9

Round and round, the ceiling fan spun my eyes into every corner of the sickly-yellow office room as the six of us stood awkwardly in the centre, unsure of how safe we really were in such an odd place.

Shortly after approaching the great wall of scrap metal that surrounded Patch, everything was a blur… armed guards stopped our vehicle, and after a rather invasive inspection for any infections or blood types, we were poked and prodded through the main gate and forced into this curiously-neat workspace.

In front of us, a seated woman in her mid-forties shuffled documents and files around her desk, almost oblivious to our presence. Only after pushing her glasses back up her nose did she bother to make eye contact with us.

“…So, how may I help you today?”

“You’re kidding, right?” Alisha jutted forwards, annoyed after having all of our weapons stripped from us, including her massive bag of guns. “What the hell is going on here? You can’t just take everything we own, trap us in this dingy office and ask what it is we want! It’s obvious, isn’t it?!”

Narrowing her eyes at the fiery-haired client standing in front of her, the woman didn’t seem affected much by the outburst. She was probably used to hearing this, coming from people like us.

“…I guess you must be newcomers, then. Well, it is my greatest pleasure to be the one who welcomes you to Patch. Before we can begin the application process, I need to know who’s under the age of twenty-one. Raise your hand, please.”

Turning her nose up at our interviewer, Alisha was the only one who kept her hands at her side, twitching as though she missed having a pistol to fidget with. The seated woman scribbled on a couple of forms, and asked us everything from our names to our original countries of residence… we lied about most of them, just to be safe.

“All right, now we can move on to the real questions. What brings your party to Patch, and what are your intentions here?”

Before I could even speak, Tomás let out a loud snort of derision. “Seriously? You build a big-ass metal eyesore in the middle of America’s main road, and ask why people end up here? We’re just passing through… or is that against your rules?”

The lady before us didn’t seem amused by the musician’s word choice, shaking her head at the impoliteness. “...Can’t be too careful, these questions have to be asked. We’re a deweaponised colony you see, a society built on the principles of the old days. We want to make sure that all of our citizens are open-minded, peaceful… obedient. Is that understood?”

Nodding frantically before either of my companions could kick up a fuss again, the woman stepped away from her desk and handed each of us a yellow card, except for Alisha who got a blue one.

“I’ll peg you as ‘Group Twenty-Three’. You’ll find your daily schedule printed on one of the three residential high-rise buildings in the town centre. I would highly implore you to keep regular with the suggested deadlines, or you may lose your food credits for the day.”

Analysing the card, I only just then recognised what she was trying to tell us. “W-Wait, what? We don’t want citizenship! We’re just looking for some people who are staying here, and then we’ve got to continue on the Route!”

“...Oh, dear. I’m terribly sorry, but that’s just not how we do things here. Your items will be taken to the exit gate, and half of your vehicle’s gas will be siphoned to power our generators as payment, but you should know already… No one simply leaves Patch.”

The silence after those words was deafening… almost eerie. Beth poked her head out from behind me, she couldn’t understand what the problem was. “…Why not? We have to go through, my Auntie Lizzie needs me! I don’t want to live here!”

The interviewer lowered her head to the small girl, attempting to smile in a non-threatening way. “You misunderstand me. Most of our citizens find that joining this community is better than suffering the outside hardships, and so they usually return shortly after their departure. We rely on new travellers like your friends to bring food for our children, and gas for our electricity.”

Her eyes aligned with mine, trying to make me understand from her point of view. “That’s why we have a minimum period of stay for all incoming citizens… of six weeks.”

“S-Six weeks?!” I blurted out, rejecting the offer before it had even been discussed. “We don’t have time for that!!”

“I’m afraid it’s not optional. You’ve already seen the inside of our walls, which means you’re bound by our law. It’s your choice to either comply, or spend the entirety of the application process in police custody.”

I was about to give up all hope, when Alisha stormed forwards and pointed an accusing finger at our interviewer. “Bullshit! We ran into a man named Harold Todd… You must have talked to him, right? He came through here to trade, so why didn’t you stop him from leaving?!”

She was right… Not only did he come to Patch, but also managed to abduct Stacie for Joyce's sake and leave without even being noticed. There was a loophole somewhere in the process, and that old man was the key.

The woman seemed to react uncomfortably at his name, and cast her eye back to the desk where a fancy cup and saucer rested at her leisure. She had been drinking tea, and there was only one crazy couple I’d met that had stocked a supply large enough to distribute.

