by Keri Lake
“These rebels … they have someone with them. A friend of ours.”
“Don’t know nothing about that. We keep to ourselves out here. Just try to survive one day at a time.”
Titus piles meat on a small square of hide and crosses the camp, places it down on my lap.
I catch the knowing expression on his face that sings to the tiny flicker of hope blooming inside my chest. For now, I abandon my questions and bite a piece of the meat, which practically melts against my tongue. So savory and delicious, it awakens long forgotten memories of when I last had venison. “Reminds me of the mule deer my mother would cook. Where did you hunt this?”
“Some woods up the way there.” He jerks his head toward a worn path through the vegetation behind him that disappears over a hill. “First deer I seen out here in a while. Been livin’ off coyotes, birds, rabbit.”
“How do you hunt without a gun?” I’m not stupid enough to think he’s hunted a coyote with his bare hands and a blade.
Gaze lowered from mine, he chews his food and licks grease from his fingers. “Snare traps.”
“You must be living like a king out here by yourself.” I trail my gaze over the camp, where woven mats hang from a line, and jars of what looks like fruit sit inside a crate just outside the small tent.
Items for which I’ll bet he’s traded his catches.
“Do you know where we might find water around here?” I’m certain my questions have begun to irritate him, judging by his exasperated huff that follows.
“There’s a creek up the path there.” He lifts his blade to direct, and I follow it toward the woods he pointed out earlier, up ahead.
“I can show them, Daddy.” Tessa scampers toward us again, her hands clasped in front of her belly.
“You ain’t going nowhere, girl. Now git back in the tent, and I’ll bring you some food.”
“The men can stay here. I’ll go with her myself.”
“Fuck that,” Cadmus says beside me. “You’re not running off to the woods alone.”
“Brandon can come, then.” I turn toward Brandon, whose significantly smaller build should seem less of a threat, and back to the girl’s father, who rolls his shoulders back, jaw shifting with his contemplation.
“I’ll be fine, Daddy. And I promise I’ll go back to the tent after.”
He waves his blade toward Cadmus and Titus. “These two stay. I don’t want them anywhere near my Tessa.” Pointing the blade toward her, he raises a brow. “Lips zipped.”
I twist to catch her nod, as she shuffles around the camp toward the other side. Pushing up from my spot, I feel a tight grip on my arm, and I turn to Cadmus.
“Anything weird, and you scream.”
“I’ll be okay.” I wrench my arm free of him and follow after the girl, with Brandon trailing after me.
The moment we clear the hill, I notice a small copse of trees ahead, and I slide one of the three canteens from across my chest and hand it to Brandon.
“Tessa?” I call out to her, as she scampers ahead of us.
With a quick glance over her shoulder, she smiles, before snapping her attention forward again. As if she doesn’t want to stare too long. Something isn’t right with this girl. She reminds me of one I knew back in Calico, Margo, who liked to rock back and forth all day, and often smiled and giggled during inappropriate times, which resulted in one guard beating her to death in front of everyone.
“You were going to say something back there. About the rebels?”
“No I wasn’t.” She titters and skips a few steps ahead.
“You were, though. Before your daddy interrupted you.”
“Nope! I just forgot.”
We breach the entrance to the woods, and the light streaming through the canopy of trees overhead dims just enough that I can only see a few feet in front of me. Tessa’s shadowy form trots gleefully over the brush, making the kind of noise I’ve come to learn as dangerous out in the woods this late.
“How old are you, Tessa?”
“Twelve. I’ll be thirteen in two months.”
The thought of a baby growing inside her small body springs bile to the back of my throat. “You’re just a child.” The words slip past my lips before I can stop them.
“Nuh-uh. My Daddy says I’m all woman. I started bleeding two years ago.”
A glimpse of Brandon shows him frowning, while the two of us walk side by side, trailing after the girl. Most blame the decimation of our species for girls like Tessa starting their menses so much earlier. Mother Nature’s way of offering up more breeders, as sick as that sounds.
