Chapter 9 #2
“Maybe we’ll rub off on you,” I say. “Maybe you’ll turn into a better person.”
“There’s one thing you can rub,” Drako says.
I roll my eyes. “Now you just sound like a horny teenage boy,” I say. “Not really giving fearsome jarl right now.”
I know how to argue with dickheads. That’s kind of my special talent. So if Drako wants to get verbal, he’s fucked. If he decides to get physical, then I’m fucked.
He smirks at me as I lean back behind Thor just a little, using him as a human shield.
“That mouth of yours is going to get you in trouble,” he says casually. “But I’ll tend to it later. We should get moving. We need to put more distance between ourselves and the feeding site.”
Hearing him call his camp ‘the feeding site’ puts a cold chill right down my spine.
Drako has adjusted to the loss of his people very, very quickly.
Or he’s hiding his trauma very, very well.
I have heard tales of how the Vikar raise their offspring, and I bet they’re all good at forcing them to eat trauma.
Thor agrees and we all stand up. I’d say we pack up camp, but we don’t have a lot of stuff. Thor has some things scavenged from the ship, and I wish we could go back and get some more, but I know that’s obviously too dangerous. Maybe. Probably. Really want to go back to that ship.
With everything ready to go, Drako, Thor, and I stand together alone. We have all lost our homes, our families, our crews. We are orphans on a harsh world that has the sole intention of killing us. Everywhere I look it feels like something is waiting to consume me.
I glance over at the two men by my side. Thor is to the left. His gaze is set to the sky, which reflects his eyes. He looks hopeful, which seems wild to me given our circumstances. He believes we are going to be saved at any moment, because that’s what he’d do.
Drako is to the right. His gaze is on the path before us. His jaw is tight, slightly gritted. I don’t think he’s angry. I think he is preparing himself for a fight. They are such different men, and I do not know how we are all going to survive together.
My body aches from the way they handled me.
The passion of the fire in the dark has given way to a morning that is less overtly intense.
Thor is definitely more sexually protective of me now, but he made rough use of me last night.
They shared me. They got along while they were inside me.
I feel a little like I am the connection between them.
“I have one thing to say before we set off,” Thor says. “Drako, if you hurt Selene, I will flay some part of you. I am not going to kill you, because we are going to need many hands for survival. But I will do things to you that you will forever regret.”
It is such a brutal, terrible threat, and it is given in such a casual way I almost don’t understand it at first. Then I think about flaying, and what that entails, and how it would to be left alive after it, and I cringe quite visibly.
Drako laughs. He is completely unperturbed. Maybe he doesn’t believe Thor. I do. There’s a certainty in the way he speaks that makes me think he means every single word.
“If you tried to hurt me, I would kill you,” Drako says. “I wouldn’t bother with the theatrics and the torture.”
“And then you would be left alone with this one,” Thor says. “And you are not prepared for that. She would ruin you.”
“She could try.”
“You are not understanding me. She would kill you. When there are only two people trying to survive a hostile world, and one of them doesn’t care what happens to her, the one who cares, dies.”
Drako looks like he doubts me. “A female, properly handled, will be obedient.”
“That is patently not true. That has never been true. That is why men fail with women constantly,” Thor says. “Women do not follow orders, and they rarely, if ever, submit.”
“To you, perhaps,” Drako laughs.
“Just let me stab him a little,” I beg. “Let me cut something off, at least.”
Thor sighs. Drako chuckles.
We embark on our ill-advised adventure.
We start walking, and as we do, we realize we don’t know where we are going.
So then we stop. This is already very much not feeling like an organized expedition.
There were times I followed goats for miles with more of a sense that they knew what they were doing than what we have any fucking notion of what to do next.
“Where are we going?” Thor asks the question none of us really want to answer.
“The horde will be on us if we are not careful. They generally prefer dead flesh, but they are also partial to living prey if it is available,” Drako says. “Any motion is good motion.”
“The fact that they exist means there are frequent mass death events on this world to allow an entire scavenger species to evolve,” Thor says. He is so smart, and what he’s realizing is horrific. I bet he’s been thinking about it since he woke up.
