Connie gingerly clutched her aching head. Shit. I've really got to stop waking up like this…
"Huh? Looks like you're awake."
Connie flinched away from the voice bouncing around in her skull, opening her eyes a hair's breadth.
"Could you try not to talk so loud?" she managed to croak. A boy's round, freckled face appeared in her vision. His tattered red-and-white sweatshirt and jeans had seen better days.
"Whatever, Mungo." The boy shrugged and left her field of vision.
"Wait! Angh, wait." Connie hauled herself into a sitting position. "Where… where are we?" A cursory scan revealed a small chain link pen with a hard-packed earth floor. Beyond that… "Oh fuck." Am I in hell?
A dark, crumbling city dominated the skyline. Occasionally a burst of flame set the smoggy sky ablaze. Haunting sounds of the shrieking of metal-on-metal, manic laughter, and terrified screams drifted through the still air. They were in the center of an otherwise clear area studded with shoddily constructed cages.
"I heard the Slavers talking. Called this place 'The Pitt'."
Her gaze turned to the boy crouched in the opposite corner of the pen. On either side of him were two small girls, one dark as the other was fair. "Who are you?" she asked them quietly.
The boy lifted his chin. "I'm Squirrel." Her tapped the dark, sharp-eyed girl's shoulder, then patted the other, smaller girl clinging to his shirt. "This'ns Penny, and she's Bumble." The two girls wore patchwork clothing only slightly better than his: a pair of ratty overalls and dirty rocket ship pyjamas respectively.
All three were wearing collars, and Connie abruptly realized she was wearing one too. Oh, no.
"I'm scared," Bumble whispered, tightening her grip on Squirrel's shirt.
You don't gotta worry. I'm real smart, remember? I'll get us outta this." Squirrel didn't look as confident as he was trying to sound.
"Hello, Pets. We'll get you to where you belong, shall we?" a contralto voice came from directly behind Connie.
She managed to turn her head enough to see the strange woman, only just realizing how drained she felt. The woman was probably pretty once, Connie thought, with a fine-boned face, and dark brown eyes. One eye was obscured by cheek length black bangs on an otherwise shaved skull. Open lesions covered the skin her leather armor left visible. It made Connie wince.
The door swung open and Connie fell backwards, landing in a pile at the woman's feet. Connie flinched away when the woman loomed over her. The Raider's mouth twisted into something that might pass for a smile.
"Lulu won't hurt you, Pets. She only bites when Ashur commands it."
Then the woman – Lulu? – hauled Connie to her feet by the collar of her jumpsuit.
"Come, Pets." She turned and walked away, clearly not expecting them to resist.
Connie's eyes narrowed. There was no way a raider would behave that way if there wasn't something protecting her back.
Squirrel hadn't moved from his spot.
Come on, let's go! Connie tried to tell him without drawing Lulu's attention.
He lifted his chin, almost defiantly. No!
Now, dumbass. She growled.
"Now, now, what would Ashur think if he saw you acting so untrained?" Lulu's voice sounded next to her ear, low and harsh. "Come, or does Lulu have to punish you?"
Squirrel's eyes widened for a fraction of a second, his gaze shifting between the slave he just met and the slaver whose eyes were gleaming with a disquieting light. Realizing that what he was up against was more than he could handle, he lead the girls out of the pen.
Lulu observed the slaves for a moment longer, then turned on her heel without a word.
Connie hesitated for only a moment before following, having little choice but to obey now. The narrow streets twisted and twined around shells of abandoned buildings, and she thought it should be a dead city, a city corroded by rust and radiation. Yet the scattered clearings in the rubble contained little fenced-in settlements, workshops, and businesses, and gazing at her surroundings with awe, it seemed the city's corpse was coming alive, a pre-war zombie unwilling to die.
They might have walked for ten minutes or an hour, but finally they passed through another chain-link fence topped with razor wire. The town was mixture of pre-war buildings and ramshackle shacks arranged in a semi-circle around a massive dry fountain.
"Midea!" Lulu stood waiting with her hands on her hips. "Midea!" she called again somewhat shrilly, her voice edged with impatience.
A woman who looked as worn as her clothing slipped out of one of the shacks to stand before the Raider.
