This is written in Damon's POV:
The stars never move.
Every night, they hang in the same pattern, scattered like shards of glass in the black sky above the tiny barred window in the empty cell next to mine. I can’t see much from my cot, only a sliver of the world beyond this cell, but the stars never change. They don’t care about the rotters clawing at the walls, the stink of blood and decay, or the weight of hopelessness and failure pressing down on my chest. They merely are.
Eternal.
Untouchable.
I tap the ring of my middle finger against the cot’s metal frame. The sound is sharp in the silence. It’s the only thing that can distract me from the moans of the rotters shuffling around outside these walls.
“Knock it off,” Benji mutters from two cells down. There’s an empty one between us to keep us separated. I can’t see him, but I can make out the frustration laced in his voice. “Some of us are trying to sleep.”
“Then sleep,” I reply, my tone flat. I don’t stop the tapping.
Clink.
Clink.
Clink.
“Hard to do with you playing the world’s saddest drum solo over there,” he shoots back. “Don’t tell me you’re giving up again. It’s depressing.”
I don’t answer. Benji always talks like he has something left to fight for. I’m not sure if it’s naivety or stubbornness, but either way, I don’t have the energy to argue with him. He doesn’t get it. We’ve tried to escape more times than I could count. Every time, it ends the same way: with pain, himiliation, and tighter restraints. I got us into this mess, and I’ll never be able to get us out of it.
The tapping stops when I clench my fist, the ring biting into my skin. Benji sighs. “Cole, tell him he’s being dramatic.”
Cole’s grunt from across from us is all the response we get. Typical.
I let the silence stretch, hoping it will swallow the conversation. Then the sound of a key scraping in the lock at the far end of the hall snaps me back to reality. My body tenses, instincts kicking in. It’s never good when they come at night. The dregs like to take their time in the dark when no one else is watching.
The door groans open, and the sound of heavy boots echo off the walls. I brace myself, my jaw tightening, ready to take whatever they dish out. Better me than Benji or Cole.
To my curiosity, the footsteps don’t stop at my cell. Instead, there’s a commotion. A muffled struggle and the sound of someone being dragged. A woman’s strained voice breaks through the silence. “Get off me! Let me go.”
Sitting up, the cot creaks beneath me. The dregs laugh when they shove her into the empty cell between mine and Benji’s. The door slams shut with a metallic clang, and their footsteps fade back down the hall, leaving nothing but the woman’s heavy breathing and the scratching of the rotters outside.
For a moment, no one speaks. The only sound is her hands rattling the bars of her cell, the desperation in her movements echoing in the quiet. The moonlight from the window behind her doesn’t quite reach her, so I can’t see anything other than her dark outline and the dirty soles of her overworn boots.
When it becomes clear she’s not getting anywhere, she lets out a shaky breath and slumps against the door. A sniffle escapes her, followed by a soft curse.
I should stay quiet. Keep my head down, like always. Yet, there’s something about her, about the way she’s already breaking, that makes my chest tighten.
“There’s no way out,” I say, my voice bouncing off the cold stone walls of our prison. “Not unless they let you out.”
She freezes and raises her head, her breath catching. “Who’s there?”
“Name’s Damon,” I reply after a beat. It’s been a long time since I’ve said my name out loud. It almost sounds foreign on my tongue. “And no, I’m not a hallucination.”
She’s silent for a long moment. I can almost hear the wheels turning in her head. “How long have you been here?” she finally asks.
“A while.”
Her voice wavers. “I’m going to die in here.”
The raw honesty in her tone makes me pause. Sliding off the cot, I crouch on the floor in front of the bars and lean forward with my elbows on my knees. “Not if you don’t give up.”
A humorless laugh escapes her. “Says the guy who sounds like he already has.”
Benji snorts from his cell on the other side of hers. “She’s got you there, Damon.”
“Shut up, Benji,” I growl, but I can’t help the flicker of amusement when she lifts her head into the moonlight and I can see the ghost of a smile when the corner of her mouth lifts. Leave it to Benji to make the saddest girl in the world smile.
The woman shifts, her back scraping against the bars. “How many of you are there?”
“Including you? Four,” Benji answers.
She shifts again, but I still can’t see anything other than her vague outline, and the tips of her boots in the moonlight streaming in front of her. It strikes me as odd that I want to see more of her.
“I’ll get out,” she whispers. Then more loudly, “All of us will.”
Benji perks up. “Now that’s the kind of attitude we need.”
I let her words sit for a moment, her determination sparking something I haven’t felt in a long time. Maybe she’s passed us up as the crazy one here. Or maybe she’s exactly what we need after all.
She shifts again, her movements restless. The faint scrape of her boots against the floor echo in the silence. I can’t see her clearly in the dim light. All I can see is the faint outline of her sitting near the door, but she’s scooted closer to me now, resting her head against the bars behind her. She’s maybe only a foot away from me now.
Breaking the silence, I ask, “So, what’s your story? What’s so important you’re willing to fight these bastards to get back to it?”
Her head turns to look at me, but I know neither of us can see the other. It’s pitch black in this block, save for the stream of moonlight illuminating part of her cell. “Isn’t freedom enough?”
“Freedom.” I run my tongue along my bottom lip in thought. “That’s an interesting concept. What’s waiting for you outside these walls?”
I lean forward, eager for her answer. For me, the only ones I care about are the two guys in here with me. There’s nothing waiting for me out there.
