The final incident, the thing that made up her mind and got her packing, was an encounter with some long-term residents of the House. She’d had a tough day, puzzling over math and English and hoeing in the fields, but things had begun to look up when her boss, a nice old guy named Smitty, had come up and handed her a sheaf of papers with writing and pictures on them.
“What that?” she’d asked. “Shitpaper?”
“No, no,” Smitty had smiled at her. “It’s money! It’s your pay. For working in the fields.”
It had taken a while to get Smitty to explain about currency and how it could be exchanged for goods and services, but she’d snapped to it quickly enough once the concept was laid out and had readily taken the stuff.
“So, huh, thanks, Smitty,” she’d told him, still wary of some kind of a trick. Did he want something from her? Like most men? “Guess I can find somethin’ to do with this, hey?”
“Don’t thank me,” Smitty had waved. “It’s just how it we do it. You work, we pay you for the work, and then you can spend the money on whatever you want. Or nothing! Understand?”
“Sure,” she’d nodded. “I gotcha.”
Later, in the Bazaar, once she’d established that this paper/currency ploop was actually real and not some kind of a trick, she’d happily gone shopping. Smokes, some cans of beer, a smart new wool cap, and five cans of Cat had used up some of the paper money, but most of it went toward that most valuable and hard to obtain commodity, tampons. More dear than smokes or bullets or even gas, tampons (the use of which she’d been taught by Ugly Jane, the de facto matriarch of the Bloodclaws), were not something to be passed up, at any price, and she’d bought as many as she could afford. Then, tummy growling, feeling pretty flush, she’d headed down to the park to eat.
The park was a nice place, all trees and flowers and paths and benches. It was quiet and it smelled good. When she got there on the day in question, there were two other people there, an older woman and another girl about her own age, sitting at a table with benches built into it and playing some kind of game with dice.
Giving them a nod and a smile, Teresa went over and sat under a big bushy tree. Selecting one of the cans, she dug out her trusty spoon, polished it on her shirttail, and popped it open. For a moment she savored the smell, nice and tangy, before taking a big scoop. Mmm, it was delicious! Some folks liked their Cat heated up, but she liked it like this, at room temperature. Greedily, her protein-starved system begging for more, she downed the whole can and then licked out all of the salty jelly-like stuff at the bottom. Luxuriously, she licked her lips and belched. Then she heard the girl at the bench-table; it was hard not to.
“Eww, mom!” she said. “She’s eating cat food! Gross!”
“Hush, Ashleigh,” said the older woman. “She just doesn’t know any better.”
“But,” the girl protested, “it’s for cats! Oh, yuck, I can smell it from here! Eww!”
“Ashleigh, be quiet!” said the woman. “Now help me pick up the board.”
In another few minutes, they’d left. For a moment Teresa sat and stared at the can in her hand. Was the girl right? Was this supposed to be food for cats? She had always assumed that it was made out of cats. After all, every other can of food, be it beans or meat or ravioli, had a little picture on the label of what was inside; why not this one, with a shot of a fluffy white kitty? Was it the same with cans of Dog? And anyway, why on earth would anybody feel the need to feed a cat, and with special food from cans? Every cat she’d ever known had done just fine for itself!
She’d mulled it over and finally decided that she didn’t care one way or the other. Getting up to leave, she’d been about to toss the empty can into one of the many recycling bins they had all over like a good little resident, but had instead flung it violently into the bushes. That had made her feel a little better.
But it had stuck in her head and each time she replayed the incident, the more out of place and hemmed-in she felt. Not embarrassed, really; she had very little if any experience with the concept of shame. More just confined, bored, and generally unhappy.
And, to be honest, lonely. She’d never made new friends easily, even back with the Bloodclaws, and these people with their highfalutin ways didn’t make it easier. Oh, she got plenty of attention from the boys, hanging around her like crows on roadkill, but they were so clumsy and juvenile (especially in comparison to a certain tall, handsome whitecoat) that she invariably rebuffed their efforts. And as for the other House residents, well, they did things like sneer at you for eating food for cats.
Finally, hoping she wasn’t making a big mistake (but essentially unconcerned either way), she decided to leave. She’d miss the security here, how she didn’t have to stand watches or worry about random violence or having to go outside to crap and all, but the great big old world out there just wouldn’t shut up. Like the old triangle bell back at the Bloodclaw compound, its call was irresistible.
And so it was that, on a beautiful moonlit night, having stuffed her gear and some food into her old satchel and retrieved her boomstick from the gun bin, she quietly left the remarkable home of Baron Zero. She’d thought of talking to the man himself, maybe to thank him, maybe to let him know that she was leaving, but then had thought better of it; why bother? Why cause a scene? Better to just sort of fade into the night.
Now, hiking along through open country, her senses wide open and alert, feeling the cool air on her face and the hard ground under her boots, she felt better about the whole thing. Maybe she’d go back to Zero’s place some day and learn all about Civilization and how to be a good worker and earn more paper money, but for now, the open road, a gallon of water, and a few cans of food were all she needed or desired.
And tomorrow, at first light, she would start looking for Justin Case. Oh, it was a long shot, akin to backing a sick dog in a pit fight, but she figured what the hell; if it meant seeing Justin and Mr. Lampert again, she was down for just about anything. A happy smile on her perfect features, she broke into an easy jog, on into the night.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Of all the odd things that he’d awakened to in the last few months, the dead rabbit that greeted Justin Kaes when he opened his eyes was, without a doubt, among the top five. Skinned and gutted, it lay no more than a foot from his face. With a violent jerk, he bolted away from the gruesome thing, a sharp tang of gamey meat in his nostrils, and scuttled on his backside into a nearby wall. Head pounding and feeling generally as if he’d been beaten from head to toe with a very large stick, Justin blinked, totally disoriented, and got his bearings.
He was inside a building of some kind, in a smallish chamber of about ten feet square with no windows that had, judging from the various implements on the walls, once been a small barn or tool shed. It smelled pungently of something rotten and the earthly reek of human crap. There were deep shadows in the corners and suddenly Justin realized that there was something there, something alive, and scrambled shakily to his feet. Was it an animal? It seemed too small to be human. Good Lord, thought Justin: Now what?