Sunscorched

by Jen Crane

  Nori had thought Hank was big, but this guy… He thrust a fist in her direction, and she wasn’t sure what to do with it. Finally, she slid her own hand inside his, her eyes widening at the difference between the two.

  “Holy wow,” she said as conscious thought struggled to catch up to her mouth. “You’re enormous.”

  Kade shrugged, obviously less than impressed with her assessment.

  “Ah, sorry.” She stood straighter. “I’m Nori.”

  His eyes slid from her face to the nearby weight bench. “Want to spot me?”

  She barked a laugh and he raised his eyebrows. He was serious. Okay, straight to work then. Nori cleared her throat and moved between the bench and rack of weights against the wall. As he lay back on the bench, she tested the bar in front of her. It was stacked with thick black weights at both ends. There was no way she could spot him, no way she could even lift the bar. She quickly added the numbers printed on each weight. Yep, heavier than she was.

  “You can’t be serious,” she said.

  Kade didn’t look in her direction. He placed his hands under the bar, pressed up, retrieving it from its resting position, and began a series of reps that left Nori’s mouth open and mind blown.

  “You realize,” she said after he’d slowly lowered and then thrust the bar up several times, “I can’t lift that thing if it falls onto your neck. Best case scenario, I scream for help and someone arrives just after you’ve asphyxiated.”

  “Yeah.” It was more a grunt than an actual word.

  “Then why insist I spot you?”

  Kade braced his arms, suspending the weight over his impossibly thick chest. “Best make yourself useful if you wanna stick around here. Or look like you’re busy, anyway.”

  “Or?”

  “If you can’t cut it as my handler,” he said, “there’s always the Pit.”

  “What do you mean? You,” Nori motioned at the muscle throughout the Pit, “you guys are the fighters.”

  “I’m the main attraction.” He smirked. “Undercard bouts are a big draw, too, though. And the more blood the better.”

  “Oh, fighting is not my thing,” she argued. “Look at me. I couldn’t give a hemophiliac a bloody nose.”

  “I meant your blood. Freaks love to watch a slaughter. The weaker the lamb, the better.”

  Nori’s stomach lurched at the thought of being forced into a ring to fight not for sport but for her life. She took in the people around her—wiry, vicious types with crooked noses and broken teeth. Then she spotted Hank leaning against a doorway, his eyes intent on her.

  “Fifty-seven,” she said after a thick swallow. “Fifty-eight, fifty-nine.”

  The creases at the edges of Kade’s chestnut eyes grew deep as he smiled. “You’re gonna do just fine.”

  “So, what exactly am I expected to do as your ‘handler’?” Nori asked as Kade stood from the bench and spread his legs.

  With practiced ease, he balanced on his front foot and rested the toes of his back foot on the weight bench. He began a set of one-legged squats that made Nori tired. His quads strained and thickened, but he focused straight ahead.

  “You’ll be in charge of scheduling and nutrition, opponent research, things like that. In time, you’ll help with focus and consistency. Maybe even strategy.”

  “But, I don’t know the first thing about training or fighting. Why would he assign me to you?” Nori scowled. “I heard your last handler…left. Why?”

  Like a storm front blowing in, Kade’s eyes clouded, and he looked away. “That’s enough for today.” Without another word, he strode toward the locker room, his back and shoulders stiff, his movements forced.

  Nori stared after him. Should she follow? Apologize?

  “Plenty to do around here.” Hank said around the toothpick in his mouth. He’d materialized from nowhere. “You’re in charge of laundry, so best head down and get started.” He pointed toward the hallway. “You’ll find it. And when you’re done with that, you’re to clean the locker room.”

  “So handler means maid, too?”

  Hank’s eyes sharpened, pinning Nori with a look that said she’d better tread lightly. “If you want to eat, want a place to sleep, it does.” He threw the soggy toothpick on the floor. “I can always send ya back to Sarge. He wasn’t too keen to get rid of you in the first place, seemed to me.”

