The Escape Page 21

  It wasn’t fair of her to pull this, not after what she’d done. But he couldn’t help himself from softening when he heard those words. Still . . .

  “How do you feel?” he asked. Because it couldn’t be what he felt.

  “Like . . . like you see me. Really see me, not the show I put on when I’m horny, or angry, or scared. You look at me like I’m real.”

  Barker smiled, hurt. No, she didn’t feel how he felt. “You are real.”

  “It hasn’t seemed like that, not for a long time.” She leaned against his chest, and he laid his cheek on her soft hair.

  “What about Clarissa?” he asked.

  “I owe her an apology. I should have been a shoulder to cry on, a friend to hug, and instead I let us get caught up in . . . escapism. That’s what sex is for me, I think. A way to forget everything. To just stop thinking about how the world’s gone to shit and feel good for a moment.”

  “And with us?”

  “It started out that way, yeah. But it’s changed. Now when we have sex it’s because I want to be as close to you as humanly possible. You’re the kind of man I never thought I’d ever see again, not since the Pulse hit.”

  “What kind of man is that?”

  “A good one, Barker.” She sighed. “A good one.”

  * * *

  Jenna didn’t know what to do. He’d given her a clear choice: sleep with other people but not him, or only sleep with him. And sex with Barker was more than just sex. It was . . . it was making her fall for him.

  She hadn’t even thought she was capable of falling in love

  (no, not love, it can’t be love.)

  and yet here she was, seriously contemplating giving up the only way she knew how to survive since the Pulse—by using her body—to be with him.

  Could she do it? Did she even want to do it?

  “I’m going to try to change,” she whispered. “For you.”

  “I don’t want you to change,” he said. “I want you to be who you really are. And who you are is not just a body. Not just a vessel to be bartered or used.”

  Jenna smiled. “You’re not going to spank me again, are you?”

  Barker raised his hands. “I recall being in deep shit over that incident.”

  “Maybe you should spank me,” she said coyly. “Maybe I secretly liked it.”

  “Wait—you want me to spank you? The woman who told me she’d let me die in a hole in the ground if I ever did that again?”

  Jenna nodded. For some reason, a spanking seemed perfect right about now. She wanted to feel the sting of penance, to be reminded that she was his, for now, at least. To be given a physical reminder that she was not a whore.

  Not a vessel to be bartered or used.

  “Please?” she asked.

  Barker paused, as if weighing the sincerity of her request. He pulled her gently down to the floor, and laid her over his lap.

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “I don’t feel the need to punish you. I’m not angry about Clarissa. Hurt, but not angry. Not like I thought I’d be.”

  She looked over her shoulder at him and nodded. “I’m sure. It would make me feel better, I think.”

  He lowered her jeans, exposing her ass. “I’m pretty sure it will make you feel worse.”

  “I need it,” she whispered. “You told me to never call myself a whore again. I did, and I treated myself like one. And . . . God, Barker—I don’t want to do that anymore.”

  Barker rubbed her ass with his large hand. “Then don’t,” he said, and brought his hand down, hard, making her gasp.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, pausing with his hand in midair.

  “Don’t stop,” she said.

  He spanked her again, and again, until tears of catharsis filled her eyes, and she moaned.

  “I’m so sorry, Barker,” she said, and he stopped, pulling her pants up, and cradled her on his lap.

  “You’re an amazing woman,” he said, “to be willing to do this for me.”

  “To be the fifties housewife?”

  “No. Well, yeah, to willingly lie over my lap for a spanking, that’s pretty brave, considering how last time went. But I meant . . . I know it’s going to be hard for you, to be only with me.”

  “Do you like spanking me?” she asked.

  “When it’s like this, when you ask me, when you consent, yeah. It makes me feel closer to you. The last time I did it I felt like I’d driven you further away. And I didn’t like that.”

  “I drove you away last night. Took myself away. So we’re even now.”

  “Then let’s start again,” he said, and kissed her.

  On the road again, Interstate 95

  They’d been driving for a while in silence. Barker kept checking the rearview mirror, expecting to see soldiers, expecting another battle.

  But none came.

  “Do you think Evan is okay?” Clarissa asked from the back seat.

  “I don’t know,” Barker said. He didn’t want to think about what they might be doing to the kid. Would they execute him? Make an example of him?

  Or just torture him until he told them everything he knew about their group?

  “We’re going to get him back,” Jenna said. “We’ll get everyone out of there. But we can’t do it on our own.”

  They paused at every freeway exit, looking for signs of . . . of what? Community. People. But there was nothing—nothing for miles and miles.

  By the time they’d traveled nearly all the way through Connecticut, Barker had almost given up hope. Until he saw the men.

  “Barker!”

  Jenna pointed at the armed men, five of them, standing guard at the off-ramp to a town he’d never heard of. The green exit sign had once borne the name of a street, or a town, but it had been graffiti’d over, rendering it illegible.

  A new word was painted in large, sprawling letters on top.

  Letliv.

  What the hell was Letliv?

  “What are you going to do?” Clarissa asked as Barker slowed the truck to a crawl.

  “We need to get out. To talk to them.”