Tessa looks over her shoulder, a flirtatious smile on her lips when she stares at Brandon. “You gotta girl?”
He slides his gaze toward me and back to her. “No.”
“You’re cute.” She giggles yet again, painting a clearer picture inside my head that this girl is not completely sound.
The trickle of running water accompanies the wet slosh of vegetation beneath my boots, and a few more yards ahead, we reach the edge of a stagnant creek. Tessa kneels down to the water and purses her lips, bending forward to slurp up the fluids, while I submerge one of our canteens below the surface.
“Do you, or your father, weave, at all?”
“No, why?” she asks between sips of water.
“You don’t can fruits, or anything?”
Her brows pinch together, and she falls onto her bottom, grunting, as she holds her stomach. “Do you mean the jars by the tent? The ladies gave us those.”
“What ladies?”
Rolling her shoulders back, she diverts her eyes from mine and sighs. “Daddy says we keep to ourselves, but that’s not all the way true. Sometimes, the Ceniza ladies come to visit and bring us gifts.”
“Ceniza?”
“That’s what Daddy calls them.”
I cap the first canteen and dunk the second, trying not to look too eager for information. “These ladies … do they travel with anyone?”
“Yeah. Sometimes, there’s men who wear masks on their faces.”
“What kind of masks?”
“Scary ones. They look like bones.”
The Skulls. They apparently got the name from the leader, rumored to be an Alpha from Calico, who collects the skulls of his kills.
Clearing my throat is a poor effort to keep from bursting with happy laughter at the first hint of a clue we’ve had in months. Beside me, I catch Brandon’s smile, the glimmer of hope that he might find out what happened to his brother inside that hospital. So long as they managed to survive the mutations and Alphas, I happen to know the kitchen is stocked with enough food to last them a number of weeks, so the idea of them perishing isn’t etched in stone.
“We should get back to camp. It’s pretty dark out.” I slide the full canteens over my head and push to my feet. With an outstretched hand, I offer to help her up.
Instead, Tessa scratches at her arm, a look of worry dancing across her face. “I don’t like the nighttime so much.”
“Are you afraid of something?”
She nods, and her scratching turns more pronounced, to the extent that the harsh scrape of her nails draws lines of red into her flesh.
“Ragers?”
The answering shake of her head sends my stomach sinking.
“What are you afraid of?”
Panic dances across her face, and her scratching has to have torn at her skin. “Will you take me with you?”
Brandon and I exchange a quick glance, and I kneel down in front of her. “What about your sister? Wouldn’t you miss her?”
“She isn’t my sister.”
As I suspected.
“She’s your daughter, isn’t she?”
When she nods, I screw my eyes shut and exhale a long breath. “The baby in your stomach. Did your father put it there?”
Arms crossed, she rubs her fingers over her skin, fidgeting. “He said … not to tell no one. He said it’s our secret.” Her eyes shine with tears, and I re
ach down to take her hand in mine. For a moment, I’m holding Bryani’s hand, a thought that springs tears to my eyes, too. “It hurts, though. It hurts real bad. And he doesn’t stop. Not even when I scream. It scares Hannah, and he yells at her, but he doesn’t stop.”
I can’t bring them with me. Not a child and her babies. Not when we plan to invade a rebel camp.
But I can punish the man for what he’s done. I can make him regret ever laying a hand on Tessa.
Chapter 2
Wren
They say the residual gases and contamination in the atmosphere, from after the Dredge hit and factories went up in flames, is the reason the weather is so erratic. Why we have unbearable heat as early as sunrise, and a massive drop in temperatures by dusk.
A cold chill winds down my spine, as I sit beside the campfire where we’ve stopped for the night, along Route 66. At only a couple of months along, my belly hasn’t yet begun to show the life growing inside of me, but I somehow feel it. As if my internal organs are shifting around to make room for my womb.
A deep, cramping ache throbs in my stomach, and I clench my eyes, rubbing my hand across it, breathing through my nose while the cold and clammy sensation settles over me.
