SWAB (A Young Adult Dystopian Novel) (31 page)

She shook her head. “I doubt it, Fuchsia is just as stubborn as Emerald, if not more so. I’m betting she thinks traipsing onto Maria’s land with a full army wouldn’t be a wise political move.” Iva squinted as she looked north to where Fuchsia was. “I bet she’s coming up with a different strategy now.”

I groaned. I wished the swab would just leave me alone. Somehow, I knew that was impossible. But at least her army wasn’t breathing down our necks for the moment. And so we crossed over the Arizona border, unmolested, on the ninth day. As we neared Tucson, I looked for any sign to indicate that humans had traveled that road as well, but the wind and sand must have erased any evidence weeks ago. There was no sign of life—human or scarb—anywhere in that desert. Iva and Bram didn’t bother to fly ahead any more to check for danger. We could see for miles all around us.

It fascinated me that a human colony could exist in a place like this. “Why hasn’t Maria destroyed the resistance fighters?” I wondered aloud.

Iva shrugged. “Some scarb are beginning to feel differently about humans,” she explained as the hot Arizona sun beat relentlessly down on us. “At first, humans were just a pest to be rid of. Now, the queens are beginning to realize that humans can be useful.”

I tried to rub the sand out of my eye. “Like turning them into scarb?”

“That, yes, and maybe other reasons. Either way, this group of survivors seems to manage all right. They probably aren’t threatening enough for Maria to bother with. She may control a lot of land, but
much of it, like this”—she indicated the endless stretches of barren earth around us—“isn’t of much use to scarb.”

We were less than a day’s journey from their settlement, and I was still looking forward to seeing how these humans survived. On the island, water was our greatest protection. The humans certainly didn’t have that here.

The fibers of my mouth were sticky, like drying cotton. Derrick handed me a water flask he’d found at an abandoned ranger camp. He always did things like that, seeming to know what I needed and wordlessly doing it.

“You must be thirsty, too,” I protested. We hadn’t passed another fresh stream since the morning before. We were nearing a canyon between two mesas. Hopefully we’d find more water there. Either way, the shade would be welcome.

He just smiled, his lips cracking with the effort. “I’ll be fine. You take it.”He smiled again.

I was glad to see him smiling again. I didn’t know what had broken his reserved mood, but I realized how much I’d missed that smile. I put the water to my lips. Even though it was warm and tasted of algae, it moistened the fibers of my mouth and throat. We passed into the shade of the canyon, but just as I was handing the flask back to him, I stopped, the hairs on my spine standing up. It wasn’t from the coolness of the shade. Something was wrong. I tapped into my connection, but sensed nothing. Suddenly, rangers jumped down on us like black crows from the mesas above before. We didn’t even time to scream.

Everything was chaos. Dozens of rangers surrounded us. More poured off the rocks like ants. They sprang through the air like ravens. Their heads were covered in black cloths so only their eyes showed. They wore loose desert garb and had no shoes or sandals on their feet. We tried to fight them. But we weren’t organized. The desert scarb
jumped in and out of the cliff shadows like bats in flight. Derrick and I swung madly to keep them back, but there were too many. I spun and thrashed my arms, knowing that if I stopped, they would have me. One of them got my left arm pinned. In seconds, they were on top of me and I couldn’t move.

They didn’t kill me, although two of my scarb died in the attack. They bound me with thick cords, put one of their black scarves around my head, and marched me blinded, deeper into the canyon.

How did we let this happen?
I fumed. We’d been so careful for so long. I guess we’d gotten casual when Fuchsia’s army abandoned us, and the desert heat had made us sloppy.
I’d been foolish thinking we were safe in the desert.
This band of rangers was highly adapted to the desert conditions. They’d waited for us to come into the canyon where they could attack us unsuspectingly from above.
What do they want with us?
I could see nothing and could only hear the occasionally chatter of their teeth and the patter of their bare feet on the rocks and sand. They reeked of sweat, like they hadn’t had a bath in ages. The dust they kicked up filled my nostrils.

We twisted and turned through the windy valley. What do you think they want with us?” I asked Iva, who was being led by the rangers just a little way behind me.

