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  Although he didn’t recall making a reservation, four beds had been set aside in Dylan’s name. The beds were arranged in a square, with two or three feet separating each bed, and though Dylan wasn’t even sure he wanted to spend the rest of the night sitting on a bed he didn’t really have any alternative to suggest so he grabbed two of the girls from the limo—the one with the red nails and brunette he assumed was her friend—and jumped onto the bed furthest from the entrance. Chase and Mikey and a girl they grabbed off the dance floor took up residence in the bed across from his.

  Dylan slumped back into the pillows stacked against the headboard, the two girls sitting a bit further down on the bed, one on either side of him, handbags, iPhones, and packs of cigarettes occupying every available section of the bed. The brunette leaned over and, placing her hand behind his head, began kissing him, her tongue flicking in and out of his mouth, her lips a combo of cherry and cigarette.

  “Happy Birthday,” she said when she pulled away.

  “Yes! Happy Birthday,” the other girl said.

  “Thanks,” Dylan mumbled, distracted, looking for one of the trays he had seen on the other beds, spying one on the floor next to the bed. He leaned over the side to retrieve it and when he pulled himself back up two bottles of champagne—uncorked and set into ice buckets arranged between his bed and his friends’ bed—had appeared, and everyone had a glass. One of the girls in the bed—the one he hadn’t met yet—handed him a flute filled to the brim and simultaneously everyone screamed “Happy Birthday!”

  Mildly embarrassed, Dylan just smiled and drained his glass in a single gulp. He noticed the two other beds adjacent to his were full: a mix of girls, guys, and even a dog—he thought he was hallucinating but someone had not only brought a small dog to the club but had actually been allowed to enter with said small dog—all of whom he had never seen before in his life. Still, he considered, it could be worse: Chase and Mikey could have brought the ponytail guy from the last party.

  Dylan placed the tray—the kind on which his mother used to bring him saltines and flat ginger ale when, as a child, he was home sick from school—at the bottom of the bed before again reaching into his pocket, taking out the vial and snorting a massive line of blow.

  The music in the bar was changing, an aggressiveness creeping into the lounge beats, and Dylan dumped more white powder onto the tray, again chopping it up into several lines but this time he turned back to the two girls who were eyeing the coke like starving orphans from a Dickens novel.

  “I’m sorry,” Dylan said, as he gestured to the coke, “I’m being a terrible host. Please.”

  The blonde from the limo, the one with the red nails, swooped in, one hand holding back her hair, the other pressing her right nostril as the left hovered up two lines. She tilted her head back, her eyes shut, and a smile slowly crept across her face.

  “Wow,” she said. “Just…Wow. That is killer coke. I’m Sarah by the way.”

  “And I’m Brandi,” said her friend, who had better tits but a less pretty face. “Is it cool if we hang out and party?”

  “Yeah, it’s cool. How did you guys wind up in the limo?”

  “Um, that guy,” Sarah replied, pointing across toward the other bed at Chase.

  Chase waved, giving Dylan the thumbs-up before snorting a line off his own tray.

  “Cool. Are you guys…models?”

  “Yes!” they shrieked in unison.

  “Oh my God,” Sarah said, “You are like, so perceptive. I mean, a lot of people eventually figure out that we’re models. I mean—hello, right? Look at this bod!” She reached over and squeezed Brandi’s right tit, smiling at the other girl and sniffling once, twice, before continuing.

  “But not right away and they’re usually just guessing by that point. And yeah it’s not like either of us are doing Fashion Week or anything like that and success doesn’t just come overnight but Brandi knows this guy who has a lot of connections in the industry and he thinks we both could be stars, easily. By the way, this is killer coke. Did I already say that? Sorry if I did but baby this shit is to die for.”

  Sarah leaned back over the tray, did another massive line, a line Dylan had cut for himself because the situation was deteriorating quickly. He glanced over at Chase and Mikey’s bed: Mikey was rolling an enormous joint while Chase and the slightly overweight girl they picked up did bump after bump after bump, any sort of discretion abandoned, his hand creeping up her thigh, moving under her leather mini skirt.

  “So, are you famous or something?” Brandi asked, not even waiting for Dylan’s answer before diving forward and taking another bump.

