Anywhere But Here (The Starborn Ascension) (27 page)

The thoughts leave my mind instantly as I open my eyes. It isn’t true. Townspeople kill outsiders all the time if they think it will better serve them. Regardless, it makes me feel more at ease.
 

The door opens wide and beardy flips on the light, blinding me and sending a surge of pain through my head. Through squints I can see two men at his side, both carrying guns. Beardy seems unarmed but he undoubtedly has a knife or something.
 

The light shows me that there is a table in front of me with a chair on the other side. Beardy scoots the chair out and sits across from me, a large stupid smile spread across his face.
 

“I’m glad to see that you’re awake,” he says. “Would you like some water?”

“I’d like you to explain why you knocked me out and tied me to a chair. Then I would like you to kill yourself and burn for eternity,” I say with as much callousness as I can muster.
 

Beardy turns to his men and waves them away. They close the door behind them leaving only the two of us in the room.
 

“My name is Stephen,” he says.

“I don’t care.”

“What is your name?”

“Bill,” I say.
 

Stephen is stoned-faced. He stares into my eyes for a long moment before turning his face down to look at the table. His fingers tap the smooth surface and his knee moves up and down as if he’s already getting frustrated.
 

“You know if you don’t tell me the truth, I can make your life very miserable,” he says. “You know what we raiders are capable of.”

I have to keep myself from smiling. Stephen is no more a raider than I am, but I know he’s got to try and keep his edge. Next, he’s going to threaten to kill me or torture me.
 

“What were you doing in the hospital, Bill?” He says
Bill
very slowly as if to tell me that he will play my little game for a beat.
 

“I already told you,” I say.
 

He nods. “Yes, well, you told me two things. First, you were going in for supplies, then you told me that you were looking for someone.”

“Can’t it be both?” I ask.
 

“Why are you looking for Jessi Paxton?” he asks.
 

“Why? You know her?”

“I’m asking the questions,” he says.
 

“So am I.”

“You don’t have the right.”

“Neither do you.”

“You were trespassing on our territory.”

“There are no more territories.”

Stephen’s face is turning red beneath his beard. “I didn’t come in here to play games.”

“No, you came in here to intimidate me, but you won’t get that chance. I’m not afraid of you.”

He stares at me for a moment, his eyebrows lowered as if he’s studying what I just said. “No,” he says. “You aren’t afraid of me. I see that clearly.”

“Why don’t you just let me go?” I ask. “I didn’t do anything to disrupt your livelihood. All I did was take a file.”

“Yes, and that’s what I am curious about,” he says. “Had you come out with syringes or medicine, I might have let you go, but the file intrigues me.”

“Lies, Stephen,” I say with a clenched jaw. “Raiders never let someone go. If you are true to what you claim then you would have just killed me and taken my stuff. Truth is, you or someone above you runs the village or town where we now sit. You’re trying to scare me to get some truth out of me because you saw that I was alone. And if I’m a woman and alone, I
must
be scared already, so why not tie me to a chair, take my shoes, and tell me you’re a raider?”

“You speak as if you know everything, yet you woke up in a drafty, cold room, tied to a chair,” he says. “You’re not in a position to dictate to me.”

“Neither are you,” I say. “So let’s be through with this. Either be the raider and shoot me, rape me, whatever you want to do, or be the regular surviving townsperson and let me go, or kill me to make you and your people feel safer.”

“Why were you looking for Jessi Paxton?” he asks.
 

“I wasn’t…just pulled a random file from the maternity ward, hoping for a good read.”

“If you want to be released, you’re going to talk,” he says. “So, maybe I’m not a bandit, maybe I’m not going to kill you, but that doesn’t mean I won’t leave you in this room until you’re ready to talk.”

“Good,” I say, barely above a whisper. “At least I will be safe.”

Stephen leans forward and rests his hands on the table. He’s wearing a gold wedding band, so he’s either still married or can’t let go of the fact that his wife has long since died. “You will talk to us eventually,” he says. “Why not save yourself the trouble?”

