by Layla Pierce
I study the fine line of his lips and the furrow of his brow. He doesn’t look at me but to Lucas. “Meeting, now.”
I want to follow, but I know that I’m not welcomed, so I go sit back on the bed with my arms crossed.
“You too, Bella. You’ll need to understand how this works if you’re going to live in the city.” There’s no smile to him as he says my name.
Lucas is the one who holds his hand out to me, and I take it, letting him lead me to the meeting room down the hall.
We walk in, and Matthew is at the round table his hands folded on the wood with his head bowed almost as if he was praying. Xavier is sitting next to him, looking over papers with handwritten notes scrawled on them.
Lucas pulls out a chair for me to sit next Xavier. I sit, and he pushes the chair in under me and kiss my cheek. I realize that the papers in front of Xavier are numbers.
“Galbraith is right, our numbers are growing, and soon we won’t have enough provisions. Our choices are to ship people to other cities, let them take some in the purge or let our people start to go hungry in the next couple years.” He slides the sheets over to Antony across the table. “Our population of women has increased three folds, but that’s because of the birth rate, the majority of the children are females.”
I cringe, and I can’t help it. Children are not protected by the purge.
“Is there a city nearby that some of our nomads might want to go to?” This comes from Lucas. “They might be willing to go trade for a while at another location.”
There is a grumble of agreement around the table. I watch as they make the best plans they can to secure the city against a big purge.
“And then if worse comes to worse, we lose a chunk of our females to the purge.”
I sit back and think about this. The government wants a better population but purging the women, but women are needed to create population. “What do they do with the women in the purge?”
All of them look at me. “No one knows what they do with the women.”
“No one has bothered asking?”
“We have, Izzy.” Matthew shakes his head. “But they won’t tell us. Top secret.”
This was why such horror stories came around. “How many pregnant women do you have in the city right now?”
“Twenty percent of the women who are able to carry are carrying.”
“And the other eighty percent?”
Antony scans the papers. “It breaks down like this, twenty percent are carrying, forty percent are recovering from their last child, and forty percent are not currently carrying or recovering.”
“And Galbraith wants that forty percent, plus the teenager girls, there’s ten of those.” Matthew leaned back. “We can probably negotiate to keep the teens safe, but the women…if they cut our food supply down, we’re looking at high rations and starvation within a couple years. Even with the ability to sustain ourselves.”
I hold my hand out for the papers and Antony hesitates for a moment. I let out a huff of air. “I’m a scavenger, not an uneducated woman, may I please see them?”
He hands them over, and I scan over the numbers, including jobs that count as safe jobs. “We can cut that number down to twenty percent if we give recovering mothers a nanny to help care for the children.”
“And justify it how?”
“Simple, the more help a mother has, the more sleep and the more care she can get. If she can recover in that six week period, she’ll be ready to carry again sooner.” That still leaves twenty percent. “What if all the other ones are actively trying? Does that do anything?”
Antony shakes his head. “No, rumor is they’ll be checked when the government takes them.”
“They should start purging men,” I mutter.
“They don’t because men can sleep with several women, while a woman can only carry so many children.”
I roll my eyes. “Okay, fine, I don’t understand the government.” In my mind there had to be something else going on with the purge. Something that wasn’t being seen.
“So twenty percent it is.” Xavier sighs. “That’s more than last time.”
“Where do I fall on the scale?”
“You don’t.” Matthew meets my gaze. “We’re planning on hiding you during the purge.”
I’m trying to figure out why it’s so vital for them to protect me. “He knows I exist.”
“And we’ll tell him you went back to the wasteland because you didn’t like the city. With your stuff gone and an old camp up, they’ll think you’ve moved on.” Antony nods towards Lucas. “He’ll take you tomorrow, but make sure you avoid any of the soldiers.”
I smile at Lucas. “He’s going to have to dress like a scavenger, he’ll be spotted easily in his three piece suite.”
“Oh, I can only imagine. What are you going to dress in? Lisa got rid of your clothes.” Lucas smirked. “Or are you going out naked?”
I roll my eyes. “In your dreams, being naked in the wasteland is not ideal. I’ll scrounge something up.”
The next morning Lucas and I are dressed in tattered clothes that I traded a chicken for in the marketplace. Lucas shakes his head as we stand at the gate of the city. “They are pre dirty clothes.”
“I heard once that women would pay more than fifty dollars for a pair of pre-torn jeans. All I had to do was trade a chicken.”
“That was my best chicken.” He gives a fake groan.
“You’ll deal.” I smile as the gates open, and the guard lets Lucas and me out with a raise of his brow. “We’ll be back.”
I lead Lucas pass the now dry creek and toward my camp. I hear footsteps nearby, and I grab Lucas to pull him behind some rubble. He opens his mouth to protest, but I put a hand over it. Telling him silently to shut up.
He nods, and I remove my hand and peek over the rubble. Not too far away is a group of soldiers, wearing leather jackets and I know precisely what those jackets are hiding. Guns, weapons, ties, anything they can use to take women with them for the purge.