She hesitates, and I can hear the tension in her breath. “I have friends. My best friend, Emily, she needs something. So I went out to find it. When I did—” Her voice cracks, and she clears her throat before continuing. “When I did, they came out of nowhere. Dregs. Ambushed me while I was stuffing it all inside my pack. I tried to fight them off, even stabbed one, so he’s struggling to walk now, but there were too many. I only managed to…well, I cut off the dick of one of them before they shoved me in their car.”
Benji lets out a low whistle. “Damn, lady. You don’t do anything halfway, do you?”
Her soft laugh surprises me. “Guess not.”
For the first time since I was shoved into this hellscape, I can’t help the small smile that tugs at my lips. The movement is so foreign to my face that I can feel my lips crack. I can’t take my eyes off the shadowed woman a foot away from me. “Bold move.”
“I’m full of bad ideas,” she replies, a bitter edge to her tone. “They took everything. My pack, my knife, my…all of it.”
The way she hesitated at the end tells me she’s leaving something out. That’s fine. She doesn’t know us. If she’s lucky, then she won’t get a chance to.
There’s something different about her. Not that I’ve met many decent people in the past year or so since the world went to shit. Her, though, there’s something. I don’t know what it is, but it latches onto me until I find myself drifting closer to the bars that separate us.
Benji, of course, breaks the moment. “So what’s your name, mystery girl?”
She sighs. “Zoey.”
“Nice to meet you, Zoey,” Benji says with exaggerated politeness. “I’m Benji—not Benjamin. That grumpy bastard on the other side of you is Damon, and across from you, brooding in the shadows but listening to every word, is Cole.”
She turns her head to peer through the bars at Cole, who’s swallowed by shadows, other than his green eyes that seem to glow in the dark. The green orbs watch her, unwavering.
“Cole doesn’t talk much,” I add. “Don’t take it personally.”
“I’ll try not to.” She turns around again and leans back against the bars. “Why are you guys here?”
I hesitate, unsure how much to tell her. The truth isn’t pretty, but then, what is these days? “We crossed the wrong people. Got ourselves into a mess we couldn’t get out of.”
Her voice softens. “So you’ve given up?”
I bristle at the implication. “It’s not that simple.”
“Sure it is,” she shoots back, turning her head in my direction. I can’t see her features, but I can feel her gaze penetrating me in the dark. “You either fight, or you don’t. You either give up, or you don’t. Either way, the moment you stop fighting is the moment you die.”
Benji lets out another whistle, and I almost wish I could reach through the bars and pull out his throat. “Damn, Damon, she’s got your number.”
Zoey shifts closer to the bars separating her cell from mine. We’re mere inches apart now. “Look, I don’t know what you guys have tried or how bad it’s gone, but I know one thing: giving up isn’t an option for me. Not now. Not ever.”
Something in her tone makes me sit up straighter. It’s not only determination. It’s conviction. She’s not saying it to convince us or herself, because she doesn’t need to. She believes it, down to her core.
“We might not be able to get out now, but there will be an opening and when there is, we’ll take it.”
I stare at her outline, wishing I could see the fire in her eyes that I’m sure is there. “You can probably move faster and more quietly. You’ll have to be careful when you get out of here. If you find yourself in the kitchen, there’s a knife block on the countertop to the left of the fridge. You’ll need to use it, and don’t be afraid to hurt the dregs before they can hurt you. I don’t mean cutting off their dick. Cut off a head or two, too. Go for the kill.”
She shifts until she’s sitting directly in front of me now. I know she can’t see me in the dark. Not even my outline is visible. To her, my cell is nothing but an empty black pit of nothingness. For all she knows, I could be nothing more than a voice in her head. “Why are you talking as though you won’t be there with me?” I don’t respond. “We’ll all getting out of here, Damon. All four of us.”
The clouds over the moon shift and I can make out a sliver of golden blonde hair, but I wish the beam of light stretched far enough to see her face. Still, though, I don’t need to see her to know she firmly believes every word she says.
We’re complete strangers. She doesn’t know anything about us. She doesn’t even know she can trust us, let alone see us, but she’s already planning to get free and take all three of us along with her. Who the fuck is this woman?
She holds a fire I long thought died out in this world. Now all I want to do is fan the embers to keep it burning.
“If you say so.”
The conversation dies there, but she doesn’t move away. She stays close. I could reach out and touch her if I wanted to, but I don’t dare for fear I might ruin her like I ruined myself.
The minutes bleed into hours, and she eventually cries herself to sleep. It’s not a wailing cry, more of a series of soft sniffles. Something else is eating away at her, but she wouldn’t say what.
Now she lies curled up on the cold concrete floor with her back pressed up against the bars. Only when her breathing evens out do I dare slip a hand through the bars.
With gentle movements, I run my fingers through her hair, detangling the knots as best I can without stirring her. It stops a couple of inches below her shoulders. The ends of the strands feel like a horrible hack job, probably done by a knife in a haste.
Her body shivers, but it’s not from my touch. I realize she’s wearing a thin tank top shirt when my knuckles graze along her upper arm, feeling the goosebumps. The dregs threw her in here without a blanket. She’ll freeze.
Cursing quietly so as not to disturb her, I snatch the thin blanket off my cot and slide it through the bars before draping it over her.
Once I’m satisfied that I’ve helped her as much as I can, I back away, retreating deeper into the shadows of my cell.
I spend the rest of the night like this, still as a statue, watching over her dark outline from where I sit upright perched on my cot.
For the first time in months, I don’t look at the stars. I look at her.
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