Broken Earth Page 4

  4

  Terri stepped gingerly around the rocks surrounding the spring. Even after a full day of rest, her leg still ached like a bitch. She stopped, balancing her weight on her good leg as she squinted through the harsh sunlight at her companion. Bedlam paced easily around her, his burns and minor injuries almost completely healed. The tiny tentacle “whips” didn’t seem to move at all when he jogged close by her side, and they lay flat now as he watched her expressionlessly from where he was perched on top of a large rock. He didn’t pant like a dog would in such heat. Between the glittering darkness of his scales, pearly eyes, and his sharp face that almost resembled a jackal if not for the massive hyena-like jaws, he resembled some sort of eccentric art born from a deranged mind more than a living animal.

  Turning away from him, she squinted down at the spring, her dry tongue running over parched lips. The water trickled out in a small stream. It would take some time to fill her bottles, but the water flowed out from the limestone pure and clean. It was the safest place to get water in the entire city. She kneeled down and scooped water into her mouth.

  When she finally drank her fill, she sat back and peered up at Bedlam again to find him stretched out on the rock patiently. He was definitely well-trained. He had to be thirsty as well, but he hadn’t bolted for the water. He didn’t even seem to be looking at it. His attention was noticeably divided between her and the landscape.

  “Come on. Bedlam. Come get a drink, boy,” she said.

  His ears perked her way and he glanced down. After a long, languorous stretch, he dropped down from the rock in a graceful bound. His little tentacles began to writhe toward her the moment he neared, his massive head and body brushing against her with affection. Terri laughed and patted his shoulder while she disentangled herself from the thin members grabbing onto her. Giving his shoulder a final pat and a light shove, she walked over to crouch by the trickling water. It puddled in a rocky dip at the bottom, at which Terri gestured.

  “Go ahead. Get a drink while I fill this up,” she said as she lifted up the metal canisters. Although they heated the water, she preferred them to the plastic bottles that left the water tasting strange after a while.

  Bedlam sank down on his haunches, his long tongue snaking out to lap at the small pool of water. She watched for a moment—because it really was an absurdly long tongue—and notched the mouth of the bottle just below the natural spigot in the stone. Bedlam drank little water compared to what she was expecting for his size, and before she had even filled her first bottle, he jumped back onto the rock beside the spring, stretching out beneath the rays of the sun.

  She was really curious about whatever world he came from that he could survive the heat and thrive with so little water. As if sensing her eyes on him, he turned his head to look back down at her, his long ears tilting toward her as he held her firmly in his regard before glancing away once more.

  Terri laughed as she grinned up at him. It seemed that Bedlam was once again patiently waiting on her. He never seemed to completely relax, not even to doze in the warm rays of the sun. Even lying down as he was, his every sense seemed to be scanning the environment around them in a way that he hadn’t done in the shelter. It occurred to her that he was more on edge since they were out in the open. The spring didn’t have any buildings close by to provide cover if necessary. Just large rocks. It had never bothered her until now. Until watching him stare fixedly at one direction or another, his ears shifting at every sound, as if there were something out there beyond her ability to see. She hunkered down more at the side of the spring, feeling exposed, a shiver running up her spine.

  It was almost worse that, every now and then, he lifted his head and gazed in the direction of the Reaper camp, as if foretelling of danger coming from that direction. That she was well aware of. Nothing good ever came from going near the camp. A smart woman wouldn’t be so stupid to venture close nor to linger where they might find her.

  Glancing up at the sun, she pursed her lips thoughtfully. The hour was still early enough that she suspected the entire camp was still sleeping off whatever brew they had concocted. The women would soon be out to look for food and water long before the men would wake. That was her only opportunity to learn what was going on beyond the walls. Her safety often depended on it. If she were fortunate, she would be able to meet with her contact and be gone long before anyone else arrived to gather water.

  She was on her third and final bottle when Bedlam, sprawled out on the rock beside her, began to shake his whips around his head, creating a hissing rattle. He stiffly rose to his feet, his lip curled back from his sharp teeth as he stared ahead. Terri felt her neck prickle and slowly turned. Blood pounding in her ears, she was sure that she was going to turn and find one of the Reapers approaching. Her breath left her in a gust of relief as she instead saw the familiar face of her childhood friend.

  “For fuck’s sake, Meg,” she breathed around a shaky laugh. “You scared me there. I thought for sure you were one of the Reapers.” She peered at her friend’s pallid face with concern. “What’s wrong with you? Did one of those bastards do something…?”

  Meg swallowed noticeably, her eyes fixed on the spot just over Terri’s shoulder. “What the fuck is that thing, Terri?” she whispered hoarsely.

  Terri glanced behind her and winced as she saw Bedlam still standing menacingly over her. Though he had dialed it back a bit and was no longer baring his teeth, he was still very much on alert, looking like death incarnate. Turning back to her friend, she capped her bottle and stuck it in her back before lifting a hand in a calming gesture.

  “No reason to be afraid. That’s just Bedlam. I found him… Well, he found me, and we’ve been taking care of each other. He’s some sort of dog, I think,” she said, her voice trailing off as her friend’s stare transferred to her.

