by Keri Lake
Across from us, Cadmus rocks back and forth, rubbing his skull. Useless to us.
One scream. That’s all it would take to alert Valdys.
I suspect it’d be my last.
As if he can read my mind, the barrel slides down to my lips, and he pushes past my teeth until I’m practically swallowing his gun.
“What treasure, stumbling upon you and your friend, here.” He strokes the top of my head. “I like the way my gun looks down your throat.”
I breathe hard through my nose, the bitter taste of steel and gunpowder burning my tongue.
Snaking his arm beneath mine, he lifts me to my feet and guides me by the barrel of his gun out of my hiding spot. Three other marauders stand inside the truck, bloodied and wounded. At his signal, they dive out the back, falling onto the dirt.
Once at the edge of the bed, the leader removes the gun, and as I open my mouth to scream, he shoves me from behind. The unforgiving, gravelly surface smacks into my face, as I skid across the dirt, the stones tearing into my skin when I fall. Neela tumbles out after me. Then Cadmus. The two men follow.
I scramble to my feet and scream, waving my hands in the air. “Valdys! Valdys!” My screams are drowned by the rattling of the crates, and the roar of the engine speeding off. “Valdys!” The surrounding darkness conceals me, as I watch the lights of the vehicle disappear into the darkness.
He’ll come for me, of course. For all of us.
And if he finds us, I pray it’s not too late. That we’re all still alive.
The leader strides up to me, gun leading the way. Behind him, one of the marauders has already gathered up Neela, laughing as he runs his hands over her.
“Get walking, girl. We got a long way to get home.”
“He’ll come for me. You should know he’ll kill you when he does.”
“Assuming he finds us? I’m pretty confident my men will tear him a new asshole.”
“Your men were slaughtered.”
“Recon team. I got a whole damn village of men who are going to be happy to meet you and your friend.”
“’The fuck did we bring him for?” A smaller marauder, about half of Cadmus’s size, stands with his gun pointed at the broken Alpha.
“Something’s wrong with the asshole. Thought it’d be fun to poke at him a bit, before we string him up on a spit.”
My lips curl in disgust at the visual, and I glance at Cadmus, who twitches and stands hunched over, oblivious to his demise.
“Get walking.” The leader points the gun at my head and smiles. “All my men need is a hole. Doesn’t have to be warm.” With a hard shove, he sets me walking in the opposite direction as the truck.
The truck I can no longer see.
Chapter 30
It feels as if we’ve walked for hours, and by the time we reach a clearing of tents and scattered motorcycles, there’s fire in my legs that reaches up into my shoulders. My throat is so dry, I can’t even muster enough spit to swallow. A celebration erupts as we enter the camp, men dressed in leather and rags rushing toward us, random hands reaching to touch private places, pulling my hair when they run it through their fingers. Hidden behind a mountain, this place is well off the main road, and the chances of Valdys finding us are slim enough to leave a sinking feeling in my gut. Some of the men sit bloodied, others gravely injured, nursing wounds I’m well aware are too deep. Men from the scuffle with the mutation who managed to find their way back to camp afterward. Far fewer than earlier in the evening.
“Found us some treasure, boys!” The leader howls with laughter, and another shove from behind kicks me forward. I turn to see Neela’s arms folded over her body, as she pushes away unwanted hands reaching out for her. Behind her, Cadmus stumbles along, lost in his own world, as the men swat at his head and chest.
They lead us to a massive pyre set in the middle of the camp, where the leader directs the three of us to sit. Handed a bottle of liquor by one of his men, he tips it back, before slamming it into my chest. “Drink.”
I want to deny him, I want to throw the bottle in his face and tell him to go to hell. But that’s the thing about thirst. It turns you humble. Weak. Grateful, when you know you shouldn’t be.
I’ve never had liquor in my life, and when I tip the bottle back, the burn on my tongue sends me forward and spitting the fluids out of my mouth. Another round of laughter erupts, as I wipe the bitter flavor from my face with the back of my hand.
“Can’t hold her liquor!” the leader says amid the mirth, and I hand it back to him.
