Evadere (5 page)

My head snapped around to see who had snuck up on us. A teenage boy with protruding ribs and dark disheveled hair cut unevenly, peered down at me, an amused smirk on his lips as he pointed the end of a jagged spear at my head.

My eyes then shifted toward Jo who sat parallel to me, her eyes large in fear at the sight of the strange boy. She quickly moved in front of me so that the weapon was now aimed at her. Puzzled by her reaction, he retracted the spear and lowered it to his side.
 

“What are you doing?” he snapped. “Why are you protecting this contributor? Why is she not tied up?”

I felt my pulse begin to race as Jo seemed so utterly terrified of this young man that she couldn’t even find the right sense to speak.

“What are you up to, Jo?” He eyed her warily.
 

“Please, Rooney,” Jo finally managed to say. “Leave her be.”

“Why?” he asked, his hand tightening the grip around the spear still positioned at his side.

“She’s not a contributor,” Jo mumbled.

“I …” I began, feeling as if I needed to say something, anything to defend myself, but Jo held up a hand to my face, silencing me.

The young man glared at me, his cheeks flushing red. “Who is she then?” he demanded to know.

Jo got to her feet and faced him. “She’s a Scave.”

The boy she had called Rooney immediately began to inspect my face. “How can that be possible?”

“It just is,” Jo told him.
 

“She’s one of us?” he asked, still a little uncertain.

“She’s one of us.” Jo’s voice wasn’t as shaky now. “Take us back with you?”

The boy’s eyes were still locked on mine. I stayed very still as he examined me, feeling as though I was failing some sort of visual inspection.

“You have a lot of explaining to do,” he said, his hand easing up on the weapon along with the rest of his body.

Jo nodded. “I know.”

“Where is your sack of food?” he asked.

A wrinkle appeared in Jo’s forehead. “I left it on the beach.”

“How could you let that happen?” he yelled out, his temper flaring once again.

Jo looked back at me and then faced Rooney again. “I was trying to save her.”

“You,” he said, motioning toward me.

I tiptoed out from behind Jo and stood beside her. He looked so frail. I wondered why Jo was so afraid of him. He looked as though if hit hard enough, he’d shatter into a million pieces.
 

“You’re a Scave?” Rooney questioned.

I glanced at Jo who met my stare momentarily. “Yeah.”

“What’s your name?”

“Anna.”

“I’m Rooney,” he introduced himself. “What’s your story?”

“It’s a long one,” Jo interrupted. “She’s on the run from the contributors. It’s not safe to stay here.”

After a slight moment of hesitation, Rooney turned around and moved at a fast speed toward the base of the mountain. Jo and I exchanged glances one more time, and I understood that if I didn’t go with them, I’d be left here alone to fend for myself. Either way, I had an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Wait for someone or something to come find me here by myself or dive head first into the domains of the Scaves. I could also tell by the way Jo was acting, that these scavenger people weren’t going to be the type to just accept me instantly when they laid eyes on me. I felt my hands tremble slightly. Taking a deep breath, I forced my legs to move and follow Jo and Rooney up the mountainside.

Long before I actually saw where Scaves lived, the smell of the place reached me first. It reeked of body odor and feces, the combination strong and sour in my nostrils. I swallowed the impending vomit that made its way up my throat from the foul stench and paused for a moment to calm myself. My palms fell to my knees as I hunched over and stared at the ground, a sudden lightheadedness coming on.
 

“Anna?” Jo turned around and headed back for me. Rooney was so far ahead, he was barely visible anymore.

“I’m okay,” I mumbled. “Just a little sick.”

“It’s the smell, isn’t it?”

I looked up at her. “It’s awful.”

“It’s a terrible way to live, I know,” she whispered. “But it’s the way it is. We have nothing. We barely make it on our own, and we have no running water or anything.”

“I’ll suck it up. Just give me a minute,” I promised, unsure if I believed myself.

“This isn’t going to be pretty,” Jo whispered.

“What do you mean?”

She sighed. “The Scaves are a gruesome people. Most aren’t able to survive out here, but the ones that do, well, you’ll see what I mean. I need you to remember something though.”

“What is it?” I asked, trying to continue to breathe through my mouth.

Jo turned around anxiously to keep an eye out for Rooney. He hadn’t even noticed we had stopped following him yet. “Don’t show too much of your mouth.”

“Huh?”
 

“You know, your teeth.”

“Jo!” Rooney called out in a musical tone, still far away.

I was making an attempt to process what she meant. All I could think about was that the Scaves were some sort of dog people who if shown another person’s teeth, would think of it as a threat and immediately attack that person for having done so.
 

“We’re coming!” she hollered back at him. “Just remember what I said,” she added in a whisper.

The small huts where the Scaves lived came into view first when entering their camp. They were made up of mismatched items, some wood, some bricks finished off with rocks or leaves. It seemed whatever they had found, or took, was thrown together in order to make a shelter. The huts were very poorly made, and I wasn’t going to dare go near the ones that had rocks as a roof looking as though any wrong bump or movement inside or out could cause the whole thing to tumble down on your head.
 

“She’s right here,” Rooney shouted from up ahead.
 

He had obviously announced my arrival to the rest of them as I could hear the shuffling of feet dragging in the dust up ahead. My pulse sped up instantly. I took a deep breath and kept my head down as I trekked slowly on into the depths of the Scaves’ realm. When I finally did look up, I gasped.

Jo had used the word gruesome. That didn’t even begin to describe the appearance of these underfed, filthy people who now gathered around to see my coming. Rooney held out his arms and pointed directly at me.
 