  “That’s not a dog,” Meg protested as she shook her head from side to side. “That’s a monster, just like the thing the guys are keeping captured in the camp. It scares me to death, Terri. I swear, the look in its eyes—it looks at us as if it would kill everyone and not feel even the slightest bit of discomfort or remorse. You can’t trust these… things.”

  That answered her question about what happened to the alien. If it was as bad as Meg said, perhaps it would be better just to leave it and let things work out on their own. She could keep Bedlam at her side and pretend that she never knew that the alien survived.

  Her eyes trailed over Bedlam and she felt a surge of guilt for considering it. If she was going to let someone die in cold blood, she had to at least acknowledge what she was doing. Despite Meg’s fear, Bedlam wasn’t evil. She doubted that the alien deserved such a fate and completely lacked good qualities. Groaning, she rubbed her face with one hand and shoved it through her hair.

  An idea took root in her mind as she looked at Bedlam. She was overlooking one huge benefit to helping the alien, one that made her almost breathless with excitement. It didn’t just arrive by foot out of nowhere. It was an alien! It likely had a spaceship nearby and could fly from any place on the planet to another. A grateful alien might be willing to transport her… say …to the coast. She would be far from the Reapers and could cross the continually expanding desert safely—which itself was a terrible feat.

  All she would have to do is sneak into the encampment and break it out. How hard could it be if she secured inside help and attacked when the men were guaranteed to be blitzed out on drugs and drink? She would suffer only minimal risk, especially considering that as soon as the alien was free, it would probably rip through anyone who tried to stop them.

  She licked her lips in anticipation and smiled at her friend. It was an insane plan. There was no guarantee that the alien wouldn’t outright kill her the moment she freed it. But what was the alternative? Hang around Phoenix and hope to scavenge enough before the Red Reaper boys caught up to her? Terri had already come to the conclusion that she was living solely on the grace of borrowed time. She didn’t have muc
h to lose.

  When it came right down to it, she would trust her chances better with a scary-ass alien.

  Inching forward, her smile widened. “Meg,” she whispered, “I need you to do me a big favor and help me sneak inside.”

  Meg narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “Why would you want to do a stupid thing like that, Terri? You said you won’t accept their protection. Why go inside?”

  “I want to free the alien,” she answered honestly.

  Her friend snorted and stomped away a short distance before rounding on her. “That’s fucking insane, Terri. I should have guessed you would say something like that with how you’re cozying up to its pet,” she hissed. “That thing will kill you!”

  “If it does, so what?” Terri returned hotly. “I don’t want to die, but if I don’t find a way out of here before the Reapers catch me, I’m well on my way to dying in one form or another… We both know it. I can’t hide for much longer, and what they would do to me would be worse than death. I would long for death until I finally managed to take my life to escape them. If I have to risk being killed by this alien for even the chance of escaping this hellhole, I will!”

  Meg stared at her incredulously for a long moment before her shoulders slumped and she sighed miserably. “Okay. I’m going on record to say that I don’t like this at all, but I will at least feel better with it out of the camp. For better or worse, it’s my home and I don’t feel safe there since they brought it in.” She met Terri’s eyes sadly. “I wish that you would change your mind and submit yourself for protection. It isn’t so bad when you’re there willingly. You might even get a decent guy who doesn’t share you too much with the others. I mean, sometimes it happens because there just aren’t enough women to keep the peace, but you would be safe.”

  Turning away from her friend, she sought out Bedlam and found comfort in his solid presence before she trusted herself to speak.

  “No,” she replied at last as she struggled to keep her voice even. “I wouldn’t be safe by any stretch of the imagination… no more than you are, even if you’ve convinced yourself otherwise. I love you, Meg, but I can’t live like you do. I would be reduced to someone’s property, spending the rest of my life serving another’s whim and slaking their desires. I can’t do that. I won’t. I’ll take my chance with the alien.” She turned and gripped her friend’s hand urgently, desperate hope swelling within her as she spoke in a hushed voice. “You could come with me, though. We could escape to the coast together like we talked about before the Reapers came.”

  Meg stared at her and smiled wistfully as she gently pulled away. “I can’t do that, Terri. I can’t leave Dale. He’s a bit of an asshole, but he cares about me. I don’t want to go back to struggling to survive alone. But I will get you in, and we will both have what we want. Meet me late tonight by the gates. You shouldn’t have too much trouble finding it. I can’t do more than that without risking punishment.”

  “I understand,” Terri replied. She winced as she heard Bedlam growl behind her. She thought he was growling at Meg, but her friend turned and glanced over her shoulder. When Meg turned back again, it was with a sense of urgency.

  “Get out of here, Terri,” she hissed. “One of the guys is coming down with some of the other girls. You don’t want them to see you.”

  Terri nodded and slipped on her pack. “Thanks, Meg.”

  Her friend nodded with a watery smile and turned her back to her as she hurried to pull out her own water bottles beside the spring while Terri slipped around the rocks heading the opposite direction. Bedlam slid off the rocks like a shadow as he skirted around her, his whips twisting around him in agitation.

