“We’re both going to survive,” I reply sternly, trying to stop my tears from spilling over as I lean closer. I can’t let him die. How could I ever explain to Jax that I let Daniel die? But the man shakes his head as a violent tremor racks his body, causing him to tremble in my arms.
“Not me, Kelsey. Not this time. But you have to… for Jax. He needs you. Promise me you’ll take care of him.”
I don’t know how to respond because I don’t think I’m ever going to see Jax again. But Daniel looks at me with pleading eyes, his breath rasping and a wet burble coming from deep in his throat. Dread washes over me. He’s dying and there’s nothing I can do. Like with Rey, I am powerless.
“Promise… me…” Daniel begs, fingers digging into my arm. “Promise you’ll take care of him.”
He’s asking too much, more than I think I can ever give, asking me to assume a responsibility I know I can’t handle. But he is also dying, and this is the only thing Daniel has asked of me. Can I really let him journey to the next life without giving him his final wish?
My tears race forward as the wall keeping them at bay splinters apart. They pour down my face and drop onto the ground, mixing with Daniel’s blood and soaking into the earth, a crimson cocktail of death and despair and hopelessness.
“I promise.”
At those words, a brief glimmer of happiness flashes across his worn, wrinkled face. By taking this burden and placing it on my shoulders, I have given him freedom from the last invisible rope tethering him to the earth.
“How… about… a joke?” he asks and with a final gasping draw for oxygen, his body goes limp, his head flops to one side and his eyes glaze over.
And like a candle extinguished by a soft breeze, Daniel is gone from this world.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
My head falls forward, resting against Daniel’s cheek that has already grown cold like a stone statue. Aching sobs rise up through my body, but before I can even close his eyelids, someone wrenches my arm back and drags me, stumbling, to my feet.
I cry out as a burning pain shoots up my bad shoulder, but whoever has grabbed me doesn’t let go and instead whips me around until I face the attackers.
And that’s when I see Ashlynn standing beside them, her blond hair hanging about her china-doll face as she stares in horror at Daniel’s body.
“You said no one would be killed.”
The man with the red hair, the one who shot Daniel, sneers. “Sometimes shit happens. Bring her here.”
The League member, who has a firm grip on my elbow, marches me forward. The red-haired man yanks my right arm, shoving back the sleeve of the jacket to reveal my barcode. He smiles, a wicked, sinister expression that causes me to shiver.
“Told you she was a Sub,” Ashlynn replies, seeming to be proud of herself. All the pieces click into place; my name being chosen for patrol duty, the change of meeting location, even the switch of our guns.
“You? You’re the one who told the League about me?” I ask in stunned disbelief, unable to accept that this friendly, pretty girl had betrayed me to the enemy.
She turns, a smug grin on her rosy lips. “Your kind don’t belong up here. You should have never left ROC.”
“Let’s go,” one of the other assailants says, a woman whose eyes dart around uneasily, her hand tight on her gun. “Before we have more of them to deal with.”
Ashlynn strides forward, notching her chin higher and locking eyes with the red-haired man. “Remember what was promised. Sawyer said I could come with you guys.”
The man snickers and looks at the others as if they share an private joke before turning back to Ashlynn. “Funny, I don’t remember him ever saying that.”
Sliding a pistol from a holster at his waist, the man levels it with Ashlynn’s forehead. Her mouth opens in disbelief, but she can’t even scream before he fires and the back of her skull explodes open. Warm blood and shattered bone splash onto the ground as her body topples over sideways, eyes staring skyward as a tiny trickle of blood glistens on her forehead.
The only thing I can think about is that now, with her glittering green eyes so glassy and emotionless, she really does look just like a doll.
Someone screams, a loud, earsplitting sound, and I don’t even realize it’s me until the red-haired man whips me across the face with his gun. My cheek splits open like a squashed, over-ripe tomato, blood gushing from the wound.
He steps forward, face inches from my own, his hazel eyes hard and stony and terrifying, a darkness swirling in their depths. “That’s gonna happen every time you make a sound so it’s your choice on how much blood you lose tonight.” He turns to the others. “Let’s go before someone comes looking to see what all the noise was.”
“Where are you taking me?” I demand without thinking. The man doesn’t even hesitate as he draws back a gloved fist and smashes it across the other side of my face, knocking me to my knees. It throbs and tears well in my eyes. Touching a hand to my jaw, I can already feel it swelling and locking up.
I cower in fear as the man towers over me. “What did I just tell you? Now get up.”
Someone hauls me to my feet, almost wrenching my right arm from the socket but I bite back a fresh cry of pain. Tripping forward, I’m pushed to follow the man while the other League members spread around me, guns all pointed my direction.
I try not to look at Ashlynn’s corpse as we pass, lying supine on the ground like a block of stone. I want to hate her for what she’s done. She’s the reason Daniel is dead and why, in all probability, I will soon follow, but she didn’t deserve what they did to her. For a moment I feel pity for the pretty, blond girl who wanted nothing more than Jax’s affection.
