by Pam Godwin
“Did you bite them, Michio? Is the Drone controlling you?”
No response.
I refused to believe he’d killed the Lakota, but maybe he’d seen Elaine? Did he know where she was? Did he know if Jesse and Roark were alive? Not that I’d trust his word on this topic.
The man sitting before me reminded me so much of the stoic Dr. Nealy from a year ago. When I’d met him, he’d been my captor, the doctor who’d held me prisoner in Malta while leading me to believe Roark had died.
But back then, I’d glimpsed traces of emotion beneath the blank mask he tried so hard to maintain. A mask he wore for my protection. And now? I didn’t sense a disguise or pretense.
No one could fake this kind of cruel callousness. He was simply not there.
The Drone was behind this. It was the only explanation. He could command the aphids better than I could, which lent itself to the idea that he could control the men who’d contracted his spider pathogen. Men like Michio.
Wherever we were headed, I was certain the Drone would be waiting, and I wouldn’t be able to defeat him unarmed and caged. Michio was my only chance. I wouldn’t give up on him.
“Remember the first time we made love? We were soaking in the bathtub and you were upset because you thought you’d been too rough with me. You said you were supposed to take care of me, not injure me. Do you remember?” The memories barreled through me, crushing my chest and thickening my voice. “It was the night before we broke out of Fort Manoel. The night before we escaped the Drone.”
His lack of expression only deepened my hurt.
I tightened my grip against the cage wall. “We’ve made love so many times since that night. Do you think about it? Did you miss me at all? Dammit, Michio, I miss you. Please talk to me.”
Woodenly, he reached toward the space between us, and my pulse went nuts. Finally, a reaction!
Gripping the window lever, he slid it shut and pressed the lock. The cold click punched me in the gut. But instead of succumbing to the burn behind my eyes, I lashed back in a fit of fury.
My fingers curled around the metal wires, and I shook the cage with all my might, banging it against the glass, trying to free it from its heavy chains. I jerked and screamed, willing the damned walls to break and pleading for him to open the window, all while glaring murderous daggers at the back of his head.
Eventually, I stopped banging and screeching and closed my eyes. Hands aching and voice raw, I slumped against the wall of the cage and surrendered my body to insufferable mourning. I trembled from head to toe, frozen in the frigid gusts of wind, scared out of my mind, and suffocating under the harrowing pain of betrayal.
I hugged my knees to my chest, and for just a few moments, I allowed myself to wallow. I let all the why me questions unfurl through my head, feeling sorry for my pathetic existence and blaming everyone for every miserable thing that had happened to me. I didn’t try to contain my breathing as it worked its way into a wheezing series of wet hacks. And I cursed Michio. I cursed him even though I knew this man wasn’t him. Mostly I cursed him for sitting in the warm cab while I froze my tits off in the back.
When I finished wading through my wretched neuroticism, I evened my breaths, flexed my fingers, and squared my shoulders. I hadn’t lost my fight.
A comforting realization settled over me. Michio didn’t know I could blow up bugs with my mind, or that I didn’t need skin-on-skin contact, or that my body contained an endless flow of energy that made me feel like I could run all the way back to Missouri.
I sat still as stone, hiding the power I’d yet to understand. A secret I would keep in my pocket until I needed it.
For now, I needed to regroup, watch and learn, and figure out how to find the doctor who’d once taken care of me, the lover who’d seduced me, the man who—I knew deep in my heart—still loved me.
I slept for a couple hours, maybe more, and woke as the golden glow of dawn flushed the horizon beyond the tailgate. The sun was behind us, so we were headed west. Moments later, we passed two weathered road signs.
Leaving Kansas Come Again and Welcome to Colorful Colorado
A few miles into Colorado, the band of twenty-some vehicles pulled off to the side of the interstate. As our truck crept alongside the caravan and headed toward the front of the line, I climbed to my knees and frantically searched for Roark or Jesse or a familiar face.