  She didn’t speak to her silent companion even after they had put a safe amount of distance between them and the spring. It wasn’t like he could offer any words to comfort her. That he loped by her side was enough. There was no reason to fill the space with words for no one other than herself. Instead, she made her way through the broken city, scouting for food as she bided her time. She gathered random supplies and cracked open cans, sharing the contents with Bedlam as she kept a continuous watch on the slow drag of the sun across the heavens.

  5

  Terri cursed her own stupidity as she crept closer to the camp. Torches flared around the perimeter wall, ghost-lighting skulls and the impaled remains of people who attempted to resist the Reapers’ encroachment through the city. It was a grisly sight even in the light of day, but at night it seemed to contain a dark malevolence that made her want to run in the other direction. The nearest head, freshly spiked, stared at her with sightless eyes, his mouth gaping open at her as if he were laughing. Bedlam sniffed at it until she snapped her fingers and patted her leg, drawing his attention away from it. His interest in the corpse made her want to gag.

  Peering through the darkness, she relaxed as she made out the silhouette of her friend waiting for her. Meg stood just inside the entrance, a shawl clutched around her shoulders. The moment she spotted her, Meg frantically waved Terri in.

  Terri ducked down along the side wall and hurried toward the entrance, keeping her steps light and quick. From the corner of her eye, she saw Bedlam gliding within the shadows as he kept pace with her. She felt better about going inside knowing he would be close by. It boosted her confidence so that, as she slipped through the barrier, she offered her friend a small smile in passing before plunging into the one place that had given her nightmares since the arrival of the Reapers.

  Meg’s lips twitched in response and she stepped out of the way as Terri entered the compound. She opened her mouth to whisper her thanks but Meg shook her head, pressing a finger to her lips as she pointed to the far corner of the camp before stepping back into the shadows, leaving Terri alone in the weak light of the encampment. Terri shivered in dread, warmed only by the press of Bedlam’s hot flank to her side. Swallowing back her nerves, she too stepped into the shadows so that she might linger for a moment to survey the camp stretched out in front of her.

  From where she stood, she could see tents littering the area between rusted-out cars and trucks that, by some miracle, the Reapers had managed to get running again. To the side of the trucks, a few motorcycles leaned against the remaining wall of a building that had fallen. She marveled at the collected vehicles. She hadn’t realized that they had so many. Usually, when they chased after her, they never used more than two. She wondered what they were going to do when they ran out of gas. She considered trying to puncture a few fuel tanks with her knife but, despite how satisfying that would be, Terri didn’t want to risk it before she found the alien.

  It was a shame, though. They would find it much harder to catch their prey without vehicles.

  Terri crept from her hiding spot to follow the line of cars, nearing the light of the bonfires that she could see just beyond them. Being so close to the trucks, her fingers itched to take one and strike out across the desert with it. But she would either be caught by the Reapers or die a terrible death among the sands. She didn’t have the supplies, or even one of the flimsy tents dotting the encampment, to help her in her escape if she attempted it now.

  A small voice in the back of her mind whispered enticingly that she could always steal one of the tents and make her getaway. She didn’t need to go any farther into the camp. She wouldn’t need the alien.

  She squashed the voice brutally. The idea was suicidal. Someone would notice her dismantling a tent. Even studying the tents as she passed by them, most of them were occupied. No doubt the Reapers lived in the tents as there weren’t many permanent structures in the compound. The few that she did see, Terri gave a wide berth, hiding among the tents as she eyed them in passing. They didn’t appear to be much better than ramshackle sheds. From one of the nearby sheds, she heard women screaming and the drunken laughter of the few men who hadn’t yet slipped into oblivion.

  No. She wasn’t about to linger; she would be caught for sure if she attempted to steal supplies. If she weren’t discovered by one
of the occupants of the tent, then it would certainly be by one of the men lingering eagerly around the sheds. That was something she did not want to happen. Best to stick with her original plan.

  She passed one tent and then another, her nerves on edge. As she neared a larger tent to the fore of the cluster, she could hear loud grunts from within. She paused at the entrance and peeked inside to make sure none would look her way as she scrambled by. Her eyes widened at the view of the three occupants in profile to her. A man held a woman with frizzy blond hair beneath him, his hand over her mouth as he drove into her while his tent buddy hammered into him from behind. She stared for a moment, her curiosity overriding her common sense. She couldn’t help it. It wasn’t like there was a bevy of opportunities for healthy sexual experiences. At twenty-nine, she had plenty of experience manually satisfying herself. Liaisons with men had been potentially dangerous even before the Reapers arrived. She had never wanted to risk it, but she watched these three clutching at each other, expressions of affection and pleasure drifting over the faces, and envied them.

  She caught herself instinctively leaning closer when Bedlam brushed his nose against her hip. This wasn’t what she was here for and she didn’t need the delay a distraction would cause. She closed her eyes, swallowed, and opened them to study how she would get by the tent without being seen. She couldn’t unsee the fact that all three were moaning, their eyes closed with pleasure, but what she noticed now was that not one of them was facing her direction. With a whispered thanks to any higher power watching, she darted past the tent and made her way into the heart of the compound.