The Fourth Law

Chapter 9, Part 2

Three weeks later was their first Official Argument.

"Why can't I come over to your place for a bit?" He'd asked at lunch; she'd never even known that staff and patients had access to the roof; half her life reading manga and watching animes, and she finally did it.

"I'm a volunteer and live-in assistant at a Catholic orphanage. We have kids from six to seventeen. If I take a guy up to my room... if I'm lucky, I'm just fired; if not, excommunicated." And, if he saw all my computer stuff... her anti-retro-culture... that would not be good.

"So get a chaperone," Sean said easily. He passed her his last half sandwich. He was nice like that.

"Huh?"

He shook his head. "Get one or two of your most dependable kids; have them clean your place or something while I'm there; no problem!"

She stewed on that. Even so... she could not cause people there or in town to talk. The moment her surname came to the fore... nothing but problems.

"No. We can't. I'm sorry." She blinked a lot as she bit into the sandwich. She could tell he was disappointed. They said nothing for some time. Her chest started to hurt... did she just lose him...?

"Fine. I didn't mean to push, Lil'." He started cleaning up their trash. He already knew to give her anything that could be reused.

"Then..." he continued slowly, "can you come by my place?" He grinned impishly. "Only during the daylight, of course."

"I..." Could she? If someone saw her going to his flat, same result, different headline: 'Butcher Barrett's Bitch Beds Boy!' She started choking on the sandwich.

"Hey, hey!" Sean lightly hit her back. "Are you all right, Lil'? I'm sorry, sorry! I shouldn't have pushed—"

"Yes. I'll come over after work," she said quietly. I hate my past.

His hand on her back stopped and eased her head over to his chest.

"Thanks, Lil'."

She nodded slowly.

They rode next to one another. His place was pretty far north, across the abandoned freeways. He said it was a great deal being so far out. She could see why when they got there. More a condo than an apartment.

"I thought Irish were drunks and Scots were cheap. Your last name is a lie!" she'd quipped.

He opened his mouth to reply when the sirens started. By instinct and training, they both pivoted and scanned the sky. No, not a tornado, especially this late in summer. Crap. Their eyes met.

"Come on!" he shouted. Barbarians, or something worse.

He unlocked the door and ran in. She paused to mumble 'tadaima!' as she kicked her shoes off. Then she remembered what country she was in and shook her head. Walking further in, she saw that he believed in punctuated equilibrium: not stuff everywhere, just in piles.

He'd walked to his television – he'd not been kidding – and pulled the knob to turn it on. Both broadcast channels showed the same thing: a barbarian mass ahead of a Federal Army was coming from Little Rock to Texarkana. The other main routes from the east into Texas, Shreveport and Lake Charles, were a wasteland of tens of thousands of crucified.

Damn, you, Dad, she thought.

So, this might be one last effort by the dying central government to coerce Texas back into the fold. Sean was already sitting on his ratty old couch, looking at the scroll of mobilizations. He pointed.