But the pain crowds my thoughts, and all I really notice over it is how cold I am and how hard it is to breathe.

My mind drifts and my eyes close.

This is the end.

I feel death creeping into my bones. This is where people rally and fight for their lives.

I don’t.

I give in.

 

 

Chapter 4

I have this recurring dream of Famine walking through a field of sugarcane. His hand reaches idly out, his fingertips brushing the stalks. Beneath his touch the plants curl and blacken, the decay spreading out around him until the entire field has withered away.

It’s eerily silent. I can’t even hear the wind whistling through those dying stalks, though they sway in some phantom breeze.

I’m back there now, standing like a sentinel as the Reaper moves through the field, killing that crop. There’s another, darker figure that looms somewhere behind me, but I don’t pay him any attention.

As I watch, Famine moves farther from me, and as he does so, the silence seems to close in on me, until it’s a deafening ring in my ears.

From behind me, a strong hand grips my shoulder, squeezing tightly.

Lips press against my ear.

“Live,” the voice breathes.

That’s what wakes me.

My eyes flutter open. I squint against the heavy, oppressive shine of the sun, the pungent smell of decay thick in my nostrils.

Hazy with pain and weakness, I draw in one shaky breath, then another.

I shift a little. At the movement, sharp, blinding pain rips across my torso.

Fucking ow.

I go still, waiting for the pain to abate. It does … somewhat, dulling to a steady throb. I take a shallow breath, inhaling bits of dirt as I do so.

I cough, and Satan’s balls, it feels like I’ve crossed through the gates of hell. The pain reignites.

Hurts so damn bad.

Dirt shifts over my body, skittering off me as I push myself up. My arm brushes something soft, something that isn’t dirt. Then it’s my leg that touches that same object.

My teeth grind against the pain as I force myself to sit up. I cry out at the action, my body hurting in a dozen different places.

Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up.

When the pain and nausea pass, I look around me. Vaguely, it registers that I’m sitting in that unfinished pool, and that someone has thrown mounds and mounds of dirt back into the craterous pit. But that’s not what’s truly snagging my attention.

Little more than a meter away, I see a face peering up through the soil like some newly sprouted plant, its mouth slightly agape, dirt lightly sprinkled across its open eyes, which stare blankly into the distance.

A sound slips out of me as my gaze darts over the rest of my surroundings. To my left I see a leg and part of someone’s torso sticking out from the dirt, to my right I see a shoulder and the arm of yet another body.

My hand braces itself against something lumpy and vaguely hard. I glance down only to realize this whole time I’ve been pushing against the face of the mayor’s wife, two of my fingers are brushing against her teeth.

My scream comes out as a choked cry.

Dear God.

I snatch my hand away, causing a dozen flies to take flight before resettling.

The woman’s daughters are laying nearby. All of them then haphazardly covered with dirt.

Buried in a shallow grave. Left to die.

And me along with them.

Elvita.

My eyes dart around, searching frantically for the woman who took me in five years ago.

I don’t see her, but the longer I stare about, the more I realize that the pit is moving. There are others who survived the rampage, others like me who have been buried alive.

And now that I’m actually paying attention, I can hear their soft, dying groans. Those of us still living might not be for long. My mind rallies against that thought.

I want to live.

I will live.

And then I will get my revenge.

I can’t say how many minutes it takes to force myself to my feet. The whole time I’m sure that one of Famine’s men is going to come out here and check on us to make sure the dead stay dead. That all my effort will come to a swift, sharp end. But no one comes.

I dust the dirt off my body. It’s everywhere—in my hair, down my shirt, coating my clothes, between my toes and inside my mouth. I’m too cowardly to look at the wounds on my chest, but I bet if I did, I’d see dirt in them as well.

Pushing myself up, my gaze sweeps over the pit. The sides of it are too steep to simply walk out of, but thankfully one part of the pool is shallower than the other, and in this shallow area someone thought to create steps leading out.

But in order to get over to those steps, I have to walk over the partially buried bodies.

Pinching my eyes shut, I draw in a deep breath, release it, then start to move.

Instantly, the pain sharpens, stealing my breath and making my movement almost unbearably agonizing.

I take one shaky step, then two, then three.

Just a little farther.

My foot slips on a bloody arm, and I fall. I hit the ground.

Blinding pain—

I think I pass out because I’m suddenly blinking my eyes open even though I don’t remember closing them.

Once again I’m lying on a dirt-covered corpse, my cheek nestled against something wet and sticky. The pain, the horror—all of it has my nausea rising. I barely have time to turn my head to the side before I retch.

My entire body is shaking, both from exertion, and from my terrible reality.

I let myself lay there for a moment, my face crumpling as I begin to sob. I don’t think I can do it. I want to live, but this is all too much.

Those awful flies land on me and that is what causes me to snap.

I will not be food for some fucking flies. I won’t.

I force down the last of my nausea and, gritting my teeth against the pain, force myself up once more.

Again, I begin walking towards those steps. And this time, I don’t fall. I make it up the steps and out of that deadly pool.

A relieved cry slips out once my feet touch solid ground. But it only lasts a few seconds. I can still hear the faint moans of the still living.

I glance back at the pool looking for anyone still alive.

Maybe Elvita survived. It’s possible.

I stare out at the sea of partially covered bodies. I don’t see the madam, but I do see the mayor, though he’s almost unrecognizable, his face drenched in blood. He’s one of the ones still clinging to life.

I wrap a hand around my stomach to stave off as much of the pain as I can, and then I begin to stumble over the edge of the pool nearest him.

He was an inconsiderate lover and a terrible tipper, but he didn’t deserve to die like this—and his wife and children certainly didn’t as well.

When I get close, I crouch next to the edge of the pool and reach down. I don’t know how I’m going to get an injured adult male out of this pit, but I can’t not help him.

He shakes his head, seeming to choke on air. Only now do I notice the tear tracks that snake down his cheeks.

“Take my hand,” I insist, pleading with him.

He doesn’t.

His dark eyes find mine. “Kill … me …” His voice is barely a whisper.

I give him a distraught look. “What?”

“Please …” he wheezes.

I rear back, horrified. My wild eyes look everywhere but him, and that’s when I see the back of Elvita’s blood-drenched body.