by Angel Lawson
As she changes, I notice Jackson tense by the front door. I call it a door but the glass was already broken when we got here although the lock was still in place. He slips into the shadowy space out of view and presses his back against the wall. Green does the same on the opposite side. I search for Walker but can’t find her, then I hear her shoes squeak on the hard, tiled floor.
“Get down,” she says quietly, a couple of rows over. I duck, dragging Jane down with me. “There’s someone outside. The guys went out the front door to check.”
I’m hit with dueling emotions. Fear—humans are worse than the Eaters out here. Everyone is paranoid. It’s best to stay entirely clear and we’ve done an okay job so far. But there’s a nagging kernel of hope that I’ve buried in my chest. Every time we encounter another human the same thought runs through my mind: Wyatt. Will he really just let me go? Can he leave whatever we have together unfinished? I know it’s crazy. Suicidal. He doesn’t even know our destination. But I also know if anyone can find us, it’s him. It just depends on if he wants to.
“Did you get a visual?” I ask Walker.
She looks at me in a way that tells me she knows what I want her to say. There’s pity and annoyance in her eyes. I know the look because she’s been giving it to me since we started working together again. She grits her teeth. “No. But there are at least four of them.”
“What’s the plan? Out the back?”
“Yes, I think so. Those two,” she jerks her thumb at the guys up front, “will go out that door. We’ll run, or at least fight, our way to the Jeep. It doesn’t have much gas left in it but there’s enough to get away from here.”
Jane watches us while she laces her boots. She never has an opinion on these matters. She just wants to be somewhere safe, out of the fray. So far we’ve managed it—but we won’t be able to forever.
“Where’s your weapon?” I ask Jane. Walker took away her gun after a particularly careless situation in Tennessee that nearly robbed Jackson of a thumb. Now she’s allowed to carry a tire iron. She holds it up with both hands.
“Keep it visible. Even if you can’t—or won’t—use it, at least make them think you will.”
“Maybe we should just hide out in here for a while,” she suggests.
“Nope,” Walker says, heading toward the non-working exit sign in the back. I push Jane to follow her. Walker unlatches the back door and eases into the sunlight. It wasn’t warm inside but the wind slaps my face. There’s no one in the back alley. We break for the lot where we left the truck.
To my surprise I spot the flash of Green’s red hair at the front of the truck. They beat us back so maybe Walker was wrong and there wasn’t anyone out front, or if there was, they moved on. Walker skids on the gravel-strewn pavement in a hard stop and looks around. She holds her hand for us to stay still. “Where did they go?” she whispers.
“Who?”
“The men out front.” Her eyes are wild—paranoid--and I think she’s lost her mind.
“Maybe you were wrong?” Jane suggests.
“No.”
The hair prickles on my neck, my sixth sense tells me Walker isn’t wrong. She rarely is and I move into a defensive position with her, back to back. I try to get an eye on the guys but I can no longer see any sign of Green. Maybe I made it up? The alley is quiet other than the wind. Walker speaks quietly. “On the count of three, run to the truck.”
The numbers come out in a whispered rush and we race to the vehicle. I wrench open the passenger door and push Jane into the middle. I sit next to her, slamming my door. Walker’s in the driver’s seat and reaches for the keys under the floor mat.
“Find them?” I ask, trying to settle my nerves, but when I look up I freeze. “Walker.”
“What?” she snaps, keys dangling from her fingers.
“You didn’t make them up.” I nod out the front window where both of our guys have guns to their heads. Green has a busted lip, blood trailing down his neck. Jackson is being held up by the man behind him—clearly suffering from a head injury. Movement behind the car reveals three more men, weapons out, one pressed against each of our side windows.
“Shit,” Walker mutters, dropping the keys. “I really didn’t need this today.”
