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Ihadn’tyetexperienceda raid in my time as a Kingsnake. I supposed it was lucky, but really it was just laziness. The police weren’t the “police” anymore so much as they were another gang. A group of guys banding together for self-protection and power, masquerading as good Samaritans.
There weren’t women in the police force any longer. Some said it was because women were too afraid. We all knew the truth, though. The men wouldn’t let women be a part of their club anymore. Of course, it was easier for them to play the upstanding citizen role, because even a decade after the Collapse, people still tended to think of the police as an organization that needed to be listened to. Ridiculous, really.
All the cops did was wield their strength to get what they needed, or just wanted, and if you didn’t listen, you ended up lying in the street with a broken rib or a black eye.
Honestly, we were probably both dead either way. But it sounded nicer with a bit of hope attached. But we liked to play pretend, like we were still a functioning society. So Luke would pay them whatever he paid them (I doubted it was cash) and we would stay away from their wives and daughters. In exchange, they stayed away from us. For the most part.
Like tonight, for example. Someone had probably “tipped off” the cops to our whereabouts, and so the police would do their due diligence in checking out the motel. From what I was told from Snakes who’d been through previous raids, all the available brothers gathered the girls and hid them in plain sight in the basement.
The cops could find them if they wanted to, of course. But finding the girls meant more hassle for them. They didn’t care about the Kingsnakes – the masks, the hoodies, the brotherhood – and they really didn’t care about the girls either. But they had to pretend. So the police would come in, do a quick sweep, and then be on their way. A simple transaction that kept the other degenerate citizens satisfied.
I jogged up the stairs ahead of Luke, knocking on the doors as I passed. “Let’s go, ladies! We have some surprise visitors tonight.” When Luke darted into one of the rooms, I poked my head directly into Hannah’s room. “Hannah, we’ve got the cops coming. We need to get you guys hidden.” Hannah sprung out of bed, half asleep. “I’m coming.”
Even the girls who didn’t want to be here, like Hannah, knew to hide in a raid. You could never be too certain how the cops would assert their power, and the devil you knew was better than the devil you didn’t.
I made sure I saw her getting ready to leave and then backed out of her room. Next was Mila. I took the key to her room out of my pocket. Most of the girls weren’t locked in their rooms – unless they were a severe flight risk – but I had locked Mila inside for her own protection. Especially after she pissed off Tybalt this morning.
The lock clicked, and I swung the door open. Surprisingly, Mila was sitting on the edge of her bed, wide awake. “What’s going on?” she asked. She was already awake again, fully dressed, shoes tied. “The cops are raiding us. We have to get to the basement.” I crossed the room, offering her my hand. She stared at it blankly. “What does that have to do with me?” I sighed. I should’ve known this would be difficult.
The other girls were converging in the hallway, so I knew I only had a minute to convince her to get her ass downstairs. Easier said than done. “Mila, don’t start with me. Not tonight. Trust me, you don’t want to deal with the police.”
She met my gaze with a steady glare. “Maybe I’d rather take my chances with them. At least they’d get me out of here, right?” I ground my teeth together, doing my best to not just drag her down the stairs with or without her consent. Because that would go oversowell. “You haven’t lived in the city for a long time, so I’m going to give you a piece of advice. Don’t fuck with the police. They’re as bad as, if not worse than, the Kingsnakes.”
Mila tipped her head to the side, looking me up and down. She took in the mask, and the dark hoodie. The ripped jeans, and everything in between. “You mean as bad asyou.”
“Prospero, we need to get these girls down to the basementnow.” Luke’s command echoed in Mila’s room, and I scrubbed my hand over my face before looking back at the stubborn woman in front of me. “Mila,” I snapped. “We need to go. Now.”She held up her hands in defeat, getting to her feet. “Jesus, you don’t need to be such a dick about it.”
I rolled my eyes, making sure she joined the group in the hallway. She did, even though a scowl covered most of her pretty face, and her arms remained crossed.
Unimpressed.Whatever. I’d deal with her sass later. Luke met me at the top of the stairs. “You lead the group down to the basement. I’ll take the rear. Hopefully Tybalt managed to wrangle the pregnant ones out of bed without too much problem.”
I nodded, unable to say anything else lest I snapped about Mila or Tybalt. Neither of which would help me at the current moment. I took a quick count of the girls, noting Hannah’s bright hair, and Mila’s defensive stance in the group. At least they were both still present and accounted for. Turning, I made my way downstairs, the girls’ footsteps following me as I kept a quick pace.
Another brother stood at the basement door, holding it open for us as I passed him with a nod. It only took a couple minutes in total, but my interaction with Mila had left me with a racing heart and a need for release. How could she be so stubborn, even during the apocalypse?
The brother holding the door open joined me in the basement, a small camp lantern lighting the small space. Luke had stayed upstairs to meet with the police after herding the girls downstairs. I looked around, taking note of my surroundings.
The basement wasn’t the worst I had been in, but it wasn’t great either. A couple of small windows faced the outside world, too high up to make for a comfortable escape, so they weren’t barred. The girls stood mostly huddled together, and I realized I should probably do a quick count of them. I wasn’t sure where Tybalt had taken the pregnant women, but they weren’t down here, so there was probably another safe room just for them.
“Hey, brother?” I asked, watching half his face light up in the dim lantern. “Have you done a count?”
“Yep.” His response was immediate, and reassured me. I didn’t want to be responsible for any girls getting left in the cops’ path. “Counted them as they came downstairs. All eighteen are here.”
My heart froze. I knew who was missing without even looking at the group. “Excuse me?”
He frowned. “All eighteen are here, brother.”
“You idiot,” I muttered, squeezing the bridge of my nose. “There’s nineteen of them. The new girl last night gave us nineteen.”
“Oh, shit.” His face fell, and I realized the brother in the basement with me was no more than a kid. “I swear I thought there were only eighteen.”
“Yeah, well, you thought wrong.”
I snatched the lantern out of his hands, scanning the group of girls. Sure enough, Mila’s dark hair and frowning face were missing from the women we ushered into the basement.Fucking hell. I should’ve known.
I should’ve told Luke I would be at the back. I stuffed the lantern back into the brother’s hands. “Stay here. Don’t leave them for any reason until I come back down here.”
“Okay. Uh… where… where are you going?” he stuttered. Shit. He really needed to grow a backbone if he was going to survive the Kingsnakes.
