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  I bend, and try not to fall over, to collect my things from the ground. I wish I could leave them there. He has humiliated me. I can feel a build up of emotions ready to burst from me. I hate that he has yelled at me like I'm a child in front of his girlfriend of the week. Maybe she's been his girlfriend all along.

  I hear his feet crunching on the ground and her giggle. My fingers want to grip an arrow and drive it into both of their chests.

  I feel Leo nudging my arm.

  The fire in his yellow eyes reminds me who I am. I am the hero of my own story. The girl who lived alone in the woods and never needed anyone. The girl who is going to free the other girls.

  The world is growing distant to me again. My emotions are shutting off. When I am done saving the women and children I am going back to my cabin.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The ragged group of people is exactly what I imagined they would be. The desperate look in their eyes is exactly what I was looking for. I pull out a map I stole when Marshall was out of the main tent. It's one of the smaller ones he never uses, as far as I could tell.

  "This area here is a high traffic area." I point to a roadway a few miles from the farm. I look at the two younger looking women, "We are going to get you and you to walk along the road there and get picked up. You look pretty perfect. Once they stop I will drop them from a tree on the side of the road with my bow. Who here can shoot?"

  A man, who reminds me of my dad a little, nods. "I can. I have a rifle." He pulls it off his back.

  "Okay good. You and I will shoot everything down there but those two ladies. Everyone else hides at the edge of the woods and ambushes after the initial are dead. We climb aboard and ride it to the farm with us women in the back as captives. There are few guards at the drop-off. Maybe four. They will expect you guys are guards too. From there it's mostly doctors and nurses. We sneak inside and…"

  "And what Emma? Blow up the building? Kill every doctor you see whether they're guilty or not?"

  I sigh and close my yes, "No one asked you for help."

  I look at the group of people and ignore the giant angry bear of a man at my back. "We are all here voluntarily right?"

  They eyeball him and nod weakly. He must look really pissed. I don’t care. I hate him.

  "Honey you have to think this through." I hear a sweet giggly voice.

  I turn and try not to shout, "What have you ever done besides fuck guys in a camp? What do you know about rescuing people and avoiding death? Your short shorts and big boobs have pretty much guaranteed your survival. Sorry if I don’t listen to anything you have to say. For Christ sake. I'm not looking for advice on how to style my hair." Her pretty face becomes stoic. She looks at Will and turns on her heel and stalks back to camp. Will grabs my arm and drags me into the woods. I fight him but at some points my feet aren't touching the ground.

  I prepare myself for the shaking of a lifetime and for his fingers to push in where the bruises are still fresh from last time.

  Instead he sits on a log and pinches the bridge of his nose. I frown. He is quiet. It's more creepy than anything.

  "You are a child Emma. You don’t realize it but you are. I know you've lived through incredible things and you've been alone and that you don’t have social skills like normal people but you can't talk to someone like that. She was trying to help."

  All I really hear from his sentence is 'child' and 'not normal'. My feet are backing away. I feel a sickly knot in my stomach.

  "You need her. Her brother is a genius of sorts. He's holed up in a creepy old mansion. We need to go there and get his help if you're serious about saving all the farm workers."

  I don’t hear him. I'm backing up slowly like I used to. Not making noise.

  My plan was a good one. We're sticking to it. I know it will work. I don’t need a bimbo like Star or her brother or the moron she has wrapped around her fingers.

  I feel a branch snap under my foot as I'm about to turn and run.

  He glances up and frowns, "What are you doing?"

  I swallow hard.

  "Why do you look like that?"

  I watch his face and roll up my sleeve on my right arm slowly. His fingerprints are still in my arms. The red has faded and instead a slight blue is appearing.

  He focuses on it and shakes his head, "What?"

  I swallow hard again and pull the sleeve back down, "I'm done with you bruising me and shaking me. If you want to talk we can do it this far apart."

  He looks frightened, like I've cornered him and made him angry.

  "What was that? Did I do that?"

  I don’t say anything. Instead a memory burns through my mind. A memory of being with my best friend Lana.

  Once we hid under her bed when her parents were fighting. Her dad was beating her mom. All we saw were feet. His in black socks with jeans bunched at his ankles. Hers were bare with red nail polish. She was on her toes and struggling to touch the ground. She made a weird gurgling noise. Slaps and grunts filled the air mixing with his shouts. Suddenly she was on the ground beside us. Her dark brown eyes widened when she saw us. Her lip was bleeding making it look like lipstick as the droplets rolled along her lips. A tear slid down her red cheek. She winked at us and pushed herself onto her knees and crawled down the hall. He followed. His shouts followed too. As she got further away we could see more. I looked at Lana. She was covering her face and sobbing silently.

  I looked back down the hall to see him kick her until she didn’t move anymore. He stalked down the long hallway of the trailer and went into the small kitchen. I heard the fridge door open. He made other noises and closed the fridge. He walked to the end of the hallway and looked at her. He opened the beer in his hands and drank a bunch of it. He turned and walked out of my sight. When Lana was calm we snuck out the window and went barefoot to my granny's. She made us pancakes and we made crowns out of craft paper and sparkle glue.

