Skin on My Skin (7 page)

I’d be dreaming of the woman later, but it wouldn’t be a good dream. It wouldn’t be like the dreams I had after doing a porn marathon. I’d see the fear splashed across her face. I’d see those eyes pleading with me. I’d see the monster ripping her to pieces with the club he had for a cock.
 

I made it to the second floor barricade and pushed my way through, the box of liquor ahead of me. I spent a lot less time and was much less careful than I’d been on the way up, but I needed to get in my suit. I needed to get out of the building. I scraped through, cutting myself on the ragged pieces of metal and spikes to the point I had blood freely mixing with sweat on the other side. I didn’t feel any of it, though. I had to get out of there and a few cuts and bruises weren’t going to stop me. I got through the barricade, bolted down the remaining flight of stairs, and into the small office off the lobby. My bio-suit was exactly where I’d left it. It didn’t seem quite right and looked as if someone might have rifled through it. I stopped anyway, staring in panic not at the tampered with suit but the wall behind it.
 

Someone had painted the Preacher’s logo on the wall near my suit, spraying over the cork board and the pictures pinned there. Someone had followed me from the coffee shop here. I checked the suit in a frenzied panic.
 

Not only was someone watching me, following me, someone had taken the seals from my suit.
 

I fled through the streets, running as fast as I could, heedless of sound or security.
 
I’d put the suit on the best I could and grimaced every time the connections flexed, metal on metal, without the seals that acted not only as a barrier, but a connector. I felt like I was running in open tin and felt exposed. The sky seemed bigger and, despite having just been within twenty feet of two other humans and survived, I was sure I was going to die at any moment. The box of liquor felt like it weighed a million pounds and I saw an assassin in every shadow, just around every corner. Someone had followed me from the Starbucks. Someone had seen me there, seen me look at the graffiti of the Preacher, and then followed me. I had no idea why someone would do that. I have no idea why someone would just take the seals to the suit. Though my old seals were extremely valuable, the suit was more valuable as a whole. You could trade whatever the hell you wanted for it.
 
I wouldn’t likely replace it any time soon. They were the very essence of the word irreplaceable.
 

I couldn’t go home. I knew that, though that was my first instinct. My stalker was somewhere around the building I’d just left. I could feel his eyes burning into me. I could see him laughing at whatever silly game he was playing. And that’s what it was. It was a stunt by someone who was bored and lonely. What more provocative piece of work could you spray paint on a wall? If you wanted to get into someone’s head and really make them doubt their continued survival, just tell them the Preacher was coming.
 

The man had single handedly wiped out most of human kind, after all.
 

And top that off by stealing his seals. Leave the suit but render it useless. It was a sick bastard that did that to another survivor. It wasn’t just stealing someone’s stash. It was something way more personal.
 

It was a sick fucking joke but, if the guy was following me, I might accidentally lead him back to my place. And then I’d be like the apartment I just left - exposed and open. I didn’t care how big the guy was or how well armed; he wasn’t going to survive long if he kept advertising his existence. I wasn’t about to do the same.
 

It had to be the scarred man upstairs, I was sure. He’d followed me from Starbucks. I wonder if he knew I was in the apartment with him. Was he that fucking nuts?
 

Who is more nuts, I wondered. Me for going to his place in the first place or him for knowing I was there?
 

I kept moving, ducking in shadows, squatting behind the rusted hulks of old cars. It was hard to move in the suit without the seals and I was afraid it was making too much noise. I felt like there were hundreds of pairs of eyes staring at me from the broken out windows. I felt ghosts in the wind and saw shadows in shadows. My breathing was hard, and labored. Without the suit functioning I felt like I did the day I watched my father murder my mother. I felt like I was going to die at any minute.
 

The sun began to set in the west, casting long, dark shadows. I was going to be caught in the city at dark with a busted suit, unable to go home. I found an apparently empty building and worked my way into a room with only one door. I sat against the back wall, staring out that door into the dark, wondering just what the hell I was going to do.
 

