Skin on My Skin (12 page)

“Yeah, we should.”

It had taken me the better part of a whole panic filled day just to make it to the apartment in the first place. I couldn’t imagine how long it was going to take with me being petrified by not having the seals. Not to mention trying to corral my crazy companion.
 

“You ready?” she asked, looking at the open doorway hesitantly.
 

I shrugged, putting on the last bit of the bio-armor despite its abject uselessness. “Sure. You… you haven’t been out much, have you?”

“Between being a prisoner in Fortress and a prisoner in here, no.”

I shrugged. “Well, welcome to New York, I guess.”

I felt, rather than saw, her reaction as we stepped out on the rubble-strewn street in the full heat of the afternoon sun.
 

It wasn’t altogether different than my own every time I left my penthouse.
 

“We can go back inside and wait till dark,” I told her softly. “It’s easier at night. You can’t see how open everything is at night.”

Jenna was quiet for a while, staring out at the sky.
 

“How long has it been since you’ve seen the sun?”

“I don’t know. Maybe back in Fortress? They didn’t let us out much. Maybe even before that. That day they drug us out of the shelter. It’s all sort of jumbled together.”

Her skin was even paler in the full light of the sun. She looked so pathetic, standing there barefoot in Woody’s baggy clothes, like she might just blow away at any moment. I sensed a fire in her, though, a fire that years of captivity had done little to extinguish.
 

“We can go back in,” I repeated. “It’s way easier at night. I promise.”

“Why did you come here?” she asked, changing the subject. “Why did you come during the day?”

“People scavenge during the day. I didn’t think there would be anyone there.”

“But how did you know it was there in the first place?”

“There was a light I saw from my place. It wasn’t much. Just enough.”

“He was an idiot. I’m surprised someone hadn’t come before. You were coming to rob him.”

She was using words from a dead world. They just didn’t apply anymore. The things Woody had accumulated came from that dead world were fair game to anyone who could take them. It was the same with my stuff. It wasn’t anything personal. People were just surviving the best they could.
 

“We should either get going or go back inside,” I told her. That same fear she felt was only exacerbated in me. I wanted to hurry back to my own home, the one place in the city I’d feel safe without the seals.
 

“I’m not going back up there,” she said with as much determination as I’d heard from her. “I’m fine. Which way?”

I nodded and hefted the bag of supplies we’d taken from Woody’s on my shoulder. The extra ammunition weighed more than the rifle I’d taken, but I was sure Jenna was going to be more of a problem for me. The moment someone saw her, and someone would see her, I’d either have to give her up or fight to keep her. Despite knowing a bit more about her, I still had that fantasy in the back of my mind. I pointed off to the west and we headed out.
 

After a block I wished she’d have found some sort of coverings for her feet. Woody’s boots were never going to fit her, but towels and duct tape or something. Inside that block her feet were bleeding not just from the miles of broken glass and rusted metal, but from just being so delicate. She had no callouses on her feet and, if I understood her story correctly, she hadn’t even been out of that bed in years. I was surprised she could walk at all.
 

Two blocks in she was breathing heavy and I felt eyes staring at me from every direction. Stop it. I was just being paranoid. But that didn’t mean someone wasn’t out to get me. There was still the graffiti artist out there somewhere.
 

“You need a break?” I asked, hoping she’d want to if for no other reason than to get off the street and push my own fear down a bit.
 

“No,” she said, trailing blood down the dust-covered sidewalk behind her. “I’ll be fine.”

We walked on, not talking, her bleeding. I saw danger in every shadow, but the only things I heard were dogs howling in the distance. I was careful to take us as far away as I could from Fortress. Hoping patrols weren’t out looking for Woody. Hours passed and I felt exhaustion creeping up again. What I needed was a hot shower, a good meal, and my own bed. Maybe then I could make a good decision about what to do.
 

“It’s awful, isn’t it?” Jenna finally said.
 

“What’s that?”

“All this. Our city. It all fell apart.”