  The look on his face reminds of her dad for a second.

  "Emma."

  As his feet move a step closer mine move a step further.

  I see the pain on his face but I fight my urge to make it okay again. He has humiliated me and treated me like a child and a victim. I am none of those things.

  My voice is small. I am scared I will cry but I know the memory of Lana makes me strong. "I am a hero. I don’t need you. I never asked you for help in this because I don’t need you. You make me feel bad about myself. I don’t need that. I might not be normal or a woman because I've chosen not to sell what I have to the highest bidder. That doesn’t make me worthless or a child. You can stay here and play house with Barbie over there. I don’t need you or her. I have gotten along fine without anyone."

  I don’t turn my back on him. Not until I feel the soft fur of Leo in my fingers. His back isn’t up like it should be.

  Will takes a step forward and I take a step behind Leo.

  "Emma. What can I say besides I'm sorry."

  I shake my head, "Your kind are always sorry Will. Sorry I beat you. Sorry I humiliated you. Sorry I cheated on you. Sorry I killed you by accident because I forgot to stop hitting and kicking."

  His eyes flash, "I would never hurt you."

  I rip my sleeve up again, dragging it up my arm and scratching myself, "But you did."

  He runs his hands through his dark hair, "Not on purpose Emma. You just make me so mad. I don’t know what to do about you. Tell me what I should do. I don’t want to feel this way about you. I don’t want to love someone that is so reckless with herself and is willing to die for other people. I will die if you die." He doesn’t look angry. His eyes are passionate but in a way that breaks my heart.

  I take a step back, "I don’t want to love someone who has sex with other women and lets them crawl all over him in front of other people. I don’t want to love someone who leaves marks on my body because he gets angry and then humiliates me and calls me not normal and a child."

  He laughs but it sounds pained as it cuts through the
quiet of the forest. "Touché." He takes a step forward with his hands out. "I would rather die than hurt you."

  "But you have. You have already so many times." I take another step back.

  He bites his lower lip and looks at me through his thick lashes. "What are we going to do?"

  I shake my head, "Rescue the women from the farm."

  He laughs again, "What about us?"

  A single tear escapes the hold I have over myself, "There is no us. There never was. There was you and me and Star and whoever else you freely let into your bed. It never was just us." I turn my back on him but Leo stays. I know I stole that one from one of granny's books too.

  "Emma there is no me and other women. It's me and you and this fucking wolf. Leo come on boy. Let me past. Come here Leo."

  I hear the growling and I smile.

  The group is sitting and laughing about something. They stand when they see me, "Are we going or what?" A man asks.

  I nod and pick up my bow and quiver, "Let's go."

  I whistle once and Leo comes bounding. I know Will is behind us. I feel safer with him there. I hate that.

  The walk down the mountain is easier than the last time. I am much less exhausted and the fear of what we are about to do is driving me forward.

  "So is that your boyfriend?" One of the older women asks.

  I look back to where he is walking with one of the guys and talking. His eyes move to meet mine. I look back at her and shake my head, "No. I don’t have a boyfriend. There is a guy I like. He's really sweet and kind and funny." I laugh, "He has no survival skills whatsoever but it doesn’t matter. He makes me feel like it's before the wars and the sickness."

  She nudges me, "Then why do you have that stricken look on your face when you see him?"

  My eyes narrow, "It's his brother. He thinks he should be able to treat me like his little sister I think."

  She shakes her head, "Girl he doesn’t treat you like a little sister. Trust me I was married twice before the wars. That is not the look a sister gets."

  I glance back, "He doesn’t exactly do the single relationship thing."

  She looks at me and smirks, "None of them do honey. What you need to do is flirt with other guys to give him a taste of his own medicine. That thing you have going with his brother is probably driving him nuts."

  I smile at her but have nothing to say. I'm as guilty as he is. Being with Jake makes me feel happy. Being with Will makes me feel something different. Something I can't name. I look at him again and know it isn’t happiness he makes me feel. It's stronger and scarier. His eyes don't meet mine. I rub my arm to remind myself of what he is capable of.

  We get to the bottom of the mountain and make camp for the night.

  The night air is getting muggy. Summer is painful, the heat is almost unbearable. Even at my cabin I would lie awake some nights and sweat.

  Leo is gone hunting. Whenever I make camp he spends his time circling it. He sleeps on the outskirts of it and watches. Some might find a pair of yellow eyes watching them from the woods disturbing, but I find it comforting.

  I drop my pack and roll out my thin roll. The women stay to one side of the fire while the men sit at the other. In the dark it is hard to make out where everyone is, but in the firelight their figures flit about in the background like ghosts.

  Distracted for the moment with my bow and quiver I walk into the forest. I can feel Leo near me. His protection of me is most of the reason I feel safe in the woods.

  I sit perched and wait. Something scurries off to the left of me. I wait for the light of the moon to reflect on its beady little eye. As the glint of muted light hits the shine of the eyeball I release the arrow. A small squeak confirms my success. I walk to it before I lose it in the dark. As I reach for it, a stabbing pain hits my hand and wrist. It moves one final time

  "Shit." I whisper and pulled back. Quills are everywhere. I kick the beast over with my foot and pick it up with my other hand by the belly. I nearly drop it. It weighs a ton. It must literally weigh thirty-five pounds. I struggle with it and end up hugging it. The quills are slicing into my chest and stomach. I wince.

