by Stasia Black
“Never thought I’d miss those ugly ass concrete walls,” she muttered, about to take another swallow of water. She finished braiding her hair. Now for the hair tie—
“Run!” Charlie’s panicked shout split the air. “Audrey, run!”
Audrey spilled the cup of water as she jumped to her feet and spun around.
Just in time to see a giant, terrifying man covered in tattoos swinging a bat right at Charlie’s head.
Chapter 2
AUDREY
“No!” she screamed, hand out, as Charlie’s body crumpled to the ground.
She froze with horror as Charlie’s eyes went lifeless. Blood pooled on the ground by his head.
No. No, it couldn’t be.
Charlie wasn’t—
He couldn’t be—
Just five minutes ago they’d been talking and joking and… This was all a bad dream. A really, really bad dream.
Wake up. Wake up.
She slapped herself in the face but the scene in front of her didn’t change.
“Well look what we have here.”
Two other men stepped out from behind the monster who’d killed her brother.
Killed.
Oh God. Charlie was dead. He was dead.
She bent over and threw up.
“Looks like we got ourselves another filly for the stables, boss.”
Audrey’s head jerked up at that. Oh God. This was real. Charlie was dead and these men wanted to—
She shut the thought off before she could finish it. Her eyes flicked down. Shit. The backpack was more than five feet away. She’d dropped it in her excitement over finding the stream.
Her gun was in the backpack.
And if they could best Charlie, what hope in hell did she have? There were three of them. And they were massive.
“I call dibs,” said the greasy man to the left of Charlie’s murderer.
“Fuck you do,” said the man on his other side. “You know boss always likes to break ‘em in.”
“So we just take turns fuckin’ her ass before we bring her back,” said the giant in the middle, cracking his knuckles in anticipation. “We’ll just say we found her that way.”
Well that cleared up that decision.
No way she was going down without a goddamned fight. The gun was in the front pocket of the backpack. She didn’t even have to unzip anything. Just reach inside.
One. Two—
She dove for it, slamming hard into the ground and snatching the gun out before the three bastards even realized what she was doing.
But the element of surprise didn’t last long. The toadie on the left lunged for her. She barely managed to get the safety off and cock the gun before he landed right on top of her.
Bang.
She’d pulled the trigger without even fully thinking through what she was doing. The guy immediately started screaming his head off and pulling a bloody stump to his chest.
Shit, shit! She just blew half his hand off!
She scrambled backwards and got to her feet, swinging her gun towards the other men.
“Back!” she screamed, her whole body shaking. “Get back or I’ll shoot you too!”
Except shit, they had their guns trained on her. One was a rifle—a fancy one, like a sniper rifle—the other a machine gun.
She was going to die.
Charlie was dead and now she was going to die and it was all her fault.
If not for her, Charlie could have stayed at Uncle Dale’s and been safe.
“Drop the gun, girlie,” said the giant man.
“Never,” she screamed. “You think you’re real men? Murdering a man in cold blood by attacking him from behind and then kidnapping a girl? You’re cowards.” She spit on the ground.
“You just gonna let her sit here and talk to us like—”
The big man ignored his comrade and suddenly looked down the sight of his rifle right at her.
Oh God. Here it was. The end of everything. All those years in the bunker preparing. Preparing for what? One week and she’d gotten both her and her brother killed. Oh God. Her eyes squeezed shut and her whole body went tense as she waited for it. To die. Right now. Any second—
Her gun exploded out of her hand. She screamed and looked down. It took her a second to realize what had happened—the big man had shot the gun out of her hand, only mildly injuring her.
Because they wanted her alive. How had she forgotten, even for a second?
So we just take turns fuckin’ her ass.
She turned and ran.
The big, ugly man’s laugh echoed behind her. “I haven’t had good hunting in a while, little rabbit. Just know, I consider this foreplay.”
She jumped over a log and kept sprinting. She was heading uphill. Which was stupid. It took more effort and she had no clue where she was going. At least downhill, the way they’d come, she had a little more idea of the landscape.
But she was a good runner, she knew that. And while it wasn’t exactly the same, she could go for hours on Uncle Dale’s mechanical stationary bike in the bunker on its hardest setting. So in theory, she should be able to keep running for a good long while.
Problem was, this was the real world. And out here there were things like pesky logs to get in her way. And bushes and thorny greenbriers and cacti— Jesus, did every plant in Texas have to have burs or thorns attached to it? Each step she took her jeans and flannel shirt were getting torn at by the damn wildlife.
Which was nothing compared to what the two men crashing through the woods behind her wanted to do to her.
But goddammit, if she didn’t get free of these bushes, she was never going to get anywhere. She ripped her arm away from the thorn bush that had hold of her, tearing her sleeve off and heading toward an area that looked clearer.
Only to realize once she ran out into an open field that—duh, it was a fucking open field and she’d just made herself a sitting duck.
The man with the rifle was obviously a crack shot. How stupid could she get? Making decisions under this kind of pressure was fucking with her.
