by Angela White
“What? You think I don’t want to make love to you?”
Flushing scarlet, she didn’t answer. When she started to turn away, Luke pulled her back, forced her to meet his eyes. “I want you so much I dream about it,” he whispered, leaning close to slide his lips along her jaw.
“I want to be with you more than any woman I’ve ever known and the next time you invite me, I’ll do my best to love you the way you deserve.”
Luke kissed her damp cheek and moved back to the cabin, afraid he’d fallen in love with someone who would never be able to feel the same. It’ll be enough, his heart said. He would love her a lifetime's worth in the weeks or months that Fate let them have, her fears of the future groundless. Death was in the air. His…and the only time he wasn’t scared was when he was close to her.
Chapter Thirty Four
March 29th, 2013
1
“You forget who I am! Never talk to me that way again!” José snarled, hand dipping toward his belt.
Dean’s dark eyes narrowed as he looked up from the muddy ground. The thin layer of grit was still keeping most of the sun from peeking though the windows and, without the glare, he had a perfect shot.
“Whoever did this might still be around. Listen to my brother, Josey, and shut up, or maybe your body will join that one by the burnt jeep. It is one of your hombres, yes?”
The school had obviously been the site of a battle. Blackened jeeps, fly-ridden Mexican corpses, puddles of drying blood, drag marks in the deep sand - and the front of the red brick building looked like a bomb had gone off. The stocky guerilla picked it all out through his binoculars. Seemingly concentrating on the scene in front of them, he stored the insults, thinking one day, when he was in charge, these two negro hermanos would be muerto.
Dean seemed to sense the thought and snorted, “You’d better bring help, Josey.” Mounting his solid black horse awkwardly, he silently cursed the wound which had healed, but left nerve damage that prevented the smooth control he used to have over his leg.
At the second intentional slur of his name, the scarred Mexican considered trying anyway.
Dean saw it in his slanted eyes, and he grinned at Cesar’s ugly cousin. “Don’t miss.”
It was a long moment between them, and Dillan reluctantly distracted his brother. They needed Cesar. Killing his reckless second in command wouldn’t help. “Fresh tracks. Not ours.”
Dillan stood up from his perusal of the hard ground and Dean continued to eye the Mexican who abruptly turned his back to them. He was pretending to watch mutated ants the size of an infant’s shoe, climb in and out of a huge, two-foot high hill of dirt, but both brothers knew he was really like a coiled snake, waiting for the right moment to strike. If he could conquer his carelessness, José might eventually gain the deadly air his cousin carried, but for now they weren’t impressed.
“They were overpowered?” José asked, lighting a thick cigar with hands that were steadier than the brothers expected.
Dean realized Dillan had been right to stop him. For now. “If they had won, they would have maybe stayed, held your men as hostages. They fled,” Dean stated curtly, annoyed they had to ally themselves with such amateurs. Cesar was the only real threat; the only reason José was still drawing breath.
“They had help. Casings are from 9 millimeters.” José’s plump, scarred face screwed up in anger as cigar smoke swirled in the gusting wind.
“Safe Haven,” Dean stated flatly, sliding his coat back to finger the sniper rifle on his pommel. His rage towards the Witch grew as he watched his brother swing up onto his horse and wince. The painful pressure on his mangled wrist was too much to hide.
“Only group we know of organized enough to use those and do this. Go tell Cesar to make camp here. Last call said he’s three hours out,” Dillan ordered, knowing the Slavers were still finishing up with stragglers in Wellington who had barricaded themselves in. Rick had been sent to take care of it. “And tell him we’ll track them, find out where they’re camped.”
Hand holding the dirty white sombrero on as the wind gusted sharply, the Mexican spun away angrily, and the twins rode off in a cloud of dust purposely kicked up to insult him further. When he was in charge, these two were dead and he would do it himself!
2
“Who has done this?” Cesar shouted furiously, brown face red with anger.
