Sunrise

“Yeah.”

“It’s not a good idea.”

“We’ll be fine.”

I was uneasy, but she had a point. We’d raided the warehouse four times with no trouble at all. “Okay. We’ll go next week. I need some caulk and nails too.”

“Thanks,” Darla said.

“But as soon as we finish these two projects, we’re going to spend some time exploring other towns. And find a source of supplies that isn’t in a town controlled by a knife-wielding psychopath.”

Chapter 33

We’d climbed Stockton’s wall often enough that we were getting good at it. Darla flowed up the outside of the wall like a black silk scarf caught by a fast breeze, dropping lightly to the ground on the other side. I followed—a little bit less efficiently and a lot less gracefully, but fast and silent all the same.

Nobody was around except the infrequent guard patrols, but that was no surprise. It was nighttime and so cold that nobody in their right mind would be outdoors. What was surprising was that there were no guards in front of the warehouse. The two empty semitrailers were still there, looming rectangles in the darkness, and the big overhead and pedestrian doors to the warehouse were both locked.

“What does it mean?” I whispered.

“They were mostly guarding the food in the trucks,” Darla whispered back. “No need to waste manpower now that it’s gone.”

We slipped around to the back of the warehouse. Everything looked the same back there. I moved the piece of brush away from the seam we had opened in the wall, wiped the snow away from it, and held the panel for Darla. “Ladies first,” I whispered.

She snorted softly and lay down, sliding sideways into the dark interior of the warehouse. Then she held the seam open from the inside so I could follow her.

We lit a candle and gathered our supplies in silence, stuffing our backpacks with caulk, nails, and electrical supplies, and then settling rolls of flexible tubing over our shoulders. My gaze landed on the leather belts hanging from a hook set in a pegboard wall. I remembered the hard knots of boiled leather, chewy and slightly slimy, sliding down my throat toward my sunken stomach. I shuddered and turned away.

Darla made a point of holding the metal flap out of the way for me when it was time to leave. “Ladies first,” she whispered.

I scowled at her, although I realized she couldn’t see me—we had already blown out the candle. I lay sideways on the floor, thrust my pack and the roll of tubing through, and then wriggled my way into the gap.

On the far side, someone seized my arms and yanked me roughly to my feet.

Chapter 34

At least three guys surrounded me—one holding each arm, and one I could sense as a dark shape looming in front of me.

Darla. I had to warn Darla without tipping off these guys that anyone was with me.

I slammed my heel into the wall, knocking the metal panels together with a clang. “Let go of me!” I screamed. I couldn’t move my arms, so I lifted my foot again and brought it down full force on the instep of the guy to my right. There was a crunch of breaking bones, and he howled in pain.

I heard the scrape of metal on metal as someone unshielded a lantern, blinding me momentarily. The guys holding my arms picked me up, lifting me off my feet, and slammed me facedown into the snow. On my way down, I saw that there were more than a dozen men out there. Behind them, watching everything and fingering a knife, stood Red.

The guys holding me had my wrists twisted and one hand on the back of each of my elbows. All they had to do was pull up on my wrists, push down on my elbows, and snap—my arms would break. I tried to fight anyway, lashing out with my legs. Someone fell on them, holding them down. Another guy approached with a rope. In less than two minutes, my arms and legs were trussed; there was nothing I could do but lay there like some useless, abandoned parcel.

“The other one is still inside,” Red said. “Break into squads. One through the front, one through the back. Tie him, and bring him out here.”

The men split up and disappeared from my field of vision. Nothing happened for a long while. Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. Red took out a leather strap and stropped his knives. The two-foot gladius at his right hip. Then the hunting knife at his left hip, its spine rippled with wicked serrations. Two small throwing knives, one from his right boot and then one from his left. The snow burned my left cheek and forehead. I heard shouting, Darla’s high voice mixed with the grunts and heavy breathing of men exerting themselves. Red impassively pulled a dagger from a sheath somehow attached to the back of his collar and started stropping both sides of its wicked-looking blade. Just as Red was reaching into his jacket—presumably for yet another knife—the men came around the corner, carrying a wriggling and struggling Darla, bound even more thoroughly than I was. They dropped her into the snow beside me.

“You okay?” I whispered.

“I’m trussed like a calf at a rodeo, lying in snow so cold it’d freeze the tits off a snowshoe hare. What do you think?”

“Shut up,” one of the men near her said, kicking her leg.

I struggled with the ropes that bound me, which only made them bite deeper into my arms. I tried to shift my legs over Darla’s to protect her in some meager way. I couldn’t even do that.

“Load them on the sled,” Red ordered. “Keep them in the barracks under guard tonight. I’ll deal with the problem tomorrow.”

We were tossed roughly onto a sled that resembled an oversized toboggan. I landed across Darla in an X pattern.

“Christ and Santa Claus,” she whispered. “You gain weight?”

“Not really How’s your leg?” Four guys took up ropes tied to the front of the sled and pulled. It lurched into motion with a jerk that rocked me back against Darla’s thighs.

“Ow! It was fine until now.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. Might bruise. Hope we’re alive long enough to find out.”

“Me too,” I said. “How’d they know we’d be there?”

“Probably noticed something missing. Stationed their guards in back instead of the front, maybe in one of the buildings nearby, told them not to build a fire.” The steady susurrus of the sled’s ru

I thought I knew what they were pla

“Yeah,” Darla sighed so heavily that it might easily have turned into a sob.

“I figure we’ll be flensed,” I said, putting words to what we were both thinking.

“That’s what I figured too.” A long silence followed, which Darla ultimately broke. “Well, shit.” Her voice was surprisingly steady. “I was really looking forward to seeing what our children would look like. I figured my pretty genes would conquer your ugly ones, but you never know. Genetic crapshoot.”

“Any child of yours would be beautiful,” I said quietly. I desperately wanted to hold her hand, to kiss her, but my hands were tied, and I couldn’t even shift my head enough to reach her lips.

“We aren’t dead yet,” Darla said.

I had an idea, but before I could say anything, the sled lurched to a stop in front of the downtown bowling alley. Two guys grabbed my shoulders and dragged me inside. An oil lamp, turned low, threw a dim and shadow-rimmed light around the room. All the racks of balls had been cleared out, leaving a large, open room. An improvised hearth had been built in the middle of the room and a small hole cut in the roof to vent smoke. But the fire was banked and the room frigid. Rows of cots and military-style footlockers filled the space. About three-fourths of them were occupied by sleeping men, maybe a hundred or so in total. A couple of the men woke, glaring blearily in our direction. I wondered why there were only men in Red’s military: maybe he was an old-fashioned sort of tyrant?