Chapter 3

"What are these stones?"

The precise, crisp, female voice rang through the room. It might have once been a living room in the big house. The ceiling was high and vaulted and housed a chimney and fireplace.

Rachel's eyes focused on the box that was shifting back and forth in front of her so that the light from the windows on the ceiling would catch in the gems.

"Garnets..I think. They're semi-precious."

"Mmm...semi...precious." Dark brown eyes set into sockets that were surrounded by tightly stretched, paper thin skin danced over the top of the box. Then her fingertips, tracing around the tightly woven strands, over the polished surface of each piece.  "And where did you find it."

"It was a trade, from a traveler."

The eyes darted up, and Rachel forced herself to raise her gaze and meet them. She already knew the question but she waited to hear it, her shoulders tense.

"And this traveler's name." The words came out slowly and strained. There was irritation behind them. Rachel felt a small glimmer of satisfaction but would never let it register on her face.

"He's gone. He was there only one night. He left before the third shift whistle."

The room she stood in was void of humanity but for Rachel and the woman she spoke to. Rarely were her guards allowed to remain inside while she was in audience. Rachel had met with the boss many times before but she was always surprised at the newest acquisitions that were displayed. Old mounted animal heads from the time before had been re purposed. Necklaces, bracelets and earrings hung from their antlers, and candles perched in holes drilled through their heads. The raised floor that stretched out in front of the fire place had been turned into a raised Dias with a throne, an armchair covered in a deep purple blanket. Every inch of space on the walls either supported shelves or hooks. Hats, coats, books, magazines, paper and pencil, cans of food. It was a museum and a general store crushed together into one room.

The woman who inhabited the space, and the whole house, matched it perfectly. Her long white hair stuck up in places, unkempt. She wore wrinkled clothes in layers, browns and tans with the occasional spark of red or neon blue.

No one ever saw her outside of the main house, in the streets or in the fields. The meager, sandbag walls that surrounded the town were nothing compared to the tall, brick and stone parapets that completely blocked the view of all but the top most level of the house. There were other houses like it, but they had been gutted and burned, or subdivided into many different apartments and worn down by too many bodies in too small a space. This place was the best possible place, and it had been selected intentionally.

Margaret Wilson hadn't been the first boss, but she was the only one that Rachel remembered. The old woman was as close to a vampire as Rachel could imagine. Boss Wilson had a leech like nature about her. Every move was hungry, desperate and unnaturally graceful. Someone her age was supposed to be blind and arthritic and swelling at every joint. But Margaret was corpse thin and impenatrable.

Rachel knew, as well as anyone else in their town, that a lot of what the government allotted them, intending that it be shared by the whole town, was staying right here in this house. Stored away some where, used as bribes or payoffs, to buy the loyalty of people that would much rather be left to their own devices.

Sometimes Boss Wilson would reward one family of workers inexplicably. Rachel hated those times. There would be happy children's faces, weeping mothers, suspicious but relieved fathers, all thinking that life was finally turning upward. They would tell everyone in the town about their gift, and about who gave it to them. But there was always an agenda. Anyone finding favor with Boss Wilson didn't keep it. There was never a clear reason.  It was cruelty for cruelty's sake, Rachel thought.

She had learned never to accept charity in this new world, and especially not from someone in power. It could mean more than losing her life, or even her soul. Because there was always another life at stake.

"Why would you give this to me?" Margaret asked, finally setting the box down on the small table near her throne. A blanket had been across her lap from the moment Rachel entered. The house was air conditioned, powered by who knew what source. Rachel couldn't imagine wanting something so heavy on her during the day time but if she were stuck in this house every day...she might just. The waste was starting to get to her, as it always did.

"It seemed valuable. We are running low on hops and wheat at the restaurant. We have very little to put in the soup that will keep the workers nourished and h-.." Rachel nearly choked on the word. It was bull, all of it, but it was necessary. "Happy."

Boss Wilson nodded her head slowly, as if moving it any faster might jostle the great inner workings of a genius mind. Rachel knew better, and she recognized the heady smell that always seemed to permeate the house. Perhaps that was why Margaret always seemed so numb. She was always high.

"There may be more wheat...there may be more hops. But those things are not cheap. The government doesn't always send me everything that we need, Rachel."

Crossing her arms, Rachel shuddered involuntarily. It was cold in this room, but the drop in temperature had more to do with Boss Wilson's change of tone. Nothing Rachel didn't expect.

"There have been very few traders coming through. Most of them see the men at the town gates and turn away." She explained.

Margaret leaned her head back and closed her eyes, her fingers playing over the top of the box, tracing the edges of the biggest gem there. Rachel stood there long enough to assume that she had fallen asleep, when the Boss took a deep breath. "Rex tells me there were two strangers...four days ago. One he only saw leaving, the other...the other seemed to catch his interest."

"Really? Did he describe this-"

"A tall man. He appeared to be strong enough, not too old or young. About your age. Long, wavy hair. Wearing a most curious set of boots."

Rachel's eyes widened a bit, a sense of familiarity and panic setting in. She scrambled to grasp where Boss Wilson was going before she got there.

"Boots...I...yes I remember a stranger like that. He...he tried to trade some old, dead batteries for some soup. He went on his way." Rachel desperately thought back to her first lie. Was she keeping them straight? Was there a hole somewhere that Margaret could dig into?

