Emmy Laybourne - Savage Drift

“I’m sorry,” I said, for the hundredth time.

“You get there safe,” he told me. “Or I will never forgive you. I mean it, if you die out there, or you don’t show up, I’m going to go around for the rest of my life telling people that my brother was an a-hole.”

He was acting tough, covering up the pain, and I really started to hate myself.

Alex stormed away, up the lawn, toward the tent city that was our home.

It was hard to wait, after that.

I kept wondering if I was doing the right thing.

Was it stupid to leave? What would my parents think? I tried to channel my dad—he was so logic driven—what would he say about my choice? When I thought about my mom, my throat got tight. She’d want me to protect Astrid, wouldn’t she?

I stood against a pine tree. The wind played in the branches around us. The golf course was beautiful at night.

Captain McKinley would come for us soon.

Astrid came and leaned up against me. Jake was sleeping on Astrid’s pallet and Niko was sitting closer to the road, watching for the captain.

“I have an apology to make,” Astrid said quietly. I glanced sideways at her. She was wearing my old green cap and a white Irish sweater that didn’t cover her belly quite all the way.

Her breath made a little cloud when she spoke.

“The reason I wanted to find Jake before…”

She took my hand.

“Is that I was going to ask him to take me to Texas.”

I breathed this in. It felt like a punch to the gut. I closed my eyes and put a hand up to my face.

“I was scared and you weren’t taking me seriously and I was desperate,” she said, it all spilling out in a confession.

She sounded sad, worried, pained to be hurting me.

“But as soon as I saw him I gave up that plan,” she said, begging me almost. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s time,” Niko said. “Come on, guys.”

My heart felt like it was in the grasp of some iron-gloved fist.

“Please don’t be mad,” she pleaded. “I do love you. I really do. And I’m scared to go without you.”

I grabbed her, maybe more roughly than I meant to, and I kissed her on the mouth.

“I love you, too. And there’s no way I’d let you go without me,” I told her.

“Took you long enough, but you got the mess cleaned up,” Venger says.

As if he could see the spot anymore in the dark night. As if the spot hadn’t dried up two hours ago.

The last shift had returned from dinner. The nine o’clock bell had rung.

“Get on back to your room, now,” he orders me. “Lights out in a few.”

I can’t get up, not at first. My joints are too sore, too cold.

He drags me to my feet, and even then, I can’t get my knees to firm up and support my weight.

Venger releases me and I stagger, trying not to fall over.

A little spark of conscience must have caught in his black, cancerous heart because his eyes flicker to mine, and away.

“Maybe this seems uncalled for to you,” he says. “But everyone who saw you cleaning here knows I won’t take disobedience from anyone, man, woman, or child.”

There’s nothing you can say to a man so stupid he thinks that publicly punishing a fifteen-year-old girl will earn him respect in people’s eyes.

And I have bigger things to think about.

There is a curfew and everyone is supposed to be locked in their rooms after 9 p.m. And they usually are. But since the riots, some of the doors don’t work right.

There is a chance I am about to run into some animals in the Men’s hall.

Venger unlocks the front door for me and holds it open.

I guess I hesitate.

“Go on,” he says. “They’re all locked up for the night.”

“But some of the locks are broken,” I say.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Venger grabs my arm and pushes me through into the vestibule.

In the front hall, where the co-eds had once checked their mail and gathered to watch live events on the bigtab, two skanky-looking guys are squatting against the wall, trading a cigarette back and forth.

Venger pushes me in and says, “You two leave this girl alone—she’s just crossing through.”

They look up at me. One of them smiles.

“Yes, sir,” says another one. I see he’s missing his two top teeth. I edge toward the hallway as Venger turns to leave.

If these are the only two guys out—I can outrun them…

They wait until Venger is gone.

The skinny creep opens his mouth. I expect him to say something ugly to me.

Instead he yells, “RABBIT! Rabbit on the hall!”

My heart starts hammering and the adrenaline pumping. My joints instantly lubricate. Muscles ready to spring. O blood coming to my rescue.

Thank you, biological warfare compounds—the sports-enhancement energy shot that I carry in my DNA now and forever.

I take off at a sprint down the hall.

The two behind me come lumbering along like snarling undead.

“Rabbit on the hall!” the one repeats.

Most of the doors are locked, and inside I hear the men shaking the levers, trying to bust free.

But there are some doors open and several men come lurching from their rooms in front of me.

One of them is sweating and bald, and he works his huge hands like I am already in them.

“Easy now, girly,” he coos.

“Leave her alone,” says a man, coming out of another room in front of me. “She’s just a child.”

“Shut it, Patko,” one of the men behind me snarls.

The man named Patko grabs the smaller of the two men in front of me and that is my moment to push forward.

Two from behind, one from in front, and another coming, now, down the hall—they swarm me.

The bald guy. Elbow to the gut. Stomp down on shin.

Wired, bug-eyed loser from front hall. Bash his nose in. Blood spurting out.

A bare-chested skinny maggot reaching for me and catching hold of the waistband of my pants.

He pulls me into his body, pressing his groin to my backside. Men swarming behind him and dragging me back.

I shift my hips and grab the maggot’s male parts and pull hard.

He screams and falls. I turn and a hand is holding me. Pry myself loose and scramble over bald-headed giant on the floor in front of me.

Released, I hurl myself forward, almost to the stairs, almost.

Then out comes Brett, the teenaged Union Man, ahead of me. God help me, ahead of me and I brace myself to hit him with my body.

He smiles and steps aside.

“Go, Josie, go,” he says as I fly past. I slam into the stairwell door.

It is locked, it is locked, it is locked, of course, it is locked.

Now I will die, hopefully quickly, but suddenly the door opens.

Mario and Lori are there and they pull me through and slam the door behind me. Somebody’s hand is in it, and a foot, and they slam it again, harder, and those parts are withdrawn and the door locks closed.