The men are filthy and I don’t like the way they look at me or the other women. One with bushy sideburns and an ugly scar near his eye touches my neck and my skin crawls. There’s no hesitation as he drags me from the truck and I manage to give him a knee to the balls. He slaps me in return, a sharp crack against my cheek, his breath heavy and reeking of liquor. From there things get even messier until I’m blindfolded and tossed in the back of a bigger truck. I feel the hard, metal gun barrel at the back of my head and the hot breath of my captor as he sits too close for my liking.
I know Jane and Walker are nearby. I hear their breathing and a small squeak from my sister. Walker lets out a string of curses before her words are muffled, then she gags. I can only assume they’ve covered her mouth to shut her up. I have no idea if our men are with us or if they’re dead on the street. We need a way out but before I can even think, the truck stops with a lurch and I’m hauled out by strong, grabby hands. Underfoot the sidewalk gives way to a smoother floor and the air is warmer. We’re inside.
I’m about to risk speaking—to ask where they’ve taken us—when I’m released and shoved forward. I stand and hit my head on something hard.
“Ouch,” I mutter using my now-free hands to reach above and remove the blindfold.
“Shit,” Walker swears as I’m able to see where we are. Any confidence we could get out of this quickly sinks to the depths of my gut.
Walker and I stand two feet apart, silver bars separating us on four sides.
I reach my hands around the bars and shake. We’re in cages, separated from one another. Cages. Like animals.
“Feisty, eh?” Scarface says, eyeing me from a few feet away. “It’ll be a pleasure to break you in.”
Walker and my sister share another cage. I’m not alone. My cage is occupied by two other women, dirty-faced and skinny. The men, our men, are bound, gagged, and tied to beams against the back wall of the building. The room is long and cavernous. There’s a dead or dying body of a man in a similar position nearby. The whole scene is like it’s out of a torture porn movie.
I look at the two women locked up with me. One is asleep, or at least I hope she is. I can’t see her face. The other meets my stare. It’s impossible to tell her age. Under the grime, her hair is blonde and tired, cornflower blue eyes assess me in return. She doesn’t look weak. She just looks pissed.
There are tables around the room and at closer inspection it seems like we’re in some sort of bar. Or at least it has a bar. Row after row of liquor is piled behind the bar and men sit with tumblers of amber liquid on the tables. It looks like they wiped out every stash in the county. Men plus liquor plus women in cages? This can’t end well.
My cheek still burns from the slap and I have little doubt I’ll get another if I shout out. I sneak a glance at Walker. From the curl on her lip and narrowed eyes, I know she’s holding back, too.
I’m relieved when they walk away, waving for more drinks from the bar. Their distance doesn’t mean they ignore us though. They jeer and make vulgar gestures. One youngish guy with a shaggy, unkempt beard blows me a kiss. My fingers tighten on the bars.
“They call themselves the Winchesters,” the woman behind me whispers once the men are far enough away. I think back to my other life and the famous TV show characters by the same name and glance at them again. I come to my senses.
“Like the town?” I ask.
“Yes, and the guns.”
“What do they want?”
“They’re Traders. Or at least they pretend to be. Liquor, drugs, people.”
“So they’re the type that make the crappy part of the apocalypse even crappier? Perfect.” For a fleeting moment I want to see them face up against a Hybrid. I glance at my sister, who is l
ooking back at me with curious green eyes, and squelch the thought. No. There’s no place, not even here, for Hybrids.
“Pretty much.” She looks me up and down. “You’re pretty clean. You’ll get picked soon.”
“Picked for what?”
“What do you think?” She rolls her eyes at my naiveté. But the worry on my face must be more than even I can manage to hold back and she says, “Honestly, getting it over with may be better than waiting around. It’s the waiting that gets to you, you know?”
“No, not really,” I mutter.
“You think you can stop them?” She snorts. “You can’t. They’ve been terrorizing this area for the last year. None of the other communities have been able to stop them.” She kicks the ground with her boot and looks at the other girl. “I came here to get my sister. They snatched her while she was gathering mushrooms in the forest. I had a plan, too. All it got me was locked up with her and well, you see what happened to my friend.”
