6
ATTICUS
I cut through a parking deck and weaved my way between buildings toward the one I lived in on the corner of Main. What was once a booming American metropolis was now a habitat for all things rural and suburban: clothes hung from lines between buildings; fruits and vegetables were planted on rooftops; wind turbines stood tall on others, giving means of power to the community; abandoned cars littered the streets, reduced to fiberglass and metal skeletons rusted by the rains; weeds meandered through the cracks in the streets and sidewalks; vines had taken over many structures.
The city of Lexington, like most places across New America, was nothing like it was before The Fall. Over four hundred thousand people had been reduced to under five thousand, and they all lived within the downtown buildings rather than in homes on the outskirts of the city. They were safer there from savages and cracks and people from other factions outside of Lexington who would want to take what they had—what they had that wasn’t theirs to begin with; most of it was stolen, pillaged by William Wolf’s men.
Many of the soldiers in Wolf’s army were a lot like Wolf: power-hungry bastards who used the apocalypse as an excuse to take the human race back several hundred years. I never claimed to be better than any of them, but I sure as hell wasn’t the same, either. I enjoyed sex as much as any man, but I fought with my conscience daily with the women who were brought here. Like on this night, as I walked down the sidewalk with my hands buried in my pockets, I contemplated whether to veer left and pay Evelyn a visit at the brothel, or to go home.
The air stank of horse manure as I rounded the corner of North Upper and West Main and passed up my building. Armed guards on horses patrolled the streets day and night, but it was never until early morning that the horse’s shit would be shoveled from the streets by the unlucky residents appointed with the task.
I walked to the oddly-shaped buildings smashed together on the corner. Men and women hung around outside, conversing and flirting. An acoustic guitar played somewhere nearby, a somewhat cheery tune, fitting of the pleasure district. Laughter and conversation and drunken men with loud voices filled the air.
Lexington was one of few cities left with enough tobacco and alcohol stock to last at least another six months. Use was strictly privileged only for Overlord Wolf and the men who fought in his army. One cigarette a day was the limit.
Stepping through the door of the building, I ignored the women who beckoned me as I passed by. I wasn’t interested in them. Evelyn Bouchard was, to me, like a favorite seat in a bar, or a preferred waitress at a cozy diner. I trusted her and respected her and enjoyed her company in ways the other men never came to the brothel for: good conversation and advice.
“I thought I might not see you tonight,” Evelyn said from the doorway of her room on the third floor. She gestured me inside and locked the door behind me.
Evelyn was dressed in a pair of panties and a white see-through button-up blouse with no bra underneath. I watched her as she walked across the room and went toward the table by the window. She was a slender woman of average height, with long, dark hair pinned sloppily to the top of her head. She had been saying she was thirty-years-old for the past three years I’d known her, but I suspected she was closer to forty-something judging by the small lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth, and how her hands had begun to show signs of age. But she was a beautiful woman of forty-something, and I liked her very much.
The snap of a match was brief, and the glow of a flame appeared around her face as she puffed a cigarette to life.
“If they catch you with that…” I said, but I didn’t need to finish.
Evelyn smiled, blew the match out with her Cupid’s bow lips and then dropped it in an ashtray. “I know,” she said, and offered an indifferent expression. “But who’s gonna turn me in?” She took a long drag, the ember briefly giving light to her face. “Certainly not you. And if they smell it on me I have a good excuse.”
This was true. It was easy for a working-girl to pass off smelling like an ashtray when her job to be so up close and personal with so many men who smoked. And she was right—I’d never turn her in. I didn’t love her and knew I never could, but she was important to me just the same. She was my friend.
I sat in my usual chair next to the bed, splaying my legs out into the floor; I brought my hands up and moved them over my face, through the top of my short hair, as if the gesture could smooth away the stress of the day.
“The girls have been asking about you again.” Evelyn grinned.
“Oh?” I said with little interest. “What’ve they been saying now?”
She pursed her lips and took another drag.
“The usual,” she began. “Wondering why you never sleep with them. Lanie said I must have some kind of miracle pussy.”
I laughed lightly.
Evelyn smiled. “You’re a handsome man, Atticus Hunt; I can’t say I don’t enjoy the shit out of their jealousy.”
