What Survives of Us (Colorado Chapters Book 1) (19 page)

On some level, Grace knew she should be shocked at herself.  She had always believed there were lines that shouldn’t
be crossed, even if you had to die defending those lines.  Right at this moment, though, Grace couldn’t think of a single thing she wouldn’t do, if it meant getting out.  Survival was everything.

She pressed on.  “Look, I get the mechanics.  I just don’t know the specifics.”  When Bri continued to look blank, Grace felt her face heat, embarrassment brushing her with brief feeling.  She stifled it, and sought for words to make the other girl understand.  “How do I make them like me?  What do they want me to do?”

“Oh!”  Under the dirt, Bri’s face bloomed pink, and she actually giggled.  “It’s pretty simple, really.  I mean, it’s just sex.  You just go with the flow.  And do what they tell you to do.  They only rape you if you fight them.”

Grace stared, trying to comprehend the way this girl had twisted what was happening to her.  Was this how a breakdown began, a desperate rationalization to make unbearable circumstances bearable?  Pity spiked through the buffer around her feelings, followed closely by guilt. 

Bri was another human being, a young girl with a family to search for and a life to salvage out of this mess.  She had taken care of Grace, had watched over her, yet Grace had no plans to help her.  In fact, she would throw her under the bus if she had to.  Grace took a deep breath and willed herself to coldness.  Willed herself to feel nothing, and shut down that line of thought.  Guilt would cripple her.  Bri would cripple her. 

Survive.

“Tell me what they will want me to do.  Specifically.”  When Bri giggled again and started to turn away, Grace grabbed her hand, trying not to grate the other girl’s bones together.  “I’m serious.”  She gentled her tone.  “Please.  I need to know.”

Blink.  Blink.  “Okay.”  Another giggle.  “This is weird, but okay…”

Bri giggled almost constantly at first, using phrases like “You know what,” and, “You know where,” but as she warmed to her subject, her shyness dissipated.  Before this, Grace deduced, she had been a young woman completely comfortable with her body and her sexuality.  Another stab of pity threatened the numbness she’d wrapped herself in; she didn’t doubt those days were long over for Bri.

By the time Bri wound down, Grace just wanted to curl up and sleep.  She felt sick to her stomach.  Part of it was hunger, she was sure.  Mostly, though, she didn’t know how she was going to bring herself to do the things Bri described.  Her stomach heaved, and she moaned softly, sliding down to her side and closing her eyes.

“Oh!”  Bri rubbed a hand down her arm.  “You must be starving – I should have had you eat something before we started talking.”  She slid into the shadows and came back with a grimy Tupperware bowl.  “It’s beans – I think they mixed them with some kind of Hamburger Helper, but there’s no meat.  It’s not good, but it will fill you up.”

The contents of the bowl were stone cold, the beans caked with strange, congealed spices.  Grace swallowed hard and forced herself to scoop some out with her fingers and take a tiny bite, forced herself to swallow, forced herself to not vomit it back up.  One bite after another, she finished the bowl.  As the nourishment brought her blood sugar back up, she became aware of Bri’s repeated, nervous glances at the window.  The angle of light had changed, probably indicating late evening. 

Grace used her finger to clean the last of the spices out of the bowl.  “What is it?”

Bri was rocking again, arms locked around her knees.  “They’ll come soon.  They come every night about this time.”

Grace’s heart launched into a hard pounding, so hard it hurt her ribs.  “Okay.  Okay.”  She realized she was almost panting and tried to slow her breathing.  “Anything else I need to know?”

Bri scooted close, and this time, Grace leaned into the comforting contact.  “Just go away, if you can.  Go somewhere in your mind.  You need to listen at first, so you know what they want, but when they start…  Just leave it behind.”  She smiled sadly.  “I always go to Christmas morning, you know, before we open the gifts?  So many pretty packages, and the smell of my mom’s cinnamon rolls…”

Grace clung to Bri’s descriptive ramblings as the minutes ticked by, listening as she segued into other holidays, trying not to listen for a sound at the door.  When the rattle and scrape came, it was almost a relief.  The door swung open.  Grace jumped violently, then scrambled backwards.  She hadn’t intended to, and the part of her mind that was still capable of observation noted that fear could make you lose control of your body in so many ways.

