The Scavengers

  Chapter 9

  Kennedy and Seth had been wrong about Drake spending the day romancing Cya. The petite blonde was curled up in a miserable ball in the back seat of the bus when Kennedy and I got back from our strange trip down the soggy dirt road.

  Drake was sitting on the hood of the bus, scowling viciously as he repeatedly sunk the tip of his knife into a soggy looking lump of cloth in his lap.

  “I'm guessing you didn't have no luck?” Kennedy surmised as we emerged out of the woods.

  Drake let out a choked laugh then looked directly at me. “I've been waiting for you to come back for an hour.”

  “Me?” I blinked at him. “Why?”

  “You have the most medical training. Go deal with that worthless, miserable girl. I think her leg is broken.” He jerked his thumb towards the bus. “We didn't make it a quarter of a mile before she started crying and screaming and moaning that her foot hurt too bad to go on. She screwed up our entire search today.” His golden eyes flashed with frustration and anger.

  “I'll see what I can do,” I said with a sigh. “Time is the only thing that heals broken bones.”

  “She doesn't have time,” Drake said. There was a cruelty to his tone that made me pause.

  I desperately wanted to trust Drake, but my Dad hadn't raised an idiot. Seth's dislike of Drake was understandable, I supposed, even though I was clearly missing a very large piece of that particular puzzle. Kennedy's distrust was a bit harder to brush off. Kennedy had been a Scavenger for the better part of 3 years and he'd been on plenty of successful hunts with Drake.

  Knowing Kennedy didn't trust Drake made me second guess my own feelings towards him. I chewed on my lip as I headed towards the door of the bus.

  “Cya,” I called her name softly as I entered the bus.

  “Go away.” Her voice was choked with tears and hoarse from crying.

  “Drake asked me to check on you.” I kept walking down the aisle towards her even as she visibly curled into a tighter ball around her injured foot.

  “I wanna go home,” she moaned. “Tell him to take me home.”

  “Let me see your foot,” I said trying to speak as gently as possible.

  “No,” she shook her head vigorously. “Hell no.”

  “You're hurt, I may be able to help you.”

  She stared up at me through bloodshot red eyes. “Don't lie to me. I know you're on his side. I saw you with him last night.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You're with Drake. You woke me up when y'all came back in to the bus. I saw him kissing you.” She glared at me with a look of pure hatred. “I want Drake so badly. He's the entire reason I signed up to become a Scavenger. I needed him to fall in love with me when he met me. I would do anything to be with him.”

  “Just let me see your leg.” I tried not to sound as flustered as I felt. Too many people knew about what I had assumed had been a very private moment with Drake. I definitely didn't want to think about Cya's fantasies starring the same man. Those were too close to the daydreams Julie and I had once giggled about while lying in our beds.

  “Why?” Cya had tears flowing down her chipmunk cheeks. “You're just trying to give him an excuse for killing me.”

  “Killing you?” I repeated. “I don't know what you're talking about. He just asked me to check your leg and see how badly you're hurt.”

  “Stop lying. Drake wants me dead. I'm worth more to him dead now than I am alive.”

  “Cya.” I took another step towards her and put my hand on her shoulder.

  She shoved me roughly backwards. “Get away from me!”

  I stumbled and caught a hold of the bus seat to steady myself. She wasn't my first angry patient. “I'm here to help you,” I told her.

  “He's going to sell me to them!” She wailed. Her tears were coming hard and fast now. “I can't walk. Conner's dead. The last hunt was a failure. He's not going to fail twice. The Scavengers aren't allowed to fail twice.”

  “Sell you?” I was still stuck on her first sentence.

  She nodded, still sobbing. “All Drake cares about are his damned drugs. He doesn't care about me and don't think he cares about you either. All that matters to him is getting his next fix. He'll trade me for rock candy.”

  “Rock candy?” I repeated dumbly.

  “It's a drug,” she practically spat the words at me.

  “Drake is on drugs?” I was stunned. “He can't be. He's the captain of the Scavengers. The Powers that Be would never tolerate drugs.”

