Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 84949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
So yeah, I don't hate Lord Azar's program. It's another way to survive, and better than most.
But then it came out that we weren't being saved for weird, controlling Lord Azar, the new and odd ruler of Fort Dallas.
We were being saved for dragons.
Funny how Daniels would murder a guy in the fort if they so much as touched my arm, but if a dragon carries me off and rapes me, it's all good.
That's the world we're in now, though.
"Back to your room," Daniels says, his voice low and kind.
I must be dawdling. It's not like me to be scared of nightmares, but I really don't want to go back to bed. Something creepy is in my dreams, and I don't know how to handle it. I cross my arms under my breasts and nod meekly, because what else can I do? Daniels has a gun and I'm just…me.
I return to my quarters, slip off my shoes, and get into bed. I pull the covers up to my chin. Warm blankets, if not soft. Scratchy, but the scratchiness is kinda comforting in the dark.
I don't want to close my eyes but eventually the darkness becomes too much.
Then…insects. Big ones. They infest my room, sitting on my bunk and crawling under the blankets. Chittering sounds echo in my ears, and I look down at my feet. Worms the size of anacondas slither around the bed, and all over there's a feeling of filth, of darkness, of evil…
I gasp and jerk awake again, shuddering. I sit up so I won't fall asleep again, and hug my legs to my chest. I want to run screaming from the room, because it feels like if I close my eyes, I'll see the insects of my dreams. That they're real, and lurk in the shadows. I can't leave my room, though—Daniels will report me.
So I curl up and try to think of old poems. Shakespeare. Nursery rhymes. Jingles.
Anything.
Sleep has become the enemy, and I don't want to close my eyes again.
"You look tired," Manda tells me over breakfast. She holds her tray out, her eyes bright, and beams as the cook puts a heaping slab of cornbread onto the plate. She's given a plastic packet of strawberry jam, too, and makes an excited noise at the sight.
I hold my tray out for the same meal and then follow her down the line, where we're given two mugs and the world's smallest cups of terrible-tasting instant coffee. "I didn't sleep well."
"That's not like you," Manda teases. "You can sleep through a dragon attack."
I just give her a faint smile and we take our normal seats in the cafeteria. My butt's cold on the bench, as the shifts we wear are little more than potato sacks with a neck hole, and the one I have today doesn't go far beyond my panties. It sucks when you get the short shift (ha) out of the laundry, but it beats nothing. It's also going to make it freakin' difficult to stash away my breakfast. The moment we sit down, I look around and when no one's glancing in our direction, I wrap the cornbread cake in a hard brown paper towel that probably came from a gas station bathroom back in the day, and shove the entire lot into the front of my panties.
Hygiene was another thing that went out the door with the After.
"Here," Manda says, pushing her packet of jam toward me. "You can have mine, too."
I shake my head. "You eat it. I don't want to be caught with more than one anyhow, if I get caught." I can just see it now—me heading for lineup and dripping chunks of cornbread from my hooha as I walk down the hall. It'd be funny if it wasn't me that would get booted out of the program, but…
Well, okay, it's still a little funny.
Manda grins at me and squeezes the jam onto her cornbread, then takes huge bites of the entire thing. I lick my finger and use it to pick up the crumbs on my tray, ignoring the growling of my stomach. I miss the foods from Before. I remember grocery stores with an aisle for all the different kinds of cereal alone. Now, we're reliant on what can grow easily here in North Texas's mercurial and often-hot weather, which means a lot of tomatoes and corn. You learn to like things you'd have turned your nose up at in the past, and my mouth waters as Manda savors her cornbread and jam.
I sip my black coffee instead. It's a treat. I don't know how they found it, but I'm absolutely grateful.
"So who's the cornbread for this week?" Manda asks in a whispered voice.
One of the guards looks over and I pretend to wipe my mouth free of crumbs. "Bethany and her kid," I murmur. "Exchange for scraps." Except Bethany doesn't really have very many scraps anymore, and I'm so hungry some days that I feel faint, but I know Bethany and Michael are hungrier, so I keep saving half of my food rations for them.