"Excuse me?" I gasp, slamming my hands down onto my hips. "I had an extremely important job to do distributing the vaccine. You're the one who took me away from that."
"Your team is gone, get over it. Everyone in this city has a job to do, everyone must prove their usefulness, including you." He takes a step toward me. "If you refuse to help put the city in order, I'll have no choice but to find a use for you elsewhere."
"What’s that supposed to mean?" I growl, frustration welling up and threatening to ignite into fury.
His gaze drops down my body. "Your womb."
I gasp and stumble back another step as he steps toward me. "You wouldn't do that to me."
He stares at me and refuses to speak. I'm starting to realize that this is how he navigates emotional situations. He places his words carefully and then stops speaking, allowing the other person to absorb what he said, to draw their own conclusions.
In this case, he's been extremely clear.
Either I do the job of a Warlord and get the city functioning again, or I become just another female baby maker.
What I want to know is, whose baby would I be expected to have? Wolfe told me he wanted me for his wife, but he hasn’t made any moves since that declaration. I thought it was an empty threat. Now, I’m not so sure.
I hurry away from the Warlord’s chambers, determined to show him how useful I can be as more than a walking womb for his seed.
Nineteen
I look at the people assembled before me, looking back at me with expectation and skepticism. These are six of the most skilled people in our Sanctuary. Some of them are smart enough to figure out why I've gathered them here, which is why they look skeptical. I don't blame them; I'm skeptical too. This is never going to work.
But Wolfe directed me to put the city in order using whatever talent I see fit, and I need these people in order to do it.
I start the meeting. "Thank you for agreeing to join me today. I’m hoping this will be the first of many meetings, and the first step toward real change in the Santa Fe Sanctuary."
"I see what you're doing," a woman speaks up. She was introduced to me as Tabitha, our agriculturist. "I respect the thought, but it's never going to work."
"What’s not going to work?" Dolly, the tech wiz, asks curiously. "Are y'all clairvoyant, because she's barely said a word? I have no idea what's going on. But the baking is damn good."
Dolly reaches out to take another cookie from the plate in the middle of the table. Christine, Tabitha’s wife, murmurs her thanks. She brought in the tray of baking, which she made herself.
"Tabatha is correct, I do have an agenda. Maybe an impossible task but I'm going to ask your help nonetheless. We need change in the city and you are the right people to enact that change."
Tabitha bursts out laughing.
"Change," she says bitterly. "Change is what was supposed to happen in the New York Sanctuary. Instead, what we got was more oppression, more violence and a whole lot of death. The Primitives did us a favour by taking that Sanctuary down."
Christine reaches out to take Tabitha’s hand, showing her support for her wife. There are murmurs of assent all around the table. No woman in modern times is exempt from the harsh realities of a male dominated world.
"Tabitha has a valid point," I agree. "I’ve travelled to many Sanctuaries and I can promise you, the harsh patriarchal system that we've all gotten to know and despise is everywhere. What I'm proposing is radical and different, but it's not new."
Again, murmurs rise up around the table. This time it's Dr. Sheela Summers who jumps in. "Hush please, I want to hear what she has to say. Bitching about an oppressive system and not doing anything about it isn't the right path and you know it. I love you Tabby, but shut up and listen."
The voices fall silent and all eyes turn to me. The weight of responsibility settles heavily over me. Not just my responsibility toward the city, but toward these women. If my plan to form a female dominated city council using the talents in this room fails, then these women will be crushed.
I force myself to continue, despite my trepidation over the scale of what I’m attempting to do. "Somehow, in a world meant to put us down and keep us down, you five women have managed to rise up and make careers for yourselves." My gaze travels to Hannah, an outsider in this group, but a valuable member just the same. “As far as I know, you are the most skilled in your professions in the city. We need you. What's between your legs doesn't make a difference when it comes to what's between your ears."
"An idealistic sentiment, but ultimately worthless in a world completely dominated by warmongering men." Again, Tabitha speaks, her bitterness shining through. "I get what you're saying, I just don't think it's gonna work. Who'll let a group of women run an entire city? Impossible. Unheard of. Not going to happen."
Anita, the engineer, speaks quietly, adding her voice to the mix. "Where is Warlord Wolfe in all this?" she asks, looking around the room as though he's about to pop out from the wall. "There's no way a powerful leader like him is going to let a group of ragtag women take over his city. I don't even know how you got us in the palace, let alone into the Warlord’s planning room. We’re all going to find ourselves arrested."
Tabitha nods her head while Dolly reaches for another cookie, a look of concern bright in her pretty brown eyes. I open my mouth to speak, but it's Hannah who jumps in to defend our Warlord.
"You don't know him." She pauses and then adds, "No one really knows him, except maybe Skye. She’s spent time with him. He's not the kind of person you think he is. Yes, he's brutal, intense, a killer. He's all those things. But he doesn't look at people and see things like gender, race, age or anything else."
Tabitha snorts. "Yeah, he sees targets."
Everyone laughs, including me, which eases some of the tension in the room. Tabitha isn't wrong.
"Hannah's right though," I interrupt the laughter. "What Wolfe wants is a city that runs smoothly. He doesn't care who does it, who makes the changes, who runs the city. He may be the Warlord, but he’s leaving the task of putting the city in order in my hands."
Now everyone's looking at me with a new kind of curiosity and I stand a little straighter under their collective perusal. I didn’t ask for this monumental task, but if I’m going to do it, then I’ll do it the way I want, which means pulling these talented women into my inner circle.
"Who are you exactly?" This is from the outspoken Tabitha. Her straight black hair falls in a shiny waterfall down her back. She’s beautiful and delicate, but her spine is made of steel. "Why should anyone listen to you?"
Her question drives home a thought that I’ve had over and over again, especially since the death of my husband. Who am I? I'm nothing really. I don't have any extraordinary skills. It took a lot of hard work and practice to learn how to protect myself, to defend myself and my team from the zombies. Other than that, I don't have much to offer. Unlike the women in this room, I'm not a doctor, a teacher, an engineer, a tech wizard, or an agriculturist. I hate cooking and cleaning, children make me shudder, and the thought of trying to organize an entire city when I can barely manage my own damn self makes me feel so far out of my depth I may as well be swimming in the middle of an ocean.