  He took a step closer, a challenge. “You want to go back to Sarge?” Nori raised her chin, but didn’t answer. “That’s what I thought. You wanna stay here, you wanna eat? Earn your keep.”

  One breath at a time. One step at a time. One day at a time. She could do this. She could do anything for a week or so.

  15

  The Pit

  Nori had been certain she would never smell anything worse than the filthy bodies and sweat-saturated weight room and fighting pit. She’d been wrong. The laundry room was stacked halfway to the ceiling with used towels and filthy workout gear. She gagged, her eyes watering at the foul stench, and pulled her shirt over her nose. Breathing through her mouth, she located the washing machine. Another gag. She needed hazmat gloves to touch some of the stuff. Unfortunately, there weren’t gloves of any sort in sight.

  With two fingers, she picked up stiff t-shirts and towels, tossing them into the mouth of the washer before they stayed in contact with her skin too long—as if she hadn’t already contracted some kind of foul man-fungus just by looking at them. She kicked the washer door shut and added three-times the recommended amount of detergent, and a dash of bleach for good measure.

  With one last shiver of disgust, Nori wiped her hands on her jeans and went in a reluctant search for the locker rooms.

  There was only one. She supposed it was unisex, not that it mattered. She hadn’t seen another woman.

  “Hello,” she called out. The word echoed through the unforgiving space, but no one answered.

  The cinder block walls supported a few rusty hooks with worn wooden benches propped beneath them. She hefted a basket of used towels she found outside the showers, preparing to haul the load to the laundry. But then she spotted another towel on the shower room floor. With an irritated huff, she snatched the towel from the floor and threw it into the hamper.

  Movement in the corner of her eye drew her attention, and she realized with horror that someone was in the shower. She straightened and prepared to hightail it from the room before she was noticed, but she heard the unmistakable intake of a tortured breath. A sob.

  Quietly as she could, she toed toward the sound, overactive empathy replacing good sense. In that moment, nudity wasn’t a concern. She wasn’t scandalized or ashamed. Someone was hurting. Shouldn’t she help? Wasn’t it her duty? As Nori raised her hand to knock on the shower door, her thoughts flew to her own times of weakness, to those stolen moments alone when she stopped pretending for her parents.

  Sometimes, when the pain or the pressure became too much, she would back into the wall in her room and slide to the floor, knees balled to her chest. She’d let the tears flow, releasing the unwelcome weight of self-pity. She allowed the tension of a perpetual attempt at perfection to leave her body, and after a good, long cry, she could breathe again. Her tears, and the release of her emotions, bathed her soul. She would emerge cleansed, restored.

  Maybe this person needed a good cry, too. Nori shoved her half-raised hand into the pocket of her jacket. She turned away, but not before realizing it was Kade who held his head in his hands behind the frosted glass door.

  Nori’s soul-sick heart recognized another. It wasn’t sadness he felt. It was loss.

  Dinner was a soupy concoction of sweet potatoes, lentils, and kale served in a metal bowl. Not half bad, though she hadn’t had a hot meal in a while. Well, hot may’ve been a stretch. It was warmish.

  “Olio again?” Muscles flexed almost grotesquely beneath the shirt of a guy taking the seat across from her.

  Most of the staff and fighters had already eaten before Nori finished her chores, so th
e small cafeteria was quiet.

  “I think it’s good.” Nori shrugged and took another bite, struggling not to stare at the man’s bruised and angry eye. It was deep purple, and swollen completely shut.

  “That’s because you just got here,” he said. “Trust me, this time next week, you’ll already be sick of it. But it’s sustenance, I guess. Last place I lived, we survived on okra and protein pellets, I swear to God.” His sandy hair was cropped close to his head, military style. Initially, Nori would’ve guessed he was about her age, but his scarred and haunted face hinted at a hard life impossible in such a few short years.

  “Oh, I won’t be here this time next week,” Nori said, lifting her hands.

  The newcomer raised his eyebrows, his mouth twisting into a doubtful smirk. “Is that right?”

  “Yes. I’m just waiting out—” Nori closed her mouth. Probably better to keep her business to herself. “I’m just here temporarily.”

