“Ow!” I shout with complaint as he sets me down on my feet in another room. “Why did you do that?”
He takes a small piece of cloth, then my hand and begins wiping my fruit-covered fingers. I yank my hand away and stuff them into my mouth. He is stealing the last of the very good taste!
“You are a wild little thing,” he sighs.
I take it that is not good in his eyes, but that’s something I’m proud of. There aren’t many people living wild anymore. Most of them have given up freedom for the safety of the cities and their tyrants. There are seventeen cities remaining in what used to be the continental United States.
I was born in the wilds outside Dallas. The sheriff who captured me today rules over the city. Much of it lies in post-war ruin, but he has managed to preserve enough of it to house several hundred thousand men, and perhaps a few hundred women.
Once upon a time, women were equal in number to men, and they were free. My father told me how it all changed, how the Event destroyed the world as they knew it. He saw it happen when he was a small boy, and he often told me stories in the long nights where we would lie in the dark, hiding from patrols looking for wild people. Our existence itself was always illegal, but he kept me safe as long as he could.
The Event was devastating. Technically there was more than one event. There were really two. The first was a sickness that struck women down in great disproportion, and rendered many, many more sterile. A biological agent, which had once been developed to control mosquito numbers, was mutated and used against the human population.
It took two years for the secondary effects of the Event to be felt, but with so many women gone, the remaining men, struck down with grief and full of rage at those who had inflicted the virus, went to war. There was no single person to go to war against. The perpetrators of the act were not discovered, though there were plenty of suspects.
War spread across the nation, war without reason. War against people of different heritages, different ideas, war against those of the wrong eye color. Coast against coast, state against state. There were those who killed to sate their rage, those who killed for revenge, there was little in the way of order and even less in the way of mercy.
Then, when it seemed they might kill until the very end of the world, someone detonated the bomb that turned the West Coast into a sea of nuclear glass, triggering an earthquake powerful enough to drop several cities into the ocean.
Peace came on rivers of blood. Order arose out of chaos. Warlords emerged, twenty of them who, through brutality and raw viciousness, formed bands of warriors and took major cities for their own territories.
The few healthy women remaining were captured and put to work spawning fresh generations. But still, female babies were a rarity. The gene editing agent had done its work too well. Instead of one female being born to every male born, there was only one female to every thousand males. A few legendary women were able to produce pure female lineages, and those women were worshipped.
I am descended from Athena of California. She who bore twelve daughters. My line is a powerful one. My father told me that often. I was born to a daughter of Athena who managed to escape the compound she was held in. She did not survive bearing me, but I did. The sheriff did not take the time to discern my genetics when he captured me, and for that I am glad. If he knew, I am almost certain I would never see the light of day again.
I was born wild. My mother fought to make me wild. And my father guarded me as long as he could. Now, I have foolishly given up some of that freedom for as little as three oranges.
Mattias’ comment about me being a wild thing sobers me more than the slap did. It reminds me of all I have lost, and all I need to fight to regain.
To get out of here, I need to understand who I am being held by. Who is Mattias? And why have I been given to him and Elias? It seems strange. Women are never allowed to be with men. Men can’t help themselves. But these ones seem to be able to.
As the food starts to settle in my stomach, questions start to rise.
“They call you the cut men, where’s your knives? Are you going to cut me? What are you going to cut?”
“We are the ones who have been cut, child. Come.”
“You’ve been cut?” I follow Mattias, asking him question after question. The house is not terribly large, but it is beautiful. Shining tile covers the floors, and the walls likewise seem to be made of rock of some kind. It could be cold and sterile, but carvings make it elegant, and the furniture is old and very fine.
We used to scavenge bits and pieces from the broken world for the shack, but none of them were nearly as nice as these gleaming wooden chairs and tables that we pass by.
Elias joins us, and I begin to question them both.
“What did they cut? Did they cut your hair off?”
A look passes between them, a smirking, long-suffering gaze.
“Something else.”
“Oh, my god, what?”
They ignore the question as they lead me into a bathing chamber. In the past, I have showered when it rained, or wallowed in what remained of dried-up creeks. I have never seen such a fine tub as this. It is the width of the entire room, and it is filled with pristine, clear water.
I rush forward, dip my face into the tub and start slurping at the water.
“Alright. Enough of that,” Mattias rumbles, his large palm swatting my rear gently. “Don’t drink the bathwater. Take your underwear off and get in it.”
“I’m dirty! I’ll make it filthy!”