“What would your wife think about you tying me up and leaving me in here?” I ask. “What if it was her sitting in this chair?”

He looks slightly confused.
 

“You wouldn’t want her sitting here with rope so tight against her wrists that she’s lost feeling in her fingers, would you? Wouldn’t you want to kill the man that did that to her? The man that hit her in the head, tied her up and stole her shoes? The man that left her in the dark until she told him something useful?”

Stephen sat back in his chair, studying me. “You make a good point, Bill. I would want to kill whoever did that to her. I would probably tie him down and cut off each of his fingers and toes. I would cut him open and make him bleed for hours. I would rip his scalp, cut out his tongue.” He speaks with such calm ferocity as though he has planned this out long before he met me.
 

For the first time, I have no reply.
 

“What is your name?” he asks again but with the same calm voice that just described a man’s torture.
 

“Remi,” I say.
 

“Now
that’s
more believable. Why do you have a file on Jessi Paxton?”

“She is someone that I met in college,” I say.
 

“Sure, but what good does this file do for you? I highly doubt you would go into a hospital full of greyskins alone because you were hit with an overwhelming sense of nostalgia.”

“I’m from a place called Crestwood,” I tell him.
 

“I’ve heard of Crestwood.”

“The leader there is Robert Paxton. His daughter’s name is Jessi. He sent me to look for her.” Of course, I purposefully leave out the fact that I was banished from Crestwood and that the only way I could come back is to give him some information about his missing daughter.
 

“Alone?”

I nod. “He hasn’t seen her in four years. I knew she was pregnant because I knew her in college. The hospital was a shot in the dark, but it’s a lead. And apparently you know her.”

“I’ve never met her,” he says. I don’t expect it, but I feel disappointed that he doesn’t know her. How much more would have Paxton welcomed me if I were to bring him his daughter in the flesh rather than just some paper that said she had a baby?

“Then why are you so curious about what I’m doing?” I ask.
 

Stephen scoots his chair back and stands, walking around the table and behind me. I hear him pull out a knife and I close my eyes.
Maybe he is psycho enough to do something to me.
He doesn’t cut me; rather he cuts the ropes at my wrist and I feel an instant relief in my hands. I pull them up and rub at them, trying to get blood flowing to my fingers again. Stephen then walks to the door on the other side of the room and whispers to one of the guards.
 

“Get her shoes and coat,” he says, thinking that he speaks softly enough that I can’t hear him.
 

He closes the door and sits back down in the chair across from me. “You were right about us being in a town. Elkhorn, to be specific. However, we have isolated ourselves to a much smaller part of the city away from the University.”

“Isn’t it a bit dangerous to have a town or village in the Epicenter?”
 

Stephen smiles at me. “Some might think so, but we have our ways of coping. The danger may have started here, but there are much more dangerous places to be. And since so many people think the way you do, many don’t even think to loot for supplies around here, so we get, or got, most of the supplies for ourselves.”

“I see you haven’t cleared the hospital yet,” I say.
 

“We go in as needed,” he says. “We are a small group. We are tactical…smart.”

“How many people?” I ask.
 

“Just over fifty.”

“Are you their leader?”

“We don’t really have a leader.”

“Do they look to you for leadership?”

A pause. “Yes.”

The door opens and the man that hit me in the head comes in with my coat and shoes. He places them on the table in front me and then leaves the room without a word.
 

“Are we going somewhere?”

Stephen nods. “We’re taking a walk.”

“I want my guns,” I say.
 

“You mean the ones without any bullets?”

“There was one left.”

He lets out a laugh and stands. “And why do you think I’m going to let you have that?”

I don’t say anything as I pull on my shoes and coat. He leads me out of the room and into a hallway with brown wood paneling, cracked and water-damaged. The place looks to be an old office building. I glance into one of the rooms and see a bunch of old computers in their cubicles. I shake my head as I think about the people that might have worked here long ago - how everything used to be about work. It
was
a fight for survival, just not in the same way we face it today.