The dozen men in the gymnasium with him looked at the filthy, bloody floor and the bodies of their men, instead of meeting his eyes. They were glad when José hurried in.
José was Cesar’s right-hand man, the scarred guerrilla the only one to speak his mind when choosing time had come, but all the men knew the Kelly twins (when they were here) were really second, and everyone else was behind them.
“Safe Haven. The twins are tracking.”
“I want them dead!” Cesar screamed in frustration, stomping down a long, dim hall that should be full of bound slaves, but held only dust and cobwebs.
“I will get el los solsados ready to attack.”
Cesar didn't slow, and José hurried to catch up, eyeing the gold-handled pistols in the Slaver’s crisscrossed gun belts. Was this the moment?
“No.”
“But now, while they don’t...”
“No,” Cesar lowered his voice, reluctantly confiding. “They have a powerful weapon. We will send in el traidor to take care of it.”
“What kind of...”
Cesar scowled, shaking his tightly-kinked curls. Would the young never learn? “Not here.”
He used his deformed hand to open a door marked Office and the two Mexicans stopped short, coming face to face with a tall, blonde woman wearing a long, unbuttoned brown trench coat.
They saw stunning blue eyes full of hatred, and then she darted between them. Even limping, she was halfway down the hall decorated with Christmas pictures before they reacted. The two men gave chase, words a mix of English and Spanish.
“Apurarse! Stop her!”
“Grab that puta!”
Samantha made it out through a side door, the men in the gym just as surprised as Cesar and José when she darted by, but it shut loudly behind her, and she froze.
A sea of Mexican faces turned her way at the echo, slanted eyes lighting up. A loose slave was fair game.
Terror ran through Sam’s veins, making her shiver, and she dropped submissively to her knees, heart thudding furiously in her chest as they all moved toward her. She was in deep shit, even worse than when the chopper went down, worse than when the wolves attacked. Help me, please! she screamed silently.
The doors opened behind her a second later, and Sam cried out as she was jerked backward by her thick braid, landing on her back in the dirt. Cesar gave José a nod and the evil man swung a knee over each shoulder, pinning her arms as he opened his filthy pants, already hard.
Dark eyes without mercy, Cesar knelt beside them, puffing on a fat cigar to get it red-hot. Then he moved it toward the bare stomach now showing from her struggles. Sam had time to notice he was missing two fingers on his left hand, and then he was grinding the cigar against her hip, and she was screaming.
José thrust into her open mouth, gagging her as he pushed in as far as he could. With a hand on Cesar's stocky shoulders as his brace, his free paw roamed her body mercilessly.
“Bite me you die!” the Mexican growled, breath already short, and Cesar held her by her hair so the scarred Mexican could shove all the way down her throat.
“I have questions, chica,” Cesar stated casually as José thrust in and out of her mouth, forcing her to breathe through her nose, “and you will answer.”
José stiffened, hips bucking forward, and Cesar’s evil face filled with delight as he slammed his deformed hand over her nose and watched her choke, unable to breath.
José pulled out, dark eyes feverish at her purple face. Maybe he would do it again and not stop, he thought, but when Cesar motioned for him to move, he did.
Sam rolled over, gaspin
g, straining for even a thread of air as tears streamed from her eyes.
“Each of my men waits for a turn, puta, and they will get it if you tell a single lie,” Cesar warned, moving toward her as she continued to cough and gag.
“Your name and why were you left behind. You have disease?”
“Samantha...not left. Here... too late. Saw... them leaving.” She stayed on the ground, coughing it up, and cringed when the short, stocky leader jerked her to her feet.
“Tell me,” he ordered, not letting her turn away from the wind that was gusting sand at them in small clouds.
“Two ... jeeps, three vans? ...Like SWAT,…. only solid black.”
“How many men?”
She shook her head, trembling. “They were leaving when I... came up 210. I only saw them go.”
“She lies!” José exclaimed, stepping toward her with eyes that said her mouth hadn’t been nearly enough. “They left her because she is diseased. I claim her.”
