Emma and Olivia weren’t listening to her. They were too intent on their crusade to worry about their own fates. “Sure, I’ll stay here and keep an eye on Larry,” Gabby whispered sarcastically to herself.
When the brush thinned, Olivia and Emma stepped through a near wall of Live Oaks and straight into a scene torn from a horror movie.
Or Mad Max.
Olivia gasped and Emma threw out an arm, trying to stop her sister from walking too far in and getting discovered. But it was too late; no going back.
Strapped to the back of a motorcycle, furiously wiggling to trying to free itself from the tight straps, was a small white pig, barely more than a piglet. It gave one last weak grunt and then dropped its head in exhaustion, now laying limp across the leather seat.
It was wearing a purple ruffled tutu.
But on the ground, in a far worse position, a young Asian woman lay on her stomach hugging the earth, with one biker hovering over the top of her. His pants were pulled down below his knees. Two other rough-looking men stood next to them, watching. Or waiting their turn?
The man froze for a moment, but then with a grin at Olivia and Emma, he continued his rutting into the woman, whose body trembled, but otherwise stayed still. The fight was out of her. She was outnumbered and outmuscled—and she was handicapped.
One arm ended in a delicate stump at the wrist. It wasn’t a new injury, not like the burning, curling skin on the shoulder of that same arm. The woman lay very still as though waiting for it to be over. She stared at Emma and Olivia with startling almond-shaped blue eyes that contrasted against her shiny, straight, long black hair. She whimpered; a small sound as though a mewling kitten was huddled within her ripped-open shirt. Her small breasts were bared, her short skirt pulled up.
Time seemed to almost stop.
Almost.
In slow motion, as Emma and Olivia stood in open-mouthed shock, he thrust once more with a groan and then stood and tugged his faded jeans up and buckled a heavy black belt, not bothering to hide his manhood as he did. He smiled at Olivia and Emma.
The man had no shame. He jerked on the bottom edges of his patch-filled leather vest covering his rippled, tattooed chest as though to straighten it and gave a proud nod with his chin.
His crew laughed in approval.
A long-handled branding iron lay against a tree, still pink with heat, like the bubbled and ripped flesh on the woman’s arm. She’d been branded with an oversized number “2”.
Olivia sniffed. The smell of recently burnt human skin wafted in the air. It preceded a buzzing that filled Olivia’s head; a sound so strong it blocked out the image in front of her. She found herself not in the woods with a trio of bikers and the woman on the ground, but back in the basement of a house, where she herself had nearly been raped a few years ago. Grayson had tried to find her to save her but he was almost too late—she’d had to save herself. She shook off a shiver and tamped down the terrifying memory.
In a quiet voice, she mumbled, “Fight,” the same word she’d heard in her own head in her dead mother’s voice that night.
The girl looked straight at her, seeing her word. It seemed no one else was making a sound; or somehow, she and Olivia had forged a connection. “How? They’re men,” she mumbled back.
Or did she?
“Fight like a man,” Olivia answered. Words she’d heard her husband say to his daughter.
But the woman had no fight left in her.
“Get up,” Olivia screamed.
The biker looked at his crew and shrugged with a smile. “Next!”
The Asian woman didn’t move. Resigned to her fate, she didn’t cover herself either.
Emma grabbed Olivia’s arm. “Let’s go, Olivia.”
Olivia jerked her arm away. “If another one of you touch her, I’ll kill you.”
The other two bikers stopped in their tracks, and then laughed out loud. Neither Olivia nor Emma held a weapon, nor were they a match for even one of the bikers, no less three.
The biker who had just finished with the woman—the obvious leader of the group—stepped forward. He was a giant of a man with a short gray high-and-tight haircut that looked more fitting for a military man than a biker. Engraved on his vest was his name: “Trunk,” and on his bicep, was the word “TWO.”
He bowed and mockingly waved an enormous arm pulsing with bulging veins and covered in ink toward the little clearing where the woman still lay. “Welcome ladies. You can join the party. It’s not how it looks. She agreed to it,” he nodded toward the Asian woman, “or you can get the hell out.”
“Yeah, looks like she’s really into it,” Olivia muttered.
Emma shushed her and squeezed her arm. They both shook with fear, trembling against each other, shoulder to shoulder. “Then we can leave… with her?” Emma asked in a quiet voice.
Trunk smirked. “You ladies can leave, but not her. You can even take the other two sniveling bitches waiting out in the rest area. Don’t need ‘em. Done had ‘em.”
He looked back to the woman on the ground. “But this one’s my new Old Lady. An Asian with blue eyes and a missing paw—believe it or not, that’s on the list—she’s worth three-hundred points on the scavenger hunt,” he finished, looking at his buddies and winking. “As you can see, we take our scavenger hunts very seriously.” He pointed to the pig and laughed. “She’s definitely riding out of here with me and the pig.”
“You can’t just take someone,” Emma snapped in false bravado.
The smile slid off Trunk’s face. “Nobody’s taking anything here. This bitch is giving it away—for food and water. Just like the other two who just left here,” he spit out between gritted teeth. “She ain’t no princess. She was a lot lizard before the grid went down. This is a promotion.”
He and his buddies loudly laughed and bumped fists.
Olivia squatted down so she could be level to the Asian woman. “We’ve got food and water where we’re going.” The woman’s eyes filled with tears. “Get up and come with us,” Olivia pleaded. The woman continued to lay still at Trunk’s feet, not willing to provoke him.
Emma tried to negotiate. “What would you trade for her?”
Trunk’s voice roared, “I said no. She stays. Now get the fuck out of here before you two are staying with her.” He snarled at them, knotting his fists into two huge balls, scaring them both to their core as he stood his ground over the woman.
Olivia gazed around at the three men and their campsite. Other than three nearly naked motorcycles—none of them sporting saddlebags—they had very little gear. A small campfire held a pot. Several empty beer bottles and food cans lay discarded beside a clear sack filled with water bottles. As far as she could see, they didn’t have weapons either. The other two bikers look amused and not prepared for anything other than complete obedience to their leader.
She looked again at the woman on the ground and thought she saw a tiny glimmer of hope in her eyes as she stared back at Olivia, so she stood and took a deep breath and squeezed Emma’s hand, and whispered almost silently, hoping Emma could hear her, “Fight like a man, little sister.”
She turned and put her hands up to cup her mouth. She screamed at the top of her lungs, “Gabby! It’s a pig! Come shoot it! Hurry!”
18
JAKE LOOKED up in shock at Nick who had appeared out of thin air, standing tall and ready with his rifle pointed at the man on the ground. The other two mechanics ran up and slid to a stop, staring with wide eyes at the mayhem that had landed at their gate.