by V. K. Ludwig
“Nobody moves an inch. How many hours of weapon training did you get?”
“Forty-two,” West said.
Glenn released a deep sigh. “Eleven.”
I almost laughed at Glenn’s number. Then the truck came to a full stop less than nine-hundred feet in front of us, and my heart boomed away in my ears.
“Pull back low crawl,” it burst out of me. “Keep your heads down and shut up.”
I shoved myself back over the ground, keeping my limbs low and my head even lower. Layers of ash rode up against the hem of my jacket. They spilled over the threads and rubbed themselves onto my stomach, covering my skin in what might have been someone's hair, or shirt or flesh at some point.
“What now?” Glenn whispered from somewhere behind me.
“Sh.” I jerked my arm around and fanned my hand over the ground, gesturing him to keep down.
A breeze carried over their voices as they left their vehicle, too far to be distinguishable, but too close for me to ignore how my limbs turned bloodless and numb. They must have seen us, or they wouldn’t have stopped.
They brought out a floodlight and hooked it to the side of the door, the bright cone searching the ground in front of us. I glanced over my shoulder. Our truck stood right there, less than thirty feet behind the burnt trees. As soon as their light strayed the rims, we would be exposed.
“Truck,” I whispered and gestured my hand in a circular motion. “Go around and get in the truck. Stay down.”
We continued our retreat, but the floodlight inched up on us with each sway it took. Deep-chested laughs hollered our way, only overwhelmed by the blasting music they had turned on.
I dug my hands into the dirt and fell back by another few inches, my stomach dragging over grit and what must have been a smooth rock. It pressed cold against my naked skin, driving a shudder deep into my core. Then it cut me.
I pressed my mouth onto my sleeve and hollered a “Fuck me!” into the thick layers of fabric.
“What the hell happened?” West whispered, and both scouts halted their movements.
“Something cut me,” I said and lifted my weight off the wound.
I let my hand wander down my torso, my fingertips soon touching the slippery layer of blood.
“How bad is it?” Glenn asked.
I lifted my stomach off the ground some more and gazed down at myself. “Hard to say. I don’t think the cut is very big, but that motherfucker got in deep. Keep backing up and wait in the truck for me. Don’t start the engine until I tell you, and get your weapons ready.”
The sound of their bodies chaffing the ground told me they had set back into motion. Whatever sharp corner protruded from the rock seemed hooked into my skin. With each breath I took, the grit and ash inside the wound sent a burning sensation along the side of my body.
I let my hand search for the rock, placed my palm over it, and sent my fingers out to find the sharp culprit. They wandered over a smooth surface and met the occasional groove, one of them letting the flesh of my fingertip sink in like a mold.
Three seconds later, my thumb found the offender. A pointy end pressed into my fingertip, almost like a shard. I traced along the sharp edge, then my thumb disappeared inside the rock. The darkness which had loomed over this area crept under my skin and paralyzed my body.
Panic choked my breath.
With my hand resting on the object so it couldn’t cut me again I crawled back, my head a bit too high and my limbs a bit too shaky. And there in front of me, underneath my palm, rested a skull so small, my hand enclosed it almost entirely.
It hadn’t been there before, but my body dragging across the ground must have revealed it. The foreboding silence around us wormed itself into my ears, making the whistles of the wind and the moans of the trees fade into a different reality.
The moonlight barely touched its razor-sharp edges, almost as if the rays knew better than me and avoided being cut. Blunt force had left a jagged hole behind, hairline cracks spreading from it all over the skull.
Nausea swept up from my stomach. A few days ago, I might have stroked the hair of a boy. Now my thumb rested inside his head. Panic tugged on my legs and arms, and I wiggled myself back until the sole of my boot hit against the rim of our truck.
Light touched my fingertips.
A shout hollered from twelve-o’clock.
“Start the truck,” I shouted and pushed myself up on all fours.
No need for hiding anymore.
My knees buckled underneath me. First one, then the other. The engine roared up right beside me. I pulled myself up on the hood and dragged my paralyzed body around it.
Shouts grew louder, and the floodlight blinded my eyes. A hand pulled me into the truck and pushed me onto the passenger seat, then the tires spun in the slick ash for a moment before our truck set into motion.
West turned our truck around and stepped on the gas, his gun resting on his left leg which he bounced up and down in a fast jitter.
Someone fired a shot. Less than a second later, the rear window of our cabin crumbled into tiny shards.
“Heads down,” I yelled.
Glenn rolled himself into the foot space, his head cradled underneath his arms. I grabbed my gun, turned around onto my knees, and fired three shots through our broken rear window.
If I hit anything I couldn’t tell. Most likely not, because their truck had quickly caught up with us, and its lights illuminated our cabin.
“Turn around,” I shouted at West. “You’re driving toward the District’s gate.”
West made a turn which scrambled me against my door and made Glenn cry out in panic. The moment we headed north, the cabin turned pitch black once more.
“They stopped,” West said, the reflection of his eyeballs in the rear mirror the only speck of white.
Their truck grew smaller in the rear mirror, until the only thing left to see were their headlights, turning on and off, sending alternating flashes of light. Short, short, short. Long. Long, long, long. Short. Long, Long. Then short.