Charlie was usually the one who— She didn’t— She couldn’t—
“Shit!” she whispered frantically, spinning around and trying to judge which was the best way to go before realizing she was only wasting more time.
There. The field was narrowest to her left. She started sprinting in that direction. If she could just make it to the woods on the other side, then maybe she could find a place to hide, or just keep one step ahead of—
The ground exploded beside her.
“Shit!” she screamed. Bastard was shooting at her. Guess he’d gotten tired of playing chase.
Cover. She needed cover. She looked frantically around for any trees big enough to shield her, but the field only had a few thin, reedy saplings. None she could hide behind.
And the grass was so high she could barely see where she was stepping. If her ankle turned on a rock, she’d be shit out of lu—
“Ooaf—” she cried, tripping and going down like a stone.
Only to land on a big, warm body.
Her eyes shot open wide and she was about to screech and jerk away, but a huge hand clapped over her mouth.
They had her. Was it the big bastard who’d killed her brother? They must have circled around, one of them shooting at her to distract her while the other—
But when she twisted in the man’s grip, she saw it wasn’t any of the three men she’d seen at the spring with her brother.
No, lying beside and half on top of her was a man even more terrifying. He was easily equal to the other man in size and stature. But this one had a ragged beard, a horrific scar running down the side of his face, and he smelled strongly.
She twisted and fought to get away from him but he just shook her and held his hand over her mouth even more forcefully. He pulled her to him, bearhugging her from behind to hold her still.
“Shhh,” he hissed in her ear.
“Just let m
e kill the fuckers.”
Audrey’s head jerked to the left at hearing yet another voice. Sure enough, there was a second man crouched down beside them, eyes locked in the direction she’d just come from.
“Commander’d have your ass,” said Scarface. “No unprovoked attacks between us and Travis. You know Article 48 of the new Constitution just as well as I do.”
The other man’s jaw went rigid. “He was chasing an unarmed woman and you know what he would have done if he’d caught her. You call that unprovoked?”
“Enough, Finn,” Scarface snapped. “Move out.” He moved his hand in a sharp, slashing downward motion.
The other man—Finn, apparently—nodded even though he didn’t seem happy about it. He looked one last time at the way Audrey had come before army crawling through the grass.
Scarface finally let his hand off Audrey’s mouth and she scrambled back from him. He grabbed her arm before she could get far. “Listen, if you don’t want to get raped, mutilated, and murdered, not necessarily in that order, you come with us.”
“Let go of me,” she hissed.
His eyes narrowed. “You can’t get out of here on your own. They’ll be on top of us in three minutes. Maybe less. We’ve got a truck. We can get you someplace safe.”
She scoffed at that. Safe didn’t exist anymore. Not when there was only one woman to every twelve or so men.
Still, sitting still in this field would only get her dead. Or captured. Or worse.
One threat at a time.
So she followed Finn’s example and started army crawling through the grass as fast as she could. She gritted her teeth against the burrs and ground thorns tearing at her arm where her sleeve had gotten ripped off.
Texas might be a proud new country but it was a land determined to make you bleed, one way or another. Still, she scrambled as fast as she could. Her life depended on it.
And then before she even knew what was happening, she was suddenly being lifted to her feet. She looked around. They were at a dense copse of trees at the other end of the field.
“Whoa, who’s this gorgeous creature?”
She jerked back from a third stranger who rubbed her red hair back and forth between his fingers.
“Jeffries,” Scarface snapped at a third man. “You’re scaring her.”
Ha. Ironic coming from Scarface. He looked like the posterchild for brutality. She held her hands up and backed away from all of them.
“Look,” she whispered. “Thanks for helping out, but I’m all good now. I’ll just be going.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Finn said. “Those fuckers are almost on top of us and you can be sure they won’t give a shit about Article 48.”
Scarface nodded and held out his hand.
Audrey was confused.
Until Finn tossed something to him.
A gun.
Shit! Out of the frying pan and into the damn fire.
Audrey turned and again started sprinting like her life depended on it.
But she barely got four steps before she felt a sharp prick in the back of her butt. Just another thorn. No big deal.
She just… had… to… get to…
She collapsed to the ground.
Her last thought was of Charlie’s face before everything went black.
Chapter 3
PHOENIX ‘NIX’
Well shit. Tranquing her wasn’t going to go down well with the Commander. But Finn was right. They needed to get the fuck out of here.
While they were technically in the neutral zone between Travis Territory and the Central Texas Sector South, they were closer to Travis’s boundary line than theirs. And Arnold Travis’s bastards would look for any excuse to kill them some Centrals.
Still, Nix took his time when he lifted her from where she’d fallen. He brushed leaves from her hair and some dirt from her cheek.
Fuck but she was beautiful. He didn’t even think it was just because she was the first female he’d touched in more than five years. Her round face, soft cheekbones, full lips—she’d be beautiful by anyone’s standards. His cock hardened at the warmth of her in his arms as he carried her back to the truck.
Maybe he’d even put his name in for the lottery this time around.
Then he laughed at himself. Going soft now, Nix? More like hard. Jesus, was he finally getting as pussy-starved as every other dumb fuck around?
