Marked

“What have you done, Charles?” Rachel breathed. Her eyes widened as she took in the scene before her.

Dotting the outside of the cabin, looking like beacons in a sea of black were eight poachers -– she counted each head-- all staring at her, their hands resting over their weapons belt.

Simone slipped from her hands, her arms too weak to hold her best friend up any longer. And maybe it wasn’t weakness but rather the fear pumping through her body that made her fingers feeble and her body convulse. Either way, Rachel’s mind raced, sifting through every scenario of how they could escape.

It became clear immediately that they were trapped. If she could run fast enough to avoid the poachers she might still survive but what would happen to her friends?

She couldn’t leave them behind. If she only lived one more hour or an entire lifetime, she would never be able to forgive herself for abandoning them.

And so she thought, I guess this is where we all die together.

“Girly’s going to run,” Charles announced.

“No she won’t,” A cool voice muttered. From the line of poachers stepped forward a pretty woman with pixie cut blonde hair and piercing grey eyes.

Over her uniform were a dozen or more scattered pins and she walked with an aura of authority which made Rachel wonder if she was their leader.

She didn’t wait around to find out. Rachel spun on her feet, thankful that Simone that had landed inside the cabin and not outside when she’d dropped her and slammed the door shut with a resounding boom.

She ran to the place where she had undone the ropes that were now her only salvation. Her fingers were a shaking mess as she tried to re-attach them with the hope of using the weapons against the poachers.

Soon-- too soon-- she found that this was pointless; it was getting her no where and she could already hear the sound of boots approaching the cabin.

“Is she dangerous?” She heard the woman say from behind the door.

“She’s harmless, that girly.” Charles replied.

Anger flashed through her veins, red and hot, making her want to reach through the door and strangle him.

Hector and her should have trusted their instincts and ran away the second they suspected Charles.

But now it was too late.

Rachel dragged Simone’s convulsing body across the way towards the Hernandez brothers.

Her own body was beginning to tremble and once more she wondered if it was from fear or if the fever was beginning to take place inside her.

Wild thought after wild thought churned through her mind while her heart galloped inside her chest.

Charles thought she was harmless, did he? Well she’d show him.

She glanced at the faces of her companions and made her choice.

Throwing Charles’ chest of weapons open, she pulled out the one that looked the most intimidating- a long, thin gun that could house enough bullets to make the poachers hesitate-- at least she hoped so.

She stuffed the small, little vial of liquid that she found tucked at the very bottom of the weapons into her shirt sleeve.

For leverage, she thought.

With all the strength she could muster, she over-turned the couch and let it create a barrier between her and the poachers.

When the door burst inward, Rachel lifted the gun and clicked off the safety like Charles had taught her. She fixed her gun on the the leader.

The blonde woman glanced down at her chest where a small red light was trained over her left breast, closest to her heart.

“You don’t want to do that.” The poacher woman said calmly. She lifted her hands as if to show surrender and took a step forward.

Stop, Rachel wanted to yell. Please don’t make me do this. I don’t want to shoot you. Even if you are a monster.

“Stay where you are or I’ll shoot,” Her voice sounded foreign even to her own ears. She hoped the others could not hear the lie in her words as much as she could.

What would she do if they wouldn’t stop? She couldn’t shoot someone, could she?

And would her gun even be enough to convince them to what- let her go, no questions asked? And even if they agreed, how would she carry the others?

A frustrated sound rattled her vocal cords.

“Listen, we are only here to give you a better life.” The woman said gently. The words were the sounds of irony spilling from a poacher’s lips.

Rachel scoffed.

“Sure, if you call living like an unfeeling monster a better life.”

“Why isn’t this one asleep like the others, Charles?” A tall, olive skinned man asked in a sharp voice.

“She took a little more convincing, this one. Plus, yalls came too early.” Charles replied, unaffected.

The woman took another step towards Rachel and reached out a hand as if to stroke the younger girl. “You’re confused...“She murmured.

“Stop goading her, Debra. If that gun goes off we’re going to have bigger fish to fry and you know that.” An older poacher with a salt and pepper beard stepped forward and turned his hateful gaze on Rachel.

“Listen, you dumb, little girl you better put the gun down before you really get hurt.”

