by Shade Owens
Just as I was enjoying the cleansing breath of air, something cold touched my ankle and I flinched, pulling it away.
“Hold still,” growled Alice Number Two.
I wasn’t sure why I still thought of her as Alice Number Two—the other Alice who’d died in that same cage with us had died a long time ago now. And Arenas wasn’t anywhere nearby to roll her eyes and correct us every time we referred to Alice Number Two simply as Alice.
Crouched by my ankles, Alice Number Two struggled not to tip over by leaning on her staff. What was she trying to do? Shackle me? In her left hand, she held what looked like thick, oversized handcuffs fit for an Ogre. They were choppily cut and constructed of unpolished metal.
Who the hell had made those? I turned around, remembering Smith, the fat blob who sat in that same tent every day, working with metal and forging weapons for the Northers.
To my surprise, she was still there, slaving away with sweat dripping down her bare back. I’d do my best to avoid traveling to the front of the tent, not wanting to watch her sagging breasts sway from side to side every time she hammered metal.
“It isn’t meant to be comfortable,” said Alice Number Two, finally clasping the restraints in place. “But they want these on you.”
They? Why was she referring to the Northers as a separate people? She’d never done this in the past. Obviously, she wanted nothing to do with them.
Leaning her weight against her staff, she stood up. “Evenings, you get in line and someone’ll tie you up… attach you and all the other prisoners together.”
“What for?” I asked, though I was taking a risk by playing stupid.
She turned to me, eyed the unsightly cut on my face, and grimaced. “You need to get that re-opened up and cleaned out.”
I reached for my face and she slapped my hand away.
“The infection’s stuck under the scab.” She turned her attention toward my cage mates. “Didn’t anyone tell you how red—” But she cut herself short, no doubt realizing that no one could have possibly seen the redness inside of that cage—the sun didn’t reach us. “Go see Mashi over there. She’ll give you something to disinfect it. But you’ll have to ask someone to peel off the scab and clean it all out for you.”
Mashi… I knew that name. I followed Alice Number Two’s eyes to a little Asian lady with a small black helmet for hair. She was frail-looking, though I remembered Sumi telling me how healthy she was for a sixty-something-year-old. I also remembered Sumi basically saying that Mashi was the drug dealer in the city; she’d pick up all kinds of drugs during her cultivation runs out around the city’s perimeter.
Sighing, I jerked my head sideways, signaling everyone to step out of the cage. When Alice Number Two bent down to try to fasten the ankle shackle around Sammy’s thick ankles, I took it from her hands and did it for her.
“What the hell are you doing?” Alice Number Two asked, but she was too weak to stop me.
“Helping.”
“By shackling your own friends?” she asked.
I glanced up at Sammy, then at the rest of them. “They aren’t my friends.”
Alice Number Two didn’t say anything. Instead, she let me fasten the shackles around the rest of them, all the while leaning on her staff and breathing hard to catch her breath. Did she visit Mashi often? Sumi had made it quite clear that any drug could be obtained through Mashi. Although I didn’t believe in drugs, I hoped that Alice Number Two was taking something to ease her pain.
Finally, I shackled the last shackle around Fran’s veiny, almost translucent leg, and she jumped when it clicked into place.
“How do these come off?” she asked, staring down at what now looked like giant doughnuts sitting over her feet.
Fran took a step forward and nearly fell. “They’re heavy as shit. Can you believe this, Pam? Treatin’ us like goddamn animals.”
“They don’t,” said Alice Number Two.
Fran looked up at her, her wrinkled brows slanting so much it was a wonder they stayed attached to her face. “Don’t what?” she said.
“They don’t come off,” said Alice Number Two. “Well, unless you die. Then Smith over there cuts it off your leg. Well, cuts off your leg.”
Everyone’s eyes bulged out. Was this some sort of sick joke?
Alice Number Two rolled her eyes. “You seriously think Smith has the intelligence to create some fancy locking mechanism and design a key? Even if she did… she doesn’t have time for that. She makes them lock into place and we deal with the mess after.”
