Page 83 of Faithless
And in a few hours, I’d be in trouble with no shelter and no sun to guide my way. I wasn’t much of a star navigator.
Shadow’s oddly poignant advice came to me at that moment.You’re stronger than you think you are. There will be times when you want to give up, but you won’t. You’re going to hold on, because you have it in you.
“I dunno, Dadow.” I could only mouth the words through my cracked lips. “I don’t know if I have any more in me.”
When the ground beneath my feet felt different, I looked down and had to stare for a few moments before my exhausted brain could process the information.
I was standing on a road. A decently well-paved stretch of highway.
Looking up, the reflective highway sign was riddled with bullet holes but still readable. The red stripe across the top said INTERSTATE. The big white numbers underneath that on the blue background read 80.
Somehow, I put the brain cells together to pull out my phone and turn it on. I stared at it so long, my battery dropped down to 10%. It was with a mixture of disbelief and pure exhaustion that I could only stare at the single tiny bar of cell reception.
Eventually, my aching fingers managed to open up my contacts and call one of the few numbers that actually had a chance of finding me before I perished out here. I brought the phone to my ear and prayed the call wouldn’t drop.
The phone rang once. Twice. Thrice.
Once there was a click on the line, I didn’t wait for a hello. “LJ, it’s Rori.” My voice was as rough as sandpaper. “I’m in trouble, and I need a big fucking favor.”
Of course, my excitable-as-a-golden-retriever cousin talked right over me and didn’t hear a thing I said. “Hey, Ror! What’s up? Haven’t heard from you in a while. What’s new?” There was a shuffling and then I heard his voice farther away. “Carter, guess who it is? Our favorite cousin! What? Of course it’s Rori! Nah, I don’t know where she’s at.”
“Lark!” I yelled into the phone, but my throat was so dry it came out like a whisper. “Stop talking for a second! I need your help.”
He finally went serious and quiet over the phone. “What’s going on, Ror? Where are you?”
“Somewhere in old Nevada, about three hours north of Carvers. I’m on the old interstate 80. I’ll explain later, but can you head west and pick me up?”
There was a pause, and I had a moment of terror that the call had dropped, but finally LJ spoke up. “Yeah, cuz. Me and Carter can be there in a few hours. You okay? You need food? Water?”
“Please…and thank you.”
“Is Daren or anyone with you?”
“No, and don’t fucking call him,” I rasped. “Or my parents either. I need to handle some shit and don’t want them to worry.”
There was another long pause on the phone. LJ was three years older than me and somewhat of an older brother figure. It could go either way that he’d insist on tattling to my folks or be down for what I was about to tell him.
“Should we bring guns?” he asked finally.
“Arm yourselves, just in case. But we don’t need the whole armory. Yet.”
“Yet, huh? Sounds like you’re gonna need it later.”
“Yeah, I’ll also need bikes.” I clenched the phone in my hand. “And a whole lot of fucking firepower.”
EPILOGUE
HUDSON
Ihated women.
There was nothing in this world that I despised more. I hated their manipulation and lies, their abuse and humiliation. Nothing from their mouths could be trusted. I’d never met a man as joyfully sadistic as every single woman I’d met here.
Almost every man I ran across in here had been confused, bewildered. And then soon enough, terrified. But at least they eventually got the sweet release of death.
As for me? I was still here. And every day was hell.
Santos and Devin weren’t afraid, though. They made this place almost bearable. We had each other’s backs. Even though Santos was weak, always looking for an extra second at the prettier ones, he understood the situation we were in. This hell that had thrown us together and become our lives.
