Jo held out her arm at the border gate and waited for the sentry to check her blood. When it registered negative, he flipped the lock to allow her through the first heavily fenced portal. She waved her thanks as she proceeded to the next checkpoint, where she waited patiently. Another guard flashed a bright light into the eyes of the people wanting entrance to the haven point, which was nothing more than a glorified trading post where prices were inflated. This setup had resurrected the lost art of haggling.
Once it was her turn, she braced herself for the effects of the blinding test, which proved she had no ruptured blood vessels. As she blinked rapidly to stem tears the light had caused, the last gate opened, allowing her and the others entry into the hustle and bustle of the vendors and shoppers.
Jo hefted her backpack higher on her shoulder, holding tight to the strap to make sure none of the little pickpockets darting between tables tried running off with her stash. She’d gone through a lot to find some worthy stuff to trade, and she’d be damned if the cretins took off with her goods.
Pulling the brim of her cap low, she traversed the stalls, doing her best to hide the fact that she was female. There weren’t many of her sex, and the few women she saw seemed to hover around big, burly men, as if needing them for protection. Jo wasn’t sure what to think about that kind of trade, because the thought of prostituting for survival left a bitter taste in her mouth and hit a little too close to home.
Over the next hour she made the few purchases she wanted, namely a flint stone, a knife, and rope, but she separated the trades far enough apart as to not bring attention to herself. Finally, done for the day, she purchased an evening meal and sat down at the market tables to enjoy her soup and hard-tack bread. The thick, cracker-like square was hard enough to break teeth, and the only way to eat it was to use the soup to soften it up, but it came in handy because it didn’t spoil like regular bread.
“Any females inside these walls are ripe for the picking.”
The low-pitched statement from the table behind her caught her attention. Jo kept her head down, but it made her pause, and she strained to hear anything more, hoping the man wasn’t talking about her.
“Why only one?” another man asked. “Why can’t we take two? Or three? There’s four of us—”
“Shh!” the first man said. “Keep your voice down. This is a covert operation.”
“Yeah,” said one of the other men. “Covert. Meaning shut your damn mouth.”
Jo turned her head slightly, trying to get a glimpse of the men out of the corner of her eye, but she couldn’t make any of them out.
“We take one for now,” the first man, who was obviously the leader, stated firmly. “When enough time has passed, we can come back and get another female. We can’t take too many at one time or they’ll be noticed.”
“But who gets her? I mean, one of us gets to breed with her while the others get blue balls? That’s not fair.”
Jo gritted her teeth. Just like a man to think with his dick!
“Don’t worry, we’ll all get a turn with her,” the leader assured Dumb Man Number Two. “I don’t care much about the baby part, but I do care about the blue balls part. Hell, we can bring any kid back here and give it in trade.”
“Yeah, yeah,” said one man. “I bet we can fetch a good trade price for a kid. Or hell, have a harem of kids and rent them out. You know more men will pay big bucks at a whorehouse.”
The absolute disgusting nature of the conversation convinced Jo these men were the scum of the earth. There wasn’t one single redeeming quality amongst any of them, and she’d be damned if she would sit back and watch them take a young, unsuspecting girl, subjugate her to being little more than a brood mare for the four assholes, and then sell her baby in trade.
The end of the world sure had brought out all the crazies.
It was hard to believe that life had been normal just a year ago, going to work, paying taxes, trying hard not to gain pre-menopausal weight. The gym had been her favorite way to blow off stress and help fight middle-age belly bulge. Then people started dying from a virus, and the mass panic of not knowing how it started or who was next convinced her it was time to leave Georgia and head toward a less populated area.
“There!” the asshole sitting behind her said excitedly.
When the other men half-turned to see who their leader pointed at, Jo followed their line of sight and saw a young girl with long, blonde hair tied up in a ponytail. She couldn’t have been any more than fifteen or sixteen, wholesome and beautiful. Jo wanted to march up to her and smack her for making herself so obvious. No wonder the four bastards had zeroed in on her, because most people were trying to get a second and third look. Females were rare, and pretty ones were almost non-existent, and if she was behind the trading walls, that meant she was disease-free.