I stared down at my shackles, the skin of my ankles already turning pink. They were cold, uncomfortable, and heavy. How was anyone supposed to get used to these?
“And don’t go doing anything crazy, either,” said Alice Number Two. “No jogging, no running… One woman kept jogging despite my warning and it chafed into her so bad that it led to an infection, and well, she’s dead now.”
I swallowed hard, feeling like more of a prisoner now than I ever had since arriving on Kormace Island.
CHAPTER 2
“It’s pretty simple,” said Alice Number Two. “You take this, you cut off some flesh”—she pointed at the dead elephant lying in the sand—"and you bring it to Bear over there. She does all the curing.”
Pam, the more explosive of the two old ladies, let out a scoff. “What’s she curin’? Cancer?”
Sammy rolled her eyes. “They’re curing the meat… as in preserving it, dipshit.”
Fran clenched two bony little fists no larger than the size of tennis balls. “Who you callin’ dipshit?”
I waited for Alice Number Two to step in and warn everyone that if they took a swing, they were ending up in a death match. But she didn’t say anything. Why wasn’t she interfering?
Fran raised her clenched fist, two trembling balls of skin and bone, and Sammy laughed so hard that her brow ring wiggled on her face. If she wasn’t careful, someone would rip that thing right out.
“Bring it on, you old hag.” Sammy grinned smugly.
Fran shook her fists and took a step forward, nearly tripping over her shackles.
“All right, you two,” said Alice Number Two. “You’re wasting my time. And you’re wasting precious meat-cutting time.”
“How long’s it been dead?” I asked, staring at the massive creature’s bloody rib cage.
“Fifteen minutes,” said Alice Number Two. “Rainer wants all the meat stripped from the body as soon as possible so it can be cured and stored before the meat goes bad.”
Although I felt awful for the elephant, Rainer obviously knew what she was doing. Cured meat, as far as I knew, could easily last years if cured and stored correctly. I’d never done it myself, but I’d seen women go through the curing process with tons of sea salt.
I glanced toward Bear, a woman whose name suited her. She sat in the middle of a pile of bloody meat, her thick arms—a combination of fat and muscle—swaying in every direction as she grabbed salt, tied meat up on a wooden rack, and moved about as if she had eight arms attached to her body.
It was easy to understand why she’d chosen the name Bear. Although not as thick as a man’s, a short, fuzzy beard covered her lower jaw and blended into her long, shaggy brown hair. Every time she moved, she grunted as if incapable of speaking English. Blood stained every inch of her skin, but she didn’t seem to mind; she kept on working, wiping her sweaty forehead every few minutes and spreading streaks of blood onto her hairline.
She grabbed a thick slab of meat with two hands, puffed out her cheeks, and raised it into the air with a loud grunt. As she did that, two large patches of shaggy black hair made an appearance underneath her armpits.
“Here,” said Alice Number Two, handing us serrated knives. “Don’t be smug… Don’t go cutting off pieces too big to carry. Bear doesn’t need to struggle any more than she already does. Stupid women trying to prove their strength. Don’t be that woman. Don’t be an idiot. Also, don’t go cutting each other with those. I don�
�t give a shit how much you hate someone. If you kill them, you get stoned.”
Stoned? That was new.
“What if the person doesn’t die?” I asked.
It wasn’t like I had any intention of stabbing someone—I simply wanted to hear Alice Number Two talk about the death match. But she didn’t. Instead, she regripped her walking staff, hopped into a more comfortable position, and said, “Then count yourself lucky, I guess.”
So they’d stopped that rule… Why? Was it because of their low population? It made sense, after all. Before we’d run away, there were so many people here it didn’t matter if one or two died every other day. The Northers kept capturing new prisoners.
“Well?” said Alice Number Two, popping her lifeless eyes out at us. “Get your asses moving.”