“Careful,” Finn said, flipping the front seat down and climbing up into the narrow space behind it. Finn flipped down one of the jump seats and reached for the woman. Nix felt oddly reluctant to give her up.
Fucking stupid. He shook his head at himself and handed her off to Finn so he could settle her in.
He turned his attention back to the field behind them and lifted his rifle, eye to the scope.
“You expecting trouble?” Jeffries asked.
“Any second now.”
“Shit.” Jeffries ran around the front of the truck and jumped in the driver’s seat. Only once he was in did Nix drop the rifle and get in the passenger seat.
He barely had the door shut before gunfire came from the trees that had been shielding them from the field.
“Get her down, Finn,” Nix shouted. “And fucking drive!”
“I’m driving,” Jeffries said, jamming the truck in drive and kicking up a cloud of dirt behind him as they took off.
The back window of the cab shattered and Nix ducked. Fuckers. He shoved his rifle through the now empty space and started firing back. He wouldn’t hit anyone like this, but some return fire might slow them down.
Soon they’d outdistanced the bastards. Nix swung to look in the backseat. “Is she okay?”
Finn nodded, his face pale. The woman was slumped over, still totally out of it. Finn’s hand trembled when he lifted it to run through his hair. “They could’ve killed her. Just like that.” He looked up at Nix wide-eyed. “She’s one of the last one’s left and she could’ve just died right in front of me.”
Sometimes Nix forgot just how young Finn actually was. He was what, eighteen? Nineteen? He’d seen so much action, he usually seemed twice that old. Everyone did. Then again, Finn usually just went out on scrapper runs. He hadn’t gone on any of the rescue raids Nix arranged every few months.
Female slavery was officially illegal in Texas but the Constitution was only three years old. There were plenty folks who chose to ignore the fact that there was a government back in power at all. Anarchy suited them just fine.
Nix liked the new President of Texas, Maxwell Goddard—formerly Colonel Goddard of Fort Worth’s 10th Air Base. After D-Day, everything was fucked. No one really knew who started nuking who—Xterminate had gone global at that point and women were dying off in millions, billions even. But maybe Russia thought they could contain it in America if they took us off the map? Or vice versa? Who the hell knew?
But the bombs started falling in all the major cities. Three in Texas. Dallas. Austin. Houston. There happened to be a northeasterly wind that week. So Central Texas and Fort Worth were fine. Not even any radiation poisoning from fallout. Just the luck of the damn draw.
But folks in Pflugerville and all the suburbs north of Austin, Houston, and Dallas got fucked. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands in the cities themselves.
And the electrical grid? Hasta la vista.
Simultaneous EMP carpet attacks took care of the rest. The Electromagnetic Pulses fried everything with a circuit board from cell phones to smart cars. Basically, every single modern convenience people relied on for daily life—gone in one stroke.
Fucking technology.
Took them all back to the stone ages.
“How long you think before the lottery?” Jeffries asked, glancing over his shoulder to look back at the woman.
“Eyes on the fucking road,” Nix snapped. “Besides, don’t you already have a woman?”
“Jesus,” Jeffries eyes slid toward him before focusing back ahead of him as the truck finally bounced onto a
dirt path that let back to a local highway. “A guy can’t even take a peek at the merchandise? Sheesh. Ain’t like you aren’t thinkin’ about it.”
Nix wasn’t going to dignify that with a response.
But then he remembered Roxy’s scream. His sister’s tiny hand reaching for him as she was ripped out of his arms.
“Actually I wasn’t thinking with my dick because we aren’t the same as them.” Nix jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “We aren’t fucking animals.”
“Whoa,” Jeffries said, eyebrows up as he looked over at Nix. “I was just saying it’s only natural if you were looking to get your thrill drill down there some greasin’ if you know what I mean. We ain’t had a new girl in over two months. Everyone’s getting restless.”
Nix jaw went hard. “You’ll want to stop talking now. You’re just digging yourself fucking deeper.”
Fact was, if the fucker wasn’t driving, Nix might be tempted to introduce his face to a wall. Jeffries was his second in command on the Security Squadron, sure—and at the Commander’s personal request, no less—but that didn’t mean Nix thought the guy wasn’t a weaselly son of a bitch.
Nix took a long breath in and let it out. Jeffries did his job. And really, that was all Nix cared about.
It’s not like you want to date the motherfucker.
No, Nix ate, drank, and slept the job. Keep the Jacob’s Well Township and all the souls who lived there safe—that was it. Full stop. He didn’t do shit like whining about not liking his second in command.
Jeffries rolled his eyes and held his hands up, letting go of the steering wheel.
“Jesus,” Nix shouted, grabbing for the wheel.
Jeffries just laughed and took the wheel, swerving the truck back into their lane from where they’d started drifting onto the shoulder, almost into the ditch.
“Relax, man. You always got a stick up your ass. Ain’t like you’re better’n everyone else.”
Fucker was getting on Nix’s nerves. He pinched the tip of his nose and looked out the window. It was barely noon and already he felt one fuck of a headache coming on.
