Skin on My Skin (14 page)

Jenna followed her hand down, licking my chest and spending several, and agonizingly long, moments at my nipples. She continued to stroke my cock and I did my best to resist the urge to just let go, as I had before. She looked up at me and, even in the dark, I was sure I could see her smiling.
 

“Woody tore me up pretty good,” she whispered, the hint of sadness hanging from her words. “But there are other things I can do. Later, when it’s all healed, we’ll do that other thing, okay?”

“Okay,” I said stupidly. I didn’t care what I got. I was getting something and my mind was numb from the experience. And later was a fantasy. Later wasn’t happening. I should have told her that, right then and there, but I was too caught up in the moment.
 

She slid down me and, despite knowing what was coming, I gasped as she took my cock in her mouth. I almost blew it, right there, but I lay back and tried to relax as one of Jenna’s hands roamed my body and the other cupped my balls in her hand. I could get used to this. I could get used to having her around me. We were almost like it was before it all went to shit. With enough work we could probably make it really seem like it was before. Hell, we could even leave the city. The future was right there but I was going to fuck it up the first chance I got.
 

I lay back and let her take me fully in her mouth. When it finally did come, it was the most powerful ejaculation I’d ever felt. It was almighty.
 

She wiped her mouth and kissed me on the cheek silently. She then lay in the crook of my arm, one arm across my chest, one leg across my mid-section. I didn’t know what to say, but at that time, nothing needed to be said.
 

The words would come in the morning. And they would not be sweet nothings.

Jenna slept so hard that, as I affixed the chain to her wrist, I thought for a moment she might be dead. I listened to her mouth intently and nodded in satisfaction when I heard her breathing. She didn’t stir as I moved the contents of the room, taking away anything she might use to escape. She didn’t move an inch as I brought in the bucket, water, and cases of MREs.
 

I sat patiently at the edge of the bed waiting for her to wake up and I couldn’t help but stare at her. It was only when I started taking pictures of her, especially of the number tattooed on her arm, that she woke up.
 

She didn’t notice the chains, at first.
 

“What are you doing?”

“I’m so sorry,” I told her. Those words would not fully describe the extent of the guilt I felt.
 

Jenna then noticed the ten-foot chain that affixed her arm to a solid stud in the wall. “What… I thought…”

Her confusion caused me pain. I’d rescued her from one situation just to put her back into the very same circumstances.
 

“You don’t have to do this. I came to you willingly. Why are you doing this?” The disappointment in her eyes was hard to look at. I’d broken her heart, again, in a single evening.
 

“I’m sorry Jenna. It’s not anything personal. I can’t begin to tell you how much I appreciate what you’ve done for me.”

“But,” she started, angrily. “There’s always a ‘but’, right?”

“But I can’t exist without those seals. Big Woody didn’t take them.”

“I know Big Woody didn’t take them. I told you that.”

“So I have to get new ones.”

The realization clicked for her. “You’re going to give me back to Fortress. You’re going to trade me for what you need.”

I nodded in agreement. There, it was out on the table. She knew the monster I was. She knew exactly what I’d done, what I planned.
 

“There’s another way, Jacky. You don’t have to do this. I came here with you willingly because you are a good guy. This isn’t you. I can feel that. You don’t want to do this.”

I ignored her. “You can use the bucket there to do your business. You’ve got enough food and water here for a few days. I’ll be back then, after… after I arrange the trade. They’ll take care of you better than I can. It will be okay.”

Jenna burst from the bed with a strength I didn’t think she had and was at the end of the chain, just out of reach of me, in under a second. I stood calmly, watching her.
 

“But I did that… for you,” she said, resigned to the fact she couldn’t get past the chain. “I sucked your dick.”

“I know. I wasn’t going to take you, not like Big Woody. But you came in and did that. I didn’t ask you to. But I can’t have you here. You’re a distraction to me. You’re going to get me killed.”

