WastelandRogue (6 page)

Rye jolted awake from a nightmare that had dragged her back
into her abductor’s clutches. Tiny embers of pain skittered through her chest
and immediately she clutched her breast.

“What’s wrong?” Sevrin asked, sleepily alert and rising.

“Nothing,” she whispered, pushing him back down. “Just
readjusting my position.”

“Uncomfortable?” He pulled her close, encouraging her to
rest her head on his shoulder.

She pretended he had solved all her problems and lay quietly
so he’d fall back asleep. Time ticked by slowly, but she held her impatience in
check. If he moved, she stroked his brow, soothing him. It amazed her at how
trusting he was of his surroundings—of her. She had no experience in trusting
anyone other than her sister.

When she thought he was well back into a deep sleep, she
lifted his heavy arm and scooted out from under it. Carefully, she put his arm
down and tucked the blanket against him. He moved slightly, mumbled a sound of
disturbance and then quieted.

She waited patiently before easing herself over him, trying
not to touch. Her foot slipped on the edge of the rock shelf and she jumped to
the floor to avoid contact with Sevrin. The thud of her landing echoed in the
small space. She hovered in the half-crouched position a few moments. Silently
rising, she crept to the other part of the cavern, back near the fire.

She looked over the piles of items she had decided had come
out of the crate. In the mess of odds and ends she found more clothing. She
kept on the shirt Sevrin had given her. It was her souvenir—her piece of a man
who had treated her with tender kindness and respect. She’d never forget him.

Not worried about size, she took a pair of dark-blue cloth
pants from the other clothing. A few holes, some wear to the knees and a small
size, they obviously never belonged to Sevrin. She glanced at the other items
as she tucked in her shirt. From the looks of everything in the old mining
shaft’s cavern, it appeared Sevrin was a wasteland salvager.

“Not a very good one either,” she grumbled, sorting through
the ragged, useless items until she came upon a brown leather jacket. She
recognized it wasn’t common lizard skin as so many items were made of, but from
the even texture and one-piece design, she suspected it to be rare.

Animals in the wasteland were nonexistent. She had heard
stories of larger creatures in the east. While it had a missing sleeve and
matched the pants, not in fabric or color, just excessive wear, she put it on.
When would she ever have the chance to acquire something so extraordinary
again, in any condition?

Footwear was the hardest thing to find. While she located
piles of them, none fit. She couldn’t walk in sloppy loose lizard-skinned
boots. The woven rope sandals were so tiny they had to be from a child. Then
she found an odd pair of knee-high boots with tall heels, not at all practical.
The slick material was foreign and unusually red. She thought about the weapon
Hamner called a razor and looked around at the oddities Sevrin had stored in
the cavern. The unfamiliar objects suggested he traveled to places she had
never seen before. Did he make deals with the scientists the same way Hamner
implied he did?

She steered her thoughts away from forming troubling
conclusions. First she had to get out of the mineshaft and resume her quest to
find her sister.

She tried on the impractical footwear.

“That figures, they’re the right size.” She stretched out
her leg to survey the fit and immediately put her foot down to steady herself.

She decided she’d wear them until she found something more
suitable. Choices had to be better in the next mineshaft or wasteland camp.

Rye added another log to the fire. If comfortably warm,
Sevrin would not wake from a chill in the air and ultimately know she was gone.
By morning, he’d forget his feelings of misplaced obligation to drive her where
she needed to go.

Besides, Hamner was dangerous. She didn’t want to involve
Sevrin in her manhunt.

Rye walked back into the dark niche and looked at Sevrin
with regret.

“I don’t know how or why, but you stirred something inside
me that I’ll never forget. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to explore my
feelings. I won’t have time for myself until I find my sister.”

The thought of never seeing Sevrin again made Rye ache
inside. They had bonded through blood. In time, that complexity of her
lamian
nature would fade, but there was another emotion tethering her heart to him
that she doubted she’d ever be free from feeling.

She placed her hand against her chest and rubbed, already
knowing it wasn’t possible to soothe a broken heart. Shay’s disappearance had
created the deep wound and Sevrin widened it. Would she ever know happiness
again?

