by Keri Lake
Nausea gurgles in my chest, and I glance over my shoulder to see my mother sitting beside my brother in a packed courtroom, her attention buried in her lap.
Can’t even look at me.
Not when the Legion officer spins me around to face the scornful cheers of my audience over the tearful cries of my brother.
Not even when I’m shuffled out of the room.
My ribs are so full of misery, I can’t bring myself to breathe, until I’m standing before the truck that will transport me to the convent.
“Thalia! Thalia!”
At shouts from a voice I recognize, I swing my attention toward where Will waves at me from about a hundred yards away, held back by a Legion officer.
Shoving at the soldier is useless, as another approaches to form a gate, refusing his passage. “I’ll wait for you! I swear it!”
The words scratch at my already battered heart, and I offer him a slight smile. Although I’m not in love with him that way, marrying him would be the lesser of two evils—a guilty thought that chokes the air in my lungs.
If I were in ear shot, I’d tell him not to wait for me at all. Not to deny himself the possibility of real love, true love, because five years is a long time to wait for someone whose heart is as untethered as mine. As my best friend, he deserves more. Better. Not to mention, it won’t do well for his reputation to marry the girl who attacked a holy man. Even if I atone for it by then, the stories will survive long after my punishment is served.
At least they didn’t learn I’d already lost my virginity. I can’t even imagine the ridicule Will would face, if they’d found he’s the one who sullied me.
The soldier beside me grips beneath my arm and hoists me up into the truck.
One other girl I recognize from the community, a couple years older, dark-haired with wide brown eyes, sits shackled in the belly of the military vehicle across from me, and we wait. Wait to be transported out of Szolen to a guarded convent that I’ve heard is equivalent to a prison. It’s where Mother Chilson rules the roost, and judging by the way she looked at me when she found the pastor knocked unconscious, I don’t stand a chance at mercy, despite the name of the place.
The Shepherd will live.
Whereas, I’ll be imprisoned for the next five years.
All because I chose not to be violated.
The engine rumbles to life, just as a familiar face swings open the flap on the back of the truck. My father’s most trusted friend and colleague.
“Jack.” The relief carries in my voice, as I sit forward on the bench.
Decked out in the black Legion uniform, he looks like a threat, but he’s acted as a surrogate father in the last few months. It was he who delivered the news that my father had been attacked by a violent Alpha during a raid. He who cradled my mother in his arms when she collapsed upon hearing the news. He who kept our broken family from falling apart these last few months.
“How are you, love?” He steps aside, and my brother climbs into the back of the truck.
“Scared,” I say, as my brother runs headfirst and wraps his arms around me.
“I tried to get the judge to listen to reason, but he’s old and set in his ways. I’m not giving up, though. I want you to know that.”
“Thalia, are you coming back?” Eyes rimmed red, my brother stares up from where he crouches at my feet, and I wish my hands weren’t bound, so I could wrap my arms around him in the assurances I can’t seem to voice right now.
“In five years. You’ll be a Legion cadet by then.” He’ll be eighteen. A man, by the time I see him again. Blinking hard fails to hold back the tears welling in my eyes. “Take care of Momma, okay?”
“I’m going to miss you.” His voice is muffled by his face buried in the crook of my neck.
Jack offers a sympathetic smile, and reaches in to pry Grant away from me. “I’ll see what I can do to reduce your time, Thalia. In the meantime, behave. I can’t help you, if you get on Mother Chilson’s bad side.”
“I think it’s safe to say I’m already on her bad side.”
“Well, do what you must to get on her good side.”
Brows winged up, I try to imagine what the hell it’d take to accomplish such a task. “You’re asking me to kiss ass?”
“Exactly.” Jack tugs the hem of Grant’s shirt, urging him off the back of the truck. “C’mon, son. Unless you want to join her at the convent.”
Grant snaps his attention to me and back to Jack. “Can I?”
“No. C’mon.”
“Take care of him, Jack. Please.”
“You don’t have to ask me to do that, Thalia. You know I will.” As my brother climbs off the back of the truck, Jack rests his hand on Grant’s shoulder.
“My mother?”
“Try to understand, Thalia. This isn’t easy on her.”
“Yes. Of course. She has her reputation to think about. How selfish of me to think about my loss of freedom right now.”
“You know, as well as I do, what this means for her.”
He’s right. She’ll be treated like a leper until I’ve served my time. What have I done?
“Please take care of her, too.”
“You have my word. Take care of yourself. And stay out of trouble.”
“I will.”
With a nod, he lowers the flap, and at a thump on the back of the truck, the vehicle lurches into motion.
Gaze glued to my fidgeting hands, I try to imagine my life from this day forward. The fierce devotion to bible studies. The punishments that I’m certain will be inflicted more frequently than necessary, until I’ve atoned for my actions. The wrath of Mother Chilson.
“’S’at your wedding dress?” The voice of the girl sitting across from me breaks my thoughts, and I stare down at the white dress that’s now covered in mud from having hidden out in the woods for most of the night.
“No.”
“Was gonna say. Kinda bland for the big day, you know?”
My mother worked with a seamstress to design the dress she’d always dreamed I’d wear during my ordination. And here I sat in its tatters. I lift a piece of the chiffon that’s stained with drops of the pastor’s blood.
“You’re one of those Daughters, or whatever the hell the churchy people call them?”
Frowning, I shake my head.
“So, what’d you do to get sent off to the penguin farm?”
Her comment brings a smile to my face, much as I don’t feel like smiling, at all. “I knocked the pastor out with a candlestick.”
