God of Monsters (Juniper Unraveling #4) - Keri Lake Page 0,14

air trapped in my lungs.

“We’ll have to sleep here tonight,” I manage to choke out.

“Are you kidding me? This is our chance! For escape! They probably radioed the storm before the accident. Legion will come for us. But I have friends this side of the wall. They’ll take us in.”

“Have you looked outside? It’s a warzone. I don’t know about you, but I’m not keen on running into a horde of Ragers right now. They hunt at night. I’ll take my chances with Legion.”

“You’ve seen one?”

“No. I’ve read plenty, though. Have you seen one?”

“Yes. Well, not a full on Rager. Just turned. My neighbor. He kinda went loopy. One day, his wife found him eating the head off a rabbit in the backyard. She reported it, and they picked him up, escorted him away, and I never saw him again after that.” Pulling her knees up, she stares off, frowning. “Was unnerving, that wild look in his eyes. When he passed me, I swear, there was an emptiness there. A wild, violent emptiness that couldn’t be reached anymore.”

Plopping down beside her, I draw my knees up, as well. “I never got your name.”

“Gwen. Yours?”

“Thalia.”

“Pretty name for a pretty girl. That’s the other thing. We have to move soon. Marauders will be all over this truck, if they stumble across it. And two young, fertile women out in the Deadlands are like two rabbits for a pack of starving wolves.”

A curl of nausea twists in my stomach with the visuals. “We don’t have any other shelter. Even if Legion comes, they can’t be as bad as Ragers and marauders.”

“Maybe for you. You have a friend in them. A high-ranking friend. I’m a nobody they’d happily hand over. One less whore in their perfectly pure community.”

“Jack wouldn’t allow that. He’s a good man. My father’s best friend. He’ll look out for us.”

“And what if they don’t come, at all? How long do you plan to hide out in the back of this muggy truck, in over a hundred degree temps?”

I lift my shackled wrists, yanking the excess chain taut between my fists. “How do you plan to defend yourself against anything, or survive, for that matter, with your hands bound?”

Lips flattened, she huffs, and turns her attention away. “They really fucked us. Hard. We might as well strangle ourselves right now, and get it over with.”

“We’re not strangling ourselves. My father always told me, there’s a way out of everything. You just have to keep a level head to find it.” Sighing, I tip my head back, the fierce scratch at the back of my throat a reminder of yet another problem. “At some point, we will have to find water. The body can only survive three days without. If they haven’t arrived by first light, we’ll head out. I’ve read it’s better to travel by day, the heat slows the Ragers, just like us.”

“And where will we go? Back to Szolen? Do you honestly think they’ll let what they deem a criminal back through those gates?”

Probably not. In fact, the chances of Jack getting me back inside those walls is probably slim, so soon after my sentencing, which means there’s only one place to go, unless we try to hack it out here in the Deadlands. “The convent is probably our safest bet.”

“I’m not going back to that convent. I’d rather die of starvation. It’s a walk to the hive where my friends live, maybe a ten-day hike, but I’ll take my chances out there.”

“Or get eaten alive by Ragers? Who are these friends, and how did you meet them?”

She huffs, linking her pinky fingers together, where they dangle over her bent knees. “Two years ago, on the ride back from the convent to Szolen, we were hijacked by a band of women. They took me in for a while, treated me real good, and returned me to Szolen unharmed.”

“What was the point of hijacking the truck?”

“Guess they got word that marauders planned to attack it. A pack of estrogen-fueled vigilantes.” Gwen rubs a shackled hand down her face. “God help the woman who refuses to be chained.” At my frown, she huffs. “My mother used to say it all the time. Even the most defiant women find themselves shackled, like those mousy, obedient twats who abide by the laws of their church and husbands.”

In other words, my mother. Fortunately for her, my father was gone more than he was home. Otherwise, I’m certain, he’d have run our household in the