“We need to be careful,” he says. “What could be killing entire herds of animals regularly? Not a typical predator. Could be something else. Gas clouds, perhaps. Something that’s released or strikes… A virus, perhaps? Or a plague of small flies spreading bacteria?”
Drako shrugs. He doesn’t care about the reason for any of these things, clearly. He is all action and little thought. Big dumb hot dummy.
I wish I could say he looks like shit, but narrowly escaping death has done nothing but make him somehow more attractive. Scrapes and scars only ever improve men because they indicate survival.
Women aren’t supposed to get scarred up, because we are supposed to be protected.
I look at Thor, and at Drako, and I realize again, deeply, all the way to my gut, that these are the only two men here to help save me.
Then I snort to myself at the concept of being saved by either of these two.
Drako wanted to turn me into his slave. Thor turned me over to the captain.
He rescued me once or twice too. He’s hard to predict.
I have to treat them both like they’re not going to do shit for me. I am going to look out for myself.
“Anyway. We should think about the best place to be rescued,” Thor says.
“When they send ships, they are going to locate the debris field and land there. We should stay as close as we can to the crash site in order to be found. They might come to the conclusion that everyone died if there are no signs of life.”
“You’re welcome to go and be picked clean at the crash site,” Drako says.
“I say we need to put ourselves somewhere safer. Scavengers have already fed on the bodies of your crew, but predators will follow in their wake to feed on the scavengers. We need to find somewhere food rich and relatively calm where we can build a fortified camp. If you absolutely insist, we can visit the crash site and try to get a radio or something to send out distress calls.”
That’s a compromise Thor seems happy with. I want to be the hell away from danger for absolute certain. My instincts have always tended to get away from danger.
We have a plan, so that’s good. Feels like we’re starting to organize the chaos. In times like these, plans are all you really have.
“I’ll lead. Girl goes in the middle. You take up the rear, Golden Boy,” Drako says. I brace myself for another leadership challenge, but Thor seems satisfied with that idea too.
Are we… getting along?
We make for strange companions; a Vikar jarl, a Frayer officer, and me, the eternal rebel who doesn’t identify with anyone or anything, but when your life is on the line you make alliances where you can.
For the second time, we embark on our journey.
This time, we make what I would call good progress.
Drako points out food plants along the way, and we collect them, putting them into the pack Thor scavenges from the wreck.
There are edible flowers, herbs, and some root vegetables that look close enough to potatoes to excite me.
It’s possible that everything is going to be okay, I tell myself. Just because absolutely everything has gone wrong for as long as I can remember, doesn’t mean that everything is going to go wrong forever. At some point, something has to go right, just statistically.
As we walk, the forest gives way to a grassy pasture with tall flowers that bloom in patches, yellow, purple, and rarely red. I find myself picking them as we pass, creating a three-toned bouquet that I know my sisters would like to display in their homes.
I wonder if they’ve already started building the batch of new homes that will cover over the land where we played as children, replacing the open ground with buildings and concrete forming a seamless wall along the river.
They’ll concrete the river too, to stop flooding. They’ll take away all the plants and the grasses that the fish and other creatures breed and hide in, and they’ll take down the little wood jetty we used to fish off of, because it’s not to code, and…
“Hey!” Thor grabs me by the back of the neck, moving me out of the way of a hole in the ground before I can tumble into it and disappear.
It’s the strangest thing, a perfectly round aperture in the earth that is dark enough to look like it goes straight down forever.
I want to drop a stone into it, but I can’t, because Thor is lecturing me.
“Where are you?” he snaps.
“What do you mean?”
He taps my forehead with his finger. “I mean, where is your head at? What are you thinking about? You need to lock in, Selene. One mistake out here is…”
“Yeah. I know. Death. Sorry.”
He frowns at me, probably because my response wasn’t respectful enough, but to hell with respect right now. I am doing my fucking best. It’s hard to keep my mind on the present when the last week or so has been nothing but absolute chaos.
“What’s the deal with the holes?” I ask the question. “Have you seen them before?”