Page 34 of Mayflower

The town looks like ruins, no better than Ashlands’ slums. The atmosphere of desolation gives me chills. I’ve lived in places like this, worked the streets in worse neighborhoods. I’ve always wanted to get away from this—poverty, decay, pervasive morals. The déjà vu hits me so hard that I want to twist inside out.

The stench is so bad I can almost taste it in my mouth. Foul, sour, bitter, rotting—all at once. It clogs my nostrils, and I hold my breath, the way you do as a child, like that ever helped to keep the stench out of your system.

The streets are dark and quiet, but there is a strange buzzing of danger that comes from the occasional open doors and brightly lit basements, sinister laughter, gunshots, and screams that poke the heavy night air. The smell of the ocean salt mixes with the garbage teeming with rodents and decomposition, and I curse inwardly as Ali and I shadow the side streets.

A quiet rustling makes Ali raise his palm and freeze, halting me.

A glow comes from an overturned dumpster by the side of a boarded-up building.

“Git!” someone snaps, and a dog runs across the road. “Hurry up,” the female voice says. “Grab the bucket and let’s go.”

Two figures, a female and a child, leap out of the dumpster and into the darkness behind the house fence, their echoing footsteps disappearing into the night.

“Jesus,” I say on an exhale, gritting my teeth.

Even after the Change, Port Mrei was all right. The world war didn’t turn it into this dump, Butcher and his gang did. It’s mostly men on the main streets, day and night, cocky ones with guns, drunk and high ones with cans of beers, playing cards. Others looking for trouble and something to steal.

The hunched-up figures, like shadows, scurrying here and there are those looking for food or, like the family we just saw, looking for leftovers in dumpsters.

I’m in the mood to fuck something up. Anger rises in me like a wave, but I can’t afford to give in to it. It’s not a game. I need to locate my target and get rid of it. So I think about Maddy. I can’t afford not to see her again. This has to be done fast and smoothly.

Love can save one man but ruin a thousand. A man in love can build a kingdom but can also destroy an entire world. Mac said that once. He occasionally talked about women, though never about his relationships. But he sure knew the true scale of the disaster that love can cause.

Me? I happened to fall in love with the daughter of one of the most powerful men in the world.

They say vampires are triggered by blood thirst. A taste of blood can turn them into beasts. It’s the same with affection. I was raised in an emotional vacuum. One taste of what it felt like to be loved, and I’m insatiable.

Am I reckless? Maybe. But this isn’t my first rodeo. I’ve been here before, with someone who looked at me and saw hope, strength, their personal Jesus. It shakes you. The resurrection has become your mundane, but you never thought that you could be so important to someone else. You've been buried in mud and slime so many times that gutters became your second home. Yet this one person looks at you with awe like you've come to save them.

Exupéry said that we become responsible, forever, for what we've tamed. That goes for your monsters and those we choose to care for.

That was little Emily, who held my hand when she was happy and snuck to sleep in my room when it was stormy outside. She didn't care for my bruised knuckles and what it took to get the money to buy her Christmas presents, or what they called me on the streets or how vicious my punches could be. To her, I was a hero, the one who tried to put powdered sleeping pills into our foster father’s bottle to get him to pass out. I did only what my teenage self thought I could do. To her, that was the most anyone had ever done.

And now I have Maddy. I won’t make the same mistake. I’m not a teenager. And my revenge is served cold.

The reason the West got so fucked by the rest of the world and all the nukes was because the West had gotten comfortable. It got fat. It got lazy. It got slow and too diplomatic, rolling in butter for decades while the rest of the world was in constant wars, priming and training for the biggest one.

And that’s Butcher’s gang. Those motherfuckers used to be fearless. Now, they think they are a king’s entourage, rolling in dough. They are becoming lazy—I count on that. So, I will take them out one by one.

Can I justify killing for revenge? When it comes to law, no. But Mac said that laws and justice are not always the same thing. And Mac is the wisest man I’ve known.

Ali and I move slowly in the shadows of the buildings. Granted, Port Mrei is one fucked up shadow.

Ali slows down to be behind me. My solo show is coming up.

I hear Shepherd’s men—shooting, sabotaging. They are not inconspicuous. They are a bit angry, thinking they have a stake in this place. That makes all the difference. I wouldn’t have jeopardized their safety. But Shepherd offered to help. His men were eager to go.

So be it.

We have one agreement—they are protection, my plan B. Let’s hope I am capable of pulling off plan A on my own. And that is, to find Skiba.

The noise grows louder as we change streets and get closer to Butcher’s headquarters, a mansion surrounded by many houses occupied by his men. The noise is obvious—while the rest of town is afraid, shriveling into themselves, these fuckers are celebrating, something, or nothing, or just partying.

Ali and I halt at the back of a fence around a dilapidated shop and peer into the street.

I’ve never had so many enemies in front of me. Dozens of men are scattered along the street, on the balconies of the houses, as well as probably inside. But most of them are careless and sloppy, high on power. Many are ready to shoot just for the hell of it. They are a mob. And I’ll have to deal with all of them to get to just one.

This time, I’m ready.

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