by Tom Larcombe
Amber Uncovered
Amber Preserved #1
By: Tom Larcombe
Text copyright © 2017, Tom Larcombe
All Rights Reserved
This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, businesses, places, and events
are the products of the author’s imagination.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
or actual events is purely coincidental.
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Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Epilogue
* * *
Prologue
Andrew stood, watching the roiling fog that filled the streets. It seemed to jump and spin to the deep, thumping disco music that spilled out of the club at his back.
I got a bad feeling, he thought. There's something wrong in this town tonight and it's got my skin crawling. At least it's almost time people will start coming out of the club. If my Ladies of the Night here can pick up customers quick enough, we can get off the damned streets. Maybe it'll feel safer back in the building.
The girls to either side of Andrew were shivering. The night was cool and the damp fog seemed to get everywhere, including beneath their skimpy clothing. Andrew felt bad about that, but they needed to display their wares if they were going to pull in any customers.
Somewhere in the distance there was a loud crash.
Guess the fog's worse than I thought. That sounded like someone crashing their car into a wall or something.
The first person staggered out of the club behind him and he turned to face them, a broad smile on his face.
“Girls,” he said, “time to work for your living.”
The two young girls turned towards the club also, opening their eyes wide and thrusting their chests forward. The first few guys out of the club were interested, but not interested enough. Andrew sighed and shook his head.
It's gonna be a long night, he thought.
Before long he had a taker, and he sent the girl and her client back to their building. It was only a block away from the club so he didn't think there'd be a problem. A few minutes later he got a client for his second girl. She started to lead the client back towards the building and he followed along a good distance behind.
His bad feeling hadn't gone away so he was watching everything around him closely. The faint sound of crying cut through the fog, catching his attention. The noise was coming from farther along his path back to the building, so he hurried his steps. That was when he noticed Jenny stop. Her client stopped along with her.
“Andrew,” she called, “there's a little girl here, all alone. And she's bleeding! Can we help her?”
He hurried up to them.
“You take care of business Jenny, I'll take care of the little girl. Go on now.”
Curled up on the sidewalk, her back against a wall, was a young girl. She was maybe five or six years old and, like Jenny had said, she had several cuts on her arms and face that were bleeding. His heart went out to her.
Word on the street was that Andrew was soft on his girls. People said that he allowed them far too much freedom and more of a cut of the money they made than anyone else did. Seeing the little girl lying on the street, lost in her sobs, wrenched at something in him. He knelt down in front of her.
“Hi,” he said. “Are you alright?”
The little girl shook her head.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” he asked.
Her tears flew fast and furious, but she managed to speak, her words interrupted by hiccups and sobs.
“No, they want... me too... Mommy, daddy... they got them already.”
“Who did honey?”
“The... monsters. The monsters... got them.”
“Do you want to go to a safe place?” he asked.
“Nowhere's safe,” she replied.
“I can keep you safe if you want.”
She looked up at him with her wide eyes, sparkling in the streetlight from the tears that filled them and rolled down her face.
“Please?” she said.
“What's your name honey?” he asked, picking her up.
She sniffed, her tears slowing.
“Amber,” she said.
* * *
* * *
Chapter 1
Amber glanced around the small store. She and two of her friends were in there, all split up to make it harder to keep an eye on them.
Josh gave her the signal, so she turned and headed for the door. Alicia was still in the back corner of the store as Amber started moving towards the exit.
Josh was the first one to the door, but when he walked out a high-pitched chime started ringing.
“Stop, thief!” the man behind the cash register yelled.
The man behind the register was older, maybe in his late thirties, but he still came racing around the counter, headed for the door.
Amber put herself in his way, but he didn't seem to notice. He raced towards the door, running into her and sending her sprawling into a very solid shelving unit.
The man made it out the door and stopped, looking for Josh. Apparently he couldn't see him anywhere since he turned to re-enter the store.
Alicia was headed out of the store at that point, while Amber had just gotten to her feet again.
The man grabbed Alicia.
“You came in with him, I saw you. Where is the little thief.”
Alicia cringed back from him.
“I don't know, I don't know him, he was just coming in the same time I did.”
“Don't lie to me you little whore!” the man screamed.
He raised a hand as though to slap her across the face.
Oh hell no, Amber thought. He's not hitting Alicia. She gets enough of that from Eric.