"Rex saw him leaving, dear Rachel. Walking from the town. Sometimes he is a dull boy, but Rex followed this stranger and found that he had hidden the most remarkable machine on the road outside of town. A motorcycle, Rachel, from the old days. Now...that would have been a very worthy trade. Something very...exciting...something that could keep the government occupied for another...year."

Rachel's mouth opened but she didn't speak. A motorcycle, a machine. The Boss wanted it, and clearly didn't yet have it. If Rex, a large, muscular man who thought himself capable of anything, hadn't managed to get the cycle then he had either had a rare moment and made his own wise decision to leave it be, or he had tried and been defeated by the stranger. She hadn't seen Rex at the restaurant since the stranger had gone, but she had been hoping that he had been sent by the Boss to do more of her dirty work. Any time away from that man and his unending sex drive was a blessing.

If the stranger escaped, then he and his machine were long gone. Surely the Boss had to know that. And yet she was bringing it to Rachel's attention. Which meant the Boss thought that Rachel knew where the bike was, or the stranger.  Or both?

"I've never seen the motorcycle." Rachel ventured.

There was a long silence, while Margaret tested the air between them for lies, the tip of her tongue pulsing just past her front teeth, like a snake.

"Then you've seen the stranger?"

What had Rex reported? Had there been an altercation between the two men? Even if Rex had been defeated Rachel couldn't imagine that the stranger escaped without a scratch. The stranger hadn't been showcasing any weapons when he first entered the restaurant. Rex liked to carry around a gun or two, and a billy club made of pipes soldered together.

"No...I haven't..Boss Wilson. Should I watch for him?"

Margaret smiled suddenly. It looked more like a grimace, but the pleased sigh coming from behind it seemed to release the tension in the room. "Would you? That motorcycle would be a lovely trade, and I'm sure a stranger in the desert might want some help from someone so talented as you. You have such a giving heart Rachel."

The compliment was as empty as the room and Rachel took it as a dismissal, turning to leave.

 "Who knows? Maybe the stranger could become a father to Micah."

The sound of her son's name struck like lightning. Rachel turned slowly, crossing her arms over her chest attempting to make her reaction look more casual than it was. The one year reprieve had been veiled before, but Boss Wilson had now made it fairly clear. She wanted the bike, she wanted the stranger. If Rachel could deliver one or both, the Boss would keep Micah's existence hidden from the government for one more year. Most children were supposed to go for training at the age of six. Micah had just turned seven a few months before.


"Do you like the box, Boss Wilson?" Rachel asked. She kept the shaking from her voice, steeling her stomach and the vat of tears preparing to spill.

Margaret craned her neck awkwardly, picked up the box with a limp wrist and let it hang precariously from her finger tips. She seemed to look at everything in the room but the box before she said. "It suits me. I can see that a bag of hops, and a bag of wheat are delivered to the restaurant. We must keep the workers...happy...mustn't we?"

Rachel left the moment the doors at the opposite end of the room swung out. She hurried down the cold corridors and out into the hot dusty sunlight, not stopping until she was outside the back door of the restaurant. The heat of the day hit fast and hard but this time it was welcome. She slammed the back door of the kitchen behind her. The room was empty. Cookie was probably resting upstairs. The restaurant wouldn't open for hours yet. Micah should have been upstairs working on his morning cleaning chores, but moments after she sank into a corner, she heard his quiet, frightened voice say, "Momma?"

Tears had already streamed down her face, but her sobs had been silent. Had something happened? She held her hands out to her boy and he sank down into her lap, wrapping his arms around her neck, burying his face there. She waited for him to tell her what was wrong, but he stayed silent, curling as tightly into her embrace as he could.

What ever the problem was it clearly wasn't an emergency, and in that moment she desperately needed her baby in her arms. She held tight to him, quietly letting the tears fall, pulling back on the reigns. Panic wasn't allowed, she reigned it in. Fear couldn't be permitted to take over rational thought, she reigned it in. By then Micah had drifted quietly into sleep. Rachel smiled. When he was an infant Micah had refused to sleep unless he was being held in someone's arms. She couldn't count the hours, days, weeks she had spent holding Micah until her shoulders screamed in pain. Devising slings and carriers that let her keep him close to her chest but save her lower back.

In those days she could never have imagined a time when she would want to hold her boy for hours and hours. Rachel kissed his head, brushed hair from his forehead, then held the strands back looking at his hairline. The red mark was still there, the birthmark. As a baby it had been easily visible. Some would ask if he had been dropped or had hit his head. Rachel kissed the mark. A mark that she had just as easily seen in the photograph the stranger had shown her.

A stranger that kept turning up. Why was he so important? Why was the bike so important? There weren't many working motorcycles in town. Even still they weren't that valuable. Why was this one so important to Margret?

It wasn't just a trade. It couldn't just be Margret's greed driving this. If it had been Margaret would have sent her goons after the trader. She wouldn't have bothered to offer something of value to someone not directly under her thumb. No...Boss Wilson was avoiding the stranger somehow...she was wary of him...or maybe even afraid of him. She was going through back channels and side lines. 

The whole thing stunk horribly of the government and its ever growing control of the small colonies or towns that remained after the end. Rachel wanted no part of it, but she was being drawn in. She was smart, she had always been smart. She would figure a way to work this to her advantage. Ultimately it wouldn't matter how smart she was. All that mattered in the end was Micah.