The Feral Sentence- Complete Box Set

by Shade Owens

  The Northers, I knew, didn’t touch the western coastline. The closest beach they had—where the Russian orphanage plane had crashed—faced north.

  At some point, maybe we’d get to that beach, but it would take a long time for Hawkins to figure it out—maybe long enough for us to be ambushed by someone, or something, else.

  CHAPTER 3

  Collins scratched the two rocks together as if her life depended on it. Now and then, a few sparks flashed, but not enough to start a fire. With nostrils flared and back as round as a basketball, she swore under her breath. Her arms, two sticks with small bulging muscles, shook vigorously.

  She needed help.

  Although my back was covered in goose bumps due to nightfall’s cool and damp air, I wasn’t too keen on offering any sort of help to Hawkins and her women. Besides, everything was damp. No way was anyone lighting a fire in these conditions.

  “Brone,” Hawkins said. She flicked a finger toward Collins, no doubt aware that as a Hunter, I’d acquired all sorts of survival skills.

  I rolled my eyes and moved toward Collins. “First of all,” I said, tearing the rocks out of her grasp, “you can’t use this shit.”

  She glared up at me but didn’t say anything, most likely taken aback by the anger in my voice.

  “There’s dirt all over this one, and it isn’t a flint rock.” I chucked both rocks into a pile of leaves. “Plus, your notch is horrible.”

  In front of her crossed legs was a pile of damp leaves, three sticks, and two pieces of tree bark.

  She crossed both arms over her chest like a fifth grader being given a fail mark on a spelling test. Turning around, I started searching near tree roots in hopes of finding sheltered leaves and branches. If something was hidden well enough, the rain might not have reached it.

  That, however, didn’t negate the fact that the humidity in the air was substantial.

  “That’s enough,” Hawkins said as I moved farther away.

  I threw both arms in the air. “You can’t honestly expect me to build you a fire with anything around here. It rained for days. Nothing’s dry. Or did you forget?”

  She stared at me.

  Hawkins was impulsive, rash, and thoughtless at times, but she wasn’t stupid. Her eyes lingered on me, and I didn’t look away. After a while, when she must have realized I was telling the truth, she nodded and said, “Then build us some beds or something.”

  Clenching my teeth, I made my way toward three large trees with countless hanging vines. Coin had taught me how to build temporary hammocks by intertwining vines and tying them around trees. Although it was time-consuming and not all that comfortable, it provided invaluable protection; Rocket had been the one to teach me how dangerous it was to sleep on the jungle floor.

  Insects and critters crawled everywhere, waiting to take a bite out of human flesh.

  As I thought about this, something poked me on my shoulder and I instinctively slapped my skin. When I looked down, a flat, crooked-legged mosquito the size of an American moth lay dead in its own pool of blood. That was something I’d never get used to.

  At least when I’d been a Hunter, Trim always provided us with one of Tegan’s concoctions—lemon eucalyptus oil. Apparently, lemon eucalyptus oil was known to repel mosquitos. When I’d asked Tegan about it, she’d told me that a long time ago, the mixture had been approved by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as an effective ingredient in mosquito repellents.

  The part that had blown my mind, however, was when Tegan told me that a well-brewed mixture could provide 95% coverage for up to three hours. And she was right—every time we’d gone hunting, we’d return with little to no bites.

  It was so effective that the women in the Village and Working Grounds started gathering lemons and eucalyptus leaves to give to Tegan, so that they too, could moisturize their skin with the oil.

  I slapped my neck this time when another poke took me by surprise.

  “Sucks, doesn’t it?” said one of Hawkins’s women.

  She slapped her skin, the sound resonating around all of us.

  “How long’s this gonna take?” Hawkins asked.

  I glanced back at her, noting the shadows spreading across her face. The cloudy evening sky, now bright cotton candy visible in bits and pieces, reminded me how of little time I had to work.

  “It takes about ten minutes per hammock,” I said, “and there’re seven of us.” I almost added, “You do the math, genius,” but kept my mouth shut.