But a stranger’s voice with a thick Latin accent answered sharply instead. “You will refrain from communicating if you wish to keep your lives.”

I clamped my jaw shut, grinding the hinges together.

The rangers led us, reluctantly silent, for another twenty minutes. We stopped. The wind didn’t rush by so quickly, and. I could smell and hear water trickling somewhere nearby.

The rangers seemed to be waiting for something, but they kept their thoughts closed to me. Again, I couldn’t sense them at all on the connection.

“Will you please remove my scarf so I can breathe better?” I asked the rangers who held me. They seemed to take a moment to discuss it, then the scarf was quickly torn off my head. Even though the light was dim in the canyon, it still blinded me for a moment. The rock faces of the mesa surrounded us, but we had stopped in a more open area of the canyon, filled with about a hundred rangers. My eyes fell on an especially tall one that wore a dusty brown over his shaggy black hair. His gray eyes were split into seven irises each. I’d never seen a scarb with so many, and each facet of his eyes looked right at me.

“Swab Cat,” he said, revealing yellowed teeth and black fibers in his mouth. “How lucky you’ve found us!” He lifted his arms, and all the rangers hooted and cheered.

“What do you want?” I asked, unblinking.

He leaned his face in closer so that his scent of musk and alcohol filled my nostrils. “For now, nothing more than to look at you,” he took off his hat, revealing a pair of long antennae. They extended as if stretching and then they were all over my face and hair. The fuzzy ends probed into my ears and itched my neck. The rangers all laughed. “She’s something, isn’t she, boys? Just look at this hair.” His antennae twisted around a lock of my hair and brought it to his sun-blackened nose. He inhaled deeply. “Smells good.” A wild look twisted itself on his face. He wrapped both antennae around either side of my head, pulling my face toward his. He brought his mouth close to mine like he was going to kiss me, but I spat into his eyes. He jerked back. “A feisty one,” he grinned, rubbing his eye. He finally put his antennae back under his hat. “Makes me kind of consider rethinking our deal with Miss. Sassy Pants up the way.” He scratched at the black stubble on his chin. “What do you think, boys?”

Is he referring to Fuchsia?
What kind of deal would she have made with these guys?

Again, the rangers whooped and snickered.

He looked at me, licking his lips. Then he clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Too bad a deal’s a deal,” he said with resignation. Some of the rangers booed. “Calm down, calm down.” He waved his big hands at them. “We wouldn’t want to cross that witch. We’d find ourselves in no better state than this damsel right here,” he said with mock civility and stroked my chin with his dirty thumb. I turned my head. “And that would be such a shame.”

“Let me go,” I said lowly, refusing to look at him.

“No can do, Princess.” He puffed his chest out and stuck his thumbs into his belt buckle. “The price Fuchsia put on your head is too high to resist. You must’ve done something really bad to put her in such a generous mood.”

So there was a bounty out for me. That was something I might be able to work with. “What did she offer you?”

“A generous contribution of scarb from her colony to my harem.” He grinned with hunger. The thought that a swab would offer her own scarb up like that made me sick. “We’ve been without company for some time now,” he added.

“I can offer you something much more than that,” I blurted, sounding more confident than I felt.

“Oh, yeah?” he raised a dusty eyebrow. “And what’s that?”

My mind raced. I had to think of something, but what would entice these desert pigs to release me? I strained to produce some brilliant miracle that would get us all out of this, but we had nothing—no possessions, no power. My mind was blank.

“I’m waiting.” He sneered, a bead of sweat making a track down his grimy skin. Time was up. I needed a solution now. Still, I couldn’t think of anything.

“She’s a Bearer,” Nathan’s voice suddenly rang out.

A tremor went through the entire canyon. All the scarb turned to the far back corner where Nathan was being held.

The tall ranger took a step toward him, leaning his ear in Nate’s direction. “What did you say, boy?”

“She’s a Bearer,” Nathan repeated, his chin in the air. “You wouldn’t want to throw away a scarb like that, now would you?”