She reached to touch Sevrin’s lips and then thought better
of disturbing him. This was the beginning and the end of their too-brief
affair.

“Goodbye,” she whispered.

Quickly Rye made her way across the cavern to the ladder
leading out of the mineshaft. In the dim light of the fire, she avoided making
any disruptive noises.

Grabbing the rung of the ladder, she started to climb toward
the trapdoor above. Mineshaft entrances often had a shack built above them. She
assumed she’d find the same above this cavern.

Halfway up, she stopped. A sound of a low moan gripped her
as tight as if someone had grabbed her ankles. Her limbs began to shake out of
fear, anxiety. Sevrin wouldn’t keep her against her will. He had shown her too
much patience and kindness.

Tears dripped onto her cheeks.

If she looked back, would she change her mind about leaving?
She took the chance. The distance and the darkness prevented her from seeing
him as anything more than a lump in the shadows.

All the better, she decided. She sucked in a deep breath and
willed away the gnawing regret that had her second-guessing her decision to
leave Sevrin’s irresistibly perfect lovemaking. She had Shay to think about. Her
sister had to be her one and only concern.

Climbing to the top of the ladder, Rye crawled out into the
small shack she anticipated covering the shaft’s entrance. She lowered the
trapdoor back into place. With a mindful thought to Sevrin sleeping below, she
tiptoed across the room and carefully opened the door to the brightness of the
outside world, then directed her thoughts toward her next step.

A vehicle seemed a promising mode of transportation. She
looked for Sevrin’s steam-trekker. Not only would she cover territory quicker,
the vehicle might contain weapons and other handy supplies.

She found the machine parked beneath camouflage netting.
Near it, she spotted steel storage boxes with government markings. Since the
day she was born, the government had been nonexistent except in stories passed
down from older generations. Sevrin was too young to have been a part of the
Century Wars that wiped out trillions of humans and turned vast areas of the
world into wastelands. So where did he acquire such beneficial items?

With no time to waste pondering Sevrin’s accumulated wealth,
she climbed onto the metal-ribbed track wheel, opened the door on the vehicle
and slid into the driver’s seat. She studied the gauges on the panel in front
of her, recalling what she did of the things Sevrin did to make it go. She had
never operated a motorized anything before.

“How hard can it be?”

The red button on the panel beckoned her first. She pressed
it. Nothing happened. She turned a black knob. Still nothing. She flipped a switch
that produced a gurgling burp like water made in a pipe. As she listened, a
seething hiss similar to the sound her water kettle made when heated appeared
to start things. The needle in one gauge moved. When it passed a thick white
line, she tried the switch, the knob and then the red button. One of them
brought the engine roaring to life.

The loudness startled her. Would Sevrin hear it?

Hastily, she pushed the right-hand pedal on the floorboard.
The vehicle lurched forward. It crashed into the stack of steel boxes, climbing
over and crushing them. She took her foot from the pedal, but it didn’t stop
the steam-trekker as she thought it would and she jammed her left foot against
the left pedal. No help.

The massive machine continued to pulverize what it could
until too many mangled boxes wedged the un-propelled vehicle and stopped it
from rolling forward. She tried the middle pedal and the steam-trekker lumbered
in reverse, the track wheel squashing everything caught beneath.

As she came out from under the propped-up netting, she
glanced at the mineshaft shack’s door. Sevrin had to have felt the vibrations
in the cavern. How quickly could he climb the ladder and emerge from the
building? Would he stop and put on clothing?

That would be a glorious sight, his nudity a veritable
delight to any female’s eye. Her insides trembled when she recalled the
sensations she experienced by his passionate lovemaking. The touch of his
fingers as he glided them over her skin gave her goose bumps. His sweet kisses
made her feel special. She thought of his concern for her health and the gentle
ways he cared for her as she recovered from the blood poison.

Tears welled in her eyes and she swatted away the ones that
escaped to her cheeks.

