After The Apocalypse (Book 2): Church of Chaos by Gen Griffin Page B

thoughts.”
    “I'll be back in a couple of hours,” Seth said. “Promise me you'll stay here until I get back.”
    “Believe me when I say that I have absolutely zero intentions of going wandering through Ra-Shet alone at night,” I said with a small smile. “With my luck, I'd get eaten.”
    Seth snorted and then bent down so that our faces were only inches apart. “I would never let that happen.”
    I blinked at my own reflection in the lenses of his sunglasses. Without being able to see his eyes, I couldn't judge his moods at all. I didn't speak as he gently brushed his lips across my forehead in the slightest kiss. Twenty seconds later, he was gone into the night and I was alone with my thoughts.

Chapter 10
    Dinner in the underground turned out to be pan friend potatoes with chunks of sausage and little bits of green peppers. The conversation revolved around an increase in rent taxes that the king was threatening to inflict upon the poorest people in the city.
    The general consensus was that the citizens of Ra-Shet were already being taxed to their breaking point and that additional fines could very well start riots in the poorest neighborhoods. Dinner conversation revolved around possible evacuation routes from the city if things got too bad. One woman was concerned that zombies would be turned loose in the Burroughs as a form of intimidation. No one disagreed and I was suddenly, overwhelmingly glad that I hadn't grown up in the city.
    The Cube might have been restrictive, but I had never lived in fear of the Powers That Be. Not until after I'd met Seth, anyways.
    When dinner was over, everyone dispersed to wherever they spent their nights. I went up to the top of the building to stare out the window and wait for Seth to return. I'd been sitting in a windowsill for more than an hour when I heard someone come walking up behind me.
    “Are you okay?”
    I turned to see a ridiculously pretty girl with sleek amber colored hair and eyes that almost exactly matched the color of her hair. She was wearing a soft red shift-dress and carrying a box I recognized as a first aid kit.
    “I'm fine.” I didn't move from the wide windowsill that I had curled up in. The view of the city from the building Gauge and his crew called the Underground was very different from the mountain view I had been so fascinated with last night. The shops, people and smells were so much closer and just so much more real than they had seemed last night when Seth had stood in the beauty school window at the top of the mountain and pointed out the various landmarks to me.
    “Are you sure?” The amber-haired girl asked. “Gauge said that he thought you might have scraped your knees.”
    I flexed my right leg without thinking about it. The slight soreness reminded me that there were a few small scratches from where I had knelt down in the gravel to pull Moira away from her doomed mother. “I'm fine.”
    “Did you clean those cuts?” She pointed at the scratches on my knees.
    I halfway smiled at her. “Actually, yes. I've spent most of my life working in-.” I stopped myself before I blurted out that I'd been trained as a nurse in the Cube's hospital ward. Gauge already knew that I was from the Cube but it wasn't exactly knowledge that needed to get around. “I know a little bit about first aid.”
    “I see.” The girl clearly hadn't missed my near blunder. I could see the curiosity in her eyes. She sat down on the edge of the windowsill beside me. “My name's Lola. What's yours?”
    “Pilar.” My name wasn't a secret.
    “Gauge told me that your parents got sold in the meat market and that you're trying to find them,” Lola spoke the words gently. The expression on her pixie-like face was kind.
    I took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly. Tears were burning the backs of my eyes. “My dad might still be in the city somewhere.”
    “Gauge told me that too. He's sent a few of our people out looking for information about who bought