I ought to go back up there and kill him. I ought to kill him, free the girl, and get my seals back. I could take her home. If she was really a Toucher, she wouldn’t need a suit. She’d be okay.
 

I knew better. I’d shot dad, but I wasn’t going to just shoot someone else. Not to just get property back.

I sat for hours, trying to figure out what to do. The city was dark by the time I finally came up with a plan. I wasn’t going to go back up to the scavenger’s apartment and confront him. I’d survived our first encounter, but that had been out of sheer, dumb luck. But I could get new seals and knew just where to do that. There was a place in the city that, for a price, you could trade for anything. I patted the box of liquor next to me. It might be enough.
 

Maybe the day hadn’t been a complete bust after all.
 

Half a day after I left the horror show in the scarred scavenger’s apartment, I saw the lights of Fortress glowing on the horizon long before I neared the west side entrance. I heard the boom of music blaring from Club Flesh even further out. It was a siren, a call to all the lonely scavengers out in the ruins. Come to us, it said. Bring us goodies and we’ll show you the one thing you can no longer have. Bring us booze, we’ll give you boobies. Club Flesh also acted a trading post. It wasn’t quite the Wal-Mart of my youth, but you could get just about anything inside, suit parts included, for the right price.

It was more complicated than that, obviously, but the basic trade at Fortress allowed a scavenger time in Club Flesh, the outermost building of the walled in compound. There, depending on the size of the scavenger’s haul, you could watch the strippers behind the sealed glass walls. New York had always run on sex, to some extent, but the survivors of Fortress had perfected into an art. It was the basis of their economy.
 

I didn’t honestly know much about the people inside the walled in compound. I’d heard the talk, of course, whispers on ham radio waves in the middle of the night. People said they were all Touchers inside, and had retreated to the park after it was clear there was no coming back from the Preacher’s Plague. Others said the rich of the city had retreated into the park and built the wall. Behind it they’d built sealed tunnels and enclosures similar to what my father had built back home during the early days of the plague. Supposedly there were tunnels running down the streets, divided houses… they carried on like nothing had happened. Still others said the Preacher lived in Central Park and was working on a new plague that would just kill everyone left. Others agreed that the Preacher was there, but that he had the cure.
 

I had no idea what to believe. I knew, however, that Fortress was rich in parts for bio-suits and that would be the only place, short of going back and killing the scarred up, raping scavenger, to get the new seals for my suit.
 

I wanted to go back. In the hours I’d spent mulling around the city trying to figure out what to do; I’d developed this silly fantasy about going back and rescuing the woman. Dumb, I know, but all I had was time and imagination. Going back would mean running into the scavenger, though, and I wasn’t prepared for that.
 

Fortress’ wall was composed of bull dozed buildings, ruined cars, and piles of old telephone poles. I had no idea where they’d gotten the material or manpower as the fires and riots ripped through the city, to construct the monstrosity, but it loomed twenty feet high around the perimeter of the park. Club Flesh was a facet of the wall and also served as one of the gates. It was the barrier between the outside world and Fortress, the place where the two worlds met.
 

Bright lights ringed the top of the wall, and blocks before I was near the building, I was bathed in white light. It was disconcerting to step out of the protective darkness into the light, even more so knowing my suit was useless. I went on anyway, trying to be brave when all I really wanted to do was hide.
 

“Stop right there,” the guard from the top of the gate ordered me, shining his personal light in my face. “What do you want?”

“I brought stuff to trade,” I replied meekly, holding up my box of liquor. “I want to get in the Club.”

“Pussy or gear?”

I couldn’t get the woman’s face out of my head, just like I knew I wouldn’t be able to. I could have had her, maybe even talked her into going back to my penthouse. But I’d have been like the scarred up man assaulting her, then. And though I didn’t live by any particular rule after the end of the world, I just wasn’t that guy. Still, the idea of seeing a woman, naked and attempting to please me, was damned pulling. Even though she’d be on the other side of hermitically sealed glass, it was still a woman. And it wouldn’t be a woman chained to a bed, bleeding and bruised. But I needed seals. I needed them badly.
 

