Tears stream down my cheeks, "No.
No." I push on him. His body compresses against my push, but he doesn’t
stir.
"Emma what is it?" Anna comes
running in the room.
Jake sputters and snorts. He rolls over
on the couch knocking me off and onto the floor. I start to laugh, "He's
alive. I thought… He's cold. Oh my god he's alive. His fever broke. He's going
to live." I jump up and grab the next vial of medication.
Anna rushes to his side and feels his
face, "Oh frig, I was scared. I thought for sure he was gonners." She
hugs me when I come back. She smells like Leo and I smirk. We traded sleeping
partners for the night.
I hug her back, but notice the difference
in our bodies. She is melded into me, squeezing me where as I am rigid.
We give him his next shot and pull the
bandages off his leg. The red lines have receded but the wound still looks red
and angry. I know we aren’t out of the danger zone, but I feel good knowing
that we are one step closer.
He sleeps the entire day and Anna and I
hang out. We take turns keeping watch and playing with Leo. I can see his
affinity for her is getting stronger. I know even I feel different. I am
getting closer to Anna and Jake.
"Em what are we having for
dinner?"
I shrug down at her from the window of
the barn, "I can go kill a bird."
She nods, "Alright. I'll start the
fire."
We seal up the house completely and cook
in the bunker. It's gross and sweaty with a fire down there, but it makes
perfect sense. No smell escapes out into the wind.
I climb down with my bow and quiver and
head across the grass. I slip into the forest, but instead of finding a tree to
climb I freeze. I smell them before I see or hear them. I slide back up against
the tree and wait to figure out where the smell is coming from.
"It was rude of you to leave without
the escort we offered."
I turn to the voice but something smacks
me in the forehead and everything goes black.
xxxx
"Wake up."
Pain overwhelms me as I open one of my
eyes. I see bars in front of my face.
"Please wake up."
In the muted firelight I see a small girl
poking me with a stick. It's made a small bleed on my arm, but that’s not where
the pain is coming from. I close my eyes tightly and then open them again. It's
dark. Firelight licks across the dark metal bars of my cage. I turn to small
girl. "Where are we?"
"The others have us." She says.
My stomach falls into my bowels. My
heartbeat and breath quicken. I push the door to the cage with my foot. My
boots are gone.
"Where are we specifically?"
The girl frowns at me, "What?"
"Our location."
She shrugs. She is young and filthy. She
makes me think about Anna, which makes me panic. I wonder if they knew Anna and
Jake were there. I see my bow and quiver leaning against the tree near me.
"There she is."
I look up at the filthy scumbag who had chased
me to the town. He is grinning again. He seems very proud of himself.
"You are a pretty girl. What's your
name I bet it's something pretty like Jessica or Stephanie or Grace?"
I lick my lips and put a finger to the
source of my pain. He winces as I touch the red sticky spot, "Sorry 'bout
that. I had to surprise you. Bet it hurts doesn’t it."
He kneels on the ground in front of my
cage, "Wanna tell me about how you got outta that town?"
I gulp.
He rattles the cage suddenly and starts
laughing at my horrified expression. "Jesus you aren’t mute are you? I
like it when you girls scream." He points to the little girl next to me,
"I guess we can make her scream for you."
She shies away from the bars and curls
into a small ball. I want him dead. Right now.
He points at me again, "You're going
to fetch us a good price. I know it."
Fear rocks me. I don’t have a plan.
That’s one of my rules. My plans where capture was a possibility have never
included a cage. I always thought the girls were grabbed and dragged to trucks.
He walks back to the fire and howls into
the night air. I watch as he unzips his pants and pees on the fire.
"Jesus Christ John that’s
disgusting. You fucker."
The hot steam rises from the fire,
polluting the air around it. A large group of men start to bitch and complain.
I look at the little girl who has a
disgusted look on her face, "I don’t know about you but I don’t want that
inside of me."
I gasp at her language.
She grins at me, "Name's Meg."
She is a savage. "Emma but everyone
calls me Em."
I look around for Anna and Jake. I don’t
see them anywhere.
"How old are you Meg?" I ask
softly.
She spits on the ground outside of her
bars, "Fifteen."
She is malnourished. She will be made to
work the farms. She won't be a breeder.
I won't let either of us end up that way.
I see a small silver thing on the ground.
I look at her, "Poke that stick this way again."
She slips her skinny arm through the bars
and passes it to me.
I look back at the men. They are getting
drunk and the fire is starting to dim.
I flick at the silver thing and drag it
back to me with several small movements. It's an old rusty nail with a silver
tip. I reach my fingers through the bars and grab it.
"How old are you?" She asks
watching the men.
"Nineteen, almost twenty."
"You look older."
I want to frown at her, but the nail in
my hands feels too amazing to bother. I pass her the nail, "Pick your
lock."
She eyes it smiling, "Wow you're
good." She reaches her hands through the bars. She makes a funny face and
I hear the clunk of the lock. She picks locks faster than I do. I've only ever
picked a couple.
"Stay in the cage with the lock
open."
She nods, "Momma says we have to do
whatever it takes to not be a breeder. I will die before I go there."
Her words remind me of the girl in the back
of the truck who screamed. I feel sick. I am even more determined to save her.
The rusty nail clanks in the lock.
"Want me to do it?"
I give her a look, "They’ll notice
your tiny arm slipping through to my cage."
