Born (The Born Trilogy Book 1)

by Tara Brown

  I open the hole a little and smile. “Stay calm. This is our ride out."

  Her eyes are full of worry. She nods. I can see the terror as the sound moves again and then moves closer.

  The sound is what I imagine it would be like being in a factory before the fall.

  My grampy worked at a toilet paper factory when I was really little. He took me on a tour when I was six. I only saw a small part of the factory, but the sound of it is burned into my memory.

  The metal bin starts to vibrate. I know the truck is closer. My breaths are so short and rapid, making me feel dizzy. I can't seem to pull a longer breath than the little ones I'm getting.

  I am vibrating along with the metal dumpster.

  A loud bang knocks against the front of the bin. It pushes me back. My foot tears through the bag. I struggle to push it down so that it isn’t sticking out and looking like a nurse is in the bin. I forgot to take the scrubs off.

  The vibration is so intense that I’m sinking into the pit of churning body bags. “Emma." Sarah cries out.

  "Stay calm.” I try not to shout, but I have to over the noise of the machine lifting us into the air. The bin tilts to the front and the air fills with screams, some of which I know are ripping from my throat.

  My bag is tossed and turned, until it slides forward and is tossed into an abyss. My stomach lurches forward as I fall for a second.

  I land against metal and bodies. Some are stiff but most are soft. I am lost in them. I don’t know which way is up or down. I can't feel gravity, just the vibration again, and the screech of the metal is everywhere.

  In between the sounds of the metal and gears, I hear sobs. I don’t think they are mine.

  There is a final loud bang and then a jerk forward. I open the hole of my bag a little more. I can't see the light. I am under the bodies.

  I'm struggling for air. I don’t think it's because there is no air. I think it's a panic attack. My palms are covered in sweat. I need Leo. I need to run my fingers in his fur. I imagine I am touching him. I slide a hand out of the bag and feel with my fingers. My arms are trapped. The sobs get stronger.

  "Emma."

  "I can't see you. Just a second. We'll be out of the gates in a minute. Just don’t freak out, okay?"

  Anna speaks softly, “Sarah, we need to stay still until we get far enough away from here. Just try breathing through your mouth. See, the hole is right there." I wish I had a hole leading somewhere.

  Remembering what my dad told me about avalanches, I spit and feel it go up in the air and land back on my forehead. I am on my back and have spit on my forehead.

  I start to wiggle and push through the bag above me, tearing the bag and shoving a body off of my other arm. My chest is tightening. The air is harder to get.

  I reach my hand up until it feels the air of the moving truck.

  Panic is ripping through me and I want to claw myself free.

  I pull my arm in and look at the light in the gaps of the bags above me. My eyes catch a glimpse of other things in the rips I have created in the bags, but I try not to see anything but the light.

  The truck lurches forward and comes to a stop and suddenly we hear men talking and laughing.

  We are lying in a sea of death and they're laughing.

  The truck moves and the bodies on top of me start to shift again. I count to ten and make myself wait an extra couple seconds.

  One Mississippi.

  Two Mississi—screw it!

  "Get them off of me. Get them off.” I’m fighting with the shifting and the moving.

  "It's okay, Emma. It's okay. I can see you.” My face is cleared suddenly and I can see the grimacing face of Anna. She is about three bodies above me.

  I reach my hands up and start clawing at the bags.

  Anna's face contorts. “No, stop. You're opening the bags. Just give me a second to move them."

  I am vibrating.

  Can't wait.

  Want out

  Need out now.

  The weight of them is crushing me. I never noticed it, but as they are lifted off I feel relief.

  My upper body is freed first. I sit up and use the two dead women next to me to push my legs free. I kick and scramble until I am out of the clutches of the black bags. I see the light of the bright sunny day and the brown of the borderlands. I have never been so grateful to see old hay and dead crops. The green of the forest off to the left side wakes my heart up. We are driving very quickly. We need to get out of this truck before it takes us to the body dump. The drop at the one I saw was huge. It was a canyon. Bodies were splayed along the canyon walls and ground.