  “No,” Dylan replied, “Not famous. Not famous at all.”

  “Are you sure? I think you’re lying…”

  Sarah leaned over to Brandi and whispered something in her ear. Brandi’s eyes got big and she leaned forward, her mouth open, her lips glistening.

  “I’m usually not very political or anything. But your dad,” she said slowly, “was sexy.”

  “You do realize that it was exactly 10 years ago that my father blew his brains out?”

  “Brains—yeah smart guys can definitely be hot too,” Brandi continued, raising her voice over the music. “That new guy—what’s his name? The one on all the ads…”

  “Heffernan,” Sarah added.

  “Yes, Heffernan. He reminds me of your dad. You see all those giant posters downtown? God who knew politicians could be so fucking gorgeous? Those eyes…” Brandi said, finishing her martini that Dylan didn’t remember her ordering, a martini that might as well have materialized out of the smoke drifting up from every corner of the club—tobacco, cloves, weed, and meth.

  “You know, the eyes are a window to the soul,” Sarah was whispering in his ear, confiding in him information she apparently felt too important to say any louder, before slumping back against the bed, as if the effort to make such a profound statement had consumed every last ounce of physical strength she had left. She lit a cigarette and took a drag, exhaling as she stared at the ceiling, through the ceiling, toward nothing.

  “I gotta hit the head,” Dylan shouted over the music, swinging his legs over the side of the giant bed. This was true; he really did have to take a piss. But he was also so restless he just couldn’t sit there on the bed, making small talk, killing time until he could bring one of the girls back to his apartment and fuck her. That was the game: You bring me to the VIP lounge at an exclusive club and provide the coke, I’ll let you fuck me any way you want. And so many nights, that was just how it happened. But right now Dylan had to move—his mind was a mess of memories and emotions he wanted to keep at bay but suppression through chemicals and flesh was extracting a heavy price; he just needed to move and so he was off the bed and heading down the stairs from the VIP area back toward the main dance floor. There was probably a private bathroom somewhere but he really couldn’t give a fuck so he just keep moving, circumventing the dance floor, watching impossibly young kids grind up against one another, the earlier lounge vibe dead, the sound system now blasting out angry rappers spitting verse after verse after verse over cold impersonal beats, clusters of young women—early to mid-20s, bachelorette party perhaps—raising their glasses, sing–screaming along with the words of the song: “Fuck a bitch/they ain’t shit/lick on these nuts and suck the dick,” laughing, bracing themselves against the bar, against their friends, against strangers, their drinks spilling all over the floor but no worries someone would clean it up later because hey—life takes Visa.

  And then the dance floor was behind him, falling away as Dylan kept moving, down a flight of stairs and into the area of the club where suddenly every attempt at ambiance or vibe or décor was abandoned and the place was just another club in another city: dim lights with empty kegs stacked in the corner, Mexican busboys running in and out of the kitchen, hauling large crates filled with clean glasses as girls lined up to use the bathroom. A couple of dealers were hanging around, and Dylan nodded to the ones he
knew, or at least thought he recognized, before pushing the door to the men’s room open.

  This particular bathroom smelled like only the bathrooms of clubs just before last call are capable of smelling: a mixture of piss, vomit, and stale beer, with a hint of industrial strength antiseptic which, rather than concealing the smell, just made everything worse.

  The floor was slippery, the cracks between the individual tiles transformed into miniature canals of gray water. Dylan navigated the empty bathroom carefully, stepping over pools of liquids he couldn’t identify as he made his way to a urinal. As he began to piss, he stared straight ahead, a series of advertisements rotating across three 9-inch-by-9-inch digital screens positioned at eye level on the three walls ringing the urinal. Dylan tried to look down into the urinal but there were pubic hairs and loogies and pink chunks of something unidentifiable ringing the pale blue urinal cake, which looked as though someone had taken a bite out of it. A wave of nausea passed over him and he tried shutting his eyes but that only made the feeling worse, so he stared straight ahead at the advertisements, which seemed to change every few seconds until everything was a single blur of color, light, pixels, products.