  I carry it back to the camp as fast as I can. It's huge.

  I drop it at the fire and look at the quills all over my hand and the front of me.

  "Oh shit. Are those barbed?"

  I shake my head, "I don’t know. I've never been stuck before. I don’t shoot porcupines ever and Leo is smarter than to attack them. I couldn’t see it in the dark."

  Mona, the older lady I've become fast friends with, comes and sits. She pulls out a small kit from her backpack. When it is unrolled she pulls long tweezers from it.

  A deep voice breaks the silent inspection, "You have to be careful. If you break it off it's harder to get out. Then you have to dig around. They're barbed, they move deeper when you move."

  We both look back at Will hovering over us. She hands him the tweezers and rolls her eyes. It makes me smile.

  He takes my other hand and pulls me to a log closer to the fire. I try not to notice the way my hand feels inside of his.

  I sit down. He holds my hand so it faces the firelight.

  He sits and starts to pull them out in an abrupt jerk. I don't notice the pain. I notice the way the light hit his face. I notice how intensely he looks at my wounds. I notice how soft his touch is.

  My stomach whirls inside like a tornado is in there.

  Mona and a man, who looks older like her, start to prepare the porcupine. Some of the other people brought other food to the camp. A hare, an owl and a large rat looking thing were all laid on the ground in front of the fire.

  Berries and roots are dropped down by the fire. People had gathered along the hike down.

  "I've never cooked a porcupine before."

  "Joe you gut it and skin it just like anything else. It's good."

  "Here let me."

  "No you aint got no control with a skinning knife. There won't be any meat left."

  Will grins listening to them.

  "They've been married for a long time." He whispers but never takes his eyes off my quill situation.

  "How did you find all these people?"

  He grins, "Me and Marshall got out of the breeder camp together."

  I grimace, "They had Marshall at the breeder camp?"

  He laughs, "He is a scientist. He is a disease specialist. He was never used like the rest of us. Too old and fat. Plus he has diabetes. No we left together. He got me out."

  I can't help the feelings I have for him. They are stronger than anything else inside of me.

  "How did you find all the people?"

  "Marshal freed them from a work farm." He looks at me, "Star's brother helped."

  I gulp.

  "He was a CIA tech guy. Anyway he has this fortress over near the farm. It's the kind of place you could ride out the entire war and live out your life without worrying about outsiders. Anyway he lives there and has Intel on all the farms and how their systems work."

  I don’t want to talk about Star but it's like a train wreck and I can't look away from the dead scattered across the tracks. I ask without the ability to stop myself, "So what's up with you and Star?"

  His eyes dart to mine, "I saved her from the breeder farm."

  I feel my eyebrow rise skeptically, "That’s it?"

  He grins, "What else do you want it to be? Do you need for there to be more to the story?"

  "What?"

  He plucks me like I'm a chicken and blows on each hole after the quill is out. "You seem bent on there being more to the story."

  I pull my hand away, "There is more to the story. I can tell. She touches you with a familiarity only a girl whose 'known' you would have. If you can't be honest with me then I guess I don’t really care what the answer is."

  I stand and walk to the far side of the forest. In dancing light of the flames I pluck my own hand and chest. It is sharper and more painful without the warmth of his touch. The stomach hurts the
most.

  I know he's watching me but I ignore him.

  Leo stalks out of the woods forcing momentary panicked looks, until they realize it's my friend. He nestles in next to me and waits for the food.

  I pluck and try to ignore the hollow feeling in my chest.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Her name is Muriel. I've never heard the name before and I'm afraid she is going to die in the crossfire and I will never hear the name again.

  She is twenty-three and has a sister in the breeder farms. She got taken on the way to the towns. Probably by the same assholes who stole me in the woods.

  When I hear the truck coming I feel a sickening panic overwhelm me. I want to tell her to abort and run like a wild woman into the woods. I don’t want to go back. It's fleeting but more powerful than any emotion I've ever felt.

  Instead I take a deep breath and run my fingers through his thick fur for a moment. It's cathartic and brings me peace.

  I pull my arrow and line it up. Muriel sells it. She hugs herself and stumbles.

  Her dark hair is ragged and dirty. She naturally has the face of a tortured soul. She is the perfect bait.

  I see movement to the west, something I never expected to see. It's a group of them. Leo must be able to smell them or sense them. He licks his lips and makes a low growl. I turn my bow and gauge the distance. They walk with the gracefulness of a mummy. Their bodies are seizing up from the scurvy and diseases they are riddled with. How they live through it is beyond me.

  It's the largest pack I've ever seen.

  I put my arrow in the quiver and slide the bow over my shoulder. I look at Leo and burst into a sprint. The bushes are flying past me. I see a colorful blur in my peripheral vision. I forgot I wasn’t alone.

  "The infected. To the west. They have to die silently." I don’t shout but I speak loud enough that they can spread the word.