Her appetite disappeared, so Jo took the dirty dishes and loaded them onto a rack. The four men rose to follow the girl, and this was the first time she got a glimpse of them. Now that they were far north, flannel was the cloth of choice, so all the men looked like unwashed lumberjacks, average looking, with the typical shaggy hair from the lack of barber shops nowadays.
They took off, predators on the hunt, and Jo trailed them. More than likely, they probably wouldn’t make a move until the girl wandered off the main path. Several times Jo asked herself what the hell she was doing, with the mental fight of pros and cons each holding traction. Preventing a young female from being raped and impregnated against her will was the biggest nod toward helping, but she ran the risk of her own gender being identified. Self-preservation reared its head, yet still, she kept trailing after the men who were trailing after the girl.
The haven point, which had once been the bustling city of Helena, Montana, suffered the quaint charm of the area lost under the desperation of a panicked population. Like many cities, the remaining people had created a sanctuary to allow disease-free people into a place with vendors and apartments, although wanting a relatively secure night’s sleep would be an astronomically high fee. Within a few months of the virus outbreak, cities had been picked clean. Once the virus began to spread and people started to die, all sense of civility went right out the door. It was like people had been waiting for the go-ahead to loot and commit all types of atrocities, and it didn’t take them very long to make skeletons out of the once-thriving economy.
As the girl meandered along the vendors, she did so without seeming to notice any of the surroundings. When she neared a section where the vendors broke near a small pathway that led to a darkened set of apartments, the men finally pounced. Before the girl could scream, they had her. The leader increased his pace and placed his hand over her mouth. As he wrapped an arm around her waist, he picked her up and the four of them disappeared down the alley. If Jo hadn’t seen it, no one would ever miss the young, blonde teenager.
Bending down, she slid her .22 caliber handgun out of her leg holster and made sure it was ready to go before following the kidnappers. The alley amplified the girl’s puny attempts to free herself, and a few grunts from her abductor suggested she wasn’t as helpless as Jo had assumed.
“Bitch!”
“No, don’t hit her!” another man said. “Don’t mark her pretty face.”
“Get me something to tie her hands with, because the cunt just scraped me with her nails.”
Using their distraction to her benefit, Jo silently walked up behind one man and calmly fired her gun into his back. Her .22 might be an ineffectual gun to most, but she knew exactly where to place the bullets to inflict maximum damage. Once the man went down, she quickly aimed at the next man and fired. He fell with a thud, dead before he hit the ground. The third man backed up and began to fumble around in his pockets, she assumed to find his own weapon, but Jo took advantage of his shock and fired directly into his head. Then she brought her gun around to the leader, but didn’t pull the trigger since the girl was between them.
“Let her go,” Jo ordered, pitching her voice low to maintain her cover.
“You fucking crazy bastard! You killed them so you could have her?”
“I killed them because they were fucking assholes, just like you. Let. The girl. Go.”
The leader spit in her direction. Jo wanted very much to kill him too, but she couldn’t chance it with the girl being used as a body shield.
“The only one who might’ve been able to help you was that first guy, but the bullet I put in his spinal cord more than likely paralyzed him,” she explained calmly. “Or he’s dead. In any case, you’re alone, and you can’t get a weapon as long as you hold on to her. So what’re you going to do, hotshot?”
They stared at one another. The lighting in the alley wasn’t great, but she could still see the fear that crossed over his face, and it amused her, knowing this man who outweighed her by a good sixty or seventy pounds could be scared of her. Then he gave a sort of roar-slash-snarl, and with a mighty shove, pushed the teenager toward her. The younger girl crashed into her, and before Jo could get a clear line of sight, the man was gone. All that was left were his footfalls running rapidly away.
“Oh my God!” the young girl cried. “Thank you! Thank you!”
Annoyed, Jo pushed her away. “Stupid teenager.”
“He…he was g-going to rape me.”
“I know,” Jo muttered. “And you’ve done nothing to protect yourself.”
The girl blinked. “But...but…”
“But what?” Jo demanded. “This isn’t a beauty contest. You don’t get points for being the prettiest apocalyptic survivor. Cut the blonde hair and get some clothes that don’t scream look at my tits.”
Suddenly, another noise came echoing through the alley, a roar of rage that caused Jo to push the teenager behind her as she raised her gun, bracing herself. A man came skidding to a halt.
