Slowly We Rot (27 page)

Noah was escorted back to the
first floor a few hours later.  By then it was mid-afternoon and the oppressive
silence from before was still very much in place.  The lack of audible human
activity from anywhere inside the huge estate remained unsettling.  In every
other way, however, he felt better than he had in a long time.

          He was feeling renewed
thanks to those private hours spent in Miranda’s company, more like an actual
human being instead of some grungy hobo.  His hair had been trimmed and his
face was clean-shaven for the first time in years.  The very thorough initial
bathing Miranda gave him scrubbed away a layer of grime so thick it left the
bathwater dark and nasty-looking.  She then drained the tub and filled it
again.  He was so overwhelmed by how good he felt that he didn’t bother asking
how the mansion had running water seven years after the end of civilized
society.  She wouldn’t have had a good answer to that anyway.

          She bathed him again after
refilling the tub, more slowly and sensually this time.  This, naturally, led
to arousal.  Though he couldn’t help it, he’d been afraid of offending her.  He
needn’t have worried.  She took his erection in one hand and stroked it even as
she continued to scrub his back with her other hand.  After pleasuring him
almost to the point of orgasm, she released his swollen member and told him to
get out of the tub.  He stepped out onto a rug and stood there while she meticulously
dried him with a towel.  Once she was done, she took him into her mouth and
fellated him until he came, which took all of about a minute.

          The whole experience
left him feeling like a client at a high class whorehouse.  Miranda seemed nice
enough, but he was under no delusion that she’d done this thing for him because
she felt helplessly attracted to him.  Yes, he was reasonably presentable when
clean, but he was just an ordinary guy, not some irresistible stud.  He had no
doubt the blowjob was part of the deal, something she’d received instruction in
prior to his removal from the shed.  Part of him felt kind of guilty about the
role she’d been made to play in this re-humanizing process.

          A bigger part of him
didn’t give a damn.

          It just felt too good,
all of it.

          So here he was, clad in
new, clean clothes and feeling better than he had in longer than he could
remember, being led into the library for his audience with the Judge.  He’d
been so distracted by Miranda’s various attentions to his person that he hadn’t
had a chance to start feeling apprehensive about this meeting.  And now that he
thought about it, maybe that was by design, too.

          He did feel a little
twist in his gut as he followed Miranda through the arch into the large room. 
The enforcer was right behind him, still aiming the big double-barreled shotgun
at his back.  There had been guns pointed at him the last time he’d been in
this room, too.  Somehow, though, the desperate terror of those moments seemed distant
and foggy, as if they’d happened far longer ago than a few months.

          As before, he
experienced a moment of deep awe at being in the presence of so many books. 
He’d taken refuge in those old western paperbacks for so long that this
extended time without reading material had been another kind of torture.  Also
like last time, his eyes were drawn to that incongruous single shelf of moldy
pulp paperbacks.  An impulse to veer off in that direction was hard to resist,
but knowing the shotgun was at his back helped him overcome the temptation.

          Deeper into the room,
his attention inevitably shifted from the shelf of paperbacks to the little
round table by the large back window.  Just one of the table’s two chairs was
occupied.  The chair’s high back was facing Noah.  A glimpse of glossy black
hair made him think the person sitting in it was probably a woman, which made
sense.  The Judge was a woman, after all.

          A woman with very
blonde hair, that is.

          Noah frowned as he neared
the table.  He saw a pale, slender hand gripping an armrest.  Definitely a
woman’s hand.  In the center of the table was an open whiskey bottle and two
clean glasses.  As he watched, the person in the chair leaned forward, picked
up the bottle, and splashed a bit of whiskey into each glass.

          The woman’s head turned
toward Noah as he arrived at the table, allowing him his first full look at her
face.  It was a familiar one.  “Hello, Noah.”

          Noah’s eyes were wide
with shock.  “Aubrey?”

          Rising smoothly from
the chair, she stepped into her brother’s embrace, putting her mouth to his ear
as she hugged him.  “I’ve missed you so much,” she said, her voice too low to
be audible to anyone other than Noah.

          “I missed you, too. 
Aubrey, what’s going on?  Where is that evil woman?”

          Her mouth still to his
ear, she gripped him a little tighter and replied in another low whisper.  “You
don’t have to worry about her anymore.”

          This declaration
stunned Noah almost as much as Aubrey’s presence here.  It had been his understanding
that he was being brought to the library for an audience with the Judge.  Now,
though, it looked as if he’d been deceived, perhaps in the interest of
preserving the surprise of a reunion with his sister.  But Aubrey’s words implied
there was more to it than that, an insight backed up by the deferential way
Miranda and the enforcer were behaving in her presence.

          Perhaps sensing his
confusion, Aubrey broke the embrace and held his hands a moment as she smiled
again.  “I’ll explain everything.  A lot has happened while you’ve been away. 
But first we celebrate your freedom.  Sit and have a drink with me.”

          Her choice of words
initially only deepened Noah’s confusion.  A glance at the grizzled-looking
enforcer didn’t help matters any.  The man was eyeing Noah with open
hostility.  And he was still holding the shotgun in the manner of a man
prepared to use it at a moment’s notice.

          Noah didn’t feel very
free just yet.

          But he opted to set
aside his lingering distrust of the situation for the moment.  Aubrey was
already seated in her high-backed chair again.  Following her lead, Noah
settled into the much less ostentatious-looking other chair.

          Aubrey pushed one of
the whiskey glasses his way.  She picked up the other glass and tilted it
slightly.  “A toast.  We’ll drink to family, baby brother.  Nothing’s more
important than blood. 
Nothing
.”

