Skin on My Skin Read Online Free Page A

they’d found to loot and were exploring it now. Fifteen years after the Preacher’s Plague began the easy spots had been picked clean. But there was still plenty of loot in the old city and the tiny spot of light was like an x on an old pirate map. I circled where the spot showed up on the window with the magic marker and drew a couple of reference lines. I watched the speck of light as the sun came up, trying to make sure I knew exactly where it was. I used a digital camera, after that, to take several pictures of my notes and drawings on the window so I’d have them with me later.
    Scavenging stuff that had already been scavenged was way easier than trying to find it on your own. It was a way of life in the ruins.  
    Once I was pretty sure where the light source had come from, I started my normal morning routine. With the sun rising, it was finally okay to turn on the mass of electronics and electrical devices I’d hauled up into the penthouse since leaving my father’s containment house ten years before. The penthouse was packed with canned goods, bottled water, piles of electronics and stacks of DVD movies. I could probably stay up here for a year straight and not have to scavenge if I wanted to. I didn’t have to leave, but that was boring and reminded me of sitting in my father’s house, once the Preacher’s Plague jumped genders, watching him go insane behind the containment wall.  
    I first checked the power levels in my batteries, nodding happily that they were all at one hundred percent. I flipped the master breaker on and watched as the apartment came to life. I had an array of solar panels hidden along the roof that powered the bank of batteries in the guest bedroom. I can tell you from much personal experience that lugging enough batteries and solar panels to the hundredth floor of a derelict apartment complex is no easy task. I think I made a hundred trips over the course of a couple of months before I finally arranged enough juice to power the freight elevator. I have to wait until a storm is passing through the city to run that elevator, though. Wouldn’t want anyone to hear their way into my hiding spot.  
    I spent a week figuring out how high I could turn up the stereo and not hear it on any floor but mine. Then I’d rigged a physical stop on the knob so I couldn’t turn it any higher. Some old rock and roll, something my father used to like, blared as I headed out onto the balcony to check my plants. My high-rise garden is arranged to look haphazard, like the many out of control gardens that cover the city. Someone would have to look very closely from a building near me to see the ripe tomatoes, lettuce, and cucumbers growing in containers. Good dirt had been a bitch to find, dig up, and haul up the freight elevator over the course of several storms. I pulled a couple of tomatoes and cucumbers and proceed to make myself a chunky salad.  
    Canned food is not only boring, but getting harder to find after all these years. I’ve had my fair share of ravioli and chicken noodle soup. The fresh vegetables are a pain in the ass to raise this high, but worth it. The one thing I’m going to regret the most, when it runs out, is the sweet, sweet coffee. I have a pile of the little single serve flavored coffees that touch the ceiling, but they are, one day, going to run out. And I don’t think coffee beans are going to grow well in New York.  
    Maybe I should leave. Not that I’d go find the Preacher and his supposed cure. Fuck him. But yeah, I could go somewhere else. I think that all the time, but I’ve never lived anywhere else. Besides a trip to Disney Land when I was too small to remember well, I’ve never been out of the city. The thought of leaving terrifies me. I know this city and, really, it knows me. We were made for each other.  
    I flipped on the massive plasma television in the living room and cranked up the good old Apple TV. Plasma televisions are one thing I don’t think we’ll