Chapter 5

One eyelid cracked open in the predawn light. Kayla, her body and mind too accustom to waking then, tried to observe her surroundings. She cast about, trying to count the number of people sleeping near her or find an exit but was hampered by pain and the complete darkness that surrounded her. Grimacing, she assessed what she could.

Sometime while she was out cold, they had bound her hands. She twitched her legs and was rewarded with searing pain. She pushed her bound hands down her thigh and found that the arrowhead in her leg was still there. They must not have any medical training, she thought.

Gently she felt around the wound and found light dressing to stabilize the arrowhead, but nothing further. The bastards who held her knew basic first aide but nothing more, she decided. She gave the arrow an experimental tug hoping it would come out, but was rewarded only by her own groaning when it only came out a small amount. Try as she might to stay silent; she couldn't hold back the whimper of pain.

The noise carried across the hangar and drew attention from her guards. A man sleeping nearby woke and came to the cot she was stretched out on. He gave her a hateful look for waking him but brushed his hand across her forehead in a businesslike manner. then jerked it back. Kayla assumed she felt feverish when he turn and fled quickly from the room. She felt flushed and hot, pain still radiated from her thigh. Breathing deeply, she tried to push the pain away as she eased the arrow out. 'Stay quiet, ' she told herself and gave a firmer tug.

She howled in pain.

"Shut up you tiny bitch!" A voice cut through the darkness as a man approached. Kayla tried to keep her painful sobs to a pained whimper at the fury in the man's voice.

He strode into view, having obviously been raised from his bed. The man was clad in a plain white t-shirt and a thick robe. His firm stride brought him swiftly to the side of her uncomfortable pallet. She tried to hold still, mitigating the pain in her thigh, but he grabbed the front of her camouflaged hunting shirt and pulled her up to face him. She tried to avoid his eyes but he shook the front of her shirt, bringing her focus level with him.

"Why are you fucking whining, you bitch?" He screamed.

Kayla was unaccustomed to swearing and certainly to being violently handled. She burst into tears from the pain and humiliation. The man shook her harder forcing her to look up into his eyes, "Where are you from? Where did you get the four-wheeler? Are there more of you?" Each question was punctuated with a sharp jerk on her shirt.

Kayla could only sob and snivel, trying to answer as he shook her. He looked at the two women in her room then back at the one, still trailing bed sheets behind him, and asked "What the fuck is she saying?"

The quiet woman who had called her out the day before tried to insert herself between the man and Kayla. "Sir! Master, I'm sorry, but she appears to be mute." The small woman pushed his hands away and pushed Kayla onto her camp cot. She gave Kayla the barest of nods and Kayla decided being deaf and dumb wasn't the worst thing in the world as the man shook the small woman hard.

"Dumb and deaf? Jebuz! I find a nubile bitch and she can't hear a word I say! Fuck." He took a deep breath, trying to compose himself. He turned to the little woman, "You find a way to tell her she has one fuckin' day to figure out what I want," he grabbed his crotch and looked hard at Kayla, "then I take the little bitch, underage or not."

The woman nodded, shaking and not daring to look at Kayla. The angry man stormed out of the hangar, leaving emotional devastation in his wake. Kayla's eye darted to the hangar door then back to the little woman. She took a deep breath, exhaled and turned to Kayla.

"How old are you, girl?"

Kayla, still shaking, answered her, "Fourteen and a half or so."

"And a half?" The woman shook her head, "If you're still young enough to count half years you're young enough that you don't need to be with the likes of us. We'll try to get you out of here if we can. This is no place for a child."

Normally, Kayla would have countered such a statement with the fact that she was smarter than most adults but today she wisely kept her mouth shut and nodded, eyes wide with fear. "Is there a doctor here? There's still an arrowhead in my leg, I'm afraid it's infected," she tried to tell them in a reasonable voice but was afraid her fear was creeping in.