Basic Math

Grant wakes the next morning to sounds of arguing over a table. His map is more active than it should be this early.

Leanne wants half of the second floor. Eve wants the roof empty. Mary wants Grant to take more people.

He steps from his bed to Mary at the table. Several women jump at his sudden appearance. “Just four people and the bus,” he insists.

“That’s fucking stupid!” Eve’s eyes go wide. “I mean…I think we need to be as prepared as possible, master.” She says with her eyes downcast, regretting her outburst. She has the rifle across her knees like it belongs there. “I know you are crazy strong now, but we don’t know what’s out there for sure.”

“I want the shop,” Grant says. “Two guys. Not like me. If I roll up with fifty women they run out the back and we get nothing.”

“Or they shoot and we have fifty extra bodies in the way,” Mary says. “He’s right. Small is better.” She looks at him. “I’m going.”

“I know.”

“Zoya. Eve. That’s it.”

Leanne’s mouth opens.

“Master—”

“Two stays a door that shoots. You’re the door. Olivia’s not coming. Cindy’s not coming. Jose drives, turns around, waits a block over. He does not play hero.”

Leanne swallows it. The word master sits there first and she lets it.

“Yes, master.”

Piper is in the kitchen doorway in the same tank top as before. She looks at Grant like she is hungry for round two with him.

“I could come.”

“You should stay,” Grant says.

She nods too fast. “Yes, master.” Her eyes stay on his mouth a second too long. Mary sees it, her eyes narrow, but she does not comment.

They take two pistols, Eve’s rifle, Zoya’s shotgun, a duffel bag for whatever the shop has to take. Grant does not choose a gun. His hands are enough.

The five miles is open whether he likes it or not.

Nine small. Five bigger. Two at a hundred. The unreadable one, east-northeast, still there, still alone.

The shop is three blocks west of campus. Its metal door is pulled halfway. Two ordinary hearts in the back. And — he looks harder than last night — four more hearts stacked behind a wall. Women. Tagged. Not loose. The two men have them.

“They’ve got girls,” Grant says, in the bus. “Four. Claimed. I missed it because I was looking for loose ones.”

“So we kill two guys and you get four,” Eve says. “I like the math.”

Grant continues. “Don’t get careless. They’ve got a locked counter and whatever’s in the case.”

Jose pulls up a block short.

“I’ll sit here, but I hate it,” he says.

“Just sit here and keep the engine on,” Grant says.

“Yes, boss. I’ll gladly stay out of whatever crazy shit you are doing this time.”

Grant nods and moves on.

The street in front of the shop is quiet in the wrong way.

The metal door hangs at waist height. Someone has been ducking under it. A bell on the inner door that does not ring because that door is propped with a cinder block. Inside: glass cases, most are smashed. A wall of empty hooks where guitars were. The gun counter still has a cage over it, padlock looking like it was hit with a hammer and lost.

Grant goes under the metal door first. Mary after him. Zoya last, shotgun low. Eve stays on the sidewalk with the rifle because somebody has to watch the street.

“Hello?” Grant does not shout. He does not need to.

A man comes out of the back with a revolver that has seen better years. Forties. Belly. Sweaty. Not a weight on the map. Just a man who got four women and a shop and thought that was the end of the story.

“Shop’s closed,” he says. “You can fuck off back under the door.”

A second man appears in the doorway behind him. Younger. Skinny. Shotgun. His hands are shaking.

Grant feels the four tags in a room behind them. Tight. Scared. One of them is close to the door.

“We’re taking the guns,” Grant says. “You can walk out. The girls stay.”

The older one laughs.

“The girls are mine, asshole. Me and Ty split ‘em. You want a piece, you wait in line like everybody else.”

Mary’s pistol is already up.

“There is no line.”

Ty lifts the shotgun. The barrel dips. He is not used to it.

Zoya shoots him in the leg.

The shop becomes a mess.

Ty screams and goes down and the shotgun goes off into a case. Glass. The older one fires wild. The round hits the cage. Grant is on him before the second shot. He takes the wrist and the revolver and puts the man through the remaining guitar hooks. The wall accepts him. The man does not get up right.

Ty is dragging himself toward the back, swearing, crying, trying to work the pump one-handed.

“Don’t,” Grant says.

Ty does it anyway. Grant’s foot finds the shotgun. Then Ty’s head finds the counter. Not full power. Just enough for Ty to stop moving.

The older one is still breathing. Barely. Grant looks at him.

“How many guns in the back.”

The man smiles with blood in it.

“Fuck you.”

Grant does not ask twice. He ends it. Two tags go blank.

Four women are now unclaimed again in the back room.

They come through the doorway in a rush — two in tank tops, one in a man’s flannel, one in nothing but underwear, all of them swinging or running or both. Unclaimed. Loud. One has a box cutter.

“Down.”

The blast goes out. Two hundred feet eats the shop, the back room, the alley through the wall. Four lock. Names stack.

“Gia. Yours.”

“Emily. Yours.”

“Nell. Yours.”

“Brooke. Yours.”

Five hundred thirty-six.

They drop the cutter. They look at him like the shop changed owners and they still work here.

“Master,” Gia says, first, like it is the only word left.

The others echo it. Soft. Immediate.

Mary lets out a breath.

“Four. Not nothing.”

Eve from the sidewalk: “Street’s still empty. Hurry the fuck up.”

The cage comes off with Grant’s hands.

Behind it: three more pistols, a dirty AR with a magazine that may or may not feed, two revolvers, a brick of 9mm, a brick of .223 that makes Eve swear again, happy, from the door. Knives. A taser nobody wants. Pepper spray. A lockbox of cash that Mary dumps on the floor and leaves.