For the first time, I recognized her. Did she not recognize me? Although it was a good thing she didn’t, I couldn’t help but want to tell her it was me. I’d never do it… but part of me wanted to reassure her that she wasn’t alone.
“This is disgusting,” Sammy said, marching straight toward the elephant. “Why are we the ones doing this?”
“Because it’s dirty work,” said Alice Number Two from behind us. “And newbies get to handle the dirty work.”
Another handful of women were slicing away at the elephant’s flesh. It broke my heart to look at the poor creature. It lay so still with its legs crossed over top one another that it almost looked like it had been slain during a nap.
Obviously, that wasn’t the case. Dozens of stab wounds penetrated its thick, wrinkled gray skin over its chest. They’d probably caused it so much unnecessary suffering.
Pam and Fran stood there looking like two old ladies waiting in line to play bingo. They didn’t do much at all and instead watched everyone else.
“No way I’m touching that thing…” Fran said, pointing a bony finger toward the elephant.
“Me neither,” Pam said.
Sighing, I marched past them with my knife held firmly in my hand. I’d skinned and gutted animals before—admittedly, I hadn’t wanted to do it the first time, or the tenth time. But after a dozen or so kills, I’d gotten used to it. I didn’t enjoy it, but it was about survival.
And I knew exactly how this place operated; if we didn’t do as we were told, we’d become dispensable. Turning around, I jerked my head sideways at Fran and Pam and said, “Come here, I’ll show you how,” but they weren’t having it. Instead, they both gave me a full up and down as if to say, Who the hell do you think you are?
Who was I kidding? They weren’t two frightened little ladies. They were both hard-ass criminals who’d probably spent the last twenty years of their lives operating some illegal drug trafficking scheme inside prison walls.
“Your funeral,” I said.
Pam breathed out so hard through her nostrils that something clicked. “What’d you say, little girl? I may be old, but I ain’t—”
“What?” Sammy asked, smirking. “Deaf? Is that what you were gonna say, you old hag? You must be if you’re askin’ Brone here to repeat herself.” She then grabbed one of the elephant’s ribs and started hacking away the meat attached to it.
“You snot-faced little bitch. I could have you killed—” Pam started, but Sammy rolled her eyes and started singing some tune I’d never heard before. She then reached for a piece of meat with both hands and tore it off the bone. The loud tearing noise was like tape being pulled off a piece of plastic.
A proud grin stretched across her face as her first cut dangled in her hands.
“Done this before?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Nah, but I don’t mind getting my hands dirty. Never did. My pops used to get me to put the worms on the hooks and I didn’t mind it.” She shrugged. “I liked it.”
Did you also like burning ants with a magnifying glass, you psycho? I didn’t voice my thoughts, and instead, stared at her as she hacked away. Sammy was the kind of woman who didn’t give a crap about anything or anyone. Nothing seemed to bother her, not even the time we’d spent starving inside of that cage.
Why hadn’t they left us there to rot like last time? The population, I thought. Why let us rot when we can be put to work with shackles around our ankles?
Unexpectedly, a familiar voice came from behind me.
“You may be old, but that’s no excuse to stand there like a bunch of idiots. You have arms and legs. Use them. Contribute. Otherwise, you’re a waste of skin.”
Before I could even turn around, I imagined Fran and Pam fuming with veiny fists held at their sides.
Who was brave enough to talk to them like this?
I knew who it was… I knew exactly who it was even before I caught a glimpse of her face.
I stood straight and turned around to find her standing with her chest puffed out, blood splattered across her thick neck and muscular arms, and short snow-white hair spiked upward and held together by rust-colored blood.
“Murk,” I breathed.
CHAPTER 3
Her glassy blue eyes rolled toward me a bit longer than necessary, and I couldn’t help but wonder if she recognized me. How was she even alive? The last time I’d seen her, she was strapped up by her wrists and forced to dangle in place while Zsasz beat her senseless.
I’d wanted nothing more than for her to be alive, but the truth was, a part of me assumed they’d killed her.
Why had they let her go?