“It didn’t fall apart. The Preacher destroyed it,” I told her, not bothering to hide the contempt in my voice.
 

“If it wasn’t him, it would have been someone else.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Do you remember how many people were in this city before the Preacher’s Plague?”

“Sure.”

“There were so many people, all pushing and shoving. The Preacher hated gay people. Fine. There were people that hated blacks, people who hated Hispanics. It didn’t matter. Someone was going to do exactly what the Preacher did at some time. It was just a matter of time.”

“That doesn’t make murder right. No, not murder. Genocide.”

“No, it doesn’t, does it?”

She finally did take a break four hours into the trip. We sat inside a ruined department store. She even let me wrap the raw, hamburger-like things that were her feet. I had no idea how she continued to walk. We ate MRE packs without heating them up and she stared around the old, ruined store. It had been looted in the early days of the plague. The remains of the worthless suits and dresses were little more than moldy piles on the floor.
 

“I think my dads took me shopping here once. We were getting a dress for the sixth-grade dance. I was so excited.”

She didn’t sound excited.
 

“At least the food’s good, right?” she asked, holding up some unidentifiable meat product from her MRE.
 

“Seriously?”

She shrugged and smiled. “I didn’t get a lot to eat.”

“Yeah. You look like you could eat.”

“Do you have something better at your place?”

“Fresh tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers,” I answered her, thinking of the bear I’d left along the way. “Maybe some fresh meat if we make a bit of a detour on the way.”

“You have all that?” she asked, incredulous. “Tomatoes? I love tomatoes. Or… I haven’t had one since before everything…”

“Tomatoes,” I said half-heartedly, anxious to get going again.
 

“Well, let’s go see these tomatoes,” she said, painfully coming to her feet. “Thanks for the shoes.”

We walked on in silence until I finally saw my building. Relief swept through me. We’d made it, no problems. I could see the end of the line. I stopped in my tracks, however, frozen in place.
 

“What is it?”

I didn’t know if I should tell her about the new Preacher logo I was staring at just across from the front door to my building. I decided not to.
 

“Nothing, come on. It’s a long way to the top.”

After the brief detour to the Starbucks to acquire bear steak, we finally made it to the Landry Building a few hours before nightfall. I told her how we would have to get to the top and she wasn’t happy about it.
 

“I don’t want to wait here by myself,” she said again, just as adamantly as she had the first half dozen times.
 

I ignored her pleas. “There isn’t another way. I’m going to go up it and make sure my place is clear. I’ll send it back down. I won’t be on it, so I’m going to have to use a rope to lower it. It might hit hard.”

“I don’t want to ride that thing,” she insisted. “Not alone. Scratch that. Not at all. There has to be a better way. The stairs…”

“I destroyed them years ago,” I said, interrupting. I wasn’t going to tell her about the freight elevator. The skies were clear and even if they were cloudy, I didn’t want to wait around for a rainstorm that might or might not come. It would just be too loud. “This is it.”

“You’re going to leave me here by myself.”
 

The total resolve she’d had in her voice earlier was now tempered with the desperation she’d had earlier. I sensed the fear, the loneliness inherent in the statement. I felt the same way. I’d gotten used to having her near surprisingly quick, and I didn’t want to give that up. Not yet. But the platform simply wouldn’t haul both of us.
 

“I’m going to send it back for you. Just stand on it, here,” I said, showing her, “and pull the lever. It will take a half hour or better to get up there. You have to stand on the platform and hold on.” I thought about that, for a moment. I didn’t want her passing out and plummeting to her death. “I’ll send down some rope to tie yourself on if you get tired. All you have to do is flip this lever, right here,” I told her.

“You’re not going to leave me?”

“I came back for you, didn’t I?”

“That’s because you wanted to fuck me,” she spat back, half mockingly. I’d hoped we’d gotten past that point.
 

“And you think, for some reason, that I don’t now?” I said, honestly. We needed to get moving. We were making too much sound and it was echoing through the elevator shaft.
 