The Jerk
Chapter 2
Ruth
The door fell into the lock and woke me. A whiff of beard wax spread across the room, like honey and green tea, telling me Adair had returned. A recording of someone’s wedding still played on the TV in front of me, and I pulled the green fleece blanket over my shoulder.
“You’re back,” I mumbled, my eyes still heavy with sleep.
Adair’s feet shuffled over the living room floor as he stomped out of his boots and unzipped his jacket.
“You fell to sleep on the couch again?” he asked. “Don’t come complaining later when you have back pain.”
I snuggled my face into the soft pillow. “How was it? Did you bring Max’s dad back?”
No answer came.
I pushed myself up and wiggled out of the blanket, which fell to the ground. A grayish kind of mud had soaked the hem of his sweater, tinted with red on one side of his stomach. Shivers crept up my legs.
“You’re bleeding!”
I hurried over and let my hand dart for him.
“Don’t.” He took a step back. “It’s just a scratch. I’ll go take a shower and clean it out.”
“That needs proper sterilizing, Adair, or all those bacterias will cause an infection.”
He gave a scoff and let his gaze flick upward. “I don’t need you to tell me what bacterias can do, considering I breed them down at the lab all day.”
“Wow, what happened out there that made you so grumpy?”
“First, it’s none of your business. Second, I’m not grumpy. I was out all night, and I am tired and drained. Third, it’s none of your business.”
His shoulders slumped as if he offered it as an apology without having to say the words. A gray-purple haze layered underneath his eyes.
“Where’s Hazel?” he asked.
“Left early. You should let her check if this needs stitching once she’s back.”
“She lef
t you alone?” He shook his head. “Shouldn’t have done that.”
“Well, neither should you.”
I grabbed the blanket from the couch, folded it, and placed it against the armrest. Adair lifted his strong arms behind his head and closed his eyes for a moment. Then he looked down at himself and lifted the bottom of his shirt, revealing a deep puncture wound right next to the small set of squares on his stomach.
“What on earth did that?”
His gaze seemed to drift out of focus. “A rock.”
With each expansion of his chest and stomach, a small amount of blood-tinted fluid leaked from the gap, putting a twist in my guts.
“Any signs of Max’s dad?” I asked once more and searched for his eyes.
“No, but we found a couple of clues, and I already called River so we can get together later and discuss it.”
His words had come out heavy, as if the exhaustion sitting around his puffy eyes had also settled on his voice.
“If you take your shirt off I can throw it into the soaking bucket with the other stuff,” I said, a tingling sensation radiating from my chest. “Your pants, too.”
He quickly dropped his shirt, his furrowed brows scolding how I had caught a glimpse of his masculine body. A shallow laugh followed. “No thanks, I’d rather undress in the bathroom.”
“Why? It’s not like you would be naked. Besides, I’ve seen naked men before.”
“And did you stare at them, too?”
“What?” Something inside me flinched as if I’d lost at a round of hide-and-seek.
He took a step toward me, far away enough to keep him alive, but still close enough to make heat rise to my cheeks. His voice dropped down to a husky whisper. “The last time I took my shirt off in front of you, you wouldn’t quit staring at me.”
I shrugged. “So? What’s so wrong with me looking at you?”
“It makes me uncomfortable,” he said and backed away from me once more.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. It just does.”
I stared into his light-blue eyes, one iris split in two by how a strand of his platinum blond hair had escaped the bun at the top of his head. “Maybe I liked what I saw.”
He turned away from me and rubbed the center of his forehead as if warding off a headache. “I’m not in the mood for your games today, Ruth.”
“What games?” I asked, forcing my voice into something innocent.
“You know exactly what I mean.” He turned on his heel, marching straight for his room. “Sometimes I wonder what I ever did to you that you hate me so much.”
I hurried behind him but stopped right at the door frame. “I don’t hate you. Why would you think that?”
“Because you obviously want me to get in trouble. You’re teasing me all the fucking time ever since you got here. It might have been fun at first, but now it’s just exhausting me.”
“Why?”
“Why?” He flung his arms in front of his chest. “Because I’m here to protect you, and you’re teasing me with something I can’t have.”
I took a deep breath and blurted the words out with as much confidence as I could muster. “But what if you could?”
The firm stance he took could have emanated confidence if it wasn’t for the way he kneaded his fingers inside his fists. There he stood in front of me, tall and muscular. Even covered in filth and blood, Adair had an intelligent and calm air around him.
And there was something else he had. Something I wanted: an awareness and understanding of the attraction between a man and a woman. No matter how many books I had read about it, I still couldn’t grasp the concept. What if he could teach me?
I shifted my weight toward him one, slow, deliberate inch at a time. “You know I’ve been off the water for quite some time now.”
He straightened his posture, each of his slow, deep inhales rising his chest a bit higher now and letting it drop even deeper. His eyes wandered down the side of my neck and caressed my collarbone for a while, making the tingle inside my chest spread its roots deeper, then his eyes jumped back up. “And?”
