Page 39 of The Pale Rider
Aeron let out this frustrated roar and flopped on his back.
“I want to, Speedy. More than you could possibly know. But not until you have your memories back and not until you know the truth about everything. We should find food.”
Who knew amnesia was such a cockblocker?
Chapter 24
I
thought Aeron would take it easy now that we weren’t surrounded by Rage Heads and humans who had gone feral and were eating people. But no, we were back on the road at a punishing pace, and I just wanted to slow down. Even though a lot of the buildings were still rubble, and they were trying to get the grass to grow again, they had gotten a lot rebuilt. California was a paradise compared to the rest of the world.
I wanted to stay here longer, but really, I just wanted to avoid Sacramento. Aeron was taking us there as fast as he could. We stayed at the hotel rooms Jade had given him. We had hot showers and hot meals every night, and I was grateful for that. It was nice going to bed with a full belly and being able to change my clothes every day. Aeron made one stop to pick up underwear for both of us so I had more than three pairs.
I was sure the street signs in California had been vandalized at one point, but someone took them down and replaced them with wooden signs. After days of riding, my stomach dropped to my feet when I saw the sign that we were entering Sacramento. I gripped his arm. I would have felt better with Smurfette in my grip, but I strapped her to the back of Meremoth because of California rules.
“Do I have to do this?”
“I have faith in you, Speedy.”
Aeron brought Meremoth up to a high-rise building with the side blown out. It looked like they were in the process of repairing it. We dismounted and went inside. Someone had wired it so it still had electricity, but we still took the stairs. I hoofed it up thirty flights of stairs to the top floor, and my thighs were screaming at me.
The entire top floor looked like Jade’s throne room. They had knocked all the walls down. She was sitting in a La-Z-Boy recliner surrounded by people with guns and satellite phones. She grinned when she saw us, but she didn’t stand up.
“Well, well. I’ve been waiting to meet you since I heard you were here. Why weren’t you in California when this all went down?”
“I kind of got a little kidnapped.”
Jade cocked an eyebrow at me. Aeron was right. She was tiny. She probably came up to my armpits, and she was dressed in all leather. Her hair was bright red and flowed down her back like a crimson river. She had a considerable septum ring in her nose. I had a feeling I would like her if I didn’t fuck up her tattoo, and she killed me.
“And no one ate you? You don’t look like some gang ran you ragged using you as bait. Were you eating people, Speedy?”
“I was in a coma. Aeron found me. I’m sorry, but all my memories are gone. They are coming back in pieces. I don’t remember a fucking thing about giving a tattoo. I’ll probably end up permanently messing you up.”
“Nonsense,” Jade said, lighting up a homemade cigarette. “I saw you at a tattoo convention. You were one of the top speakers. I stood in line for hours to get a tattoo from you. The line was out the fucking door, and I missed you. You were always booked a year in advance, and I never knew when I would end up in Los Angeles to book that far out. Now that you’re here, I’m getting my tattoo, but my idea has changed.”
“Yes, but even with all that backstory, the fact that I can’t remember how hasn’t changed.”
“I know. I have a plan. Do you see this pumpkin at my feet? They are in high demand, and I had one in my vegetable basket this week. I’m forgoing pumpkin pie so you can figure it out on my pumpkin. If you do it, you tattoo me. If the pumpkin is a hot mess, then you’ll just have to come back to California and do it when you get your memories back.”
At least Jade wasn’t totally insane and setting me loose on her body with a tattoo gun. It still didn’t solve the problem that I wasn’t sure if I could even draw. I hadn’t had access to pencils and paper, though sometimes, my hand felt like it should have something in it to sketch with.
One of the gang members presented me with a sketch pad and a pen. It felt like a missing part of me came back when I fitted the pencil in my hand. Maybe I could still draw.
“What do you want me to draw?”
“Okay, I want it on my chest so everyone can see it. I want you to tattoo me on a throne surrounded by zombie heads on pikes. But I want it done Sailor Jerry style.”
All of that made sense to some part of my lizard brain. I could already see it in my head and was plotting my lines. I guess I remembered how to draw. I plopped on the floor with my sketch pad in front of Jade.
“Do you want the La-Z-Boy as the throne, or do you want me to improvise?”
“Are you kidding? I want the La-Z-Boy. When this all started out, me and all the girls holed up in a furniture store right near the strip club. We all claimed a recliner and made it our bed. There was a little family-owned grocery store nearby that we could loot. We finally said enough was enough and started taking to the streets to save people when the war started.
“One of the bombs landed in our furniture shop. We weren’t there at the time, thank god. But when we visited the rubble, there was my fucking recliner without a scratch on it. This is my lucky recliner, and it deserves to be inked on my chest.”
I had a lucky blue baseball bat named Smurfette. She had a lucky recliner. Everyone had the right to be weird right now. I chewed on my bottom lip and focused on my drawing. This just felt right. The scratch of the pen against the paper felt like the first normal thing I’d done since I woke up from that coma, even if I was about to draw a woman dressed like a dominatrix in a recliner surrounded by zombie heads Sailor Jerry style.
This wasn’t freaking me out anymore. Jade would not kill me or banish us if I fucked this up. She gave me an out and gave up something she wanted to so I could practice first. She was quite reasonable, which was probably why California was being run so well.