We reach the end of the hallway and walk out a door that leads into a wide open parking lot. It’s not raining as I expected, but the clouds are dark and heavy. To my left are barriers of trucks, tires and wooden pallets that make up the perimeter wall. To my right I see a group of children playing some version of tag. I can’t help but smile, not because of the children, but because my unique ability had given me the upper hand once again.
 

Stephen leads me through an alley, past another building until we come to another parking lot. This one has a protective wall at the other end and people are spread all about, talking with each other, laughing. Some are playing games, others have made fires and they sit hunched over a warm cup of coffee.
 

“These are my people,” Stephen says. A few of them look up at me and when they notice that I’m a newcomer, they stop what they are doing and stare.
 

I try not to look at them, and instead, I turn to Stephen. “What do you want with me?” I ask. “Why are you showing me these people?”

There is someone I would like you to meet,” he says.
 

We walk across the parking lot, with all eyes seemingly on me as we cross. He leads me to another building and opens the door for me. We walk down a hallway until we reach a room. Inside there is a woman sitting at a desk. She wears a headset connected to a radio transceiver. Every couple of seconds she relays a call.
 

“Red Falcon this is Home Base, do you copy? Red Falcon, please respond.” She looks up at us and smiles, but then her face turns suddenly serious.

“Still unable to reach them?” Stephen asks.
 

She nods. “I don’t know what could have happened.” I can sense the fear in her voice.
 

“I want you to keep trying,” Stephen says.
 

“I didn’t plan on stopping,” she says. She looks at me for a moment. “Who is this?”

“I wanted to introduce to you our newest friend,” Stephen says looking at me, his eyes warning me not to contradict him.
 

“Her name is Remi.” He turns to me. “Remi, this is Lydia.”

“Pleased to meet you,” I say slowly. I start to reach out my hand but think better of it.
 

“We found her at the hospital,” he continues. “She was looking for an old friend named Jessi Paxton.”

Lydia’s face goes from narrowed eyes to wide eyes, her mouth gaping open. Then without warning, her mouth closes and she seems to be snarling at me. “You aren’t going to take her. I won’t let you!”

“Calm down, calm down,” Stephen says, holding up his hands. “She’s not taking anybody. I just wanted her to meet you.”

“Why are you looking for Jessi Paxton?” she asks.
 

I look at Stephen and he just nods for me to tell her. “Her father sent me to look for her. That’s when I came across Stephen and some of your friends. One of them’s a real jerk," I say, rubbing the back of my head.

“So, you’re wanting to take her from me?” Lydia asks, tears filling her eyes.
 

“What are you talking about?” I ask. “Jessi is here? She’s alive?”

“Auntie!” The voice behind me is so sweet sounding, so innocent, like something that could have never been born of this world. “Can I go outside?” I turn to see a tiny little girl, barely reaching a height above my knee. She’s wearing a ruffled dress and her bright, blonde hair is pinned back into little pigtails.

“Not right now, Evie,” Lydia says.
 

“Evie?” I say. I squat down to look at the little girl in front of me.
 

Her blue eyes study mine and she smiles. “Who are you?” she asks.
 

“I’m Remi,” I tell her. “Your name is Evie?”

She nods emphatically like she is proud of nothing more.
 

“Short for Evelyn?” I ask, turning my head toward Stephen and then to Lydia.
 

“You can’t take her,” Lydia says, now standing. “She’s been my baby since…since the day it all started.”

I hadn’t planned on taking anyone, but what better opportunity for me than to bring Paxton his granddaughter? He would welcome me in without question. All would be made right. All would be forgiven. I would demand to be a soldier. Not just a soldier, but a commander. Paxton might even ask me to be an elder. This little girl is all the security I need.
 

“But her grandfather is still alive,” I say. “He runs a town not too far from here.”