Chapter 77: Taran

He's going to sell me. I guess I should've known. He's made no move to touch me, hasn't treated me as anything more than a commodity. His attitude is coolly distant.
We arrived at his old family homestead a few hours ago. I'm wandering the property, stretching my legs. I was a little surprised he let me go anywhere without him, but all he said was, "You have no place to run away to. Even if you managed to drive the car by yourself, you don't know how we got here and you have no way to take care of yourself. Just don't go too far out, I can't help you if I don't hear you scream."
I shudder at the implication as I walk further from the house, into a nearby grove of trees. Maybe I shouldn't be walking by myself, should worry more about being attacked by a Primitive while out on my own, but I need some air and some distance from my captor. The trees surrounding me are all dead, dried up and skeletal. I reach over my head snapping a twig off one as I pass underneath it. Dead foliage crunches under my feet and the sun blazes overhead. I won't be able to stay out for long without burning.
The rows of trees are evenly spaced, though some have fallen to the earth and either dried out or decomposed. I step over one such fallen tree, the dead branches crunching with each footstep. I begin to feel vulnerable as I realize how much noise I'm making. Talon's warning echoes in my head and I'm about to turn back when something catches my eye. Something bright and pink, waving in the air like a banner.
Drawn to the small splash of colour on an otherwise empty horizon, I push through my unease and walk toward the object. As I get closer revulsion rises up inside me and my heart starts to pound hard against the walls of my chest. My steps slow but I don't stop. Something inside me feels like I owe these people at least an acknowledgment of their existence. An acknowledgment of their passing. No one else will do it. In our battle against the disease that wiped out a once thriving civilization, these are the forgotten.
The pink splash that'd drawn me toward this horrific discovery belonged to a girl. I sink down next to her, studying her small body. She can't have been older than ten when she was turned. Who knows how long she survived after that. The thing that differentiates her from a regular human corpse is the desecration of her bones. Holes had been jabbed through parts of her face, sticks and bolts of metal embedded in her skull. Surrounding her are the bodies of her horde, maybe fifteen dead Primitives.
There are several odd things about this child; her age, her placement slightly away from the rest of the horde and the teddy bear clutched tightly in her arm. She was young, the youngest Primitive I've ever seen. Children usually die under the brutality of a turn. Another strange detail about the girl is that she's been placed separate from the others. While their bodies are strewn carelessly about, this one was placed purposefully, her limbs arranged and the teddy bear tucked against her little chest; as though she'd died peacefully with the toy in her arms. But she hadn't. She'd died the same violent death as the others. Someone had destroyed this horde as it crossed the farmstead.
Whoever had killed them must've separated and arranged the child. Tears prick my eyes as I imagine the care and grief involved. He probably hadn't wanted to kill a child, probably hadn't any choice.
I sniff the tears back and get to my feet, moving quickly away from the grave. A wave of dizziness hits me and I'm forced to stand still for a moment, sucking in deep breaths. I must've been kneeling for longer than I thought. I shake it off and head back toward the house. I've been outside long enough, put some space between me and my captor. Now it's time to face the man who wants to sell me and convince him to turn around and take me home.
I look longingly at the car as I pass it on my way to the house. It's really my only hope for getting out of here, but there are so many obstacles. I have no idea how to start it, no idea how to drive it and no idea what direction to drive in once I got it going. Talon is right, I'm better off, safer, with him.
"Thought you'd try taking off," he grunts when I open the door.
He's sitting at a table with an impressive array of weapons laid out in front of him. While they should make me nervous, the thought of that dead horde up on the hill makes me feel grateful that I've been kidnapped by a guy who knows what he's doing. I saw him in action, killing Primitives with ease when we were attacked in the desert.
"Thought about it," I admit, approaching the table and tentatively taking a seat.
"You wouldn't have made it far."
"You'd come after me?" I'm genuinely curious. This man seems like such a contradiction. He's capable of hurting people, yet he hasn't touched me. I suspect he's the one that killed that horde, but then arranged the girl in an almost ceremonial way.
"Wouldn't have to," he says, not looking up as he unsheathes a knife and looks closely at the blade. "You'd have come back on your own. It's pretty dry out there. No food and water for miles. All kinds of predators."
"Like you?"
He smiles at my comment. "Sure, predators like me."
"I don't think you're as bad as you pretend."
The smile melts from his face and he lifts cold blue eyes to me. He's not really looking at me though, but through me. Like I'm not a person to him. "It would be a mistake for you to think that."
