Page 22 of Bait
ChapterTen
To my dismay, Bianca continued to be nice and charming. We were back on the road, and I decided to sit with her in the main cabin. I needed a little distance from Torch and Candela after last night. To distract myself I started asking questions about her life, which she was more than happy to answer.
She was a little younger than me. Her parents had been preppers, but they’d done it with a group of families from their community and had been able to survive as a collective. Once it was safe, they’d decided to start this settlement. When other survivors began showing up, they’d opened their doors and grown it together.
“Did you like living in the bunker?” Bianca asked me as we sipped some mint tea she’d made—as in she made the tea pouches herself. Not everyone did everything in this community. From what I’d seen, people did what they were best at, but no one was above getting their hands dirty. I couldn’t help but think how we would’ve fared in the bunker if everyone had to put their labor into keeping it going. Bianca was still looking at me, waiting for an answer as I considered what to say.
I settled on, “It was not as crowded as you’d think.” She seemed surprised at that. “It’s a huge bunker. They initially estimated that we’d have four thousand people down there. In the end, they could only make it work for about half that many. But a lot of those wealthy people that bought in were older.” Many were past their reproductive years and instead of accepting their poor planning, they’d attempted to solve the problem by turning the people who worked to keep the bunker going into their breeding machines. “A lot of them have died, and even with pretty intense efforts, we have nowhere near enough births to make up for it.”
“And all the people they keep kicking out,” Bianca observed.
“There’s that too.” I wondered if Leo had found a way to make the elevator work again. If Danika had taken over my duties. I wanted to hate her, and I kind of did, but I also understood her. She was trying to earn favor because that was the only thing that felt like safety in the bunker. Staying on Becker and his cronies’ good side. Even with only a day away from the bunker, I could see things so much clearer. “I kept the archives and ran the small library we had.” It had seemed like such an important job. I’d been so haughty about it, and in the end, it was just a way to keep me entertained, unaware of how deeply we were all being deceived. Of the treachery I was unknowingly—and sometimes knowingly—complicit in.
I watched Bianca as she quietly sipped her tea and noticed that today she didn’t seem to be very interested in Candela. In fact, she’d barely even talked to her. She’d been way more into asking me about myself. And I really should’ve minded my own business, but I could not help myself. And we had nothing else to do until the next stop. So, I gave in to my curiosity.
“Do you and Candela—” I stopped myself when I remembered that was a nickname I’d given her. “I mean Valeria.” We were in the main cabin, which meant neither Torch nor Candela would hear us.
But Bianca caught on soon because she uttered a very effusive “No.”
“I was just playing around.” She flushed a little, her light brown skin deepening with red. “My lover likes when I get a little attention from another female.” The look on her face told me all I needed to know. “I wanted to get her riled up since I’d be gone for a couple of weeks at the Ser—” She paused, flushed deeper and then took a gulp of tea. “I mean your settlement.” I frowned at her flustered expression. Was the settlement name a secret? “Anyway, I got a very nice parting gift.” She winked salaciously, which made me laugh. “And I’ll get a nice welcome when I see my other lover tomorrow.” She spoke so naturally about her relationship. I didn’t envy her, but I craved what she had. The ease of it.
“Is it normal to have more than one partner?” I still knew so little about this world. I barely grasped how it worked, really. Their settlement seemed to be thriving, but were their neighbors? What about that potential attack they’d been worried about the night before?
“Every community has their own rules and very few are travelling long distances to see how people in other regions are living, but in our area, we were determined to go back to the old ways. Nurturing the land, taking care of the children as a collective, helping one another, making sure everyone has enough, and allowing each of us to determine how we love.” It sounded so simple. “You’ll have that with those two.”
“What do you mean?” There was no way I could suppress the high-pitched tone in my voice. It must have shown because she laughed at whatever she saw on my face.
She lifted a shoulder and looked over it almost like she wanted to make sure Candela and Torch couldn’t hear. “I just think they were missing a piece to complete the picture.” Which meantIwas the piece? “They are both too intense. Torch is always stoic, and Valeria is a hothead. They need a little softness between them.” Her words made me think of the night before and the fact that they obviously knew what the other wanted, but they hadn’t kissed. It was almost like they could give each other a meal, but they were missing someone who thought about dessert. The sweetness. I didn’t know if I could be that for them, but I wanted to try and find out.
“They seem to be doing fine.” I said that more for reassurance than because I believed it.
If Bianca picked up on my desperate need for validation, she didn’t show it. Instead, she reached out and patted my hand. “They’re fine now that you’re here. They’d been waiting a long time.” I didn’t get a chance to ask what that meant because Candela came into the cabin then, looking nervous. Without saying a word, she started closing the blinds. Both Bianca and I followed suit.
“We spotted a suspicious vehicle heading our way,” she said, her voice agitated and as she frantically moved round the room. “It looked like they’d broken off from a caravan, but it might be a trap.” She went to a drawer under the bed in the sleeper cabin and pulled out two guns.
She handed me one, with a dubious look. “If anything gets too close, shoot.” I swallowed down a whimper and took it in hand with a nod.
“I’ll shoot.”
Candela didn’t seem to fully believe me. She watched me unlock the safety, which I did with a lot more confidence than I felt, then pulled out a rifle for herself. “You guys stay back here, keep the blinds low.”
Bianca was already kneeling on one of the bench seats, peeking out the window, with her gun in hand. She also had a knife sitting next to her. She looked competent, alert, prepared for anything. It was so contrary to the easygoing, relaxed girl I’d just shared a mug of herbal tea with. In the bunker, women were expected to be submissive and stand back while the men did the “hard jobs.” Upper-level women at least. Lower-levelers broke their backs to serve the rest of us. I was so complacent in all of it. I’d even argued with my brother when he asked Torch to teach me self-defense. But in this new world, where everyone got to participate in their own well-being I had to do my part when it was required.
“They’re gaining on us,” Candela called from the front. “Keep your sights on them. I’m going to try and hit their tires.”
“I’ll try for the back ones,” Bianca responded, waving me over to her side. “They’re here.” She pointed to the vehicle, which had a small cab and was open at the back. They were going really fast, faster than the rig could go.
“You really think you can get them?” They were still pretty far, but Bianca was already opening the window and sticking the muzzle of her gun out.
“Can’t hurt to try.” She said the words with a smile, but she didn’t even turn to look at me. She was fully focused on her prey.
The truck was not big, but there had to be ten people packed into it. At first, I couldn’t tell who was in it, but as they came closer, I saw it was not just men. There were women and children too.
“Shit,” Candela shouted from the cabin. “They’ve got kids in there.” Bianca sighed and lowered her gun.
“I can’t risk hurting them. We have to get them away from the raiders. They sell them off sometimes.” That turned my stomach. Selling children. I wondered if Becker had bought some kids off raiders. Forced them to be his lower-level peons. That would explain why we had more kids than live births, but there was no time to dwell on it because in the next instant, they were ramming the truck against the side of the rig.
Torch managed to swerve away, but then they crashed right into us again, sending me and Bianca tumbling in the back.