Shaking off the memories and hardening her resolve with
reminders that Shay needed her help, she turned the steering wheel and pushed
the forward motion pedal.

Aimed toward the sunrise, she relied on instinct as a guide.
It didn’t take long to roll out of sight of the shack and away from Sevrin possibly
stopping her.

Rye covered a great distance with the vehicle, much quicker
than she imagined. When the unmerciful heat of the sun gave her a headache, she
considered stopping. She favored sleeping in the day, especially in the
afternoon, but she pushed on. Then the engine produced a few grumbling sounds
of exhaustion and quit, making the choice for her.

She pressed the red button to restart it. A dull roaring
followed a clickety-clack and then nothing.

“Well, I’m farther along than if I walked.” She opened the
door to get out and then stopped and looked in the back for useful items to
take with her.

She turned and knelt on the seat to reach as far as she
could for another lizard-skinned flask Sevrin obviously owned. If there were
weapons, they weren’t visible. She remembered the long lizard-skinned coat that
Sevrin had swaddled her in when she lay in the ditch but she didn’t see it.
Naturally,
if he treasures it, he’ll keep it with him.

Rye shook the flask expecting it to be partially empty and
discovered it full. “Of course.” She smiled. “He clearly has a knack for
efficiency and refilled it at the pond.”

She considered her next steps as she glanced out the window.
The horizon went on forever. She couldn’t leave behind the only means of
traversing the wastelands with as much expediency as the steam-trekker offered.
But how did she make the vehicle go?

“What do we have here?” a man’s voice said from out of
nowhere.

In that same instant, he grabbed her around her upper body.
Every muscle in Rye’s body tensed as he pointed a knife to her throat.

“I wouldn’t move if I were you,” he warned. “I always keep
my blade coated with allium juice.”

Fear immobilized Rye. Her thoughts shot back to her recent
imprisonment by Hamner. Did he really have allium on it? An unusually strong
scent rose to confirm his threat. How much did he have? Would he make sure she
was dead before he left her? In all her years, she had never run into so many
humans threatening to kill her with the blood poison.

“What do you want?” she asked, weighing her options.

“Why, everything you got.” His foul breath reached her nose
and she tried not to cringe.

“That isn’t much.”

“You have a vehicle. That’s a good start.”

“It’s broken.”

“We’ll just see about that.” He pulled her from the steam-trekker
and forced her down off the track wheel while he remained on it.

She had already determined her need of the steam-trekker and
a plan formed.

“I know where you can find a treasure trove of luxuries,”
she said, hoping to keep him from fixing the vehicle and stealing it without
giving her an opportunity to get the better of him.

He turned his long lanky frame and looked down at her
through tired muddy eyes. His thick brows rose, displaying interest. “Like
what?” he asked.

“I don’t know, exactly. I didn’t look. It’s back where I got
this vehicle. I saw a lot of government boxes. Could be anything in them.”

“Why didn’t you look?” He scratched hard at his whiskered
jaw as if he attacked bugs hiding in the filth.

“And get caught by the owner?” She shook her head. “I’m just
a female, what could I do against him?”

“You’re
lamian
, what’s it to you to get into a little
scuffle?” he questioned.

“Maybe the owner of that stuff wouldn’t be as considerate as
you were by warning me he had allium,” she countered. “I don’t know what kind
of weapons he has.”

“Where is this stuff you speak of?”

“I’ll take you there if you can get that vehicle running,”
she told him flat out.

“How can I trust you?”

“You’re the one with the allium-dipped blade,” she reminded
him.

He raised his arm and looked at the knife in his bony hand.
“Oh yeah, right.” Then he shook his head. “Nah, I think I’ll settle for just
this vehicle.” He hopped down and walked around to the other side.

When his lack of caution gave her room to run or attempt to
overpower him, she thought of Sevrin. She had just put him in danger by what
she told the stranger.

The man came back around, climbed up on the track and got in
the steam-trekker. He closed the door. She listened to him banging something on
the inside. He finally hit the ignition button. It didn’t start as it had for
her. Every rumble and sputter died with a long groan.