“I can help you,” she insisted. “I can help you find more seals.”

“You’ll get me killed. Thinking of you will probably get me killed. You’re… you’re a distraction to survival. I’m sorry.”

She threw a case of MREs at me and I ducked out. I heard her scream all the way down to the tenth floor. I hoped she had enough sense, once she calmed down, to stop shouting.
 

There were guys, in the ruins, that if they somehow found her, wouldn’t be nearly as easy going as I was with her.
 

I stood in the street for a while, helmet off, idly listening to see if I could hear her screaming from the penthouse. I couldn’t and hoped that was because of the distance and not because she’d stopped. She would stop. She had to stop. She’d have time to come to grips with her fate. I was sure the people of Fortress would take care of her. Jenna was valuable, a commodity to be treasured. She’d obviously come to grips with her role as a… I couldn’t bring myself to call her a sex slave. I couldn’t admit, to myself, that I was going to end up dragging her back to Fortress so she continue a life of rape.

I was trading her for seals for my suit so that I could continue my existence. That was it. It was just a trade and I tried to rationalize it in those terms. She was just another scavenged item from the old, dead world.
 

I made it a few blocks before I saw the first of the new Preacher logos. They no longer struck me with the absolute fear they had a couple of days ago, but I checked the rifle I carried anyway. There were dozens of them situated around the entrance to another building. If a person had come out of the front of that building, he would have been struck by the dozens and dozens of spray painted images. It was almost as if the painter thought whoever he wanted to see his work lived right there.
 

Could the logos have been meant for someone else?
 

I doubted that. If anything, the logo painted where I’d, idiotically, left my armor told me otherwise. Someone wanted me to think the Preacher still lived, though I didn’t know why. And that someone thought I lived several blocks from where I actually did. I had mixed feelings about that. They didn’t know where I lived, yet, but were close. Why me, I wondered. What the hell did they want with me?

It didn’t matter. I wouldn’t be able to fight them without the seals. I wouldn’t be able to do anything. It was bad enough being out here on the streets again, without them. And though the suit itself was comforting, out in the wide open, it didn’t mean shit. It wasn’t anything more that metal armor.
 

Once I got this all over with, I’d lay low for a long time. Maybe I wouldn’t leave the penthouse for a year or better. They’d give up looking for me and everything would be all right. That’s what I continued to tell myself. I just needed to trade Jenna for the seals and get the hell back to my place. The problem, a far as I saw it, was I needed to make sure they actually would trade seals for the girl. I know that’s what the Banker said, but I needed to hear it from someone else, someone higher in Fortress’ chain of command. I needed the bargain somehow honored.
 

I needed them to tell me that they wouldn’t hurt her. I had to hear that or the evil balance I’d struck with myself wasn’t going to work. That was my justification. That was how I’d reasoned this. She would be safe in Fortress’s hands, much safer than with me. I could never offer her the protection she needed. That was the best justification I could give myself. It would have to do to sleep through the night.
 

I continued on past the Preacher’s logs, doing my best to ignore them. I had other business to take care of.
 

Fuck the Preacher. He was a problem for another day.
 

The walls of Fortress looked different in the daylight. They were somehow more dingy and trashy looking when you were not blinded by floodlights. The cars and debris that had been used to build the massive walls were rusted, withering away in the weather like the rest of the dying city. Fortress was the barely beating heart of the corpse and all of us scavengers were the bacteria eating away the necrotic flesh.
 

The guards were still there, though, and looked just as deadly in their black body armor with their assault rifles. If anything, there were more of them stationed at the entrance to Club Flesh. I was pretty sure I knew the reason for that. Big Woody was still having an effect this long after his death. The doors of the establishment were papered in wanted posters and I pulled one off.
 

The flyer showed Big Woody, in all his glory, fucking the stripper to death, both succumbing to varying degrees to the Preacher’s Plague. It was a hell of a thing to see first thing in the morning. The reward was quite large, though I didn’t think it large enough to purchase a full set of seals for my suit.
 