A fowl smell clings to the air, like greasy death, reminding me of the incinerators back at Calico. I lean forward to see something black hanging from a rusted metal rod, stretched flat between two metal posts across the flames, and I suck in a sharp breath the moment I realize it’s the Legion soldier. Cooking on the flames, his skin is as black as the uniform that hardly clings to his body anymore.
Screwing my eyes shut, I turn away from him to Neela, beside me, who sits with her head tucked into her hands. Beside her, Cadmus twitches and rocks, as usual. Whatever happened to him back in Calico has turned him into a walking ghost.
Panic swirls in my gut, mingling with the lingering burn of liquor. No matter what I see, no matter what these men do, I can’t lose my head, like Cadmus.
I have to be smarter.
Think faster.
A chunk of sizzling meat lands in my lap, and the moment it hits my thighs, singeing my skin, I let it fall to the ground.
“Don’t be rude, girl. Isn’t polite to decline a meal out here in the Deadlands.”
I glance up to where three of the men stand around the cooked soldier, tearing pieces away from him, and before I can stop it, vomit creeps up my throat. I bend forward in time to expel it onto the ground next to the meat. Slimy strings of bile hang from my lips, which I spit away.
“Not hungry. ‘S’okay. One man’s trash, is another man’s treasure,” he says, and swipes up the meat from the ground, just outside the halo of my last meal. He pops the meat into his mouth and smiles as the grease coats his lips. “We don’t pass up on a meal out here.”
“Whatever you have in mind … for us ... we can help you.”
“Help us? Help us how?”
“You want Calico, right? You want to bring it down? I can tell you how to get inside.”
“’Fraid you got your groups fucked up. Those are the rebels. Us? We don’t give a shit who’s in power. Politicians are like weeds. Kill one off, and another one grows in its place. Doesn’t matter who he is. But if he comes down from his perch and ventures out into the Deadlands? We’ll fuck him, and his momma, and his baby sister.”
The men collectively laugh, and I turn to see one of them gnawing on one of the soldiers arms.
“We’re just out here to survive.”
Keeping my head low, I raise my gaze just enough to see large chunks cut out of the soldier and holes for the limbs they’ve torn away.
“Awww, don’t feel bad for your little soldier friend. He told us a secret.” Setting his foot up on a rock beside me, he leans down, resting his elbow against his thigh. “Those mutation cages were a gift. A gift from good ol’ Calico. Those soldiers knew they weren’t going back.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, don’t cry for your charred friend over there. He knew this mission was suicide. They planned to set those mutations loose on us. Whoever’s in charge at that hospital did a shitty thing sending those two soldiers out.” His lips stretch into a smile, and he tears off another piece of meat, taking a moment to look down at the chunk left in his hands. “But I’m guessing they weren’t banking on you and your little friends tucked in the back, were they? Tell me something, how’d your friend over there get so big?”
“He’s an Alpha. Trained to kill.”
Leaning to the side, he snorts. “Looks like somebody dropped the ball with this one. Speaking of balls. You let him fuck you? I got to believe he’s got a dick to match those muscle
s. Had to stretch your tiny little cunt right out.”
I don’t answer him. The sickness of hearing him talk this way hits me worse than seeing the soldier hanging over the flames.
A scream tightens my muscles, as I look to the side to see one of the men standing behind Neela with his hand shoved down her shirt.
“Hey!” I push at him, and the scrawny male comes at me, stopped short by the leader, who holds his gun against the man’s chest.
“Isn’t polite to jump the line. I’ve got men with far more seniority than you jonesin to get their hands on these ladies, but you don’t see them copping a feel before everyone else, do you?”
The bang of the gun jolts my muscles, and the man falls to the ground.
Dead.
Exhaling a sigh, the leader shakes his head. “Sorry ‘bout that.” He waves his gun toward another marauder, who drags the fallen body toward the firepit, gathering rope to tie his hands and feet, which I presume will be fed over a spit later. “Nothing goes to waste out here. Now, let’s get you three settled.”
With his gun still warm from the last bullet shot, he nudges my arm. “Git up.”
Ideas spin in my head.
Like, grab Neela and run. Run where, though?
