“You’ll definitely stand out.”
“I wish I was a cat.Yourcat,” she amended. “Then I could just lie around and everyone would pet me and love me and feed me.”
It sounded like a dream, to be pampered and cared for and adored. Little Miss Purrfect was certainly thriving here in Promised Land. With her never-ending bowl of scraps we got from the kitchen, she hardly even hunted lizards and rodents anymore. From what I’d observed, pets were somewhat rare around here. Cipher must have pulled some strings with Brother Larry to allow her inside.
Teresa and I lazed around for a bit, sharing the worn but comfortable couch in the living room. I showed Teresa the books I’d gotten from Artemis and we spent some time sounding out the words. One of the books was solely about the letter A, and she traced the shape of it with her finger. “Artemis begins with an A,” she said.
“Also apple, awesome, and asshole.”
She smiled at that. I taught her the picnic game, where we each had to “pack” something that began with a letter of the alphabet while remembering what we had said previously. Some of them Teresa got wrong–she thought “cake” began with a “k”–but most of them she got right.
“You’re a quick learner. You’ll be reading in no time,” I said. Then I cracked open the biology book, and we went through the diagrams of the human body detailing the sex organs, male and female. Teresa insisted it was disgusting, but I found it pretty fascinating.
Soon enough it was time for dinner. On our walk to the cafeteria, we happened upon the same two guys from earlier who tried again to make conversation. Instead of speaking, Teresa made her hands into claws and hissed at them. It wasn’t the friendliest gesture, but I did the same.
Ride or die, as Artemis would say.
FIVE
CIPHER
I founda routine in Promised Land, as one does. My mornings belonged to Kitten, curled up in bed, kissing, touching, and getting each other off. Then we’d clean up, dress, and shuffle downstairs for breakfast at the cafeteria with our friends before splitting off to our respective jobs.
Workdays were spent with Larry and the rest of the construction crew hammering away at the outdoor stage, breaking for a bagged lunch around noontime so that we might stay on schedule. Sometimes we’d listen to the radio, which was a catalogue of gruesome deaths from Rabid attacks and travel warnings on where to avoid being kidnapped or worse.
In some cities the fever was so bad that the military had to come in and cordon off whole sections with blockades and checkpoints so that no one could go in or out. I imagined the chaos and fear, the desperation in trying to protect your loved ones from Rabids in addition to the violence that broke out in times of civil unrest. And still no news about a vaccine or a cure, other than the old standard “we’re working on it.”
The news was depressing as hell, and more often than not, we switched to a music station instead.
Meanwhile, I’d yet to see a single Rabid or any signs of the fever. It was the longest I’d gone without dealing with the fallout of the virus since I was twelve years old, and for a few moments a day, I could almost forget that we were living through a plague of epic proportions.
Besides that, I enjoyed being outdoors, and the manual labor was good for my head. I still needed a few puffs from my sleepytime cigarettes to fall asleep at night, but the nightmares were fewer and less intense. I even found myself leaving my machete at home, though I kept at least three knives on me at all times and insisted Kitten be armed as well.
In the span of just a few weeks, Kitten had been unofficially adopted by the mothers and mothers-to-be of Promised Land, as evidenced by the numerous baked goods he brought home from work. Teresa was similarly spoiled by the grandma types who frequented the general store. I often caught the two of them walking hand-in-hand throughout town or gossiping on a park bench with their heads bowed. I still cataloged everyone who spoke to them, just in case.
The rest of the Assholes were making friends too. Gizmo was hanging out with Wylie, a fellow tinkerer who joined us at mealtimes to challenge Gizmo’s intellect on everything from wearable robotics to the scientific fallacies ofThe X-Files. I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed to me that Gizmo might even be… flirting? Macon had his landscaping buddies and Artemis had befriended a few of the teachers at school. I had Donnie, who smoked with me during his breaks while on patrol. It also helped me to memorize the guards’ routes and schedules, useful information that I tucked away for later.
And the town, we soon discovered, did not shut down entirely after dark. There was bingo night at the cafeteria where they turned on the lights and brought in an announcer to call out the numbers. Kitten won some homemade soaps and Teresa used Artemis’s win to nab some hard candies.
There was game night in the rec room where I wiped the floor in foosball thanks to my time spent in low-budget summer camps.
And there was movie night where we camped out on the school’s football field and watchedThe Princess Brideprojected onto a tarp pulled taut between the field goal posts. Kitten had never seen it before and he giggled at the funny bits, which I felt every time because he was using me as a human recliner. Teresa was cuddled up to Artemis, who was snuggled up to Macon who appeared pleased as punch. Gizmo and Wylie shared a blanket of their own with their preferred twelve inches of space between them, heads bowed and talking throughout the entire movie.
Promised Land was turning out to be wholesome as heck and as Donnie had said, real fucking nice.
Brother Larry was growing on me too. Not only was he easy to talk to, but he was as pragmatic as me in finding solutions to problems. As a newly minted carpenter’s apprentice, I had to admit that our progress was impressive, and my own skills were advancing at a fast clip. I could now hammer a nail in two strokes without busting my thumb and operate all manner of electric saws and machinery.
A couple weeks into our working relationship, Larry said to me, “Feels good to build something with your own two hands, doesn’t it, kid?”
He’d taken to calling me “kid,” and considering the decades between us, I didn’t mind it. It occurred to me that while I’d been protecting our family in the midst of fighting off starvation and cannibalistic raiders, I hadn’t had it in me to build much at all. Even my relationships with the other Assholes came from the mutual need for survival, so there was a certain sense of pride in seeing the stage approaching completion and knowing I’d had a hand in creating it.
“It’s not terrible,” I said.
“Like God’s own creation,” Larry mused.
“Whoa there, old man, slow your roll. It’s an outdoor stage, for chrissakes.” I still didn’t know if Larry was truly religious or only playing the part, but he wheezed a hearty laugh and slapped me on the back in a fatherly way.
As we were preparing to raise the wooden ribs of the stage’s band shell, a storm rolled through, and Larry told us all to call it quits for the day. With the extra few hours to myself, I hoped to spend some quality time with Kitten, whose schedule varied due to being on call in case someone needed emergency services.
