I swallowed hard as I tried to work to get my hands free without slicing too deeply into them. The rope was just too tight. I locked my elbows and tensed my muscles as I jerked both hands upward.
My balled-up entwined fingers smacked him just above the groin. He grunted and sneered at me.
“Hold her!” he shouted, and the men instantly obeyed. They grabbed my arms and held them over my head. The slender man roughly pulled the zipper down the rest of the way. My jacket split open, and the cold air slammed into my chest.
He grabbed the hem of my shirt and yanked it up to my chin. I shivered as the cold sank through my skin and into my bones. The slender man placed his icy, dirty hand on my stomach.
“Mmm… soft. No markings though,” he said grinning. He leaned closer, his lips inches from my ear. “Your skin is so smooth… so perfect.”
He slid his hand higher, moving slowly toward my breast. I fought back the tears that were threating to roll down my cheeks.
“If the markings aren’t up here,” he said curling his fingers under the band of my bra before changing directions. His hand moved back down my stomach. “Then they must be down here.”
My lungs squeezed together. It felt like I couldn’t take in any oxygen. Everything around me started to swirl together. The only thing I could see was the guy’s disgusting, smiling face.
“Don’t. I’m not one of them,” I said.
“So, you are a liar.”
The man close to my backpack chuckled. “We knew that when she said they’d come for us if we didn’t let her go.”
“Just let me go,” I begged.
He clicked his tongue and started moving his hand toward the button on my jeans. “I have to know for sure if you are one of them. Because if you are, you’ll go back to them and tell them about us. And we don’t want that.”
“I’m not one of anyone!”
“There’s only one way to know for sure,” he said popping open the button on my pants. There wasn’t anything I could do to stop the single tear that leaked out of the corner of my eye. It felt like a blob of ice was sliding down my face.
“Please don’t,” I begged. My entire body trembled uncontrollably.
He put his hand on the zipper, but he stopped moving. The slender man blinked several times before swallowing hard. The men holding my arms suddenly let go.
“Untie her,” the voice said.
4
The man on my right moved his fingers quickly in an attempt to untie me, but his nerves caused him to fumble around. Beads of sweat popped up at his temples, and he started puffing out rapid breaths. His anxiety was growing, and if he wasn’t careful, he was going to hyperventilate.
“Get away from her,” the voice ordered, and the sweaty man backed away.
A tall guy with eyes darker than the midnight sky stepped closer. He looked me up and down skeptically before slicing the rope with a knife.
The instant I was free I pushed the new guy with dark eyes out of my way. I grabbed my backpack and refilled it quickly. I stood up and started walking away, but before I could get far, a girl with long, snarled pigtails grabbed my arm.
“Hang on there, girly,” she said with a slightly arched eyebrow.
My heart was still pounding. I took a slow breath and tried to assess the situation. Remain calm. My dad’s words finally finding their way to me.
There were four new people surrounding the three who’d kidnapped me. Three guys and a girl holding a club with nails poking out at the end. They untied me, but they held me in place. They weren’t allowing me to leave.
My situation had improved but only slightly. I just needed to get to my gun.
One of the guys had a knife pointed at the slender man’s neck. The jacket. I’d seen that jacket before.
Ryder.
I glanced at the girl who was still holding my arm, and she looked down her nose at me. It almost looked as if she was holding back a sneer.
“Don’t kill us,” the slender man said, backing away from Ryder’s blade. He grouped up with his two cowering buddies, all of them wearing the same panicked, glassy-eyed expression. Their fear of Ryder and his friends was very real.
“If we don’t, you’ll just turn around and do this again,” Ryder said.
The slender man forced a chuckle. “We didn’t know she was with you. How could we have known? She was all alone. No markings.”
Ryder lowered his blade a few inches. “I feel like we’ve already given all of you far too many chances. It’s always something with you three.”
“Please, another chance,” the slender man begged.
“If the choice was mine, you’d be lying in a pool of your own blood,” Ryder said, twirling his blade between his fingers before tucking it back into the sheath at his waist. He glanced at me, his face cleaned of the blood that had been smeared across his cheek. “Lucky for you, it’s not my choice.”
“Oh, thank God,” the slender man said lowering his head in relief.
The dark-eyed guy that had come with Ryder picked up the rope. He and his buddy tied the three men who’d kidnapped me together.
“Wait! What are you doing?” the slender man asked, his eyes bugging out of their sockets.
“Bringing you back to Jacob. We’ll let him figure it out,” the dark-eye guy said in a voice that was barely audible from where I was standing.
“Oh, Christ! No!” the slender man said turning and trying to run away. His ankles had already been tied to the others, but apparently, he hadn’t noticed. He fell face first in the snow, pulling the other two down with him. “I changed my mind! Kill me!”
Ryder shook his head. “If Jacob lets me, I’d be happy to do that for you. Let’s go.”
“Come on, princess,” the girl holding me said as she tightened her grip. “Meaty. What have you been eating?”
We followed behind the two men that had come with Ryder. They were working together to pull along the slender man and his comrades with the least amount of falling as possible.
