Initiation (Gypsy Harts #1) (2 page)

“What kind of bombs?” The girl had a feeling she knew, but unless Em said it she held hope that in a few months the world could be set right.

Em laughed dryly. “Oh, the big ones. The worst kind.”

The girl shook her head. “No. What…what kind of dream am I in?”

Em laughed again, turning to the pile of clothes. “It ain’t a dream, honey.” Now her tone was bitter. “It’s a nightmare and we’re all living it. But if you want to stay alive and anywhere near a somewhat happy existence, you’ll come with us.”

“Where will we go?”

“We have a place,” Em said, holding out a shirt. “It’s secure. No one fucks with it. But every now and then we have to go looking for supplies. Each month we have to travel further out. The bombs didn’t hit too close to where we live, but the fallout was the bitch of it. There’s no plants, no trees. The only food we have when we head out is what we find. And we take the extra back for the others. We found this place just today. There’s a shitload of food and water in storage, you could have lived here on your own for about a year if you were careful. There’s even a good supply of fuel for the generator, candles for light. Composting toilet.” Em laughed. “This is a fortress. Unfortunately, we found you.”

“Why is that unfortunate?”

“There are men following us. If we get close to our place they’ll back off, but as long as we’re this far away we’re fair game.”

The girl let Em sit her up, working her arms out of the nightgown she’d been wearing. She tried to cover her breasts but it was silly; her arms were too weak. And with what the nurse had already seen and done, her chest was hardly worth hiding. “Will they kill us?”

Em nodded, now helping the girl’s arms into the sleeves of the shirt. It was soft, loose. Cotton. “Eventually. Not soon enough, though.”

That made the girl’s blood go cold. “What will they do?”

Em leveled eyes at her. “What do you think men do to women once there are no laws, prisons, or police officers?”

The girl shuddered. Something in Em’s expression led her to believe this wasn’t paranoia. This woman had been through exactly what she spoke of.

“Did you…” the girl cleared her throat and tried again. “How did you all meet?”

“A series of unfortunate events,” was Em’s answer as she tied the string at the top of the shirt she’d found. The girl looked down at it now, realizing it was loose, billowy with large sleeves. The neck tied closed with a bit of black string. The shirt itself was charcoal grey with black stitching decorating it in a curling pattern along the hem.

“Found underwear, too,” Em said, pulling a pair of cotton briefs from the clothes. “Should I help you with these too?”

The girl was blushing as she nodded. She couldn’t move her legs. She’d been trying this whole time but they lacked the strength to follow her commands. And yet they weren’t numb. She could feel the blanket son her skin, and she’d felt Em’s cool hands on her legs before. They just lacked the strength to move beyond wiggling her toes.

Em slid the fabric up her legs and helped the girl work the underwear on over her bottom, hefting her hips so the girl could tug them into place herself. “It’s best to dress in layers,” Em instructed. “There are leggings here. You should always wear something under your pants, you never know when you’re going to get caught out in the cold. Jeans, leathers, canvas, wear whatever you want but always layer up. In the day it’s fucking hot out there, so with layers you can always take shit off until you’re comfortable.”

“Why are the temperatures so weird?” the girl asked as Em slid the leggings up her calves.

“Limited vegetation,” was the matter-of-fact answer. “Plants are nice to have around for many reasons. But they keep the temperatures cooler in the day and help hold some heat at night. Without them we only have the sun and dirt.”

Again they did the hip-lift to pull the leggings up. It might have been her imagination, but she thought she might have actually done some of that lifting herself, her feet planted on the mattress for support. But then again, maybe not. It was hard to be sure.

“What are you all?” the girl asked reluctantly. “Were you friends? Relatives?”

“Doesn’t matter what we were before.” Em’s answer was blunt. “Now we’re the Gypsy Harts, and now we’re family.”

Gypsy Harts
. The girl kind of liked that.

“Okay, so I saw a chair on the way in here,” Em was musing as she left the circle of light. When she returned she was pushing a wheelchair. “Here we go. Let’s go see what the girls have come up with for supper.”

Em picked her out of bed as though she weighed nothing, and then set her down in the chair with barely a grunt. Perhaps she was quite thin now, but it was hard to be sure what she had been before. Other than that dream she’d been woken from, that is.

Em pushed the chair for her, hanging the lantern from the handle of the chair as they left the room. The hallway was dark and cool, very much like a stone corridor should be. Especially if they were underground, which the girl was starting to believe.

The next room was large, and with a few of the lanterns lit throughout the room the girl could see a small stretch of kitchen cabinetry with a few gleaming appliances, an arrangement of living room furniture, and a table with four chairs separating the two spaces. It could almost be a house, but this room was also devoid of windows.

“They’ve even got canned ham!” the girl with the blonde-and-dark hairstyle exclaimed, holding up a can. “Man, I haven’t had ham since…well, since before.”

“We’ll take it with us,” May decided, turning to Em and the girl. With a loud gulp the girl took in the true height of the woman, and from this angle she could see not only the knife strapped to her thigh but the belt with multiple blades tucked into place. When she turned away the girl saw the pistol at the small of her back and felt her eyes grow wide.

“There’s beef stew, we’re heating it up in the nuke box,” the chipper woman went on. “A functioning microwave! How fucking cool is this place?”

“Impractical to light a fire underground,” May mumbled, dropping onto a sofa and kicking a booted foot up onto the low table in front of her. “Hard to stay hidden with smoke flowing out of the ground.”

“Hey, is this your sugar-daddy or your father?” This from the one that really seemed to not like the girl. She was holding a stand-up picture frame which she turned to the girl, all but shoving it in her face. “Tell me that’s your dad and he’s available. Because he is totally fuckable.”

