Skin on My Skin (19 page)

Loco Two was going to have to die.
 

I made it up to the twentieth floor quicker than I had any of the times before, even with the heavy bio-suit. The apartment was just as I’d left and, for a second, I laughed about that. This place could go twenty years and stay exactly as I’d left it. The treasures contained in Big Woody’s apartment could rot there. It might be that no one ever found the place again.
 

I did my best to ignore Big Woody’s corpse under the plastic sheeting and went to the gun rack. There were a multitude of rifles and I selected an M-4, made sure the magazine was loaded, and pulled the charging lever. That’s when I saw the box of grenades.
 

“Kid…” I heard over the suit’s intercom. “Kid are you all right? Where the fuck are you?”

I didn’t answer and went to the stairwell. I waited.
 

“Kid, I’m hit pretty good, but I think I got that fucker. He’s not shooting anymore. Get back here. I need help.”

I heard the sound of footsteps in the stairwell followed by the crash of steel as he pushed through the barricade. I also saw his blip on the HUD coming closer. What was he trying to pull?
 

“Yeah,” he said with a laugh. “Maybe I ain’t hurt too bad. Get down here boy. I don’t give a fuck what your daddy says. You’re going to pay for setting us up like that.”

My daddy? What the hell was he talking about? He must have meant it metaphorically, as in protection. My father was dead. I’d killed him.
 

“If you leave now,” I finally replied, “I won’t kill you.”

“Kill me? Funny kid. I was putting assholes like you down when the plague started. I’m a fucking warrior, boy. What the fuck are you?”

I let the first grenade drop and listened with satisfaction as it exploded. I had no idea how far down it had gone or if had even gotten close to the soldier.
 

“Oh, yeah. Funny asshole,” I heard, disappointed Loco Two hadn’t died. “Keep it up and I’m going to fucking kill you slow.”

I followed with three more grenades, listened, and then just started throwing everything in the box. Something was going to hit him, I was sure. I didn’t want to look at him and kill him, not like I had when I’d shot my father. I wanted it to be sterile. Maybe I wouldn’t have nightmares about it then.
 

Twenty-five explosions later I had convinced myself that if I dropped anymore, I was going to take down the building. His blip disappeared on my HUD, but that didn’t mean much. The tech we still relied on was old. It was falling apart. I listened for a long time and didn’t hear anything. That didn’t mean anything either. Loco Two was, just as he’d said, a professional soldier. He could move quietly. But he also knew I had the high ground and, with that, the advantage. I was going to have to go down there and look for myself.
 

I checked the rifle once more and headed down. I went as silently as I could, but each step reverberated like thunder in the stairwell. If he was waiting for me, he was going to have all the advantages. Sweat poured down my face,
 
and it was fogging up the inside of my visor. There was no way to wipe it off without taking it off and I didn’t have time for that. Besides, if his suit had been damaged, I’d be exposed to him.

I crept down, shining the rifle’s light in the nooks and crannies. My rain of grenades had done a lot of damage to the stairwell and parts were unstable. I leapt over one six foot gap and there he was, laid up against the wall, his face shield busted and gurgling blood.
 

“Nice one there, kid,” he said, coughing up black death. “You fucking did me right, didn’t you?”

I kicked his rifle away, never taking the barrel of my own from his face. “What did you mean about my daddy?”

The man giggled, laughing. “Oh fuck, boy. I’m dying here and you want to know that? Well fuck you. You killed me, you little fuck. I beat the Preacher’s Plague this long and some punk fucking kid gets me with a random fucking grenade. I’m not telling you shit.”

“I can make it quick for you,” I offered, poking him in the head with the barrel of the rifle.
 

“What the fuck do I care? I’m dying anyway. Quick, slow… it don’t make no fucking difference. But I’m telling you something, kid, I ain’t the last one coming. You remember that drone? Well that drone recorded it all. They’ll come for you, asshole. They’ll come and they will fucking…”

The sound of the bullet roaring from the barrel and turning his forehead into so much red mush scared me despite the fact I’d pulled the trigger. He was right, of course. I’d forgotten about the drone. I rushed down the stairs and out into the street. The damn thing was nowhere to be seen.
 

