“Have you looked outside? It’s a warzone. I don’t know about you, but I’m not keen on running into a horde of Ragers right now. They hunt at night. I’ll take my chances with Legion.”
“You’ve seen one?”
“No. I’ve read plenty, though. Have you seen one?”
“Yes. Well, not a full on Rager. Just turned. My neighbor. He kinda went loopy. One day, his wife found him eating the head off a rabbit in the backyard. She reported it, and they picked him up, escorted him away, and I never saw him again after that.” Pulling her knees up, she stares off, frowning. “Was unnerving, that wild look in his eyes. When he passed me, I swear, there was an emptiness there. A wild, violent emptiness that couldn’t be reached anymore.”
Plopping down beside her, I draw my knees up, as well. “I never got your name.”
“Gwen. Yours?”
“Thalia.”
“Pretty name for a pretty girl. That’s the other thing. We have to move soon. Marauders will be all over this truck, if they stumble across it. And two young, fertile women out in the Deadlands are like two rabbits for a pack of starving wolves.”
A curl of nausea twists in my stomach with the visuals. “We don’t have any other shelter. Even if Legion comes, they can’t be as bad as Ragers and marauders.”
“Maybe for you. You have a friend in them. A high-ranking friend. I’m a nobody they’d happily hand over. One less whore in their perfectly pure community.”
“Jack wouldn’t allow that. He’s a good man. My father’s best friend. He’ll look out for us.”
“And what if they don’t come, at all? How long do you plan to hide out in the back of this muggy truck, in over a hundred degree temps?”
I lift my shackled wrists, yanking the excess chain taut between my fists. “How do you plan to defend yourself against anything, or survive, for that matter, with your hands bound?”
Lips flattened, she huffs, and turns her attention away. “They really fucked us. Hard. We might as well strangle ourselves right now, and get it over with.”
“We’re not strangling ourselves. My father always told me, there’s a way out of everything. You just have to keep a level head to find it.” Sighing, I tip my head back, the fierce scratch at the back of my throat a reminder of yet another problem. “At some point, we will have to find water. The body can only survive three days without. If they haven’t arrived by first light, we’ll head out. I’ve read it’s better to travel by day, the heat slows the Ragers, just like us.”
“And where will we go? Back to Szolen? Do you honestly think they’ll let what they deem a criminal back through those gates?”
Probably not. In fact, the chances of Jack getting me back inside those walls is probably slim, so soon after my sentencing, which means there’s only one place to go, unless we try to hack it out here in the Deadlands. “The convent is probably our safest bet.”
“I’m not going back to that convent. I’d rather die of starvation. It’s a walk to the hive where my friends live, maybe a ten-day hike, but I’ll take my chances out there.”
“Or get eaten alive by Ragers? Who are these friends, and how did you meet them?”
She huffs, linking her pinky fingers together, where they dangle over her bent knees. “Two years ago, on the ride back from the convent to Szolen, we were hijacked by a band of women. They took me in for a while, treated me real good, and returned me to Szolen unharmed.”
“What was the point of hijacking the truck?”
“Guess they got word that marauders planned to attack it. A pack of estrogen-fueled vigilantes.” Gwen rubs a shackled hand down her face. “God help the woman who refuses to be chained.” At my frown, she huffs. “My mother used to say it all the time. Even the most defiant women find themselves shackled, like those mousy, obedient twats who abide by the laws of their church and husbands.”
In other words, my mother. Fortunately for her, my father was gone more than he was home. Otherwise, I’m certain, he’d have run our household in the same tight order in which he ran his military unit. Not that it was much different when he was gone, except, before the church became her focus, my mother happened to be a fairly independent woman. Smart. Skilled in sewing and the use of medicinal herbs. It was because of her that I took an interest in it, having accompanied my Nan a number of times to the clinic where she volunteered. I often dressed wounds, administered medicines, and familiarized myself with the most gruesome injuries a child my age could ever endeavor to lay eyes on.
My mother certainly had her good points, at one time.
As the ache at the back of my head flares to life again, I close my eyes, breathing through my nose. A concussion, I’ll bet. I need rest, an opportunity to settle the injury.
“It’ll be dark soon.” Gwen scoots herself down the bed of the truck and curls into a ball beside me. “We should try to get some sleep.”
A soft tickle brushes across my ankle, and with a smile, I kick out at it. “Stop it, Grant.”
At a tick-tick-tick and growls, I snap out of my dream and scramble backward.
At the opposite end of the truck, illuminated by the soft beams of moonlight streaming in through the opened flap, a gruesomely-deformed figure crouches.
Its black, soulless eyes stare back at me.
Hungry.
Violent.
A scream in my throat fails to break free, the air locked tight in my lungs and choking my voice. I stretch a trembling hand toward Gwen, who, a quick glance tells me, remains unwittingly asleep. The brush of my fingers across her shoulder startles her awake. She lifts her head, and a scream bounces off the walls of the truck as she kicks back beside me.
The Rager shifts, as if excited.
Another hops up inside the back of the truck.
And another. This one female, with long, straggled hair, and sagging breasts beneath her tattered shirt.
The three create a wall, blocking our only chance of freedom.
Only one thought consumes me: I’m going to die.
Chapter 4
Cold metal scrapes over my belly and chest, my nails clawing for purchase, as the Rager drags me by my ankle. Gwen’s screams outside the truck add a terrifying soundtrack to the fear thrumming through me.
I still can’t scream. Can’t make so much as a sound, my body too focused on escape.
The lip of the truck disappears from beneath me, and my face slams into the dirt below. Pain shoots up into my sinuses, rendering me momentarily stunned, and I raise my shackled wrists to my nose in an effort to thwart the acidic pulses climbing into my skull.
Somehow, I manage to twist around, and the earth grinds into my back, the jagged rocks tearing at my skin. Ringing inside my ears mutes Gwen’s screams, and I stare up at the black sky, with its diamond stars twinkling down on me. Calm. Peaceful. If I die tonight, it’s inconsequential to those stars, which shine in spite of it.
The world blinks to blackness.
I open my eyes to a gravelly bed of jagged stones beneath me. The rough surface chafes the very tips of my toes.
Screams slice through the hazy confusion that clings to my brain. Pressure pounds inside my fingertips, and I tilt my head back to find the chain of my binds trussed over a rusted stretch of twisted rebar that sticks right out from the wall of rock behind me. I trail my gaze over a wooden structure overhead, which seems to be a support for the surrounding stone. Man-made. A mine shaft, maybe?