Back From The Dead: My Apocalypse Level-up System novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: The Auction

"Hello, Lacey," I said.

She pushed the ledger an inch to one side and folded her hands on the table.

"Sit," she said. "Please. You must be tired."

I sat.

Brent didn't move behind her chair.

He didn't look at me either, which told me he had known I was coming too.

"You walked into my camp," Lacey said fondly. "I always said you were brave."

"You called it a camp."

"What else would I call it?"

"A market."

Her smile stayed where it was.

"The auction is at dawn," she said. "Come and watch. You can see how it works, and then we can talk about what you're really here for."

"Which is?"

"A partnership. You have a wall and a cellar and a nurse. I have two hundred people and a list of buyers who pay in diesel." She tilted her head. "Together we could feed the whole valley."

"By selling it."

"By organizing it. Somebody has to, Devon. You of all people understand that."

I looked at the ledger.

Names ran down the page in her tidy hand, each with a number and an amount.

Beside every amount, a word I could read upside down.

Owed.

"What are they owed?" I asked.

"Not owed. Owing. Everyone eats here, and everyone pays." She smiled. "I'm not a monster. I let them work it off."

"And the ones who can't?"

"Then I sell the debt."

She said it kindly.

I had never heard anyone say a worse thing in a gentler voice.

At dawn, the grandstand filled.

Two hundred people sat on the cold metal benches with their numbered tags, and below them, in folding chairs, sat the buyers.

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