Chapter 11 #2
They laughed as they dragged her, kicking and screaming like a madwoman, across the yard. Shapes loomed in front of her, and a torch flared to light. She saw dirty faces and large, scared eyes looking at her.
A metal door was opened, and she was tossed in through it. Grace slid and fell, collapsing on another person who lay on the ground.
“You might want to get up,” someone said to Grace as she scrambled and tried to stand.
She banged her head against the bars above her head.
The cage, for that was what it was, she realized, wasn’t large enough to stand upright in.
A crouching stoop was all she could manage.
There were other cages on three sides of her.
She carefully tried to inch around the unmoving woman on the ground.
“What’s wrong with her?” she asked.
“She’s dead,” the other occupant of the cage said.
Grace recoiled. She had landed on a dead body, and the revulsion of it all was too much for her.
Grace threw up and then collapsed. The last thing she remembered was the other woman in her cell saying, “This one ain’t gonna survive much longer than the other one did.”
Grace woke to find that it was morning. Cool dew was on her clothes and hair, dampening them.
Sitting up, she noticed that she had also slept in vomit.
Yuck. And something stank. She covered her nose and mouth and tried not to breathe, and then she realized that it was a combination of herself and the dead body lying in the cell beside her.
Rats had been in the cage during the night and part of the woman had been eaten. Would they have to wait for her to be eaten completely for the body to be taken away? Feeling callous for her unkind thoughts, she whispered a prayer for the woman’s soul.
“Just sit still,” a voice said.
Turning, Grace saw another woman sitting on the other side of the cage. She looked dirty, but her eyes were bright and fierce with the spark of life in them.
Before Grace could do or say anything, some men came to the cage door. Guns were pointed at the captives and the door was unlocked and opened.
“You move, you die like her,” a man said.
Grace held as still as she could.
Without ceremony, the body was pulled out of the cage leg first and dragged across the yard.
The door was closed and locked. Grace turned to her companion in the cage and was about to ask her what was going on when suddenly, she was drenched.
Water flew at her from the front and she was doused in it.
“What the heck is wrong with you?” Grace demanded. She glared at a man holding a bucket, and he threw the contents into her face, laughing all the time.
Luckily, it was just water, cold but clean.
The men with the buckets moved down the line of cages, throwing water over all the occupants. They were mostly women and children, although there were a couple of young men. No one looked clean or well-fed, and Grace wondered what kind of new world she had ventured into this time.
When the bucket dousing ended and the bandits vanished, Grace’s companion turned to her.
“I’m Trudy Morrison. Welcome.” She held out a dirt-encrusted hand.
Grace shook it. “Grace Erv—er, I mean, Marks,” she said, thinking of Hunter once more and missing him deeply. “Who was that poor woman who died?”
“Jane Pike,” Trudy said, wiping her face and hands on her dirty skirt. “Wife to Edmund Pike and mother to Clive and Roger. Both are ten years old and at home with their father, luckily. Or maybe he’ll have sent them away by now to some relatives. I would have.”
“What is going on here?” Grace asked. “Why are you here? Why is anyone here?”
Trudy looked at her as though she was insane. She had the most expressive brown eyes Grace had ever seen. And despite being stick-thin, she radiated a strength that Grace had never felt.
“You must know why you’re here,” Trudy said, looking around. “We’re all here for one reason only.”
“And what is that?” Grace asked. “I truly don’t know. One moment I was delivering dinner to the sheriff’s office, and the next I was being kidnapped. Please, can someone just tell me what is going on here?” She felt very close to tears.
Behind her, a woman spoke.
“Don’t kick up a fuss if you know what’s good for you,” she said. She was older, with gray in her hair and wrinkles by her eyes. “Just hush up. Trudy, clearly she doesn’t know the lay of the land. Inform her before we all get punished.”
“Yes, Mrs. Odenkirk,” Trudy said.
She sighed, taking the measure of Grace with her eyes.
“If you take a moment and think about it without blubbering, you’ll realize that there really is only one reason to keep folks like us alive.
We mean something to someone. With me, it’s my papa.
I’m all he’s got left apart from the farm, and so I’m worth more to them alive than dead.
And so long as my papa plays his part and does what he’s told, I keep breathing, even if it’s only barely.
But the moment he decides to turn on the bandits and stops supplying them with beer, then I get shot in the head, just like dear Jane was. ”
“Blackmail,” Grace said. “El Aguila is using you to blackmail those who love you.”
“Well done. Give her a prize,” Trudy said with sarcasm heavy in her tone. “And now he’s going to do it to your family too. So, settle in. You’re going to be here a long time.”