Forced Ride

The world ended with a whimper, not a bang. Trea Jelico had known that for years now. But today the whimper came for her small patch of scrap and salvation, and it sounded like diesel engines growling over the ridge.

She was halfway to the cache when she saw them. Three trucks painted in rust and mud, their beds packed with armed men and women. The lead truck flew a flag she didn't recognize. That meant raiders. That meant trouble.

Trea dropped the scavenged battery and ran.

Her boots pounded the cracked asphalt of what used to be a state highway. The settlement gates were three hundred yards ahead. She could make it. She had made it through worse.

Then the first shot cracked past her ear.

She dove behind an overturned sedan, her heart hammering against her ribs. Her hand went to the knife at her belt. It was a small blade, good for cutting straps and opening cans. Against a truck full of armed riders, it might as well have been a toothpick.

The trucks didn't slow down. They rolled past her hiding spot like she wasn't there, and for a moment she thought they might keep going. Then the lead truck stopped. The others followed.

Boots hit the ground.

Trea stayed low, counting footsteps. Four. Six. Eight. More than she could fight. More than she could outrun.

A shadow fell over her.

"Look what we got here."

The voice was male, rough, almost bored. Trea looked up into the barrel of a rifle and the face behind it. The man was maybe forty, with a scar that ran from his temple to his jaw and eyes that had stopped caring about anything a long time ago.

She didn't say anything. She just stayed still, her hands visible, her knife still at her belt but useless.

Two more men appeared behind the first. One of them grabbed her by the collar of her jacket and hauled her up. The fabric bit into her throat, cutting off her air for a second before she found her feet.

"Easy there," the scarred man said. "She's cargo now. No sense damaging it before we get it loaded."

Cargo. The word hit Trea harder than any blow could have. She had been a courier. She had been a trader. She had survived things that would have broken most people. But she had never been cargo.

The man holding her didn't let go. His other hand found her waist, then slid down to her hip, then lower. His fingers dug into the meat of her backside through her cargo pants, squeezing like he was testing fruit at a market.

"Not bad," he said. "Skinny, but not bad."

Trea's arm moved before her brain could stop it. Her elbow drove into his ribs, hard enough to make him grunt and release his grip. She twisted, her hand going for her knife, her mind already calculating the angle for a throat slash.

The rifle butt caught her in the side before she got the blade out.

The impact knocked the air from her lungs and sent her sprawling onto the asphalt. Pain flared through her ribs, sharp and hot. She gasped, trying to breathe, trying to move, but her body wasn't listening.

"Stupid bitch," the scarred man said. He wasn't bored anymore. He was annoyed, and somehow that was worse. "You want to make this harder? We can make this harder."

Two of them grabbed her again, this time by her arms. They dragged her across the ground toward the trucks. Her heels scraped against the pavement, catching on cracks and pebbles. She tried to dig in, tried to find purchase, but they were too strong.

Another pair of hands joined the first. One grabbed her hair, pulling her head back. Another found her chest, palming her through her shirt, squeezing hard enough to make her gasp.

"Check her for weapons," the scarred man said. "And check her good."

They did. Hands roamed over her body with a clinical roughness that was somehow worse than violence. They patted down her arms, her legs, her torso. Fingers probed her waistband, her pockets, the hollow between her thighs. Every touch was a statement of ownership, a declaration that her body was no longer hers to control.

She found her knife. Her small emergency blade hidden in her boot.

They didn't.

But what good was a knife against eight armed riders? What good was anything when you were already marked as cargo?

"Nothing else," one of the men said. "Just the blade on her belt."

"Throw it in the cab," the scarred man said. "She'll get it back when she earns it."

When she earned it. The words settled into Trea's chest like stones.

They hauled her to the back of the second truck. The tailgate was down, the bed already full of supplies and a few other people. Women, mostly. One of them looked up as Trea was thrown in, her eyes hollow and knowing.

Trea landed hard on a pile of canvas tarps. Before she could get up, the two men were in the bed with her. One pinned her wrists above her head. The other straddled her hips, his weight pressing her down.

"First thing," the man on top said. "You need to understand how this works."

His hand went to her pants. He unfastened the button, pulled down the zipper, and slid his hand inside. His fingers found her through her underwear, pressing, exploring, claiming territory she had never given anyone permission to touch.

