"Closed!"
Samantha scrambled back, afraid the guard would come in and hurt her too, but there were only the noises of the camp. A loud, drawn-out scream, a gunshot, and more shouts in a rough Spanish dialect she was only vaguely familiar with. What the hell was she gonna do? Keep trying. That, she would do until she was dead. It was who she was. A survivor, no matter how many times this new world tried to kill her. She went back to searching.
At one point, Samantha had lain low in a supermarket full of decaying bodies during a dust storm, the warning arriving only an hour before the sand, but it had been enough. The waves of energy had made her heart clench in longing, knowing instinctively that it had come from someone who was…different, like her. She had almost chosen to skip Cheyenne and hunt down that person, but wasn't sure exactly how to do it. Now, she bitterly wished she'd tried.
Unlike NORAD, the school still had small treasures, like clothes and shoes, and a basement of boxes she'd happily explored after finding a case of fruit cocktail on top of a crate of bottled water stacked for the vending machines. Apparently, the rescue party hadn't swept the basement, and neither had any of those hiding here. Why? Just because of a few bodies? Were they stupid? Those were everywhere they looked anyway. What was a few more if it meant fresh supplies? She shrugged, running her fingers around the entire tent line. Their loss had been her...
"You won't find anything."
Samantha was on her knees in front of the flap, and looked up, scared gaze going wide at the sight of a tall, thin, dirty white man with beautiful, shifty green eyes and a black bandana around his neck. He stood outside, holding the flap open. He held a jug of brownish water in one hand, and looked so much like one of the Slavers that Samantha forgot her own plan.
"What do you want?" she snarled, calling him a traitor in her head as she backed up on the blood-splattered floor. She wouldn't get near that cot again unless she was dead or unconscious.
"He wants you to get cleaned up and ready for him."
Sam ignored the words, escape plans reforming in her mind as she watched his vivid green eyes crawl over her exposed flesh. She felt that steel in her spine and slowly stood up, faced him. Maybe she'd just gotten lucky. If he still wanted her when she looked like this, he was a sexual deviant at the very least and therefore, weak.