* * *
I’m exhausted and can barely keep my eyelids open as I stumble through the woods, a gun aimed at my spine. It’s already and hour or two into morning when I lift my head and see buildings rise into the sky. They are nothing like the buildings in the compound. These ones are tall; ten, even eleven stories or more; built of concrete and brick with what had once been large windows but are now mostly shattered glass and wooden boards. Many have crumpled in on themselves, making them unsuitable for homes, but others still stand, covered in vines and foliage, with most of their roofs intact. Empty windows and doorways stare back at me, an occasional soiled curtain fluttering the in the breeze. The buildings stand as silent ghosts of a lost city. Grave markers of all the people who once lived, and perhaps died, inside them.
One sticks out more than the others because it is so massive, we could house the entire O.Z and still have plenty of room left over. Solar panels; and there must be thousands; line the roof, allowing for the building to have electricity. A glass tower stands at one end topped by sagging, decrepit old letters as tall as a grown man. A few letters have fallen sideways, supported only by their neighbors, but it reads Towson Town. I don’t know what that means though.
As we near the giant structure, there’s a sinking in the pit of my stomach because I realize that Jax had been wrong when he estimated the League had about 3,000 occupants. Based on the number of people I see outside working and farming or even the number of children playing, and assuming more are in the building as well, there must easily be twice that many. Everyone appears happy and it’s nothing like the militarized cult I had pictured in my head. It seems normal, people going about their day, enjoying the spring weather. Their peace and normalcy stand in sharp juxtaposition to the fear and anxiety wrapping me like a sinister hug.
We walk along the remains of what had once been a wide street before the wildlife took control again. Beside the road, a bent, rusted metal street sign hangs at a broken angle. It’s green and has a sun-worn red, white and blue shield painted in the center that reads “Interstate 695 East- Essex” with an arrow pointing to the right down a tunnel of thick trees and tall grass. I wonder what it had once been for, where it had led.
Arriving at the glass tower, rows and rows of large multi-colored metal boxes greet
me, all with flat wheels and most with broken glass. Rust eats away at the frames and doors, the paint faded and peeled, and a layer of dust and decades of grime cover all of them. These must be cars. I remember learning about them once with Maeva and wishing for one because they sounded cool. Rey and I would use the living room sofa and pretend to be in a car of our own, zipping around the surface with the windows down and the wind in pur hair.
These dented, damaged, weed choked pieces of junk before me don’t look nearly as wonderful as I’d always imagined.
Turning right, my captors march me past two huge bronze statues of horses, one missing a tail, and then we pick our way over a brick lined walkway. Half the bricks are missing or cracked or covered in squishy green moss. My feet slide on some of the slicker sections.
I can feel the eyes of the people around us bore into my skull. I refuse to glance up, not wanting to meet anyone’s gaze and needing to tread carefully or risk falling. Inside my boots, my feet ache, blisters rubbing between my toes, some already burst and oozing. My legs throb and my tongue must have tripled in size from dehydration.
Entering through a series of old doors, I look up to find us in the middle of a long hallway. A banister stands about twenty feet ahead overlooking lower levels. Above loom large, domed windows piercing the blue sky and offering sunlight to the interior.
Lining each side of the wide hallways are signs that mark former stores; clothing and shoes, candy and stationary, jewelry and athletic equipment. Everything has fallen into a sad state of disrepair, but it’s immediately clear this is where everyone in the League lives and the stores have been renovated into homes similar to the suites in ROC. Everywhere I look people work or walk to pay or even just sit on the edge of cracked, empty fountains to take a moment’s rest and talk with a friend.
“It’s a mall,” I whisper to myself in incredulity because while I’ve heard of these things, I never expected to be inside one. I never imagined it could be so vast and overwhelming as it looms above me like cement giant.
One of my kidnappers pokes me with the butt of their gun, guiding me toward a set of black stairs that look like they use to move up and down on their own at some point in the distant past. People stop and stare or point or whisper to each other as I pass, and I’m again reminded that I do not belong here on the surface. For about the hundredth time since the day Rey died, I find myself wishing I had never left ROC.
Descending to the bottom floor, I’m led to the basement of the mall, which has been turned into a prison. Bare bulbs stick out from the walls every ten feet or so, though only a quarter seem to actually work causing the hall to be cast mostly in long, ominous shadows. Rows of former closets and spare rooms of the sub level have been converted into make-shift cells. All stand empty and forgotten and I can’t help but think that if I stay down here long enough, I will become empty and forgotten too.
Arriving at a cell that must have once been a janitor’s closet, I’m thrown inside with such force I fall onto the linoleum floor. The impact jars my joints and bruises my knees, but I don’t have the energy to stand again and instead collapse against the wall as the red-haired man shuts and locks the metal gate, sealing me into the dismal space.