  Stepping away from the urinal as he zipped his fly, he heard giggling in the hallway outside the bathroom and then the door was opening and Sarah and Brandi slipped inside. Dylan opened his mouth but before he could say anything, Sarah was kissing him, pushing him up against the end stall as Brandi giggled before adding, “It is your birthday after all, right?”

  For a second Dylan flashed back to the party, to the possibility that Meghan Morrison had been there but then he remembered how he had blown the whole thing years ago and it probably wasn’t even her anyway and besides, Sarah was smiling as Brandi closed the door behind them and then Sarah and Brandi were kissing, Sarah’s hands climbing underneath Brandi’s skirt as Brandi leaned against the wall. Dylan was sitting on the toilet, watching, his cock growing harder as Sarah slid Brandi’s panties down her smooth, toned thighs, calves, finally over the four-inch black heels. She tossed the panties at Dylan, lifting up the skirt as Brandi urged her on, imploring her to eat my pussy, which Sarah did as Dylan watched, a grin plastered across his face, wondering when he should join in. Sarah answered that question for him when seconds later her head was out of Brandi’s lap and she was kneeling in front of him, unzipping his fly and pulling his cock free. Brandi was still moaning, trying to finish with her hand what Sarah started. Dylan stared at Brandi as Sarah took his cock into her mouth, sucking the head then moving down his shaft, taking his balls into her mouth, sucking hard on one, then the other, before letting go and pulling her head back, taking a breath before deep throating the whole thing.

  Now Brandi was moving toward him, her face flushed, the skin on her breastbone glowing red. Sarah took her mouth off his cock, spitting on it before Brandi, facing Sarah and the door but turned away from Dylan, her thighs slick with her own juices, eased herself onto him, grunting softly as he pushed inside of her. Sarah was still on her knees, licking Dylan’s balls and Brandi’s pussy, pausing only to take a breath or urge Dylan to fuck Brandi harder, her hand between her own legs, fingering her pussy, her asshole, frantically trying to get herself off.

  The bathroom door swung open, the music from the club spilling into the bathroom before fading back to a muffled pulse as the door closed. Someone was in the bathroom but Dylan didn’t give a damn; he could feel his own orgasm starting to build up from the base of his cock, and he began fucking Brandi even harder, the smell of her hair—cigarettes and perfume and sex—driving him crazy, the sound of skin slapping skin echoing off the concrete walls.

  With another burst of music and noise and voices the door opened again then shut and Brandi was leaning forward now, forcing Dylan deeper into her, grinding her clit against Sarah’s mouth, her hands pressed up against the stall door, her nails digging into the stickers advertising defunct bands and live-sex websites slapped haphazardly across the metal.

  “Oh my God I’m coming,” Brandi announced, moaning, her hips bucking uncontrollably—that pushed Dylan over the edge and he pulled out of her, exploding all over the word tattooed across her lower back: FEAR.

  “Jesus Christ,” Dylan gasped as Brandi stood up, smiling, helping Sarah to her feet, both girls pulling their clothes back into place. “Jesus Fucking Christ. That’s the best birthday present I’ve ever had.”

  “We thought you might like it,” said Sarah, smiling over her shoulder as she pushed open the stall door and began straightening her clothes in the grimy men’s room mirror.

  “Like it? That’s an understatement,” said Dylan. “Nice tattoo too…But why ‘FEAR’?”

  Brandi turned around, a blank look plastered across her face, her eyes looking at him, through him.

  “Aren’t you afraid?” she asked.

  The room was suddenly very quiet and all Dylan could hear was muffled bass rumbling behind the door, vibrating off the walls, and the buzz of dying florescent lights.

  “Let’s do another line,” said Sarah, breaking the silence.

  Chapter 7

  Tiber City

  Aug. 26, 2015

  2:29 p.m.

  In the abandoned warehouse deep within Tiber City’s Jungle district, Campbell tended to the dying child.

  Campbell was amazed the child was still drawing breath. The boy had been brought to the warehouse-turned-field hospital, known as Camp Ramoth, less than five hours ago, his body ravaged by disease, his skin glowing, radioactive with fever, transforming the frail, prepubescent frame into a furnace of flesh and bone. A puss-caked lesion running the length of the child’s stomach quivered with infection.