Take his gun and shoot him. We’d be swarmed by the men who seem to follow his command.
Throw ourselves in that fire alongside the soldier. Perhaps with whatever it is they have planned for us, that’s the most merciful fate, of all.
“What should we do with him?” The small marauder from before shoves Cadmus forward a step, and when he doesn’t trip, as perhaps the smaller one intended, he knocks him in the back with the gun. Cadmus flinches, as he raises it again, and both men chuckle.
“Pansy ass? Stick him with the women. Hell, maybe he’ll be worth a good fuck later. ‘Sides that …” The leader glances back to where the men have already strung the second body over the flame. “We’ve got enough meat for a couple days.”
A small group leads us to one of the tents, in which a thick wooden post, a skinny tree stripped of all its branches, stands in the center. On one side of the post, a marauder ties a rope around Neela’s throat and binds her hands behind her back. Another marauder pushes me to the ground, and I twist to glare back at him.
A cold smack strikes my cheek, sending tingles across my skin, but it doesn’t erase my glare. “Keep it up, bitch. I’ll skull-fuck you right here, right now.”
Only Neela’s scream interrupts my staring, and I turn to see one of the men pulling off her pants, only getting them halfway down her thighs, before she kicks him in the face.
“Get off of her! Get the fuck off of her!” Hand set to the ground, I lurch to scramble toward her, but a force yanks me back. The marauder with the long beard takes hold of my ankles, gathering me beneath him. He uses the leverage to flip me onto my stomach, then presses his weight into my spine. Air bursts from my lungs, as he wrangles my arms behind my back.
“No! No!” Wriggling beneath him is pointless, with all the weight bearing down on me. Rope bites into my wrists, and my body is flipped back, my bound arms crushed beneath me. I kick at him in a useless fight that he merely bats away in fun, laughing, until his palm hits my throat, and he squeezes enough to make me still. Rope bands across my neck, stretched tight enough that I have to wheeze on each inhale, and he holds the end of it above my head, like he’s reigning a wild dog.
Hot breath hits my cheek, smelling of rot and rancid meat, and I screw my eyes shut, when his tongue drags over my cheek. “I’m gonna take my time fucking you, bitch. And when I’m done, every other bastard in this camp, including the dogs, is going to have a turn with you.”
A sob chokes my chest, and in what little movement I can muster, I turn my head away from him.
Nails scrape across my hips, as he yanks my pants down, but I don’t bother to look. I can’t.
On the other side of the post, I hear the slap of skin over Neela’s muffled screams, and the moans of her rapist.
I open my eyes to Cadmus, rocking across from us, twitching, as he looks off in the other direction. “Help us,” I whisper to him. Two days ago, he would’ve been strong enough to take on a dozen of these men. Now, he just looks small and weak. “Cadmus!”
His rocking pauses, and with a twitch, he turns toward me. The first time he’s made eye contact.
In my periphery, the bearded man is springing himself free, stroking his cock while he stares down at my exposed lower half.
“Cadmus, help us.” The words push through clenched teeth, and I blink away the tears in my eyes, bringing the clarity I notice in his stare to sharp focus.
The man in my periphery falls on top of me, and taps what I presume to be his tip against my belly.
“Cadmus! Help me!”
The Alpha snaps the rope binding his arms, and in one swift movement, no more than a blink, he’s holding the man on top of me by the throat. I dare to turn my head in time to see the man’s beard tear away from his face, splashing blood across my chest and stomach, exposing the bloody flesh and bone of his bottom teeth. Eyes wide, he lets out a stiff moan, his body probably lost to shock. In the next second, his neck is snapped, leaving a sharp piece of spinal column sticking through the skin, with his head tipped too far against his shoulders.
I don’t see what happens to the man on top of Neela. All I hear is her scream, and the gurgling sound in the man’s throat in between. Cadmus snaps our binds loose, and I scramble to pull up my pants.
With tears in my eyes, I kick out at the dead body that nearly violated me just moments before, and when Cadmus reaches down for me, I allow him to lift me to my feet. It’s then I turn to see the other man lying on the ground, beside a long stretch of meat that looks to be his throat ripped out. I look back to Cadmus, whose dilated pupils and occasional twitch tells me he still isn’t right.