She sits forward and snorts an ungracious sound. “You’re shitting me.”
With a reluctant chuckle, I shake my head.
“Here, I thought you were some sweet, wholesome type. So, that soldier ...” She jerks her head toward the back of the truck, as if Jack is still standing there. “He’s your dad?”
My dad. I try to push thoughts of him away, for fear of crying in front of this girl, and shake my head.
“Your boyfriend?”
The mere suggestion of that makes me frown, and the repulsion must be obvious, because she immediately shrugs.
“Guy just seemed to be worried about you. Like … more than the average Legion soldier.”
“Friend of the family.” Not that any of this is her business, but her conversation is a much needed distraction from the maelstrom of thoughts spinning in my head. “Why are you here?”
“Adultery. Whoring myself to a married man.” With a scoff, she rolls her shoulders back, chin high. “Too bad I wasn’t one of the Chosen, or fucking an older man would just be God’s work. Bunch of hypocritical assholes.”
The thought stirs the unrest in my gut. Despite the consequences, there’s a reason I did what I did.
“Wish I would’ve snuck a cigarette in. It’s a long fucking drive to the convent.”
“You’ve been there before.” It’s not a question, and the smile that creases her eyes tells me I’m right.
“This ain’t my first rodeo.
First time earned me two months in the convent. Got a soldier off during his R-and-R. Little rubbing action, is all.”
“They sent you away for two months because of that?”
“He was married, too. Thirty years older than me.”
It’s impossible to hide the grimace on my face. Five years seems like a lifetime longer than just a couple of months. “What’s it like?”
“Ah, well, stroking a man is fun.” Hands still bound, she curls her palm in and shakes it up and down to mimic the motion. “I practiced on cucumbers to get--”
“I meant the convent.”
Snorting a laugh, she shakes her head. “Oh. Well. The convent is … what you’d expect. Dull. Gray. Black and white.” The humor fades from her eyes as her brows come together in a frown, and she lowers her gaze from mine. “Your friend can’t help you. Doesn’t matter how much ass you kiss, there’s no good side there. Just an endless dismal stretch that you cling to so you don’t fall over the edge into madness.”
Judging the vacant look in her eyes, while she seems to reflect on the few months spent there, I suspect they’ll have to strap me in a straight-jacket after I’ve served my time. “You’re afraid to go back.”
Before she can answer, the sound of something pelting the outside of the truck has my attention snapping toward the ceiling of it. Like rain, but more intense and sudden.
I pause to listen, concentrating on the noise, but the truck swerves, knocking me off balance, and my head hits the metal wall behind me.
Shouts from the front cab of the truck skate down my spine in a harrowing warning.
“What the fuck!” The girl across from me slips from the bench onto the bed of the vehicle.
Tires squeal.
The shouts turn into blood-curdling screams.
My pulse hastens.
The truck swerves again.
It slams to an abrupt halt, throwing me into the wall that separates the back from the cab. The floor hits the base of my spine on a painful crack. Pain throbs inside my skull, while red and orange circles float before my eyes, right before my field of view shrinks.
“Hey!” The voice draws me out of the blackness, and I blink my eyes open to the face of a woman. Brunette. Dark eyes.
I know her.
How?
My mind scrambles for missing pieces, while I stare up at her in confusion.
“The truck.” Crouched beside me, she looks around, and I notice a bleeding gash on her eyebrow. “Must’ve crashed.”
The truck … the truck. The truck that was driving me to the convent.
Squinting my eyes, I push to a sitting position, and a flare of agony strikes the back of my head. A ringing in my ears only intensifies the invisible assault inside my skull. “Ah.” I lift my hand to settle the pain, realizing my wrists are still shackled. “The Legion soldiers?”
“I think they’re dead. I tried knocking on the cab window. There’s no answer.”
Eyes darting toward the back of the truck, I don’t even give myself a moment of rest before I’m crawling toward it. The thump of my knees, and the awkward clang from my tripping forward when dizziness off-balances me and has my shackles slamming against the metallic truck bed, can hardly be heard over the pelting and flapping of the tarp. I lift the back flap, greeted by darkness and brisk winds, the painful sting of grit and sand against my face. Lowering it shuts out the chaos, and I push to my feet, backing myself toward the front of the truck once more.
“Sandstorm. We’ll have to wait it out,” the girl says from behind. “Fuck, I need a cigarette right now. ‘Least the storm will keep the Ragers away.”
Ragers. I hadn’t even thought of them until now. I’ve never personally seen one in my life, only in illustrations captured by historians in our library. Every child who grows up in Szolen receives an education in their pathophysiology, and my own studies in infectious disease drove me to a more in-depth study. I’m book smart when it comes to knowing what drives their instincts, but I don’t have a clue how to defend myself against one.
And here we are. Miles out from Szolen. In the thick of a sandstorm that will likely bury half this vehicle by the time it’s unleashed its wrath.
Whatever fears I’ve come to know up prior seem almost laughable against that which now thrums through my veins.
Chapter 3
The pelting slows to no more than the occasional tick against the tarp, and I lift the flap to find mounds of new sand, before the lingering red dust urges me to close it again. The scratchy tickle in my throat sends me into a coughing fit, and I bend over to expel the polluted air trapped in my lungs.
“We’ll have to sleep here tonight,” I manage to choke out.
“Are you kidding me? This is our chance! For escape! They probably radioed the storm before the accident. Legion will come for us. But I have friends this side of the wall. They’ll take us in.”
“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 ge
t 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.