Page 2 of The Commander

Dawn crept up, arriving before Cara noticed it. She opened her eyes and sat up, her mouth dry and tasting of smoke. The fire dwindled to a bed of glowing embers. Brenda still slept, her face buried in the folds of Cara’s coat, oblivious to the growing chill.

“About time you woke up. Sun’s already thinking about showing its face. You best be about your business.” Mighty Joe awoke, his rheumy eyes fixed on Cara, a mixture of suspicion and expectation in their depths.

Cara ignored him, her gaze sweeping over Brenda, who huddled on the ground atop a bed of packing materials in Cara’s extra coat. She had stayed outside, sleeping next to the fire rather than seeking shelter with the others.

Shaking Brenda’s shoulder, Cara said, “Hey, I need to go. I need to see if there’s anything in my traps.”

Brenda stirred, her eyes fluttering open with a dazed expression. “It’s still dark. I’m cold. Hungry.”

“We’re all hungry. You young people should help with that,” Mighty Joe griped.

“The baby,” Brenda started to protest.

“You could have brought something back when you were in there.” Mighty Joe pointed in the direction of Dalewood.

They heard a noise, the sound of wood breaking. It wasn’t entirely out of place, but everyone in the camp turned and looked in the same direction as if they knew something bad lurked there.

Over six feet tall, dressed in black pants and a black vest with a utility belt, one of the muzzle headed aliens lifted a branch out of its way so it could stare at them.

“Fuck, you did it now,” Mighty Joe grumbled, stumbling back toward the rest of his sleeping group.

The alien lifted its head, its nose moving as it sniffed the air, bared its teeth, and then opened its mouth so a pink dog tongue flopped out, as if trying to lick something up. In all her years traveling with her dad, Cara had never been so close to one of them. Her heart stilled in her chest.

Brenda whimpered.

It seemed to count them, sorting them out. Cara felt its gaze land on her, shift to Brenda, and then return to her. It licked the air again, focused on Cara’s eyes. An ear twitched, then it snorted.

Brenda let out a scream before she covered her mouth.

The creature dropped the branch and disappeared.

“Now you done it. Oh, no. Now you have done it, girl,” Mighty Joe muttered.

“They knew you were here.” Cara watched the branch shake in its wake, forcing calmness through the chill in her veins. That was really odd. She reached up and smoothed down the hairs on the back of her neck.

“Borrowed time!” The old man yelled back at her.

“You are going to die here, one way or another, if you don’t do something. I’m going to find us food, and we are going to get out of here. This damn place is toxic.”

“You’re not going to find anything, baby girl.” A smooth, amber toned voice emerged from the trees. Andy was not a big guy, but he had a big guy voice, and it was a nice voice. Too bad it didn’t match the rest of him.

“Andy.” Brenda sat up.

“Good morning, Red. How’d you sleep?” Andy’s gaze raked over her, lingering on the curve of her hips and the swell of her chest beneath her worn jacket. His calculating interest made Cara’s skin crawl. She tugged the jacket tighter, wishing she could blind the bastard.

Had Brenda noticed the action? The woman never seemed to see. She’d clung to Andy since they met, as if the things he had done to her in her bunk to make her moan turned him into something special.

Cara didn’t see it. Didn’t care. How could two orgasms in a row from a nasty pile of steaming crap like Andy be worth an exchange of her dignity?

“Andy, I’m so hungry. You can’t make me stay here. You know I can do my part. You didn’t tell me how it would be.” Brenda climbed to her feet, rubbing her mouth.

“I’m not in charge of things. That’s Danov. You know that, right, honey?” Andy said.

Cara couldn’t tell who he was selling that line to. “Honey? You knew what the pig planned. That’s why you brought us here.”

“Andy, how could you do this to me? You know how I feel about you. What has happened to you? You have to leave those other dirty bitches in that town. I’m the mother of your baby.” Brenda’s voice rose as she rushed Andy and threw her arms around him.

“I told you I care about you, honey. But it’s out of my hands. You can’t come into town again, either. Danov had a fit when he found out. If you come, you have to bring Red and be ready to work.”

Red , Andy called her. Cara hated the nickname and the way his eyes lingered on her skin, as if imagining it flushed with something other than anger.

“I can’t do that! You don’t want me to do that. I’m pregnant,” Brenda shouted.

“If you take them back, you should take us back,” someone called from Mighty Joe’s direction.

“You lot had your chance. None of you could pull your weight,” one of Andy’s men called back.

All of them. The men with Andy held clubs, and Cara didn’t doubt they’d use them.

It was a mess. Brenda hung on Andy like moss on a tree while his shoulders grew straighter and his eyes gleamed as if he liked the attention she gave him.

“Cara, maybe we can make this work?” Brenda asked.

“You know why they need more people to work? Because half of them have taken jobs that don’t pay any alien tax. I told you what that disgusting pig said to me, Brenda.” Cara shouldn’t have to remind Brenda, but the woman must be so afraid of being alone in this world while she was pregnant that she would do anything to find protection. That had to be why she was climbing over Andy.

“You said you wanted an easier job,” Andy said over Brenda’s head at Cara.

“We’ll make it easy on you, Red. Can’t wait to see if you get red and pink all over,” one of the men said, a grin splitting his pimply face.

