Traded. That’s what she’d said. Traded like an old world Benjamin or piece of salvage, a jug of water or a gallon of juice. But what was our value? I stared at the filthy bodies surrounding me, the ragged bits of skin in the moonlight.
What good were we to anyone but ourselves?
It made me get to wondering if this was how Pop had been taken. But him and me had been out near Vega, the other side of the cornfields, and pirates don’t go messing where GenTech is at. Besides, all the racket they made, I would have heard pirates coming. Whoever stole Pop away had been stealthy. Because Pop had heard voices, but I never heard a damn thing.
I finally gave up standing and sank down in the sludge. Sal slumped beside me, waiting, I’d no doubt, for me to tell him how come we were pinned inside the leftovers of a city, trapped by buildings rooted in mud.
“They’ll take him for sure,” a raspy voice said behind me, and I spun around to a beady set of eyes. The man’s head was smudged silver in the moonlight, his cheeks hammered hollow and thin. “The fat one,” the man whispered, staring at me.
“What you talking about?”
“He’s young. And there’s plenty of him.”
“For what?” Sal said in a small voice.
The scrawny dude scrunched up his shoulders. “For whatever they like.”
“Shut it,” I said, turning away. “Don’t you listen to him.”
But Sal was already sobbing, his fists squeezed tight.
I felt at my arm where the nail stung and throbbed, and I knew much longer and I’d have to claw the damn thing out with my fingers. At sunrise, I told myself, pulling away from Sal and hunkering down to sleep. I needed to rest, if I could. I couldn’t do anything now. Not until the sun came up.
But when the sun came up, I was caught in a sickness, wrapped inside a fever that painted the brown world red.
I’d not hardly opened my eyes and I was throwing up what little was inside me. My head swirled, and I clutched the mud as if I could stop the earth from moving. I felt hands on me, stroking the hair from my eyes. I was wriggling around and shivering, my skin all thorny and pricked.
“He’s burning up,” Sal yelled, his voice piercing through the blur.
The pain howled in my arm, and I reached slippery fingers to where the nail had worked its way deep.
Eyes closed. Eyes open. It didn’t matter. My guts twitched and I heaved again, and not a single drop squeezed out.
In a different world, I could hear the ramp cranking down amid a stampede of boots and voices. Then the smell of old leather filled me with nausea as hands grappled hold of my shoulders and grabbed at my feet.
“How many more days we got to keep them?” said the woman at my legs, her fingers sharp on my ankles.
“I quit counting,” the voice right above me shot back, and the sound vibrated through me as the pirate woman sank my head against her chest. Her breath reeked like smoke she’d swallowed a thousand years prior. “Flip him,” she said. “He’s gonna lose his lunch.”
Lunch.
The word jabbed at me as they turned me facedown and rushed me up the ramp. And I could almost taste burned corn and warm water, feel the breeze atop a finished forest. Me and Pop and a meal fit for kings. My old man trading me kernels so as to double my rations. And if I died now, then there’d be no one to go looking for him. No one to care.
In the distance there was music, a guitar stopping and starting and the sound of women singing. I strained my ears to listen. Blinked my eyes open.
I was stretched on a lumpy cot beneath a corrugated ceiling, little bits of sky poking through the metal, revealing the pink of a sun giving up or a sun coming back.
I shivered. Ran my hands on my tender skin. Naked. I clutched my stomach and it felt swollen and sticky. I tried to raise up my head but a hand eased me back.
“Rest,” the girl said.
It was her. Alpha. The one who’d plugged me with the nail in the first place. I struggled against her and felt at my arm. The wound was bandaged now, the skin puffy.
“Pulled it out,” Alpha said as I squinted up at her. “Can’t have you dying on us.”
“Shouldn’t have shot me, then,” I whispered, feeling a searing pain up the back of my skull.
“You tried to shoot me first, bud. Remember?”
She swabbed a damp cloth at my chest and I tensed as the water dripped and tickled. I remembered how this girl had looked with the baby on her hip — like someone who hadn’t had all the sweetness beat out of her. And then the pain came tearing at my eyeballs again, and I blacked out hard and cold.
Went on like this for hours. Rolling back and forth on the cot, coming to, then passing out again. The voices quivering in the distance, singing and laughing. And Alpha returning to bathe me and check on my wound.
The holes in the ceiling became plugged with night, then turned pale with morning. And I didn’t think of my pals down in the mud pit. Not even once.
I’d been left alone and was drowsy and spent when the door came open and a new girl came in. She pulled a sheet across me and sat beside me on the cot.
“Alpha tells me you’re a tree builder,” the girl said. She looked young, and much too small for a pirate.
“Used to be,” I muttered, turning away from her. “Lost all my tools.”
“I don’t think it’s the tools that matter. Either you are something or you’re not.”
I stayed silent.
“Let me see your hands,” she said, not giving me much choice in the matter. She studied my fingertips, felt at my palms.
“I want you to build something for us,” the girl said, looking satisfied. “To finish something.”
I tried to sit up on the cot but was too weak, so I just blinked at her. She was handsome, in a stern sort of way. Her braided hair was blond, and cleaner than it had any right to be in a town so full of filth.
“Who the hell are you?” I said.
“You can call me Jawbone. Though most here call me Captain.”
“Thought Alpha was in charge.”
“Alpha answers to me.”
“You don’t look much like a captain.”
She smiled, all patient and shit. I started to say something else but she cut me off.
“You should feel honored. Your work will leave quite the legacy.” The girl spoke smart, like she’d been schooled or something, not grown up here south of the forty.
“You’ll have to excuse me not giving a damn,” I said.
“I imagine you give a damn about one thing. Yourself.”
“You can imagine all you want.”
“If you build for us, then you’ll go free.”
I stopped cold at that, felt my guard slip.
“Another few days and King Harvest will be here,” she went on. “You can be part of our trade with him. Or not.”
Build or be traded. Easy enough choice.
“I got a friend, though,” I said, surprising myself with the word. “Little fat kid, down in your pit.”
“You can take my terms or reject them. But they’re not to be altered.”
“Then you’d better let me sleep,” I told her. “I’ll start building once the heat wears down.”
“I’m sorry about your friend,” the girl said, standing. “I’d like nothing more than to free all of them.”
“So why don’t you?”
“Because King Harvest requires we meet our quota. One way or another.”
At sunset, I was strong enough to stand, and I took to the walkways with Alpha on one side of me and Jawbone on the other.