“Gear,” I told the guard, once again holding up the case of liquor to make sure he knew I was serious.
 

The soldiers of Fortress were a funny lot. They simultaneously both hated the scavengers that did business at Club Flesh and loved the goods from the ruins that they themselves would not go out and get. They looked down on us, tolerating us scavengers only because of our abilities to find things. Club Flesh only existed so that the outside world would be stopped at coming into Fortress. It was as far as they wanted us in.
 

“Is it real?”

“Probably for the Banker to determine, right?” I replied, hoping not to get shot. The gate guards were known for taking their cut of whatever came through. They were also known to have itchy trigger fingers.
 

“I say who sees the Banker. I only send him the polite ones. You don’t seem like a polite one. We don’t like the rude ones in Club Flesh, huh boys?”

I sighed. The conversation was already more than I’d wanted to participate in. Talking hurt. The fear I felt at not having the seals in my suit was turning my empty stomach into a blender, threatening to send up bile and flood my suit. I wouldn’t get those seals, though, if I didn’t give the man his cut. I pulled the cardboard top back on the bock and pulled out a dusty bottle of whiskey, holding it up.
 

The guard in the military suit walked forward, snatched the liquor from my hands, and held it up to the light. “Whew… Maker’s Mark. You know how long it’s been since I saw any of this? I’ll tell you what, boy,” the guard said, “you tell me where I can get more of this and I’ll let you keep this to trade to the Banker.”

There were seven other bottles in the box. I didn’t know if they’d be enough for what I needed or not. The eighth bottle would help. But I didn’t want to tell the guard where the stash was. Mutilated giant or not, I might need to go back there.
 

“It was the only one,” I lied. “No more.”

“That’s funny as shit,” the guard said, taking the bottle back to the guard shack with him.

“Why is that?” I asked, though I didn’t really want to know. Why did I open my mouth in the first place?

“Because you’re the second one to come in here today with a case of Maker’s Mark saying it’s the only one. Go sit next to the big boy,” the guard laughed as he opened the Gate. “You two are made for each other. Go on in. There’s room for you at the bar.”

The big boy? He could only be talking about the disfigured man from the apartment with the Toucher. Had he followed me? Was he the one playing with me in the first place with the graffiti? It didn’t matter. I would be in and out, quick and quiet as a mouse. He wouldn’t even see me and, if he was my stalker, maybe I could lose him here and get back home.
 

Maybe. There were a lot of maybes in my life that I wasn’t entirely comfortable with anymore. I stepped through the gate with more fear and anticipation than I’d felt in days.

I’d watched a lot of movies that had scenes in topless clubs back before the Preacher’s Plague. A lot of them. I was drawn to the images of the underside of a dead world. I always imagined them as dark, smoke filled dens of debauchery filled with women ready to take my money for a dance. The interior of Club Flesh wasn’t in any way like what I’d watched on the old movies, and there wouldn’t be any lap dances. Club Flesh’s lobby was a series of sealed doors leading into plastic enclosed tunnels. Eight tunnels led off in different directions and circled what they called the bar. A patron would enter the tunnel, which was wide enough for his suit, and make his way around the bar to his seat. He would be sealed off from not only the other customers, but the dancers in the middle of the bar. Drinks could be ordered and delivered through two door-sealing mechanisms. In all, eight people could sit at the bar at any time and the length of time you were allowed to sit there depended on the loot you gave to the Banker.
 

The Banker sat in a small booth to the left of the entrances to the bar. The man did not wear a bio-suit behind his armor glass wall. A drawer below him, equipped with a sterilizing station, allowed access both to the goods brought in and the goods sent out. The entire affair was very sterile and the people who ran Club Flesh went through great effort to make the entire affair as safe feeling as possible, though the plastic walls and ventilators did little to comfort me. They made me feel like I was back home, staring through faded plastic at my father.