Whimpering beside us, Neela shivers, weaving her arm into mine and breaks down into a sob.
“Shhh. We still have to get out of here,” I whisper. “The others will be coming soon.”
As if he’s just become aware there are others, Cadmus turns away from us, his movements slow and curious as he walks toward the entrance of the tent.
“No!” I grab for his arm, but he shakes me loose. Instead, I duck behind Cadmus’s massive back and follow him out of the tent.
“How the fuck did Pansy get loose?” What must be the smaller man with the gun manages the one question, before the signature sounds of tearing skin tell me Cadmus has done something horrible to him. It seems to get the attention of the other men, who shout at the Alpha, commanding him to get on his knees.
I peek around his body, as a group of men approach him, far more than a dozen, and when they draw their guns, I step in front of him.
Every muscle in my body is wracked with the kind of fear that numbs the senses. I don’t know if these men would shoot right through me for Cadmus. All I know, is I won’t let them execute him after what he did back in that tent.
Breaths heaving, I stand against him, waiting for them to attack.
“Move away from him, girl,” the leader says, staring down the barrel of his gun. “I will not hesitate to put a bullet in you, too.”
Cadmus lurches behind me, his muscles tense, and the growl in his throat tells me he’s spoiling for this fight. Perhaps unaware, in whatever alternate version he’s seeing right now, that we’re entirely outnumbered and outgunned.
The men move in closer, and I scan the crowd to see most of them are holding guns. Cadmus might fight through a few, maybe even lessen their numbers a bit, but he’ll never kill all of these men on his own. And if one happened to put a bullet in his head, it’ll be over.
A distant sound serves as a momentary distraction, and when a few of the men turn around, I know they heard it, too.
“I’m not going to tell you again. Move the fuck out of the way, or I’ll blow your head clean off your shoulders.”
Another sound echoes through the
mountains, and I pick up on the distinct pitch of it.
The screeching of mutations. More than one, even though I can’t see anything through the darkness.
There’s only the flash of white that draws my attention back toward the leader, and in the next breath, his head is severed from his body. The translucent creature tears away bits of his remaining flesh, shoving it into its mouth.
The other men shout and scatter.
Cadmus bumps into me from behind, and seconds later, he’s no longer there. He joins the melee, grabbing one of the fleeing marauders by his shirt, before punching his fist through the man’s spine.
The mutation doesn’t seem to bother with him, as it scampers after another victim.
Hand in Neela’s, we run through the camp, dodging the fights.
More flashes of white in the distance bring us to a halt, and I twist around, searching the camp for a way out. Fires crawl over the tents, as if deliberately set aflame by the unseen invader I’m hoping to spot in the crowd.
Valdys is nowhere in sight.
One of the marauders bumps into us, but quickly scrambles off into the darkness. All I hear is a scream beyond the perimeter of the camp, over the chaos trapped within.
I catch sight of Titus chasing after two marauders, and when I spin around, I’m greeted by the beady eyes and translucent skin of a mutation. It pounces toward us, and squeezing Neela’s hand, I jump back.
A massive figure steps in its path, and I look up to see the back of Valdys. He wrangles with the creature that swipes at us, snapping its maw.
“Get to the truck!” he calls over his shoulder.
I don’t want to leave his side, but as I turn around, there’s nowhere to hide here. Scattered amid the dwindling number of marauders are all three Alphas and the occasional mutation.
Taking Neela by the arm, I skirt around Valdys, who wrangles the creature to the ground. The two of us run into the darkness, eyes trailing over the terrain I can hardly see beneath my feet. My lungs burn as I race blindly toward the mountain, in search of the truck. I catch sight of it up ahead and push speed from my legs, dragging Neela behind me. Cold metal hits my palms as I damn near slide into the driver’s door and scramble with the handle to open it. Neela and I climb inside and lock the doors. Hands gripping the steering wheel, I take a moment to breathe and settle my nerves. Beside me, Neela wheezes too, her palms pressed into the dashboard.