The Survivors: Book One

She could hear them snickering as she pulled the keys from the ignition with trembling hands, and she stuffed them up under the dash. Hopefully the jumble of wires would hide the keys long enough to buy her a head start if fate gave her the chance to run…although she wasn't sure she would. There was too much hate to just scurry away now.

"Yes, in the snow! Come on!"

Melvin opened the side door, and Sam quickly began pulling on her flats.

"Get out here."

He was leaning inside now, and she tried to control her voice and pounding heart. This was it. "I'm in a skirt. I'll freeze."

"Then hurry up and find some clothes in them cars out there - you too, but only dresses or skirts. My women don't wear the pants, I do."

Samantha nodded obediently. Wanting desperately to spit in his face, she held her leg out for him to clamp the hated tow-chain over the raw, bruised skin of her ankle, and sighed in relief when he removed the rawhide leash from her neck. She forced herself to give him a small smile. Melvin was the one she might have to kill to get away. It would be best if he thought she was accepting her fate, so she would have the element of surprise.

As she stepped nervously down into the half-inch of gray and black flakes, her shoe landed on a slick piece of wrapping paper with a bloody Santa smiling happily at her. She slipped, awkwardly, crying out as the van's sharp door caught her leg. The rusty corner tore through her skirt and she hit the wet ground, landing hard on her ass, as blood welled.

The two painters were laughing, Melvin doubled over, and Samantha's anger grew as cold as the wind.

"Get shoes too. Dumb-ass woman."

Samantha picked herself up, rubbing at her throbbing thigh. She wanted to scream that she had been grabbed and thrown onto a government chopper, that she hadn't been planning to walk in the snow or anywhere else, but turned away before she could. Fighting back now was not part of the plan - a weapon was.

Her feet were ice within the first minute and she stomped to the farthest car she could reach- a long, brown, dented station wagon. The frozen vehicle was, thankfully, empty of remains, and she began to find small, useful treasures as soon as she ducked inside the front and began searching. She stayed at it steadily, anger flaring hotter when her nail caught on the chain and ripped off in a hot flash of pain.