A man stepped into the dirty yellow light coming from the window, and she almost laughed.  Why, he wasn’t so bad.  He was just a man, not very tall, probably not much taller than her own 5’4”.  He had on digital army fatigues and a Broncos baseball cap, and when he smiled, his teeth were straight, white and even.  Then Grace got a good look at his eyes.

Terror dried her mouth and made her heartbeat surge.  There was nothing in his gaze that recognized her as human, as another person.  His gaze swept over her, assessing, and Grace was reminded of the way the judges at the state fair had looked over her horses.  She was nothing more than livestock to him.

“Well, well.  Looks like the cowgirl finally woke up.”  He didn’t even glance at Bri, though his next words were clearly
directed at her.  “Looks like you got her all fixed up for us, and fed her, too.  You get the night off, just like I promised.”

It took a minute for the import of his words to sink in, then Grace’s eyes flew to Bri.  The other girl was staring miserably at her kneecaps, rocking faster and faster, her face twisted with guilt.  So.  Kindness hadn’t been Bri’s motive for helping Grace.  She was just desperate for someone to take her place.

Ironically, the betrayal calmed Grace.  She was truly on her own now, no need to hinder herself with worry about Bri.  She took a deep breath, and felt her brain shift into a kind of turbo mode she had never experienced before. 

She locked in on every detail about the man, from his ramrod straight posture and the proud tilt of his chin, to the pristine cleanliness of his hands, to his almost dainty combat-boot-clad feet.  In the space of several heartbeats, the pieces had fallen into place, the picture had formed in her mind, and she knew just how she needed to play this to make him think she wasn’t a threat.

“Please.”  Her voice shook, and that suited her purposes just fine.  She kept her tone high, almost childlike. 
I’m dumb,
she willed him to believe. 
I’m no threat, just a stupid girl. 
She blinked at him, and silently, viciously thanked Bri for teaching her that trick.  “I’ll do whatever you say.  Please just don’t hurt me.”

His smile broadened, and dimples appeared in his cheeks.  “Well, cowgirl, I’m glad to hear you want to cooperate.” 

He walked over to Jen, and without any apparent malice, kicked her once, twice, right in the face.  Her head cracked back into the cement wall, and she gave a gurgling sigh, but otherwise did not react.  Blood began to pump from her flattened, crooked nose and her front teeth were gone, her mouth a scarlet and black gaping hole.  The man looked back at Grace.

“This one fought all the time.  Some of the guys like that, but I like ‘em soft.  Willing.  You understand me?”

Grace clung to calculation by the wispiest of threads.  The need to scream, vomit, run, cry, beg, anything anything anything to protect herself from the violence she had just witnessed came perilously close to overwhelming her.  One question kept her on track:  What did he want?

Again, she felt a shift, as if time slowed and facts clicked.  He wanted to be big.  He wanted her to be small.  He wanted her to fear him, because to him fear was respect, and respect was everything.  All of these things were so clear, in the tilt of his head, the twist of his mouth, the way he watched her for her reaction to what he had just done.

She gave him the reaction he expected, letting tears well up and flow.  “I won’t fight,” she choked.  “I promise.”

And she didn’t fight, not as he dragged her to her feet and out the door, pausing to lock it behind him.  Details leaped out at her as he hauled her along:  their room was part of a much larger, lavishly furnished basement – further proof of their lack of value to these men – clean, comfortable rooms were just a thin wall away.  A daylight window caught her eye, overgrown with vines, but a possible escape route.  At the top of the thickly carpeted stairs, another door opened into a kitchen.  Grace had a brief impression of cheerful red apples as he pulled her through, then they were outside in the fading sunlight.

Grace could smell a fire on the soft breeze, smoke, meat roasting, and the faint scent of gasoline.  Houses crowded closely around them, older, well kept, with mature landscaping and tall trees.  They were in the city, she would guess, not one of the outlying suburbs, probably not far from the downtown area.  Grace snuck a look over her shoulder to note the proximity of the mountains and her position relative to them.