I hear their footsteps echo down the hall and once they disappear, I let out a strangled howl, tears falling freely down my sweat and dirt streaked face. I lift the sleeve of my jacket to wipe them away and then remember that it’s Jax’s coat I’m wearing. It makes me cry even harder because Daniel is dead and Randolph is injured and no one in the compound will ever know what happened to me. Not that they would come looking anyway. I’m not one of them, most of the compound hates me. No one will risk their life, and certainly not the lives of everyone in the compound, for a girl from ROC.
Then a sickening realization dawns, eradicating any hope I might have had of a rescue. They’ll think I’m the one who killed Ashlynn and Daniel. Assuming Randolph has no idea who knocked him unconscious, what else would they think?
The idea hits like a punch to my gut and I double over, bawling uncontrollably. I don’t realize how loud I’m being until a tiny voice floats from down the hall.
“Shh! If you make too much noise they get mad.”
My head snaps up. I’m hyperventilating and hiccupping and my eyes are so swollen and puffy and sore I can hardly even see anymore, but I drag myself to the bars of my cage anyway. Shifting all the way to the right of the door and straining to see farther to my left, I can just make out a small, gaunt face pressed up to the bars of another cell.
A little girl stares back, probably no older than eight, with greasy dark hair tangled around thin, pale cheeks and sunken, brown eyes. Despite her sickly appearance, she looks at me with an intelligent inquisitiveness that seems out of place on someone so young.
“What’s your name?” she calls softly, eyes darting farther down the hall in case a guard overhears.
“Kelsey. What’s yours?”
“Nadia.”
“How long have you been here?”
“I don’t know. A long time I think.” She jams one lanky arm though the bars. “Do you have one?”
I squint and force my eyes to adjust in the poor lighting to see what she wants to show me. Then I jerk backward from shock, smacking my head on the cinder block wall as I stifle a gasp.
“You have a barcode!”
“Shh! Yes. Do you?”
“Yes,” I respond, shrugging off the jacket and presenting my own tattoo. “Are you from ROC? How did you get up here? How many others are there?”
She blinks in surprise, overwhelmed by my rapid-fire questions. “Yeah, I’m from the O.Z. I escaped with my parents through the outside door because their numbers were selected in the Gamble. Except once we got to the surface we were caught by these people and thrown in here.”
“Are your parents there with you?”
She drops her head, sniffling. “No. They both got sick and died. It was a while ago. I don’t know how long. It’s just me now, and whoever else is a prisoner too.”
She couldn’t be referring to the most recent Gamble, which means she’s been a prisoner here for at least a year if not longer. My heart breaks for the poor child. “I’m so sorry, Nadia.”
She lifts her eyes to me again. “There’s others locked up down here somewhere. I don’t know how many there are exactly, maybe seven or so, but I think we’re all from the O.Z. We’re being collected for something.”
“Collecting us? For what?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen anyone new in a while, but I keep hearing the guards talk about finding any ROC escapees because they need us.”
I go to respond, but suddenly the heavy sound of boots on tile meets my ears. A moment later, the red-haired man appears, his freckled brow furrowed and thin mouth twisted in a snarl. He kicks out at the door of Nadia’s cell, causing the girl to scamper away where I can’t see her.
“You know better,” he growls, then flips his hardened gaze my direction. “You on the other hand, seem to be having a hard time understanding how things work here.”
Striding to my cell, a creepy half smile falls across his face. I scuttle backward along the floor as he removes a key from his pocket, unlocks the door and enters my cell. I press myself backward against the wall and wish I could disappear, vanish into the cinderblock and melt away.
“There’s. No. Talking down here,” he says very slowly, as if I don’t understand English.
I hold out my arms for whatever protection they can provide. “I know, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
He lifts one leg and drives it into my ribs. As two snap under the impact, severe pain shoots across my body, into my spine and spirals downward. The air expels from my lungs with such force I can’t draw a full breath and it feels like someone poured liquid fire into my chest.
“Wrong answer,” the man says, reaching down to grab me by the hair and wrench me to my feet. To avoid crying out, I clamp down on my bottom lip so hard I taste blood while
wrestling to loosen myself from his grasp.
A hand whips across my face, its mark stinging my already damaged skin. And then he’s got his fingers wrapped around my throat. Slamming me against the wall, my head hits so hard I hear a dull thud and my teeth clack together. Stars swim across my vision, black, shadowy fingertips creeping at the edges.
I claw at his hands as they press on my windpipe and now I really can’t breathe, managing only to gasp and strangle, eyes bulging from my head as I feel the darkness take hold.
When I am moments from unconsciousness, he releases his grip, tossing me aside like a piece of worthless garbage. When I hit the floor, my right ankle pops and twists, agony flaring through the joint. I lay on the cold, hard flood sucking in oxygen and rubbing at my bruised throat. I cough, ejecting a glob of blood and I pray it’s from my busted lip and bleeding gums and not something far worse.
The Gamble (The Gamble Series Book 1) Page 15