Read Online Wolves by D. J. Molles - Free Book Online

which. Maybe all three. Quietly, to Jay, he says, “You think those girls are slaves?”
    Jay tilts his head, seems to reconsider them.
    Huxley looks around the place. The cold burn of perceiving it in a different light. Maybe this is where slavers go. Little towns like this. Maybe his daughter was sold off to a man like the one that stands outside of the little whorehouse with his two girls.
    â€œWhat’s that now?” the man with the whores calls out. “You have a question about my ladies?”
    Huxley looks back to him. He takes a few, slow steps toward him. It is odd how he feels this tension rising in him that he doesn’t think the other man even recognizes. Huxley only has a knife, and the man is big, but Huxley knows that he is dangling on the precipice of violence, already imagining what he will do to this man, though he has not even asked the question … 
    â€œThose slaves?” Huxley says. His voice is flat. Dry. Without inflection.
    The man’s face darkens and he spits in the dirt. “Fuck that and fuck the slavers. These is free women.” The man points a finger at Huxley. “And best you watch your tongue about shit like that. Chairman Warner can claim these lands all he wants, but the Black Hats don’t reach out this far and there’s some good people here that’ve lost loved ones to the slavers.” He takes a deep breath. “You buyin’ or not?”
    Huxley eyes the man, trying to wade through everything he just said. Trying to piece it together. But he understands the last question, even if everything else has gone over his head, so he shakes his head and backs away, mentally pulling himself off that edge of reaction. “No thanks.”
    The man makes a face at Huxley then looks off to the gate, hoping for other potential patrons.
    Huxley looks at Jay, suddenly feeling a little odd standing in the middle of everything. He can feel the townspeople watching him with some passing curiosity. “What the hell was he talking about?”
    Jay shakes his head. “No idea.”
    Rigo doesn’t seem to have understood any words at all. He looks utterly lost, nervously hitching up his pants. Like at any moment he might take off running.
    â€œWastelanders?” a voice calls out from behind them.
    Huxley turns toward the sound of the voice. Just a few yards behind them is a scrapper’s trade hut. There are two men at the hut. One is an ancient old man with a dirty gray beard smudged with black grease. His prominent underbite continuously gnaws at his toothless gums as though he is always chewing something. His eyes are dark and liquid and appearing to lack anything beyond nominal intelligence. Huxley thinks he might not be all there.
    The other is a younger man, who stands there and wipes grime from what looks to Huxley like an old engine component. The young man looks up from his work, his fingers still scouring away beneath an old stained cloth. His eyes are on Huxley, an interested smile on his lips.
    Huxley raises his eyebrows in question, as though to ask, Were you talking to me?
    The young man sets the component down and waves them over, leaning on his display table with both hands.
    Huxley walks up to the booth and takes a quick glance at the wares on the table. There are glass bottles, old electrical components that Huxley cannot fathom a use for, mirrors, a few picture frames with faded photos of strangers inside them. There is a stack of old books in the corner, their pages yellowed and torn. Several pairs of shoes hang from their laces, ranging from very old and worn to nearly new. Tools are displayed prominently upon a table in the same way a jeweler displays his wares. But there is also food, water, and what look like homemade knives.
    The old man gives him a flicker of eye contact, and then a weathered, blackened finger begins to poke through a tray of metal components. He mumbles something and tilts his head, as