Page 186 of Everything Under the Sun

I felt suffocated the moment I stepped off the ferry and headed deeper into Paducah, Kentucky. Hundreds—maybe a thousand—people walked the streets, toting shotguns and rifles and axes over their shoulders, pulling vicious dogs on leashes; one man walked with a bear, and it was a wonder how he had not yet become the animal’s meal.

Kade pushed his way through heavy crowds with me beside him, still bound with my hands behind my back. Painted faces watched me—dark makeup, motor oil, charcoal—it was unsettling to see the whites of their eyes stark against the blackness following me coldly as I moved past.

I shrieked as a heavily muscled dog with long, gnashing teeth came at me; it growled and snapped and lunged at me on its leash. Kade put himself between us just as the dog’s owner yanked back on the thick chain; the dog withdrew and lay submissively on the concrete next to the woman.

“Looks like you’ve been fishing again,” the woman said, looking down on me for she was incredibly tall. “Doesn’t look like a fighter. I may have to take her from you.”

I looked back in search of Atticus, seeking the comfort of his eyes, but he was gone. I panicked, struggled to pull my arm from Kade’s hand; I pushed up on my toes to see over the heads of so many people, but Atticus was nowhere to be found.

“Where’s Atticus?” I asked with anxiety. “Where did they take him?”

Kade tugged on my elbow, pulling me toward him.

“You’ll see him later,” he said, and then turned back to the woman.

“If you want to fight me for her,” he challenged, a grin in his voice, “then by all means; we can settle it here, or in the arena later tonight.”

The woman’s free hand came up, the tips of her thumb and index finger moved over her bottom lip. “Hmm,” she pondered, looking me over with the surveying sweep of her gaze. “She’s too skinny—maybe next time.” The dog sprang to its feet when she jerked on the leash, and the two walked away together, disappearing amid the crowd.

Kade looked at me; I swallowed nervously.

“Around here,” he explained, pulling me toward a building, “you’re only my companion for as long as I can keep you.”

“You mean your slave?”

He ignored my icy comment.

“Still have to watch my back though; you’re new and the people here like shiny new things.”

“Shiny new slaves, you mean to say,” I kept on.

He stopped on the sidewalk and gestured a hand at Paducah’s residents. “Every person you see here either wants to be here—”

“I don’t,” I cut in, sneering.

“Either wants to be here,” he repeated more sternly, “or hasn’t figured out how to change their situation. If you’d like to leave, all you have to do is find a way out. Your freedom is up to you, sweetheart. If you’re strong enough to take it, then you’re more than welcome to keep it.” He pointed at my bound hands and said matter-of-factly, “Those are on your wrists because you let me put them there.” He smiled. “Your limitations are what got you into this mess. Think about that for a while.”

I wanted to claw his eyes out! But strangely enough, it was his logic, not his actions, which provoked it.

We went into motion again, heading for the building. “You can’t live out there, alone, like the two of you were doing in that cabin. What were you thinking, anyway?” He glanced at me, his brows drawn.

“We could live alone,” I bit back, “if people like you would leave us alone. Just because the world ended doesn’t give you the right to oppress everybody else. Because civilization was set back hundreds of years doesn’t mean we, as humans, have to devolve with it.”

Kade’s bright eyes smiled thoughtfully, and then his mouth, wreathed in a black beard and mustache, shortly followed.

“A lecturer,” he stated. “Can’t say we’ve had too many of those around here”—he glanced at me, raised a dark brow—“But that could play in your favor.”

“How so?” I asked, but with little hope.

“Nobody here wants to hear that shit,” he said, pulled me along. “So no one will bother challenging me for you.”

He led me around the building toward the front. Dozens of graffiti-covered school busses were parked across the large parking lot, the windows and doors left open, some were covered by sheets, and people sat outside in lawn chairs.

The building in front of me had tall diamond-shaped windows positioned dramatically over the wide entrance and low steel-and-glass awning. I was surprised to see that the many glass doors and windows were all still in-tact.

Kade pushed open a glass door and took me inside the once-extravagant building. Vulgar graffiti covered the walls; the smell of burnt wood and the mustiness of a slowly-dying building lingered on the air, smothered by the stench of body odor and unwashed clothes and marijuana, and, of all things, the after-burn of a methamphetamine cook. I knew that potent smell all too well—my neighbor, Terry Wiltshire, blew his house up and almost took mine with it one year because of a cook gone bad.

Insofar as I could tell, Paducah was a disgusting place, occupied by disgusting people, who, as I walked past, looked at me as if I were an annoying fly they wanted to swat and be rid of.

---