Authors: Zachary Rawlins
“You
know about DNA?”
“Don’t
be foolish. I know everything you do and much that you do not.”
“How
did you learn about something like that?”
Tobi
stared out the window.
“That
isn’t important. We must hurry, or...”
“Tobi.
How?” Yael insisted, crossing her arms. “Please, enlighten me.”
Tobi
muttered something unintelligible.
“I
can’t hear you...”
“Television,”
the cat admitted.
“I
thought so,” Yael said, petting Tobi to mollify the indignant cat. He purred
despite his attempts to remain aloof. “How do you know so much about Jenny?”
It
took several minutes of scratching behind the ear before Tobi relented.
“We
cats... have our ways of knowing things. Jenny Frost is from a place far more
cruel and frightening than you or I.”
Yael
rubbed Tobi’s belly thoughtfully.
“That
makes me feel sorry for her.”
“You
don’t understand,” the cat insisted, one paw twitching helplessly in the air. “Jenny
Frost is not simply a bad person. She represents something far worse.”
“Really?
Are you sure?”
“Not
sure,” the cat admitted, yawning with satisfaction as Yael scratched behind his
ears. “But I am certain that you are better off without her.”
Yael
reached for her windbreaker.
“We
have to go find Jenny,” Yael said, fumbling with the zipper.
“Actually...”
Yael
stopped in the act of reaching for her gas mask.
“What?”
“I
may already know where she is...”
“Tobi!”
Yael grabbed the cat, holding him so that his lower body dangled in the air.
“Why didn’t you tell me that right away?”
“Because
I wanted to spare you the ugliness,” Tobi said sadly. “Now, I think you
probably should see for yourself. You need to know exactly what you are dealing
with.”
Yael
didn’t know what to make of that, so she finished getting dressed, brushed her
teeth and threw her things back into her duffel.
“Alright,”
Yael said, strapping on her gas mask. “I am ready.”
“We
will find out if that is the case,” Tobi said, leading her out the window of
her hotel room. “Shortly.”
***
The elevator chimed
and the doors slid open, nearly silent on greased runners. Jenny made it three
steps onto the floral pattern carpet, thick pile and deep red, before Yael came
bursting out of the stairwell door, gasping for breath, her mask up on the top
of her head.
“Miss
Frost!”
Jenny
stood frozen in astonishment, a short, dusky man with a glistening pompadour
directly behind her, craning his neck so he could see over her shoulder.
Neither of them looked happy to see her.
“What
the hell?”
“What
are you doing?”
“That’s
what I want to know! You’re gonna get both of us killed!”
“What
the hell is goin’ on?” The man’s pompadour bobbed along with his vigorously
nodding head, a compulsive movement, likely a result of nerve damage. “You
bitches know each other?”
“Shut
up, Tim,” Jenny snapped, then grabbed Yael’s shoulders. “Why are you here?”
“That’s
what I want to know,” the man demanded, red-faced. “What is this shit?”
“Would
you be quiet?” Yael demanded coldly. “And watch your language, please.”
“Listen,
bitch,” he said, reaching beyond Jenny to grab for Yael. “I don’t know what the
hell you think you’re doing…”
Jenny
pivoted and struck him in one smooth motion, the movement casual and brutal,
the force of her rotation driving the palm of her hand into his face, crushing
his nose and pushing him backwards. He cried out pitifully and pin-wheeled his
arms before he fell head over heels down the stairwell. The door closed quietly
behind him, but not before Yael heard his voice silenced with a sickening
crash, flesh wetly yielding to concrete.
“Told
him to shut up,” Jenny observed coolly. “How did you find me?”
“Did
you… did you just..?”
Yael’s
thoughts were interrupted by Tobi darting between her legs and then across the
room. Jenny lunged for the cat, but missed and ended up falling to her knees on
the patterned carpet.
“I
knew it,” Jenny snarled, her face contorted with anger. “Goddamn cat.”
“I
told you not to trust her,” Tobi said, perched on top of a pile of broken
furniture, safely out of Jenny’s reach. “Now she’s going to get us all killed.”
“Shut
up, vermin,” Jenny hissed. “Who invited you, anyway? And why aren’t you back at
the room, Princess?”
“Because
I didn’t want to leave without you. Why are you here, Miss Frost?”
“An
errand for that hotel owner, and some business of my own.”
“But
what are you doing...”
“No
time to explain,” Jenny said, flinching at the sound of footsteps down the
hall. “Hide your bag. Get your ass out of sight, cat, or I will throw you out
the damn window.”
“What?”
Jenny
moved with urgency, cuffing Yael and grabbing the gas mask from her head, then
snatching her duffel and throwing it along with the mask down a convenient
adjoining hallway. Tobi gave Yael one last reproving glance, then followed her
bag around the corner and out of sight.
“Miss
Frost, what are you...”
“Yael,
you shouldn’t be here. Now that you are, I need you to follow my play, alright?”
Yael
didn’t have to think about it. She nodded and waited for further instructions.
“Don’t
make eye contact with any of them. You are too damn smart and they will see it.
Don’t say anything. And when you hear your name, hit the floor, and stay until
I tell you. Clear?”
Yael
nodded again, unable to swallow around the knot that had formed in her throat.
Jenny was only halfway to her feet when the door opened. Two men walked out and
stared with obvious suspicion. They were filthy, dressed mostly in scavenged
leather, and heavily tattooed. One of them wore his gun openly, the revolver
shoved down the front of his jeans, while the other had scars up and down his
shirtless torso.
“What
is this?” The man with the scars face twisted in confusion. “Where is Tim?”