  Anna is breathing hard and sweating. Sarah is crying.

  I point to the back of the truck. “We need to jump."

  Sarah shakes her head. I grab her face and focus it on mine. “You need to trust me. You need this. Think about the swimming hole. We will be there in three days."

  She sobs with her eyes closed. Her little face trembles. She feels like she did the first day I met her in the dark—frightened and tiny against the massive world that wants to destroy us. It feels like nothing will ever change.

  I scramble over the bags of death. I don’t think about what I'm touching or doing. I climb to the edge of the filthy truck. I try not to imagine the diseases that linger on this metal ledge.

  "Don’t touch your face or anything until we can wash."

  Anna nods, still watching Sarah sob.

  I sit on the ledge and feel the wind whip around me. If I close my eyes, I am in the back of the truck and my dad is driving. We are on a gravel road in the middle of nowhere and he lets me ride in the back. I grip the ledge and look back. “Climb on here with me."

  They listen and move quickly. We sit on the ledge together, gripping the metal and waiting.

  "When you feel the next sharp corner, we jump. Tuck your arms and legs and try to roll for the ditch. The truck will slow for the corner."

  The truck is moving fast. Not fast enough that we will die, but fast enough that we may be injured. The brakes hit hard and jerk us forward as the truck veers. I shout, “Now!” My fingers try to grip, but I force them to let go and roll from the truck.

  The screams faintly mix in my head with the pain and the ringing noise as my body bounces on the gravel. Dust is everywhere. Sharp pains cover me. My body comes to a stop but my head feels like it's still rolling. Hot liquid is seeping from above my eyes. When it covers my vision, the world turns red for a moment.

  Through the blood I see a dusty haze. Sarah is picking herself up and pulling at Anna's arms. Anna shakes her head to straighten her vision out. They hop down into the ditch. They're shouting at me. My vision is clouded for a second. I see their faces screaming. I look behind me and see another ball of dust coming our way. It's another truck.

  I stand and run into the ditch, diving between the thick grasses and pulling them over me. The truck roars around the corner, spitting rocks everywhere.

  I can barely hear it over the ringing in my ears as I turn on my belly and throw up. Blood mixes with my vomit. I'm not going to die here. I force my trembling and twitching body to crawl out of the muddy ditch. I drag myself up the bank and climb over some dead fallen trees.

  "Emma, this way.” Anna is waving an arm at me. I can hear her, but she sounds like she is shouting in a can.

  I turn and stumble to where they are sitting behind some trees and bushes.

  Sarah has a cut on her face that looks like road rash. It's not deep.

  "Can you move everything?"

  She nods.

  Anna has no wounds I can see, but she is favoring her right arm. It hangs funny.

  She looks terrified. “I think it's broken."

  "Okay, we need to get going. They can fix it at the camp." It's going to take us days to get back to the camp. "Can you walk?"

  She nods. “I have to walk, Emma. It's not if I can or not. I'm not going back there. We need to bandage your head. It's bleeding bad." I scowl whe
n she starts to tear at her scrubs with her one hand. She can’t get it so I help her. When we get it off she hands me the cloth. “Tie it to your head.”

  I take it and tie the dirty white bandage to my forehead. It stings but I know it’ll have to do. "Okay. I think it'll hold."

  I offer Sarah my hand. She takes it and we start the long trek back to the building we've just left. I need to get my bearings and the trail back to the camp.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I scan the area for a sign of them, but find nothing. I knew they would leave me, but I never imagined they would leave me empty-handed.

  They took my backpack even. The only thing I see that gives me the slightest bit of hope are the broken branches. I can't help but smile a little. They may have left me but at least they make the walk back obvious.

  I point at the hillside in front of us. “It's this way."

  Sarah moans.

  I look at her and try not to snap. “We walk till dark. That’s the rule, okay?” My head hurts, and it's making me a little mean.

