“So, he was lying,” said a tall man with stringy red hair. He lifted his foot and pressed Atticus’ head beneath his boot. Atticus didn’t stir against the pressure; he made no sound. Was he even breathing?
I made a run for the wall where my staff was propped, but was grabbed from behind and lifted into the air before I could reach it. My arms went out in front of me automatically; I screamed so stridently I felt a pop inside my ears.
The arm tightened around my waist the more I fought, and I twisted around in his grasp, dug into his face with all ten fingers.
“Feisty little bitch!” my captor brayed as my hands tore at his head like a wild cat.
I hoped he would drop me; I even braced myself mentally to hit the hard floor, but instead I felt the white-hot bite of his open hand against my face. Black spots sprang before my eyes, and my head swayed side to side before I could gain control of it again.
As my eyesight blurred back into focus, I saw that I was on the floor, looking up at the man. I crawled on my hands and knees toward Atticus, felt the familiar ache of loss deep in my chest and in my stomach, the same feeling I felt when I went back to the village to find my father but knew in my heart he was already dead. “Atticus!” I cried, lifting his head onto my legs; I stroked his hair. “Oh, Atticus…” A stream of tears flowed from my eyes, clouded my vision. There was blood on my fingers when I pulled my hand from his hair. I stared at it, unblinking.
Boots shuffled against the floor all around me as the men made their way through every room in the cabin; I heard the clatter of cabinet doors as they were flung open, the clinking of glass bottles, casual laughter as the men carried on about the items they’d found.
I never looked up from Atticus; I stroked his blood-soaked hair; I shielded his head with my body. I thought he was dead. It made little sense for him not to be: these men were hostile, they did not come here to trade supplies, or to make friends—they were here to pillage. And kill. And rape?
I didn’t care about any of that anymore.
A rush of breath filled my lungs again, and my heart stopped beating for the briefest of moments when I felt Atticus’ warm breath exhaling from his nostrils, filling up the confined space created by my blanket of hair as I leaned over him.
Relief swarmed me, but then was suppressed by trepidation—I feared what these men would do if they knew Atticus was still alive. I lowered myself over him even farther, hoping to shield the sight of his respiring chest with my hands and my hair.
“They’re both worth more than anything I’ve brought back in a month,” a rough, grumbling voice said from somewhere above me.
“You’re right,” grumbled another man. “The man is more than fit enough to fight”—(So they do know Atticus is alive.)—“And the girl…a bit skinny, but they all are at first.”
A heavy set of boots came walking up.
“There’s no one else in the house,” another voice announced. “They’re checking around outside—looks like these two have been here for a while.”
“What all’d you find?” said the rough, grumbling voice.
“Cigarettes, whiskey, some minor medical supplies, pills—basic shit, really.”
“And a lot of fucking bullets,” said a new voice attached to another pair of boots coming from the hallway. “Couple of guns, too.”
My heart dropped when I thought about the gun Atticus told me to always carry with me. It had been so long since I’d carried it around the cabin, or back and forth from the pond. Atticus hadn’t even said anything about me not carrying it, in some time.
Complacency. We were both guilty of it, and we both may die now because of it. An uncontrolled sob rattled through my chest, drawing the attention of the men back.
“Hey, it’s not so bad,” the red-haired man said with mock consolation. I sensed him crouching in front of me; heard the faint squeaking of his leather boots as his weight crowded and compressed them around the ankles. “I think you’ll like where you’re going,” he went on. “You may even thank me later.”
It felt like déjà vu—Marion said the same thing when he took me and Sosie from the woods. My blood went ice cold.
I raised my head from Atticus and looked up at the red-haired man.
He smiled.
I scowled.
“I won’t go back to that place,” I spat, my voice full of acid. “I’ll kill him and myself before I let you take us back to Lexington City.” It stung me to say it, but it stung even more to have meant it.
William Wolf, Rafe, Marion, any of them would kill Atticus and me the moment we stepped back on Lexington City soil. Or worse—and more likely—we’d be tortured first. I would not go back there; I would not let them take Atticus back there; I would do for Atticus what he did for his mother before I ever let that happen. How? I didn’t know, but I would figure it out if it was the last thing I ever did.
The red-haired man’s thin eyebrows crinkled in his forehead. He glanced up at the men he had been talking to, then looked back at me.
“Lexington City?” he said, appearing to have no knowledge of that place. He wore a faintly amused smile. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but we have no allegiance to William Wolf.” He glanced at the men again, and they all smirked.
They were not dressed in military clothes, I noted, like the soldiers from Lexington City were. These men were dressed casually: T-shirts, jeans, work boots.
The black-haired man standing to the red-haired man’s right, chuckled. “We fight for another leader.” He rose out of a crouch. “Somebody with a bigger nut-sack.”
The men in the vicinity laughed, nodded, smiled. I held onto Atticus’ heavy shoulders tighter.
“Seems we get quite a few former residents of Lexington City over on our lands,” said the red-haired man in his rough voice.
He and the black-haired man looked at one another, nodded in agreement.
“Yes, this is true,” said the black-haired man smoothly; he reached up and rubbed his short black beard. “We welcome most of them, but they have to prove themselves before we let them in.”
I didn’t care about any of this. Yet, the red-haired and black-haired men went on and on as if I was interested.
“William Wolf is a gluttonous tyrant,” said the black-haired man. “From what we understand, he takes and takes and never gives anything back to his men, or his people.”
“A fucking communist,” the red-haired man said. “Just like that bastard who rules Phoenix”—he snapped his fingers, trying to recall—“What’s his name? Vaughn-something-or-another.”
“Levi Vaughn,” the black-haired man corrected.
“Whatever the fuck his name is,” said the red-haired man. “They’re all fucking fascist pigs who like to sit on their thrones surrounded by the spoils of war, serving their men the scraps. I don’t fight for scraps.”