Regardless of how many lived here, or whether or not I gave a shit about any of them, it was the closest thing that came to a functioning town. There were other settlements; I’d heard of them via word of mouth, even came across a few early in my travels before deciding to set up shop here. Maybe some of them had persevered, much like Purgatory did, but if they had, it was only because they’d locked themselves inside. Whether it be behind a wall or a cage, safety came from hiding from what the world had become.
We were all in cages, and just because our cage functioned in a way that promoted survival—producing electricity, fresh water, and food—that didn’t make it any less of a prison. I felt that cage every day, the steel bars of it pressed up against me, closing in on me, trapping me, suffocating me. Eventually this cage was going to kill me.
But where would I go? Out there I would just be another survivor, having to constantly seek out shelter and food. In here, I was something else entirely.
Monster, a voice whispered inside my head.
A god, I responded silently, forcing myself to scoff even though my hands clenched into fists and my stomach flip-flopped.
A god of monsters, the voice agreed.Who’s lording over a kingdom built on fear.
Feeling sick, I tuned out the voice inside my head, realizing that I’d nearly walked halfway across Purgatory in the wrong direction. Annoyed, I spun around. I had no choice but to walk through the main drag again.
A group of women hurried past me, some carrying young children, others dragging older children behind them, all of them refusing to look directly at me. The kids should have been in school, but there was no school to attend. Their parents were busy keeping them alive, fighting or fucking or scavenging, too busy to worry about schooling them in anything other than their own survival.
Soon, I thought grimly, there would be entire generations who wouldn’t know how to read and write. It was a thought that should have concerned me, but at the same time it no longer held much sway. My own children were gone, and when it came down to it, I didn’t give a fuck about what other people did or didn’t do as long as they stayed clear of me and mine.
Mine, I thought, chuckling darkly at my word choice. There was no “mine.” I had nothing of real worth left to claim. Nothing but a pile of stolen junk and my own two hands.
Finally free of the main drag, I made a right between two buildings. As I walked quickly through the shaded walkway, the stretch of open land that would lead me home came into view.
I’d purposely chosen what had once been a building used solely for storage, a good distance from everything else. Everything out here was overgrown and far too close to the outer gate for anyone’s liking. Except mine.
Making a left, not looking where I was going, I instantly reacted when something knocked into me. Grabbing the body that dared to touch me, I wrapped my hand around a thick neck and loose jowls, and sent whoever it was face-first into the wall of the building behind me.
“Watch yourself!” I bellowed, and slammed him into the wall one more time. He made a strangled, gurgling sort of noise, one that filled me with the sort of satisfaction that only inflicting pain seemed to do. And then his body went limp in my hold. A loud gasp came from behind me, and I turned to find an elderly woman holding a trembling hand to her chest.
Unconcerned, I dropped the man—he fell to the broken concrete like a flaccid slab of meat—and continued on. When I reached the south-side lawn, I slipped into the thick underbrush, the grass and weeds that grew nearly as high as I stood tall, and stopped to squint up at the sun. I stared until my eyes watered and white dots danced across my vision.
When I could see again, I glanced down at my hands. The sun highlighted the large callouses that covered each fingertip, every knuckle, and the pads of my palms, and the dirt ground into and staining every crevice. And the blood. No matter how many times I scrubbed my hands raw, the blood never seemed to wash away. Curling my fingers into fists, I dropped my hands to my sides and continued on, marching purposely through the tall grass, ensuring I took a different route than I had at dawn.
Laughing coldly, I shook my head as self-loathing filled every empty space inside my aching chest. When I left home at dawn, I thought I’d be bringing a blue-eyed, red-haired spitfire of a woman back with me. Stupidly, I’d thought it could have worked, that we could have had something.
“Fuck,” I muttered, angrily shaking my head to clear the unwanted images of her. Her face, her coloring, her attitude, all of her had been reminiscent of something I’d once had and lost. For the first time in four years, I’d let my emotions get the better of me, thinking her presence would ease the unrelenting tension always building inside me. Instead, I’d misjudged and misread her entirely. For the first time in four years, I’d fucked up royally. And there was no room in this world for fuckups.
Reaching the sad, sorry-looking building, I tugged on the chain of keys affixed to my jeans, pulled them free, and set to work opening the five padlocks I’d long ago secured to the large metal door. One by one I unlocked them, balancing them in my palm as I kicked open the door. Once I stepped inside the dark, cool room—a refreshing change from the heat outside—I elbowed the door shut behind me and tossed the tangle of locks onto a nearby table.
What had once been a large vacant space consisting of two rooms was now filled to the brim. The room I stood in was home to a wide variety of things I’d salvaged over the years. Looking much like a neglected antiques shop, there was old furniture, boxes of odds and ends, car parts, canned goods, weapons, clothing, bedding, anything and everything piled on top of each other with no rhyme or reason to their order.
I hoarded everything I could get my hands on. Whether it was vehicles, scavenged goods, winnings from my fights, earnings from bets, payments owed to me or stolen from those I’d killed, I kept it all. In this world you never knew when you were going to need something, and someone always needed something. The way I saw it, it was better they owed me than I owed them.
I ran a hand over the top of my head and grimaced. My hair was growing out, the thick Mohawk running down the middle of my otherwise shorn head was longer and heavier than I liked. I scanned the dimly lit room and paused on a stack of blades, singling out the smallest yet sharpest. Blade in hand, I headed toward the lone mirror I’d affixed to the cinderblock wall. I set the blade down on the edge of an old utility sink, then grasped the hem of my T-shirt and pulled it over my head before tossing it away.
Lifting one of the jugs full of well water that I always kept on hand, I filled the large basin with the brownish liquid that hadn’t yet been boiled or strained. After taking hold of the sink’s edge, I dunked my head into it. I stayed beneath the murky liquid longer than necessary to merely wet my hair, my eyes open wide, holding my breath until my lungs began to burn. Dying was a messy and painful business for most, but not nearly as painful as living was. Nothing could touch the incessant throbbing ache that another day here on hell offered, not even death.
Coughing and sputtering, I jerked my head from the water and staggered backward. I folded my body in half, gripping my knees as I fought for my next breath. My eyes burned, my lungs felt on fire, the sharp pains reaching down the whole of my chest. It was a relief, this pain, a short reprieve from the prison I lived in.
When I was breathing steadily again, I straightened and reached for my blade. As I leaned in closer to the rusted piece of mirror hanging haphazardly on the wall, my wet reflection glared back at me—dark brown, nearly black eyes rimmed in red and encased in shadowed, hollowed circles sitting high on an angry, angular face that was framed in a heavy beard almost as black as my hair.
I was a fearful fucking sight. The people here were right to be afraid of me. The things I was capable of, the things I’d done ... There were times I even feared myself.
Leaning closer to the mirror, I lifted the blade. The slow slide of sharpened steel against hair made a scratchy crackle, one that repeated on a loop as I mechanically shaved the overgrown hair around my Mohawk.
When I was nearly done with the sides, determined to give the long hair on top a trim with the blade next, I heard the creaking sound of my front door opening. Cursing myself for not locking it, I spun around with my blade poised for a fight. The door slammed shut and a flash of pink twirled into view.
“You made a fucking mess, Adler,” Liv trilled happily, her obnoxious Southern swamp drawl out in full force today. Crossing her thin arms beneath her less-than-ample chest, she cocked her head and pursed her lips.
“Get the fuck out of my place,Olivia,” I growled, my fist clenching as I gripped the handle of the blade tighter.