Cesar watched her face, saw how fast the fire blazed in her hate-filled American eyes.
“They did not leave me! They would have loved to have me, but the dumb-ass driver never looked back!”
Cesar swung her around, forcing eye contact, “And why es it that they would love to have you, puta? What makes you so especial?”
Sam dropped her eyes and stepped through destiny’s open door. “I’m a storm tracker. Who doesn’t need that now?”
Cesar hid his pleasure and gave José a nod as he shoved her, tripping her so she hit the dirt. “My tent first. Show her what I expect tonight. Mañana, she does rounds of el los soldados.”
Samantha's heart clenched with fear like she’d never known, unable to believe they saw no value in her. Escape! Her mind began to scream it, and she immediately began to make a plan, ignoring the dark hands now crawling inside her torn shirt.
She had gotten out a call and been answered, but the radio had gone dead before she could find out if they would come back. She couldn’t count on that. She would have to save herself again. Samantha began looking around, desperately searching for anything that could help her. Crooked tents with Mexican flags and slogans were going up, the smoky breeze carrying the odors of feces, rot, blood, and death, screams echoing from the other side of the big camp…it took only a moment to understand. These men were evil, plain and simple.
She had stayed in the school because she’d been hoping the men who had gotten the others would come back, had decided to give them a full week to get here if they were coming, but now her time had run out. A piercing scream echoed, making her jump, and she stopped her light struggles as José led her roughly through one side of the unorganized camp. There were other whites here, but they were in the same boat as she was.
Sam’s mind suddenly replayed the evil man’s words: show her what I expect tonight. Fear filled her body from the feet up. Melvin and Henry had been bad. This was going to make her want them back.
José shoved her into a large, lopsided tent. When he followed her in, closing the flap, Sam’s eyes glazed over with terror.
3
The second she was able to move, Samantha forced herself to her feet and began searching for a weapon, ignoring the blood that dripped from her mouth, her nose, and down her bruised thighs. Longing for a shot of antifreeze to calm her nerves and take the edge off the deep, familiar ache low in her guts, Sam kept looking even though the tent held only piles of reeking garbage.
Her attacker had chained her ankle to the tent pole like a dog, the cold metal a horrid reminder of her weeks in captivity with Melvin and Henry, and her heart was blazing with determination to get away. Now. Tonight. They would be expecting it, but wouldn’t think she’d kill to escape. They didn’t know what she was capable of!
Stomach aching, Samantha edged to the flap and slowly lifted a tiny corner to peer out, eyes moving quickly over the men, who appeared unhealthy with cold sores, coughs, and noses that were wiped on filthy shirt sleeves. They were an ugly group of hardened killers, bruised faces and clothes still streaked with innocent blood that drew insects. Sam instantly hated the penny-sized snapping flies she could see swarming over the filthy camp, but thought it was fitting the mutations were here, in this place of abominations.
What she could see of the town around them offered no hope either. Rusting Army trucks rammed through the gates of a charred warehouse, block after block of damaged, destroyed, burnt homes, and bodies, rotting openly. This place had been gone before the Slavers, and Sam cursed herself for being caught off guard. She should have known there was trouble coming by the way the rescue party had been so well-armed and alert. It had taken her days to figure out how to charge up the CB System, and after finally succeeding, she’d fallen asleep in front of the radio, and hadn’t heard the Slaver’s engines over the wind or her own bad dreams.
Samantha shivered as the noise levels increased - cries, gunfire, barking, and shouts. All the men she could see from her tiny peephole were Mexican, most dark and fearsome in their blood-tacked leggings and long shirts. Help would not come from the town or any of these men. What about the females here? There were none in sight. As she started to raise the flap higher, instinct took over, and she ducked as a big boot slammed into the tent where her head had been.
“Closed!”
Samantha scrambled back, afraid the guard would come in and hurt her too, but there were only the noises of the camp. A loud, drawn-out scream, a gunshot, and more shouts in a rough Spanish dialect she was only vaguely familiar with. What the hell was she gonna do? Keep trying. That, she would do until she was dead. It was who she was. A survivor, no matter how many times this new world tried to kill her. She went back to searching.