“What’s wrong?” Six places his hand over mine, the warmth of his skin leaching into my bones. Though I’ve since learned his real name, Rhys, I’ve found myself slipping too many times, calling him by the nickname I gave him all those years ago. Eventually, he insisted I keep calling him Six. He told me once that he missed hearing it during our years apart, and that it reminded him of our short time in Szolen together, when we were young and innocent.
Opening my eyes, I take in the weariness of his stare and the concern shadowing it. “It’s nothing, I’m okay. Just a little sore from traveling.”
“We should stay a couple nights, then. Let you get rested.”
“No. We need to keep moving. A good night’s rest, and I’ll be fine.” About two dozen tents make up our temporary camp, along with the dozen, or so, sleeping bags situated around each bonfire, for the men who act as lookout. We left Ceniza early this morning, leaving behind only the few survivors from Calico, who opted not to travel with us, and managed to get halfway through New Mexico by dusk. According to Rigs, after two more days of driving, we could hit Florida and find the other solar powered community. Hopefully, one more welcoming than Szolen.
“Don’t be tough, Little Bird. We’re in no hurry. We’ve got enough supplies to last a couple weeks on the road.”
“Really, I’m okay. My body’s preparing for a baby. There’s bound to be some discomfort, you know?” Smiling, I lean forward to kiss him, and he grips the back of my neck, keeping me from pulling away too soon.
“So long as you’re not in pain. You’ll tell me, right?”
“I promise.”
His brows come together, reminding me so much of the boy I fell in love with. The silently contemplative boy from the other side of the wall, who always looked troubled. “I’ll get you something to eat.”
“I can get my own.” I push against his thigh to get up, but he grips my shoulder.
“Sit, woman.” He’s on his feet before me, and bends to kiss me, before striding off toward a vat of stew two of the elder women cooked for the group.
Across the camp, I catch sight of Tripp, Six’s brother, who piles up more wood for the fire. He gives a solemn smile and a curt nod, before going back to his stacking. Somewhere in the camp, his little girl, Trinity, runs around motherless. After having betrayed the hive, I guess Leanna couldn’t bring herself to face them again. Not even for Tripp, or her daughter.
“You’re Dani, right?” The name takes me by surprise, and I turn to find a younger guy, one of the survivors we picked up from Calico a couple months back, has sat beside me. “That’s your name?”
“No one’s called me that in a long time.” I’ve seen this one around the camp, watching me from afar sometimes, but he’s never spoken a word to me until now.
“At Calico, they tell stories about you. The girl who escaped. Except, they said you were eaten by Ragers.” He doesn’t carry the multitude of scars like many of the survivors, and on instinct, my eyes divert to his nape, where there isn’t a number tattooed there. A few new scars, still pink with healing, show he didn’t escape Calico unscathed, though.
“Just goes to show you, you can’t believe everything they tell you there.”
He rubs his hands together, his brows pinching tight, as he stares off toward the bonfire. “My girl tried to escape. She wasn’t so lucky.”
It’s possible he was a new subject, just brought in from the Deadlands, but even the new ones had tattoos inked on day one. I can’t begin to think what role he played at Calico to avoid such branding. “I’m sorry to hear that. What was her name?” Though I didn’t know any other women in Calico, I make it a point to know their names, to hear their stories.
“Roz. She worked transport.” His lips tremble, eyes carrying the shine of tears. “I tried to get her out of that place. Her and … her friends.” There’s derision in his voice when he mentions them, and I get a sense they wronged her somehow. “I wanted her to be free. But she was shot by one of the guards. They left her for dead. Just … ran off without her.”
I want to tell him that, in my own experience, escape from that place was a solitary act of survival. That there wasn’t room, nor opportunity, to think about the others I left behind, ones I wish I could’ve taken with me, but I don’t.
“I think … if she’d have just waited a little longer, she could’ve come with me. With you. I would’ve protected her. I would’ve taken that bullet for her.” Even with his attention turned away from me, I catch the tear at the corner of his eye before he quickly wipes it away. “We could’ve escaped together.”
