Free Flesh Worn Stone by John Burks Page A

to be cut to hell and, in this cesspool, infected quickly. “Do you have something in a ten or eleven?”

    “Oh no,” Glen laughed, taking the shoe from him, “you can’t have one now.”

    “You said they were free.”

    “They are free, but only to those with a mark,” he said, pointing to his forehead.

    “So I have to win a Game before I can get a pair of shoes?”

    “And then there’s the waiting list,” Erma put in. “There’s a back order, you know?”

    “A back order?”

    “Sure,” Glen told him, “along with the pieces of leather armor for the two- and three-timers, the other pieces of clothing…there just isn’t a ready supply of leather for making shoes, though it looks like we’ve got quite a bit more since yesterday, huh, Erma?”

    “The Castle bless us, yes.”

    “So how long is the back order?”

    “At least a year, maybe more. Come back and see us when you win a game and you can order a whole outfit, if you want. That’s not to say you’ll ever actually get any of it,” he said, laughing. “But you can order anything you want.”

    Steven left the workshop in disgust, and, ironically, stepped on a fist-sized rock and cut his foot.
               
    * * *

    Amanda hadn’t heard John’s comment to Steven, but revenge was all she could think of as well.

    Amanda Gordon’s life had been relatively simple, as simple as an American girl’s could be. Born to middle class parents and loving parents, Amanda had grown up on Houston’s west side, not in the most affluent neighborhoods, but in neighborhoods not yet touched by the curse of gangs and drugs. She’d been a Girl Scout, a cheerleader, in the Honor’s Society, and played high school basketball. She’d done everything expected of her, and then some. She’d graduated in the top ten percent of her class and had college paid for by scholarship.

    She’d done nothing to deserve this, she thought, and Cassandra had most certainly done nothing to deserve being eaten alive, stored like that for later use like she was some sort of Quickie Mart. She couldn’t get the look on her friend’s face just before Rebecca had put her out of her misery off her mind.

    She doubted that she’d ever forget that look. She doubted she’d ever forget the absolute pain in her friend’s face.

    Amanda envied the strength she saw in Rebecca. Through the tears and sorrow there was something else there, she knew. There was a spark that, for whatever reason, the others didn’t see. She’d have to get close to the woman, she knew, if she wanted to survive.

    The others she didn’t really care about. She wanted Darius just as dead as Cassandra was, but John and Steven were two bumbling male idiots in world filled with bumbling male idiots. They were, at least for the moment, harmless. She’d known both their types in the world before the Cave and she considered herself a great judge of character. Steven was a loving dad and husband, one of those rare types that actually were what he seemed on the outside. She could see him and Rebecca at the park, sitting on a checkered tablecloth with a picnic basket, maybe sipping on wine, while watching their sons play. She was sure that, like her own parents, they were the stereotypical good Americans.

    John Hussein, on the other hand, seemed nice on the face of things, but was ultimately a spoiled rich kid. She’d known quite a few like him from River Oaks, Houston’s premier neighborhood. They always had money that their parents, or even grandparents, had earned and expected life handed to them on a silver platter. They were sly, wearing a camouflage suit of politeness and education until they were all-too-ready to show their fangs. John always seemed so concerned, yet she knew there was a monster lurking just under the surface. She could see it in his eyes.

    Darius on the other hand, she was sure, was a garden variety criminal. He was a man who, by virtue of his sheer imposing size, had