room, two moth-eaten mattresses on the floor. My sister was on the other mattress, still passed out from the drugs. When the men realized I was awake, their approaching legs came into view. I wasn’t strong enough to fight the needle they injected into my arm. I was pulled under again.
But now I knew I was in a different place.
I tried to move my body, and that was when I realized my wrists were bound together. My legs moved next, and they were in the same predicament, my ankles tied together with rope so thick that I would never be able to rip through it.
Then my eyes opened.
I looked at the wood underneath my cheek, the little holes in the material showing the snowy ground underneath. We must have hit a bump, because it made the vehicle sway and roll my body slightly forward. The sound of the wheels against the earth was loud on my ears, and then I heard the distinct neigh of a horse.
I was in a wagon.
Why the fuck was I in a wagon?
I rolled to my back so I could look up at the sky. It was a sunny day, not a single cloud in the sky, and the air was so dry it was like sandpaper on my lungs. Tree branches extended from trunks into my vision, wooden slices without leaves.
I raised my chin to look across the wagon.
Melanie was there, fast asleep with her face against the wooden cart that carried us. She was bound at her hands and feet too, the small breaths coming from her nose visible as vapor.
“Melanie?” I whispered.
Her mouth was open, and she drooled onto the wooden plank.
I rolled to her spot and hit her with my shoulder. “Melanie? Wake up.” When I’d stirred initially, I’d awoken to a reality that seemed dreamlike. Taking in my surroundings with a dose of skepticism, I didn’t feel much panic. But now that reality had sunk into my flesh, I realized my fate was still in jeopardy.
After I hit her a couple more times, her eyes fluttered, and a pained moan came from her throat. “What? What happened?” She was more affected by the drug than I was, so she struggled to grapple with reality.
I metabolized stuff much quicker because I was furious rather than scared.
But also scared…
“We’re in a wagon.”
“A wagon?” she whispered. “Going where?”
“I don’t fucking know, but we aren’t going to find out. Turn around so I can get these ropes off.”
She groaned as she turned over, and then we both bounced off the wood when the wheel hit a rock in the road.
I scooted down and used my teeth to work the rope, to wet it enough to turn slippery and get it over her wrists, but the knots were tight, the rope was thick and scratchy, and I wouldn’t get her free even if I did this for a month straight. “I can’t get it.”
“Let me try.”
It was totally hopeless. If I couldn’t do it, then she definitely couldn’t, but I didn’t argue and turned over.
After a couple tugs, she gave up. “It’s too tight.”
I lay there, wearing different clothes than I had before, beige pants and a thick matching jacket. But the clothing wasn’t enough to keep us warm when we were exposed to the air like this. The sunshine wasn’t enough either. I didn’t focus on the fact that someone had changed me when I was unconscious. I didn’t even ponder what else had happened in that time frame, a span that was undetermined. Was it days? A week? Or just a few hours? There was no way to tell.
I assumed we were being trafficked, but that didn’t explain the wagon. Unless we’d been bought by some weirdo who preferred to spend his life living out a western fantasy.
My sister’s quiet voice came from behind me. “What now?”
I stared at the opposite end of the wagon, absorbing the vibrations of the transportation, feeling that sense of calm in the face of danger because there was no chance of survival. There was just peaceful acceptance, cutting the line of grief and moving right to the front.
I rolled to my back and sat up, raising myself high enough to see what was in front of me. The person driving the cart sat on a solid wooden seat, so his body was hidden from view. If I wanted to attack him, I’d have to crawl over the structure, and being completely bound like this would make that