The chain of parked vehicles consisted of small trucks and cars of the fuel-efficient variety. I didn’t see a fanged mouth—were they retracted?—or recognize a single face as fifty or so men checked engines, refueled from containers they hauled, and urinated on the side of the road. No one talked or shared a glance, yet they worked like synchronized machines alongside one another. The sight made the hairs on my nape stand on end.
Something wasn’t right about them, beyond the whole kidnapping thing. Not only could I feel their auras humming beneath my skin, but their presence seemed to repel nearby aphids. The insectile vibrations were there, a dull buzz in my gut, but the aphids didn’t come within a visual distance. If anything, they fled.
Though I had been unsuccessful in commanding these blank-faced men to die on the battlefield, I tried again. Focusing on two men standing beside one of the cars, I silently breathed, Die.
Nothing.
Shit.
We reached the front of the line and circled back to return to the tail. Not one vehicle held a cage. No familiar faces.
I was the only woman.
The only prisoner.
No Roark or Jesse.
Grief slammed into me with the force of a tidal wave. I slid to my butt, wrapped my arms around my waist, and tried to reign in my raging breaths.
My imprisonment on Malta had almost destroyed me, but I wasn’t the same person I was then. I’d dragged my ass out of a dungeon, survived the bowels of a volcano, watched the bodies of my Lakota companions burn to ash, and faced the charred remains of my beloved home.
Those events had hardened me, but what fortified my every breath was the bond that had evolved amid the hardship. I’d formed a profound, impenetrable stronghold with Jesse and Roark, one I would fight for, bleed for, and kill to protect. That made me stronger than every one of my muscled, empty-eyed captors.
I would stay strong and keep my head clear and my eyes open. No more wallowing. No more hopelessness. I would see Jesse and Roark again.
With these thoughts, so began my second imprisonment under Michio.
The next two weeks were much like my captivity on Malta. But instead of a guarded tower on an island, I was caged like a mangy dog in the bed of a truck.
Three times a day, Michio offered me food and water. Instead of bribing me to eat, he wordlessly took it away when I didn’t touch it. Instead of humoring my questions with mind games, he gifted me with blank silence. Instead of giving me baths and carrying me to the toilet, he tossed me two buckets. One he filled with water to wash with, a wasted effort since I refused to remove my pants and jacket. The other bucket was to shit in. I really hated him for that bit of degradation and told him as much.
But everything else had been the same. The caged restlessness. The dread of the unknown future. The endless ache for Jesse and Roark. And my insatiable libido.
Michio might’ve lost his soul, but his body was here, healthy and well cared for, taunting me with the confident glide of his strides, the sculpted planes of his beautiful face, and the movement of his muscles beneath flawless skin. Sensuality was an idiosyncrasy of his physical structure, whether he was looking at me with desire or not. And there were no looks from him, neither with interest nor disinterest.
The other men didn’t leer at me either. They stared at nothing with hollow eyes and expressionless faces like Michio. They did what was needed to keep me alive, but I was never allowed out of my tiny prison.
I tried to escape. Holy hell did I try every time Michio opened the gate to the cage. But each attempt earned me a blurring punch in the ribs. He hit me hard and o
ften, his strikes too fast to counter, his strength unstoppable, and his vacant expression firmly in place. I might’ve been able to move like him, but I couldn’t outmaneuver or overpower him, and the bruises on my torso added up. Eventually, I stopped trying.
It was a sign the civilized world had well and truly ended when men could haul a caged woman in the back of a pickup across several states without getting stopped. We passed lone wanderers, gangs of men, and several gun fights already in progress, yet no one tried to wave down or approach our caravan. They probably assumed I was a nymph.
A screaming, begging, coherent nymph. Whatever. I never stopped calling for help.
Atrophy set into my muscles. I couldn’t stand, couldn’t fully stretch out. So my arms and legs weakened and shrunk, and my pants began to sag off my hips. And the smell… The leather blocked the wind but sweet Jesus, my clothes reeked of body odor and stubbornness.
Still, I refused to undress, especially when we hit the snow and ice in the Colorado Mountains. There were a couple days I was certain I’d lose a few fingers and toes to frostbite, but it was the cliffs that sent my blood pressure into the danger zone.
Cliffs.
