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Wanderers 101
Jun fidgeted more the seedier the streets got. “So this is my old boss Chaz. It’s the bar where I met Burian.”
This was also a far cry from posh shops with Gazelle the previous day. A cold, ugly mist fell from the sky, and the city stank like dead rats and garbage. The wanderers had followed, but stopped short once we’d turned onto this block, then disappeared entirely.
Getting to the bar required leaving the car, walking two blocks, and then Jun had to lead us down a tangled network of code-violating buildings and alleys. I marveled that Jun or Sterling thought in any way this was a good idea. The whole thing reeked of mold, sewage, rats, unwashed humans, and something like caramelized plastic burning in an oven. An assortment of human-shaped forms tucked themselves around boxes and dumpsters and only gave us quick glances before looking back down. The locals hadn’t emerged from their hangovers and hazes yet.
“So how did you meet Burian, exactly?” Sterling had not gotten around to telling me any of this story the previous evening.
“I was bouncing to make ends meet,” he said, muttering under his breath and smelling of shame, “and I was doing it down here. It’s rough work. Good pay. You get your paws dirty.”
“Hmm,” I said with understanding. Meaning he’d been down in the muck with the other low-life bottom-feeders.
“Saw Burian a few times. He wasn’t a problem until one night. I’m not exactly sure how it happened, but he ended up face-down in a toilet. He was pretty fucking destroyed. Not policy to call the cops or an ambulance, but he needed one or the other.”
“Hmmm.”
“Before I chucked him into a dumpster, I found his phone, and used his finger to unlock it, and he had like no contacts, except this one guy he texted back and forth with, so I was like, hey, come get your boy off my doorstep. Sterling showed up, and you know Sterling, when he walks into a room, the room stops.”
Jun banged on a rusted metal door set into the side of an ancient brick building wedged between two slightly taller, precarious-looking wood buildings. Nobody light a match. The cheap perfume Jun had doused me in made me sneeze.
“It’s pretty safe before two,” Jun said with some unease.
“These buildings are great for an ambush.” I eyed the decrepit structures rising around us. What was that weird smell? Like someone was burning a plastic-covered doughnut in an oven.
“Like I said. Before two.” He banged on the metal door again.
“Because nobody’s conscious yet?”
“Pretty much,” he said. “And the owners regularly get deliveries and business and stuff, and they don’t like scumbags causing trouble.”
A little metal door slid open on the larger door.
“Open up.” Jun grunted, banging on it once more with his fist. “We got an appointment with Chaz.”
The door slammed shut again, then the larger door creaked open.
The inside was dark: dark walls painted with slightly brighter but dark murals, but the lights were on, and everything illuminated. Half a dozen workers pushed brooms and mops, wiped down glasses and organized the bar, or unloaded pallets of beer.
And as I walked in, every single one of them stopped moving and stared. The tension in the air snapped to a hum like a struck tuning fork.
“We should leave,” Hamid murmured.
“Scouting for investments isn’t pretty, Hamid,” I murmured back. We’d sold this little outing into a sewer as Sterling wanting to get in on the ground floor of some urban rehab. The only rehab this area of town needed was to be fire-bombed and liberally salted.
“Chaz!” Jun bellowed.
A narrow fire-escape like railing ran around the top level of the club, and a door opened. A moment later a skinny wolf with a power mullet straight out of a bad family photo, wearing jeans so tight his testicles strained forward in a pleading knot begging for mercy and a stained purple wife beater, emerged. He made his way down the rickety fire-escape stairs to the bottom level while his staff continued to do their best zombie thrall impression.
“Get back to work!” Chaz swung his arms at them. “She ain’t here for you losers. This here is a married woman.”
Chaz thrust his thumbs in his belt loops, rolled his eyes at Hamid, and whistled at me. “Damn, Jun. You didn’t tell me she was fancy.”
Jun shrugged, uncomfortable.
“Lookit that pedigree. It just drips right off you, don’t it? Even under that shitty perfume.” Chaz eyed me up and down. “Gaia’s ass. You don’t belong anywhere near here, Lu— what’s your name again?”
“Winter Mortcombe.”
