Prophet of the Badlands (The Awakened Book 1) (13 page)

lthea drifted at the precipice of sleep, lost within a dream-forest around Den’s village. Barely aware of her nest of warm cloth, she rubbed her cheek into the material as she snuggled deeper with a soft sigh of contentment. Tranquility lasted only minutes before a flurry of loud shouts in the distance caused her eyes to snap open. She sat up to all fours, wide-eyed and still, listening for danger. The woven metal walls came into focus; the quiet of her cell replaced the chaos of the slave revolt. At the realization of where she was, her hands searched her body. Althea breathed again when she confirmed she was not restrained.

Raiders screamed at each other outside; angry men hurled threats and insults while the women among them made horrible war-shouts. She crept to the lattice wall between the pens and laced her fingers through the diamond shaped holes. Three of them were half awake; Rachel looked as wired as Althea felt. Seeing the woman still in cuffs, she stared at her toes and sighed.

“I asked him to let you out. I’m sorry.”

“He’s been yelling all afternoon. He didn’t even show up to f―uhh, wife anyone last night.” Rachel let off a sad chuckle. “S’pose it’s pretty silly to swallow the bad words given our fucked up situation.”

Zhar sat up, blinking at her. “Hot damn! You’re still alive? You were a bloody mess when he carried you back in. We thought you dead.”

Althea looked down at herself, sulking. “This is not my blood.”

“Look, kid.” Zhar stood. “All hell is breaking loose out there. You
have
to do something before we all die!”

“What can she do?” Ramani spoke at last. “She is so small. If you cannot break the door, what will she do?”

Zhar gave the little woman a look of anger borne of having no answer for the question. “Prophet it open!”

Althea glared under flat eyebrows at Zhar, with no reply for something so stupid.

The clatter of a metal door grating into a loud bang echoed through the factory, chased by the distant sounds of gunfire. The women jumped and Althea burrowed into the red flannel to hide. The shouting, punctuated by more shots, grew louder. As sparks and a ricochet flew from one of the huge machines, Rachel dove chest first to the ground, yelling at the others to get down.

Vakkar, having become enraged at the incompetent loss of the slaves, blamed their ill treatment of the Prophet for their bad fortune. His belligerence, lubricated by moonshine, had become violence in the wee hours. The fighting escalated into an outright mutiny as the raiders’ reaction had only fanned the flames of his superstitious paranoia.

The chieftain backed into view, his face lit by staccato muzzle flashes from his huge handgun as he fired past the giant machines at people out of sight. Dull clanks became fleshy thumps as bullets struck him in the chest. Althea peeked out from her shell of cloth as gouts of blood poured through holes in the metal vest. The fallen leader wheezed and went over backwards, landing on his side as a spatter of red flew from his mouth.

Althea ran to the door of her cell, pounding and kicking at it. “Over here!”

His eyes rolled around, barely able to focus at the voice so small amid the sounds of war. He dragged himself onto his stomach and pulled his body towards her, gurgling. Another bullet glanced off his back, gouging the armor.

She assaulted the cage, pounding and slapping while shrieking. “Let me out! Please, don’t die!”

Althea did not notice Rachel’s gaze locked upon him, a vengeful, eager grin from ear to ear.

Three men sauntered around the corner of the ancient machinery, as if they had all the time in the world. Two reloaded their rifles as the third spat on his back. Althea cringed at the metallic
clack
of weapons cocking. They laughed at their wounded leader and leveled their weapons at him.

“Din ka’ya diem, motherfucker.”

The mortal challenge, spoken through a laugh.

“Don’t kill him.” Althea wailed, slapping the cage wall. “Please, no!”

Up on her tiptoes, she rattled all her weight against the door, screaming as a barrage of gunfire painted the floor with an ocean of sanguine crimson that burbled through twisted metal flowers around the exit wounds. For an instant, Vakkar looked at her in silent apology before deflating with a final gurgle. His cheek slapped onto the floor.

She shuddered, feeling an icy claw at her heart as life left him.

