryl looked at him (and she NEVER stared at his crotch) all she saw was an ugly, possessive addict living in another reality. But when he looked at her, it was with dark desire.

    "I don't hate you." She forced herself to say. "I didn't go out. Where would I go? I was here. I was watching TV- -"

    "Bullshit." Lee turned the recliner to face the television. "My DVD's still in there." One of his pornos. She'd never be caught dead watching that. Cheryl was busted.

    Lee smirked at her. His DVDs were all he had left, the rest of his things traded away for drugs. As such he spent a few hours of every day jerking off in his chair, usually while high, and Cheryl would get a beating if she happened to walk into the room. He'd probably sooner trade her away than that smut.

    Chewing the white pills from his jeans pocket, Lee swallowed them dry. "So, want to tell another lie, or just tell me who you've been fucking?"

    "I didn't do anything. I didn't go anywhere. Why don't you believe me?"

    Lee stood up. Trying the guilt card with him had been a mistake.

    His eyes clouded over and he gave her a familiar, numb look. Then the backhand sent her sprawling.

    Cheryl stayed on the floor while Lee yelled. Her ears were ringing but he was probably berating her for making him raise his hand. Tears stinging her eyes, she briefly considered telling him the truth. Fact of the matter was that Lee was all she had, the only one she could ever turn to - but he'd never buy the truth, not when she was a godless whore.

    She'd been raped four months prior while on a run to Midtown. Her attacker had worn a moth-eaten ski mask over his face, held her facedown in the refuse of an alley. Had whispered while he was inside her, "Could kill you where you lay bitch, feed you to the rotters. Kill you." He came on the word KILL and repeated it feverishly, then he melted into shadow and was gone.

    Cheryl hadn't known she was pregnant until that very morning, until the miscarriage.

    Thank God Lee had been passed out, because she had screamed to wake the dead, even with a rolled-up towel clenched between her teeth as she lay on the bathroom floor. She'd screamed even louder and cried and beat the tiled floor when it was over and she saw it. Transferring the towel from her mouth to between her thighs, she used another one to clean the mess and then wrapped it - him, her? - in a dinosaur blanket. Then she'd gone out to the landfill.

    What would Lee say if he knew?

    "I knew you weren't just getting fat, bitch. Fucking whore. Rape. Rape! Ha." He'd punctuate every word with his fists. Things would be worse than they'd ever been.

    "I..." She mumbled, though still unable to hear, "I heard a noise. A cat. I was just looking for it."

    "You better not have given any of our food to a fucking stray." He snapped. "I didn't." She replied. "I couldn't find him...I wouldn't have fed him anyway."

    "Goddamn right. I'd skin and eat the little bastard before taking him in. You better feel the same way, Cheryl, because I'm the provider here. I take care of YOU. You don't have a goddamn thing to be giving away to anyone." He dug his toe into her ribs, making her whimper. "Except that filthy cunt."

    He left her on the floor and went into his bedroom. She stayed there another hour, just to be safe.

    The signage on the Holy Covenant Community Shelter was illegible, every letter of every word punctuated by bullet holes and smeared with crud. It was just as well, seeing how the shelter didn't have much left to offer. Just a roof and some blankets - there'd been a time when Reverend Palmer was able to convince her charges that such meager provisions were a blessing. Nowadays she could barely say it herself without bitter laughter.

    Oates, a bearded black man in his late sixties, was helping her put new boards up over the windows. "Just what are we protecting?" Wheeler asked in his usual manner. "You." Palmer replied.

    Wheeler brushed back his shock of white hair and picked at a scab on his chin. "I ain't worth protecting. None of us are. Truth hurts."

    "So why don't you kill yourself instead of bitching all day long?" Isabella barked from a cot across the room. The reverend shot her a look. Wheeler shrugged. "Mother Theresa here says that suicide's a sin. I'll go to Hell if I do that. Apparently Hell's something worse than this putrid shithole." All things considered the shelter wasn't in awful shape. Palmer knew that Wheeler just thrived on misery. He was scared to feel a shred of happiness, lest something tear through those boarded-up windows and take it away. Palmer could barely hold her tongue around the man. He never helped to scrounge for supplies, never comforted any of his equally-distraught companions. The world owed Wheeler, always would, and that was that.

    Something thumped against the board Palmer was hammering. She cried out and Oates pulled her away, turning his hammer to wield its claw as a weapon. "Whoever's out there, speak up!"

    "Patrol Officer!" A young male voice.

    It was a common ruse among most cities in the badlands, thieves posing as P.O.s. "Let's see some ID!" Oates shot back.

    A laminated card slipped between two of the slats and into Palmer's hands. Michael Weisman, it said. Based in Miami, it said. "Long way from Florida." Oates called, reading over her shoulder.

    "Florida's gone. I've been here for months. I just want to check up on you."

    "No one checks up on anyone," Wheeler spat. Two other men, J.J. and Yeats, trudged into the room. "What's going on?"

    "We got ourselves a P.O. outside." Oates muttered. He peered between the boards. "It's Weisman all right."

    "The ID's fake," said Wheeler. "Don't even think about letting him in!"

    "Come around to the front." Palmer said to Weisman. As she left the room with Oates she glanced at Wheeler. He stuck his tongue out and flipped her off.

    She and Oates cleared the crude barricade from the front entrance and unlocked the door. Weisman was wearing his uniform, though it had clearly seen better days. He patted a pistol strapped to his hip. "How many you got in here?"

    "Ten." Palmer extended her hand and introduced herself. "Do you have any food?" Weisman asked. "Medicine? Plumbing?"

    "Pipes are fine." Oates slapped Weisman on the shoulder and ushered him in. "You're looking at the Harbor's best plumber. We're getting a nasty soup of ground water and seawater, but I threw together a filtration system."

    With sandy brown hair and deep eyes, Weisman was good-looking. Damn good-looking. At fifty-something, swatches of gray among her long blonde locks, Palmer rarely felt attractive nor attracted. But damn. Smiling sweetly at the P.O. she led him into the building. Oates stayed behind to restore the barricade.

    "How long have you all been in here?" Weisman asked next. It sounded to Palmer like he was taking mental notes. "Most of us have been here a year or so. We took a young woman and her boy in last week, and that's it."

    "Has anyone been assaulted recently?"

    "No, not at all."

    "And how many of the ten are men?"

    "Uh, six."

    "And there haven't been any problems."

    "You sound surprised, Officer Weisman."

    "Mike, please." He stood in the doorway of the community room and returned the questioning stares of its inhabitants. "Any of the men ever leave the shelter?"