I don’t have to follow her gaze to know she’s looking at the other man hanging from the wall.
“How long have you been here?” I ask.
“A week maybe.”
“Is anyone looking for you?”
A flicker of guilt crosses her face. “I live in a community not far from here. We agreed to wait a few more days. Well, they agreed. I didn’t. She’s my sister. I couldn’t let them just take her and do…well, God knows what to her.”
“So you left without them?” Sounds familiar.
“Yeah. It was dumb.”
I look at the girl. “Is she okay?”
“No.” Her chin juts out but the defiance is just to cover up something she doesn’t want to say.
“What’s your name?”
“Miranda.”
“Miranda, I’m Alex.” I point to the other cage. “That’s my sister Jane and our friend. She goes by Walker.”
“Why are you telling me this? I’d rather not put a name to your face. We’re not friends in here.” Her tough façade finally crumbles. “I can’t care about you and sister and myself, too. If anything, you’re the distraction we need to get some of the focus off ourselves.”
“I get it. I do. But I’m not the type to let bastards like this get the upper hand. We’re been through some crazy stuff over the last year, but a group of rednecks playing slave-trader aren’t going to be the ones to take me down. I refuse.” I force my most confident voice. “We’re getting out of here alive and in one piece. You too.”
She stares at me like I’m a lunatic. Maybe I am. It could run in the family. “I don’t think you understand these guys.” She looks over at Green and Jackson hanging from the wall. “They’re ruthless.”
“Yeah well, I’ve seen enough out there that I’m not afraid of a filthy human. I have traveled for so long and we’re almost at the end,” I explain. “So these guys killing or trading or enslaving us—it’s not happening.”
The girl cracks a smile. “You sound like you believe that.”
“I do,” I tell her, staring out the cage at the men. “And you should, too.”
Reality strikes when one of the men that captured us drags a girl from a long hallway at the back of the building and tosses her into Walker’s cage. Her hair is long, brown, and uncombed. She wears jeans and no shoes. Her cotton T-shirt hangs off her shoulder. My stomach hurts just seeing her. When he opens the cage I wait to see if Walker will do anything—fight back—but she doesn’t, instead keeping her eyes down. The cage door slams and he mutters something under his breath.
We all avoid looking at the girl, red-faced and distant, except my sister who offers her the purple coat as a cover-up.
I feel like I’ve slipped into an alternate universe.
It’s not that I haven’t heard about places like this. Or thought about the possibility. With the Resistance, we brought in survivors who’d lived through a variety of traumatic post-apocalyptic hellholes. But Walker and I have spent the majority of our time post-virus with the military, surrounded by men that respect us and armed to the teeth. We had firepower on our side, and as Wyatt called himself, “A fucking fairy godmother.”
I realize now how lucky we’ve been.
Another man comes by whistling an eerie, slow tune. He checks our locks before dropping in two bottles of water and a pack of crackers. I watch nervously as he heads over to Green and Jackson. The redhead lifts his chin and mumbles something I can’t quite hear. Whatever it is offends the man and out of the back of his jeans he removes something dark. I grip the bars of the cage and shout, “No! Don’t shoot him!”
The man glances back at me and holds up the weapon. I realize then it’s not a gun but something different and I hear a buzzing sound as he flips a switch. Blue electricity hums from the weapon and he jabs it into Green’s side. The Fighter’s body jerks on contact, electrocuted by the taser. The Winchester zaps him twice more until Green flops to the side, unmoving.
“Did you kill him?” I shout again, but Miranda drags me away from the bars and covers my mouth.
I fight against her but she whispers, “He’ll punish us all if you don’t shut up.”
I hate it and I hate that man but I know Miranda’s right. It’s not fair to everyone else held prisoner to put them at risk, and I slump against her on the floor. The Winchester gives me one last look before shoving the taser into the back of his pants and exiting out the front door. The sound of bolts turning from the other side echoes through the quiet room.
