Wolves by D. J. Molles Page B

is a trading town only. No place for hanging out and rabblerousin’.”
    Huxley and Jay and Rigo look amongst themselves.
    Huxley has nothing of value but his knife, and that he is not willing to trade. Jay has the satchel of things he scavenged from the wreckage of the Mexican caravan. He upends this on the table, spreading the items out. It is an assortment of oddities from small, burned-out electronic parts and wiring, to some items of a more homemade nature. Some sorts of ointments and salves.
    The sentry pokes through them, unimpressed.
    Next, Rigo approaches the table and begins to empty his voluminous pockets. From inside these deep folds he produces several ancient candies, bottle caps, paper clips, intact fuses, batteries, a handful of 9mm rounds, and an old multitool.
    The sentry bobbles his head. “Well. It ain’t a whole lot. But I suppose it’s enough.” He motions to the gate. “You can go.”
    The young man at the minicannon steps from his perch at the helm of the contraption and pulls a metal cord that threads through a pulley system and lifts the heavy gate constructed of numerous layers of rusted steel sheeting.
    With the huge, heavy thing creaking and groaning over his head, Huxley steps through into the town of Borderline. The earth has been crushed by thousands of footsteps so that nothing grows, except for skeletal strands of scrub brush along the edges of the shacks and shanties. Everything has been constructed of scrap metal and old wood remnants from stick-built houses.
    The main businesses—traders’ posts, liquor houses, and whorehouses—are clustered around the roadway that feeds from the gate, a sort of main street that extends just two hundred yards or so into Borderline and ends at the back walls of the town—it is small as Old World towns go, but Huxley supposes that when you have to put a wall around things, you can’t make them that big.
    The gate falls noisily back into place behind them.
    Huxley looks around, standing in the middle of the main drag. It is an odd sensation, being in this place. After so long in the wide open, it is disorienting to be in such close quarters. It feels almost claustrophobic.
    To his right, a small shack hangs with various jerkies and fills the air with the smell of charred meat as the shopkeeper stokes the flames of his cookfire, preparing a fresh batch of smoked meats for sale or trade. Beyond the smokehouse lies another shanty where a cruel-looking man pulls a tarp aside and yells inside. Two young girls emerge, scantily clad. Across from these two enterprises, Huxley sees a scrapper, his wares set around him, a store full of nameless goods that Huxley can’t even identify, or imagine how they could be used. Next to the scrapper, there is the liquor house, hawking whatever spirits the locals have brewed from whatever fermentables they can come up with out here.
    Tucked behind the businesses that line the main drag, there is a collection of shanties where the permanent residents of Borderline make their homes. They are all about ten foot cubes, some with windows cut into their sides, others that have been stacked, one on top of the other, to make a two-story structure. There is a surprising amount of people milling about. Most of them congregate in the center of the main drag of the open-air market, a lot of carts and small stands for traders that have no residence in Borderline, or at least don’t own a shopfront.
    Huxley eyes the trading posts that seem to have the widest variety of things.
    Jay seems distracted by the two young prostitutes. They squirm for attention, doing the best they can to attract the eyes of men entering the town. And succeeding, by the look on Jay’s face. It’s been a long time since Huxley has been with a woman. But these are not women. They are just girls.
    Huxley looks at the man that stands behind them. Their pimp, their owner, or their guard, he’s not sure