Page 9 of Bait
ChapterFour
“Is he dead?”
Candela gave the very still man on the ground a disgusted look and shrugged.
“Probably.” She didn’t seem too bothered by it, and I couldn’t say I was too broken up about having him killed on my behalf after what the man told me he intended to do. Not a very dignified fate he had in mind for me.
“How long has this been happening?” I asked, glowering at the ground.
Candela grimaced at my question, then unlatched a canteen from the pack strapped to her chest and passed it to me. She had so much stuff hanging from her body. A leather strap where a knife and a gun were holstered, rings where keys and a small flashlight hung. There were other things, but I couldn’t even tell what they were. Her pants looked like they were made of leather, and I really wanted to run my fingers over it.
“Drink.” She offered me the water again. When I stared at it with more than a little suspicion, she smirked. “It’s purified.” I took two long pulls while I examined her more closely. She looked so different, but also the same. She was so much taller. At least five or six inches taller than she’d been when she left—or was kicked out. Her hair was shaved on the sides and the back, but she still had a shock of those dark curls on top. She’d always looked like those Amazons we read about in mythology. Powerful and brave. And sexy, so fucking sexy. “Stop staring and drink up, Brains. We need to get moving.” She wasn’t flirting with me, but the terseness in her tone had my body paying attention.
“Yes, ma’am.” That made her chuckle, which made something very warm bloom inside me.
But I finished my water like she told me to. Now that I wasn’t fearing for my life, I looked around a bit. We were in the desert. At least everything around the bunker had been. Just sand and beautiful red rock formations all around us. Some cacti that I hadn’t been able to appreciate nearly long enough, but the spot where we were, somehow, was densely forested. There was ivy crawling up the outside of the building and grass below my feet. My feet, which were hurting like hell because my old espadrilles were not up to all this running around in the outside.
A little thrill ran through me as I let myself feel the stickiness of the dried sweat on my skin and thought of Leo’s story about drying in the sun. I thought I might like to do that someday too.
“What about the other people I heard out there, were they also hunting me?” I asked between gulps of water and Candela’s eyes softened.
“Torch is taking care of that.” She said his name so casually that I almost didn’t catch it, and when I did, I choked on a swallow of water and went into a coughing fit.
“Torch’s here?” I looked behind her, then over my shoulder, but didn’t find him. I was as scared as I was eager to see him, and the relief of knowing he was all right felt like a million pounds lifted off my shoulders.
“He’s dealing with the raiders now.” That was the word that Becker had used, “raiders.”
“Are raiders people who survived The Burst out here?” Candela frowned at my question, but instead of answering, she gestured toward the body with a wave of her hand.
“Grab the legs and help me get him in there.” She indicated an area further into the building with a flick of her head. I had to swallow down my bile before touching him, but I made myself do it. I’d only touched a dead body once and it was a memory I kept locked up and had no intention of uncovering. Getting the man out of sight was not easy work, but we did it quickly with Candela whispering instructions.
Once we were done, she used the canteen to rinse her hands and offered me some to do the same. She was so strong, her brown arms corded with muscle. She looked well fed, not at all what I expected someone braving the outside for almost ten years would look like. I wanted to ask her so many questions, but I was afraid she’d get angry at me for reminding her. It was my fault she ended up out here after all. She went through the man’s pockets methodically, handing me stuff as she went. And she began to talk. “Becker’s been doing this for years. Pushing out people to bait some outsiders into giving him supplies in exchange. Unfortunately, there are those that like the sport.” She fished out a pistol from inside the raider’s pockets, and she took off his belt, which looked well-made. It was also in much better condition than I’d expected. All our clothes in the bunker were well worn, some threadbare, but the man’s clothes—and Candela’s for that matter—looked almost new. When she got hold of some keys, she pocketed those. She picked up his hat, but after sniffing it, tossed it to the ground. “Gross motherfucker.” She made a face that was a mixture of boredom and disgust.
“How many people has he pushed out?” I wasn’t even sure I wanted to know, especially not from the look of anger and distaste on her face.
“A lot.” My stomach sunk thinking of the hundreds that we’d lost over the years. “It’s not all the people who have fallen, a lot have died,” she said guessing my thoughts. “But quite a lot of them. There was only you today. Which isn’t typical.” I’d wondered about that. Becker seemed to be acting out of anger with me.
“There was no one else down there, in the holding cells.”
Candela nodded at this and sighed. “He usually keeps people in the hold for weeks, sometimes months, until he can push a few out at a time and that way he has more to barter with. They have to pay to hunt.” So, we were his currency. Now that money had no value, he could trade those of us who no longer blindly believed his bullshit for his little luxuries. “He blows a siren before he does it, but with you it seems he was rushing. There weren’t a lot of people nearby waiting for you.” There hadn’t been anyone. I shuddered at the thought of being pushed out there, seeing the sun for the first time only to be hunted down by people who saw you as a piece of meat.
“How did you guys know I’d be here, then?”
She hesitated for a moment, then seemed to decide. “Xavier, he’s got a way to communicate with Torch?—”
Torch. I thought about that tiny flinch from Xavier when I’d mentioned their friendship. The instructions he’d given me. So, Torch had found a way to help people after he’d vanished. That sounded like him. I frowned, considering what she was saying. Becker told us for years we never regained communication with the surface.
“As long as I’d been alive, we’d never had any contact, at least that was what we were told. How did they manage it?” Before she could answer, someone came running through the clearing and instantly Candela was on her guard, the gun she’d used on the raider drawn and pointed in the intruder’s direction, but after a second, she slumped her shoulders and put it down.
“You could let us know it’s you, asshole,” she told the new arrival without much heat, then turned to me with a grin. I still couldn’t see very well, but something about her ease told me it was Torch. A fist formed in my chest and suddenly I felt the urge to cry. “You can ask the man your questions yourself, Brains.”
It was him.
He emerged from the shadows of the trees, and he was there, in front of me. Tall and powerful, not exactly handsome but compelling. His mouth was still perfectly shaped though, even with that beard it looked almost pretty. He’d always been an imposing presence. It reassured and intimidated at the same time, and he was scowling at me.
“Torch.” My voice barely came out and a weird tingling started up and down my legs. It was a jolt to see him. My whole body seemed alarmed at his presence. Maybe it was too much stimulation to have the two people I’d spent so much time despairing about together at once. To think that while I’d been down there hoping my actions hadn’t hurt them, they’d been up here together. That now they’d saved me. “I can’t believe you’re okay.” My voice broke on the last word, but he didn’t say a word. His eyes seemed to focus on various parts of me, quickly, as though taking a quick accounting, but when they landed on my face he looked right through me. Then he turned away.
“We need to go.” He told Candela, and only her. Disappointment opened like a chasm inside me. It wasn’t like I didn’t deserve it. My feelings didn’t matter really, just that he was okay. That they both were.
