The day after: An apocalyptic morning (27 page)

              "No," she admitted without shame. "It was actually more the other way around." She bent over to dry her legs.

              "You attacked him?" Jessica asked in disbelief.

              She shrugged. "He has a nice ass," she said. "And I was horny. What's wrong with having a little fun?"

              "What's wrong with it," Paul said, "is that you were supposed to be guarding him. What if he was dangerous? What if he had attacked you? Nice ass or not, we don't know this man! Anything could have happened, anything! For Christ's sake, Missy, he is in the building that we store our goddamn food and ammunition in!"

              "Sorry," she said softly, her eyes downcast now.

              "Sorry," Paul repeated, mocking her. "And just where is Hector, your partner in this guard detail?"

              "I'd rather not say," she replied. "He's all right though."

              Paul buried his face in his hands for a moment and took a few deep breaths. When he looked up he noticed that Jessica was still pointing her gun at Skip, murder in her eyes. "Jessica, would put that freaking gun away before you accidentally shoot something with it?"

              "Put it away?" she asked. "What about him?"

              "What about him?" he returned. "At least this proves he wasn't trying to attack us from the inside, doesn't it?"

              "It doesn't prove anything except that he's an animal willing to come in here and take advantage of our hospitality by..."

              "Oh please," Paul said, cutting her off. "I hardly think it makes him an animal because he responded to the seduction of a beautiful woman after he's been out in the wilderness for two weeks."

              "Do you really think I'm beautiful, Paul?" Missy asked, beaming, immediately interested.

              "Shit," Paul muttered. He turned to Skip. "Are you about done with your bath now?"

              "Uh... yeah," he said. "Look, I'm really sorry about all of this. The last thing I wanted to do was..."

              "Don't sweat it," Paul told him. "Just get out and get your clothes on. We'll get you a bed set up in one of the rooms."

              "You're not going to let him stay here after what just happened, are you?" Jessica asked.

              "I don't see how this changes anything," Paul replied. "You know as well as I do that what just happened is far from unusual in this town these days. I probably should've known better than to have Missy guard him. I should've found two of the men. But then I probably would've had both of them run off to screw someone and Skip would've been free to wander around at will. At least this way someone was with him."

              "I don't think we need to discuss town business in front of him," Jessica whispered, although loudly enough for Skip to hear. "Especially not... you know?"

              "He already knows about it," Paul said. "I filled him in earlier on the various games that are played here."

              "You did what?" she asked, horrified.

              Paul ignored her. "Now you see what I mean, right?" he asked Skip, smiling a little.

              Skip smiled back hesitantly. "A very graphic lesson," he agreed.

              "Sorry we came rushing in here with guns," he said. "We heard moaning and splashing coming from in here and we thought that maybe... well..."

              "That I was hurting her?"

              "Yeah."

              "I didn't realize we were so loud," Missy said, embarrassed now.

              "Nobody ever does," Paul said. "Nobody ever does. Get yourself dressed, Missy and then I'd like to have a word with you in the office."

              "Okay," she said, dropping her towel and grabbing her clothes. She began to put them on.

              "Jess," he said, turning to her, "can you go get Jeff from the front and have him take over watching Skip for us?"

              "You want me to do that?" she asked with distaste, as if she was being asked to gut a fish or slaughter a chicken.

              "Yes, please," he said, just a hint of sarcasm tinting his words. "If it's not too much trouble that is?"

              "I don't like the way you've been talking to me tonight," Jessica practically hissed at him. "You seem to have forgotten what your place in this town is. Remember..."

              "I wasn't a resident," he said before she could. "I know. You've only told me that a hundred times or so. And as for forgetting my place, I think that it's the opposite that's happening here. I think I'm just starting to realize my place as well as your place."

              "Are you threatening me?" she said, taking a step closer. "Because if you are, you'll be out of here so fast..."

              "Take it for what you want, Jess," Paul told her, standing his ground. "We've already been over this once tonight, haven't we? Now, if you're finished, would you please go get Jeff so we can make sure that Skip doesn't find himself in any more mischief tonight?"

              "I am far from finished," she said angrily. "We will talk about this some more."

              "Fine, let's just do it later, okay? It's been a hell of a long night and we have a lot of people to talk to tomorrow."

              "You're overstepping your bounds," she warned, pointing a finger at him. "And you'd better check yourself." This statement might have had a little more dramatic effect had she not then turned and headed off to do exactly what she'd been told to do.

              "Fuckin' bitch," Missy, who was now completely clothed again, muttered once she was gone.

              "Enough of that," Paul told her wearily. "I'll see you in my office, Missy."

              "Sure," she said, sulking to the door. Before she went out she shot an affectionate look at Skip. "See you later," she told him.

              He gave no acknowledgment to her and a moment later she disappeared. Once she was gone he looked at Paul. "Sorry about all this," he told him. "I seemed to have created some power struggles for you."

              "Nothing to be sorry about," Paul said. "I'm kind of glad that all this happened tonight. Jessica and Dale need to be taken down a few notches and this struggle over you has given me the means to do it."

              "I see," he said. "Will this incident with Missy affect how people feel about me staying?"

              "No, not in the least. Trust me on this. You'll be voted in as long as I'm with Jessica when the story about you gets told. You're a man in a town where men are scarce. You'd have to be Ted Bundy before these women would vote to exclude you. If nothing else, the rumor about what happened here tonight will strengthen your case. After all, they'll know you can be seduced, right? That's the best thing you can say about a man in this town."