“You need something, scavenger?” the main guard asked. I guess he didn’t recognize my armor from the night before. There wasn’t anything strange about that. All military grade bio-armor looked the same, right?
 

“I want to see the Banker. I want to trade.”

“Oh yeah? It don’t look like you’ve got much to trade there, scrappy.”

The gun never wavered. I knew there were also a couple of snipers somewhere in the wall with sights set on me. I held up the wanted poster, the image of Big Woody out.
 

“You know where that asshole is?”

“I know.”

“Trading information… that old fucking Banker doesn’t normally do that. I bet in this case he’ll make an exception. But you know what’s going to happen if you are bull shitting, right?”

I shrugged, which was hard to see in a suit of armor. “Yeah, I can guess.”

It was weird. Usually, at that point, I’d have been in a panic. I’d have been in a panic the entire time out in the open. But I wasn’t. I was tired and I just wanted to get it all over with.
 

“Head on in,” the guard said as the gates parted. I hadn’t been to Club Flesh but a few times in the ten years since I’d left my father’s house. Now I’d been twice in as many days.
 

The biggest thing that had changed since I’d been to the club two nights before were the guards. There had never been any guards inside the club before. I guess they didn’t want the patrons to feel uncomfortable staring down guns while they were getting hand jobs through rubber membranes. There were a half dozen guards now, and it was the most people I could remember seeing in one spot since before the Preacher’s Plague. Even without the guns, it was more than a bit disconcerting.
 

The Banker sat behind his sealed window, without a suit, barely looking up from a plate of food.
 

“The guards tell me that you have information on the location of the man who attacked our facility two nights ago. Is this correct?”

He sucked at his fat, sausage-like fingers and then wiped the remaining grease on his stained shirt. I wondered what he did before the Preacher’s Plague. What kind of man had he been?
 

“Yes sir. I can tell you where his body is,” I told him, hoping the suit’s speakers hid my queasiness.
 

“His body? He’s dead? I’ll tell you, scavenger, that big buck wasn’t going to go down to the plague easily. He fucked one of our dancers to death and then didn’t die himself. He survived multiple gunshots on the way out. Why would I think, after that and evading our forces through the city, that he’d be dead now? What proof of that do you have?”

“The plague didn’t kill him. Lead did. I know where the body is. Once our deal is done, I can take your patrols there.”

The banker nodded in agreement. “And I’m to believe you killed him?”

“Yes,” I lied. “But believe what you want. I don’t really care. But the location of Big Woody isn’t the only thing I’m trading.”

The Banker pushed the plate aside and appraised me, staring up and down at my suit. “I can check the recording of that night, but I’m going to guess I don’t have to. I think you are the one who was here before, trying to trade for suit seals. Am I right?”

“Yes.” There wasn’t any reason to lie to the man.
 

He clapped the greasy hands together and smiled, broken, black teeth filling his massive maw. “I am so very happy I am right. I like being right. I don’t think, however, that you think the location of a corpse warrants a set of seals, do you? I don’t care how much damage that monster manage…”

I cut him off by dropping the phone into the drawer and pushing it through. He picked it up, looking at me strangely.
 

“A phone? We have hundreds of these things. They are, for the most part, useless without cell towers. I probably don’t need to remind you that there hasn’t been a functioning cell tower in fifteen years or so?”

“Turn it on. Look at the pictures.”

I waited for him to do just that. I knew when he got to the pictures of Jenna based on how wide his eyes went.”

“You told me you’d trade a Toucher for seals. Is that still the case?”

The banker was silent a few, staring at the photos. “Why yes, indeed it is. She has been your… companion all this time?”

“No, the guy that attacked you had her. I stumbled across them while I was scavenging. She was there when it all went down. I’ve never seen her before then.”

“She looks clean, if not worse for wear. I take it she still lives?”