Chapter 6 #3
I wanted him away from me, but I forced myself to unclench my jaw and speak as civilly as I could manage. “Fine.”
“You ever want a fun night, you should join us at Hydro.”
“No.”
“I haven’t even told you what it is yet!” He still spoke lightly, but his eyes darkened.
I pulled the reins to the side, hoping he would release Violet, but he didn’t.
“I’m not interested,” I said a little louder.
“I bet we could change your mind if—”
Trey rode Marigold almost directly into him, forcing him to let go of Violet and jump backward, cursing.
“Oh sorry, Lem,” Trey called out, but his expression was dark. “Didn’t see you there.”
Lem glared at him, straightening his jacket. “Watch where you’re fuckin’ goin’, Mason.”
“You meet Bones? You hear she officially belongs to Mac’s crew?” Trey leaned forward on the saddle horn, and I couldn’t see his face, but something like fear flashed through Lem’s eyes as he glanced between us. “She’s one of ours now, and we’re keepin’ a real close eye on her.”
That sounded like a threat, but as Lem glowered and took a step back, I guessed it wasn’t for me.
Trey reached out and tugged on Violet’s reins. “Have a good one, Lem.” He didn’t let go of Violet, keeping her close beside Marigold as we moved away.
I didn’t look back, but I could feel Lem’s eyes on me. My skin crawled. I rubbed my knee, trying to erase the sensation of Lem touching me.
“Sorry ’bout that.” I glanced at Trey to see his fingers flexing on the reins as he scanned me. “Lem’s a creep, but he shouldn’t bother you again.”
“Is everybody scared of Mac?” I asked before I could think better of it.
“Mac’s given people a good reason to fear him if they cross him,” Trey replied.
In the silence that followed, I mulled over what Trey had said to Lem, my temper growing the more I thought about it.
I didn’t belong to Mac. I remembered Sam saying that Madame let the crew leaders govern their own people.
Maybe that’s what Sam meant when he said I was in Mac’s safe place.
Well, fuck that. I wasn’t a nice shiny trophy for them to display.
I’d been that before, and I wasn’t doing it again.
We take care of our own.
You’re in the crew now, so if anybody messes with you, they’ll deal with us.
I hated that tiny part of me that thought maybe they said that shit because they actually saw me as a person.
Don’t trust ’em, Wolf ordered.
Trey gestured at a large building. “This is—”
“Mac doesn’t own me,” I snarled in a pretty good impression of Wolf.
Trey halted Marigold and looked at me. “What?”
I couldn’t keep my damn mouth shut. “I’m not a fucking possession.”
“I know?” Trey’s brow furrowed. “Why—”
“What you said to that man,” I snapped, hating that my voice wobbled. “I don’t give a fuck what Mac thinks, but I don’t—”
“Bones,” Trey interrupted, looking exasperated, “that’s not what I meant.”
I pressed my lips together, glaring at him. He glanced around us and shifted Marigold closer to Violet so he could lower his voice.
“Look, the way things work here is…not ideal,” he said, his eyes never leaving mine, “but Mac doesn’t think you’re a possession. You’re a member of his crew, of my crew. An’ we want people to know that ’cause it’ll keep assholes like Lem from harassin’ you.”
I believed that’s what Trey believed—and maybe Sam. I wasn’t so sure about anyone else.
We don’t want our precious treasure to get lost. Madame’s cruel voice ran through my head.
Gods, I was so fucking tired of being a thing.
“Bones.”
I glanced up at Trey, my throat tight. His eyes were serious, but he gave me a small, crooked smile.
“I heard you tell Lem no. If somebody won’t take no for an answer, you got me as backup, alright?”
My eyes burned with a confusing swell of emotions, and I had to duck, letting my hair fall forward to shield my face. Trey cleared his throat.
“As I was sayin’, this is the garage where we keep the rovers and some other vehicles. We don’t use ’em around the hold. They’re still running on gasoline, so we gotta conserve it. We use horsepower inside the walls.”
Once I got myself under control, I peered up at the big wooden building.
Half of it seemed to be well-maintained and the other half was dilapidated.
In one corner an entire fucking tree poked through the roof.
It surprised me to hear they used gasoline.
Finding vehicles that still ran on it was rare.
In the desert, everyone used solar power.