At one point, Samantha had lain low in a supermarket full of decaying bodies during a dust storm, the warning arriving only an hour before the sand, but it had been enough. The waves of energy had made her heart clench in longing, knowing instinctively that it had come from someone who was…different, like her. She had almost chosen to skip Cheyenne and hunt down that person, but wasn’t sure exactly how to do it. Now, she bitterly wished she’d tried.
Unlike NORAD, the school still had small treasures, like clothes and shoes, and a basement of boxes she’d happily explored after finding a case of fruit cocktail on top of a crate of bottled water stacked for the vending machines. Apparently, the rescue party hadn’t swept the basement, and neither had any of those hiding here. Why? Just because of a few bodies? Were they stupid? Those were everywhere they looked anyway. What was a few more if it meant fresh supplies? She shrugged, running her fingers around the entire tent line. Their loss had been her...
“You won’t find anything.”
Samantha was on her knees in front of the flap, and looked up, scared gaze going wide at the sight of a tall, thin, dirty white man with beautiful, shifty green eyes and a black bandana around his neck. He stood outside, holding the flap open. He held a jug of brownish water in one hand, and looked so much like one of the Slavers that Samantha forgot her own plan.
“What do you want?” she snarled, calling him a traitor in her head as she backed up on the blood-splattered floor. She wouldn’t get near that cot again unless she was dead or unconscious.
“He wants you to get cleaned up and ready for him.”
Sam ignored the words, escape plans reforming in her mind as she watched his vivid green eyes crawl over her exposed flesh. She felt that steel in her spine and slowly stood up, faced him. Maybe she’d just gotten lucky. If he still wanted her when she looked like this, he was a sexual deviant at the very least and therefore, weak.
“Are you one of his men?”
Rick shook his head, the lie falling easily as he stepped inside, letting the flap close them in smelly dimness. “Slave.”
Sam took in the fresh and old bruises, dirty, ragged jeans, and shirt that hung on him, no jacket despite the low temperatures. She took a step closer, lowering her voice as her heart warned this was yet another man who couldn
’t be trusted. “Can you get a gun?”
Rick shook his head again, beady eyes on the bare skin showing through her torn shirt. “No. Pills, though. You’ll be a zombie while he’s...using you.”
Her face was pale as she forced her lips to curve into an inviting smile. “Do you have a woman or family here?”
Rick shook his head again, thinking Cesar would be very pleased with how easy this was going to happen. “No.”
She smiled again, and he felt his body respond, the blood and bruises indeed a turn-on for him. That was another reason he’d stayed. Here, a man was allowed to be just that: a man.
“Do they let you come and go?”
“Sometimes,” he said absently, staring at her platinum hair and pale blue-and-black eyes with a hot gaze that hid a scheming, evaluating male mind. “Sometimes I have a guard.”
Rick gave a slight wince he made sure she saw. “I got away once,” his voice lowered to a mutter. “Haven’t tried in a long time, now.”
Very aware of the dim daylight fading fast, Samantha ran a hand up his arm, letting her shirt fall open. “You like women?”
His eyes were full of want, mind full of control. It was all part of the plan, and he’d done it enough to know he had already succeeded. He was numb to the guilt as he worked her. “Hell, yeah.”
“Wanna touch?”
Rick’s breath was coming short. He did want her - unlike the other females, who cried too much and cowered - and he broke Cesar’s first rule: don’t touch until the deal is done.
Samantha was unprepared for the bolt of lust his gentle hands drew. When she arched into his caress, to her shame, it wasn’t completely faked. She smiled, deeper this time, with obvious meaning. “Wanna do more?”
His hands slid down her bony hips and she pulled back, closing her torn top as best she could. “Then get us out of here…and I’ll be your slave.”
Rick’s eyes narrowed, hands lowering in mock fear. “He’ll kill us.”