An Unyielding Desire (After The End Book 2) (17 page)

Cautiously, he and
Dana moved toward the kitchen, where they found a tense scene. Coop stood with his gun aimed at the opened freezer, a body near his feet. He was tense, his voice cold when he demanded, “Let go of the girl and get your ass out here.”

“Fuck you,” shouted the voice.

Dana looked at her watch before tapping it twice, letting Shane know they had two minutes left of their five.

“Come on out, and you can just go,” said Shane. “We only want the woman.”

“Women,” said Coop, his attention not wavering from the freezer. “At least two, and that filth is using the youngest as a shield.”

“Just let the women go, and you can walk away,” said Shane again. “We don’t want to kill you.”

“Speak for yourself,” growled Coop, though he had the sense to do it quietly.

Shane tried again. “Look, there are a lot of us, and we’re all heavily armed. You can’t win this. Just give us the women.”

“Fuck you,” said the unseen assailant again. “Go get your own women.”

Shane went for a different approach. “Look, man, you know the state of the world. We just want to get laid. How about a trade? You give us some time with your women, and you can have some food and an assault rifle.”

Dana looked stunned, but Coop didn’t flinch. Shane winced when two female voices cried out in protest, but hardened his heart. He couldn’t worry about scaring them right then if he wanted to save them. “What do you say?”

“Get in here,” said the man. “Bring your gun, and we’ll talk.”

Shane put his handgun back in the holster and held out his rifle at his side, exaggerating his motions to show he was harmless. Entering the freezer, his nose wrinkled at the stench. It had a lingering aroma of rotted meat, but newer layers of unpleasantness almost covered that. Waste, recent sex, and unwashed bodies mingled in a mélange that made him want to vomit.

“Give me the gun.” The piece of shit was an obese man who resembled a redneck Jay Leno. He had a small handgun pressed to the temple of the trembling girl in his arms.

Shane held out the assault rifle, his stomach turning as he examined the young Asian girl, guessing she was around fourteen or fifteen. He flicked a glance at the older Hispanic woman, putting her age around thirty.

The man admired the gun, running a hand over the stock and licking his lips. “Okay, here’s the deal. You can have ten minutes with
Valeria.” He jerked his head toward the older woman.

“What about that one?” asked Shane, looking at the girl, who whimpered.

“Oh, Yu is something special, my friend. She’ll cost you a lot more than a single gun, even for just a taste.” He dropped his hand from the rifle to squeeze the girl’s breast until she cried out. “She was fresh as a daisy until a couple of weeks ago, so we’re talking tight territory.”

“What do you want for both of them?” Shane swallowed, hating the look of disgust on the women’s faces.

“Your vehicle. We saw your Humvee roll up and had decided to claim it for ourselves. You give me the keys, and you can have ten minutes with Yu and keep Valeria.”

Valeria
called out a vigorous repudiation as Yu whimpered, “Valeria.”

Shane nodded. “Yeah, okay. Seems fair. Can I have my guys come in? They’re going to want a taste of this too.”

The man backed up, not letting go of Yu. “Fine, but sweetness and I will stand over here and watch. I want to insure you don’t try to go back on our deal. Greed leads to death, my friend.”

Shane nodded, turning his body slightly to gesture toward Coop and
Dana. “Come on in, fellas. It’s time to fuck.” As he said it, he reached for his pistol, drew it out, and targeted the slime ball before the other man had a chance to react. He didn’t let Yu’s terrified gaze distract him as he shot, the bullet going right through the other man’s forehead. The girl screamed as the man fell, and Coop was there to catch her before she hit the floor.

In the process, the gun belonging to the man Shane had shot ended up at
Valeria’s feet, and she had scooped it up. Now, she had it pointed at Coop. “Let go of the girl.”

Coop eased
Yu to her feet and lifted his hands, backing away. “Okay, easy does it, ladies.”

Shane saw
Dana look at her watch and make a zero motion with her thumb and forefinger. “Sorry to be so brusque, but here’s the deal. Our friend is bleeding in the parking lot. You are welcome to come with us if you’d like, but you need to decide quickly.”

Valeria
pointed the gun at him. “Why would we come with you? Do you think we want to trade one set of rapists for another?”

Shane squirmed at the word, instantly recalling the first time he’d taken Mina. “We don’t want to hurt you.”

Dana stepped forward, hands held upward. “It’s true. We have a safe place—as safe as any place can be these days. No strings, other than hard work. You don’t have to pay in any fashion with something you don’t want to part with. Especially the little girl.”

“I’m fifteen,” said
Yu, leaning against the freezer. “Not a little girl.”

Shane had to bite back a small smile at that, recalling how grown up he’d felt at fifteen. “Come on, Coop and
Dana. We have to go.”

Valeria
kept the gun trained on them as they backed away. When they were out of her line-of-sight, the three of them turned and rushed to the parking lot. Ben lay where they’d left him, paler than he had been, but gun still in hand. Dana went for the Humvee, and Shane helped Coop load him in the backseat. They were about to pull out of the parking lot when the two women came out, waving their arms.

Coop pulled the
Humvee close to them. “Climb in and find a spot. It’s going to be a fast ride, so strap in if you can.”

It seemed to take forever for them to make it back to the farm. As soon as Coop pulled up to the porch, getting as close as he could,
Dana hopped out to get Emme. Shane wasn’t sure how much help a naturopath would be, but she was all they had. Together, he and Coop carried Ben into the house, surprised when Yu helped hold his head. Valeria hung back, clearly still not trusting anyone.

They laid him on the dining table, and Emme came rushing into the room, Mina at her side. Shane moved out of the way, as did Coop and the others, watching Emme don gloves from an expanded first-aid kit and start examining the wound.

