“Why the hell would you come up with a rule like that in the first place?” I asked, my ire from earlier growing stronger the longer I stewed about it.
“It was enacted by the Council to cut down on hoarding and other black market activities. People are less likely to grow marijuana or make moonshine if they know there are periodic, unannounced inspections.”
“So, the bit about it being for fire safety is bullshit,” I said, suspicion confirmed.
Larry shrugged. “The inspections serve more than one purpose.”
I shook my head. “The gasoline is locked up and so are the medicines and weapons.”
“If I could trust that there’d be no mischief afoot, I wouldn’t lock them up either. You have to remember, Cipher, this isn’t America as you know it, or even as it was. There’s no private property in Promised Land. The things you own are whatever you can carry on your back when you leave here, same as when you arrived. And as far as fire safety goes… why, I figured you’d appreciate that particular precaution.”
I set my drink down and turned in my chair to square off with him. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“I looked into your background, kid, and your friends too. I know your government names and who your parents are, or were. I know where you come from, and I know which of you has a criminal record.”
I bristled at that. I didn’t even know which of us had a criminal record. Some questions were better left unasked.
“How?” I said.
“I’m an old man with friends in high places. Low places too. I do favors for them and they do favors for me.”
“What kind of favors?”
He waved his hand. “I thought you’d be comforted to know that I don’t allow just any rogue traveler to settle here. I do my research. Wouldn’t you?”
I sat back in my chair and glared at the dappled light shining on the scummy surface of his pool. The rain had stopped and the sun was breaking through the remaining clouds. The afternoon was unseasonably muggy, and my clothes stuck to my skin like wet paper.
“So, you know about the fire?” I said and tried to block out the memory of kids screaming as they burned alive.
“I do, though that particular bit of information took a few extra calls to uncover. Three of you were pronounced dead in that fire.”
“I know,” I said stiffly.
“How’d you go about getting new identities?”
“I knew a guy in D.C. People were dying left and right. It wasn’t hard.”
“The ones you call Macon and Joshua checked out. The one mystery that remains is Teresa. It seems the identification assigned to her in Atlanta was false.”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” I said. I wasn’t going to tell him the condition we’d found her in, as a malnourished sex slave to four very cruel men who were, by all counts, cannibals. From what I’d gathered, her family had sold her to them when she was nine or ten. Artemis had insisted we get involved, and she’d taken out all of them, one by one. Traumatized and dead-eyed, Teresa hadn’t spoken to us for weeks. She was obviously better now, but she could probably use some therapy. Shit, we all could.
“So, what if we choose not to remove the locks?” I said.
“Then you’ll go before the Council, and you’ll all get sentenced to weekend work detail, something really awful like shoveling pig shit or masturbating bulls for their semen, and the Fire Prevention Committee will remove the locks anyway.”
“You really have this town locked up tight, don’t you?” I said.
Larry raised both hands. “You wanted to know what it takes to run a town like this. I call it the three C’s: consistency, consequence, and correction. But between you and me, I’m more interested to see what you’ll do when you run out of pills.”
My body went rigid and I glared at him, wondering how in the hell he could know about that.
“Is it for pain?” Larry asked, glancing down at my artificial limb.
“They help me sleep at night. Nightmares,” I said, not wanting to give him any more than that. Larry nodded, seeming to understand.
“As a former user myself, I sympathize with your dilemma, kid, but I can assure you Dr. Foley won’t be prescribing you narcotics for anything short of surgery, and I wouldn’t recommend that either. He was a veterinarian before he was our town doctor, and his skills as a surgeon are better suited to livestock.” He pointed at me and said with a warning note, “And if you think you can get your boyfriend to charm some pills out of our honorable midwife Sister Marion, you’d better think again.”
I hadn’t thought of that, but it was a logical next step. Larry wagged his finger at me and I had the sudden, violent urge to lop it off with my machete. He had me in checkmate and I hadn’t even known we’d been playing the game. I was infuriated, and I was impressed.