She stepped up closer, swishing her hips as she walked. “But out of curiosity,” she said, batting her eyes, “is it the pussy? I mean, could Loose Lanie be right?”
I just shook my head. Any other day I might play along with her, let her work her magic on me to put me in a better mood, but I had too much on my mind.
I sighed.
“Rafe’ll be heading to Cincinnati soon,” I said. “I’ll be taking over while he’s gone.”
Evelyn sat down on the edge of the bed, facing me, and she drew her legs up to sit cross-legged; the springs creaked underneath her movements.
“And that’s a good thing?” she asked, wary. “Isn’t it?”
My eyes met hers.
“I like the position I’m in,” I said. “I don’t have to make any of the decisions—I just follow orders.”
Evelyn smiled craftily as smoke rose from her lips; she cocked her head to one side. I already knew what she was about to say, and mentally I prepared myself for it.
“Following orders doesn’t exempt you, babe,” she began, always honest, always the voice of reason I often ignored when alone. “You’re still guilty of whatever you do—or don’t do. Blood is on your hands as much as anyone’s.”
I hated that she was right, because the ‘following orders’ excuse was all I had to keep me sane. I knew deep down I was still guilty just for being a part of it, even if my part was and always had been small, just enough keep the shadows of suspicions off me.
“So, what are you going to do?” she asked.
I raised my back from the chair and leaned forward, propping my forearms on the top of my legs, letting my rough, work-worn hands dangle between them.
“I’m going to do my job,” I said simply. “I’ll command security, make sure everyone is doing what they’re supposed to be doing—discipline those who aren’t—and if a scouting party comes back with supplies, then I’ll make sure everything gets inventoried and stored away; nothing much different from what Rafe does.”
Evelyn chuckled, took another puff of her cigarette and then set the rest in the ashtray next to the bed.
“Rafe does a lot more than that, and you know it.”
I shook my head, wanting to forget about the rest of what Rafe did as Overseer.
Evelyn stood up, came over to me and sat sideways on my lap, draped an arm around the back of my neck. Absently, I hooked an arm around her, my fingers splayed against her bare thigh. I stared out ahead, too bothered by my thoughts to give her my full attention.
She touched the side of my stubbled face. “You’re a good man, Atticus,” she said softly and with burden. “But being a good man doesn’t do anything but get him killed anymore.” She fitted her long, slender fingers underneath my chin, turned my head to face her.
I looked at her through eyes that hid a lot of pain. But Evelyn always knew that it was there, even when, like now, I wasn’t showing it.
“You don’t have to rape or murder or act like a barbarian like the rest of them do,” she pointed out, “but you can’t show weakness, Atticus. You have to be firm and merciless when the time calls for it, or they’ll eat you alive.”
I looked away, forcing her fingers to fall from my face.
I knew this truth more than she did, but sometimes I needed her to remind me of it. I was firm and merciless when I had to be—that was no question—but in a leadership role, proving I was fit for the life the men led here, would be much harder to pull off. My every move and decision would be watched and judged by dozens of pairs of eyes. Men would want to see me make mistakes, to show weakness, and to fail.
Evelyn patted my shoulder and then stood from my lap. Taking her half-smoked cigarette from the ashtray, she slipped it back in-between her fingers and then walked to the open window and sat against the windowsill.
“I’ll do what I have to do,” I said, more to myself than to Evelyn.
“What about the girls?” she asked.
“Like I said, I’ll do what I have to do.”
“Soldiers’ll be lined up along the street like people used to do back in the day to be the first to get a fancy new cell phone.” Smoke streamed from her lips; she flicked ashes over the windowsill. “Are you sure you can seal the girl’s fates like that even when they’re down on their knees begging you to let them go?”
“Are you doubting my ability to lead, Evelyn?” Wounded, I gazed at her from across the short distance.
She shook her head. “No. I would never doubt your ability to lead, but I’ll always doubt your ability to treat those women with the same cruelty and barbarism that every other soldier in Wolf’s army does.”
I looked away.
Evelyn was one of those women once, three years ago when a scouting party brought her here. She had been lined up with others against her will, placed in one of four groups: warrior, worker, wife, or whore. Considered too weak to be a warrior, too old to be a wife, and too pretty to be a worker, Rafe sent her to the brothel that day. I was her first customer.
“You can’t keep doing this,” Evelyn said.