  At that rate, and by the looks of the darkening sky, I’d have enough time to make three, maybe four, before it became too dark to see anything.

  And without a fire, I’d be working blind.

  “Collins, go help her,” Hawkins ordered. “You too, BluJay.”

  Collins ran a hand over her poorly shaved head and rolled her eyes. It was obvious she wanted nothing to do with me, but if it meant having a place to sleep, she’d help.

  BluJay, a young woman with blue eyes as bright as shallow Caribbean water, got up and stretched her back. Unlike the others, her blond hair wasn’t shaved, but instead, short, unkempt, and uneven. I wondered if it had once been short and she’d allowed it to grow back.

  Was that what I would look like once my hair grew back? Like a Barbie doll left in the hands of a two-year-old child? In an instant, all I felt was the air around the skin of my head. I couldn’t believe I was bald, nor did I want to think about it. Thankfully, I couldn’t see my own reflection. Besides, it would start to grow back soon enough.

  Without a word, BluJay held her belly and waited for me to give her an order. She looked so docile. What was she doing with someone like Hawkins? Even her posture gave off the appearance of absolute submission—she stood with rounded shoulders and a bowed head as if she’d spent the last year being tortured by the Northers. Looking at her, I didn’t see any hatred or anger, but instead, an overall sense of kindness and uncertainty.

  “Do you have a knife?” I asked her.

  She turned around, seeking Hawkins’s permission, and when Hawkins nodded, BluJay pulled a short stone blade from her belt and gave it to me.

  “How are you at tying knots?” I asked her.

  She nodded.

  Was that supposed to mean yes? Why wasn’t she saying anything?

  Hawkins must have sensed my confusion; she leaned back, resting the back of her head in her palms. “BluJay doesn’t talk,” she said. “She’s mute.”

  I hesitated. “But she can hear me?”

  The moment the words came out, I felt like an idiot. Obviously, she could hear me.

  Hawkins, along with all her women, laughed—the sort of laugh that made me feel like a moron.

  “I said she’s mute. I didn’t say she’s deaf, Brone,” Hawkins said.

  Then, another one of Hawkins’s women—a tall, middle-aged woman with an egg-shaped head—stood up, withdrew her knife, and moved toward me.

  “I’ll help. Let’s get this over with.”

  CHAPTER 4

  The buzzing, croaking, and howling kept me up most of the night, and I was willing to bet I wasn’t the only one who was getting up with aching muscles and a sour stomach.

  By the time the morning birds started chirping, half of Hawkins’s women were climbing out of their poorly constructed hammocks and grumbling under their breaths. Some of them had been forced to sleep together, which must have been uncomfortable.

  “What’s for breakfast?” asked one of the women, still lying in a hammock overtop someone.

  The woman underneath her mumbled something and squirmed, no doubt trying to get out from underneath. At the same time, a branch snapped, and both women fell to the ground.

  While most women started laughing, Hawkins jolted upright with a knife in her fist.

  “It’s Dufus and Dufusella,” Collins joked.

  Hawkins, clearly not impressed, climbed out of her bed and stretched her neck to the side until it cracked like a thick pretzel stick being split in half.r />
  “Get up, all of you,” she ordered. “The sooner we get there, the better.”

  What did she think this was? Some high school field trip? There was absolutely nothing to look forward to.

  “Yo, what the fuck!” someone shouted.

  I turned around to spot BluJay spinning in circles as if trying to catch an invisible tail. When she didn’t find what the woman was shouting about, she shrugged.

  “Right there!” that same loudmouth shouted again.

  As BluJay twirled one more time, I spotted the blood before she noticed it. It was bright and blotchy and covered the back of her knee.

  Hawkins took a step forward. “What happened?”

  BluJay, not being able to see behind her own knee, ran her fingers down her legs and grimaced when her fingers slid over the blood.

  “What happened?” Hawkins repeated, this time storming toward the shouting woman.

  “I-I don’t know, Hawks. She got up out of the hammock like that.”

  “A leech,” I mumbled.

  Hawkins swung around with so much force I was surprised her back didn’t crack. “You got something you wanna share with the class, Brone?”