“Wait!” the teenager cried and put her hand on Jo’s arm to push the gun barrel down.
The new man looked at the three dead men first before concentrating on Jo, and he raised a baseball bat like he was getting ready for a game.
“She’s mine,” the man said coldly.
“She’s a child.”
“She’s my child!”
Jo blinked. “Seriously? You’re her dad?”
“Yes!”
“Hey,” she said, addressing the teenager. “Is he telling the truth? He’s your father?”
“Y-yes,” she replied.
Jo suspiciously eyed the man again. “Do you want to go back with him?”
“Yes.”
Jo lowered her gun and stepped aside. The teenager rushed forward and threw herself into the man’s arms. Dad bent his head, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath as he hugged his daughter. Jo couldn’t help but admire the man’s muscles as they bunched under his shirt, although it annoyed her that she noticed.
“And where the fuck were you?” Jo demanded, shaking off the momentary lapse of concentration.
The man raised his head and glared at her. “Pardon me?”
“If you’re her dad, where the fuck were you when these assholes latched onto the idea of kidnapping her? Do you even know what they had planned for her?”
“I can make a pretty disgusting conclusion,” he muttered.
“She’s a priceless commodity,” Jo continued, pointing to the teenager. “These bastards knew she was disease-free, so don’t fool yourself into thinking she’s safe behind these walls.”
“Look, thank you for protecting her, but you don’t know anything about us.”
“You’re right, I don’t know anything about you two, but I do know what it means to survive. Turn her from your daughter into your son, if you really want to protect her.”
Jo shook her head and started to march past him to leave the alley, but he grabbed her arm, stopping her. It was the first time in a long time that a man had touched her, and instinct had her trying to pull away, but the small spark of electricity when their skin met confused her so she stopped her struggle.
Instead, she glared at him. “Let go of me.”
The man stared at her, hard, and when their gazes met, butterflies fluttered in her belly. “You’re a woman,” he finally said, surprised.
“You don’t have to sound so shocked.”
“I’m not. I mean…you’re a pretty good aim…” His voice trailed off, as if he knew exactly how sexist his words were.
Jo was quite aware of how she looked. She’d cut her once-long hair off and deliberately kept her face a little dirty to disguise her rounded features. His disbelief was warranted, but instead of pissing her off his unease amused her.
“I’m a pretty good aim…for a female?”
“It sounded better in my head.”
“I’m sure it did.”
“My name is Luke,” the man said. “And this is my daughter Casey.”
“I’m Jo.”
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” Casey blubbered through tears. “I didn’t mean any of it!”
Casey’s shaky voice jolted Jo, and she took the opportunity to pull her arm out of Luke’s grasp, stepping far enough back so he couldn’t touch her again. Despite herself, she was curious about Casey’s words, so she waited for Luke to explain.
“We had an argument,” Luke said over Casey’s head. “She said she wished it had been me who died instead of her mother.”
“Ouch,” Jo said, wincing.
“I didn’t mean it!” Casey wailed.
“Keep your voice down,” Jo said. “Sorry to hear about your mom, Casey, but this new world sucks and girls like you are worth a lot of money, so try to put the teenage angst behind you in order to survive this fucked-up world. ’Kay?”
Casey nodded.
Jo turned to the dad. “Now, the chance of someone not hearing those gunshots are about zero to nil, so I suggest you skedaddle and forget about—”
Before she finished what she was saying, the sound of another gunshot ripped through the alley. Luke gasped and grabbed his side, stumbling forward into her and trapping Casey between them. As a shrill whistle pealed through the night, Jo instinctively raised her gun and fired, causing the whistle to abruptly end, followed by the dull thud of a body hitting the ground hard. For a split second, Jo couldn’t believe she just killed one of the haven guards.
“Fuck!” Jo cried. She placed her arms around Luke, helping him stay on his feet. “That was a guard. I just killed a fucking guard! Shit! Come on, we have to go. Casey, help your dad on the other side.”
“What are we going to do?” Casey asked in a wobbly voice. “He needs medical help.”
“Well, we just fucked ourselves getting help here,” Jo replied. “Guards are judge, jury, and executioners, so we gotta get the hell out.”
“How?” Luke asked, wincing with every step.
“I’ve got a plan,” Jo said. “Just don’t pass out on us until we get out of here.”