Connie frowned at the woman, feeling pity and anger boiling in her stomach. What was this, some sort of slavery?
She awaited her orders with her hands folded demurely in front of her. It might actually look demure, if her hands weren't white knuckled. She was unhappy, that was for sure, but Lulu apparently did not notice.
"These are the new Pets." The Raider gave Connie a haughty, lingering look-over before turning to regard the children behind with the same unpleasant expression, smirking slyly. "See to it that they know their place."
A thinly veiled sour expression flitted across Midea's face. "As you say." She then offered her hand to the kids, forcing a reassuring smile. "Come on, kids. Do you want to go meet the others?"
Bumble took Midea's hand, keeping her death-grip on Squirrel with the other. Penny glanced back at Connie, and offered up a weak smile before following her friends.
Connie attempted to follow, but a hand clamped on her shoulder with an iron grip. She swallowed, dreading what she knew was about to come.
Lulu turned her half-way around, and a tiny shiver ran down Connie's spine at her hungry smile. "As for you, pretty…"
A finger trailed under her jaw and down her neck, leaving Connie's skin crawling in its wake. She was scared, but she wouldn't give the Raider the pleasure of knowing that, and so she remained standing upright with her arms held defiantly at her sides.
"Sometime soon, we're going to get to know each other better," Lulu purred, leaning in closer. "Won't that be fun?"
Then she shoved Connie through the gate and slammed it behind the bewildered girl, who barely caught herself in time.
"But until then… wait for me, my pet." With that said the Raider winked, turning on her heel to walk away briskly, her movements sharp and forceful.
Peoples warmed out of the buildings the moment Lulu left, and the number of them made Connie wonder how they'd fit. There had to be around a hundred or so, all told. She must look as dazed as she felt, because one of the women broke away from the group. The woman hovered uncertainly at her side.
"Hey, I'm Milly. Are you all right?"
Connie shuddered. She really didn't fell like talking right now.
The one called Milly smiled hesitantly, and the warmth in her eyes was more than enough to make the weeping sores on her face irrelevant. "That was a good piece of luck. Looks like you won't have to worry about Lulu for a while."
Connie swallowed. "For a while?"
Milly raked a hand through her short maroon hair and attempted another smile. "Um…Why don't we introduce you to the others?"
The way Milly avoided the question was hardly subtle, but Connie decided to let it lie for now. She turned to face the roiling crowd. As far as looks went, the group had only one thing in common – the scabby, fractured appearance of their skins, which also shared an oddly washed-out quality. Even the people whose skins should clearly be dark had a yellowed tinge.
The next half-hour or so was a blur of half-remembered names and faces. So Connie was unspeakably grateful when Midea pulled her aside. The woman's expression was deathly serious.
"You're to work in the control room with the boy." She jerked Connie's chin in Squirrel's direction. "You'd better do as the masters tell you. Don't look them in the eye, don't argue, keep your head down… you'll be fine." And then she left.
And Connie couldn't help but sigh. Wonderful.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Her first impression was a cacophony of noise. The shriek of metal-on-metal, shouted orders, and screams of agony
Clatter, screech, clang, sizzle…
Flashes of light from the furnaces and scattering sparks from metal cutters lit the shadows like tiny fireworks.
She was distantly aware of the slowly building tension in her muscles, the way her skin was starting to crawl. She forced her heart to slow, then moved forward, weaving around workers and their loads. Eventually she found the place she was looking for – a door marked 'Employees Only'.
Connie pushed through and caught sight of the person she was looking for – a muscular man clad in rags, with a large axe/saw hybrid strapped to his back. He smiled and wiped greasy grey hair out of his eyes, and Connie was briefly reminded of her father.
"Hmm… You you're the new recruits? Welcome to hell. Either of you got any experience with machinery?"
Squirrel trailed in after Connie, tugging irritably at his collar, "I kin reprogram computers."
"I was on the maintenance crew in the… my hometown." Without looking, she slapped Squirrel's hand away from his neck. "Quit it, you're going to set it off. You want to get fried?"
Squirrel glared, but stopped fidgeting.
"You kids'll work on the compu-"
'What's your name?"
The man stopped short, surprised, and smiled again. Connie thought it was oddly strained.
