Page 19 of Trade
“Sure. Salmon, bass, trout. Sauger and crappie, too, but they taste like shit.”
“You eat from the lake?”
He nods like it’s a weird question.
If it’s safe enough to eat from, it must be safe to swim in. I pop to my feet and stalk to the edge of the rocky cliff. The man follows.
I’ve always wanted to swim. When I was a kid, almost every year, the teachers would have us write essays about what we would do if we could go back to the Before. We were supposed to write about what we would do to change things, but the first time I was given the prompt, I didn’t understand what they expected, so I wrote “climb a tree and go swimming.”
Every time after that, I wrote what I was supposed to write, but I’d always think before I started—climb a tree and go swimming. That’s my real answer.
I did everything I was supposed to do. I got married. I tried to have a baby, month after month, year after year. I did my job, loved my husband, longed for a family. I believed my work mattered. I kept twenty-seven trees alive.
I can seetens ofthousandsof them from where I’m standing now.
I’m supposed to let this man finish whatever it is he wants to do and then go back to the bunker and wave at the camera. Naked. All garments must be left outside. I’m supposed to be grateful they let me back in and never speak of what happened. I’m not supposed to speak.
“How far away is the lake?” I ask.
He glances away from my face to consider the lake. “Three days’ walk.” He looks over and scans my body. “Maybe four.”
My cheeks heat. I don’t care what he saw that made him up the estimate. He’s just some man who bought my body for a little while. He’s a customer.
He is standing right next to me, shoulder to shoulder, like he’s afraid I’m going to jump, staring at me—my face, my tits, my ass—as if there isn’t a whole vista of fucking miracles spread in front of us like the Garden of Eden. This is all supposed to be dust and ash. Right?
When did they tell us that? I search my memory, but I can’t pinpoint the lesson. It’s justknown. The Outside is a ruin. We know it like we know the moon has phases and the sky is blue even though we’ve never seen them clearly through the smoked glass atrium roof. The world ended in a cataclysm, and we’re all that’s left to carry on. The legacy of humanity is in our hands.
Except we’re not the only ones, are we? There are Outsiders. There’s this man.
“Do you have a name?”
His gaze jerks from my tits to my face, but he doesn’t blush at all. “Dalton.”
There aren’t any Daltons in the bunker. We’ve got several Mikes, Brians, and Johns. There’s a second Bennett who works in Machine Repair. I’m one of four Glorias.
“Dalton,” I repeat quietly.
“Gloria,” he says softly back.
My gaze flies from the valley to his face. He’s not smiling, but his perfect lips have softened. His eyes hold mine for a second before letting go.
His handsomeness is crushing. Breathtaking. Disorienting.
He bought me. Fucked me without my consent. I didn’t want it. He had to know. I’m a product to him. I’m a thing. A body. A hole.
“What did you trade for me?” I ask. There’s an angry edge to my voice, and I don’t care. If he takes offense, good. We should be fighting. We’re enemies.
“A hundred barrels of oil.”
My eyes fly wide. AP’s allotment is eight barrels a quarter. A hundred is enough to fuel the bunker for almost half a year. And he traded that for me?
“What did you get for that?” I ask. This time I try to mask my fear. I don’t know the market at all—Administration runs the lottery—but a hundred barrels is a fortune.
Dalton’s expression grows guarded again. Because he’s ashamed? Or because he’s going to lie?
He jerks his chin toward me sharply. “You.”
“For how long?”