With a long bone-constructed knife, Murk walked right in between Fran and Pam without blinking. Their hateful gazes followed her intently until Fran finally said, “Thinks she’s so tough—”
And in one rapid, half-second motion, Murk swung her elbow upward and sideways, knocking Fran right in the mouth. Her head whiplashed, and she stumbled backward with both hands over her mouth.
Pam, too stunned to react, shifted her gaze between Murk, who expressed no emotion whatsoever, and Fran, who now had blood spilling out from in between her fingers.
“She—she knocked out my fucking toof!” Fran shouted.
When her hands came down, a black gap sat right in the center of her mouth where one of her front teeth had once been.
“Where’d it go?” Pam asked, searching the sand as if she’d lost a lover’s ring.
“I swallowed it!” Fran said, her mouth now filling with blood. She spat out a glob and without warning, charged straight for Murk.
But Fran stopped running the moment Murk turned around and pointed her knife into Fran’s throat. Fran copied Murk and raised her knife to Murk’s throat. So they both stood there, challenging each other.
Unlike Fran, whose hands were trembling and face was turning a deep shade of red, Murk stood calm, staring straight into Fran’s eyes without any fear whatsoever.
“You have no idea who the fuck you just messed with,” Fran said.
I wasn’t trying to be ageist, but watching a woman aged for retirement threaten someone at knifepoint was a bit unusual. It was easy and quite honestly delusional of me to assume that all old people were frail, uncoordinated, and for the most part, kind.
Fran was probably someone’s grandmother, yet here she was, prepared to slit Murk’s throat.
I supposed Murk, too, was old enough to be a grandmother. Would that be me in forty years? Did a person truly change on the inside as they aged? It wasn’t like I could discuss these things with my mom anymore.
“Let me be perfectly frank with you,” Murk said. “You may have been some scum lord back in the real world… Hell, you may have even taken more lives than I can count. But out here, lady, you’re nothing.” She gave Fran a full up and down, the corner of her lip pulling upward. “You’re new. I can smell it. I may not be able to kill you where you stand, but I can sure as hell break every frail, calcium-deprived bone in your body. I also have countless ways to make your death look like an accident.”
Fran swallowed hard, forcing the tip of Murk’s knife to bounce off her throat. She then grimaced and pulled away with a stom
p in her step.
I stared at Murk as she moved toward the elephant. As she walked away, one thought crossed my mind: what if I could get Murk out of here? It would solve everything, wouldn’t it? She could become a leader again and rebuild the Village. I sighed. Obviously, I was getting way ahead of myself.
We hacked away at the elephant for hours until the sun began to set. Every time Murk walked past me, I stared at her intently, hoping she’d look up at me. But she never did. She’d stare at the ground and ignore everyone around her.
It was like watching a workaholic on the job—she didn’t care about anything other than getting the work done.
Finally, when Alice Number Two came by to tell us to go grab a bite to eat, I slowly made my way to Murk near the elephant’s head. With no one around to hear me, now was my chance.
“Murk,” I whispered.
Her eyes shot up at me, but the moment they met mine, she looked away.
“Murk, it’s me,” I said again.
She didn’t answer.
Instead, she picked up her last slab of meat and started dragging it through the sand and toward Bear.
“Murk,” I hissed. “It’s Brone.”
She dropped the meat and swung around so quickly that I flinched.
With her knife pointed at my face, she said, “I don’t know you, kid. Don’t ever talk to me again.”
She picked up her meat and kept on walking.
Oh my God.
What had they done to her? She’d assigned me the title of Archer. I’d become one of her best Hunters… How could she not know who I was?
I watched as she walked away, the evening sun casting a deep orange glow across her suede-covered back. It made today’s fresh bloodstains on her shirt look brown and her hair yellow.
Murk, I pleaded in my head.
CHAPTER 4
We walked toward the sleeping area with full bellies and aching muscles. At least, I assumed everyone’s muscles were hurting, especially if mine were.