I gazed across the room at nothing for a long time, lost in thought, and then something occurred to me.
“If the Overlord makes Rafe General and gives him the army to lead on a permanent basis,” I began, “there’s a good chance I’ll be promoted permanently as well. I could easily be the one taking over Rafe’s operations here in the city.”
“Yes, that’s a possibility,” Evelyn agreed.
I stood and paced the floor; my boots tapped as I walked back and forth over the weathered hardwood.
“If I become Overseer,” I went on, “I’ll have the opportunity to begin making changes.”
“You could,” Evelyn said, “but not the changes you’d like to make.”
I glanced over.
Evelyn smoked the cigarette down to the filter and then crushed it out on the windowsill. She looked back at me, preparing an explanation—for once I just wanted her to agree with me, but I knew I was fooling myself.
“The one thing you’d want to change more than anything else,” she said, “is the one thing you can’t change. You’re outnumbered and overruled in every aspect when it comes to those girls, Atticus. As long as Wolf is leader, and as long as Rafe is his right-hand, there will always be four kinds of women in the East-Central Territory. And anyone who tries to tamper with that system will find a noose around his neck, or fifty angry fists beating him to death in the street—I don’t want that to be you.”
Evelyn left the windowsill and came toward me, a seductive rhythm in her walk, a sweet, yet malicious look in her eyes—she was putting her talents to work. It was a survival instinct, one often used when her own life was at risk, when she would have to become the whore, the manipulator, and adapt to her cruel surroundings rather than be destroyed by them. But now her survival instincts were kicking in for her only friend.
She stepped up to me, her dainty arms bent between us, resting on my chest. I looked down into her eyes, my gaze sweeping over the curvature of her mouth.
She pressed herself against me. “The world is changed, Atticus.” Her voice was soft and dark. “Nothing is the way it used to be, and it never will be again.” One hand slid upward between us and I felt the softness of her fingertips brush my lips. “You have to conform to the world as it is now. You have to become the calloused man that all men become, or die holding on to a moral life that no longer exists. Evolve with the rest of humanity, or become extinct, Atticus. There is no other way.” She pushed up on her toes and bit down tenderly on my bottom lip.
Feeling myself growing, I wound all ten of my fingers through the back of her hair and pulled her closer, kissing her hungrily, wanting to taste her malevolence in my mouth, her ability to adapt. Because I needed that more than I needed anything. More than I needed sex or conversation or advice. More than I needed food in my stomach or water in my throat or air in my lungs. Adapt or die. It had been the reason I went to see Evelyn every other night for the past three years. We had been learning to change together, using one another as a crutch in which to lean on when one would begin to revert back to the Old Ways.
Like most, Evelyn and I were once good people before the world changed. I was a good son and brother; I worked hard; had a soft spot for animals; I was a man of honor and integrity and principles, a man on my way to becoming a Marine like my grandfather—I was a good man, I thought. Evelyn was once a beloved sister, wife, and mother, who worked as a nurse in a children’s hospital. She went to church on Sundays and drove a family van and liked to sing to her two young daughters—Evelyn was a good woman. But in every good person there is something dark waiting to take the reins. Now here we were, Evelyn and Atticus, a whore and a murderer, succumbing to that dark part of us, because that’s how life was.
Being a working-girl was not something Evelyn ever planned, but it is what she became, and with every man that beat her and did unfathomable things to her, she surrendered to it. She adapted to survive. Just as I had been doing slowly over time, with her help—adapting. Soon I would no longer need it. Soon I would succumb fully to the darkness and might someday prove Rafe’s equal, if not his competition. Because every day I felt more of my old self fading away, replaced by pieces of my new self, and my evolution was almost complete.
I broke the kiss; my hands were still wound roughly within her dark hair. This was our moment, an event, a time between two damaged people in which we both longed to feel: The Surrender. Atticus Hunt and Evelyn Bouchard of the Old World surrendered to the Darkness and became one with it.
I ravaged her. I gave in to the darkness inside all men and took her with aggressive abandon, my mind expelling all sense of kindness and morals and concern and conscience. I ravaged her long after tears had pooled in her eyes and her naked body trembled beneath me. And she gave in completely, wanting to feel the pain, wanting to endure the violence, needing to be reminded again and again and again of what she had become and what she would always be.