  “They’ll shoot us,” she said. “They could shoot us on sight.”

  “I’ll go,” Jenna said. She pulled her rifle off her chest and laid it down on the passenger seat.

  “Whoa,” Barker said. “Clarissa’s right. Let me talk to them, in case they’re hostile.”

  “If they’re hostile, they’ll be a lot less likely to shoot an unarmed woman, don’tcha think?” Jenna hopped out of the truck and slowly walked toward the men with her arms up in the air.

  * * *

  “I’m unarmed,” Jenna called. “Can I talk to you guys?”

  “Down on the ground!” one of the men yelled, and Jenna dropped to the dirty pavement, her arms spread out at her sides.

  He ran up to her and put his knee on her back, pushing the air out of her lungs. His hands patted her down efficiently, checking her pants and ankles and even quickly checking under her breasts for weapons.

  “Clear,” he called back to the other men, and he helped her up. “Who are you? Who’s in that truck?”

  He didn’t look like a soldier. The man was dressed in regular work clothes that smelled faintly of fish. He was young, and fit like a soldier, and clearly knew how to hold his rifle. But there was nothing about him that reminded her of the men at Grand Central.

  Thank God.

  “My name is Jenna. I’m unarmed. My friends Barker and Clarissa are in the truck. We don’t want to hurt anyone, we just want to talk. Haven’t seen many friendly faces on the road, you know?”

  The man called to the truck, still idling down the road. “Turn off the engine, keep all weapons in the vehicle, and come out with your hands up.”

  Barker and Clarissa emerged as Jenna had done, with their
arms in the air, and lay down on the ground without being asked to.

  Another guard ran up, and he and the first man patted down Barker and Clarissa.

  “Clear,” the other guard said, and the one who was on Barker nodded in agreement, and let them stand up.

  “I’m Ken Barker,” he said, and held his hand out to shake the guard’s hand, something Jenna had never seen him do before. Not even with Roy.

  “Trent Taylor,” the guard said, lowering his rifle and shaking Barker’s hand. “Where you folks coming from?”

  Barker looked at Jenna, as if asking silent permission to reveal the truth. She nodded.

  “The camp at Grand Central Terminal. We . . . we escaped.”

  The expression on Trent’s face would have been comical in any other situation, the way his eyebrows raised in recognition.

  “Grand Central? I heard they’ve been doing a good job of keeping people alive.”

  “Where’d you hear that?” Jenna asked.

  “The radio,” Trent said. “They said they have all the survivors there.”

  “You . . . you have a radio?” Clarissa asked incredulously. “Do you know Emily Rosen?”

  Trent shook his head. “Sorry. No. But we do have a radio that was kept safe from the Pulse. The transmissions are infrequent, but there are some. We put out our own transmission once a day, at dusk. Just in case anyone’s listening.”

  “Grand Central is keeping people alive, barely. It’s a hellhole,” Jenna said.

  “We have a lot of people in Letliv with family who live . . . lived in Manhattan. We’re hoping they ended up at Grand Central,” Trent said. “That they survived. If I made a list of the names, would you know the people?”

  Jenna shook her head. “It’s a long shot. There are thousands of people there. I know most of the younger women, by first name, at least. The ones who were on the Tracks. And the soldiers . . . well, Barker might know their names. I know some, mostly nicknames though.”

  “I know a lot of the girls on the Tracks too,” Clarissa said. “But if it’s an entire family, or a married couple, they slept in a different area, so we probably don’t know.”

  “It sounds like it would be worth taking a look at a list, though, right?” Trent asked. “We’d really like to know if the family we had in New York is alive.”

  “They might be alive,” Barker said, “even if we don’t recognize their names. But we can try.”

  Trent smiled. “Welcome to Letliv, then. You can go retrieve your weapons, but if you use them, you might get shot. Just a warning.”

  “Duly noted,” Barker said, and nodded his head to her and Clarissa to follow him back to the truck.

  “This is it,” Barker whispered. “Don’t you think? They’re even letting us keep our weapons.”

  “I don’t know,” Jenna said. “They might just kill us and then take the weapons once we’re off the road.”

  “No,” Clarissa said. “If they wanted to kill us, they could have when we were standing there unarmed. They want information.”

  “What if it’s another place like Grand Central, though?” Jenna asked.

  “I didn’t get that vibe,” Barker said. “Did you?”

  Jenna shook her head, and so did Clarissa.

  They geared up and headed back over to Trent and the other men.

  “Letliv,” Barker murmured under his breath, as if trying out the name of the town.

  “That’s another thing,” Jenna said quietly as they walked. “Why rename a town?”

  Clarissa smiled at them. “To start over.”

  Grand Central Terminal, the OCC

  EVAN

  Evan had spent the night wide awake, waiting for Scar to come into his cell. Every noise, every step outside the door made adrenaline rush through him.

  When would he come? What would he do?

  (You know what he’ll do)

  Evan spent the first part of the evening trying to push those thoughts away. To not think about it . . . about what would happen to him. But as the night went on, his imagination took over, and finally he stopped trying to not think about it, and focused on preparing for it so he could survive.