“Couldn’t
make it,” Jenny said cheerfully, walking boldly toward the men though she was a
full head shorter. “Boy was so busy talkin’ that he had a little accident and
fell down the stairs. You’ll probably find him at the bottom of the stairwell,
give or take a floor.”
The man
with the gun seemed twice as nervous as the man with the scars, who kept
glancing at Yael in a way she didn’t like.
“Wait
a goddamn minute. What happened to Tim?”
“He
made a mistake,” Jenny said, shrugging indifferently. “Couldn’t have been
important, or you wouldn’t have had him trolling for customers. I came here to
score. Can we do some business?”
The man
with the gun kept reaching for his pants, then pulling his hand back and
glancing at the scarred man, like he was waiting for an order he fully expected
to get and was repeatedly disappointed.
“Maybe.
What’s with the girl?”
The
scarred man reached for Yael and she slapped his hand away by reflex before she
thought about what she was doing. Yael worried momentarily that she had made a
mistake, but then Jenny intervened, laughing.
“My
partner,” Jenny said, grabbing Yael’s shoulder as if she were holding her back.
“And I’d watch your fucking hands if I were you.”
The
scarred man stared at his reddening hand as if he didn’t know what to make of
it, while the man with the gun chuckled to himself.
“And
why is that?”
“’Cause
I’m the nice one,” Jenny said, grinning broadly, her teeth shining like
serrated porcelain. “You don’t want to have to deal with her. Trust me.”
Yael
was trying very hard to be brave, but watching the scarred man lick his lips,
what she felt was a combination of dread and profound nausea, along with a great
desire to be watching the whole scene from the comfortable remove of her gas
mask.
“Well,
what do you want?”
“I
want to come inside and talk. You always do business outside your front door?”
He
shrugged, and then nodded at the man with the gun.
Yael
turned her mind off for the search, insisting to herself that she felt nothing
at all when his crude, blunt hands groped her. She supposed that he was looking
for weapons, but his hands lingered in places where nothing could be hidden.
Then he pushed her rather roughly aside and reached for Jenny.
“Aren’t
you
friendly?” Jenny said, smirking. “This the first time you touched a
girl?”
It
was pathetically obvious, even in Yael’s terrified state, when the scarred man
walked inside the door and waved for them to follow, that he had no intention
of letting them leave. Jenny must have known; she must have seen what Yael saw
in his eyes, but all Yael could do was hope as Jenny hustled her along, tugging
her past the leering eyes of the guard at the door. Yael didn’t feel numb; she felt
nothing at all, the horrid slow-motion inevitability of a bad dream.
The
hallway was short. The space on the other side had been an office during a more
prosperous and legitimate point in the building’s history. It had clearly come
to function as both ad-hoc storefront and a sort of live-in squat. There was a
long glass display case with flickering neon tubes, empty inside but piled with
the remains of old takeout, partially crushed beer cans, crumpled aluminum
foil, and overflowing ashtrays. The room smelled of body odor, cannabis, old
cigarettes and burning plastic. The carpet was stained and frayed, pock-marked
with cigarette burns and strewn with bits of trash.
Out
of the corners of her eyes, careful to keep her head down and her hair in front
of her face, Yael counted four people; the scarred man who had led them here, a
man behind the counter with skin the color of the sunset and elaborately styled
hair, a fat man with a mouthful of gold teeth next to the door, and a
half-naked woman, eyes dilated and jaw slack, lying on a tired mattress in the
corner of the room. The smoke was so thick that Yael could barely keep from
coughing, desperate not to draw any attention to herself.
“Well,
well,” chortled the man behind the counter with the purple-red skin. “What do
we have here?”
“They
want to buy,” the scarred man said gruffly, pointing vaguely in Jenny’s
direction. “I think.”
The
man behind the counter laughed again, a crude sound that reminded Yael of the
laughter that had haunted her in the halls of her school.
“Is
that so?”
“Could
be,” Jenny said amiably, freeing the narrow cord that held her ponytail, then
running her fingers through her disheveled hair. “Assuming you got what I
want.”
Even
with her eyes on the ground, Yael couldn’t help but notice how terrible all
their teeth were when they smiled, even the stoned girl in the corner with the
drooping, tattooed breasts. Not one person had a complete set, and the few
teeth they retained were in various stages of yellowed decay.
“And
what’s that, sweetie?”
Jenny
laughed as if she were truly amused, wrapping the flexible metallic cord around
her fingers. Yael was surprised that this was the first time she had seen Jenny
with her hair down, rather than in her habitual ponytail.
Her
hair, Yael noted critically, was in desperate need of a cut.
“Azure.
AHS-125. You got that shit?”
“Damn,
girl. You only want the hard stuff. And what about her? What does she want?”
Yael
didn’t bother to look up. She knew there was a finger pointing in her
direction, along with a roomful of ugly thoughts. She told herself she would
not be sick, repeated it like a mantra in her head. Because Yael was fairly
sure that dangerous criminals did not throw up during drug deals.
“You
to shut the fuck up and get to business, that’s what.”
“Is
that so?” The man leaned across the counter. “What do you have to offer in
exchange?”
With
a resigned familiarity, Yael shut down her frantic thoughts, one by one,
willing herself to be a machine, a robot, incapable of feeling. She could feel
the potential violence in the room, the barely restrained savagery and
deviance, like heat radiating from a furnace.
People
had died in this room. The thought floated through Yael’s mind, abstract to the
point of meaninglessness to her shell-shocked brain. People had died here. And
they would again – very soon.
Yael
was fairly certain that she was the last person in the room to realize.
“I
was thinkin’ money,” Jenny said icily, toying with the sparkling metal cord
dangling between her fingers. “I don’t wanna hear about what you were
thinking.”