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They’d made me leave Mica at the main building. I’d learned quickly that it was useless to fight the guards. It only gave them an excuse—as if they really needed one—to make me bleed.
After the beating, they laughed as they shaved my head. They laughed as they tattooed my neck with my blood type. They laughed as they hosed me down with frigid water and shoved me into a uniform and too-tight shoes. And through it all, through the shivering and the pain and the fear, I silently vowed to myself that I would survive long enough to watch them burn.
After the intake process, I’d been pushed out into the night and told to report to building number seven, which was one of the women’s barracks. Someone there would show me the ropes and tell me where to go at work time.
The avenues and barracks that made up the camp were sun-bright, thanks to tall lights studding the compound. The harsh glow enhanced the uninterrupted grayness of the landscape. The buildings, the bricks making up the tall walls surrounding the compound, and even the prisoners’ uniforms were all hopeless, dusty gray.
A cluster of prisoners limped along in front of me. Hard to tell their genders because they were all bald, like me, and their bodies were emaciated past the point of having any curves. Just beyond the barracks two guards watched us approach.
The guard on the right, a male with moon-pale skin and a mean glint in his eyes, licked his lips. A whimper rose from a prisoner as the guard pulled him behind the building. The rest of the group continued walking.
Screams filled the air.
The prisoners continued. No one even glanced in that direction.
The other guard saw me coming and must have spotted the horror on my face because he flashed his fangs at me. “Keep moving.”
I lowered my head but cut my eyes to look down the row between the buildings as I passed. The guard bent over the prisoner’s neck. Feeble legs kicked the air, but it was like a rabbit fighting a wolf.
I’d never seen a vampire feed from a human, but that wasn’t what made bile rise in my throat. No one helped him, including me. Shame and fear made my skin crawl.
The rest of the camp was quiet, which amplified the noises of the struggle. I picked up my pace, but that earned me too much attention from the guards lining the path. Slowing, I attempted to breathe deep to still my racing heart. But doing so only brought more of the choking ash into my mouth. The acrid taste on my tongue, the flavor of charred lives, suffocated me. I jackknifed forward and vomited yellow bile into the gray dirt.
Rough hands grabbed my shoulder. I yelped and fought the hold, believing they belonged to one of the guards.
“Shut up,” a voice hissed. “Keep moving.”
It took me a moment to realize the face next to mine was female. I couldn’t tell her age, but there were permanent frown lines creasing her ashy brown skin. “Contain yourself.” Her tone was low and mean, even as her hands helped support my weight.
Wiping the back of my hand across my mouth, I allowed her to help me stand.
“Don’t look around. Just walk.” She tightened her grip. “One step after another,” she whispered. “Just keep moving.”
Our feet moved in sync through the gray dirt.
“Hey!” a nearby guard called.
She kept moving, but waved a hand in a nothing-to-see-here motion.
“Oh, it’s you.” He backed away.
I watched the exchange but couldn’t make sense of it. How could an old woman in a work camp have that much influence?
“Who are you?”
“You shouldn’t be here.” She said this in a tone so low, I wondered if she’d even meant for me to hear it.
My hollow stomach quaked and cramped, as if it couldn’t decide whether it was too sick for food or too hungry to worry about being sick.
Before long, she led me to the dark doorway of the building marked with a number seven. I stumbled through the entrance and fell into a support column. The wood felt solid and sure in my hand, and it offered a measure of much-needed equilibrium.
Several dirty faces watched me with blank expressions. It was hard to tell them apart with their identical stubbled heads and hollow, hopeless eyes.
“What is your name?”
Every eye in the room turned toward the woman who’d brought me.
I tried to swallow, but the rawness there mixed with the inescapable dust made the walls of my throat click together dryly. I coughed and tried again. The old woman watched all this without an ounce of pity.
