Page 7 of Famine

My nausea rises, and I begin struggling in earnest.

I hadn’t survived this long to have it all end like this.

Elvita is cursing as she fights like a wildcat against her captors.

One of the guards holding Elvita now releases her, and for an instant I think she actually managed to partially free herself. But then the man withdraws a dagger from his hip holster.

“Please,” she begins to cry. “I will do anyth—”

He runs her through, stabbing her over and over again before she can even finish begging for her life. I scream as her blood sprays, and I jerk against the men who hold me, feeling like a fish on a hook.

They kill her. Right in front of me they do it. I scream and scream as she bleeds out.

That’s when the first knife enters my body—while I’m still watching my friend die. For a moment, my cries cut off, the action taking me by surprise. But then it’s my body the men are stabbing over and over again.

I can’t catch my breath around the pain. My legs fold as warm liquid trickles down my body.

Fuck, it hurts. Worse than anything I’ve ever felt. I want to scream, but the sharp agony of it closes up my windpipe.

I go limp in the men’s arms. They grab me by the legs, hoisting me off the ground. The world tilts, and I finally manage to release a low, tortured moan as my body sways back and forth, back and forth.

“One … two … three.”

The men release me, and for a single second, I’m weightless.

And then I hit the bottom of the pit.

I think I pass out from the pain, but I can’t be sure. I’m slipping down a hole of agony and delirium. I’m too weak to focus on much of anything else, otherwise I might have noticed the particular hue of the sky above me or the shape of the dead around me. I might have even tried to focus on the arc of my sad, brief life or that I might finally be reunited with my family.

But the pain crowds my thoughts, and all I really notice over it is how cold I am and how hard it is to breathe.

My mind drifts and my eyes close.

This is the end.

I feel death creeping into my bones. This is where people rally and fight for their lives.

I don’t.

I give in.

Chapter 4

I have this recurring dream of Famine walking through a field of sugarcane. His hand reaches idly out, his fingertips brushing the stalks. Beneath his touch the plants curl and blacken, the decay spreading out around him until the entire field has withered away.

It’s eerily silent. I can’t even hear the wind whistling through those dying stalks, though they sway in some phantom breeze.

I’m back there now, standing like a sentinel as the Reaper moves through the field, killing that crop. There’s another, darker figure that looms somewhere behind me, but I don’t pay him any attention.

As I watch, Famine moves farther from me, and as he does so, the silence seems to close in on me, until it’s a deafening ring in my ears.

From behind me, a strong hand grips my shoulder, squeezing tightly.

Lips press against my ear.

“Live,” the voice breathes.

That’s what wakes me.