  She slumps and starts walking. We are filthy in our white and pale-blue clothes that are now stained and torn. Dirt cakes our faces mixed with the dried blood. The cut above my eye needs a stitch. It's not going to get it. I'm going to have a deep scar there.

  It's hard to care now that I made it out alive. I didn’t die there. I still block out the images of the torn bags and the things I saw in there. My little cut is nothing.

  My feet ache. The slippers are bad for hiking. I slip a few times. Anna is cautious. Her arm still looks funny.

  It takes all of our second day to get back to the place where I camped with Will and Jake and we roasted the hare. I lick my lips and think about the hare.

  Somehow remembering the hare makes me miss Meg. Her nattering took up the free air, though my brain liked to roam while we walked. She stopped my thoughts and drove me insane in a different way than the hunger that is gnawing at my belly does.

  Sarah and Anna are like me. They're quiet. They think a lot.

  "I could go for a piece of the lemon meringue pie,” Anna whispers the worst thing I've ever heard. My stomach grumbles. I can taste all of the food. The hunger is driving us all insane obviously.

  "I could go for the spaghetti from the first day.” Sarah rubs her belly.

  I whimper almost. “No, the pancakes, bacon, and sausage breakfast."

  Sarah moans. “Ohhhh, cook always whipped me up something she called hollandaise, secretly, to dip my home fries."

  “Gross.” Anna laughs. “You're disgusting."

  We pass the camp and the small charred fire that they tried to cover over. I roll my eyes when Sarah points to it. “Hey look, a campfire.”

  "Three guesses who hid that one when we camped here."

  Anna laughs. “Oh God, I miss him."

  Sarah looks confused as she climbs over an old log. “Was it Jake?” We've told her enough that she knows he isn’t great at survival.

  "Yup. The branches are leading this way."

  We make it into the valley just below the camp by nightfall. We have walked nonstop. I know we are hours from the camp. I see the exhausted looks on their faces and cringe. “We need to keep going. Anna, that bone is going to set wrong, and you'll never have a range of motion with it."

  I don’t know how to set it if it's dislocated. I can set a bone if I can feel the break but not a dislocation. Instead, I tie it in a sling with strips from the top of my pale-blue scrubs, which now comes up to my midriff.

  Sarah sniffles a little. “Em, I'm so tired."

  I rub her arm. “I know. But we have to keep going. We'll be at the first camp in a few hours. We will get food and a bath."

  Sarah looks defeated. She slumps and we continue walking. We look like the infected. We are covered in blood and dirt and our clothes are torn. We even walk like them. I'm going to be pissed if I walk all the way to the camp and end up getting shot.

  The forest grows dark. I would be scared if I had even an ounce of common sense left in me.

  I have a fever. I know I do. The chills of the soft breeze make my skin hurt. My head is no doubt infected from the filth on the bandage, but I push myself on.

  One foot in front of the other.

  Anna is almost stumbling so I put my arm around her and pull her up the hill. My legs burn. My chest aches. I'm coughing from the sickness starting inside of me. My body wants to fight the infection. It's strong from the weeks at the breeder camp but I'm exhausted.

  My legs give way and I’m about to collapse. My head lifts to the sky and I see an angel of mercy pointing a gun at my head from a bird perch in a tree. "Halt."

  My dry throat barely gets out the slightest of words. “Help. Help us.” I hear the croak of it.

  He is waving his arms suddenly. The forest comes alive. Torches are brought and arms reach out for me. Anna is gone. Someone is carrying her. Sarah stays at my side. I grab her arm firmly. “You're safe. Find Will and Jake."

  Her blue eyes fill with terror as I collapse and fingers grab at me, but their faces fuzz out and I slip into the darkness.

  In my sleep, I hear things. Sometimes it's Sarah and sometimes it's people laughing. I think they're laughing at Sarah. She never leaves my side as far as I can tell. My body isn’t ready to wake up. Something is withholding the waking world from me.

  Weird confessions float in the air around my head. Strange things are whispered to me while I sleep.

