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Supervolcano All Fall Down(25)

By:Harry Turtledove


There was a word for women who gave in exchange for what they could get. No cash changed hands in these transactions. Vanessa knew the word stuck to her all the same.

“You must have relatives you could get a loan from,” Micah said.

She’d chewed on that before. Her father probably would front her the money to get back to California, or at least out of the camp. She’d had too much pride to ask him. She’d made her own way since she dropped out of college to try the real world instead. Asking him for anything would seem like failure.

So what exactly do you call sucking this guy’s joint in exchange for a better tent and a chance to use the Net once in a while? she asked herself. But this was—or she’d always figured this was—temporary. Once she got the hell out of here, she could always pretend Micah Husak had never been born. Taking money from her old man was different. She wouldn’t forget it. Neither would he.

“I don’t want to do that,” she said after a short pause.

“Evidently not.” His smile showed off that half-missing front tooth. “Well, I can’t say I’m sorry you don’t.”

It was a peculiar kind of smile, but she needed only a moment to recognize it. He didn’t just get off on having her go down on him. Anybody could do that. He got off on having her go down on him even though—or rather, especially because—she hated it. She was acquainted with those complicated pleasures, too. They turned out to be less enjoyable when you were on the wrong end.

“I think I’d better go,” she said, her voice thick with not-quite-suppressed fury. It was a good thing for the dweeb that they made you check your firearms before you walked into the FEMA building. Otherwise, he would have been lying on the floor with that nasty smile still on his face and with the back of his head blown out.

“Er—yes,” he said. If her rage didn’t give him pause, he was even dumber than she thought—and that was saying something. But he had, or figured he had, the whip hand, because he added, “I’ll see you again before too long.”

Vanessa grunted and got out of there as fast as she could. Doing what she wanted to do would make her happy now, but she’d be sorry for a long time later. No, she wouldn’t be sorry. Nothing that happened to Micah Husak could make her sorry. But she didn’t want to spend umpty-ump years in jail, either.

No? What do you call this place? Even jail food might be better than MREs. She tried not to think like that as she stormed down the corridor to the back door. Thinking like that would leave the dweeb dead and bleeding.

The big black guy who stood guard there studied her thoughtfully. “You sure I ought to give you back your piece right now?” he asked, doubt all over his voice and on his face. “Maybe everybody’d do better if you came back for it later.”

“I’m okay,” Vanessa said. And so she was, as long as she didn’t think about looking at Micah Husak’s blind snake from eye-crossingly close range. Trying not to think about something, of course, was as impossible as usual. Grinding her teeth, she made herself go on, “I won’t plug the son of a bitch no matter how much he deserves it.”

“Huh.” The guard seemed no happier. He explained why: “You don’t want to go hurting yourself, neither. We got too much of that around here.”

He had his reasons for worrying. The number of people at Camp Constitution and all the rest of the refugee centers near the edge of the ashfall line who took the long road out was a national shame and disgrace—or it was when the rest of the United States wasn’t full of its own screams of anguish. The camps didn’t—couldn’t—even got noticed a lot of the time.

All the same, suicide wasn’t on Vanessa’s radar, not the way turning the dweeb into a colander was. “You don’t need to worry about that,” she assured the black man. “I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.” She gave him other kinds of satisfaction: not just getting his rocks off but making her blow him when she would rather have blown him away.

“Well, okay,” the guard said slowly. Even more slowly, he turned around, took her .38 out of its slot, and handed it back to her. “Don’t you do anything silly, now, you hear?” He had a deep, buttery-rich voice, as if he ought to be singing gospel music instead of standing here in a polyester uniform and a Stetson.

“I won’t,” Vanessa answered reluctantly, because she really did feel as if saying that to him was like making a promise. It wasn’t as if she’d never broken a promise or told a lie, but even so . . .