  “Shh! Don't say it out loud or he'll kill us both. The Powers that Be don't care what Drake is on so long as he gets results. It doesn't matter how many girls he sells for drugs so long as he keeps bringing cans back to the Cube,” Cya whispered. “The drugs are all they care about. Drake was already pissed off before we even left the Cube because the last hunt we went on was a bust. We didn't find anything good enough for him to trade for more drugs in Ra Shet. I heard him talking to Conner when they were getting the bus loaded. He kept saying how this hunt needed to go smoothly or they were going to run out of their special rock candy.”

  “Drake isn't going to sell you or trade you for drugs,” I tried to sound as calm as possible.”

  “Drake isn't the only one on drugs,” Cya said as she shook her head vigorously. “They all are. Him. Shayla. Kennedy. Conner was too. They carry them around in little brown fabric bags. Didn't you see Shayla get Conner's bag off of his body before they lit him on fire?”

  I frowned, struggling to remember. I had seen Shayla searching Conner's body but I didn't remember what it was she had taken from him.

  But I had just seen Drake holding a little brown sack just a few minutes ago when we'd walked up.

  “Why would Drake want to take drugs?” I demanded, keeping my voice low. “Drugs make you slow and distort your ability to function. Drake needs to be at his best when he's on a hunt. Why would he take something that would make him weak?”

  Cya sniffled and narrowed her eyes at me. “Because rock candy doesn't make them weak. It works by speeding up your perceptions so that everything else around you looks like it’s in slow motion. You see zombies coming but they're moving so slow that all you can do is laugh at them. Everything moves so slowly. Rock candy turns the hunts into a game. It turns this hellish world we live in into a violent playground for the sadistic.”

  “You've taken it?”

  “I already told you, I would do anything to make it as a Scavenger. I would do anything to be Drake's girl.” Her expression was hateful as she straightened her spine and looked me dead in the eye. “Conner offered a piece of rock candy to me on my second hunt. He said it would make me a real hunter. A real Scavenger. It was so awesome. I felt so incredible.”

  “You like the drugs?” I had never felt more confused.

  “I loved the drugs,” Cya emphasized. “But at the end of the hunt, Conner took the other three recruits who had come with us on the hunt and he sold them to a flesh broker out of Ra Shet. He got an entire pound of rock candy per girl.”

  “What is a flesh broker?” I asked.

  Cya laughed bitterly. “By the time you find out, it'll be too late for you.”

  “Cya, you really need to let me take a look at your leg,” I said as I tried to bring the conversation back on track. As much as I wanted to try to fit rock candy drugs and flesh brokers into the crazy puzzle of information I'd already gathered today, I didn't figure I had that much time before Drake boarded the bus and demanded a report on Cya's medical condition. I didn't want to have to explain to him that I'd been listening the patient accuse him of being a drug-addicted human trafficker.

  “My leg doesn't matter,” Cya said as she wiped tears from her cheeks. She attempted to use her torso to shield the leg from my sight but her efforts were futile.

  Walking on the injury clearly hadn't done it any favors. I hadn't seen an open wound on the leg yesterday but the massive swelling made me wonder if she was developing
an infection. Her entire lower left leg was purplish black and swollen to easily four times the size of the right leg. “Shit,” I muttered.

  “Go away.” Cya growled at me. “Leave me alone. We're both dead, Pilar. Don't you know that we're both already dead?”

  “Your leg...”

  “Are you deaf?” Cya snapped. “They're going to kill us and you're still talking about my leg.”

  “No one is going to kill you,” I tried to sound comforting. Blood poisoning sometimes made people paranoid. Maybe I hadn't gotten her wounds clean enough yesterday when I bandaged them. The thought was worrisome. Cya's skin was red and splotchy from crying so I couldn't tell whether or not she was feverish. She wasn't about to let me touch her.

  “If you only knew the truth,” Cya laughed bitterly. The sound was brittle like broken glass and ended with a miserable, choked sob. “Go away. Leave me alone. Tell Drake I'm fine.”