          Noah’s hand went
immediately to the glass, closing tight around it as a twinge of that old
desperate need recurred.  As always, his instinct was to toss the whiskey back
in a single gulp, but this time he hesitated.

          He frowned.  “I’m older
than you.”

          Aubrey lifted an
eyebrow.  “Excuse me?”

          Noah still hadn’t
picked up the drink.  “You just called me ‘baby brother’.  But I’m older than
you.”

          Aubrey smiled.  “I’m
sorry, it just sometimes feels the other way around.  I’ve always been the
responsible one, remember.”

          Noah lifted the glass
then, but a trace of the frown lingered.  “I guess that’s true.  I’m sorry,
Aubrey.  I wish I’d been a better brother and not such a worthless asshole.”

          Aubrey sighed.  “Enough
of the self-pity.  I’m kind of an asshole, too.  But it’s a new day, Noah. 
Things will be better now.  So drink up.  To family.”

          Noah shrugged.  “To
family.”

          They both threw back
their drinks.  Aubrey reached for the bottle and splashed more whiskey into
both glasses.

          Noah picked up his
glass again and frowned at the amber liquid inside it.  “Jesus, that’s good
stuff.”

          “The best.  This place
is stocked with enough top shelf booze to float the Titanic.”

          “Wait a minute,” Noah said,
setting the glass back down.  “You hate it when I drink.  What the hell?”

          “I have a more relaxed
attitude now.”  Aubrey shrugged and sipped from her glass.  “We live in a safe,
insulated environment here.  We should take advantage of it.  Drinking is one
of your greatest pleasures.  I think it’s time you indulged to your heart’s
content.”

          Noah gnawed at his
bottom lip and took a look around the library.  He supposed there was some
small thread of something resembling logic in what she was saying, but something
felt off to him.  Miranda was still hovering in the vicinity, apparently awaiting
further instructions, but now there was no sign of the enforcer.  Noah hadn’t
noticed him leaving the room.

          “What happened to the
guy with the gun?”

          “He’s not important. 
Forget he was ever here.”

          It was an odd thing to
say and Noah didn’t know what to make of it.  On the other hand, he didn’t miss
having a gun aimed at him, so he didn’t argue with it.

          Aubrey glanced at the
house servant.  “You can leave now, Miranda, but I expect you to pop in and see
if we need anything now and then.”

          The young woman bowed
slightly.  “Yes, ma’am.”

          She hurried out of the
room.

          Noah picked up his
glass and downed its contents.  He filled it again.  “Was it you who told
Miranda to blow me?”

          “Of course.  How did
she do?”

          Noah gulped whiskey. 
“She did her job well, put it that way.”

          “Good.  She has
standing orders to do anything you want.”  Noah thought he saw a lascivious
twinkle in his sister’s eyes now.  “Imagine the possibilities.”

          Noah ignored this.  He
was still trying to wrap his head around too many other things.  “Explain
something to me.”

          Aubrey smiled.  “What
do you want to know?”

          Noah hardly knew where
to start.  He actually needed many things explained.  He filled his glass yet
again.  The booze was going down fast, the way it usually did.  “What happened
here?  Where is the Judge?  Why does it seem like you’re in charge of this
place?”

          Aubrey reached for the
whiskey bottle.  Noah noticed it was now half empty  It’d been close to full
when he’d come into the room, which had only been a few minutes ago, he was
pretty sure.

          “The Judge put me to
work as a whore, mostly servicing Connor’s men and upper echelon estate
employees like Chance.  This went on night and day.  I hardly ever got a
break.  But the whole time I was plotting.  Some of those men fell in love with
me, just like Nick did after keeping me locked up in his basement all those
years.”

          Noah frowned.  “Hold
the fuck on a minute.  Nick
what
?”

          “I told you this
before, remember?  In Jackson, after Linda died?”

          Noah shook his head.  “No. 
I don’t remember that at all.  Are you fucking with me?  Jesus fucking Christ.”

          Aubrey shrugged.  “I’m
not surprised you don’t remember.  We smoked some of your weed that night and
you weren’t exactly sober to begin with.  I was pissed at you, but I was trying
to be understanding.  You were having a rough time of it.  It was just you and
me at that point, private brother and sister time.  That was the first and only
time I ever smoked pot.  We talked a lot and maybe said a lot of things we
wouldn’t normally say.  That’s when I let it slip about Nick.”

          Noah’s confusion did
not abate.  “I can’t believe this.  I thought Nick
rescued
you.”

          “No.  And isn’t it obvious
in retrospect?  What are the odds of a random rescuer coming along so many
years after the end of the world?”  She had a faraway look in her eyes now. 
“He killed dad that day we came down from the mountain.  He abducted me.  After
nursing me back to health, he spent years raping me.  But I worked on him the
whole time.  He fell in love with me.  I
made
him fall in love with me.”

          Noah felt sick to his
stomach.  “Jesus.  I think I’m gonna throw up.  I thought he was a good guy.  You
must be the best actress in history.  I thought you were really in love with
him.”

          Aubrey shrugged,
sipping whiskey.  “I was.”

          Noah gaped at her. 
“You can’t be serious.”

          “But I am.”  She sighed
and shifted in her chair.  “I guess you could blame it on what they used to
call Stockholm syndrome.  You know, where a person held captive over a long
period of time comes to identify or sympathize with her abductor.”

          “And that happened to
you?  With the monster who killed our father and spent years attacking you?”

          “I don’t expect you to
understand it.”

          “That’s good.  Because
I don’t.”

          Aubrey frowned.  “The
situation was what it was.  It’s over now.  And now that Nick’s gone, I don’t
even care.  The point is, I used what I learned from all those years chained up
in his basement to instigate and lead a revolt against the Judge.  And it
worked
,
Noah. 
I’m
the Judge now.”