I cringed.
What is he doing
?
This ranger already had his feelers all over me; I didn’t want to give him any more reason to do so.

The ranger turned back to me, a glint shimmering in his seven irises. “Are you a Bearer, swab?” There was a new kind of greed there. I was about to tell him my brother was crazy, and not to listen to him. It wasn’t even a lie. Nathan was crazy to tell him about this.

One of the other rangers wearing a large sombrero stepped forward, addressing the leader by name. “He might be lying to you, Veto. He ain’t no swab, you know?”

“He better not be lying to me.” Veto’s voice suddenly turned dark. “I don’t take well to those who try to cheat me,
comprende
?”He made a slicing motion against his neck, then took another step toward me, his face in mine. “So I’ll ask you one more time. Is what the boy says true? Are you a Bearer?”

My heart sank to my toes. Thanks to Nate, there was no way out of this now. If I told him it wasn’t true, Nate would be killed. If I said it was, we would be in worse danger than we already were. I gritted my teeth. “Yes, it’s true.”

The ranger studied me a hard moment. He licked his lips. “Change of plans, boys.” His voice rang out across the canyon walls. “The swab stays with us.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Veto

I felt like strangling Nathan as soon as I was free. The good news was that Veto wasn’t going to hand us over to Fuchsia, but the bad news was that he wanted to hold onto me for himself, probably to breed some more of his filthy desert rats. But for the time being, I’d play the thing out with Veto rather than face Fuchsia and a death sentence. We weren’t going to fight. Yet.

“I’ll be king of this whole desert,” Veto said lowly to me as he had his men marched me back into the narrow, winding canyon passages. He threw his arms out. “With you, I’ll be king of the whole world. No more need for swabs,
comprende
?”

I did “
comprende
,”
and I didn’t like it. “What about my scarb?” I demanded.
Will he kill them before I can find a way for us to get out of this?

Veto puckered his lips, causing the black hairs of his upper lip to touch his nose. “I’ll give your scarb until morning to choose,” he said after a long minute. “They can either join my band, or they can die.”

“You won’t just kill them?” I asked, surprised.

He shook his big head, causing dust to fly off his hat. “We aren’t the wasteful kind,
señorita
. The desert taught us not to be ages ago. If they don’t cause me no trouble, I’ll take ‘em.”He gave my arm a nudge. “I need all the help I can get with all these swabs around,
comprende
?”

Still, resources had to be scarce. This was the desert after all. How many scarb could he sustain? I was glad that the rangers weren’t
just going to kill my scarb, but I also knew that not many of them would happily join this group.

“Let me talk to them first,” I told him.

“Fine, fine.” Veto waved his hands in the air like he was swatting away a bee that had suddenly turned annoying. “But they must decide by morning.” With that, he left to walk at the front of the procession.

After five minutes of walking through the winding canyon, we came to another opening, this one even larger than the first. It stretched at least two football field lengths. Steep walls surrounded the entire area, giving it the feeling of being inside a large bowl. It was filled with handmade buildings and shelters, all crudely made out of wood and bits of discarded metal, probably taken from the remains of human settlements. Animal skins stretched over many of the windows and doors. The most prominent feature, however, was a slowly turning windmill at the center. I could smell the fresh water it pulled up from the ground drifting in the hot air.

Rangers lounged in the doorways, bottles of liquor at their feet. Some sat around died-out campfires chewing on bits of rawhide and even a bone here or there.

“You eat meat?” I asked the ranger who held my right arm incredulously.

He shrugged. “Our stomachs can handle it. Better than starving, right?”

We passed a pen of goats and a fat pig as we went further into the settlement.

“Where are all the women?” I asked the ranger. So far all the rangers I’d seen had been male.

He gave a wicked grin. “They don’t last long here.”

I really didn’t like the sound of that.

But it was kind of fascinating the way the entire band was run like a pack of wild dogs. Filthy and coarse, but it worked. They’d learned to survive.

The rangers brought me to the center of settlement, right to where the wind mill was. It slowly brought cupfuls of water up out of the ground with each turn of the wheel. The water dumped into a large wooden cistern to be stored. It was pretty clever.