The Reapers never turned down a raid for gasoline because the payout was huge—if they could get past the armored guards in the convoy.
Juck had tried to cut a transport deal with a tank lord once, but he hadn’t even been allowed through the gate.
Tank lords had the money and power for a whole damn army, and they weren’t about to trust one of the most valuable resources to raiders like Juck.
Juck had taken that insult personally and for months the Reapers targeted that tank lord’s convoys. Until they started rolling out in actual godsdamn tanks, and Juck suddenly had better things to do.
Alongside the garage was a smaller dirt road. The horses’ hooves kicked up a cloud of dust that coated the nearby evergreen trees and made my mouth taste like mud. Behind the garage, another large building came into view. This one looked newer with walls of corrugated metal and a tin roof.
“That’s the barracks.” Trey gestured to several training fields where a group of people jogged.
“This is where the guards train. The lower-level guards sleep in the barracks, but the crews get their own smaller bunkhouse.” He motioned toward the cluster of small old wooden cabins between the barracks and the garage.
A few cabins had boarded-up windows, but Trey stopped in front of number four, which looked neatly maintained, with old glass windows still intact.
“This one’s ours. So if you ever need to find us, there’s usually at least one of our crew in there. ”
Lana’s face flashed in the window before she dropped the curtain back down. I looked away, my heart pounding.
Trey pointed at a cluster of trees in the distance. “The clinic is just behind those trees, so we’re actually pretty close.”
I realized I could see the corner of the clinic roof between the trees. My closeness to their bunkhouse brought me a tiny bit of comfort, which immediately irritated me.
Don’t let your guard down, Wolf reminded.
A handful of larger, nicer homes surrounded the watchtower. I assumed Madame lived in one of them, but I wondered who had the rest. Maybe the council members I’d been introduced to, Nemo and Zana? Madame’s sneer floated through my mind.
“How long has there been a council?” I asked as we moved down the dirt road.
Trey looked surprised, then delighted, that I asked a question, and I immediately regretted it.
“Not too long.”
I didn’t miss the way his voice lowered carefully or the way he brought Marigold closer to me and Violet again.
“Madame took power about thirty years ago. At first, it seemed like a good thing, but after a decade, there was a rebellion. A big one. People tried to overthrow her, but they failed. The unrest never fully died. About five years ago, Nemo convinced her to appoint a council. Said it’d help keep the peace.
She appointed Zana and the people elected Nemo. ”
Trey’s voice warmed on Nemo’s name, his admiration clear. If the council was a compromise, it seemed reasonable to assume they didn’t have a ton of power. I had more questions, but I only needed to get a feel for the hierarchy here. I didn’t need all the details.
Trey waited for a moment, looking disappointed when I stayed silent, then urged Marigold to continue.
We moved south, and Trey showed me the horse stables, the farm, the fields, and the small pens of livestock.
Pigs and goats and several cows milled about.
Chickens roamed free everywhere. In the fields, people harvested crops, a working tractor made hay bales, and fruit trees grew wild.
There were mostly apple trees, but some pear, plum, and cherry trees as well.
More workers harvested the fruit and packed it into crates.
It took us over an hour to reach the manufacturing district on the far south end of the hold, where a giant old warehouse stored a variety of ancient machinery as well as the butcher and the tannery.
I knew before Trey pointed it out that we had to be near the slums. The wide dirt road changed to a narrow footpath choked with weeds.
Trash and debris littered the ground. I understood why they were called rusters, as most of the ramshackle huts were made from rusted sheets of metal.
A dirty child stood in front of one, coughing as she watched us pass.
I didn’t miss the way Trey’s expression darkened when we rode past the brothel.
I caught a glimpse of the second gate that led out of the Vault, and my heart sank. It seemed to be permanently closed. I couldn’t be sure from this distance, but it looked like it had been boarded shut.
“Last count we took, there were three hundred and seven people here,” Trey said as he urged Marigold on. “We don’t get many people coming from outside. Most of the people here have been here for generations.”
“What was this place?” I asked, glancing up at the watchtower again.
“Best we can guess, it was built to be some kind of shelter for the end of the world. I don’t think they ever made it here, though.
It was sitting here empty for gods know how long before the founding members stumbled on it.
Whoever it was, they constructed the bigger buildings, some of the houses, the wall, and planted all the fruit trees. ”