Our small bus has four flat tires, a smashed front end, and almost all of the seats removed—those were some of the first things we sold away. It’s fine, though, since we don’t plan on driving it anywhere. The metal interior makes a reasonably cozy home, though it’s achingly hot in the summer and bitterly cold in the winter. But it keeps us safe and dry, and that’s all you can really ask for in times like these. I spot it in the darkness and the flicker of a small lamp-light inside, and a rush of relief fills me. I race toward home, shoving the folding door open and crawling inside. “Amy?”
But it’s only Sasha huddled over the dinner fire. Sasha, with her brown eyes and dark hair and too-lean face. Sasha, who was gorgeous and might have been working as an actress or a supermodel if that whole ‘dragon apocalypse’ thing hadn’t happened. She looks thin, and there’s a massive bruise covering one high cheekbone.
Her eyes go wide at the sight of me. “Claudia! Where the heck have you been?”
I flop down on my small mattress, wrapping my blankets around my body as makeshift clothing. “Where’s Amy?”
Sasha puts a lid over the small metal half-barrel we use for cookfires and then crawls over to my side. “You look awful. Are you okay? And why are you naked? Did they hurt you? Did the militia keep you?” She gasps. “Are they making you—”
Sasha’s a talker. Her stream of worried chatter makes me feel better, though. It’s normal, and so few things feel normal lately. “I’m all right, I promise.” I touch her arm. “Long story, and one I’ll share later. Where’s Amy?”
“Gone looking for you,” Sasha says, pulling out a beaten-up water bottle and passing it to me. “Are you…okay? Really? Did the guards assault you? Is that why you’ve got no clothes and you’re all scratched up?”
“Nope. Seriously, I’m fine. But Amy—”
Sasha’s eyes widen. “And can I just say this? You smell…really weird, girl. Like garbage and something else. Were you out scavenging and you got robbed? I mean, you smell like you were scavenging, but you’ve been gone for days and no one scavenges naked.”
I give Sasha a weary smile and take the water from her. I intend to only take a sip…and end up downing the entire thing. I’m completely dehydrated, and the feverish feeling is growing. The wound on my neck is bothering me. Actually, everything is bothering me at the moment, from the rough feeling of my blankets to the way my dirty hair falls against my skin. “I think I’m sick,” I tell Sasha.
“Sick? How?”
A dragon bit me during sex. “Dunno.”
“Is that why you smell?” Her brows furrow together.
I lift my wrist to my nose and sniff. I do smell strange. There’s an underlying stink of sweat and garbage from the dumpster, but there’s a stronger, much more unusual scent coming from my pores. It smells, oddly enough, like Kael—dragon skin, spices, and heat. I frown and sniff my other wrist, then my hair. It’s definitely coming from me. Maybe his scent rubbed off during sex…but wouldn’t it be gone by now? “I need a bath.”
I want to say I stink, but the truth is…I kind of like the smell. Just another reason why I’m sick in the head. Kael’s scent is appealing and comforting, and I wish I hated it now.
“You can bathe later. You have to tell me this story first, though.” She turns back to the fire and lifts the lid, and as she does, the scent of soup wafts through the air, making my mouth water. “I’m making stew if you’re hungry. There’s some squirrel meat and potatoes in it.”
“Stew?” I look at her in surprise. “How did you get the ingredients for a stew?”
Sasha averts her gaze, stirring the small pot nestled in the coals. “How do you think? We were hungry, and you didn’t come back. There was nothing to eat. I had to do something.”
Right. Sasha’s ‘friend’ in the militia who trades her a few coins or snacks in exchange for sex. Well, more than sex, I think, because she always returns with bruises or a haunted look on her face. I’ve warned her before, that ‘seeing’ this guy for food is a slippery slope. We know far too many girls who started out with one guy friend and ended up with twenty, or a hundred. They always end up at Blowjob Becky’s as one of the whores. Sasha swears she’s careful, but the bruises on her face and the despair in her eyes tell me something else entirely.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I should have been here.”
“It happens.” She shrugs. “It wasn’t so bad, and it bought me and Amy enough to eat for a few days. There are worse things. You hungry?”
Suddenly the bite on my neck doesn’t seem so awful. Kael was kind to me, in his own way. Sasha’s soldier friend doesn’t have a kind bone in his body. She sacrificed for this food, and I’m not going to turn it away and hurt her feelings. “I’ll eat. Thank you.”
Sasha ladles out a bit of stew into a chipped bowl and passes it to me. “Tell me what happened. You’ve been gone for weeks, and we’ve been worried sick. Amy said she went and visited Tucker, asking about you. He told her that the militia had you, so she went to go ask them what happened.”
My stomach flips uneasily. “When was this?”
“Two days ago.” Sasha gnaws on her lip, giving me a worried look. “I asked around, but I didn’t get anywhere.”
“It’s okay,” I say, even though it’s not. It’s normal for me and Sasha to disappear overnight at times, me on scavenge runs and Sasha with her friend. But Amy? Amy always waits here at home. Her leg’s bad, and she can’t walk far without it hurting. For her to be gone two days is…bad. I gulp down my food. I have to go find her. “She talked to Tucker, huh? That fucking bastard.”
Sasha looks confused, cradling her bowl. “What did he do?”
“He sold me out to the militia, that’s what.” I chew angrily, determined to eat quickly. I won’t think about the fact that the meat’s a little spoiled or that it’s spread so thin that you can barely taste it in the broth. I won’t think about the fact that I’ve had fresh meat with Kael every night. He betrayed me. I focus on Sasha instead. “I brought some stuff to Tucker to sell, and he had the militia waiting when I got there. Bastard sold me out to save his own skin.” At Sasha’s dismayed gasp, I go on. “The militia arrested me and locked me up for over a week, deciding what to do with me. Then they put me on trial in front of the mayor, and you can guess how that went.”
Her jaw tightens and she frowns. “That fat hypocrite?”
“Yup. Sitting there using a laptop, too. He had the nerve to look me in the eye and tell me that scavenging was bad and I shouldn’t do it, all the while using scavenged equipment. He’s a piece of shit. Anyhow.” I shiver and set down my empty bowl, dragging my blankets closer. “He decided I should be permanently exiled.”
Sasha sucks in a breath of alarm.
“It gets worse,” I tell her. “The militia had a different idea.”