“Oh, now I understand… That’s how you get ahead in the system, is it? The tea trade?” I muttered at the woman, who had clearly been bribed with rare goods. She tried to clear her throat and dismiss involvement, but with all of our sceptical eyes on her, she caved almost instantly.

“W-Well, that’s- I just- Okay, sometimes I accept the odd item and pull some strings, so what? Everyone did it in the old days! It’s not a crime here!”

I recalled raiding every cabinet in the Todd’s house, thinking how fortunate it was that we’d happened upon that particular goldmine.

“Lady, I think it’s your lucky day…”

----

Standing in front of our RV, I watched as Tomás lifted out box after box of teabags and powdered milk, our interviewer was almost drooling at the profit she could make. She’d allowed us to pass the guards in order to ‘take a look at our vehicle’, which was stuck in a garage on the other side of the induction building.

The woman tried to maintain a detached demeanour, but we already knew that her sweet-tooth was a major weakness.

“T-This is extortion, you kids should be ashamed of yourselves! A deal is a deal, though… You should have a three-day transfer period now, that’s the best I can do with the current special passes. For both of our sakes, please keep a low profile in the meantime.”

Nodding with a smirk, I sat back as she kindly let us take a handful of personal items before our RV was to be moved across town. I selected my phone, while Tomás got a little tender with his guitar case before being denied access to the garage after trying to sneak out some of Harold’s whiskey.

“…What? It’s a personal item, I swear! I treat this bottle like family!”

In the end, we couldn’t really find much that we wanted to take with us. After living on the road for so long, it was depressing that we didn’t have any material objects to tie us down. It was probably a good thing anyway, since all of our gear had been stripped from us; it would only have upset everyone, losing their prized possessions.

The interviewer took the last box of tea into her hands, and turned back to face us one last time. “Oh, I almost forgot… All new entrants have to report for mandatory cleansing as soon as possible, to wash off any harmful bacteria from the outside. You can find the public bathhouse through the garage door, to your left then straight ahead.”

Nearly every one of us froze stiff, as though we’d heard a forbidden word. Beth’s face lit up like a firecracker, and couldn’t hold in an excited chuckle. “Hehe… Bath? Did she just say… Bath?! Oh, goodie!”

We followed the woman’s instructions through the dirt-path street, although there wasn't much of the town visible from the outskirts. The tiny buildings around us were still far away from the tower blocks we'd seen, the huts appeared to be made from straw and wood... rather temporary-looking.

The ‘bathhouse’ itself was rather shoddy as well… actually, it wasn’t a house at all. There was just a couple of shower curtains and some wooden pallets laid out to the side of the road, with two signs pointing to the woman’s area and the men’s.

Stray clothes were piled on top of each other, and casual whistling could be heard within the maze of white sheets.

“…Are you serious? There’s no way I’m going in there, there’s barely a wall separating us!” Alisha tutted to herself, but as she turned backwards, she saw one of the guards from the induction building shake his head warningly. “Jeez. Okay, I'm going…”

The teacher took the three kids into the woman’s section, and Tomás shared that familiar ‘how did I get here’ look before starting to strip his clothes in our section. “Turn around bro, I don’t want you sneaking a dirty peek at me. Try to control yourself, eh?”

“Nothing I haven’t seen before, 'Ding Dong Daddy'. Don’t flatter yourself,” I sighed in return with a light laugh. “...but for real, about this place. I wasn’t expecting it all to be so...”

“Ordinary? Good, it’s not just me. Is it weird that ‘normal’ makes us nervous now?”

Shrugging at the idea, we both ditched our pants and wandered into the thick fog of steam, through to a square that had scalding-hot water gushing down from a hacked-open pipe. Curious about the temperature, I stretched my arm out and let the water sizzle onto my dirt-clad skin.

“Arrrgh!! Oh, fuck! Fuuuck!!”

“Waaah, what?! Is it that hot?!”

“It… It’s so damn good!! Jesus Christ!”

I cupped the water into my hands, splashing my face to let it burn away the scars and dried blood of the past two months. I hadn’t bathed in the longest time; our group had already stopped noticing how grimy and sticky we all were, now that water was scarcely used for anything other than drinking.

The bathhouse even had a soap dispensary, the nearby sign instructed one press per person. Rubbing my bare chest and legs red raw with the stuff, it was strangely satisfying to watch the tangled clumps of loose body hair and chunks of dirt-black soil rinsing right off of me, congealing on the floor only to be drained away forever.