I fumble with it again.
"Dipshit is coming back." I
pull my arm in and sit on the nail.
He grins at me, "I think I wanna
taste the merchandise before I give it away."
He pulls a key out of his pants and licks
his lips. He gets down on the ground in front of my cage and sticks the key in.
"You're gonna like this."
I feel like throwing up.
He opens the door and reaches in
lightning fast. His huge hand grabs my thin wrist and clamps down. He drags me
from the cage. I kick at him but he's really strong. He pins me to the ground
on my stomach. He pulls my hair and whispers into my ears, "Scream and I
slit your throat."
He lets go of my hair with force and
shoves my face into the pine needles and dirt. I cough and choke. My eyes
flicker at the young girl. She looks terrified.
"Don’t do this in front of
her." I beg.
He shoves my face in the pine needles
again, "She needs educating. Where you two are going, you'll both be
needing to know how to make a man happy. Think of me as your teacher."
I feel him grind himself against me. I throw up. I can't stop
myself. I don’t have anything in my stomach but bile fills my mouth. I spit it
to the side of my face, fearful he will rub my face in it.
He pulls my pants down. I feel his hands
on my underwear. I want to scream and fight but my hands are pinned. If I
scream he will kill me. I make a snap decision that death would be better than
this. I open my mouth to scream as he puts all his weight on me and covers my
mouth.
"Shhh Em. Don't scream. We need to
go now. Before they find him."
Tears spring from my eyes as I look back
and see his open eyes still staring at me. The rusty nail sticks out only a
little bit from his head, next to his eye. Blood trickles down his face.
She heaves him off of me quietly. The
fire is only twenty feet from us and I can see that the group of men has
dwindled. They must have gone to sleep. I push myself up and grab my pants. I
see my knife in his boot. I take it. I hold it tightly. I want to stab it into
him.
She grabs my hand and points to the
woods.
We walk hunched over. I grab my bow and
quiver and follow her into the forest. We run fast, even though we are bare
foot. I recognize the forest after a few moments. Even in the dark I know where
we are.
"Oh shit."
I stop, hearing her speak. I'm ready for the worst and instead it's the best. I
see yellow eyes glowing in the dark. I drop to my knees, ignoring the branch
that cuts my knee. His paws are around my neck within seconds. His warm breath
is in my hair.
I cry. He holds me like a mother would a
child and I feel soothed.
"He's yours?"
I nod through the tears, "Leo."
He pats his ears, "He's a big
dog."
I smile, "He's a wolf. A timber
wolf."
"Well we better get moving before
they find us."
I stand and run toward the farmhouse. I
know it's through the woods and not far. We can hide there until they're gone.
My brain can't seem to make my own survival important. I need to know if Jake
and Anna are safe.
The dark shadow of the farmhouse looks
like an outline in the open field. I run faster.
Meg runs as fast as I do. Her footsteps
are a whisper in the grass beside me. I burst through the door. The house is
dark and silent.
"Anna, Jake?" The living room
is empty. The blankets are gone. I don’t know where to go. I don’t know where
they would go. I run down the basement steps into the bunker. Nothing is there,
just my panting breath.
I run back up the stairs, "We need
to go hide. They're gone. They might be looking for me."
"Who?"
"My friends." The words feel
funny in my mouth.
I grab her sweaty fingers in the dark and
pull her back out to the barn. We slip inside the dark of the barn. I drop to
my knees in the hay and feel for the hatch. It has hay glued to the top of it.
It's impossible to find even in the bright of the day. I only found it because
it was open when I arrived.
I groan lifting the hatch and whisper,
"Hurry climb down here."
Leo jumps down into the hole like he has
before, many a time. Meg feels for me in the dark and then the hatch. I climb
down after her and pull the huge hatch back over the hole.
I feel in the silence for the stools. I
sit and suddenly the pain in my feet is overwhelming. I know they’ve been cut.
"Did your feet get cut?"
Meg is closer than I think, her whisper
is right in my face, "No. Momma makes us walk and run in the woods
barefoot all the time. They always take the shoes."
"Smart."
"Yeah momma was a warden at a
maximum security prison before. She says she knows all the worst things people
can do and she knows why they do it."
I shiver at the thought.
We don't hear voices or noises.
Eventually I fall asleep on the wooden floor against the warm fur of Leo. Meg
sleeps against me. She touches me and tries to hold me in her sleep.
My feet pound too hard for me to get a
good nights sleep.
"It's been five days Em. He walks to
the same spot and makes weird noises. I have a hunting hound. He does the same
thing when he wants me to follow him. We need to get following him in the
woods."
She has not stopped talking for five
days. Momma this and Momma that. I don’t know what to do to make her be quiet.
She doesn’t take my silence as a hint.
"Yup that there wolf is trying to
tell us the way to go to find them. Are your feet better?"
I look at the cuts on the bottoms and
nod, "They have scabs."
I rub salve into the bottoms of my feet
and pull my thick socks over the scabs. I pull on the boots I had stored in the
farmhouse bunker ages ago.
"For a survival expert you'd think
he woulda told you about thickening the soles of your feet. I can walk across
coals with mine." She lifts a foot showing off her padded feet. I want to
grimace at the filthy things but I know she's right.
She throws a huge bone for Leo. He runs
and gets it and chews it in the field, "Not so sharp is he? My hound
brings it back."