Lucas also looks over the group with me, his eyes narrowed as the soldiers wander the opposite direction. Once I am sure they are gone, and the pounding in my heart dies down a little bit I move out from behind the rubble.
“They’re looking for scavengers to purge.” I start walking the other direction toward my camp and Lucas follows me.
“The purge doesn’t start for two weeks.”
“Not out here, out here they purge as soon as they are in the area. It’s about a month long hide and seek game. Come on, let’s hurry.” I quicken my pace wanting to get my stuff and get back into the safety of the city.
We get to the camp, and I stop short in my steps as I see the soldiers tearing my home apart. I tried to stop the anger rising up in me, and Lucas grabs my arm to turn me around, but I refuse. I can’t turn away as they throw my items out of the small tent, they are few, but they still mean a lot to me.
A soldier comes out and rips the fabric of the tent, stepping on a picture frame as he crosses the small area. Lucas pulls me down, and I try to keep a sob from escaping at the idea of my home and items being destroyed.
He pulls me to him and holds me, we’re trapped, we have no way of walking away as I hear soldiers coming up the other end of the path. Lucas kisses my head. “Follow my lead.”
I give a little nod, and he kisses me his hands roaming up my side under my shirt. His fingers dance over my skin raising goosebumps, and I think I know his plan. I lean into his kiss, and I undo the button on his jeans and slide my hand down to wrap it around his cock.
He leans his head back and let out a moan. A soldier looks over the rumble and chuckles. “Seems we’ve found the owners of the camps.”
Lucas wraps his arms around me and kisses me deeply. “Seems you have, we’re a bit busy as you can see.” He runs a hand down my face. “My girl and I are trying to well you know.” He winks at the soldier, and he gives a booming laugh.
“We have orders to take in any
female that isn’t currently pregnant.” He looks down at my stomach. “Which she doesn’t seem to be.”
“Well, if I am, I’m not far along, but trust me. We’re trying. Do you want to join?” I coo and lean back, stretching my body out, so my breasts press against the tattered fabric of my shirt.
“I wouldn’t mind if I do.” The Solider climbs over the rock, it wasn’t exactly what I expected, but maybe he’d leave us be if I let him have a quick fuck.
The soldier took off his jacket and exposed his weapons, and I saw Lucas hesitate. This must not have been what he was expecting, but I don’t know how he thought this would work.
“What are you doing?”
I know the voice that made the soldier hesitate. The sergeant. I look at Lucas, and he quickly buttons his pants back up and straightens my shirt. We stand, and he puts me a little bit behind him to protect me, except I don’t feel protected. What was Lucas going to do against the sergeant?
Galbraith stares at me and then his eyes go to Lucas. “This explains why you weren’t at the meeting. Dressed like a scavenger and frolicking with a scavenger wench. Do I know you, bitch?”
I shake my head. “No, Sir, you’ve never been in my neck of the woods.” Clearly, he hadn’t been paying attention to details when he threatened me earlier. “If you’d like though, I’d be happy to get to know you better.”
“I would not fuck a scavenger if the human raced depended on it, but clearly Lucas has lower standards.” He sneers.
“And I wouldn’t fuck a bastard like you.”
His hand strikes so fast that I don’t see it coming. Blood drips out of my split lip, and I smile up at him, and I know it’s mean. “Especially if you treat women like that.”
“You’re good for nothing more than continuing the human race.”
“That’s exactly it. Without us you’d perish. We still currently outnumber the men, and if you continue to treat us like shit we could revolt.” I wipe the blood off my face. “I may be a filthy scavenger, but I know how to survive.”
He goes to grab my hair, but this time I see him and move out of his reach. “The purge is coming bitch, and you’ll be in my truck, bound and ready for the taking.”
Like hell, I would be. A soldier calls, and Galbraith goes to see what the fuss is about. Lucas looks at me and touches my lip. “Your mouth is going to get you in trouble.”
“My mouth just saved me.” I sigh and make my way to the destroyed camp. A lump forms in my throat as I approach the shredded clothes and broken items. I pick up a picture and stuff it in my pocket without looking at it. I know it by memory, it’s a charcoal drawing that my mother did before she was taken in the purge.
Lucas wraps his arms around me. “Anything else?”
“No, they destroyed it all.” I sigh and press the back of my hand to my eyes to keep the tears from spilling. I will not let the sergeant know that he hurt me. The ache in my heart will disappear as I learn to accept the manor as my new home.
Lucas turns me away from the camp to head back to the city. We don’t see any of the soldiers on our way back, and Lucas walks with me in silence, but his hand never leaves mine.
CHAPTER FIVE
We arrive back at the manor, and Matthew looks nearly distraught as his eyes fall on my lips. “What the hell, Lucas, why did you hit her?”
“It wasn’t him,” I say before Lucas has a chance to react. “We ran into the sergeant, and I got a little bit mouthy.”
Lucas snorts. “She’s brave and won’t take anyone’s shit is what it comes down to. She got what she needed though. They found her camp already.”
Fresh thoughts of the destroyed camp that I worked so hard on fill my mind and I take a deep breath. “It’s okay, it’s not like I could go back there.”