  Despite the introduction of antibiotics, the fever persisted and the boy was writhing on top of the tiny cot that had been prepared for him, crying out in agony, his little hand reaching into the air for his mother, his father, for some reassurance that the pain would end and everything would be OK. But there was no mother, no father, only Campbell, and while the doctor knew the pain would end, he also knew that everything would not be OK.

  Taking the child into his arms, Campbell raised the boy off the sweat-soaked cot, whispering reassurances before gently lowering the tiny, shivering frame into a small tub of lukewarm water. The child moaned, his skin trembling as the water rose around him. He placed one hand behind the boy’s head, creating a fleshy buffer between the hard ceramic of the tub and the child’s skull. With his other hand, Campbell picked up a sponge and began to clean the lesion. A thick layer of crust covered the disease, although when the sponge began to move across the infected area, fresh puss—yellow with the consistency and smell of mayonnaise left to bake in the sun—began oozing from the deformity. The child moaned, delirious, as Campbell continued cleaning the lesion, the boy’s body shaking as fever and bacteria revolted against the soapy green-gray water. Gradually the crust sealing the infection broke away, bits of scab crumbling into the tub, floating across the top of the water like bath toys.

  The boy was crying now, tears streaming down his scarred face as his mouth tried to form words but none would come because this child did not know language, only sound, but even in anguished wails his question was still clear: Why?

  There was no way Campbell could answer the child, no response that would provide a sufficient explanation as to why this child had been chosen to suffer. Instead, he knelt by the side of the bathtub, continuing to bathe the boy as the infection cleared, squeezing the lukewarm water over the child’s bald and bruised head, and in that moment, the rest of the warehouse-turned-makeshift hospice seemed to melt away and there was only Campbell and the boy, and he began speaking to the child in low, soft tones, telling him of places far away from Tiber City, of lands filled with good men who performed good deeds, ancient tales in which hero was not a word that triggered snickering and the rolling of eyes, stories that, above all, were an attempt to convey to this dying child that the world had not always been like this.

  As if
to reject this suggestion, the boy began to convulse, and Campbell dropped the sponge, placing his hand on the child’s head, cursing softly as the fever refused to break.

  Lifting the boy back out of the tub, Campbell held him in his arms, water soaking his shirt as he wrapped the boy in towels, calling out for assistance; he needed to pack ice in towels and wrap them around the boy to have any chance of breaking the fever. There was no intercom, no call button in Camp Ramoth, just Campbell’s voice booming off stone and exposed piping.

  Seconds later the gurney men arrived. They moved silently into the warehouse, entering from a side hallway two by two by one: five total. There was no particular urgency to their movements yet there was purpose and precision and within seconds they were gathered around the child’s cot, laboring in silence as Campbell, exhausted, took a few steps backward before slumping against a crumbling wall. He exhaled sharply, watching as the gurney men began wrapping ice in tattered, stained towels, a terrifying helplessness washing over him as he saw the sheer horror reflected in the child’s eyes. There was so much he wanted to try to explain to the boy but there was just not enough time: This child would die like the others.

  But until that moment came, Campbell would do everything in his power to alleviate this child’s suffering. For the past decade Campbell had been a servant of the gurney men, tending to Tiber City’s sick and dying: those forgotten as the rest of the city, the country, the world drifted deeper into the future.

  There had been a resurgence of diseases forgotten by the Western world: leprosy, bubonic plague, smallpox, and Ebola had begun to make sporadic appearances throughout Tiber City’s Jungle district. There were hospitals, of course, but the emergency response services no longer ran to all parts of the city. The numbers of uninsured had skyrocketed over the past few years, as had the number of illegal immigrants cramming into the already-swollen Tiber City slums. As conditions deteriorated, a wave of disease swept across the city; some families chose to simply abandon their terminally-ill children, moving into another slum without their young: Finding sick children left to die in squatter pads or shooting galleries was no longer an unusual occurrence. Yet, in the time it would take to move these children into some sort of government home, they’d most likely be dead, forced to spend their final days on earth bound in red tape. And so Campbell worked in this subterranean camp, a witness to human suffering in its most absolute form, doing what he could to alleviate misery.