Amber took off like a shot. She wasn't very large, about the size of an average fourteen year old, but she was fast. By the time she hit the man's lower back she was at a full sprint.
Alicia had been paying attention and when she saw Amber coming, she moved to the side. When Amber hit his back, the man went flying onto the sidewalk. As he fell, he kept going, tumbling out into the street.
Amber grabbed Alicia's arm to the sound of tires screeching and horns honking.
“You go that way, now!” Amber said. “I'll wait until he's standing then take off in the other direction.”
“Thank you,” Alicia called as she turned and ran down the sidewalk.
Amber waited until the man she'd run into was standing again, then turned and started walking away.
“Hey you, stop! You're in a load of trouble,” the man yelled.
>
That was when she started running. Evidently the man hadn't been struck by any of the cars because when she turned, he was running after her.
Gaining on me too, she thought.
She knew her way around this section of the city, although not as well as the area near the building she lived in. So she ran towards a neighborhood that had lots of alleys.
I'll be able to duck off into one of those and lose him, she thought.
A backwards glance showed her that he was panting and losing ground. She put on a burst of speed and opened up the distance between them.
After she took a corner, she sprinted all out for a few seconds, dodging into a narrow crack between two buildings that wasn't quite an alley. She sprinted down the narrow passage only to find herself at a dead end.
Oh shit! I'm screwed. I could've sworn this went all the way through.
Amber hid behind a pile of trash near the end of the alley, knowing that it wasn't going to be enough to hide her if the man came down this way.
A cool breeze caressed the back of her neck as the wind picked up. She'd have thought that the air would be still down this narrow passage, but the wind was blowing hard enough that it started picking up dust and garbage from the ground.
A glance showed that the man was coming down the passage, peering through the broken windows as though looking to see if she'd gone through one.
The wind whistled now, the dirt and garbage sucked in by the whirlwind flying in circles a few feet ahead of her. As she crouched down lower, hoping to stay hidden, a freak affect of the wind carried his words to her.
“No way she'll be down there, not with the wind like that. I'll find that little bitch if it's the last thing I do though.”
The man turned and quickly retraced his steps down the alley.
Bitch? You're calling me a bitch? I hope somebody robbed you blind while you were chasing me, asshole.
The whirlwind danced, bouncing from one side of the tiny alley to the other. It continued to spin until Amber started to relax, deciding that the man wasn't coming back this way. Once she had relaxed and stopped worrying, the whirlwind stopped abruptly, dropping the garbage to the ground and filling the air with the dust it had been carrying.
She coughed as she stood up and made her way towards the entrance to the alley. A quick check showed her that the man wasn't in sight.
He probably went back to his store. Maybe he realized he'd left it open with no-one watching it. I suppose I don't really hope he got robbed blind, but it would serve him right for trying to hurt people just because they did a little shoplifting.
Amber knew that she should head back to where she lived and let Alicia and Josh know that she was okay. But her nerves were still unsettled, so instead of heading home, if she were actually willing to call it that, her steps took her towards one of the few places in the city where she could actually relax.
A few years back the city had started a gentrification program, adding in a bunch of small green areas. Most of them were tiny, the size of a building lot, but there was one near the center of the city that was a little over two acres. Half of it was a meadow with an artificial pond centered in it, but the other half had already had a few trees on it. They'd planted more trees, and lots of underbrush, before the budget for the gentrification program came apart. So now there was a tangled mini-forest on that half of the park.
The park was less than a mile from where she was so she got there quickly. She slipped through the outer edges of the trees and found the trail that led to her favorite spot in the entire city. In the middle of the tiny forest there was a clearing. She knew that others came here also, she'd seen evidence of them, but it seemed that none of them treated the area wrong. She'd never seen trash or anything of the sort here, just footprints or plucked flowers wilting where they'd been abandoned.
She settled to the ground with a sigh of relief, finally relaxing the rest of the way as she sprawled in the grass of the clearing.
It might be that we're getting too old for that trick any more. That guy was watching all of us like a hawk from the moment we came through the door. Huh, imagine that! Me looking too old for something? I swear I looked like a little kid forever until a year or two ago. I'm finally starting to look my age, or am I? I don't even remember how old I am any more. I think I should look lots older than I do, but...
She shook her head, her thought train falling to the wayside as the birds started chirping again. They always stopped when she came into the clearing, but if she stayed still for a couple of minutes once she was there, they started up again.
