Page 71 of Skin Trade

“No one lives in houses?” She couldn’t imagine her father living in an apartment. They’d always had houses when she was little, big houses with land so he could work, and her mother could do whatever her mother did.

“Yeah there are some houses. But they go to the important people, like the priests, or the teachers and the doctors.”

“The mayor?”

“Yeah, the mayor has his own house too. Where you from if you don’t know these? Must be far away. All the human towns are like this.”

“Oh.” Her mind raced to answer. Saying she’d been living in some man’s basement for the last decade was not going to work. “Down south?” She said it as a question rather than a statement, her uncertainty clear in her words.

“Down south? You don’t have no accent.”

“I wasn’t born there. My mother moved me there when I was a teenager. That’s why I have friends here, but it wasn’t like this.” She knew she had given the right answer when Zane nodded and focused back on the road. Would be her luck to screw this up, even with these guys and give them an answer that told them she was lying.

“I heard the cities down south are a lot different. Lots of houses, and places, not built like this, all these boxes on top of each other.”

“I heard there isn’t the thirsty,” Mick added.

“No thirsty?” Is that true? They don’t have thirsty down there?”

“They bake on the pavement,” Mick said. “Don’t they?”

Payton just nodded at both of them and let them fill in their own gaps.

“Man, could you imagine that,” Zane said. “All those creatures on the ground, bubblin’ and meltin’ and cookin’. Be like crackin’ eggs on the ground.”

“Crispy around the edges,” Mick said, and both of them erupted into laughter. Payton shuddered. She’d never get that image from her head now.

It was easy to fall into the lie as Zane and Mick made up their own theories of the place. All she had to do was nod here and there, and they were off on it. To her, she could almost make the memory real. She had that knack. Sometimes it drove her mad, the way she would imagine things and they’d become so vivid, she was sure they were real, disappointed they weren’t. If she tried hard enough, she could have convinced herself that she was from down south. A clever escape mechanism for when things in her life were too much for her mind to handle.

Zane and Mick fell into easy conversations about it all and about how they should one day go own south and see what kind of critters they’d have to clean up. Their words, not hers. It was like watching two people dream about the future together and almost get carried away with their thoughts.

It wasn’t long for the gates to New Mont to come into view. Big steal things that reached so far up, it would take someone a great deal of time to try and climb them. A lot of determination too. It reminded Payton of a military area. The only thing missing were green canvas covered vehicles parked outside, but it did have the guards, all of them armed and watching this strange truck that had just approached.

“Do we need permission to go in?”

Zane pulled the truck into a sort of layby. “They just need to check we don’t ‘ave any hitchhikers, you know?”

“Hitchhikers?” She thought he meant her and was about to ask, but he was out and down from the truck faster than her brain could process it all.

“He means the thirsty,” Mick said. “They check that none of them got in the back of the truck, or we didn’t sneak ‘em in.”

“Sneak them in? Why would you do that?”

He shrugged. “Someone could.”

Zane sauntered over to one of the guards at the gate itself. He wasn’t lined up like the rest of them. She could see Zane talking, but with the window up, the air conditioning on and being where they were, she had no chance of hearing what he was saying. He pointed back to the truck and the guard waved two other men over to them.

“Stay in the truck,” Mick said as the three guards approached with Zane.

“Can we just go through?” Zane asked as they got closer.

“You know I can’t let you do that.” The guard knocked on the window. Payton opened it. “Hey, Mick.” He raised a brow at Payton, signalling for her to answer.

“Payton,” she said. The guard nodded.

The truck rocked with one guard climbing onto the back to lift up the tarp and see what was there. The other guard was tasked with looking under the vehicle and making sure nothing had clung onto the bottom. That was some level of desperation.

“All clear,” one of the men said. He thumped the side of the truck.

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