"Marco." He turned and ghosted his hands over the keyboard before speaking again. "So you'll be working on the computer controls…"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Connie's head hurt. She wasn't sure exactly how long she had spent focusing on the string of green letters and numbers that comprised the steel mills program, but it was far too long. It didn't help that she'd woke up that morning feeling like she had a cross between a hangover and a concussion.
She trailed after Marco and Squirrel, massaging the back of her neck and wishing that the tension that followed her around all day would dissipate. They were almost to her 'district' – what they called the little fenced-in compounds that comprised the slave quarters – when a child's shriek lanced through the air. And then there was tense, heavy silence.
Connie rushed forward, her body moved by an instinct deeper than understanding.
She saw a man with stringy brown hair and a greasy face with the skin peeled down to meaty flesh, who had a death-grip on a little dark-haired girl.
His face was cracked into a skeleton's grin where his cheeks and lips were eaten away. The little girl was Penny, Connie realized with a shock. The kid hadn't talked much, but she seemed sweet, and she had smiled at Connie.
Briefly, As Connie watched the scene play out before her, her gaze met with the girl's and a very different pair of warm brown eyes flashed in her mind's eye. What would she do if that creepy bastard was looking at her Amata like that?
In a heartbeat she made her decision.
She and launched herself into the air and came crashing down on the raider, throwing him off Penny with force that sent them rolling, and consequently, Connie ended up on top of him.
He seemed confused at first, but that quickly turned to annoyance, as if she were a fly on his nose.
He growled throatily as Connie perched on his chest, muscles coiled beneath her thighs like some self-satisfied big cat. So many painful things she wanted to do to him, she couldn't even make up her mind.
And suddenly seeming to realize the position they were in, his annoyance turned to smugness and he smirked up at her with his destroyed face. "Ya don't haff tha gutsh, bitsh."
Connie could barely make out the words, the slur of snakelike hisses, and it was unsettling.
His hand ghosted over her ribs. A swollen, scabby red tongue peeked through his teeth as he snarled menacingly up at her. "Whadda you tshhink they'll do taya before they kill ya? An' then I'll take the girl anywaysh."
She could hear the kid's frightened whimper behind her, the shared panic that burned in their veins. Wasteland children were far from innocent, but the thought of what little remained being tarnished... How could people do this? How could people do this?
A burning moment passed, and the rage inside began to grow, springing up suddenly as a flame fed by oil.
Something in Connie twisted… and broke. A dark gleam entered her eyes, even as it entered her mind, lurking, gnawing, clawing around the edges. Finishhimsilencehimendhim…
He was still stroking her side while all of this happened, his confidence peaking. He thought she was reconsidering, that she'd remove herself and leave him to finish his business in peace, just as any sensible Slave girl would do.
But Connie was anything but sensible. this. threat. is. not. allowed.
The Raider shifted a little, growing uncomfortable. Not that he didn't enjoy being straddled, but the way the girl was looking at him…
"You think so?" she all but purred, unexpectedly now, speaking for the first time in seemingly minutes. She leaned a little closer. "… reeaaally?"
His face twitched with alarm, and even though he wanted to, he could not escape the depths of her eyes.
Her hand closed around a triangular fist-sized chunk of concrete, raising it above his head, and she watched as the delicious fear spread across the man's face. He'd fucked with the wrong person, pushed the wrong mind over the edge. And he knew it and it was beautiful.
The cry of protest came too late.
The rock pounded into his skull, almost independent of Connie's thoughts, again and again and again, until his face was a bloody crater and grey matter splattered across the stones. She could hear someone screaming, but her mind didn't understand. Finally she slowed, then stopped, trembling.
Gazing down at what she had done, no, what someone else had done, she dropped the rock and scrambled away, retching. Penny sniffled, and Connie winced as though struck.
Ohgodohgodohgodohgod…
Her stomach heaved. The metallic scent of blood mixed with the acrid taste of bile on her tongue.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Meanwhile, Lulu watched from the distance. True, she was supposed to be that idiot Tom's backup, but this was so much more... delicious. She watched the new slave through narrowed eyes, glorious with scarlet splashed on white skin, and hungered. Unconsciously, Lulu licked her lips. Mine.