“Spike!” a biker shouted. A stocky man with a long blond braid down his back and a gray specked beard.

“You’re on. I’ll help you. But don’t give them an excuse to kill you. Men are expendable, the women aren’t,” Spike muttered low to Justin, then said louder for the group to hear. “Yeah, I barely made it out of the hills and look what I found.” He opened his arms and grinned.

“We went riding to make sure you were gone, and we find you with a bunch of women,” the man said. There was murmuring from the standing crowd of men. “How about you introduce us to your new friends.”

“This is Smith,” Spike said, pointing to the leader of the bike gang. “Smith, this is Justin and…sorry I’m not all that great with names, ladies, if you could introduce yourselves…”

“I’m here with these four women and they’re all mine,” Justin announced, cutting off the introductions.

Smith laughed. A few of the other men chuckled too. “Yours?” he said. “All yours? There’s not that many women left alive on the planet and you get four of them just to yourself?” He turned to look at the collective group of twenty hard men standing nearby. “Doesn’t sound quite fair, does it?” he asked.

“Fuck, no,” someone shouted out.

“Oh shit,” Krissy muttered. “This is going to turn out bad.”

Rebel turned her head and met Tiana’s terrified gaze.

Smith strutted forward, giving them all a closer look. They all stood, tense and quiet, waiting to hear what he’d say.

Smith stopped in front of Rebel, gave her an intense stare, and swung around to look at his men. “Well, well,” he announced, “look who we’ve got here, boys. It looks like we’ve found ourselves a movie star. This here is Rebel Case. One of the most beautiful women in the world. We’re like a bunch of hillbillies in Beverly Hills.”

He placed his hand on the small of her back and pushed her forward a step or two so the men could see her easier. There were lots of whistles and catcalls. Suddenly the semi-circle of men seemed oppressive. A bead of sweat ran down her back.

“We go out to scavenge for supplies and instead find ourselves four new women, including Rebel Case. Sounds like today is our day, wouldn’t you say?”

There was a cheer from the crowd.

“Now wait a minute,” Krissy and Justin both started to say at the same time.

“How do you plan on dividing this up?” Spike asked Smith, cutting them off.

Smith crooked an eyebrow. “Not with you. You’re supposed to be gone, so get out of here. Boys, get rid of him.”

And with that the only man who was on their side beside Justin was summarily led at gunpoint to his bike and told to get out of there or else. Rebel intercepted one intense look between Justin and Spike before Spike left on his motorcycle. She hoped to God he followed through with his promise.

It was their only chance.

Smith swept his hand out to the men displayed behind him. “Most of these men don’t have a woman. Ladies, I think we’re going to need your services.”

Oh great.

“How many people are in your group?” Krissy asked boldly.

“We’ve got forty people living up there. Thirty-nine men and one women.”

“Wow,” Tiana said. “That’s a lot.”

Smith shrugged. “Ten million people lived in Mexico City. I hear it’s a ghost town now.”

“How do you know that? Do you have someone who can use a ham radio?” Krissy asked.

“Yes, and I also found someone who’d arrived direct from Mexico.”

“Oh.”

“Only one woman?” Tiana said.

Smith looked at her sharply. “Just one, so we’re looking for more.”

“Enough of this,” Justin said with a voice that could grind rocks. “It was nice meeting all of you, but we’re leaving now.”

“You can leave, that’s fine,” Smith said. “The women are staying.”

“No, they’re not—”

“Men,” Smith barked. “Sounds like we’ve got trouble here.”

Three bikers swiftly broke off from the main group and stepped up to Justin. He reached for his gun and they knocked it out of his hand and proceeded to beat the shit out of him.

A sob flew out of Rebel’s mouth. She covered her lips with her hand, trying to keep herself quiet as she watched the horror she was helpless to stop unfold in front of her.

They punched him in the face, in the stomach. He tried to fight back, but there were too many of them and he was only one person, recently recovered from a lethal sickness. Justin fell to the ground and they kicked him in the ribs again and again.

Tears streamed down Rebel’s face. All of them were crying, even Krissy.

The women had guns on them, weapons. But what use were they? They were four against twenty. Those odds only worked in action movies with superheroes, not in real life.

“You girls come with us and do everything we tell you to do and we’ll take him with us, get him checked out and taken care of by a real doctor and he’ll survive. You don’t come with us, we’ll beat him some more, until he’s nothing but a bag of broken bones and we’ll leave him out here for the predators to eat. Either way we get you. But this way we get you without a fight. I’d hate for any of you to get hurt in the process. Got it?”