Chapter? 6 (Joshua’s POV)

  The boulevard had once been six smooth lanes funneling commuters toward the Harlem River bridges; now its cracked asphalt resembled a dry riverbed, laced with weeds and rimmed by husks of minivans. I picked my way along the center?line—war?hammer slung across my back, pack cinched tight—pausing every half?block to compare my surroundings to the hand?drawn map Anna had left tacked to the cottage mantel months earlier.

  Two stop?lights past the blown?out laundromat, the charcoal note said, then east until the Iron?Elbow sign. Strip mall sits kitty?corner. Big rust gate.

  The Iron?Elbow gym’s mural finally loomed ahead: two faded Muay?Thai fighters locked in an eternal clinch, colors bleached by sun and rain. Just beyond, the scabbed fa?ade of the strip mall sprawled across an entire block, its faded signage jutting like broken teeth—DOLLAR WORLD, NAIL SPA, CHECKS?CASHED. Someone had bolted corrugated sheets over the storefronts and strung barbed wire along the parapet; the result looked less like retail and more like an improvised citadel.

  A wide vehicle entrance—two rust?patched shipping containers set thirty feet apart—served as the outpost’s gate. A sagging banner hung between them, painted in flaking white: SCAVs?ONLY — NO EMPIRE — NO ANARCHS — TRADE FAIR, FIGHT HARD. Two sentries lounged on folding chairs beneath the sign.

  The guard on the left wore a duster fashioned from pleather couch cushions, the seams hand?stitched with electrical wire. He cradled what looked like a flintlock musket whose barrel had been sawed to pistol length. The right?hand sentry had chosen different anachronism: a modern nickel?plated Stoeger double?barrel shotgun, the stock wrapped in striped bedsheet for grip.

  As I closed to twenty paces, the shotgun swung up.

  “Traveler!” The man’s voice rasped from behind a welding?mask visor. “Hands out—palms up.”

  I raised both hands, letting the weight of the pack shift off my shoulders so my war?hammer lay flat against my spine. “Joshua Reeves,” I said loudly. “Looking for trade—and someone who passed through some time back.”

  Pleather?coat musket?man squinted, then nodded at the hammer. “That a ticket?”

  “Tool,” I answered. “Ticket if it needs to be.”

  They traded glances before the shotgun dipped slightly. “Two?pouch toll,” Pleather said. “Pearls or coffee.”

  I unclipped a Ziploc of instant Folgers sticks from my belt, tossed it over. He weighed it, then grunted approval and waved me in. “Market’s center court. Keep steel sheathed. Scav code.”

  Past the containers, the strip?mall parking lot had been converted into a shantytown bazaar. Canvas tarps fluttered between lamp?posts, forming alleys where vendors hawked scavenged goods: dented cans, cracked solar lights, pre?war denim. The stink hit me like a physical wall—human sweat steeped in weeks of hard labor, overlaid by the sick?sweet rot of open gray?water trenches that zig?zagged the asphalt. Flies orbited every drain.

  An old man boiled something resembling beans atop a propane burner; the liquid hissed, releasing a metallic tang that mixed with the odor of unwashed bodies. Nearby, a woman gutted pigeons on a card table, feathers sticking to her forearms.

  I wove through clusters of barterers, ears tuned for any scrap of news:

  “Empire patrol hit the 9th?Ave pharmacy—took everything except the rat poison.”

  “Looking for .223? Got five rounds—fresh pulls, forty pearls each.”

  “Saw Vagabond scouts by the ferry terminal—eyes out.”

  None mentioned Anna, but the undercurrent of tension told me the Anarchists still made the strongest boogeymen. Every time that faction’s name surfaced, voices dropped an octave.

  Halfway down the main aisle a teen in a ski?mask offered me a set of kitchen knives caked in rust. I shook my head and pressed on toward the back of the lot, where plywood stalls gave way to darker service corridors between the mall’s rear loading docks. A sour breeze drifted from those passages, ripe with sewage and the ammonia bite of human waste.