“Danov told you that you and Brenda could take the lay-down job, which would free up someone else to work in your places for the alien tax. We’ve got a real treaty with the muzzles. They won’t bother us as long as we pay their tax, right? We have a fair rotation for our tithe—three months a turn.”

“You’ll love it,” the other guy leered.

“It’s easy work. You’d do it for me, wouldn’t you, honey?” Andy tipped his head down and wheedled at Brenda.

“After. I said after the baby. If you still really wanted that. But I know you won’t.” Brenda rubbed her face against his chest as if she were sure.

In Springfield, none of this type of stuff happened. There was no tithe, no rotation, no lying on your back having sex with whoever someone told you to have sex with. This was the type of wanker, asshole stuff Cara’s dad had wanted to save her from.

“What do you say, ladies?” Andy tried to push Brenda away from him.

She clung. “Take me with you. You have to take me with you, Andy.”

It devolved from there. Brenda wouldn’t let Andy go. When Cara tried to help, one of his men came around to push her away. She grabbed a stick from the fire to make him back off. Brenda started screaming, and Mighty Joe began yelling.

Cara clenched the burning stick tighter, the glow of embers warming her hand. Around her, Mighty Joe’s group muttered quietly, their eyes darting between the three men and the woods where the muzzle head had been.

“You’re causing more trouble than you’re worth. Put that stick down, Red. You don’t want to make this worse.”

“My name’s Cara,” she bit out. She didn’t lower the stick.

Andy’s lip curled in a smirk, his casual stance that of a man who thought he held all the power. “Alright, Cara, but you’re the one causing waves.”

“You can leave any time,” Cara added as much mock sweetness to her tone as she could manage. She could almost choke on it.

“Keep poking the giant, and it’ll be real hard to stay under the radar.” Andy gestured broadly toward the woods.

Was he talking about the muzzle head? It was strange that he’d appeared right after that thing. That wasn’t normal at all.

She held her stick firmly, ready to fight. If this group thought she’d surrender to them and give up, they were wrong. “We were just trying to survive. No one asked to be part of monthly rotations. Find someone else. Or better yet, handle your mess of a town instead of dragging us into it.”

Andy barked a laugh. “Brave words for someone with zero leverage.”

As they spoke, sunlight brightened the morning further, and Cara felt time slipping away. She needed to get rid of them and resume her search for food before the chance to set traps and range farther away vanished completely.

“Brenda. Come on. He hasn’t changed his terms.”

There was hesitation in every line of Brenda’s body. She kept her eyes trained on Andy, as hopeful as an animal waiting for its master to give it orders. “Why are you doing this to me? What happened to you?”

“Honey, this isn’t what I want. You believe me, right? The mayor has a plan. We have to get the taxes in. This is how we do it here. Convince Red. I’ll come back tomorrow when you all are hungrier. I’ll bring you something. Would you like that? We’ll talk again.” With one last look at the group, Andy turned and left. His thugs gave Cara and Brenda one last leer before following him.

Cara was happy to see them go. “We don’t need them.”

“I can’t believe he’s really just leaving me here. I told him he was the father of my baby.” Her body sagged.

Brenda—all sharp angles and lean lines—was as skinny as Andy. The hardships of the past few days had clearly taken a toll. Beside her, though only slightly taller, Cara felt thick and solid, like she should be immune to the gnawing hunger. Her breasts and ass still bounced more than she wanted them to. A sharp, unwelcome stab of guilt pierced her.

Brenda was visibly wasting away, and Cara…wasn’t.

“He’s no good.” Cara put her hand on Brenda’s shoulder. It couldn’t be healthy to be pregnant and so thin at the same time.

Brenda shook her off, her mouth hardening. “Here, I want to give you something. I found it in his house. He was hiding it under the bed.”

“Why were you looking under his bed?”

“I was hungry. Since he shares that house with those other guys, I thought I’d find boxes of rations there or something—you know, to keep other people out of it.”

That made sense to Cara. Brenda went on, speaking as she walked over to the tree where she had sat the day before. “He had all kinds of stuff under there he wasn’t supposed to have. But this has got to be worth something. Maybe you can find a market?”

“A market? There’s no pop-up market around this place. What would they sell?” Cara asked.

Brenda reached up into a vee in the branches and pulled out something wrapped in a dirty T-shirt. Folding the cloth away, she revealed a swath of silver that glinted in the morning light—a huge silvery blade. It looked ancient and new at the same time, with an edge as long as Cara’s forearm and a hilt set with jewels.

“Geez. Where did that come from?” Cara asked.

“I told you,” Brenda answered.

That wasn’t what Cara had meant. That didn’t look like anything Andy had found lying around in an old ruin, untended. It was well crafted and very sharp. Cara didn’t want to touch it. Although money had no value anymore, it was the type of thing that people would covet.

“I don’t want it,” Cara said.

Brenda wrapped it up again and went to where Cara’s backpack lay next to the coals of the fire. She shoved it inside. Her mouth had firmed, as if she’d found her backbone again, but her eyes were tearing up. “Take it. Trade it. Sell it. Throw the fucking thing into the river. It was hidden, so he will go looking for it, and we can’t have it, can we? What do you think his boss will do?”

Cara didn’t want to argue. She had already wasted enough daylight. She wanted to set her traps as far away from this area as possible, then circle back through the old ruins to see if she could find something edible there.