Human Bait

Chapter 1: The Freshly-Baked

"Call me a hopeless romantic, but I promised my wife I'd never take another woman. So ever since the Infected ate her, I've only fucked men."

"How touching." I spread my hands out in front of the fire and watched orange light flicker between my thin fingers. "But what's in it for me?"

The man beside me sniffled back a trail of snot and slipped a hand into his coat pocket. With a flourish, he slapped a wad of Northerner cash onto my lap.

I plucked up the cash and flipped through it absently, noting the silver "one thousand" stamped on each bill. Once, a thousand Southie units would have purchased food for me and my father for a week. And once, Northerner units were worth even more than Southie ones.

Once.

I chucked the money into the fire.

"What the fuck, man?" the man sputtered as the fire devoured the offering. "That could be worth something again ten years from now."

"Ten years from now, we'll all be dead." I stood and shifted a quarter turn away, wincing as the snow infiltrated the broken soles of my boots. "If that's all you've got, I'll be on my way."

My nonchalance masked a silent prayer. Please, Ether, let him give me a better offer. My stomach gnawed at my ribcage, a twisting ache a couple stages past hunger, and I couldn't bear to leave the fire's heat just yet.

The man flicked his wrist, gloved with enviable worn leather. "Fine, fine. Sit your ass back down."

When I plopped down again, the chair legs rocked back, digging through the snow to meet the frigid ground. The greasy man dug a cloth sack from his pocket and tossed it to me. I yanked the string loose, and a few grains of white rice spilled out.

I raised my eyebrows at the man beside me. The firelight glimmered on his yellow teeth, his greasy brown strands of hair, and his shiny lump of a nose.

"One little sack of rice? You really think that's all I'm worth?"

He huffed a laugh, and one whiff of his sour breath jerked my head back toward the fire. "Look, you're a pretty one, even with those fucking weird-ass eyes, but us Northerners are having a hard enough time as it is without accommodating any refugees."

That stung more than I wanted to admit. Not the bit about my green eyes, which were perfectly normal in the South, but that word 'refugee.' When I made my month-long trek through the mountains that separated the South from the North, I had dreamed of finding a Southie research base here and helping them cure the Infected. But after months of fruitless searching and constant hunger, I had given up. Now, I dreamed only of my next meal.

I was just as pathetic as my father had always claimed.

As usual, I buried my emotion in sass. "Oh, is that what this exchange is about? Accommodating a refugee?"

Greaseball frowned. "You know, you got a big mouth for a guy your size. You really think you'll get a better offer around here?"

I folded my arms over my chest and leaned back on the chair, an action I regretted when the cold wind sucked away the meager warmth of the flames. "Other Cutthroat Crew members have paid me better."

He fidgeted with the red Cutthroat Crew band over his wrist. "Well, that must have been before the Infected made it this far North. Now things are getting hard, even for such a fearsome crew. But we're still dreaming big! Just last month, we plundered an entire schoolhouse."

"Oh, wow. You must have so many dry-erase markers."

"And that's not all! This last month, we started planning something ballsy. And by ballsy, I mean big, big balls, like... well, I can take off my pants, if you want the full demonstration. Anyway..."