I roll my eyes, and jerk my shoulder out from under his expert fist. “Quit acting like my security detail. I can take care of myself.”
“None of us can. Not anymore.” Owen scowls. “The sweeps are too efficient.”
I clench my lips in a tight line. I can’t argue with that. The Sweepers’ noiseless ships hover over the canyons on some kind of electromagnetic suspension system. Eerily silent. Not even a vibration signals they’re coming for you.
In our bunker system deep in the Sawtooth Forest, there are twenty-three of us left, split between eight separate bunkers connected by a shared tunnel—an underground beehive community of sorts. No one ventures up top after dawn unless they’re logged out on assignment. And never the clan women, which is why I have no real friends among them. They won’t take chances. But, I can’t live squirreled beneath the dirt. I need to know the sun still rises. How else can I be sure the world hasn’t ended a second time?
Owen pulls out half a fried rabbit from his pack. “Gimme your knife.”
“Why? Where’s yours at?” I eye him suspiciously. “Have you been gambling again?”
He shrugs. “What’s it matter?”
“They’ll kick us out if you’re caught. They’re already looking for any excuse to get rid of Da.”
Gambling was outlawed after an Undergrounder was stabbed to death in a fight over a lost wager. Trafficking in weapons is illegal too. The camps all have numerical codes on their possessions now, but stuff still trades hands. And Owen’s a master hustler.
He gestures impatiently for my knife. I toss it to him and watch him carve a piece of meat. He’s good at it—he can whittle on anything. He’s promised to make me an antler handle for my knife, same as his, soon as I spot him a stag. Which could take forever. What’s left of the big game has retreated deep into the Wilderness of No Return. There’s nothing out here for them to eat. Even the grass is down to a fried stubble.
“You should be sleeping,” Owen says, through a mouthful of rabbit. “You’re on watch tonight.”
“Waste of time.” I arch my brows at him. “When do Sweepers ever come after sundown? Prat just makes stuff up for us to do so we don’t go rabid down under.”
Owen lets out a satisfying snort of laughter, and I allow myself a smug grin. We share a warranted disdain for all things Prat a.k.a. Prentice Carter. We call him Prent to his face, but Prat behind his back. I don’t feel too bad about it. I’d take either one over Prentice. Prat only made bunker chief because he said he knew how to manage people. Turns out he spent a summer stocking shelves for his parents—wealthy entrepreneurs who were overseas when the earth’s core overheated. I think Owen should run the bunker, but his pedigree isn’t up to par, our father being the camp drunk and all.
Tucker licks his lips and whines for a piece of rabbit. I ruffle the back of his neck to let him know I’m on it. “I couldn’t’t sleep in the bunker anyway,” I say with an exaggerated sigh. “Da was singing again.”
“So?” Owen stops chewing and throws me an incredulous look. “You’ve been falling asleep to drunken karaoke your whole life.”
I laugh. “Not my whole life.” I swipe the rabbit from his hand and tear off a chunk for Tucker. Owen’s strong, with a grip of steel, but I’ve always been quicker on the draw. “Ma used to sing to us,” I remind him. I swallow and stare out over the disfigured hills, pine branches radiating out from stumps like fried arteries. It’s been six years. Some days I forget what she looked like, but I can still hear the lilt in her voice when she sang.
She died the day the earth’s core overheated, or the meltdown as we call it nowadays. Me, Da, and Owen were fishing up at Steelhead Lake—Da was mostly popping beer cans—when the water began to heave. A tidal wave built in the lurching lake, and we scrambled to higher ground and huddled together, watching helplessly as a fireball the size of a football field ripped through Shoshane City. Molten rock pushed miles of asphalt sky-high forming blacktop mache mountains. Strip malls exploded like piñatas, buildings shot hundreds of feet into the air like gigantic stomp rockets. Da says toxic ash clouds took out the survivors. All hell broke loose after a ring of volcanos around the globe erupted and the sovereign leader issued a thermal radiation warning. That was the last we heard from him. And Ma. I miss her gentle spirit. There’s nothing gentle about the world anymore.
I liked how she used to pull my hair back from my forehead with her soft hands. “Makes your green eyes stand out,” she’d say, tilting her head to one side. “Now everyone can see those butterfly leg lashes resting on that milky skin.”