Lucas squeezes my hand, and I know he’s caught on to the grief that I’m feeling. “Let’s get something cool on the lip, so it doesn’t swell much more.”
Matthew walks with us. “What did you say to him?”
“I told him I wouldn’t fuck a bastard like him.”
Matthew gawks at me. “You said that to the sergeant?”
“He said he wouldn’t fuck a scavenger like me. I don’t think he realized I was the same woman he saw earlier today. Which tells me that he pays doesn’t pay true attention to women.”
“But you do,” Lucas says as we enter the kitchen. He goes to the sink and soaks a towel in cold water before handing it to me. “You know the statistics of men to women ratio.”
I shake my head and dab my lip with the towel, flinching slightly. “No, I don’t, I just know women outnumber men still.”
“How do you know that as a scavenger?”
“I listen, I communicate with others like me outside other cities, we watch, observe. It’s what we’re good at.” I shrug and put the rag back on my lip.
Matthew and Lucas exchange looks and I wonder what they are thinking, but they don’t say anything, so I just let it be. Once the rag starts to dry, I put it on the sink and cross my arms. “So the purge is in two weeks, we have two weeks to figure out how to save that other twenty percent of your women.”
Matthew nods. “I don’t know if it’s going to happen though, that’s the crappy thing about being a city official, we can find ways to change what we can, but when it comes to the purge, some people don’t get to be saved.”
“They hide in the houses, basements, attics, if we could we’d barricade the gates and they know that. But the soldiers would destroy our city and take us all.”
I snort. “They don’t purge men.”
“You’re right, they slaughter us when it comes down to it.” Antony’s voice comes from behind us. I turn around and face him. “You’re a scavenger, I’m sure you’ve seen the broken down cities, the skeletons that lay scattered around them.”
I nod, I’d seen a city or two like that in my travels, but I hadn’t known what happened. “I didn’t know they were all male. I just figured they’d starved to death. I’m not a doctor or a detective, the cause of death escaped me.”
“That’s what happens to a city when they resist the government. It is our job to protect them the best we can, sometimes that means giving into demands.” He looks at the other two as if the last statement is directed at them. I’m not sure what to say since I don’t know much about the city.
Lucas clears his voice and puts a hand on my back. “Come on, we’ll let these two talk. Clearly, Antony has something to say.”
I willingly walk out of the kitchen, but I look over my back to see Antony talking to Matthew in a low tone and Matthew shaking his head.
“What does Antony want to do?”
“He wants to give over the full forty percent.”
“What? After the way he acted in the city, I would think he’d want to do anything to save the women here.”
Lucas turns to me to face him. “We all want to do what we can to protect the city, Antony thinks that it would be best because it means the government is less likely to come here again for a few years.”
Because they would need time to replenish the number of women they’d lost, so the population of the city would be under control, there would be fewer women draining the resources. They’d be…where ever the purge took them.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say no one else wanted to protect the city. I just thought…”
Lucas brushes a thumb over my cheek. “Being a city official is a hard job, some nights it brings nightmares.” He closes his eyes, and I see the pain cross his face. I cup his face with my hands and lean up to kiss him. I have no other way to offer him comfort because I can’t find the words. This isn’t my horror, it’s his.
His tongue teases my lips and coaxes them to open for him. His big hand presses against the back of my head, holding me to him as our mouths find a rhythm working together.
“I feel like you could chase away all my sorrows.” His words are barely a whisper against my lips. “You’ve only been here for two da
ys and you already make me feel that way.”
I press my forehead against his and take in his words. I’m not supposed to be attached to them, I’m simply here to avoid the purge, and yet his words start to melt something in my heart. The way his touch soothes my own grief doesn’t help matters.
He runs a hand through my hair and pulls away. “I’m going to get out of these ridiculous clothes.”
“Me too.”
We step away from each other and go up the stairs to change. I hesitate by my door to watch where he goes. No one has shown me around the manor yet, so I only know where certain things are. Lucas goes in a room just two doors down from mine. I smile, content with knowing where is room is.
A few hours later I find myself looking over the city again after I change into the clean clothes. As the sun starts to set the hustle and bustle is starting to die down, and the vendors are packing up for the night. None of the men have approached me again tonight, they’ve been tucked in their office, and I can only assume they are debating about the purge and how to approach it.
Lisa had come to check in a couple times to make sure that I’m okay. She’s sweet and attentive, but all I want is to be alone right now. I have to admit that the exchange with Galbraith has shaken me up some. I might have been brave in his face, but the idea of him targeting me for the purge has me worried. Especially if he finally puts together that he’d seen me in the city. Then he’ll know where to find me.
And none of us have had sex yet. You don’t get babies without sex.
I put a hand on my stomach and try to imagine a baby growing. If I’m honest with myself, I don’t want to bring a child into this world. Especially a female child. What kind of mother would I be if I bring her into a world that doesn’t appreciate her and may whisk her off somewhere the moment she’s of age and isn’t carrying a child.
To wherever the purge takes her.
Something isn’t sitting right in my mind. I doubt they kill every woman they take in the purge, but that’s the only thing that would keep them from being a drain on society.