World Of Shell And Bone (18 page)

I shiver violently, but with the restraints, I cannot pull my arms across my body to heat myself. Every bone in my body aches, and my brain feels fuzzy, like it’s wrapped in cobwebs. Nausea rolls in my stomach. I’m on my back. If I vomit, I will choke. I concentrate on taking deep breaths in through my nose and blowing them out of my mouth.

What day is it? What time? How long has he had me here? Am I hurt? As if in answer, my foot throbs but then I sail away again, on a wave of semi-consciousness…

Voices. Whispered male voices.

“…he’s taking too long.”

“He’ll be here.” Drew, tense.

“If he doesn’t care enough, it’s going to fuck up our plans. We should’ve done something else.” Nathan, angry.

“He’ll come. And he’ll get what’s comin’ to him, too.”

“Well, if he comes and the bitch is dead, it ain’t gonna do us much good.”

There’s a shuffling as they come into the tent. I close my eyes and lie still.

A rough hand feels my forehead. I try not to wince at the pain in my skin. Drew curses softly.

They undo my wrist cuffs and maneuver me to a sitting position. I look up at Drew’s sweating face. He puts a cup of water to my lips and I drink. My lips hurt from where they’re cracked; my tongue feels sand-coated and swollen.

I take a swing at him before he can put me back in my cuffs, but he just grabs my hands and pushes them to my sides. That amount of effort takes everything I have, and I lie down, my head pounding with fever and disease. My foot aches.

“We’ve bandaged it.”

I hadn’t realized I’d spoken out loud. I sleep.

When I wake up again, I am ravenous. Grinding my teeth simply to have the feeling of something in my mouth, I look around the dim tent, but there’s no one inside. My arms and legs are still restrained.

“Drew.” My voice is hoarse and husky, barely above a whisper. I try to conjure up some saliva, swallow, and clear my throat. “Drew!” Marginally louder, but I’m not sure he’ll hear me if he’s more than a few yards away. Judging by the light and the temperature, it must be either early morning or early evening.

I pull my arms towards the center of my body, and the metal restraints clang against the cot legs. I do it again, with more force, and the noise is louder. I begin to jerk my arms and legs like a psychotic, animated puppet, hoping that the noise will bring Drew or Nathan.

I hear boots crunching outside my tent—footsteps slow and stop. The tent flap opens and Carlos’ face peeks in at me.

“What the fuck, Drew? Did you beat her up?”

“Not too much. She can handle it—she’s tough.” He chuckles.

The tent flap closes, but I can still hear them outside.

“Hurtin’ her wasn’t part of the deal.”

“Don’t worry about the bitch right now. I gave my word we could meet without guns if you brought me the gold. I’ll trade you the gold for the bitch, fair and square.”

“This ain’t fair,” Carlos responds.

Nathan says, “Don’t—”

Carlos marches in, Drew and Nathan on his heels, and cuts my leather cuffs. The manacles hang there after I’m free, like bereft prison guards defeated of their sole purpose in life. I sit up, gasping, not quite believing that the freedom is real.

“I’m takin’ her with me,” Carlos says. His voice is authoritative, but his upper lip twitches and gives him away. “Deal’s off.”

Drew stares placidly. He is dripping sweat, we all are. Fear is sour in the air.

“You’re wrong on both counts,” he says, cracking his knuckles. The
prot-prot-prot
sound startles a fly that has landed nearby, and it buzzes off. “Neither of you are going anywhere.”

I see Nathan, slightly behind Carlos, pulling out his gun. I open my mouth to warn him, but Carlos seems to know what’s going on. He pulls out one of the old guns he bought at le marché noir. A series of pops explodes; I’m not sure who’s shooting whom. Drew produces a gun like a magician. Blood sprays in mini-geysers, lashing against my face, and I cry out.

Wait. Stop. Don’t.

Missives, but they are too late. Carlos is missing an eye and most of the top of his head. Nathan is unrecognizable as Nathan. Drew remains standing, but there’s so much blood on him, I don’t know where it’s coming from. He slouches on the floor of the tent, his hand clasped to his gushing shoulder, just as I stand. I try to step over him but he pushes his knee up and I trip. Stupid. I wasn’t expecting that and I should have.

He laughs. “You can’t leave me now,” he says, and I see then in his eyes just how much insanity he holds within him.

I scramble to my feet again because I know if I don’t escape now I will never escape; he will keep me here until I die and maybe even after that. He reaches for me, but I feint left and kick at his hurt shoulder, hard.

I run into the stinging sun outside with his shriek of pain echoing in my ears.

My foot screams with every step; agony has had no meaning until now. I hobble and drag it along, and when I fall, I crawl until my palms bleed. I know Drew will catch up to me if I don’t hurry—it is only his shoulder that is hurt; his knee doesn’t slow him down too much. He won’t let me escape so easily, not after what he’s been through for the right to torture me, to own me.

Panic threatens to flatten me when I fall the third time, because I am sure I hear footsteps no more than a dozen yards behind me. My foot throbs; it feels like a hot swollen rock at the end of my leg. Please, I whisper. Please, please. I have come so far. Please. But I know having come so far is no immunity against a terrible fate.

