She waved a hand, faux-diamonds glittering on every sharp, pointed fingernail, “Sucky accommodations, disgusting wartime food, Gov. officials, military, collusion, probably battle—outnumbered and suicidal—and bad air. What’s not to love? It’s a fucking party.” She patted the rock beside her.
I dropped to the stone, still fighting a cough. She extended a small oxygen container toward me. I shook my head. “Contagions,” I reminded her.
“It’s yours, then,” she said.
I seated the mouthpiece against my teeth and sealed my lips around it. Took three slow deep breaths. My coughing stopped, and I pocketed the O2 canister. “Appreciate it.”
“Speaking of nails,” she said, “I like the orange color, but you seriously need a pro job, not that homemade shit. Maybe with little razors along each edge.” She flashed hers again. There were indeed razors along each edge, with removable, silk-plaz shields over the tips to keep her from cutting herself. “If a girl finds herself alone with a dick, and her weapons have been removed, she can still do serious, close-in damage.”
If I had a thrall who was a nail pro, I’d be set, but no way was I making another thrall just for the luxury of razors on my fingernails, so I was stuck with my sucky homemade color. I inclined my head to her. “I like the last-ditch weapons.”
She glanced around and, seeing we were alone, extended something brown that crinkled in her hand. It was a Snickers bar. Awe and envy shot through me. “Where the bloody hells did you get that?” I whispered, almost worshipful, as I stared at the candy bar. This was a new style wrapper, meaning it wasn’t an old, dried out, prewar bar, but something recent and fresh. Chocolate was so rare it was worth its weight in gold in some places. “Does it taste . . .” I struggled to find a word. “Does it taste right?”
“Exactlyright. None of that fake chocolate shit.” She waggled it at me. “It’s yours.”
“I can’t afford that,” I whispered again, as desire flooded me. My nanobots wanted the treat, the sugar, caramel, nuts and gooey chocolate goodness stored in my memory.
“Gift.”
I raised my gaze to her eyes, laughing black eyes in her dark-skinned face. “Why?”
“Trading partners. I got me a connection making candy. She’s got a connection in South America where they’re growingchocolate trees again. We want to sell through your roadhouse, so no one connects it to the Sisters.”
I opened the wrapper, the thin silk-plaz tearing with a lot of effort. The smell was overwhelming. Real chocolate. No doubt. I took a bite. “Oh. Oh. Bloody hells,” I slurred with a full mouth. “This is real.” After I swallowed, I looked her in the eyes, reading her as a dealer, as a bargain maker.
She looked a little guilty and a lot proud.
“You’d make more if you marketed them all by yourself.”
Her eyes went hard. “And get attacked everywhere my girls went? No thank you. We’ve talked about it. Who we are’s hard enough. Add into that people knowing we have money and access to real chocolate? Not safe. You have defenses we don’t. We’ll deliver the product to you. After a satisfactory waiting period, so no one can tie the bars to us, you sell them and collect our money. We get ninety percent of your profits.”
I took another bite and laughed, again talking through thick gummy deliciousness as I calculated what I was being offered and the danger to both sides. Sugar sped through my system. “So, you have the contacts and will deliver the product. I keep you and your club safe. I handle the people who’ll to try and take it from me. I’ll fight the battles. The danger is to my club, no backup from you on that. And you get ninety? Nope. Seventy-thirty, my way.”
“I can find someone else.”
“True. How likely is it that your partners’ll find one of your girls alone and make her tell who the contact is? Who the supplier is? And then cut her up and cut you out. Seventy-thirty, my way.”
“Switch it. Seventy-thirty our way.”
It took everything I had in me and battle with my nanobots to release the candy bar into her razored fingers, but Ihanded the half-eaten bar back. “We can keep doing this all day. Or I can walk away. “Fifty-fifty. Bottom line. Last offer.”
She pursed her lips, and I spotted a diamond stud in her nose. It was on the far side of her face and unseen in the cloudy light. Reluctantly, very reluctantly, she said. “Deal.”
I knew traders. I spotted the tells of the fake reluctance all the way. She had planned on fifty-fifty from the beginning. So had I. I put out a gloved hand. Before she took it I said, “Do me a favor. Keep the razors sheathed.”
Chuckling, she handed the half-eaten candy bar back and said, “Also deal.” We shook. And just like that, I had a new partner and a new income source. The chocolate called to me, but I had appearances to keep up and indifference to chocolate was part of that façade. I put the bar into a pocket.
* * *
Lunch at our permanent campsite was a crappy offering of tinned fish, which the cats mostly stole, soy meat and soy cheese and a delightful choice of MREs—which the cats didn’t consider real food. They walked away with their tails in the air, showing us their buttholes. And these were the same un-picky felines who ate toxic rats.
The slimy tasteless food was a trip down memory lane of the hard years after the war. In my years at the junkyard and now the roadhouse, I’d gotten used to salads and eggs. I wondered if my nanobots would keep constipation at bay. Ducked my head to keep from showing amusement I didn’t want to explain.
While I dealt with indigestion, Evelyn showed up with the semi and trailer.
I watched as Mateo extended his three longest limbs and stepped from the Quadro. Almost delicately, he crossed thepitted ground and walked to the truck cab, where he lowered himself to speak to his former Captain and the woman who was probably the love of his life, if such relationships really existed. The conversation lasted long enough that the cats ambled over to investigate. Before they could hear anything, Mateo rose to his full height and stepped back before returning to his vehicle.
Evelyn met my eyes through the diesel’s windshield and she lifted both thumbs in question. I made a twisting key-off gesture and she killed the engine, lay back her head and closed her eyes.