“How do you even know Ryder anyway?” the girl asked loosening her grip only slightly.
“I don’t really know him,” I said, my voice quieter than I would have liked.
She looked me up and down. “Guess you know him well enough for him to drag us out here to come looking for you. Lucky for you we did too.”
“Is it?”
“Is it what?” Her eyes narrowed.
“Lucky.”
She rolled her eyes and pressed her fingertips to her forehead near her eyebrow. “If it hadn’t been for us, your pants would be around your ankles right now. Each one of them nasty-ass dudes taking a turn no doubt.”
I gnawed on my cheek. The feeling of the slender man’s hand on my skin came rushing back, sending a sick feeling into my stomach.
“So, um, yeah, you’re welcome and stuff,” she said bowing her head slightly as if she’d just completed something spectacular and was waiting for her applause.
“Thank you.”
“You didn’t answer me though. How do you know Ryder? I’ve never seen you around.” Her head stayed forward, but her eyes shifted toward me for a split-second. “It’s all quite suspicious.”
I drew in a deep breath and swallowed. “I did answer you. I don’t really know him. He was in a fight earlier, and I just happened to cross his path.”
“And you’re really not marked?”
I shook my head.
“Huh,” she grunted.
There was a small part of me that wanted to ask why she’d made the noise, but a bigger part thought that the less I talked to her, the better off I would be. She didn’t seem to like me any better than the slender man had. The fewer interactions I had with her, the happier I’d be.
I let out a soft sigh as I looked off toward the south. I was going the wrong way. Miss Pigtails tightened her grip again. “Don’t even think about it.”
“Oh, no. I wouldn’t dare.”
Ahead of us, Ryder said something I couldn
’t make out to the other two guys before jogging back to me and Miss Pigtails. “Go lead the way,” Ryder said, staring at his friend’s hand that was wrapped around my arm. “I need to talk to Emmy.”
“Emery,” I corrected.
“Emery?” Miss Pigtails said, barely able to hold in her laugh. “What kind of name is that?”
Ryder glared at her before turning and bowing his head in my direction. “I kind of like it.”
“You like it so much you couldn’t even get it right?” Miss Pigtails said with a laugh. She was quickly silenced by the look on Ryder’s face. Her fingers released my arm, and I sucked in a breath as if her grip had somehow stopped me from breathing in deeply. “I’ll go lead the way.”
“That’s a great idea,” Ryder said, waving her away. The second she was out of earshot he smiled. “Charlie is a bit rough around the edges.”
“No? Really? I didn’t get that at all from her.”
Ryder laughed. “I apologize if she said something stupid or insulting or whatever.”
“I don’t think you can apologize for someone else.”
“Oh, but I can try. It’s not like I’d want you to get the wrong impression about us. We’re the good guys.” Ryder lifted his palms up and shrugged.
I chewed my lip for a second. “It doesn’t really matter what I think.”
“I think it does.”
There was a long pause, but I could tell there was something he wanted to say. For some reason, he was hesitating.
I cleared my throat. “How did you know where I was?”
“I followed you.” He didn’t sound even the slightest bit embarrassed, or worried about how I might react by sharing that information with me.
“Why?” I asked, looking at his cleaned-up profile.
He shrugged. “It’s not a safe place out here all by yourself, and I just wanted to make sure you got on without a hitch.”
“How long were you going to follow me?”
“Maybe to your destination.” He turned and flashed me a smile. His teeth were white and clean.
“I doubt that.”
He brushed his hands together before tucking them into his jacket pockets. “So, you should know who we are.”
“You already told me before. You’re on one side of some war. It’s not my war. I don’t need to know any more than that.”
“It’s everyone’s war. If you live on this planet, it’s your war too.” He stared at me for a moment. “Anyway, That’s Eli,” he pointed to the tall one with dark eyes, “and that’s Logan.”
Even with his jacket covering him, Logan looked as though he was composed of eighty percent muscle. If he had to, he could probably wrangle the slender man and his two men all by himself.
“And you’ve met Charlie,” he said.
“What did you tell them?”
“About what?” he asked.
I readjusted my hat. “About me. Why did they come out here and help you look for me?”
“They’re my friends. We all live together. That’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about.”
I shook my head vigorously. “I don’t want to get involved in your war.”
“Everyone’s war.”
“It’s not mine.”
He sighed. “I want you to come back and just see what we have. You don’t have to stay.”
“You want to bring me to your leader… Jacob.” I pointed at the slender man. “He doesn’t seem to like Jacob, so I’m not sure I should either.”
“Jacob just doesn’t like when the people he allows to leave the group continue to get in the way. Or if, like in your case of what they were doing to you, make things worse.” He nodded at the stumbling men. “And they are always getting in the way and making things worse.”
“If they aren’t part of your group, how exactly do they fit into your war?”
“Everyone’s war.”
I rolled my eyes.
Ryder cleared his throat. “We call them natives. I guess technically you’d be a native too.”
“What do you mean by a native?”