“Right,” she reluctantly agreed. “So at least an hour before it gets back down here.”

“Probably less. I’ll let it down quick. Just stay out of the way, okay?”

“And then thirty minutes or so up.”

“Yes,” I said, wondering if she could see the comforting smile behind the mask. “Thirty minutes or so.” It was more like an hour, but what was another little lie?
 

“You have a tomato waiting for me, okay?” she said, touching my shoulder piece and then stepping back out of the elevator shaft. “And that bear steak cooking.”

I got on the platform and began my trip to the surface.
 

The trip up was agonizing.
 

First off, it was slow. I needed to do something about that. What if I had to make it to the penthouse in a hurry? Maybe I was just being too impatient. Secondly, I worried about Jenna. The girl could wander off. The more I thought about it, the more I thought she probably would. Why go upstairs with your potential rapist? The more I worried about it, the more I was tempted to sail back down and take her to the freight elevator. Damn the noise. I didn’t want her to leave.
 

I didn’t want to be alone again.
 

I didn’t want to show up, upstairs, though, with her hanging on my side only to have to face some potential invader. If the graffiti artist was up there, waiting for me, she’d slow me down. I needed to check my apartment and check it quickly. It could be an absolute coincidence, I knew, but I had a hard time believing in that since the plague. The logo was all over the city, of course. It wasn’t necessarily targeted at me. It was some sick fuck’s joke. But the fresh ones I’d seen in the places I’d been… that was too fishy. I couldn’t accept it. I was convinced the person was following me.
 

And it obviously wasn’t Big Woody. Someone was still out there. Somebody was still following me.
 

Which is why I made sure the safety was off the rifle when I got to the penthouse.
 

I stood in the doorway for a long time, simply listening. I heard the hum of the electrical equipment, storing power from the solar panels and wind turbines. The ham radio crackled softly and, for a moment, I missed the comfort of Radio Guy’s mad ramblings. I didn’t hear anything out of order and didn’t, on first glance, see anything out of place. I stepped into the room as softly as possible, but the clicking of my bio-armor’s buts sounded like thunder. I went forward, rifle raised, room-to-room. I didn’t quite take my time, but I looked in every nook and cranny. I knew the penthouse like the back of my hand. There simply wasn’t a hiding place I didn’t know. It took me a few more minutes than I’d have liked to finish the search and find a rope long enough to lower the platform manually back to the first floor.
 

I pulled my bio-suit off and did just that. Normally I’d ride it and work the breaks, but I couldn’t do that. I tied the rope off and began working it downwards. When I got to the end of one rope, I tied on another. It took most of my repelling gear to get it down, but I was relieved when it finally went slack.
 

If she was still there, she’d come up. If not, well, I was long used to not touching a woman. I’d dream about her. I dreamed a lot.
 

As I ticked off the time it would take for the platform to return, I wandered out on the balcony and found the perfect, red ripened tomato. I went to the kitchen and sliced it neatly on a plate and then sat with it, a bottle of water, and a shaker of salt, on the floor near the elevator shaft.
 

I heard it long before I ever saw it and knew, again, that I needed to do something about the sound level in the elevator. I’d gone to great pains to only use the freight elevators during storms, but I never realized just how loud my other form of transportation was. None of that mattered, much. I wouldn’t be going anywhere without the seals for my suit anytime soon. I didn’t know what the solution was to that problem, but I could stay in the penthouse a long, long time without ever having to worry about it. I’d been preparing for that eventuality since the day I’d moved in.
 

Jenna knuckles were white from the death grip she had on the platform.
 
Her fear, though, was instantly replaced by wonderment when she saw not only my mostly tidy dwelling, but the sliced tomato I’d left for her on the plate.
 

“You really do have tomatoes.”

“I do,” I said, offering her the plate. She stuffed it in her mouth whole slices at a time, barely bothering to chew. She looked up at me, embarrassed, and I felt something cross my face that didn’t quite hurt, but didn’t exactly feel right either.