"You haven't hurt me and you've had plenty of opportunity," I say defiantly. "I saw the grave up on the hill, past the orchard."
He frowns. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"The little girl," I prod, and when he continues to look confused and annoyed, I add, "With the teddy bear. Primitives don't carry things, especially toys. Someone gave that to her after she died."
"Wasn't me," he says dismissively.
"I still don't think you're as bad as you try to make yourself out to be."
He sits back in his chair and crosses his arms over his chest. "How do you figure that?"
"You saved me during the horde attack, told Xavier to put me in your car." It's weak reasoning since he didn't actually check to see that I was okay during the attack, but I'm willing to grasp at straws. I need this guy to not be as evil as he seems. "And I don't care what you say, someone arranged that little girl, gave her a bear and treated her like a human instead of just another Primitive. No one else knows about this place, it must've been you."
"So what if it was," he snaps, his words cold. "I don't like seeing kids die. Doesn't make me a good person."
"You have a heart, Talon. You've had every opportunity to hurt me and you haven't," I insist.
He stares at me now, his eyes finally seeing me, finally showing emotion. But not the kind I was looking for. A new fire has lit in those icy depths. "You want to see my bad side, princess?"
I swallow hard and lift my chin, staring back at him. It's a stupid thing to do. Prod a man like Talon, but I'm out of options. I can't escape. He's essentially forced my reliance on his survival skills. The only thing I have left is to reason with him, reason with the man that tenderly arranged the dead girl.
He erupts out of his seat so fast, I barely have time to blink and he's around the table reaching for me. I hurl myself sideways out of my chair, scrambling to get away from his explosive advance. He grabs me by the hair and drags me backward into his chest. Then he lifts me off the ground, an arm around my waist, my kicking legs barely fazing him.
"Stop!" I shout, trying to drag his arm away.
"You wanted to see the monster, you got him." His words are terrifyingly similar to Diogo's when he dragged me into the shower.
Talon drags me through the house, toward a set of stairs. He takes them two at a time until we're on the second level. He strides down the hall and shoves a door open. I barely have time to glance around, taking in an old dresser with a smashed mirror, a wooden chest and a four-poster bed. He hurls me face down on the bed grips my hips and drags me back until I'm standing on the floor with my upper body pressed into the bed.
I realize in that moment that he intends to rape me.
I try to crawl backwards, but he grips my neck from behind and pins me to the bed. His hands seem to be everywhere at once, holding me down and reaching under me to unzip my pants and then drag them back over my ass. My screams of terror turn to sobs as he reaches back to unbuckle his own pants.
"Please don't," I beg through the tears, trying to twist around, to look at him. He forces my face back into the bed refusing to let me turn or look behind me.
Then I realize, he can't look at me while he does it.
I turn my head to the side and yell, "Look at me, you coward!"
He takes a fistful of my hair and drags my head back, arching my neck. He leans down and says, "What?" his voice chillingly devoid of emotion.
It would probably be safer to shut my mouth, to just take the punishment and tread more carefully in the future. Still, this is my only chance to avoid being brutalized by a man just trying to prove a point. I twist my head to look at him. "Look me in the eyes, asshole. Or are you incapable of that?"
He whips me around hard enough that I think my neck will snap, then he picks me up and throws me on the bed. I land on my back, a puff of dust flying up from the blankets. "You have a fucking death wish!" he roars, climbing on top of me and pinning me down.
"Maybe I do," I snarl back, "but at least my life means something."
He stares at me, tension flowing between us. Gradually I can feel his intent shift, and though I'm terrified of pushing him too far, I need to take advantage of this moment. "You don't want to do this, Talon." God, I hope I'm right. He might be a murderer, might be a mercenary. But I don't think he's a rapist. "Please, don't."
"Why are you so fucking invested in making me out to be some kind of good guy?" he demands, punching the pillow next to my head. A cloud of dust flies up and then settles over both of us.
I gasp in a lungful of the dusty air between my sobs and say, "Because if you're good then you won't sell me. You won't make me some stranger's slave. Because if you care, even a little, you might take me back to Sanctuary, back to Diogo."
He sits back on his haunches, looking down at me, his expression pitying. That look is enough to bring the tears back. Maybe I've touched him, maybe he does think of me as more than another payday. But nothing I've said has changed his mind.
He confirms my thoughts when he says, "The world don't work that way anymore, princess. Good or bad, doesn't matter. Only survival."
His words are like a knife to the heart. Brutal. Unkind. Sort of true.
They're also an echo of the same thing Diogo has said to me.