Page 8 of Famine

My eyes flutter open. I squint against the heavy, oppressive shine of the sun, the pungent smell of decay thick in my nostrils.

Hazy with pain and weakness, I draw in one shaky breath, then another.

I shift a little. At the movement, sharp, blinding pain rips across my torso.

Fuckingow.

I go still, waiting for the pain to abate. It does … somewhat, dulling to a steady throb. I take a shallow breath, inhaling bits of dirt as I do so.

I cough, and Satan’s balls, it feels like I’ve crossed through the gates of hell. The pain reignites.

Hurts so damn bad.

Dirt shifts over my body, skittering off me as I push myself up. My arm brushes something soft, something that isn’t dirt. Then it’s my leg that touches that same object.

My teeth grind against the pain as I force myself to sit up. I cry out at the action, my body hurting in a dozen different places.

Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up.

When the pain and nausea pass, I look around me. Vaguely, it registers that I’m sitting in that unfinished pool, and that someone has thrown mounds and mounds of dirt back into the craterous pit. But that’s not what’s truly snagging my attention.

Little more than a meter away, I see a face peering up through the soil like some newly sprouted plant, its mouth slightly agape, dirt lightly sprinkled across its open eyes, which stare blankly into the distance.

A sound slips out of me as my gaze darts over the rest of my surroundings. To my left I see a leg and part of someone’s torso sticking out from the dirt, to my right I see a shoulder and the arm of yet another body.

My hand braces itself against something lumpy and vaguely hard. I glance down only to realize this whole time I’ve been pushing against the face of the mayor’s wife, two of my fingers are brushing against her teeth.

My scream comes out as a choked cry.

Dear God.

I snatch my hand away, causing a dozen flies to take flight before resettling.

The woman’s daughters are laying nearby. All of them then haphazardly covered with dirt.

Buried in a shallow grave. Left to die.

And me along with them.

Elvita.

My eyes dart around, searching frantically for the woman who took me in five years ago.

I don’t see her, but the longer I stare about, the more I realize that the pit ismoving. There are others who survived the rampage, others like me who have been buriedalive.

And now that I’m actually paying attention, I can hear their soft, dying groans. Those of us still living might not be for long. My mind rallies against that thought.

I want to live.

Iwilllive.

And then I will get my revenge.

I can’t say how many minutes it takes to force myself to my feet. The whole time I’m sure that one of Famine’s men is going to come out here and check on us to make sure the dead stay dead. That all my effort will come to a swift, sharp end. But no one comes.

I dust the dirt off my body. It’s everywhere—in my hair, down my shirt, coating my clothes, between my toes and inside my mouth. I’m too cowardly to look at the wounds on my chest, but I bet if I did, I’d see dirt in them as well.

Pushing myself up, my gaze sweeps over the pit. The sides of it are too steep to simply walk out of, but thankfully one part of the pool is shallower than the other, and in this shallow area someone thought to create steps leading out.