I looked down at Loco Two. Despite the damage to his faceplate, his suit wasn’t in too bad a shape. Loco One’s was passable as well. A plan started forming in my mind and the entire thing would hinge on just one thing.
 

I had to hope Jenna wouldn’t kill me when I got back to my own place.
 

I made it back across town to my penthouse in record time despite the load I was hauling. I left the bundle in the freight elevator. A little comforted that Jenna hadn’t escaped and hadn’t figured out how to use it. My little transport platform, in the other shaft, was just where I’d left it. The tiny ribbons I’d stretched around told me no one had been there. The stairwell was inaccessible, so unless she’d jumped, she was still upstairs. She hadn’t escaped.
 

I don’t know that I was happy about that. I half wanted her to be gone so that I didn’t have to face her. If she was gone then I wouldn’t have to worry about anything.
 

I thought about it hard the whole time I traveled up the platform. I’d wronged the girl multiple times. What reason would she have to possibly trust me, at this point? I could tell her about my experience with her friends and how they desperately wanted her to get away, but why would she believe me? I’d been wrong in everything I’d done to Jenna and, if she was somehow waiting at the top of the elevator shaft with a shotgun, I deserved every ounce of buckshot she put through my chest.
 

She wasn’t waiting at the top, as I found an hour later. I began the methodical check of the rest of the penthouse, making sure someone hadn’t found another way up and was hiding, waiting to take me out. I saved the bedroom for last.
 
I wish I hadn’t.
 

Actually, I wish I hadn’t gone in there at all. Jenna wasn’t there.
 

But a lot of her blood was.

The bed was a bloody mess. It was more blood than I imagined her body containing. There was so much blood everywhere that, for a moment, I thought she might have chewed off her own hand. I followed the blood trail out into the kitchen, and kicked myself for not having noticed it before. She’d gone into the kitchen, lit the gas burner and then cauterized her wounds. The burner was still on and I silently turned it off.
 

“Jenna?” I asked quietly, thinking I might have missed her in my rushed check of the penthouse.
 

I did the check again, more methodically and slower. The blood trail ended at the stove, which was a good thing, I guess. At least she wasn’t under a pile of MRE cartons bleeding to death. It took another half hour, but I was sure she wasn’t anywhere in the house. I paused at my own gun rack trying to remember if anything was gone.
 

“Jenna?” I asked once more. “If you’re in here… I’m so sorry. I’m not here to hurt you.”

I heard the wind rustle through the patio door and suddenly realized it was the one place I hadn’t looked. She hadn’t shut the door all the way, either. I was sure I had.
 

I stripped out of my armor, leaving it stacked neatly on the floor. I left the gun piled on it and then opened the door.
 

“Fuck you,” Jenna spat and I ducked just as she pulled the trigger on the assault rifle she’d taken from the rack. She kept the trigger depressed until the rifle clicked on empty. I stood on shaky legs, but didn’t move forward.
 

“Jenna…”

“Fuck you,” she growled again. “Just get it fucking over with. Take me back to that fucking place, if that’s what your sorry ass is going to do.”

“I’m not taking you back.”

“Yeah, right. You went through all this just to not go through with it? You made me do this?”

She thrust her left hand out at me. Her thumb hung the wrong direction from her palm. The skin around it was shredded and crusty. I could smell the cooked meat and infection, see the pus oozing. She’d broken her thumb to get out of the handcuffs and, if she lived, would probably never use that hand again. Not like she had before. My heart sank at the sight and then collapsed completely with her next words. “You did this to me.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” There is no way to describe the guilt I felt at that moment. There wasn’t anything else I could say besides I was sorry.
 

“I’m not going back there,” she said, standing shakily, a little too close to the railing. “I’d rather die than go back there. I’ve only been waiting around so I could kill you first.” The defiance was still in her voice, yet I sensed the utter exhaustion she was overcome with.

