Auction

That shout ends my life as I know it.

I came to the market this morning dressed as a man in order to sell three oranges, stolen from a tree behind a walled garden in the gold zone. Each of the oranges is a potential lifeline. I could eat them and quench my desire for something sweet and liquidy, but if I sell them here in Mosquito Market, these three oranges can be traded for so much more. Water purification tablets. Meat. Batteries for the radio and the flashlight, both of which are dead and leave me in dark, silent nights when the drizzle makes it impossible to build a fire. All I can do is lie underneath the sheet iron roof and hope that the old plastic bags I glued to it keep the rain from corroding through.

The risk of sneaking into the market was worth it—until it wasn't.

I wear heavy men's clothes, a big overcoat with shoulder pads that make me look broader. I have a broad-brimmed hat that I can pull down to cover most of my face. I put on a deep voice, and a beard.

The beard just gave me away. I should have taken my supplies and left, but I had a few shell casings in my pocket, enough to trade for some meat stew. That smell called to me and called to me until I gave in and sat shoulder to shoulder with the men who frequent the market, slurping down my stew. I didn't notice that it was soaking the fibers of my fake beard. I didn't notice the heat and the sweat working away at the glue either, not until the patch of hair that kept the men thinking I was male dropped off my face and into my stew, right in front of several dozen traders, soldiers, and mercenaries. Men.

"It's a woman!"

The cry goes up and is carried across the crowds. There must be at least five thousand men here today. Five thousand men, most of whom are stuck with a virginity they don't want because these days, no man has a woman.

Wommmaaaaaaaaaaaannn!The shouting is a visceral, hungry, brutal sound that makes my blood run cold. How do they know? A fake beard does not a woman make.

These men are starved for sex. Post-Event, women are impossibly rare. People are rare in general, and women are prized. Kept in great harems and breeding programs. A woman in the wild is almost unheard of. That's why I've been so careful to make sure nobody has ever heard of me.

Until now.

All it takes is one man to say it and suddenly every man in the market is looking at me. Their gazes are not friendly. They are predatory and aggressive. Danger surrounds me. These are men who have not had straight sex in their entire lives—and now they think there is a woman with the kind of hole their bodies are made to crave.

"Woman?" I let out my most booming laugh. "I am no woman!"

Hands, so many hands come toward me. Dozens upon dozens of them, tearing at my overcoat, pulling me off my feet and yanking the clothing from my body.

The thin veneer of civilization the guards maintain is gone. They are part of the frenzy, pushing and shoving and firing shots to get to me. The chaos is loud and terrifying. I always knew if I got caught, it would be bad. I had no idea that it would be this bad. I never knew it would be a wave of masculine aggression rising over me, so large, so powerful there is no way I can fight it.

Men are trampling one another to get to me as I dart beneath the bar I was just eating at, and take refuge behind the casks. The weapon at my side is out of its holster. The energy clip has maybe thirty shots in it. Not nearly enough to shoot my way out of here. Maybe just enough to keep them back. Maybe.

My view is now a mass of hands and eyes, as they follow me around and try to get into the little space where I have pushed myself, my small female frame now protected by two big barrels of fermented beer.

They're reaching for me, big dirty hands clawing for me. If they catch a bit of my clothing, they will drag me out.

I fire into the very small space between the grasping males. I don't want to hurt anybody, but I don't want to be hurt either. The shot ricochets off a bottle, breaks it in the process, and zooms off over the crowd.