Trea bucked beneath him. She twisted her hips, tried to bring her knee up between them, but his weight was too much. Her body was not her own. It was a thing to be used, a resource to be cataloged.

"Stop," she said. The word came out as a breath, barely a whisper.

"Stop?" The man laughed. "Honey, we haven't even started."

His fingers pushed past the elastic of her underwear. They found the sensitive skin between her legs, the place no one had touched since the old world. His touch was dry and rough, lacking any pretense of pleasure. This was not about her. This was about establishing a fact.

He pushed one finger inside her, and Trea's breath caught in her throat. The intrusion was sudden and clinical, a probing exploration that had nothing to do with desire. He curled his finger upward, pressing against the wall of her body like he was measuring the space inside her. Assessing her. Taking inventory of what she could take.

"Tight," he said to his companion. "Hasn't been used much. That'll change."

The man holding her wrists laughed. "They all start out tight. Give it a week."

Trea turned her head away. She stared at the canvas tarp beneath her, at the frayed edges and the stains that told stories she didn't want to read. Her body was reacting the way bodies did, with a betrayal of dampness that came from friction and force, not desire. She hated herself for it.

The man on top of her added a second finger, stretching her wider. The burn was immediate and sharp, a violation that went deeper than skin. He worked them in and out with a mechanical rhythm, not caring that she was dry, not caring that every thrust sent a jolt of pain through her core. He was making a point. The point was that she had no choice.

"See?" he said. "Already getting wet. She wants it."

She didn't want it. Her body was simply responding to stimulation the way biology demanded, producing moisture to protect itself from damage. It was survival, not surrender. But the distinction didn't matter to him. It didn't matter to any of them.

His thumb found the bundle of nerves at the top of her sex. He pressed down, rubbing in slow circles that sent unwanted sparks through her nerve endings. Trea's hips twitched involuntarily, and she bit her lip hard enough to taste copper. She would not give them the satisfaction of a response. She would not let them see anything but blankness in her eyes.

"That's right," the man said. "Get used to it."

He withdrew his fingers with a wet sound that made Trea's stomach turn. He wiped them on her shirt, leaving a smear of her own body's betrayal across her belly. Then he climbed off her, leaving her exposed on the tarps with her pants undone and her dignity in shreds.

The other man let go of her wrists. He grabbed her ankle instead, checking her boot. His hand closed around the hidden knife.

"Well, well," he said. "Look what we missed."

He pulled the blade from its sheath and held it up to the light. It was small, barely four inches, but it was sharp. He pocketed it with a grin.

"Nice try, cargo."

The tailgate slammed shut.

Trea lay there, her pants still unbuttoned, her body still humming with the violation of touch. She could hear the men laughing outside, could hear the engines revving, could feel the truck lurch as it started to move.

She didn't move. She couldn't.

The woman with the hollow eyes crawled over to her. She was older, maybe forty, with lines around her mouth and a weariness that went bone deep. She didn't say anything. She just reached down and refastened Trea's pants, buttoning them with the practiced efficiency of someone who had done this before.

"First time's the hardest," the woman said. "After that, you learn to float."

"Float?" Trea's voice cracked.

"Above your body. Let it do what it has to do while you stay somewhere else." The woman settled back against the supplies. "I'm Maren. I've been with the convoy for three years."

Three years. The number was a death sentence.

"I'm not staying," Trea said. "I'm getting out."

Maren laughed, but there was no humor in it. "That's what I said too. Three years ago."

The truck picked up speed, bouncing over the ruined highway. Through the gaps in the canvas cover, Trea could see the settlement she had called home for two years. The gates were open. The walls were breached. People were running, but there was nowhere to go.

Smoke rose from the buildings inside. Gunfire crackled in the distance.

The settlement was dying. And Trea was leaving it behind, not as a survivor, but as cargo.

She closed her eyes and tried to float.

But all she could feel was the ghost of those fingers inside her, the weight of that body on top of hers, the knowledge that this was only the first mile of a very long road.

Her fingers found the edge of the canvas tarp and gripped it tight. She would get out. She would find a way. She would not become Maren, hollow and resigned, counting years like a prisoner counts days.

But first she had to survive tonight.

And tonight, the convoy would stop.