I continue on, panting, groaning, sounding, I am sure, like an unknowably terrifying entity were anyone to hear me. But then Drew’s bellowed scream of rage shakes the sparse vegetation around me and I quiet down, bite my lip and press on.

The perimeter of the camp catches me entirely by surprise; I was sure Drew would’ve caught a hold of me long before I reached it. I stumble into the guard, blinded—or nearly so—by pain, sweat, and fever.

The Nukehead grabs me around my upper arms, his brow shiny with sweat. His eyes are so wide I can see all of his irises, round and brown like twin burnt planets.

“Ms. Cannon,” he says. “We have been looking for you.”

I try to answer, but collapse instead, and surrender to the silent humiliation of being lifted into camp like an invalid.

The world comes back into focus in jagged pieces. The sand-colored canvas of the tent. A tin mug of water. Nurse Carina’s face, the wrinkles in sharp relief as she frowns, mouthing words at me. No, not mouthing. She is actually speaking.

“… do anything to you?”

Try as I might, I cannot understand her words. I shake my head and blink. Now I see Ceres, and I try on a smile. She looks upset, her face twisted in a childish expression of fear and panic, her fingers working a bouquet of wildflowers. The petals, shredded, cascade down onto my cot like colored raindrops.

I reach out my hand to her, but somehow it connects with Sara instead. She gives it a reassuring squeeze. Alexander’s perched on her hip, gnawing on a sweet.

A minute or an hour later, Nurse Carina and Reyes are helping me sit up. I try to use my feet to leverage my weight, and a lightning bolt of pain sears my entire leg and shoots barbs of heat into my hipbone. I cry out without meaning to, and, embarrassed, apologize.

Reyes grins at me. “No need for your sorrys now, ma’am. All’s you got to do is open yer mouth and drink this nectar we got at le marché noir.”

I look down at the tin cup Nurse Carina proffers. A mint green liquid is inside, with bits of herbs floating on top.

“For the pain,” she explains. “Couldn’t give you most of our medicines because they’re based in alcohol. Not good for the baby.” She smiles gently.

The tenderness in her face shatters my heart. After all the things this baby has been through already, that people would still think about its welfare is both depressing and heartening somehow. I sip at the liquid. Its tartness bites at the sides of my tongue, but soon I’m floating on a pleasantly buzzing cloud, and my body doesn’t seem to be attached to me anymore.

I must have fallen asleep because when I look up again, Ceres is by my bed, holding both my hands.

“S-sorry,” she says, her voice breaking.

“For what?” My head still feels like it’s full of empty air, and I’m having a hard time pushing the words out.

“Left you alone.” She looks down at our hands clasped together. A fat tear escapes her eye, splatters on the back of my hand, warm and wet. “Lucas…” She shakes her head, cannot continue.

“It’s not your fault. I should’ve told someone where I was going.” I squeeze her hand. “Hear me?”

She shakes her head again, her gaze remains earthbound. “Bad Rad hurt you. Bad Rad.”

I stare at her for a long moment, words spinning up into a whirlwind in my head. “Ceres… how do you know about Drew?”

She gestures vaguely toward the tent door. “Guards. Got him. Got. Caught.”

My pulse jitters at the thought of all these women and children, unarmed, around Drew. “He’s dangerous. Where is he now?”

“Reyes and his men tied him up. They didn’t know if we’d need information from him so they held off on killing him. He’s not going to hurt anyone, Vika.”

I look past Ceres at Nurse Carina. She stands by the tent entrance, her hands folded in front of her. I simply cannot imagine Drew being subdued by anyone, injured knee and shoulder notwithstanding.

“Can you take me to him?” I struggle to sit up without putting weight on my bad foot.

Nurse Carina is upon me in an instant. “You’re to stay in bed for as long as possible.” She pushes gently on my shoulder. “Think of the baby. You need to keep your strength up. The Sympathetics will be here in the next twenty-four hours, and then you have a long journey ahead of you.”

Hope blooms in my chest. “Are you sure? They’ll be here in the next twenty-four hours?”

“Yes. Reyes got word from le marché noir this morning.” She smiles, her eyes shining in the light. “Freedom. Can you smell it in the air?”

“That’s great news.” I pat Ceres’s hand and smile at her to cover up the coiled shoots of alarm beginning to wrap themselves around me. Between the medicine and the pain, I’m unable to discern exactly why the news of the Sympathetics has me feeling this way. “But I promise not to exert myself.”

Nurse Carina sighs her resignation, and as she helps me off the cot, I’m gripped by the cold certainty that they’ve captured the wrong man, that Drew hangs back even now, a predator with an eye for weakness in our perimeter.

I am handed promises of retribution from Nukehead men I do not know as I make my way with Ceres and Nurse Carina from my tent to Drew’s. As we pass over the small hill that separates me from the man who is desperate to own me, these men ask me again and again for my permission to do to Drew as he deserves. But I shake my head every time, telling them that violence is not what I want.