“Do you know your blood type, Ben?”

He groaned, but didn’t answer.

“Check his dog tags,” said Shane.

Mina did as he’d suggested. “B-negative.”

Emme frowned. “Is anyone else a B-negative?”

No one spoke up, and she cursed. They watched in silence as she worked, obviously trying to staunch the flow of blood. Ben grew paler with each passing moment.

“Hurry up,” urged Kelly.

“I’m a doctor of naturopathy, not a damned trauma surgeon, Kelly.” Emme looked flustered, but continued working. She was probing the wound with her fingers, making Ben scream, when he drummed his heels on the table and went silent.

Shane knew what that meant and jumped in to lend a hand as they tried to resuscitate the private. He traded off with Coop after a few minutes, before Emme just stopped. She stripped off her gloves, dropped them on the table, and turned away. It seemed like someone should announce the time of death, but they all kept quiet.

Emme didn’t speak to anyone as she left the room, quickly followed by Mina. Shane looked at Coop, sharing a moment of understanding and loss. They were still soldiers, no matter what had happened to them
since The End. Losing another member of their team hurt, and he questioned if he had made the right decision. If they had brought Ben back to the farm before rescuing the women, would the boy have survived? There was no way to know, and he couldn’t change the decision he’d made, but being a leader sucked sometimes.

Chapter Eleven

He didn’t come to her that night, and Mina was relieved, though she hated the circumstances that had led to her reprieve. She hated seeing how down the soldiers all were. Ben had been a nice boy, and it wasn’t fair that he’d died. Realizing he was just a few months older than her also gave her new reasons to fear the future.

They buried the boy the next day, picking a spot away from most of the utilized farmland. Someone had carved a simple wooden cross with his name, rank, birth date, and yesterday’s date. Mina had no idea if December 12, 2020 was exactly the right date, since structured time was a bit harder to track these days, having lost most of its meaning.

Lia was absent, and Mina
heard Tony telling Kelly she had started bleeding that morning from a suspected miscarriage. Seeing the grave of a young man softened her anger toward her sister, and she hoped the herbal abortion was safe for her sister, if that was what Lia wanted. Too many people had already died to lose her so senselessly.

Shane had been subtle about staking his claim, but he stood right beside her, his hand on her lower back. She was angry at the way he’d taken upon himself to announce they were a couple—even if that was a very loose definition of what they really were—but had enough compassion to hold back reacting for now.

She was also feeling a bit cheered by the cramps she’d been having, which always preceded her period’s arrival. It was unlikely she carried either Shane or Coop’s baby, and she was thrilled. Celebrating would wait until after the arrival of her menses, of course, but she was probably in the clear.

*****

Mina could have jumped for joy when she received confirmation three days later that there would be no baby. Shane took the news stoically, and she hated that it hurt him, and then hated that she hated hurting him. What kind of idiot was she to have any feelings for the manipulative jerk?

Lia was up and around that morning too, and she looked well. Mina hadn’t asked, but assumed the process had worked. She returned her attention to their new arrivals, who were joining them for the first time. The two women had been sleeping in the basement on an old pullout couch. It wasn’t comfortable, but she imagined it had to be better than the hard floor of the walk-in freezer, especially since they weren’t being raped by multiple men several times daily.

Mina smiled at Yu as Emme sat down at the table. She looked better as well, having spent the first two days after Ben died looking a bit like a ghost. Mina knew it had hit her hard that she couldn’t save the boy, though no one blamed her. She had done her best.

Emme handed a cup of tea to both
Yu and Valeria. “Like I said, a cup a day until your cycle starts. Let me know if you don’t bleed soon, and we can try something else.”

The
women drank obediently, shuddering at the first taste, and Mina nodded sympathetically. It really did taste awful since Emme had exhausted her supply of stevia, and they were saving the last bit of sugar and honey for Christmas.

“How long have you been here?” asked
Yu.

“Since birth,” said Mina. “Our grandfather built this house.”

“And the soldiers?” asked Valeria, looking nervous. “Are they safe to be around?”

Mina and Emme exchanged a look, not sure how to answer that one. Shane was…unpredictable, but seemed content with
just her as his sex slave. “They’ve been a big help,” she settled for saying.

“Coop and Owen are hot,” said
Yu, giggling a little.

Valeria
shuddered. “How you can think about anything like that after what we’ve been through is a mystery to me, Yu.”

“Rape doesn’t define who you are,” said Mina.

Valeria sneered. “Just try it sometime.”

“I have.”

The older woman’s hard expression eased a bit, though she still said, “It’s easy to think you can come back after one rape, but how do you get over being used multiple times per day by men who enjoy hurting you?” Her voice broke. “How do you reconcile letting them hurt the young girl you’ve been watching out for?”

Mina glanced out the window, easily catching sight of Shane on the tower. “I don’t know.” There wasn’t a good reply she could offer without explaining the complicated, tangled mess she had with Shane. She was suddenly grateful her rapist appeared to have developed a bit of a conscience and treated her more gently than the men who had hurt
Yu and Valeria. What a fucked up situation, to be happy her rapist wasn’t always violent.

Yu
took her hand. “Valeria, you couldn’t stop them. You bore the brunt of it, and you did everything you could to protect me. You can’t blame yourself.”

“Blame the world we live in,” said Emme firmly. “Our new reality sucks. All we can do is
try to prepare for any eventuality and survive what happens.”

“You should come to
Dana’s classes.” They were more infrequent now, but she had a feeling the other woman would start doing them again to teach the women across the table how to defend themselves. It was something she had appreciated learning, though Mina wished someone could teach her how to defend herself from Shane when he was acting charming and reasonable. It was much easier to know how she should feel when she’d been terrified of him hurting her.