  “I’m Diesel.”

  “Nori,” she said and stuck out her hand. “You one of the fighters?”

  “Naw,” he said, the smirk resurfacing. “I’m the fighter.”

  “That’s not what your face says.” Diesel’s one good eye narrowed, and Nori flashed him a smile. “Why do they call you Diesel, anyway?”

  With a puffed chest that would’ve made a rooster wither in shame, Diesel said smoothly, “Cause I’m efficient and reliable.”

  Nori worked not to laugh. He obviously took himself—and this fighting thing—very seriously. “Okra and protein pellets, huh? I heard people used to eat corn and watermelon. That you could pick apples and peaches from trees. There were so many they fell to the ground and rotted.”

  Diesel swallowed a spoonful of soup. “I call B.S.”

  “I swear.” She grinned at him. “My dad said they ate meat at every meal, too.”

  “Now I know you’re full of shit,” he said and Nori shrugged good-naturedly. “Your dad still alive?” She nodded. “Your people aren’t from Trogtown, are they?”

  Nori looked up at him and searched the one good eye, which gleamed under the room’s constantly flickering overheads. “No. I-I was raised aboveground.”

  Diesel’s mouth fell open.

  She wasn’t sure why she’d told him. Maybe it was because his harrowed face was full of such hopelessness, such torture. There was a light deep inside him, but it was desperately close to blinking out. Her stomach soured. Could her admission cause her trouble? She was new to everything about this subterranean world. Did they hate outsiders, people from aboveground like her? Would they use it as some sort of leverage?

  “I’m just kidding,” she said in a rush. “I was born…north of here.”

  “Oh, I don’t think you were kidding.” Diesel shook his head, his good eye trained on hers. “Not at all.”

  “I was,” she protested.

  “Yeah?”

  “Mm hmm,” she said and picked at the sleeve of her shirt.

  “Where were you before you came here?” Diesel thrummed long, slender fingers on the top of the table.

  She hadn’t heard the name of a single place besides Trogtown. Hadn’t known there were other places like it. Her ignorance could get her in a lot of trouble.

  “I came here,” she said with feigned toughness, “to eat dinner in peace, and you made yourself at home at my table. You want to keep up this line of questioning, this interrogation, you can just find somewhere else to sit.”

  She took a long draw from the cup of water she’d gotten with dinner. When it hit her tongue, it took every ounce of self-control she possessed not to spit it at Diesel’s feet. It tasted stale, chemical. If she hadn’t known she’d been purchased, and that she was valuable, she would’ve sworn someone was trying to poison her. Nori closed her eyes and forced the liquid down.

  When she opened her eyes again, Diesel was staring at her.

  “What?”

  He shook his head. “Nothin’.”

  “Since you’ve got so many questions,” she said, “how about some answers. Where were you born?”

  Diesel folded his arms across his chest and leaned back. “Eaton.”

  “Eaton,” Nori repeated. “Oh.”

  “Know where that is?”

  Her nostrils flared in irritation. He had her. If she said yes, he’d undoubtedly ask her to prove it. If she said no, she’d give herself away.

  She changed the subject instead. “Hey, you know what might be wrong with Kade? Or is he always this moody?”

  Diesel unfolded his arms and leaned toward her conspiratorially. “You didn’t hear?”

  “Not everything.”

  “His handler jumped into the gorge the other day just before dawn. Climbed over the rail and threw himself in.”

  “Oh.” Nori put a hand to her mouth. “My God.”

  “Yeah?” Diesel barked a laugh, but it held no humor. “Where’s he been?”

  “Who? God?”

  He pursed his lips and nodded, but Nori went on.

  “Did they— Did they find his body?”

  “Huh-uh. Washed down the stream, they say. But nobody could’ve survived that fall.”

  “Jesus,” Nori breathed.

  “Haven’t seen hide nor hair of him, either. Not in this hellhole.”

  “You’re awfully cynical.”