The words were lost because the girl was wrenching the frame away, bringing it right to her face. Her fingers traced the raw wood frame, the faces in the frame pulling her whole focus. That was the man from her dream, and next to him a young, thin blonde woman with the near-identical smile the man was directing at the camera. There was an old rusty pick up behind them, the man had his bent arm on the open window ledge. The girl was leaning on the body of the truck, foot propped up on the tire.

“I think this is my father. This face … I was dreaming about it.” She looked up at Em, over her shoulder. “Is that what I look like?”

The mean one snatched the photo back. “So trippy that you have no idea what you even look like. But yeah, this is you. Maybe five years ago with a few more pounds than right now.”

The girl tried to grab her photo back but the mean one—Brit, they had been calling her—held it up too high. “Give it back to me,” the girl insisted, suddenly not so scared of this woman. She was mean, but only to those weaker. She was a bully, but bullies weren’t scary to the girl for some reason.

“Come and get it,” Brit snarled back, turning away with the photo just to run into the girl with the two-tone haircut. “Out of my way, Coral.”

Coral took the frame away without even blinking and carried it back to the girl. She handed it over without much ceremony, more like she was returning a toy to the loudest-whining child, but the girl grasped and looked up at the woman. “Thank you,” she said softly, clutching her prize to her chest.

“Think you have a brother?” Brit asked, nonplussed to have been outplayed so simply. “If he looks like your dad, I call dibs.”

“There’s canned stew,” Coral was saying, still staring down at the girl. “You should try and eat real food, get some strength.”

“Watch the solid stuff though,” Em warned, pushing the chair towards the spot next to the sofa where May was still slumped, having watched the mini-drama without changing expression. “You might get sick if you eat too much too fast. Your stomach needs to adapt.”

“What’s the last thing you remember?” May asked suddenly, dropping her foot back to the concrete floor and leaning forward on her elbows. “If you remember anything.”

The girl shook her head, looking back at the photo. “I was dreaming, before I woke up. I was riding in a truck, with this man. We were happy, singing with the radio. It was summer. Very warm, the sun was shining.” She shook her head. “That’s it. I remember nothing else but that dream.”

Em sat on the other sofa, her posture mirroring May’s. “What year do you think it is?”

The girl looked up at Em, frowning. “Umm. I don’t know.”

“You don’t need to learn motor functions or anything like that. So it’s all mental. I just wonder if there are basic remnants clinging to your rafters.” Em smiled. “Some people can guess the year but not their name.”

She looked at the photo again, concentrating on the handsome, lined face of the man standing next to the truck. This was her father, she felt it. But as for details …

“I don’t know,” the girl mumbled, raising her head.

“I wonder how long you were out for,” May mused, locking gazes with Em. “How long before the bomb.”

Em nodded, and the girl once again was on the outside looking in. Locked in her own inability to remember … “Wait,” she mumbled. “Is it … I think I remember something.”

“What is it?”

The girl shook her head. “I can remember signing. Something. 2013?”

May nodded. “Okay. That’s something to work off of.”

“But I’m not sure,” the girl rushed to add.

May grinned. “There’s no wrong answers here. You might remember 2013. So let’s say that’s when you were knocked out.” May nodded back to Em. “Well before the bombs.”

Em nodded. “When the threats heightened her old man moved her down here.”

May nodded in unison.

“What year
is
it?” the girl asked, looking from to the other.

“The later stages of 2017, but no one’s keeping track of the dates anymore,” May answered without much emotion. Her cold eyes came back to the girl. “The bombs dropped late 2016. It’s been a year.”

The girl’s eyes widened. “A year? And it’s still…chaos outside?”

May looked a bit startled. “Honey, it’s going to stay this way. There is no law and order anymore.”

“Don’t scare her,” Em said softly.

“She should know,” May insisted, eyes never leaving the girl. “When tensions got high, the men, the
good
, strong, brave and true signed up and enlisted, cutting out to go fight the bad guys. Even the cops were gone, ready to fight back the evil.” May shook her head. “They left behind just as much evil, because no matter what people are shit and they’re just looking for an opportunity to get what they want.
Take
what they want, and fuck everyone else. The bombs just lessened the numbers. It was the wild west while we were waiting for the hellfire to rain down.”

The girl felt like her spine was shrinking under the intensity of May’s glare. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I don’t remember.”

“I know,” May muttered, getting to her feet with a sudden surge.

“I wish we could find something with your name on it,” Coral sang out from the kitchen area. The woman was so happy. How were these people friends? They were all so different. “I have no idea what to call you.”

“I vote for Feebs.” Brit was suddenly behind the girl, leaning over her shoulder. “As in,
feeble
.”

“Back off Brit,” Em snapped.

“What about Ammie? For
amnesia
?” Coral’s suggestion didn’t seem any nicer than Brit’s had.

“She looks like a Melody, or a Tamara,” May piped up, pulling the pistol from her waistband. The girl tracked the weapon, not sure if she’d ever been close to one before. May slammed the weapon onto the coffee table and sat back down.

“I think she looks like an
Anne
,” Em suggested.

“I like it. It’s close to
amnesia
.” At least Coral was appeased.

“Anne it is,” May agreed, tilting her head the girl’s way. “So,
Anne
. You can decide your own fate. You want to come with us once the windstorm clears? Or would you rather stay here? Understand of course, we’re taking everything that’s in that storage room with us when we go.”

That was hardly a choice.

“If I can get walking,” the girl began cautiously. “I’ll come with you.”

May nodded, appeased. “Good. Now we just have to figure out how you’ll be of the best use to us.”

Brit stepped in front of May to flop onto the sofa on the far side. “Oh please. We all know the best use for her.”