Palms flat against the grating, Althea slid down until she knelt among the tatters of her skirt. With her face pressed into the steel, only her fingers hooked through the gaps above her head prevented her from falling over. All strength had left her from watching this man die so close and being unable to stop it.

“Why?” She fell into sobs as the raiders ran off laughing.

Zhar kicked the partition between cages. “The hell are you crying over a piece of shit for? Don’t you dare feel sorry for that bastard.”

Ramani made a spitting gesture in Vakkar’s direction and put a trembling hand on Zhar’s shoulder. Her voice came hardly more than a whisper. “She is life. Any death hurts her, even one as vile as him.”

The Indian woman recoiled from the angry glare, but as much as they loathed Vakkar, Ramani’s words made sense. Rachel scooted to the wall, calling Althea by name, trying to distract her from the heavy sobs that wracked her little body.

Zhar went to the front of the cell, straining to get a view of what was going on, and wound up staring at the post. Her fingers could not fit through the diamond-shaped holes in the lattice, much less stretch the six feet beyond it to the key. She kicked at the door, making the entire partition shake, but could not batter it down. Aya’s calm demeanor had fled; the security of her place as the most favored among prized pets had vanished with Vakkar’s life.

Althea raised her head, sniveling from her grief. While Zhar paced, the other three crawled close and huddled against the barrier between cells.

“Please help us!” Ramani wailed, the loudest she had ever been.

The ring of a ricochet near the roof preceded a clank Althea felt in the grating.

Aya’s voice trembled. “I don’t want to die, please… Please do something!”

Rachel’s tone was more commanding. “Look, kid. We can’t take the chance of just waiting here to see what happens. Those raiders are killing each other. With Vakkar dead, do you have any idea what they’ll do to us when they stop fighting? They’re gonna line us up and take turns. I saw how they looked at you. They don’t respect you like Vakkar did.”

Althea cringed. Vakkar’s lieutenants had not much cared for her being free to roam while out of the cell. Her fear of going from a sought-after Prophet to a hunted pariah made her search for a compromise in an uncompromising situation.

Breathless, her voice sounded like she did not even believe her own words. “Don’t be afraid. I am the Prophet, and you are special, rare pretties. They won’t harm―”

A small rocket broke through the far end of the factory and detonated against an ancient hulk, knocking pipes and metal bits into the air in a glittering cloud of debris and dust.

“Wanna rethink that, kiddo?” Rachel tugged at her wrists. “Fuck. Do something! How can you just sit there?
Come on!
”

The random clanks of debris returning to the ground filled the air with a disharmonic symphony of scrap. They were right. She could no longer ignore the begging of four people in such danger, and looked around for anything she could do. Accepting captivity was one thing, but being stuck in a cage in the middle of a war zone was something else. Without Vakkar in control, the women he collected would suffer brutality at the hands of a crazed mob. Herself aside, Rachel, Ramani, Aya, and even Zhar did not deserve that.

Cinderblock dust spat in puffs; the gun battle outside raged. Althea circled her cage, rummaging through boxes and testing the bolts that held the fencing to the wall. The key to her cell was a short distance from the door, hidden in a mass of gore between Vakkar’s chest plate and his body. Finding nothing of use in any of the old boxes, she wanted to cry. She felt as vulnerable trapped within these walls as if she had been tied, and slumped in a heap amid the bedding.

“Can’t you do something?” Zhar yelled.

Ramani put a hand on the redhead’s shoulder. “She heals the body; she cannot do anything to metal walls.”

A bullet ricocheted off the cage in a shower of sparks.

“Get down!” Rachel rolled onto her stomach. “Get the fuck down before you take a bullet.”

They all complied, huddling close to the floor. Aya and Ramani clung to each other, trying not to scream. Zhar huddled by the door, waiting for the first fool to be stupid enough to open it. A shaft of light pierced the dark factory, within which a shadow of a staggering raider slid into view. It lengthened past the edge of one of the ancient machines. The wobble in the gait coupled with raspy moaning gave away his injury and need for help.