Letting Tomás have a go under the stream, he shared similar 'oooh' noises as the naked old men from the next shower over threw us some kind of strange, almost knowing look. It was likely that this was a familiar reaction for people new to Patch; bathing was a simple luxury that most had neglected in favour of basic survival.

Opening my mouth to let the near-boiling water fill me up, I spat it out in disgust when I turned to see the musician with his hands downstairs, sighing in relief as he emptied his bladder into the drain.

“Dude, this is a public bathhouse! Cut it out, that's freakin’ nasty!”

“Oh, lighten up. It’s a shower, who doesn’t have a cheeky slosh? We’re all guys here…”

As he jokingly whipped his aim in my direction, I backed away too far and knocked into someone I couldn’t see through the thick mist. “A-Ah, sorry mate… Wait, what are you-“

The boy who looked to be in his teens shushed me, flapping his head back and forth towards the curtain before resuming his original position. He was desperately trying to look past the shower’s boundary for a reason which genuinely escaped me until he spoke.

“…I heard there’s a fit black chick who came to Patch today… Do you know her? Is she in there right now?”

“Huh? You mean Alisha? Wait… Are you trying to peep-“

“Ssshh!! Not so loud, greenhorn! Y’all just sit back and enjoy the show…” His accent was deeply-southern, making the contrast with my thick Scottish voice a little awkward to co-ordinate.

The peeping tom pulled back the curtain a tiny bit, and for a moment I was inclined to leave him alone, until Alisha’s bare ebony skin caught my eye through the gap.

Frozen in place, I gave an audible gulp and prayed that she hadn't spotted me standing there... Thankfully, it seemed as though her back was turned.

While my first instinct was to protect my female friend's integrity, I knew that she would absolutely destroy this kid if I made a scene here. Her ensuing rage would probably land us all in jail, not even an hour after our induction.

Just as my naked teacher friend started to bend over, I yanked the pervy boy's shoulder backwards to end his little show. The teen must have seen it as a declaration of war as he threw a surprised elbow at my face.

“Back off, will ya?! There ain’t been a new girl in this dump for weeks, hell if I’m missing this chance!”

As I tried to get him under control and move our grapple away from the curtain, Tomás caught wind the struggle and made a beeline for us. “Dan, I’ve got your back! Let go of him, you little-“

The musician barely made it three feet before slipping in a soapy puddle and landing upside-down into a grossly-revealing position. I couldn’t count on him to bust me out of this, after all…

The other showering men tried to break up the awkward fight, only to be struck with collateral damage as the angered kid smacked everyone clumsily under the dripping water. Before we knew it, there was a straight-up brawl in the public bathhouse as everyone threw curses and punches at the first person who caught their eye.

No one could see who the other was retaliating against through the steam, body parts were flapping about chaotically… In the madness I’d somehow created, it was impossible to react as a portly middle-aged man roared and charged towards me along with a handful of other bathers, ripping away the women’s curtain entirely.

A hail of screams and whoops filled the area, and I knew then that we weren’t going to get out of this alive. Closing my eyes to remain impartial, all I could hear was the patter of women’s feet running out of the shower, screaming for help and calling us a bunch of perverts.

At this point, the majority of elderly nude men had followed the exposed women out of the shower to catch a glimpse of them getting changed, a behaviour which I found to be even creepier than what I'd just walked in on.

The teen who had been trying to spy on Alisha groaned on the jagged floor somewhere beside me, and I spitefully thought about leaving him there as I got to my feet…

“Stay on the ground, dirtbags!! You’re both under arrest for sexual misconduct and assault!” I hadn’t even realised that the armed guards had infiltrated the shower room until they were already shoving my face down into the growing puddle, and I could just barely see them handcuffing the pervy kid as well.

One of the women must’ve recognised me being forced through the curtain, and pointed us both out... Naked and beaten, I was pulled to my feet by the officer and prodded out of the shower’s exit, where a large crowd was gathering along with a sniggering Tomás and frowning Alisha.

I bashfully raised my legs and whispered for a towel in an attempt to reduce the visibility of my soapy form, but the guard was fairly content to drag me shamelessly all the way through the cramped public streets alongside my ‘partner-in-crime’.

The bracing wind began to pick up, and an abrupt chill ran all over my still-wet body. It was difficult to follow what was going on, the police force in Patch had somehow reacted to the 'misconduct' almost instantly…

My soaked feet were already caked in gritty dirt from being shoved around street corners, but at least it gave me traction as I threw desperate glances back towards our armed captors.

“L-Let me go!! I’m not some kind of pervert, you've got this all wrong! Can you at least give me a bloody towel?!”