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  It was back here, in an alley choked by dangling power cables, that I spotted her.

  She sat hunched against a graffiti?tagged dumpster, knees drawn to her chest, rocking slightly. Her frame looked brittle under a burlap shawl; stringy gray hair fell in mats around a face creased like dried riverbeds. One eye filmed over white; the other darted, sharp and yellow as a ferret’s. She muttered into a cupped hand that might once have held coins.

  “Pretty one in the broth, pretty one in the broth, bosses gonna sip her bones…”

  I would have passed her—another casualty of neglect—if not for the phrase that tumbled from her cracked lips: The old woman’s rheumy eyes fastened on the pearl I had flashed like a moth to a dim lantern. A tremor fluttered in her throat—half greed, half fear—and she inched closer until the sour odor of unwashed hair and rotting clove?tobacco filled my lungs.

  “Pretty stone,” she rasped, tongue sliding over broken teeth. “But knowledge drinks deeper than shine, boy. You give me that, I’ll pour you a cup of truths.”

  I wanted to recoil, yet Anna’s face—her wild braid, the faint scar at the edge of her brow—burned behind my eyes. I pressed the pearl into her gnarled palm. Her fingers snapped shut with the speed of a mousetrap.

  She tucked the gem inside a pouch that clinked with siblings, then crooked a finger for me to follow. We slipped deeper between gutted storefront

  I halted. “Ma’am?”

  Her head snapped up. She squinted, as though daylight stabbed eyes accustomed to gloom. A rictus grin split her face, revealing a picket fence of crooked teeth. “Looot goblin,” she hissed, eyeing the bulging pack on my shoulders. “Shiny man with shiny bag.”

  I knelt a safe distance away, keeping one hand near my hip holster. “You said something about ‘pretty one’? A prisoner?”

  She giggled, a wet rasp. “New model—ooh, skin like river?milk, hair all brown silk. Got her in chains under Discount Mart.” She jabbed a thumb behind her toward the mall. “Making her drink the people?broth so she fattens nice.”

  My stomach clenched. “Who’s got her—Scavs?”

  The old woman spat, missing her lap. “Not Scavs. Red?paint fools? No. Anarch meat?pots. Came two nights, paid pearl tax at east gate. Brought girl bound. Boss man said—’cook her soft.’” Her voice fell to a conspiratorial whisper: “They always cook the pretty.”

  A cold filament drew tight in my chest. Anna had been captured by Anarchists—my worst fear repeating on a grotesque loop? I fought to keep my tone neutral. “What’s the boss’s name?”

  She scratched the scaly skin on her throat. “Calls hisself?‘Dutch.’ Big teeth, red boots. He like girls with scars.”

  Memory flashed: Anna’s face bruised, lip split, yet defiant. Rage buzzed behind my eyes. I forced it down. “Thank you,” I said, and fished two coffee sticks from a jacket pocket, laying them on the asphalt within her reach.

  She snatched them, looking both grateful and vaguely predatory. “Got more shiny, pretty man?”

  “That’s all.” I rose. “Where exactly—is the Discount Mart basement?”

  She cackled. “Down where the rats swim in grease! Dungeon for loot goblins!”

  Translation: the long?defunct discount superstore anchoring the strip?mall’s northeast corner. I’d seen the facade earlier—roll?down gate half?crushed, interior dark as coal seam. I had passed by the place on my way from the plaza it was a couple blocks away from the brownstones Anna had been looting.

  I thanked her again, mind already mapping assault angles: loading?dock doors, rooftop HVAC hatches, storm?drain access. But first, intel validation. Charging blindly could get me flayed beside Anna.

  I headed back toward the brighter thoroughfare. Vendors hawked wares in oblivious cacophony while somewhere beneath their feet, if the crone spoke true, a dungeon stewed human broth.