Althea stared as the silhouette on the floor stretched. Resigning herself to captivity, her gaze fell into her lap. A thin strip of flannel draped over her wrist, catching her eye. Inspired, she tore the scrap of red cloth from the bedding and scurried over to one of the metal shelves. With her back against it, she put her hands behind her around the pole and wound the material about her wrists as if bound in place.

Ramani could not believe her eyes. “She’s doing it!”

“Nice,” Zhar whispered.

“Good girl,” rasped Rachel.

A bleeding man lurched around the end of the giant machine, clutching it to keep from collapsing. He swayed in place for a moment, gazing into space. Tattered, bloody, and weaponless, he spotted Althea and shambled over. When she didn’t get up and come to the door, he banged his fist on the grating.

“Oi. Need ‘elp.” Blood dribbled out of his mouth.

She wriggled, pretending to tied. “I can’t reach you. You have to come inside. I need to touch you to make the hurt go away.”

He glanced at the post, taking the key and fumbling with it at the door.

Althea made a show of tugging at her supposedly tied wrists. “No, not that key. Vakkar wears it around his neck.”

A distant explosion knocked shards of glass from the windows.

He flung it over his shoulder. Zhar jumped and pressed herself to the cage, her gaze locked upon the flying glimmer of metal as it bounced along the concrete and vanished under a pile of silver tanks. The other three all screamed “No!” in unison as the key disappeared. Rachel added some other words.

Althea hated lying to this man, making him hurt longer than he had to; but she could not let these women die. As he searched Vakkar for the key, she pondered if it was just for a bad person to suffer a little longer for the sake of four innocent lives. When the raider stuffed his hand into the armor, she drew in a breath with rapt anticipation. After a terrible long minute of rooting around, he held up a bloody key and stumbled to the door. The metal thing scratched at the lock plate. All of a sudden, he stopped and looked at her with a squint of distrust.

She wriggled and whined, fighting her fake bindings, reached at him with her foot. “I gotta touch you. Please! Don’t make me watch you die, too.”

The wounded man stared at her a while longer before the strength seemed to fade from him. Out of time, he opened the lock and the door swung wide. He swooned in and grabbed her hovering leg about the ankle.

“There. Touchin. ‘Elp.” He fell to his knees.

Smiling, she leaned forward and put her hands on either side of his face. “Sleep.”

“Oi wha―” His eyes fluttered closed and she guided him to the ground.

When she set to the task of healing him, the women all yelled at her. She did not care if there was little time. She was not going to leave him hurt, especially after lying to him.

Once she mended him, she darted out and locked the door. A look at the empty peg upon the post stopped her heart.

“The key’s over there!” Zhar pointed. “By the propane tank.”

“What’s a propane tank?”

Zhar growled. “Fucking dumb Scrag. The round silver things.”

Althea glared, reaching into her mind to understand the meaning. “I’m not dumb.”

The entire factory rocked with a thunderous
boom,
the building shuddering from the impact of a vehicle somewhere along the outer wall. A torrent of dust fell from the rafters. Althea ran to a stack of old silver tanks that matched Zhar’s thoughts, and got down on all fours to peer under them. The key glinted in the dark, just out of reach where it had bounced. She grunted, trying to force her arm deeper under the pile. With her head turned, she had to work by feel, and thought the tip of her finger brushed the key.

She shot a pouting look at the harem. “I can’t reach it.”

“Do something!” yelled Zhar.

Ramani burst into sobbing.

Althea flattened herself to the floor as more shots clanked and sparked off the ancient machines overhead. The key defied her, too far from the edge to reach. Her wish for longer arms gave her an idea, and she stuck her leg into the gap. After planting a toe on the key, she edged it close enough to grab with her hand on the next try.

The women crowded around the door as Althea carried the tiny chip of metal over; such a small thing that meant so much right now. The opening door almost knocked her over from the strength of Zhar’s desire to be free. The redhead ran straight for Vakkar’s pistol, bare feet slipping in the blood. She fell on him, tearing at his gear.