The man yanked her along, walking swiftly through back yards and alleys, until they reached a spacious open area.  Lake to the south, big bonfire already roaring near the shore, and an open area crowded with campers and tents.  Grace swept the area again, squinting, and felt her stomach clutch.

Unbelievable.  Memorial Park.  Her eyes flew to the north, and picked out the statue of the firefighter in the near-dark.  Even if Quinn had survived, their rendezvous was in the middle of a gang-controlled refugee camp.

The man hauled her across a street drifting with trash.  In addition to the fire, she could smell people now, too many people, living too closely together, with inadequate sanitation.  Here and there, a small fire flickered and a shadow moved, but for the most part, the camp was still.  Not deserted, she realized, but hidden, crouched, a stillness that prayed not to be noticed.  The people in this camp were afraid; she could feel it as clearly as she felt her own heart pounding in her chest.

The bonfire was their destination.  Camp chairs circled the blaze, and outside of that, concentric circles of trash and debris told of the activities that went on here.  Empty beer cans and liquor bottles, empty cartons of cigarettes, junk food wrappers, and bones.  Lots and lots of bones, in various sizes, most of them charred.  Grace recognized a cat’s skull, and the beans in her stomach lurched and rolled.

Over the fire, the haunch and leg of something big was being t
urned on a spit by a boy about nine or ten years old.  He stood as far away as he could get from the heat, shielding his face in the crook of the opposite elbow, and after a while he switched hands, rubbing and blowing on the hand that had turned the spit.  Before he hid his face again, Grace saw that his eyebrows, eyelashes and the front of his hair had been singed away.

The man let go of Grace’s arm and put his hand on her shoulder, pushing her to her knees.  “Wait right here.  If you move or try to run, I’ll kill you.  But first, I’ll make you wish you’d never been born.”

As threats went, it wasn’t original, but it was effective.  Grace dropped her head, nodding her acquiescence.  She watched the man’s little combat boots stride away and lifted her head the slightest bit, trying to take in everything that was going on around her.

Three men were sprawled in the camp chairs, one of them dozing, the other two staring into the flames.  All of them were armed with multiple weapons – knives, pistols, and larger, complicated-looking firearms.  Grace knew next to nothing about guns, but they looked like the military-style weapons she’d seen on TV or in the movies.  The men did not speak to each other.

Her eyes slid to the activity on the other side of the fire.  A semi truck trailer sat with its doors open about 20 feet beyond the flames, and in the back of the trailer, a man sat in a lawn chair.  Two men stood on the ground on either side of him, fingers on the triggers of the guns they held, waving people forward one at a time from a line that snaked back into the darkness between the nearby campers. 

The people – mostly men – that came forward were all carrying something:  a handful of canned goods, a jumbo pack of toilet paper, an amber bottle of prescription medication.  As they stepped up, another man would take whatever they had to offer, examine it, then either nod and set the offering in a pile at the seated man’s feet, or shove it, with sharp words, back at the person who had brought it.

Some kind of barter system, Grace thought, and squinted at the seated man, trying to see him more clearly.  That would make him the leader.  Making sure he was visible, demonstrating his power, receiving his due.  At this distance, it was impossible to make out his features, and Grace dropped her head back down, certain her curiosity would be noticed and discouraged if she kept her scrutiny up much longer.

Besides an older woman or two in the offering line, she hadn’t seen any other women, and no children, other than the singed boy that tended the fire.  She watched out of the corner of her eye as the line dwindled and finally petered out.  The man in the back of the semi trailer stood, stretched, and leaped lightly to the ground.  He said something that made the man who had been assessing the goods bark with laughter, and together, they swung the doors of the trailer shut, securing them with a heavy padlock.

Grace’s heart stuttered into a faster rhythm as he strode towards the bonfire, trailed by his bean counter – the guy was actually carrying a clipboard, which struck Grace as exceedingly incongruous – and both the trigger-fingers.  The little man returned to the circle of light, and sat down in the chair closest to her, leaning to give the side of her head a stinging swat.