We drove for twenty minutes. The city was a graveyard of abandoned cars.
I had to weave the truck through the wreckage. Deviants were everywhere. They were perched on rooftops.
They were crawling out of sewers. All of them naked. All of them hungry.
I pulled up to a Rite-Aid. The windows were reinforced with metal bars. A "Pharmacy." Fitting for a walking drug-store like me.
"Wait here," I told Janiella.
I hopped out. I still had the lamp. I approached the front door. It was locked. I looked through the glass. The interior was dark. Shadowy.
I smashed the glass of the side door. The alarm didn't go off. No power. The silence was heavier than the noise.
I cleared the aisles. It was empty. The Deviants didn't care about aspirin or bandages. They only cared about me.
"Come on," I signaled to Janiella.
She ran inside. She was shivering again. The air in the pharmacy was freezing.
"Check the back," I said. "See if there's a breakroom. We need a place to sleep."
I walked to the pharmacy counter.
I hopped over. I started grabbing supplies. Water. Protein bars. Vitamins. If I was going to be the world's battery, I needed to charge.
I looked at my reflection in a mirror behind the counter. I looked like shit.
My eyes were sunken. My skin was pale. I looked like a guy who'd been on a week-long bender. (haha).
"Hex!" Janiella called out from the back.
I ran to her. She was standing in the doorway of the manager's office. Inside, a woman was huddled in the corner. She wasn't a Deviant. Not yet.
She was middle-aged. Wearing scrubs. A nurse. Or a pharmacist. Her skin was starting to turn grey. Her eyes were darting around. She was shivering.
"Please," the woman whispered. Her voice was a croak. "The rain... I drank some. I can feel it. The cold. It's coming."
Janiella looked at me. Her eyes were wide.
"Hex. You have to help her."
I looked at the nurse. She was a stranger. I didn't know her name. I didn't care. But she had skills. She knew medicine. She was a resource.
But my "medicine" was limited. If I saved her, that was another clock to manage. Another mouth to feed. Another seven-day fuse.
"Hex?" Janiella pushed.
I looked at the nurse. She was staring at my crotch. She didn't even realize she was doing it. Her instinct knew where the cure was. It was primal.
"Fine," I said. I felt a wave of exhaustion hit me. "But this isn't free. You work for me. You help us survive. Understand?"
The nurse nodded frantically. She was desperate.
"Janiella, get her some water," I directed.
I walked toward the nurse. I started unzipping my jeans. My body felt like lead. This was my life now. A transactional savior. A biological pimp.
Life is a bad joke. And I was the punchline.