“A native is a person that isn’t taking sides. Or like you, someone that doesn’t want to participate in the war… someone that wants things to go back to how they were before The Evolved tried to take over.”
I wasn’t exactly sure how I wanted things to be. How could I know when I wasn’t even really sure how things had been? I wanted things to go back to how they were when my parents were still alive, but that wasn’t an option.
“What’s Jacob going to do to me?” I asked. “I mean, since he doesn’t like natives.”
“He doesn’t have a problem with natives as long as they mind their own business. Most of the people roaming about, not that there are many, are out there because Jacob let them go.”
I shook my head. “Why would he do that? You have fewer people in your war. Isn’t he afraid they’ll join up with The Evolved?”
“The Evolved would probably just kill or torture them. Jacob doesn’t believe people should have to fight for something they don’t believe in.”
“So, he just lets them go?”
Ryder nodded. “Yup. I mean he doesn’t give them any of our supplies, or anything. Every man for himself and all that.”
“Then he’ll let me go?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“OK,” I said sucking in a quick breath.
Ryder turned and smiled at me. “But I bet he’s going to be just as fascinated by you as I am.”
“Oh, please.”
“No really. I can’t even remember the last time we found a true native. Maybe you’re the last one.” He jabbed his elbow into my arm lightly.
“Do you have markings?” I asked, my voice quiet.
Ryder’s eye shifted down towards the snow. He exhaled slowly. “We all have markings. Once upon a time, we were one big happy family—”
“How big?”
“Big enough.” He looked at me, but I didn’t react. Ryder cleared his throat and continued. “We were all given a marking because we were all devoted to the same cause. I was given mine at birth. Those other guys, the ones that call themselves The Evolved, they have extra markings. To them, they are like badges.”
My head bobbed up and down rapidly. “On their face. No mistaking them. Like the one that attacked you.”
“That’s right. They are proud of who they are, and they know they are strong.” His shoulders dropped as he released a big breath. “They don’t let people go like Jacob does. Instead, they collect people. Keep them as prisoners. Slaves.”
I shook my head. “That guy fighting you… he didn’t take you for his prisoner.”
“He was alone. If there had been another, I’d be gone. Maybe even dead.”
“Dead?”
“I’m not afraid to fight back. I don’t really take orders,” Ryder said raising his eyebrow at me. “I’d cause too many problems for them. They wouldn’t want to deal with me.”
I swallowed down the sour taste at the back of my throat. I wanted to take a drink from my water bottle, but I was afraid to stop and take it out. After Ryder’s story, I just wanted to keep moving.
“I’m a fighter,” Ryder said stiffening his jaw. “And it’ll do you good if you become one too.”
“Who said I wasn’t one?”
He eyed me, but his expression didn’t change. “I hope that’s true. Not much longer until we’re home. I think you’re going to like it.”
Ryder smiled as he nodded at the stretch of land in front of us. All I saw was snow for as far as I could see.
He ran ahead of us and stomped his boot on the ground in a particular rhythm. In seconds a square door opened revealing a secret underground passage.
What had I gotten myself into?
5
Eli and Logan led the slender man and his buddies down into the secret underground hideaway. Charlie held the door open with one hand while she swung her spiked club with the other. She looked both bored and m
enacing at the same time, and I was pretty sure she knew it.
I hesitated for a second before stepping down onto the first rung of the ladder. Charlie’s lip curled at one end, and she raised her eyebrow at me.
“Aww, are you scared, girly?” she said, her expression changing into a frown when she caught Ryder’s chastising eyes. “What?”
“Knock it off already,” he said through his teeth.
She shrugged, as her gaze shifted out toward the horizon. “Whatever.”
I stepped off of the ladder and turned around. There was a long corridor in front of me. It must have been the basement of a rather large building that no longer existed.
The walls were covered with a dark, gritty scum. It seemed like the walls and the ceiling were constructed of thick concrete. I lightly touched the surface with my glove, but it didn’t leave a mark in the grime. The gunk must have been there for so long that it had become part of the wall.
“Go on,” Ryder said with a smile. “I know it doesn’t look the best, but it’s safe. It’ll be OK.”
He lightly put his hand on my shoulder, and I flinched. “Sorry.”
Charlie hopped down off the ladder and chuckled as she walked past us. “Have fun kids,” she said as she waved a strange flourish. “Enjoy your stay.”
“Sorry about that,” Ryder said when she was out of earshot.
“She really doesn’t like me.”
“She really doesn’t like anyone.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “She seems to like you just fine.”
“Today,” Ryder said, taking a step in front of me. “This way.”
Our feet padded softly against the dirt-coated tile floor. Each step sounded like a muffled bass drum echoing around us.
“What is this place?” I asked.
“I think it was a school basement once upon a time.” Ryder shrugged. “At least that was Jacob’s guess. I’m not sure any of us really know, but it keeps us safe.”
“Is this where you stayed during the storms?”
Ryder shook his head. “Even longer than that. We found this after the war started. It wasn't too long after that they unleashed the storm.”
“They unleashed the storm?”
Ravaged Land: Divided Series - A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Books 1-3 Page 3