  “Oh, and what does someone like me—or you, for that matter—have to believe in? I was born near here. I don’t even remember my parents. Hank’s isn’t my first gig, but it’s by far the best, and you know why?”

  Nori shook her head and didn’t say another thing, afraid to send him over the edge he was so obviously balancing.

  “Because I’m a fighter. I’ve fought my whole life. And I’m finally big enough to do some damage. I’m not fighting for my innocence or safety anymore. I’m not fighting to survive. I’m fighting to earn my freedom, and I’ll win it, too, just you watch.”

  Nori sat silent, stunned by the serious turn of their conversation, by the passion, the desperation behind his words.

  “You know why they call me Diesel?” he asked after a while.

  “Be-because you’re efficient and reliable?”

  “No.” His mouth twisted sardonically. “Because I’m quick to ignite with a slow and deadly burn.”

  Nori didn’t doubt that for a moment.

  Diesel didn’t leave the table, but he didn’t speak again. Though his gaze was focused straight ahead, his thoughts had gone somewhere else entirely.

  16

  A Hammock, A Friend

  Nori mumbled an awkward goodnight some minutes later and left the table, though Diesel didn’t.

  There’d been no sign of Kade since the shower incident. Probably best. She wasn’t sure what she would’ve said. Maybe nothing. Or maybe she would’ve vomited an admission of overhearing his emotional breakdown. Yeah, definitely best she hadn’t seen him.

  From a pile of clean laundry, Nori snagged a set of the smallest workout clothes available. The worn gray sweatpants had a drawstring, at least, and she could tie the front of the gigantic t-shirt. A storeroom held a few necessities like toothbrushes and soap, and she snagged those, too, before using the shower herself.

  It was hard to be happy about her cold room and thin mattress, but at least she might get a full night’s sleep. And there was a deadbolt on the door. Just as she climbed into bed, wincing from the lingering aches of her encounters with Sarge, there was a knock at her door.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Kade. I thought—”

  Nori was up and opening the door before he finished. He smiled nervously and held up a stack of pillows and linens. “I remember my first night,” he said. “Thought I could teach you a couple tricks.”

  Stunned by his gesture, she backed from the doorway and held the door wide.

  “You don’t want to sleep there,” he said, tossing the folded stack onto the bed. “Kills your back.”

  “It sucks, sure,” Nori said. “But it’s better
than the floor.”

  “Not the floor. Just wait.”

  Kade twisted two huge silver hooks into the earthen walls, growling and pressing through his back and shoulders at times.

  “Sheet,” he called, and she handed him the top one. “Now, tie a knot in your end of the sheet then tie this rope around the knot.”

  She did as instructed, and when they finished, a hammock hung in the back corner of her small room. Nori looked from Kade to the hammock with a goofy, eager grin.

  “Well, you gonna try it out or not?” he asked, hands on his hips.

  The hard bed made a good stool to reach the new hammock, and Nori pulled open the linens and fell back into their cocooning warmth.

  “I love it,” she said, popping her head over the side. “Thank you.”

  Kade looked at the floor and mumbled, “No problem.” He handed the pillow and blanket to a still-grinning Nori. “Better lock this door after I leave,” he said, backing out of the room. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Bye. And thanks again.” Nori hopped from the hammock and deadbolted the door before climbing back into her new perch. Stuffing the pillow into one end and pulling a much softer blanket up to her chin, she thought maybe, just maybe, she might make a friend.

  “Hey, Nora, wait up.” Diesel jogged through the hall to catch up to her as she headed for the locker room and morning necessities.

  “It’s Nori.”

  “Yeah. Nori. What happened last night? One minute we were talking, and then you just left.”

  “Ah, no,” she said. “One minute we were talking, and then you zoned out. I said bye, but you didn’t hear me.”

  Diesel focused his good eye on the floor. The other one, the shiner, was a lighter purple, almost violet with green around the edges. Pretty. He chewed at his lip for a moment before he said, “I do that. Sorry.”

  “No big.” Nori shrugged, and as they approached the locker room, he showed no signs of stopping. She really hoped he didn’t follow her into the toilets.