“There she is,” he announced. “Jo says she’s a Scave.”

My eyes met with a woman on my left who only had one eye. The other side of her face was deformed and mostly skin now covered up the spot where her eye used to be. She didn’t even bother to try to hide it. Her hair was gray, frizzy and long. The skin on her cheeks sagged. She reached out a very skinny arm toward me as if to touch me. I uncomfortably moved out of her way so that she couldn’t get close. I huddled toward Jo’s side as I was eyed by even more Scaves. All of them turned to stare at me, their faces beholding curiosity filled with both concern and hatred at the same time. Scave men had long hair and beards, some of them reaching their waists. Their collar bones protruded out from their shirtless bodies, and their skin was covered in the dust from the ground as if permanently stuck there. A younger woman, probably in her 30s, drummed a long black fingernail along the side of her cheek as she examined me. I looked down at the ground. The smell of their unsanitary premises no longer bothered me. The fear of seeing the disgust in their beady, little eyes brought on a whole new more overwhelming sensation that outweighed the previous one.

From the back of the crowd, an old man pushed his way through until he came to the front. He stood directly in front of me, his scraggly whitish-gray beard wrapped around his wrist. He held a crooked branch in the other hand as a cane to help prop himself up. The stench from his open mouth, which he breathed through, immediately made my nausea return as if something rotten was growing from inside his throat. He made a wheezing sound as he breathed, almost like a continuous growl. He had scars covering the skin on his face, and his teeth were sharp, the top ones overlapping his bottom lip in spots. He looked more like a beast than a man, far more horrific than any of the others. I clenched my fists at my side and swallowed hard.
 

“What are you?” he said, almost in a deep hiss.
 

It took every ounce of willpower I had not to run away right then and there. This was the kind of creature I pictured lurking on the banks of the Evadere beach at night when everything was black. This was a monster unlike anything my imagination could even have come up with, and yet here I was, standing in front of him, knowing this interrogation wasn’t going to end well. I barely knew anything about contributors or Scaves. I could put some of the pieces together here and there and from what Jo had told me, but really, how was I going to pull this off?

I opened my mouth but nothing came out. I clenched my hands together in front of me and looked at them. Licking my dry lips, I tried again. “A Scave,” I whispered.

He made a disapproving groaning noise as he circled me now, looking me over. I felt as if I he were my predator. He had to be some sort of leader of the Scaves, I guessed. “How is this so?” he questioned.

“I …” Jo stuttered.

“Be quiet,” he commanded her, holding up the stick to point in her direction.

Jo’s head shot downward.

“Where did you find them?” he asked.

“At the bottom of the mountain,” Rooney replied.

“Where were they coming from?”

“If I had to guess, it’d be near farming,” Rooney continued.
 

“You’re running from the farming contributors?” This ugly, frightening creature stood before me once again. One of his pointy teeth scraped against the bottom of his lip and a little drop of blood ran down to his chin. I watched in disgust as he brought up his arm with his beard wrapped around it and wiped it off with his hair.

“Yes,” I whispered.
 

“Jo,” he said in another growl turning around. “Where’s the sack?”

“She left it on the beach,” Rooney answered for her. “It’s gone.”

A loud hissing noise came from the Scave’s throat. Jo backed away from him. She was just as terrified of this
thing
as I was and she lived in a group with him. “What is your opinion on this matter?” he questioned Rooney who didn’t seem quite as juvenile while in the presence of his leader.
 

“I’m not sure I believe she’s a Scave,” Rooney told him.
 

The other Scaves from the crowd all grumbled in concern over my presence.

“Were you sent by someone?” the man asked me.

“No,” I said quickly.

“Perhaps by
royalty
?” He winced a little as he emphasized the word royalty as if it pained him to say it and had to do so slowly in order to get it out. “Surely they wouldn’t sacrifice their own to spy on us, unless they wanted you dead.” He pressed his face closer to mine, and I felt my eyes water up from the rank smell protruding from his mouth.
 

“I …”

“I don’t believe you!” he shouted before I could even finish.

A burning radiated down through the center of my chest and into my stomach. I took a few steps backwards.
 

“You couldn’t survive on your own all this time.” He sniffed me, then gave me a look of pure disgust. “You’re clean, healthy.”

“Karn!” someone shouted out.
 

Everyone slowly turned around to look at two Scaves who had just entered the campsite, both of them appearing very similar to their leader, yet a little younger and stronger as they had more muscle built up. They looked just as hideous with their jagged teeth and long hair pulled back into a messy ponytail. They had two others with them, males, whose feet and hands were bound together with wire that had been placed on so tightly, their skin was bleeding. Their mouths were gagged.

“You,” the Scave leader snapped, pointing his staff at me. “Wait here. I’m not done with you yet.” He slowly limped over to where they stood. “What is this?”

“We found them hanging around the bottom of the hill,” one said.

“They were alone,” the other added, his voice huskier.

The contributors’ eyes widened as they took in the sights around them. They appeared physically very
normal
, like a human. I wondered how long the Scaves had been on their own out here trying to survive. They were frail-looking from lack of nutrition, yet still had such a fierceness and determination about them.
 

How was I going to get out of this? I couldn’t stay here and pretend to be a Scave. I was lost in this strange world and mingling with creatures I didn’t know the first thing about. I had nowhere to turn as the certain doom awaiting me began its overwhelming descent upon my mind, impressing its hideous ideas into my imagination of the terrible things that I was going to have to endure here with the Scaves. Perhaps the contributors would see that I looked more like them, and I could talk some sense into them. Surely someone somewhere could tell me how I could get back to Earth or point me in the right direction of someone that knew.