Half the time I live in my memories. What we’re doing now isn’t really living.
“Your hair needs cutting,” Owen grumbles. “You look like a matted mountain goat.”
I jolt upright and glare at him. “Jakob likes it long,” I say, shoving what remains of my loosened braid inside my collar.
Owen slings his arm around my shoulder and leans his forehead against mine. “Somebody got a bunker boyfriend?”
I dig an elbow in his ribs and he makes a clumsy move to pin my arms. I grab him by the neck and topple him, and we roll around, jostling for control, until we’re too weak from laughing to go at it anymore. I like it when he’s just being my brother, but for the most part he’s forgotten how.
If it weren’t for Jakob Miller, life in the bunkers would be unbearable. I can talk to him about anything and everything, even Ma dying, and he doesn’t tell me dumb stuff like Ma’s in a better place, or we’re the lucky ones. For that, I can forgive him the goofy overalls and trucker cap he walks around in. Not a hot look, even by bunker standards, but he makes me feel safe, and maybe that’s more important now than anything else.
It’s against the rules of Jakob’s clan for women to cut their hair. His family are Septite homesteaders who moved off grid decades ago when the world government came into existence and the first sovereign leader was elected. As far as the Septites are concerned, the tribulation has begun. Which is odd because they still spend their days making furniture that will outlast any of us. They call themselves Separatists, but the rest of us shortened it to Septites, which bugs them no end.
Jakob hasn’t told them we hang out. He says it would be one woe too many for them right now, whatever that means, so we meet in secret in an alcove at the far end of the main connecter tunnel, well beyond the last bunker—too dark and damp for prying eyes to bother us. Mostly we do battle over pawns and castles on a chipped chess set in the tawny glow of a flashlight jammed upright in the hard-packed dirt floor. Mostly. I can’t say we’ve never held each other close, hearts beating as one, or that our lips haven’t brushed a time or two in the dark. Jakob says if his father ever happens upon us there together, we’d be wishing a Sweeper found us instead.
I toss Owen the half-eaten rabbit. “Do you think we could catch one?”
“What? Another rabbit to fatten up your bony butt?”
I wipe my hands on my shirt. “A Sweeper.”
He shoots me a warning look. “Don’t go getting any stupid ideas.”
I fiddle with the rear sight on my Remington. I know he’s trying to protect me because Ma would want him to, but it feels like he’s always bullying me into submission since she died. “It’s not stupid to want to know what we’re hiding from.”
Owen frowns as he chooses his words. “Predators. That’s all you need to know.”
“I don’t want to live in a gopher hole the rest of my life. Don’t you want to be free again? We should quit running and fight back.”
Owen widens his eyes at me and swallows a bite of rabbit. He wipes the back of his hand across his mouth as if he’s processing the thought. “They never get out of their ships.”
“They must sometimes.”
“Forget it, Derry.”
“There has to be a way to—”
“There isn’t.” He chucks a bone at Tucker who snaps it out of the air in one fluid streak of fur. “Let it go.”
I stare at Owen
defiantly. “You think I’m a hazard up top, but Sam asked for it. He was goofing off, skimming rocks. They sucked him right in before he—”
Owen turns toward me, his dark eyes murky like stagnant pools. “How do you know that?”
I study him for an agonizing moment, regretting my decision before the words leave my lips. “Because, I was there.”
About NORMA HINKENS
Award-winning Indie author Norma Hinkens writes Pretty Gritty YA at a pace that will leave you slack-jawed! Travel junkie, legend lover, idea wrangler, Norma grew up among rich storytelling traditions in her native Ireland, land of make-believe and the original little green man. After abandoning globetrotting as a career choice, she settled in California. In her spare time, she retreats to rural Idaho to hike, bike and boat, but mostly to eavesdrop on mountain men and prepare for the apocalypse. If you like dystopian sagas, gritty heroines, and twists you won't see coming, then you'll love her turbo-paced thrill-rides! Join her VIP READER CLUB for hot new releases, stellar giveaways, exclusive content, behind the scenes and more.
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Captured Memories (The Sanction Series Book 4) Page 12