Pereya considers me and mutters something in Portuguese, then shrugs and leads us to the back room.
It’s surprisingly clean, the back room. There’s no windows, and the only light is a bare lightbulb that flickers overhead. Pereya lets us into the room, shuts the door behind us all, and then pulls a ring of keys out of his pocket. There’s a short wooden table in one corner of the room, and Pereya heads there. He drags it over to the side, revealing a trap door with a padlock on it, unlocks it, and flips it up. Under the floor, there are two military crates, also padlocked. He hops down into the crawlspace and opens the first crate. “What’s the order of the day, Hays?”
“I’m thinking a GPS tracker if you have one. Couple of semi automatics. More bullets. Maybe a nice grenade for shits and giggles.”
Pereya grunts and unlocks the case, revealing a veritable armory stored in the boxes. My eyes widen. Did we come here to get more guns? How many more do we need? Pereya digs through the stack of arms and pulls out another handgun. He offers it to Daniel, who inspects it with a clinical air.
The room’s quiet. Oppressively so. I lick my lips, nervous as Pereya drags gun after gun out of the case, along with boxes of bullets and cartridges.
Daniel looks over at me. “You want anything, baby doll?”
“For you to stop calling me baby doll,” I say in a sweet voice. Then I add, “Maybe a couple of knives.” I want to be armed to the teeth.
“You heard the lady,” Daniel says, and I catch a drawl in his voice. Southern, or that’s part of his act, too. “Got any knives?”
Pereya pulls out a couple of small knives in leather sheaths. “For your girlfriend. She can slide them in her boots.” He gives my ugly sandals a skeptical look.
“You got boots for her?” Daniel asks.
“Size seven,” I offer hopefully. I like the idea of getting boots and filling them with weapons. “Maybe some jeans, too. Size two.”
“I’ll see what I can find,” Pereya says, tossing stuff into a pile at Daniel’s feet. “Give me until the morning.”
“Doc?” Daniel asks again.
“Soon,” Pereya answers.
“We also need a place to stay tonight.” Daniel says, pulling out a wad of money from his pocket and peeling bills off. “Though I think it goes without saying that no one saw us here.”
Pereya gives us a skeptical look, then shrugs again, as if he doesn’t care. “Got a room upstairs. I can toss my old lady out of it for the night, but it’ll cost ya.”
“Not a problem,” Daniel says smoothly, flipping more money out of his stash for Pereya.
I look around at this room. No windows. Only one door. And we’re close to the front of the building. I point at the floor. “We want this room.”
Pereya looks at me like I’m crazy. “Ain’t no bed in here, chickie.”
“Bring us blankets and pillows,” I tell him. “I like this room.” It’s true—I wouldn’t feel safe upstairs in a room full of windows. In this place, we can barricade ourselves for the night . . . and we’re close to the exit if we need to escape.
Daniel’s giving me a half smile, as if he’s wondering what I’m thinking, but he doesn’t argue. He looks over at Pereya, pulls out a few more bills and then offers them to the man. “Think you can set us up for the night?”
Pereya takes the money without even looking at the amount. He simply pockets it and begins to put his guns carefully back into their cases, locks them, and then shuts the trap door and padlocks it. “Be back in a bit with your bedding,” he tells us, leaving me and Daniel in the room.
WHEN PEREYA RETURNS HE BRINGS an older woman with kind eyes. She’s carrying a black bag.
“Hello, I’m—”
Daniel cuts her off. “No names.”
Pressing her lips together, she nods and opens the bag. “I’m going to take blood and urine samples. I can have your results back in an hour.”
I don’t know if I’m relieved or terrified to see the doctor. Both, I suppose. I’m afraid of what she’ll find swimming in my system after all the “clients” I’ve had. But . . . I also want to know. So I let her examine me thoroughly, not flinching when her touch becomes as invasive as any client’s. She asks me personal questions without judgment on her face and takes blood and urine. Daniel’s there the whole time, at my insistence. I don’t think I’d be comfortable with a stranger touching me if he wasn’t there. He keeps his face averted out of respect for me, though.
Then the doctor leaves to run tests, and I sit in the room, waiting, my arms wrapped around my torso as if I can hug out the fear tumbling through my body.
The call comes back quickly. Daniel listens, speaks a few words into the phone, and then hangs up. “All clear,” he tells me.
I want to collapse with relief. “Nothing?”
“Nothing. No STDs; no bun in the oven. You’re right as rain.”
I stare at him. Right as rain? I didn’t catch anything, but that doesn’t mean I’ll ever be “right” again. Still, I’m relieved beyond words that I’m not a walking stick of hepatitis. Small blessing, I suppose, that Freeze was such a hygiene freak.
“I told you that they used condoms. Even when I blew them.”
“Can’t believe Gomes sold you. What a stupid, greedy fuck. If I don’t get to him, Mr. Freeze will.” He sounds disgusted, as if he can’t believe the stupidity.
I slide to the floor, my knees feeling weak. I’m sitting close to a load of weapons at Daniel’s feet, and he’s casually picking through them as I watch. I glance around the room once more. “You sure this place is safe?”
“Not at all,” Daniel says. “But the devil you know, and all that.”
I know how that feels. “Good point.”
Daniel stuffs a few of the new guns into both of our bags. “So why do you like this room?”
“Two things: no windows and close to the front door.”
He grunts, not looking at me as he organizes his new stash of weapons. “So you’d rather be close to the front door than have a bed?”
“The way I look at it, everyone here is dangerous,” I say. “If I was in a zombie apocalypse and I wanted to be safe, I’d pick a room with no windows and close to the ground floor. You don’t want to be upstairs in case of an emergency.”