Chapter 26
Though he allowed her hands to be free so she could descend the tower, when they reached the bottom, he put the mittens on again and placed a leash on Ari’s collar. Hours of climbing had sapped her to the point of an exhaustion so great her legs would barely move.
Being led across to the encampment of the Scavs, naked and leashed, wasn’t that new. That this came after she tried to escape and failed, yes, new. She hated the failure and that Sawyer was probably preening in his mind. Putting mittens on her meant she couldn’t do any sort of work. They’d be taken off eventually. He would let his guard down again.
She only had to survive and lie low. Surviving this day was the main problem.
Fatigue wracked every muscle; even her eyes seemed tired, her head. She wanted to lie down and curl up and weep.
They approached Zarr, who’d apparently decided a flat sheet of rock and some rubble to either side made a throne with armrests. A large sword rested to one side of his faux throne, an orange long gun to the other.
“Show me how you punished her, Saw! Where is the blood, the bruises?”
“I punished her as I saw fit. Stay,” he said in a quiet aside to her. “In fact, I want you to kneel. It’ll look better.”
She kneeled on the gravel-strewn crooked pavers. Zarr had no doubt positioned himself just so. The pavers were mostly vanished, eaten by landslides and weather and catastrophe, but those that remained led in a makeshift path to his makeshift throne.
They were three yards from where he sat, scowling. Scavs gathered at the sides, both sitting and standing. More were arriving.
One long gun was carried in Sawyer’s right hand and the other gun, Keera’s, was slung over his shoulder with a rope strap.
“Though a little scratched, her tits, her face, her front look perfectly normal. I hope her back is fit only for spitting on? Show. Turn her.” Zarr made a circle in the air with his finger.
“No, Zarr. I caught her. She was punished. My slave. My right.”
“You will soon be a slave if I say so!” he roared, throwing himself upright. The blue tattoos on his face writhed as he raged. “If you have not done as I told you to, you have two choices now. Kill her or become a slave yourself. Choose!”
Sawyer’s left hand landed on her head and he scrunched in his fingers. “Be good. Do not be afraid, Ari.”
As if that helped.
Maybe it did. There was reassurance in the weight of his hand on her and even in her name being said – as if she mattered to him. Her toes curled.
Zarr wanted her death.
“Choose!” Zarr repeated.
Cold washed and ebbed through her. She tried to creep back on her knees, only to be stopped by Sawyer’s hand tightening in her hair.
“Pardon my humble opinion, Zarr.” Dayne stepped out. Sassik wasn’t far behind. “May I –”
Keera was pushing herself to her feet from her seat on a block.
“You may not! Sit down. Choose, Saw.”
“Her dead?” Sawyer drawled. “Or me a slave?”
“Exactly.”
“Then I choose death.” He half-turned, bringing his long gun up, finger to the trigger.
Where could she go? She simply could not run fast enough to escape this. She must close her eyes and meet her fate. This felt like the ultimate in betrayal, though really what else should she have expected...
Then he turned back and blew a great hole in Zarr.
Blood splattered the rock throne and he slumped to the ground.
Dead, dead, dead.
He’d killed Zarr. Mouth open, thoughts scattered, she stared.
“Come!” Sawyer wrenched at her arm and she tumbled, then staggered to her feet. A gunfight was breaking out. Ducking, firing one handed, he ran with her toward some rocks.
Half the Scavs seemed to be firing on the other half. Though when they reached cover, she saw that was untrue. Only a few were fighting back against a larger group led by Dayne, Keera, and Sassik.
“Stay there.” Weaving, he ran back toward the fighting.
A thunderous cracking and grinding sound from above distracted her and she looked up, to see a six-legged, giant metal bug walking down the toppled tower. It crunched pieces of the building as it walked, disintegrating some into smashed dust that puffed beneath its circular feet. Chunks rolled down and landed in trees that grew near the base.
A war machine. A machine from the past. Its upper hull shone in mottled gold and black, and two thin, translucent shields attached down the middle of its spine raised like wings.
A gun-like tube popped up above the cockpit head. Green fire blazed forth, scorching a line in the earth where she’d recently stood. Roaring, the line of fire ate its way along as the bug walked closer, as the fighting died. The fire winked out a few yards before it reached Zarr’s prone body. Zarr lay on his back, looking up at the sky.
“It’s a warbug!” someone shouted.
The machine halted, rocking, with steam hissing from joints, perched upon the collapsed, lower layers of the building.
Far above, in the slot of sky, the light had faded enough that stars were coming out.
From the belly of the bug several metal ladders fell, and men poured down them or dropped from hatches. They ran forward and past her. One stopped next to her and stared. His stark black armored suit was in contrast to the red gun in his hands.
“Hello, pretty thing.”
She gulped. Naked before the Scavs with Sawyer beside her – she could cope with that, but this man was a stranger. Though she studied him and saw he was a Scav warrior also. She wrapped her hand over her collar where the leash attached, as if hiding that somehow helped.
“She’s mine,” barked Sawyer. He arrived beside her, his long gun pointed low.
Mine – for once it was a relief to hear that stated.
Sawyer...she considered what he’d done...had he truly risked enslavement or death to help her? Who was this man?
His palm settled on her head again, and she let out a small sigh. Safe.
Safe? With him? It felt good. She’d figure out why and maybe chastise herself, later.
“Dayum.”
She turned to where Sawyer was looking. Something...two somethings, were perched over Zarr’s corpse, and they were eating him, feasting off his legs and his stomach area.
The jaggs.
Their hunger during this phase was often phenomenal, or so she’d heard. The crunch and crack of bone was audible from here, as were the gobbling sounds. Gruesome.
Now one of them was shaking its head, worrying the corpse. Ari grimaced.
“How apt,” Sawyer muttered. “Go Martha. Go Arthur. Cheapest pets to feed, ever. Not sure I’m ever taking them for walkies.”