“What’s your name?”
“Kenny.” The wobble in his voice matches the rueful look in his eyes when he turns back toward me.
“I’m sorry she was taken from you, Kenny.” Abandoning the ache still throbbing in my belly, I rest my hand on his and lower my gaze. “I’ll remember her name.”
Lips tight, he sniffs and nods. “Thank you.”
Rhys returns to my side, holding two bowls of stew, one of which he passes to me.
I release Kenny’s hand to accept it, and my gaze follows the second bowl, as Six hands it off to Kenny.
“No, that’s okay. I’ll get my own.”
“Just take it,” Six insists, reaching around the front of me, as if trying to avoid spilling any on me.
Nodding a second time, Kenny takes the bowl from him. “Thanks, man. I appreciate it.”
“Kenny, this is Six--I mean, Rhys.”
“I know. I mean, I know of him. There’s stories about him at Calico, too.”
Six snorts and shakes his head, drawing his knees up. “Not sure I want to know.”
“Nah, they’re good.” A hint of a smile stretches his lips. “You were like a hero to some of the subjects there. Like a myth.”
Catching the look of discomfort on Six’s face at the mention of hero, I smile. “I think you’re blushing.” Unamused, he looks away, shaking his head, and I chuckle at his obvious embarrassment, turning my attention back toward Kenny. “He’s not big on accolades. One of those brooding, modest types.”
“An Alpha, right?” Kenny asks, before tipping back his stew and wiping a hand across his face.
“Yes. He was part of Alpha project,” I answer for Six. I pick a piece of the meat out of the stew, handing it off to him.
As expected, he declines it. “You need the protein. Eat it.”
Rolling my eyes, I pop the meat into my mouth and wash it down with some of the broth. Within seconds, it relieves some of the gurgling ache in my stomach, but the underlying crampiness persists.
“The girl who escaped with Roz. She had three Alphas with her.” Kenny lifts the bowl to his face, slurping more of his soup.
My brows wing up at his comment, recalli
ng what Papa told me about how dangerous Alphas were from S-block. How they were used as weapons. And how their needs were somewhat animalistic in nature, just as Six’s can be at times. “Did she survive?”
“Last I knew, they were sending Legion officers after her. She took one of the other Alpha project females with her.” The way he speaks about them, like some biology experiment, is fitting for those who lived through Calico. We rarely looked at others there as human beings, because doing so made the experience twice as unsettling. Subjects. Females. Males. Alphas. Mutations. The detachment in those words made it bearable.
“That was before they threw me into isolation.” His eyebrows flicker, and a sharp exhale through his nose silently speaks of the unseen panic behind his eyes.
“They punished you for helping her.”
He doesn’t answer at first, instead tipping back his stew, as if he needs the added time to collect the emotions I can see rising to the surface. “Two days of interrogations. They couldn’t kill me, of course. No one knows the computer system in that place like I do.” His throat bobs with a swallow, and he shakes his head. “I don’t know what you call those moments before death, though. When you wish they’d just kill you already.”
“They call it amusement,” Six says beside me. “I’ve always referred to it as endurance. Justification.”
“Justification?” Kenny lowers his bowl and rests his elbows on his knees. “For what?”
“For destroying all of them in the end.”
As if contemplating those words, Kenny silently nods, staring off toward the fire. “You’re absolutely right. All of them.”
Chapter 3
Cali
I lie in the back of the truck, tucked between Titus and Cadmus on a bed of sleeping bags, while Brandon sleeps in the cab. Camping by the fire would’ve been nice, but Titus didn’t want to risk that Tessa’s father would seek out the bullets stored in the back of the truck for the empty gun we gave him, and shoot every one of us in our sleep. It’s not as if I’m cold, lying between these two infernos. For the first time in weeks, my heart flutters with the first signs of life since the night I watched those doors seal shut, only shadowed by the guilt and anger I feel for Tessa.