              "That's good to know," he said.

              "Don't be so happy about us accepting you though," Paul warned. "Once you're a member of this community, I'm going to move to put you in charge of defense and training. And then you can be the one who deals with all of this guard duty crap. I imagine it will be the toughest job you'll ever have."

              "So I hear you bagged Missy," Jeff, the nineteen-year-old guard that he had first encountered at the front entrance, asked him with a shrewd smile. He seemed to have put his hostile feelings aside. "How was she? She was one of the virgins but I was thinking about maybe giving her a try." They were walking down the hallway of the community center, Jeff in the rear, lighting the way with a flashlight.

              "Virgins?" Skip asked, raising his eyebrows a tad. Missy certainly had not been a virgin.

              "You know," he said, "it means none of the guys have tapped her yet. Nobody's worked their way around to her yet. So was it worth it?"

              "Jesus," Skip muttered. "I'd rather not say. I prefer to keep my experiences to myself."

              "Bummer, dude," Jeff said sadly. "But I can get down with that, you know? That's the same thing Paul and Mick do. They don't say shit. Sometimes I think they're out there getting more pussy than anybody." They arrived at a small storage room near the back of the building. "Here's your suite. Sorry it ain't much." He shined the flashlight inside, allowing Skip to have a look at it.

              It was pretty much a case of what you see is what you get. It was a windowless room with only one door. About ten feet by ten feet, the floor was covered with the same industrial carpet that covered the rest of the building. There was a rollaway bed of the sort usually found in motels set up in the corner. A neatly folded stack of linen sat atop it. On a small table next to the cot was a candle, unlit, with a pack of matches next to it. Skip walked inside and picked up the matches, lighting the candle and allowing Jeff to douse the flashlight.

              "So, dude, you were like a cop and all, right?" Jeff asked, pulling a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his flannel shirt.

              "That's right," Skip told him, picking up the stack of linen. It was soft, dry, and smelled faintly of laundry soap. Clean linen! Amazing. He began to unfold it and place it on the bed. He would get to sleep in a real bed.

              "Well," Jeff said, "even though you were a cop, I guess it's only polite to ask. I'm not a Bogart you know?"

              "What are you talking about?" Skip asked, looking over at him.

              "You wanna burn one with me?" he asked, holding up a tightly rolled joint. "It's good shit."

              "You want to smoke a joint with me? The man you're supposed to be guarding?"

              "Hell yeah," he said, putting the joint in his mouth and pulling out a disposable lighter. "I ain't never smoked out with no cop before. It'll be the bomb." He lit it, taking a large hit and filling the room with the pungent smell of marijuana.

              "My work is going to be cut out for me here, I can see that."

              "So what do you say?" Jeff squeaked, speaking and holding his breath at the same time. "Wanna get loaded?"

              "What the hell?" Skip said, reaching out and taking the joint. "I guess they can't fire me now, can they?"

              "You the man," Jeff squeaked, grinning at him.

              Though he had not smoked any since his high school days, it really was like riding a bicycle. He put the smoldering joint between his lips and sucked, drawing a medium hit into his lungs. "This is some good shit," he squeaked back as he handed the joint back to Jeff. "Where'd you get it?"

              "Are you kidding?" Jeff asked, dipping the ash that had formed onto the floor. "We have more than a pound of this shit in storage. When we went through all the houses looking for supplies we found pot in more than half of them. I guess these rich people liked to smoke out. They bought quality buds too."

              "Really?" Skip said, exhaling a plume of smoke.

              "And that ain't all," Jeff said, holding the joint near his mouth but not hitting it. "We got enough booze, wine, and yuppie beer to kill everyone in town five or six times. There's enough Prozac, Xanax, and Valium to paralyze an army, and even some coke and crank. In one of the former doctor's houses we even found some morphine and a box of syringes. Fuckin' rich people. They're disgusting, ain't they?" He took a hit, sucking up more than a quarter inch of the joint in one inhale.

              "I guess it shouldn't surprise me," Skip said, "but somehow it still does." He grabbed the joint and took another hit. "So what's your story?" he asked once he'd exhaled and handed it back over.

              "Me?" Jeff squeaked, once again talking while holding in a hit. "I'm from Salt Lake City. I was here on my mission."

              "Your mission?"

              He blew the smoke out and handed what was now nearly a roach to Skip. "My mission," he said, coughing a little. "You know, for the Mormon Church. I was up here riding a fucking bicycle around spreading the word."

              Skip found this extremely funny. He began to laugh, unable to stop once he was started. "You," he chortled, "are a Mormon?"

              "Fuck no," he scoffed, laughing himself. "But my family was. If I wanted my piece of the pie, then I had to play the game, right? Now my parents couldn't afford to send me to Japan or Russia or anything like that, so I was doing my time here in California. I was gonna start at BYU next semester and major in business and be a part of my old man's firm but the comet kinda toasted those plans." He shrugged. "I don't mind though. This is, without a doubt, the best time that I've ever had. I mean, I got to score some pretty good puss back in SLC, you know, being a football player and a future BYU student, but I never imagined anything like what we got here. I've been laid at least once a day since the comet hit, usually twice. My friend, you are now living in paradise."

              "Paradise," Skip said, feeling his head reeling from the pot. "You ever listen to The Eagles?"

              "The who?"