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“Wyatt’s allowed to do that because Buddy isn’t branded,” Waylon clarified. “He doesn’t belong to anyone. You are ours now. You aren’t meant for Wyatt’s experiments.” His smile turned affectionate, something between proud father and creepy stranger.
“Thank you,” I mumbled, somehow feeling horrified, afraid, and grateful all at once.
A middle-aged man had branded me as proof of ownership, to protect me from his brother who tortured people in his butcher shed, and he’d done it because I think he had a crush on me.
How could I survive any of this?
I calmed myself down and wiped my eyes. My leg was still throbbing, but I thought that it would be that way for a long while.
I handed Waylon his jacket back without saying anything, and the two of us headed out of the shed and back up towards the house. The only thing I knew for certain was that I couldn’t trust anybody in the Loth family.
32
Harlow
“How the fuck can they brand a person?” Kimber shouted in anger and disbelief.
We’d been reunited in our stall after our long days at work, and I had shown Kimber my brand. Her immediate response had been horror but that quickly turned to rage, and I had to literally hold her back from attempting to climb the walls so she could bash Waylon’s head in.
“If you hurt him, they’ll kill us both,” I warned her in desperation, and that finally got through to her.
Her body slacked, but the normally soft features of her face were hard with barely contained anger. She helped me sit down, and she crouched beside me to get a better look at it. It was bloody, crusty, and inflamed, and it somehow hurt even worse than it had this morning. A painful heat radiated all down my leg, and it exploded into agony whenever the wound itself brushed up against anything, which happened constantly thanks to my heavy denim skirt.
“I never want to think of myself as naïve, especially not after all the shit I’ve seen the last couple years.” She was looking down at the brand with tears standing in her eyes, and her jaw clenched. “But I still can’t believe how bloody barbaric humans can be.”
“I’m okay,” I insisted and put my hand over hers. “It’ll heal, and I’ll be fine.”
“When we get out of here, I’ll fix that up for you,” Kimber said, and she motioned to the sleeve of vibrant tattoos that she’d given herself down her arm. “I’ll get another kit or make one or whatever, and we’ll turn that into something beautiful on your leg. You won’t be marked by them forever.”
“Thank you,” I said thickly.
Kimber leaned over, and ever so gently, she brushed her lips against the unmarred skin below the brand. It was the lightest of touches, and the sweetest of kisses I’d ever had.
I curled up in the crux of her arm, my head resting on her chest, and she ran her fingers through my long tangles of hair.
“So, what story do you want to hear tonight?” she asked.
“Whatever. I’m too tired to pick.”
“Okay. We’ll go with one of my favorites then,” she said. “Once upon a time, there was a man named John Hammond who dreamed of owning a theme park of living, breathing dinosaurs.”
Kimber hadn’t made it very far into her retelling of Jurassic Park when we heard voices coming from outside. Usually, at this time of night, all of the Loths were up in the house, and the only sounds were of the farm animals and zombies.
But this was clearly human voices, talking to one another. They were close enough that we could hear them, but not enough that we could really understand them.
Then I heard a more familiar voice, protesting loudly and clearly, “No, I don’t want to go!”
“That’s Avril,” I realized, and Kimber looked to me. “I work with her in the house.”
Kimber got up and hurried over to the crack in the exterior wall, the one we used to guess the time of day. She started prying at it and scraping it with her fingers, and I limped over to join her. With some effort, she managed to make the crack just large enough that we could both peer through.
Down the gravel road past our stable was another barn, and the main door had been left open. Outside that, Waylon was holding a kerosene lamp in one hand and his gun in the other. They had bright electrical spotlights throughout the ranch that they could use, but Waylon had chosen something dimmer to attract less attention.
Beside him was his brother Wyatt, and they were talking to two men I had never seen before. One of the men had a leash that was tied to two muzzled zombies – likely domestic ones based on their calm demeanors, but they were still muzzled – and the other held Avril gruffly by the arm.
“You sure these things will really hunt for us?” the one holding the zombies asked, sounding skeptical.
“I’ve used them myself. They’ve tracked humans, deer, and rabbits no problem, but they do struggle with birds,” Waylon explained. “I don’t think they like looking up.”