She let the light breeze and chirping birds help wash away the remainder of her worries and frustrations, her nerves slowly settling down. Once they had, she sat up and looked for the birds. She considered them as much her friends as she did Alicia and Josh. Over time she probably saw the birds as much as she did her friends. It was nice to have this place to get away to and she used it frequently. She knew it pissed Eric off to not know where she was, but since she'd started filling out a year back, she'd tried to stay away from him as much as possible.
And now that I have to tie my breasts down to make it look like I still don't have any I have to be even more careful around him. If he sees how I've filled out, he'll want me on the Walker team.
Eric had taken a page from modern motivation classes and assigned 'teams' to all the kids where she lived. There were the older girls that were on the Walker team, the younger boys and girls who were all on the Lifter team, the youngest children that were on the Beggar team, and then the older boys made up the Guardian team.
Guardians my ass. They're as bad as Eric. If they saw how I'd filled out, they have me stripped and on the floor in a heartbeat, and Eric would be leading the way. I really have to find somehow to get away from there, but I don't know how to do that. I've never known anything else, at least not that I can remember. There's a few memories of that old lady and that fuzzy memory of riding in a car and having an accident, but after that everything else is living where I am now.
She thought back over the years, to the earliest memories she had after those.
Andrew was good, I mean he did stuff that wasn't legal, but he still helped me after the accident. He even said he looked for my parents, but all he found was that article about a car crash where they never found the driver or passengers. Besides, he was nice to the girls and just provided protection for them for a cut of their profits.
The memories grew darker from there.
Jay, on the other hand, wasn't all that good. After he challenged Andrew and killed him, things changed. He brought in a bunch of boys, and then the girls had to make money walking the streets and take care of the boys too. But Eric took him down after only a few years. Eric might beat the kids some, but at least he doesn't force the working girls to take care of the boys. If the boys want something like that they have to pay just like everybody else does. Except for Eric, of course.
She shook her head as she came to her own dilemma.
Unless of course the boys find me and can pull it off without Eric catching them, in which case it's anything goes. But Eric wants all the girls who have filled out to be Walkers and that's just not something I'm going to do. I've seen what happens. They start to complain because they hate it, so he gives them drugs to make them not care about what they're doing and then they get hooked on the drugs. Not gonna happen to this girl!
Amber realized that she'd been here for more than an hour and decided that it was time to head back and let Alicia and Josh know that she was fine.
* * *
When Amber got back to the building, she let herself in the front entrance. Down here, there were several 'apartments'. The girls could use them for their tricks, if they charged the guys extra, and anyone looking for a real job got to use the addresses on their applications.
She went upstairs quietly, to the large room that was most of the second floor. Eric was nowhere to be seen, and probably wouldn't be until it was
almost dark out. She dug out a cold burger she'd put away last night and ate it. One of the Guardians, Tim, had gotten a job at a fast food restaurant using the apartment addresses, and had eventually been promoted to closing manager.
Eric had, so far, resisted the impulse to screw with that because Tim always brought back all the food that would've been tossed out at the end of the night. Tim also made sure they had more cooked up than they really needed most nights so he had more to bring back. It meant that the kids got more food than they would've otherwise and Eric was smart enough to realize that screwing with that would be a bad plan.
What it meant for Amber was that she always had at least some food on any day Tim worked. She and Tim had been close friends for several years, and he'd always had a crush on her. He'd never commented on the fact that she seemed to age more slowly than he did and still did little things for her. Things like making sure she got some of the food every time he brought it back.
Somehow Eric hadn't noticed that she still looked like a child, despite her being older than Tim's twenty years. She'd always managed to not stand out, to blend into the background, and as a result Eric could barely remember her name most days, never mind the fact that in the ten years he'd been in charge here she'd only seemed to age three or four.
Unfortunately, those three or four years were the ones that brought her into puberty and she was sure that Eric would notice her soon enough. She checked her banded breasts, they were sore enough that she thought they were strapped down tightly, but it never hurt to double check.
When she finished her burger, and her checks, she headed back to one of the two doors on the second floor. One of them led to Eric's room, and she avoided that like the plague, but the other was into the single room on the second floor that was available to all the kids and had electricity. It had a small refrigerator and a flat screen TV someone had stolen. The building was once wired for cable and a few small favors had gotten them reconnected and the records regarding it deleted. It also had a bunch of cupboards and a large table for sorting through items that made it back here one way or another.