  He wanted to kill Scar. To wrap his hands around his neck and choke the life out of him, pacifism be damned. Would he have his chance?

  Or maybe fighting back would just get him killed. Maybe it would be better to be silent, to just take it. Maybe it would be better to pretend to be asleep through the whole thing. Just lie there like a rock so that Scar would lose interest.

  Would it hurt?

  Fuck yeah. It was going to hurt, if Scar actually did what he was implying he wanted to do. It would fucking hurt.

  What if Scar wanted him to suck his cock? The thought made Evan gag. He wasn’t sure what would be worse, or more humiliating—to be forced to suck a dude’s cock or to get fucked in the ass. Both options rolled in his mind as equally horrifying.

  The night would never be over, it would never end. His body ached, he was exhausted, but he couldn’t sleep. So Evan just waited.

  He waited in fear, all night long. But Scar never came.

  When Scar arrived in the morning, Evan was huddled against the wall, trying to protect as much of his body as he could with his ankles still chained up.

  “Did you miss me last night, pretty boy?” Scar asked, and laughed.

  Evan closed his eyes against the blinding light that streamed in through the open cell door and didn’t answer.

  “You look disappointed,” Scar said, uncuffing his ankles and pulling him up to standing. “You were probably all ready to take it up the ass for me, too, weren’t you.”

  Evan blinked and looked at the ground, refusing to look at the man.

  Fuck you.

  “Let’s go,” Scar said, and pushed him out of the cell.

  What now? Where was he being taken?

  They’d done it on purpose, Evan realized. Made him stay up all night, terrified, waiting to be raped. Maybe Scar never intended to do it in the first place. Maybe it was all just another torture tactic.

  “Well, since I got you all hot and bothered last night and didn’t let you bust a nut, you’re in for a surprise,” Scar said.

  Evan’s stomach flipped, and he stumbled.

  “Keep going. We’ve got a girl for you.”

  Scar pushed him into the OCC, where the Colonel stood next to a girl in a chair with her leg in a splint, which she had propped up on another chair. She didn’t look happy to be there.

  “Well, hello there, son,” the Colonel said. “This is Annie. Annie was friends with Clarissa, so you two have something in common.”

  Evan looked at her warily but didn’t say anything. Scar’s freaky talk about busting a nut was still replaying in his head.

  Please, God, don’t let them make me rape this girl. I won’t do it. I can’t. They’ll have to shoot me.

  “Evan, say hi to Annie,” Lanche said, as if he were introducing two ten-year-olds to each other. “Isn’t she pretty?”

  Annie turned her face away when Evan looked up at her.

  Lanche sighed, and out of nowhere, his open hand came down on Evan’s face, making the bruises that were already there explode with renewed pain.

  “Don’t!” Annie cried.

  “Shut up,” Scar said, and she did.

  “Now,” Lanche said. “I hear you have blue balls after waiting all night for the visit you were promised.”

  “You son of a bitch,” Evan said, not caring what happened to him.

  But then Lanche kicked Annie’s splinted leg off of the chair, and she howled in pain.

  Evan covered his mouth in shock. They couldn’t do that. How could they do that? Hurt the girl for something he’d said? It wasn’t fair.

  “Oh, Evan, that wasn’t nice,” Lanche tsked
. “Look what you made me do.”

  Evan wanted to shout at him, but he kept silent, fearing that the Colonel would hurt the girl again.

  “Take off your clothes, boy.” Lanche hovered his hand over Annie’s injured leg threateningly.

  Evan did as he was told, stripping once again, holding his hands in front of his crotch. “Please, sir, please don’t do this.”

  “Drop your hands.”

  His penis still hurt from Lanche’s whipping. Evan couldn’t bring himself to expose his body any more.

  Scar shoved Evan between the shoulder blades, pushing him to his knees, making him drop his hands to catch himself.

  “Don’t worry about Annie. I bet Annie loves looking at your little teenage cock, don’t you, sweetie?”

  Annie shook her head. “Sir. I’ve told you everything I know, please. Let me go.”

  “But Evan here hasn’t. Let’s soften him up a bit, shall we?”

  Evan dropped his head in shame and stared at the cement floor. He couldn’t do this. Wouldn’t. But was he prepared to die right now?

  He was so exhausted. Done. If he were dead, all of this would be over.

  “Just shoot me and be done with it,” Evan whispered.

  The Colonel unholstered his handgun from his hip and cocked it, pressing the muzzle against Evan’s temple.

  Evan closed his eyes, tried to think about his family, and about his dog. About his friends at school, back when there was a school.

  “Really?” Colonel Lanche laughed. “Really, you want me to shoot you, right here, in front of Annie?”

  “I won’t rape her, sir. So kill me if you have to.”

  “You have a twisted mind, young man. Who said anything about raping her?” The Colonel lowered his gun and grinned.

  That sick fuck. Messing with his head again.

  Evan looked up at him confusion.

  “You don’t have to fuck the invalid,” Lanche said, still laughing. “You can just masturbate in front of her.”

  “What is wrong with you people?” Evan yelled.

  Lanche hit Annie’s leg again, and she screamed.