One look at Walker reveals a green face. Jane fingers her sock and stares at the ground. Did she even see what happened? I never thought I’d see Walker so rattled but she looks bad. I settle myself, realizing my reactions are disturbing the others.
I hold up the bottle of water. “Is it safe?” I ask, breaking the silence.
“Yeah, they save the drugs for themselves and to trade,” Miranda says then nods to a bucket in the corner covered with a thin piece of wood. “But, just so you know. That’s where you go to the bathroom so you may not want to go crazy.”
The water smells like rust but I drink anyway, gagging at the aftertaste. Miranda and I split the sleeve into three and she wakes her sister, Rebecca. I see now that she’s only a teenager—a couple of years younger than me.
“Do they sleep here?” I ask. The crackers taste like salted cardboard but it helps with the nausea building in my stomach. I know Walker is listening so I face her so that she can hear our conversation better. We need as much information as possible if we’re going to get out of here in one piece. One glance at Green slumped against the wall tells me we’re going to have to act sooner than later.
“No, they have a couple of homes on the main stretch,” Miranda says. “We watched them for two days before we got caught. Butch, the one with the side burns? He’s their leader and not as much of an idiot as he seems. He’s mean as a snake but he’s savvy. They keep business hours, believe it or not, and now we’re part of the business.”
No, I want to tell her, we’re not.
“They’ll be back late morning, when the bar opens. But sometimes they have customers earlier than that.” She wrinkles her nose. “Usually the druggies looking for a fix.”
“What’s the routine,” Walker says from her cage. “What happens when they come in?”
Miranda shrugs. “Traders start coming in. Many are just here for the essentials. Medication, ammunition, or even food. But others like the dirty stuff. They know this is the place to feed their habit. A few buy women for an hour. Some for longer.”
“Where do they trade the girls? Do they just walk in here?” Walker asks.
“See that mirror?” She points to a section over the pool tables. It has a good view of the cages. “I think it’s a two-way. The men pick who they want from there and then Rebecca says there’s a little office down that back hall. They have it set up for entertaining the customers.”
I can’t contain the chill running down my back.
“Our men,” I ask. “Why di
dn’t they just kill them when we got here? What’s up with the torture routine?”
Miranda’s face softens. “As far as I can tell they had the unfortunate luck of being with you. Butch doesn’t like men who actually respect women. They get strung up as a deterrent for anyone who thinks of going against him.”
Rebecca tugs on her sleeve. Miranda wraps her arm around her sister and asks, “What’s up, babe?”
“The man that came to see me yesterday? He’s nice.” Bile rises in my throat. “He didn’t hurt me. We just talked.”
Miranda gives her a forced smile. “That’s good. Maybe not everyone in this Godforsaken town is a monster.”
“What do you think?” I ask Walker, who has moved as close as possible.
“I’m not sure yet.” Confirming she’s already working out a plan. It’s what she does. It’s probably her superpower, although this is the tightest moment we’ve ever been in. Worse than Eaters or Hybrids. They just want to kill or snack on us. This guy? He wants to destroy our bodies and minds.
“Well let me know,” I say as though it’s that easy. If we only had to worry about one of us I think we could make it happen, but there’s five. I spare a glance at Miranda and her sister, then the other woman still bundled in Jane’s coat. Make that closer to ten.
I catch Jane pressing the back of her hand on the forehead of the woman in the cage with her. She whispers something to her and her gentleness surprises me. Is this what it takes to get my sister to show a little compassion?
I manipulate my jacket into a pillow and lean against the bars. We need sleep to fight back, which is what I plan to do in the morning—one way or the other.
3
I wake with a jerk, confused about where I am. My back and neck protest any movement but then I see Miranda next to me. Her face reflects a quiet fear—that’s when I notice Butch’s ugly face leering through the bars.
“Jesus,” I mutter rubbing my eyes. “That’s the last thing I want to see first thing in the morning.”
Miranda and Rebecca both stiffen next to me and before I can react Butch has lunged through the bars, catching me with a meaty hand on my throat. I struggle for air against his strong grip.
