The Survivors: Book One

"Don't hafta go on no boat, do we?"

"Prob'ly." Melvin's voice was distracted, bloodshot brown eyes on the pale leg showing from beneath their whore's grimy skirt. The sight of his own thumbprint on her calf made him stir as he remembered how she'd gotten it.

"Ain't goin' on no boat," Henry whined, blowing out a hard belch.

Melvin gestured toward Sam, mean smile showing yellow, broken teeth. He threw small a rock at her, hard, and both men laughed when she cried out in pain.

Knowing the overweight alcoholics were hoping she'd fight back, Samantha let their laughter wash over her as she listened to the terribly angry earth around them, resisting the urge to dig at her dirty hair or rub her stinging hip.

The two abusive pigs keeping her captive and passing her like... like a bottle, assumed she meant a thunderstorm, but it seemed like snow to her - maybe even a Blue Norther - and about the weather, Samantha was hardly ever wrong. Her predictions had earned her the pass to safety…had given her this hell instead, but she didn't consider trying to tell them again. The long-haired, 30-something painters liked to pinch and slap as punishments, and she was already covered in bruises. Keeping her mouth shut was a hard lesson to learn.

Get away. Try again! her heart demanded and the wind suddenly blew harder through the Wyoming basin as if to reinforce the thought. Sam shivered, mind racing. The wounds and marks from her first attempt had mostly healed, but the damage to herself self-respect never would. Not that she had time for something as trivial as that. Only survival mattered now.

The trio tensed at a close, loud bang echoing from the west, but when a second shot didn't come, the men went back to their bottle, and their slave went back to her desperate plans. She was a fighter. She just needed to stack the battle.

Closing her eyes, Samantha inhaled deeply. There would definitely be snow to start the New Year, and just before morning, too. Could it help her? Maybe, if she manipulated things a little. Right now, the two men were drinking heavily. Set to stay up late and wake up even later, what would they do upon rising to a foot of snow on the ground?

She frowned. They would take the way they had already cleared to get this far and return to the other end of the overpass - to the deserted farmhouse they'd stayed in last night. They would hole up and wait out the weather, even though they were only an hour from moving the last of the abandoned vehicles out of their way, and then they'd be free of the Bonneville City limits. It was an ugly place full of the dead and the wails of those who would soon follow.