“Assuming I’ve developed needs that haven’t been there before…” I let my whisper trail off as if not telling the entire truth would somehow make it less real. But the way my body reacted now whenever Adair came around me was hard to ignore, and certainly couldn’t be camouflaged with silence.
“And what needs might that be?” he asked with a low pitch.
I allowed my eyes to trail across his broad chest. “More like curiosity, maybe. Now that I’m here… there are things I want to understand.”
He released a slow, deep moan and let his lips brush against each other. “And you want me to show you?”
“Yes.”
My heart clattered against my throat, and I feared he might hear it. No. I hoped he heard it, and would finally understand that I meant what I said.
Heat grew from somewhere below my bellybutton and trailed down between my legs, unleashing a primal desire onto me I couldn’t control or otherwise satisfy. I had tried that on my own, but it did little to distract me from that one thing only a man could give me.
He lowered himself down to me, his eyes stuck to my lips. I did everything the old books and magazines had taught me. I cocked my head slightly and revealed the side of my neck. I licked my lips. I readied my body to fall into his arms.
“Oh, you are gooood,” he whispered. Then he shook his head, took a step back, and turned on his heel. “Damn you’re so good, I almost fell for it. You better don’t try that with another guy, or I swear not even I could protect you from him. Maybe you can rip those jokes with dudes from the Districts, but out here they will either get you raped or married.”
He disappeared into his room, and I remained rooted. “But I don’t want to marry. I want —”
“I already told you my room is off-limits to you,” he said, then he slammed the door in my face.
The tingle inside me dissolved into nothing.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. I betrayed the council. Infiltrated the people of the Districts. Fled my home. All to learn more about the nature of human procreation. Ayanna and Autumn had it make look so easy, but here I stood, with a door inches away from my nose.
“Are you guys arguing again?” Hazel asked and placed a bag onto the coffee table, layers of snow slipping off her boots and onto the beige tile floor. “I went to the village and borrowed us the best movie. If we get Adair to tell us where he hides his dried seeds, maybe we could make it a movie morning with popcorn?”
I looked down at my holo-band. “It’s not even eight yet.”
“So? Everything goes on Sundays, right?” She walked up to me, gave a quick knock on Adair’s door and let her voice grow into a shout. “You up for a movie morning? They finally had the Marvel collection down at the village.”
“Give me ten,” came back. “I gotta get a shower.”
Hazel gave a pat on my shoulder. “Go check the cabinets in the kitchen for dried corn while I take my jacket off. This is going to be fun. Who knows if I’ll have the chance to do these kinds of things once I moved?”
I gave a nod and strolled over to the kitchen, rummaging through cabinets and opening flip-top lids. “He got injured, and I think you should check on it. It’s pretty deep, and I’d say it needs stitches.”
She slipped out of her boots and hung her jacket by the wrought-iron wardrobe. “I’m sure he’ll tell me if it’s that bad. I met one of the scouts on my way down. Apparently, things didn’t go as planned, and there’s no sight of pastor William.”
“I feel sorry for Max, I can’t imagine what it is like to lose a parent.”
“But you said your mother died.” She walked over and grabbed a large pot from the cabinet beneath the sink, placed it onto the stove and covered the bottom with a thick layer of oil.
“Yeah, but I wasn’t even three yet when it happened. Not sure how conscious I was of it at the time.”
“An
d your dad?”
I flipped the top of one of the canisters open, looked inside, and handed it to Hazel. “Never met him. He was a donor.”
“And the information is anonymous?”
“No. But it’s not common for children to have a relationship with their donors. And we have men at our community homes who help raise the children, so I never saw a need to get in touch with him.”
She gave a deep sigh. “That’s sad. Family is everything to us, you know. Our dad was an asshole, but at least we got a chance to grow up with our parents for the most part of our childhood.” She hovered her hand inches above the oil. “I think it’s hot enough now. Do me a favor and pour in two hands full. Make sure you spread it out evenly.”
Doors opened and closed behind us as Adair left his room and went to get his shower. A few minutes later he came back out to corn popping against the metal lid, nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist and three bandaids covering his wound.
“Ruth said it needs stitching?” Hazel asked.
“Nah, this should do. I disinfected it as well.”
The moment he caught my eyes trailing across his chest, he rolled his eyes and turned toward his room, his feet squeaking inside his shower shoes with each step he took.
“You can start the movie if you want to. I’ll be there in two,” came from him, then he disappeared behind the door.
“If I put butter on it,” Hazel said with a raised brow, “are you still going to eat it?”
“Yeah. It’s the meat I can’t get used to.”
“That’s because you’ve got it all wrong behind that wall,” Adair said and walked up behind us.
He had trimmed back the stray whiskers of his beard, the fruity scent of his wax once more filling the room along with traces of soap and iodine. Dressed in shorts and long sleeves, he pressed his hands onto the butcher block and leaned into the island.
“Animal agriculture is harmful to the environment,” I said. “It requires deforestation and causes pollution.”
“With that I agree. But there’s lots in between large animal agriculture and not eating any meat at all. Our families only raise as much livestock as they need to substitute for whatever we couldn’t hunt.”