Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 86059 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 430(@200wpm)___ 344(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86059 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 430(@200wpm)___ 344(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Everyone but me. I can’t stop shaking.
I thought I’d gotten away but he found me. He followed me—hours later—back to the fort. He came looking for me.
Oh god. I’m so fucked.
I avoid the dinner bell later that night, pretending to have cramps when Jenny comes in and checks on me. She knows it’s not like me to miss a meal. I’m usually the first one out there, determined to get my fair share. But I just give her a fake-pained smile and clutch my stomach, and continue hiding in my bunk.
Today needs to go away. It’s a bad dream, I tell myself. I’m safe. I won’t go back to that particular area again for scavenging missions. I’ll go to a different section. I’ll ask to look north every time, tell them there’s certain things I need to repair bicycles and I want to focus my efforts there.
If they don’t let me…I guess I can leave the program. Go back to my bunk on the floor of Tinker’s shop and back to scrounging and repairs for a few meals. I’ll hate it, but I’ve hated a lot of my choices lately.
All I know is that I can’t go back out again.
That dragon was different than the ones that surround the fort. Those gray-eyed zombies might as well be statues for all that they respond. They sit on the walls and ignore us as if we’re nothing, and it’s easy to forget that they’re there. That they’re the enemy.
I can’t forget now. When I close my eyes, I see the whirling eyes of the dragon mere feet away from me, his gaze a madness of black and gold. It focused on me. He saw me. I’m going to see that haunting gaze in my nightmares. I can’t forget how close I was to his massive maw, the gaping jaws, the razor sharp teeth.
I touch my scars, remembering the agony of my first encounter with a dragon. Of one hand, trapped under a concrete wall that had fallen forward, my other desperately trying to hold my bleeding face together.
I was lucky to escape with just a mangled face and half an arm last time. I know if I meet a dragon again, I won’t be so lucky. Most aren’t.
Even so, I can’t stop thinking about how…terrifyingly magnificent he was. The lethal grace of him as he stretched in front of me. The hot whiff of his breath as he yawned, catlike, as if I’d woken him from his nap. The sheer magnitude of his size. He was beautiful in the way that a cobra was beautiful, and both are deadly to anyone that gets near.
Maybe he won’t remember that he saw me, I hope against hope. But the tickle of smoke that hangs in the air tells me otherwise. It took him a few hours, but he found me. He followed me back to the fort. He knows who I am and where I came from.
I…can’t go back out again. Not without risking my life. I have to quit the program. Even as it occurs to me, the thought fills me with grief. I have to leave behind my friends, Manda, Jenny, even Kristi, who says nothing but is a comforting presence nearby. I have to leave behind a structured day and regular meals and knowing that I’m safe in my bunk and no one will grab me and try to force me. It’s not perfect, this strange program—I have to turn over my panties and let strangers look at my body. I have to endure the leers and comments of men like Brady.
But that’s all they are. Leers and comments. It could be so much worse. I’ve seen so much worse. The only reason it hasn’t been so much worse for me is because of my face and my arm. Eventually that’s not going to stop someone, and then I don’t know what I’ll do. I won’t have the protection of the militia for being in their weird little program.
Even Tinker hinted that I’d have to “win him over” if I came crawling back. I shudder. What other options do I have, though? I sit up, sick with the realization that I can’t stay. I’m going to have to find some other alternative. Everyone in the program goes out beyond the protective walls of Fort Dallas. Every day.
They won’t let me be the only girl in the program to stay inside the fort.
I glance around the room, mentally packing my things. I can take my shoes. Those were mine before I came here. Most of my clothes will have to stay, because they belong to the program. Maybe—
An alarm bell rings. A different one.
It’s the morning bell that prompts a line-up of all the women in the program.
My mouth goes dry and there’s a knot in my throat. It’s after dinner. There’s no reason to ring the morning bell now. They’re calling us together, and I can just guess what this is for. I hesitate, wanting to just run away and never come back, but I’ll be caught. I have no choice but to go out with the others and see what’s going on.