  “I should have killed you when I had the chance.”

  “Emma, I love you. Please be okay.”

  “You saved her, Em. You did it.”

  I don’t know if the voices all belong to one person or if they are figments of my imagination. At one point, Leo is beside me. He is reading a book, sitting in a chair with glasses on. When I look at him, he smiles his wolf smile and says, “You never should have left me, Emma." He has a deep voice and an English accent.

  The blackness takes me. It's like I'm on a roller coaster, and we keep going in tunnels where I can hear but not see.

  Something bites into my arm and I scream myself awake. I'm sitting up and covered in cold sweat. My clothes are gone and a bandage is across my chest covering my breasts. No one is in the tent with me. I look at my arm and nothing is there.

  A cold shiver walks over me and I can't help but wonder if it’s the ghosts of the dead girls. They're pinching me and telling me that I've slept long enough. It's time to wake and stop the breeder farms.

  I grab a robe next to my bed and pull it around me. I am thinner again. I sigh. All that eating was for nothing. My arm hurts too.

  I stumble out of the tent. My legs are weak. They feel like sticks. My feet are sore. I look at them, surprised. They're covered in bandages. I lift my foot and touch the bandages, wincing at the sting from whatever is under the bandage.

  "You were bleeding from everywhere." I lift my head up to see Will sitting outside my tent on a chair. His eyes meet mine and I think he knows everything. He can see my soul.

  I put my fingers up to my head and wince when I touch the thick bandage I find there.

  He stands and walks to me. His body towers over mine. "You made it back to me.” His words are suddenly a whisper. It's as if he was terrified he would never speak the words, and even now, they scare him. I think they scare me, but I nod once as I try to fight the tears that fill my eyes.

  He wraps his body around mine and lifts me into him. It's the safest place I've ever been in my life. My father, my grandparents, my mother—no one has ever made me feel like I do in his arms. It's the safest place in the world. It’s like hugging Leo and letting him tell me everything is going to be okay.

  "You never do that to me again, Emma.” His words sound wet in the crook of my neck. He's trembling. “You never do that again. I thought you were gone forever."

  I shake my head as my legs buckle—partly from lack of strength and partly because I'm emotional. I don’t know where to put all of the emotions. They're every
where. He compensates for my lack of strength. His strength becomes mine. He holds me up.

  I sob. I sob for the women and girls in the black bags. I cry for the people who have no idea what's going on. The ones who think their family members are living in condos and have forgotten about them. Children who have been left to believe their own mothers are living it up with air conditioning in the city, instead of suffering in the woods with them.

  I sob because a small, shallow part of me misses the food. I will never eat like that again.

  I sob because a doctor took my virginity. When Anna explained what had happened to us both, I never cried then. I was strong for Sarah then but now I can cry for my loss and my abused body.

  I sob because I never imagined in all my life I would be here in this moment. It's a dream come true.

  Other arms begin to join our embrace and hug me with fingers that dig into me.

  "Emma.” I know it's Sarah's voice.

  Will is holding me so tightly I can't see anyone. My face is buried in his massive chest. I am breathing him in. It's the sweetest air in the world.

  "Emma.” I hear Anna scream and another body is crammed into the massive hug.

  I tap lightly on his chest. He lets me go a little but not completely. His eyes are red. I don’t see tears. He gives me his smile that makes my insides twist into knots. I turn away from him but his big arms stay on my waist. I pull Anna and Sarah into me. We hug and shake.

  Sarah snuggles her way into my armpit. "You smell,” she whispers. I laugh into Anna's mass of dark hair. She and Sarah both look shiny and clean again.

  I look down at my dirty skin. “All that work to clean me up, and I came back just as dirty as when I left."

  Jake walks up with his goofy grin. “I think you're dirtier.” Will is still holding my waist tightly, but I pull away and run to Jake. My robe is flapping so I pull it around me and hug him. His arms sweep me up into his embrace and he kisses my filthy cheeks just like he did the other time. "I missed you, Em."