1 Behind Beer Barrels (1/2)
”Female!”
That shout ends my life as I know it.
I came to the market this morning dressed as a man in order to sell three oranges, stolen from a tree behind a walled garden in the gold zone. Each of the oranges is a potential lifeline. I could eat them and quench my desire for something sweet and liquidy, but if I sell them here in Mosquito Market, these three oranges can be traded for so much more. Water purification tablets. Meat. Batteries for the radio and the flashlight, both of which are dead and leave me in dark, silent nights when the drizzle makes it impossible to build a fire. All I can do is lie underneath the sheet iron roof and hope that the old plastic bags I glued to it keep the rain from corroding through.
The risk of sneaking into the market was worth it—until it wasn't.
I wear heavy men's clothes, a big overcoat with shoulder pads that make me look broader. I have a broad-brimmed hat that I can pull down to cover most of my face. I put on a deep voice, and a beard.
The beard just gave me away. I should have taken my supplies and left, but I had a few shell casings in my pocket, enough to trade for some meat stew. That smell called to me and called to me until I gave in and sat shoulder to shoulder with the men who frequent the market, slurping down my stew. I didn't notice that it was soaking the fibers of my fake beard. I didn't notice the heat and the sweat working away at the glue either, not until the patch of hair that kept the men thinking I was male dropped off my face and into my stew, right in front of several dozen traders, soldiers, and mercenaries. Men.
”It's a woman!”
The cry goes up and is carried across the crowds. There must be at least five thousand men here today. Five thousand men, most of whom are stuck with a virginity they don't want because these days, no man has a woman.
Wommmaaaaaaaaaaaannn!The shouting is a visceral, hungry, brutal sound that makes my blood run cold. How do they know? A fake beard does not a woman make.
These men are starved for sex. Post-Event, women are impossibly rare. People are rare in general, and women are prized. Kept in great harems and breeding programs. A woman in the wild is almost unheard of. That's why I've been so careful to make sure nobody has ever heard of me.
Until now.