  “I said it’s probably a leech.”

  I almost added, “You’d know that if you knew anything about the jungle,” but managed to keep it to myself.

  Collins bent forward with the weight of her body on her knees and inspected BluJay’s bloody leg. “Think Brone’s right, Hawk.”

  “So, pull it off!” Hawkins snapped.

  “No, don’t!” someone said.

  Slowly, Hawkins turned toward the woman, and if she’d been carrying a gun, she’d have shot her square in the face for speaking out like that.

  The woman—Pops, I think her name was—elevated two trembling hands and bowed her head. “Um, respectfully, Hawk. Don’t think you’re supposed to pull off a leech. Well, I mean… That’s what I’ve heard.”

  “Dude… Don’t those things carry diseases?” someone else added, stepping away from BluJay.

  Without moving her lower body, Hawkins rotated her chest to face me and arched an eyebrow.

  I sighed. “No, it doesn’t carry diseases. And you can pull it off, but there’s a technique.”

  Hawkins didn’t move, no doubt her way of saying, Well, get to it, then.

  So, I moved toward BluJay with Rocket’s voice in my head. “The goal,” she’d said while hovering over Biggie’s leg with slouched shoulders, “is to make sure you pull the mouth off along with the body. If you don’t, it’s like a tick… part of it stays inside.” She looked up at me with furrowed eyebrows—a look of intense concentration that made her seem pissed off. “It might not carry diseases like a tick, but if the mouth gets stuck, it’ll slow down the healing.”

  “Girl, hurry up!” Biggie had shouted.

  Rocket then yanked the leech off and held it between her thumb and index finger as if showcasing some science project. “Look at that sucker.”

  Crouching down by BluJay’s knee, I placed a sturdy hand around her calf. “Hold still.”

  Then, as Rocket had taught me, I slid my fingernail underneath the leech’s sucker and at the same time, pulled it upward. Blood spat from its mouth and onto BluJay’s knee, and it wiggled between my fingers. Not wanting to look at the ugly thing any longer, I threw it in the nearest bush.

  “Might want to wrap that up,” I said. “The bleeding can take a while to stop.”

  “Someone give her something,” Hawkins ordered. “And let’s keep moving.”

  The moment I turned around, something cold and clammy grabbed my forearm. I looked back to find BluJay staring at me with pleading eyes. Though she didn’t say anything, I knew what she was conveying—thank you.

  I smiled at her, forgetting at that moment that she was part of Hawkins’s crew; for a split second, she was a girl… a young woman blindly following her leader. Why hadn’t she joined my side after we’d saved that whale? Emotions had been running so high that countless women decided to follow me rather than succumb to Hawkins’s abuse.

  Maybe she was afraid.

  “Any time,” I said, and the corner of her lip twitched as if moving for the first time in years.

  Hawkins hacked her way through a curtain of hanging leaves. “Let’s move.”

  How long would she last today? Would her feet hurt after several hours? I hoped so—I wanted her to realize the mistake she’d made entering the jungle in search of Rainer.

  For all she knew, Rainer would kill her the moment she saw her. Or, even more likely, she’d be killed by Zsasz on the outskirts of the city.

  But it wasn’t my place to get involved.

  “Grab a bite,” Hawkins said, pointing at a banana tree to her right.

  I hadn’t noticed it—the green bananas hung upside down and sat so close together it was hard to tell them apart. I’d seen banana trees before, and most of them held the fruit high up, making it difficult for us to cultivate them.

  This tree, however, wasn’t too tall, and with a good stretch of an arm, we could easily pluck the bananas away.

  Hawkins’s women lunged toward the banana bunches like starving monkeys. Collins even went as far as to elbow BluJay in the neck to be the first one to eat. I waited for them to stop grabbing fistfuls of fruit before making my way over.

  They weren’t yet ripe; pulling one off was tough, and it would likely taste like shit, but I was starving. I peeled it open, and it emitted a loud crack like a piece of wood snapping, and took a bite of the dry, chalky texture.