“Ammo,” Zoya says. “That’s the real shit.”

They pack the duffel bag until it looks like it is ready to burst. Gia and Emily carry cases without being asked. Nell finds shoes. Brooke stands too close to Grant and does not pretend she is doing inventory.

“You killed them,” Brooke says. Not a question.

“Yes.”

“Good. Ty wouldn’t shut up. Don kept saying we were lucky.” She swallows. “Master. If you want me on my knees in this shop I will. I just— I can feel you. It’s different than them.”

Grant looks at her. Looks like in her early twenties. Not sure if she was older before she became his, but she is stunning. Dark hair with piercing eyes. Flawless skin besides a bruise on her jaw that is already starting to fade.

“Not in the shop,” he says. “We load up the bus. Then we leave.”

“Yes, master.”

She still looks at his mouth.

Mary catches his eye. She looks annoyed and then smirks at him.

They take everything that shoots. Jose has the bus at the corner when they come out under the metal door. Eve covers the street until the last case is on. Gia sits next to Emily and their hands find each other’s without looking.

Jose glances in the mirror.

“Four more?”

“Four more,” Grant says. “And enough ammo that Leanne can stop counting shells like they’re going extinct.”

“Good. I was tired of that.”

The ride back is not quiet.

Emily is pressed to Grant’s shoulder in a way that is not the bus’s fault. Nell’s knee keeps touching his. Brooke stares at his hands. Gia asks Mary, quietly, why they call him master and why she feels pressure to say it too.

“We call him master,” Mary says. “He didn’t tell us to do it. Five hundred did. I fought it for a day. Don’t waste your time.”

Grant looks at her.

She shrugs, small.

“I’m tired, Master. I can be strong and still not like the word, but I use it anyway.”

Eve, from the front: “Can we not fight about it on a bus full of ammo?”

Zoya laughs once.

Brooke’s fingers brush Grant’s wrist.

“Sorry. I keep— I want—“ she looks down at his crotch. “Is that allowed?”

“It’s allowed,” Grant says. “Not on the bus.”

“Yes, master.”

Jose pulls into the garage.

Leanne is there with the table already cleared.

“Show me.”

They dump the duffel bag. Her eyes go bright in a way that has nothing to do with sex.

“Damn. Okay. Okay. We have a chance if somebody knocks.” She looks at Grant. “Thank you, master.”

Olivia is on the landing with the unloaded pistol. She sees Brooke’s bruise and the four new faces and something in her eases.

Cindy is behind her.

“You brought more?” Cindy asks.

“Four.”

“Do you want me upstairs or do you want me at the table counting?”

“Table,” Leanne says, before Grant can. Then, to him: “Unless you want her.”

“Table is good,” Grant says.

Cindy nods. “Yes, master.”

The penthouse does not stay empty.

Grant goes up to wash the shop off his hands. The four new ones follow as far as the hall. Mary stops three of them with a look.

“Gia, Emily, Nell. Two. Leanne will put you on a floor.” She looks at Grant mischievously. “Brooke is your problem.”

Grant tilts his head at the bedroom.

Brooke comes in like she has been waiting her whole life for this.

The door shuts.

She pulls the flannel off. No bra. Small breasts, brown nipples, a faded bite mark on the left that is not Grant’s. She shoves the shorts down. Bare. A dark patch she didn’t get to shave. Her pussy is already wet.

“They made us ask,” she says. “I’m not asking if I can touch you. I’m asking where you want me, master.”

“Bed.”

She gets on her back when his face says he wants to see her.

He puts his mouth on her first because the bruise on her jaw makes him angry. She grabs his hair and comes fast, a broken “master.” He climbs up and pushes into her in one slide. Tight. Hot. She hooks her ankles and takes it.

“Harder,” she says. “Please. They were careful like that made them kind.”

He is not careful like that. He fucks her deep and even. She climaxes again with her forehead on his.

He lasts until she says “please inside” and then he can’t hold it anymore, filling her pussy, his mouth on the unmarked side of her jaw.

When he pulls out she stays open a second, his seed leaking onto the sheet, and she laughs once, shaky.

“Different,” she says. “Fuck. Very different.”

“Good.”

“Can I stay on this floor?”

“Leanne decides floors. I decide you don’t go back to a shop.”

“Yes, master.”

Downstairs the table has grown.

Leanne: “Fourteen pistols. Seven rifles if that dirty AR feeds. Two shotguns. Ammo for more than two afternoons.”

Eve: “I’ll test the AR on the roof. If it jams, then it’s just a club.”

Mary finds Grant on the stairs.

“Four girls. A bag of guns. None of ours got hurt. I’m calling that a good morning.”

“Brooke’s upstairs.”

“I know. I felt it. So did the building. They’re getting worse, Master. Hungrier. That’s the 500. I don’t think it’s going away.”

“I know.”

“I’m still me. I also badly wanted to follow you into that bedroom and I didn’t, because somebody has to count ammo. Don’t make me be the only adult.”

“I won’t.”

She uses the word.

“Master. The unknown man hasn’t moved. The triangle hasn’t moved. Today we load magazines and we teach Bren which end is which.”

“Today we load magazines,” he says.

Noor: “Five hundred thirty-six, master. Gia, Emily, Nell, Brooke.”

The five miles opens.

Nine. Five. Two.

The unreadable man still east-northeast. Still no women. Still a blur where a number should be.

Grant climbs to the penthouse.

Five hundred thirty-six points hold still.

The shop is empty and now they are starting to look more like an army — or at least a militia.

The unreadable man still does not move, but something else does.