She took the railing with one hand and, weakly, tried to get a leg over it. I didn’t blame her. I’d probably jump if I was going to be a prisoner at Fortress as well. I eased to her as she was looking down at the rubble strewn street below.
 

“You don’t know the things they did to me, there. You don’t know what I went through.”

“I do know,” I whispered. I wanted to touch her, to comfort her, but I also wanted to join her and make the leap for her. I was that guilty. I’d done just as wrong to her as the crazy people back in Fortress had. “I saw what they made you do.”

Jenna was just barely conscious. She’d lost a lot of blood and her eyes looked like they might slam shut at any moment. Tears flowed down her face.

“There isn’t anything I can do, big boy,” she said sarcastically, pulling her leg back and collapsing into the chair. “You can fuck me, you can take me to Fortress… I don’t really care. I… I’m done.”
 

She passed into slumber easily and, for a moment, I thought she’d died. I had to check. The closeness to her still evoked those unbridled feelings of passion, but there was more to it now. I wanted to help her and I didn’t want anything from that help. I didn’t want to trade. I wanted to make up for what I’d done. Content that she was still breathing, I picked her up and took her back into the house.
 

I changed the sheets on the bed and cleaned up as best I could. I dressed her broken and burnt hand as she slept and, surprisingly, she didn’t wake up through it. I covered her up and hoped for the best. Cuts and scrapes I was used to, but I wasn’t a doctor. I couldn’t treat that sort of infection. I could try to stuff fifteen year old antibiotics down her throat, but I didn’t know if they’d work. Worse, she might choke on them. I had to hope for the best, but I was already making plans to carry her out, if she didn’t wake soon. The Preacher’s men knew the area I was in. They would be getting closer.
 

I made a trip down to the ground level, carefully looked around outside to see that if I’d been followed, and then retrieved the two extra bio-suits. It was even slower going back to the top, because of their added weight, and I was afraid Jenna would go off the deep end again. But I found just as I’d left her, sleeping fitfully.
 

I had a little time. It would take the red suited man’s goons awhile to find me. I was going to give her as much as I could. But in the meantime, I began gathering up traveling gear. I’d spent the last ten years in the penthouse but, as I sorted through what I needed to pack, I found that none of it really meant all that much to me. The things that weren’t pictures and mementos of a time past, they were rations and extra ammunition. The old world was dead and even the solitary life I’d built for myself in the penthouse was nearing an end. One way or another, I was leaving, and I didn’t need plasma televisions and stacks of computer games to get me there.
 

I needed her.
 

I’d come to that conclusion even before I’d decided to trade her away. I’d just been ignoring it. But the tiniest amount of time we’d spent together had meant more to me than anything I could remember. It could have been any girl, I realized, but there was something special about Jenna. There was an untapped fire in her that drove me. I wasn’t the only one who’d seen it. The other Touchers, back at Fortress, were willing to lay down their lives in order to get the girl out of the city. There wasn’t much more you could say about a person than that.
 

I packed Jenna’s backpack as lightly as possible. I probably packed too much in mine, but I had no idea what I’d need outside of the city or, for that matter, what I’d be able to scavenge. The pack was a lot heavier than I’d have liked, though, and it was going to be slow going sloughing through the ruins with Jenna at my side. It didn’t matter, though. I just needed her to come with me.
 

When I was done packing, and then repacking, I went and sat by Jenna’s side. I’m not sure how long I was there before I dozed off, but I woke to the sound of her shuffling on the bed. She looked at me sadly, her eyes full of fear and confusion.
 

“This isn’t Fortress.”

“No.”

“So you didn’t want to carry me back passed out? Need me to walk there on my own?”

“No,” I repeated. How did I tell her what I’d seen there? How did I explain I was sorry for forcing her to gnaw to bust her hand up like that? There was no explaining the guilt I felt and all I could hope for was that she would let me help her escape the city.
 

“Do you have something for pain?” she asked meekly. I went and found something, opening the old medications were still good. “Bring a beer back with it,” she said and I did that as well.