Marked

She’d imagined her capture a million different ways.

It wasn’t always the same scenario but it always ended with a Mark on her forehead.

Rachel wondered what that would feel like, not the Mark itself, but the lack of feeling that came with it, the lack of personhood.

What would it feel like to lose yourself?

She shut her eyes and focused on the forest with its buzzing of animals preparing for winter.

There was the tune the wind whistled between the tree branches and standing alone in the middle of the forest, it was easy to picture them sneaking up behind her, clad in their standard gray city uniform.

If she tried hard enough, she could even hear the sound of twigs breaking under military boots, as if they were really coming for her.

She could almost, but not quite, taste the leather of their gloves as they clamped over her mouth.

Would she kick and scream?

Or would she go quietly?

She’d like to imagine she’d be brave, maybe all the compounders did, but she was smart enough to know that bravery didn’t gain you much, not against the capital.

When they kicked her feet out from under her and shoved her face into the earth, would she cry?

If so, what would she cry for?

Maybe she’d cry for the loss of her freedom but mostly she thought she’d cry in relief because hiding was exhausting.

And maybe giving up was easier.

Her blue eyes flung open and she realized, not surprisingly, that the only thing she cried for, now, was Jed.

Her little brother, who had run away to the city to be Marked exactly two weeks before, had he thought giving up was easier too?

She tried not to imagine Jed with empty eyes.

Jed as one of them.

But it was difficult.

Once the capital had their hands on him, a strong, unmarked boy, she knew there was no hope of them ever letting him go.

That funny notion of bravery snuck up on her again.

She shoved down her sob, wiped her face and picked up her bucket of berries, determined to snap out of her grief.

There was a crunch of twigs that immediately drew her attention to a female form looming from her left.

She arrived with an armful of logs balanced against her hip.

“Rachel, stop sitting around. We’ve got to get these into the truck before sundown.”

Gathering up her leather gloves, Rachel followed after her mother, past a copse of brown, drying trees.

Ruth was right.

Winter was fast approaching and there was no time to waste. Sitting around crying over Jed wasn’t going to bring him back and it certainly wasn’t going to help them survive through the harsh winter months.

“Once the snow starts falling our scavenging trips are done.” Ruth stated. “Plus Elena is getting tired so we’ll have to leave soon and we’ve barely collected anything.”

The older woman hitched the logs higher up on her hip and scoffed. “I don’t know why that damn woman insists on coming along. She’s pretty useless, carting that huge belly around like that.”

“Maybe she’s trying to help.”

In response, Ruth harrumphed.

Over the cresting hill, Rachel caught sight of the others—two men and a very large, pregnant woman.

As the guys cut away at the fallen tree, Elena assisted by throwing the severed pieces onto the back of the old solar-powered pick-up.

Rachel went to Elena’s side and tossed a few logs into the truck to ease her burden.

“Do you think the others had any luck?” Bane asked.

Bane was Elena’s husband, a skinny blonde man with a receding hairline and nasally voice.

“I doubt they’re doing any better than us,” Ruth replied.

Her red hair tumbled in the breeze, like fire crackling against the soft greens of the forest. “There’s not much left for us to scavenge through. I keep telling everyone we need to move to an area where crops will grow but no one will listen.”

“We are surrounded by forest.” Carl stated patiently.

He grabbed his cane and propped it in front of him, leaning his graying beard over the top of it. “How far do you think we’d get before we ran into another city and got caught by the poachers?”

Ruth grimaced at this. “I’m just saying that we can’t survive off of berries and nuts forever.”

“We have chickens,” Rachel offered.

She caught Elena’s smile as she rubbed her overly-stretched belly.

Bane jerked his thumb toward the east, the forest area cluttered with several flourishing trees. “I think there’s a river down that way. Our tires caught some mud on the ride up. My guess is there’s at least a stream so we should check it out in case it has fish.”

“Now that’s what I’m talking about!” Ruth cheered. “Come on, Rachel, let’s go see what we can find.”

The walk to the stream was a silent one.

Without Jed, there wasn’t much for her and Ruth to talk about.

When the quiet became unbearable, Rachel gathered her courage and took her mother’s hand into her own.

“I miss him too.”

It was the first chance they’d gotten to really talk since Jed had run away—the only moment of privacy they’d shared between planning the scavenging trip and the compound busy preparing for winter.

Light filtered in through the trees overhead and a sliver caught Ruth’s face which was hard and set, like stone.

Studying her, Rachel wondered what had caused her to become this way. Of course she knew her mother had been through a lot. She’d survived the Great War, the disease that had ravaged the world and even losing her husband—but none of that seemed to justify how cold her heart had become.

It was as if she didn’t even mourn Jed.

“We’ll need long sticks, and they’ll have to be sharpened if we intend to catch anything,”

“Mom, please.” Rachel pleaded.

She grabbed Ruth, effectively bringing her to a halt. “Jed is gone and I feel so empty. Please stop shutting me out—I know how you’re feeling.”

“You can’t even possibly begin to understand what I feel, Rachel.” Ruth growled as she spun to face her. “Because you don’t have children of your own and you should never, you hear me?”

“He was my brother. I understand, mom—I do.”

