Chapter 11
"WELL, THAT WAS QUITE AN EVENING." Nestor and Rachel were walking together back to the swinger resort. Even though it was dark, it was still warm enough that she had not felt the need to pull on the dress she had in her backpack.
"How did the shooting go? Will the sheikh be happy?"
"Maybe. It wasn't messy enough so they had to fake it."
"Peanut butter and fudge?"
"Yep. Looked very convincing."
"What if he wants a live show?"
"That could be a problem. How was the video game?"
"It was more like an immersive experience - you could feel things, taste things, smell them. I got raped by a couple of orcs, and of course they wanted me to clean them up. I gave up on it. Too much like work."
"What now? Want to get some dinner?"
"Maybe later. Not here. Not the same place I work at."
"Oh oh. Is there something I should know about the food?"
That made her bristle. "The food is wonderful. It's just... someone is going to be waiting on us, it's most likely going to be my roommate Elise. She usually works in the kitchen but she covers for me on my nights off."
"So?"
"What if you decide to rent her? She's so beautiful, much prettier than I am. It would be so humiliating."
"And if I don't?"
"Well, if I show up with you I'm going to get teased about it, for sure. And if we don't do anything that'll be even worse. Do you know how much I got teased about Rocco this morning? And then when they found out I was doing a show. Really, I had no peace all afternoon. Plus you look so clunky dressed like that. Really. How could you? Last night you were so beautiful in that amazing suit. And at lunch, I guess it was breakfast for you, you were lovely naked. But now..." She wrinkled her nose. "Why don't we go for a nice run on the beach? I do that all the time after work. Leave everything here and run naked. No phones, no watch. We can get a couple of kilometers out and no one will have any idea what we're doing, or not." As she said this, she was squeezing his hand in an SOS signal. Hopefully his fucking watch wasn't picking it up.
He didn't say anything in reply, but followed her to the little room the resort gave her for the season. Like all the other rooms, the lock was a keypad, so there was no need to take along a key. A lone double bed, he noticed, like the one in his own room. Without a word, he stripped off the running shoes, the socks, the baggy shorts without bothering to empty the pockets, the polo shirt, the briefs. She only had to slip off her sandals and leave the backpack. She gestured at the door to the bathroom but he shrugged. So, still without a word, they went out to the beach and started to run up to the point.
There were still some bodies scattered on the beach, not sunbathing of course, some of then entwined, others just homeless sleeping rough on the sand. Little black girls, Nestor thought to himself, ones who hadn't found a bed for the night. The analytical side of him was starting to ruminate. How many tourists, and what percentage would be interested in a little black whore on any particular night, particularly when the entire tourist population seemed to be intent on fucking for free? And what was going to happen in a few months when the weather turned wet and cold and the tourists were long gone? He was having a vision of an enormous meat locker full of frozen girls hanging on hooks. Waiting to be served up at Zombie Pizza. But how could there ever be enough demand?
"What are you thinking about?" Rachel finally dared to speak as they came to an area that was almost clear of bodies. They had run for about fifteen minutes already. Instead of people, this part of the beach was strewn with seaweed.
"Whore's meat. Did they fill you in on what went on this afternoon?"
"Not really. Bea was teasing Risa that she wouldn't even notice Rocco after she'd fucked Andre. I thought it was just the pretend thing we saw when we got hacked. It really happened?"
"In the morgue. And Rocco recorded it."
"Andre was really that, uh, big? I mean I know he was enormous but I never imagined he was enormous that way."
"Yep. And covered with tattoos. Some of them were African tribal tattoos. Cannibal tribes."
"African?"
"There are Russian mercenaries in Africa. They've taken over some of the failed states. Then we wound up eating lunch at Zombie Pizza, across the street from the morgue, and they have this Pizza Hawaii, ham and pineapple, except it isn't exactly ham. So the guy at the counter says it's horse meat, except the way he pronounced it was whore's meat. And Javert..."
"Who?"
"The cop investigating Andre's demise. If he's actually dead. Javert is going on and on about long pork, and how the Hawaiians used to be cannibals, and before that about how all the little black girls wind up at the pizza place, but they don't have any waitresses. So I'm looking at the girls sleeping on the beach and wondering if they are all going to wind up as pizza topping."
"Gross. Well, one thing I do at work is help carve up the meat that comes in. We buy it in bulk, you know, a whole side of beef or whatever. Sometimes on the hoof. It's all your typical stuff. No girls."
"That's reassuring." There were some other bodies sleeping on the beach, large, male bodies. "You run here on your own, at night?"
"Usually with Elise. We run here at night all the time."
"And you've never had a problem?" He gestured back at the men they had just passed. "Could be dangerous."
"What are they going to do? Rape us?"
"Kill you?"
"We just go out into the water if it looks like there's a problem. None of them can swim. Speaking of which, why don't we cool off?" She urged him into the ocean, which still as warm as during the day. He was standing almost neck deep, over her head, but she wrapped her arms and legs around him, then leaned in to whisper in his ear. "We need to talk."
"You watch too many spy movies."
"Listen to me. When I was playing the game this evening, Anna talked to me. In the game."
"What did she have to say?"
"She said that the directorate had been hacked. That you were both in great danger. That if they knew that you knew that they would kill you immediately."
"Oh."
"Just oh?"
"Well, how do I know if it was really Anna? Or Anastasia or Natalia, whoever this girl is. And how would I have any clue if what she's saying is accurate?"
"So I took all this trouble, ran all this way out with you, for nothing?"
"We had a lovely run in the moonlight. At least it was lovely for me, with a beautiful woman."
"While you're thinking about eating little girls. The least you could do is... oh."
He was lifting her up so her legs were on his shoulders, probing her with his tongue. He was good at it, better than any other guy who'd had the courtesy to pay attention to her. His skin as smooth as a girl's, his tongue knowing the right places. As good as Elise? Four or five licks was all it took to set her trembling.