Every road we took hugged the very edge of a steep drop. How would I die? Would the truck lose traction, sail down the side of the mountain, and explode into a fiery inferno? Or would Michio yank me out of the cage at the highest point and shove me over himself?
I suffered through some minor panic attacks as the caravan made its way west through Utah then south along the edge of a nearly continuous range of mountainous cliffs. The drastic changes in elevation and climate made my stomach turn and my body shudder between sweating and freezing.
The cage grew smaller and smaller with every mile. I ached to stand, to stretch, to run. I needed out, needed out, needed out! I tried screaming, kicking and punching the cage walls, and spitting in their faces. Nothing moved my captors.
In Arizona, the interstate carved its way through narrow walls of gorges. Instead of cascades of evergreens, there were reddish-brown cliffs. My demise stretched out around me, the Thelma and Louise ending playing a continuous loop in my head. It made my desperation even more desperate.
During one of our rest stops in barren butt-fuck nowhere, I shouted for Michio’s attention, as I often did, while he dug through a supply pack beside the truck. “You remember the prophecy? The cliff, Michio? You took me to fucking cliff country! Is this your plan? You really want me to die?”
How were Jesse and Roark going to find me? I was so far away. Too fucking far. It would take a miracle.
As expected, Michio gave no indication that he heard me. But I didn’t relent. I shouted and pleaded through the Nevada desert while glaring at the towering, rocky peaks of never-ending cliffs.
It wasn’t until we reached Las Vegas that I finally calmed down enough to eat the scraps of meat Michio tossed in my cage. “Where are we going? Do you even have a destination?”
I was met with an exaggerated expression of nothingness. As he turned and climbed into the cab, I gave his back a middle finger and screamed, “Fuck you, you limp infertile dick!”
It was a moment of weakness. I really hadn’t given up on him. Besides, passion was better than indifference, right? Even if my passion was uncouth, immature, and really fucking angry. At the very least, it kept my blood pumping and my skin warm.
We drove through Las Vegas without stopping. The over-the-top, buzzing city of indulgence lay in a pile of rubble. Torched skyscrapers looked down upon overturned cars, shattered signs, and gutted slot machines. I could almost smell the singe of useless, burnt money.
Soon, the crumble of concrete and glass gave way to a brown landscape. The dirt, the dusty wind, the leaf-less vegetation, everywhere I looked was brown. It was late in the day, and the sun dipped behind us. Why were we heading east again?
All signs pointed to Hoover Dam. Literally. The road signs counted down the miles to the famous tourist attraction. If I recalled correctly, it was also the largest hydroelectricity facility in the world.
A fortress in a canyon, powered by water, with miles of underground tunnels, Hoover Dam was exactly the kind of practical, pretentious domain the Drone would choose to rule from.
I shivered despite the sun-warmed breeze.
Less than an hour passed before the massive cliffs closed in around us. I knew we were close when electrical substations began to crop up, the steel lattice, heavy-duty wires, and transformers jutting out of steep surfaces of rock.
That was when I saw them.
The truck swerved, dodging a nymph in the road. It was the first in a long line of hobbling nymphs. One, then two, then dozens of them. They walked in the direction of the dam, heads down and stringy hair hanging in their faces.
I couldn’t feel them, not a single icy prickle, and this puzzled me far more than the fact that they didn’t seem to sense me.
From my perch in the bed of the truck, I stared beyond the slanting electrical towers, craning my neck to see around the twisty bends in the road, searching each sickly creature for some kind of reaction.
The nymphs didn’t lift their heads, didn’t shift their pupil-less eyes, and didn’t falter in their determination to plow ahead. Some wore shreds of tattered clothes. Others were completely nude, their skin baked by the sun. My chest ached as I watched them trudge along, their cadaverous frames jerking with each step, their backs bowed under the affliction of the virus. I couldn’t feel their pain now, but I remembered it clearly. They were as trapped as I was.
When was the last time I felt one of their chilly whispers through my gut? Virginia? Right before I’d lost consciousness for two weeks? Had something changed in me then? Or did I lose the ability to sense them when I came into my new power?