  No one around me seemed to mind its bitter taste. As I swallowed hard, something caught my eye. Behind the tower of bananas was a small, frail-looking tree with a narrow trunk and bright green leaves. Attached to its branches were little green fruit—similar to limes but the size of lemons.

  Guava, I knew.

  I moved toward it, leaves cracking under my step, and reached for its leaves.

  “What’s she doing?”

  “What’d you find?”

  “Move!”

  Before they had the time to circle me like a pack of wolves, I tore off a bunch of leaves from the guava plant, feeling insects rush off the tips of my fingers.

  “What is that?” Collins asked, tearing one of the green fruits from its stems. “Guava?”

  I nodded, and everyone came running with half-eaten bananas in their fists and mouths full of white mush.

  “You eat the fruit, dumbass,” Collins said, staring at my leaves.

  Ignoring her, I turned around and pressed a few of them over the cut on my face. I’d learned about the benefits of guava leaves through Tegan when she’d been running the Potions tent, or as I knew it, tent number four.

  Back then, everyone had called her the pharmacist.

  Although she’d had an entire shelf devoted to herbs and plants, the one she spoke about the most was guava—something to do with how easy it was to find around the Village and how versatile it was. It hurt me to think of the old Tegan—tall, slender, and confident in the way she walked; she’d moved toward me like a cat, hips swaying from side to side. I remember thinking she was arrogant, but her long messily braided hair in conjunction with her plant-construction jewelry and plain hemp clothing told me there was more to her than I knew.

  Soap.

  That was the first thing she’d tried to sell me.

  And now, she was pregnant and barely speaking at all. What had the Northers done to her?

  I’d gone to visit tent number four a few times after a long day of hunting and one hot, humid night—the night Hammer had threatened me at knifepoint—I entered the tent to catch her sleeping on a bed of leaves at the far back. The moment I’d entered, she’d jolted upright and laughed for having fallen asleep.

  I remembered thinking she’d had too much to drink, but the truth, as I found out later, was that Tegan didn’t drink despite being the person responsible for creating the Village’s moonshine. She’d shared gallons of it with the entire V
illage that evening and hadn’t touched a drop.

  Outside, women shouted and sang, their feet stomping against the ground as they danced in drunken ecstasy around the fire.

  I’d barely taken two steps inside her tent when she’d said, “Guava.”

  “What?” I’d asked.

  “That cut on your neck,” she’d said. “You want guava leaves.”

  She stepped toward a large wooden shelving unit standing on four legs and pulled from it two guava leaves. “On the house, doll. They’re fresh from today. For your cut—” she wiggled a finger at her own neck to point out my wound. “Guava leaves have incredible healing properties. Cuts, abrasions, you name it. They’re anti-inflammatory and antibacterial. I even use them to make tea… Helps with ear infections.”

  Stunned, I parted my lips to ask something along the lines of, “How do you know all of this?”

  Surely, I wasn’t the first person to act so surprised by the amount of knowledge she held in that brain of hers. She smirked and pulled her braid over her shoulder. “Spent three years in Neptune Correctional Facility before being shipped here. I’ve never been much of a social person, so I read. Like, a lot. My brother became a surgeon, while I got a six-year sentence. Reading up on medical books was the one thing that kept me from feeling like a total waste of skin. I figured when I got out, I’d go to med school. So, my brother kept bringing me medical books, including manuscripts on natural medicine. God, I wish they hadn’t shut down Neptune Correctional Facility… I’d be in school right about now. And before you ask”—she waved a hand in front of her face, reminding me of a typical high school girl—“the only reason I’m here in the first place is that some son of a bitch broke into my house.”

  I stared at her. Was I missing something?

  “I smashed his face in with a baseball bat. My big brother bought it for me when I got my first apartment.” Shaking her bowed head, she rubbed her forehead. “To be honest, I should have listened to him… Moving into that ghetto neighborhood was a stupid idea.”

  She must have realized she’d been ranting; with a goofy smile on her face, she passed me the leaves. “I’m sorry… I don’t talk to many people. Here. Apply that over your cut and it should take care of the infection.”