“No,” Ruth snapped. “You don’t understand. You think what I feel is sadness? It’s not. It’s regret. I regret bringing you and Jed into this world and there’s no way for me to take it back.”

Ruth jabbed a finger behind them. “You see Elena? How stupid she is? She cannot even run. She’s fat and big with a human that will only suffer and starve and one day end up like Jed.”

For the first time in a long time, Rachel felt anger creeping up inside her.

“You’d be smart not to go getting attached to anyone, not even your family.” Ruth warned. “It’s crazy the things people will do when times get tough.”

Rachel suspected Ruth was referring to the father she never knew; the man who left them in order to get the mark.

But Jed was nothing like him.

There were a million things Rachel wanted to spew to her mother in that moment—most of them unkind things—but a slight crack of twigs to their left effectively ended their conversation.

Knowing they’d left the others behind in the opposite direction, whatever it was, it wasn’t anything familiar.

They both came to an immediate halt and stood stock still behind the cover of a tree.

That’s when the voices reached them.

“Think we’ll really find any beggars out here or is Jensen just pulling our tail?”

“Well the thermal readers are picking up a few large heat spots across a twenty mile radius so either there are some beggars out here or some damn enormous beasts. Either way, we’re killing something tonight!”

“It better be beggars, man. I’ve only got two this month and if I don’t bring in at least five they’ll cut me out.”

“Well, wadaya’say we go find us some damn dirty beggars then?”

Rachel’s heart thrummed in her neck and pounded against her ribcage.

It was them.

Poachers—the section of law enforcement tasked with hunting down people like Rachel and either killing them or forcing them to get the Mark.

Beside her, Ruth pulled a pair of knives from her coat and handed one to Rachel while motioning with her other hand to keep quiet.

Rachel’s palms were slick with sweat and it was all she could do not to lose her grip on her knife.

The footsteps were growing closer.

The two poachers would round the corner any moment now. Surely they’d kill them—or worse—mark them and be done with it.

A loud crack filled the air, interrupting her fears and sending startled birds scattering from the trees.

“Woo-hoo!” One of the men cheered, sounding dangerously close to her. “Looks like the others found one, come on!”

The two poachers, in their gray uniforms ran right past the two, towards the place where they’d left Bane, Carl and Elena behind.

“We have to do something,” Rachel breathed. “They’ll be killed!”

She took one step before Ruth’s fingers clawed at her arm.

“It’s too late for them. We have to get out of here now.”

“But--”

Suddenly there was a break in the bushes and something flitted towards them.

At first, she thought it was a poacher, until she caught sight of the blonde hair

It was Bane with one arm clamped over his bleeding stomach, his face smeared with dirt.

“Bane! Oh my, God, what happened?” Rachel gasped.

She waited for a sign that Elena and Carl were following.

There was none.

“W-where are Carl and Elena?”

Bane shook his head, his body working hard with each breath.

“She’s gone. They surrounded us and we tried to run but it was useless. They—they caught Carl but Elena—God, Elena fell and she wasn’t breathing. The poachers. Man—I ain’t ever seen anything like that. They just cut the baby right out of my woman like she was—like she was some type of animal.” He sobbed. “I—God, I just couldn’t get to her in time.”

“Oh, Bane.” Rachel whispered.

“We need to get out of here.” Ruth snapped as her palm pressed against Rachel’s lower back.

“Mom, wait!” Rachel cried. “Didn’t you hear Bane, the others—?”

Ruth shook her just as a gunshot cut through the air.

Hearing the gun shots—knowing they were coming from the poachers—Rachel couldn’t think of any nightmare that could equal this hideous situation.

“Are good as gone so do you want to live or not?”

Before she could form a coherent thought, Ruth was already tugging her along into a sprint.

Through the pumping of blood in her ears, she couldn’t even tell if Bane was following.

There was a sharp stitch in Rachel’s side but she kept running. She ran until they broke into a clearing and the sound of rushing water drowned out their exhausted gasps.

“Get in the water.” Ruth shouted.

And then something rounded the corner up ahead and came into view. It was a box-shaped vehicle, all white except for the cage it hauled behind.

Inside, she could see the shape of two bodies.

One was a woman, with her stomach torn open.

In front of her stood an old man with a graying beard and a baby in his arms.

Carl.

He kissed the infant gently on the forehead and then clamped his hand over the baby’s face, smothering its breath. It was a horrible thing to watch yet she couldn’t tear her eyes away.

She remembered the unspoken rule among the compounders—that they would rather die than ever be captured and marked by the capital.

“Old man’s killing the kid!” A poacher shouted.

“Put it down, old man! Put it down!”

The baby struggled in Carl’s arms and finally stopped writhing. At the same time, a bullet penetrated Carl’s forehead and his body crumbled to the floor.

Dead.

Carl and the baby were both dead.

A cry, like screeching metal, ripped from Bane’s throat just as he broke into the clearing behind them.

With her heart hammering against her ribs, it was all Rachel could do to keep from throwing up.

But more frightening, or perhaps more chilling than all of that, was the image of something Rachel had never seen up close before—something terrible.

The Marked Ones.

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A/N First of all, thank you so much for clicking on Marked! Big internet hugs to you. How would you react if faced with Poachers? Tell me about it below in the comments!