When I see the man, his hands bound by rope, I am gripped by a terrible, unreasonable fear that it’s not Drew, that he’s actually behind me, waiting to pounce. But then I see his bandaged shoulder and the blood-soaked fabric of his shredded shirt where the bullet went in. I take in his unnatural height and ophic black braid. It really is Drew.

His lip lifts in a sneer when he catches my eye. “You. Should’ve killed you the night I fucked you,” he says between wheezing breaths. He sweats from the effort of being alive.

Ceres shakes visibly beside me. On the other side, Nurse Carina tightens her grip around my waist. Tremendous heat emanates from her—sheer anger.

I rest my hand between Ceres’s shoulder blades to let her know it’s okay, that Drew doesn’t intimidate me. It is a half-truth I must convey to keep my sister tethered to this reality. I am afraid she will drift away from me like a puff of dandelion seed, for good this time.

I turn so Nurse Carina knows I want to leave. I have no desire to spend a moment more than necessary in his toxic presence now that I’ve verified he’s here, unable to harm me any longer. When the ship arrives, he will be left behind to starve or to deal with the anger of the Nukeheads. I feel no pity at the thought.

Outside, the calm-but-industrious buzz of activity has been replaced by cacophony. A number of Asylum and Nukehead children rush about with packs of their belongings, all chattering at each other. Nukehead parents yell instructions over the noise.

Sara sees me and waves. I go over to her, my heart a fiercely beating thing. “Is it the Sympathetics? Are they coming?”

Sara nods. Alexander attaches himself to her leg and smiles shyly, caught up in the excitement of the crowd. Whistles and shouts bob on a breeze, sail past. “They’ve just turned onto the main road. Some of our men rode back to get word to us. I can’t believe it’s happening.” Her mangled face is pink with imagined happy endings.

I smile at her in spite of the worry worming its way into my chest. The Sympathetics are coming. I force myself to relax. “You and Alexander deserve no less.”

She hugs me gently, and I inhale the scent of desert sun. “Promise me that you and Ceres will make every attempt to stay in touch, even if we don’t live near each other.”

I pull back and pat her shoulder. “But of course. That doesn’t need to be said.”

A memory of Shale punches through my mind, and the bittersweet moment crumbles around my feet. I remember the sight of him, tall and full of anger, as he stood in acid rain and watched the attack on the Nukeheads. He should be here now, embarking on this journey to our future. Instead, his body decomposes in the sun somewhere, alone and unwatched.

I blink back the tears and turn to Ceres. “We better pack some of our things.”

“Ceres and I got all that done while you were resting,” Nurse Carina answers. “Isn’t that right, Ceres?”

Ceres beams at me and nods.

“Why don’t you come to the gates with us?” Sara asks. “We’re bringing gifts to the Sympathetics.”

We follow Sara and Alexander as the rest of the camp streams past us to get to the gate so they can watch the welcoming ceremony. I smell excitement and the rounded juicy notes of delight wafting off of everyone just as readily as I can smell the jasmine and honeysuckle extract the women and girls have rubbed on themselves. It is, I think to myself, the smell of new beginnings.

I stand motionless, listening to the excited chatter of children, and the laughter of the women woven along with brisk directions from the Nukehead men. In spite of my foot’s protestations to all the abuse it has endured, in spite of the dust and sand that’s been kicked up by everyone settling into my eyes and coating the insides of my nostrils, in spite of worry hanging on me like the smell of rot, I am the nearest to happy I have been in a long time.

And then I see them approach, an elegant entourage of two silver government cars and one white bus glinting and sparkling in the sun as they eat up the miles in their hurry to get to us.

The woman in the first car gets out and approaches the Nukeheads waiting by the open gate, eager smiles on their faces. I notice first that she is wearing the green BoTA uniform. A Sympathetic in BoTA? But then I also notice her green tattooed-on eyebrows and the tattoo of a tulip in the center of her chin.

Moon.

Picking up a proffered apple, she smirks. “Le marché noir fruit as a welcoming gift? Isn’t that a bit cheeky, even for a rebel camp?”

It is then that the realization slams into me: These aren’t Sympathetics. This is simply a group of government officials come to arrest us, or worse.

I need to warn someone, but Moon cannot see me. I’m certain she’s here because she knows of my involvement with the Rads. If she finds proof that the refugee camp has been harboring a fugitive like me, it will mean certain death for all of us.

Forgetting my bad leg, I step backward in an attempt to get out of Moon’s line of sight. When the pain flares through my bone, I bite down on my finger to keep from crying out. But little Alexander spots me, and, thinking I’m playing, he laughs.

“Vika!” he cries. “Silly Vika!”

I hold my breath and stand still, hoping Moon hasn’t heard. But her eyes fly toward the source of the noise. She sees Alexander and follows his gaze to me.

“Well,” she says into the silence, staring at me with a strange smile licking across her face. “If it isn’t Vika Cannon. We’ve been looking for you.” She makes a hand signal and Maintenance men pile out of the bus in the back, their acid guns at the ready.