Whatever the catalyst was, it was a blessing. Crippled to a state of seizures and vomiting was not how I wanted to arrive at our destination.
A hairpin turn spit us out alongside the Colorado River, and up ahead, some kind of checkpoint halted our caravan. Bracketed by the river and a steep rocky wall, there was nowhere to go but forward or backward. We motored slowly, stopping and starting toward the dam and presumably the Drone who now presided over it.
Barbed wire gates barricaded the passageway, guarded by twenty armed men. The road continued beyond the gates and across the dam, the monolithic wall curving inward against the pressure of the river. On top of the dam’s entrance sat a tall, plain concrete structure. I assumed it housed one of the elevators that went to the tunnels in the canyon below.
I struggled to see around all the vehicles as the guards checked each one, pushing aside the gates, and stepping back to allow entry to the dam. They wore the same blank expressions. No talking. No gestures. Mindless fucking robots.
As we inched forward, the nymphs on the road moved past us, stooping, shuffling quickly, keeping close in line, and intently following some unseen path. Why?
The reason waited just outside the gates.
My heart crashed into my ribs as I took in the row of ten women—cured women—chained to concrete posts. Their postures sagged, faces pale, bodies nude, their hair sticking to their heads in matted clumps. A few women weakly jerked their arms against the shackles. The rest simply hung in defeat, their blinking eyes the only indication of life.
My chest heaved and my breathing ratcheted, the struggle to suck air made worse when I saw the lumps of bodies at their feet. Skeletal frames. Thin skin. Long, jagged nails. Comatose nymphs. None were crawling out of the bottom of the pile, which meant someone was dragging them off before they woke. To take them where? To do what with them?
The sharp, sickening talons of fear and shock flayed the lining of my stomach. Why would the Drone create nymphs only to cure them now? Why do it by cruelly hanging women to posts outside the dam? My blood boiled, and my jaw clenched with pain. I gripped the cage wall, shaking it with horrified anger. Where had these women even come from?
The answer darted out the door of the c
oncrete structure, smiling and running straight for our truck, her belly round with pregnancy and her eyes locked on Michio.
Elaine.
Elaine approached with hurried steps, clutching the bulge of her belly, her upturned face alight with excitement. The sight of her, alive and pregnant, seized me by the throat and stole my breath. There were so many opposing reactions whipping through me, but the strongest feeling settled in my gut. Don’t trust her.
Her wide, smiling eyes were fixed on the cab of the truck, her entire visage radiating with health and actual fucking emotion. But why wasn’t she in a cage like me? Why wasn’t she expressionless like everyone else here? And why was she so over-fucking-joyed to see Michio?
My hands clenched against the wire walls of my prison. I needed to give her the benefit of the doubt and hear her out, even as every muscle in my body burned to attack her. A jealous tantrum would not get me out of this.
Our truck parked against the guardrail atop the dam, and she stopped beside the passenger door.
“Elaine!” I rattled the cage. “What happened to you?”
Her throat bobbed with a swallow, but she didn’t look at me. Slowly, her smile widened, aimed at Michio.
If he smiled back at her after depriving me of emotional interaction for two weeks, so help me God, I would slice his cheeks from mouth to ears and stretch his smile so wide his jaw would open like a bear trap.
His profile shifted toward her, but the line of his mouth remained flat.
I loosened my grip on the cage. “Elaine? Why won’t you look at me? Did they fuck with your head?”
She turned her neck slightly, her eyes flicking over my battered appearance. My lips were cracked from the wind and sun. My hair stuck to my face in a ratty ball of grease. Sore, oozing blisters covered my swollen knuckles from superficial frostbite. No doubt I looked like shit hit the door twice, yet neither shock nor sympathy touched her bowed lips.
Her lack of concern slipped beneath my bravado, wrapping cold fingers around my heart. I had cured this woman, freed her from her agonizing sickness, and had never asked for gratitude or support in return. We didn’t have that kind of relationship, but I needed her now. I spent two weeks emotionally alone and craving human touch, and dammit, I just really needed a hug. But there wasn’t a chance in hell it would come from her.