Rachel didn’t remove her gun from Debra’s chest despite the chill that ran down her back.

Debra made a move towards her and it all happened so fast. The others drew out their weapons and Rachel lashed out with her gun, striking Debra against the jaw. The woman flexed her mouth but otherwise kept coming at her. That’s when Rachel remembered the milky liquid.

As Debra lunged at her, Rachel slammed her wrist into Debra’s mouth and the little vial shattered, spraying glass and the white, milky substance Charles had used to drug them into her mouth.

With bleeding lips, Debra tried to spit out the liquid but Rachel grabbed her around the neck and clamped her hand over her mouth.

Thanks a lot for the fighting lessons, Charles, Rachel thought without humor.

“This is what’s going to happen,” Rachel began, feeling bold at the sight of the other poachers halting for fear of their leader.

It was nice to see they could at least feel something.

“Your men are going to help me carry my friends out of here. You’re going to give me access to one of your cars and then you’re going to let us go. Once we are far enough away, I’ll let Debra loose for you guys to come find her.”

“You stupid, girly.” Charles harrumphed. He pointed to the ceiling and a poacher threw a knife through the air.

Rachel flinched, sure that the knife was aimed at her. In that moment of distraction, Debra broke free and jabbed her elbow into Rachel's stomach.

Not a second later, Rachel heard the snap of a rope. Then all she heard was the swish of an oncoming rock heading straight for her head.

...................................................................................................................

There was just something so peaceful about unconsciousness.

A state of limbo, where reality couldn’t hurt you.

Rachel’s lashes fluttered and she resurfaced to light that colored her eyelids white.

There was a dull ache where Charles’ trap had struck her and her mouth tasted like metal.

The last thing she remembered before blacking out had been the hands of the female poacher reaching out to push her out of the way of the oncoming rock-or maybe she had been pushing her towards it.

Now that she had emerged from the darkness she could feel the heaviness of her head with every painful throb of blood that rushed through her veins.

She remembered Simone, Hector and Juan and how their bodies had been so feverish and defenseless and how she had not been able to get them out of Charles’s cabin in time. Where were they now? Were they even alive?

Most importantly, were they still unmarked?

Trying to sit up, she recognized the presence of another person when two large hands pushed her back onto a cool, metal surface, and clicked belts shut around her body, trapping her.

Sounds began to materialize- first a humming and then slowly, as her vision cleared, the sound of people chatting in conversational tones.

At the end of her form stood two poachers in their unbearably tidy grey uniforms- uniforms that gave off the illusion of being clean and pressed but she knew in reality held the blood of hundreds in each of their threads- and two feet shorter than them, sitting a few feet away on a rock and rubbing his scruffy beard was Charles.

“You...traitor.” Rachel rasped out. Two pairs of unfamiliar eyes shot to her and then Charles’s gaze slid over her as well, but more slowly, more measured until their gazes were glued together.

“Mornin’, sunshine.” He said. The sky overhead was still dark but it might as well have been morning with the way the lights from the poacher’s vehicles illuminated Charles’s lawn.

Charles rose from his perch on a rock and came to stand beside Rachel, a halo seeming to outline him.

How ironic, Rachel thought. A halo around the devil of a man standing before me. It seemed like this night was full of ironies.

Stroking her hair, he turned to the poachers and fixed them with a toothy grin. “Now yall take good care of this one for me. She’s me favorite.”

Rachel yanked her face away, too angry at herself for not being able to see the truth behind Charles when they had first met him. Ignoring him, her eyes searched wildly for any signs of the others.

The lawn was littered with two white vehicles shaped like boxes and at least five poachers were rummaging around in the forest with buzzing boots that lifted them a few inches off the ground where it looked like they were erasing tire marks and footprints with a laser emitting contraption.

She wanted to be amazed by their technology but she found herself too scared to think of that- scared for her friends who were nowhere in sight, scared for her own life.

The weight of their predicament finally settled in on her. Charles had turned them over to the poachers- and the poachers were not killing Charles-- instead they were complimenting him as if he were one of their best behaved lap pets.

“We’ve got the others loaded up already, Charlie. We gotta get Debra in for treatment but let us know if any others come by. You did great work.”

Charles skinny body next to hers- she wished so badly her arms were free so she could slap him and knock the last few remaining teeth from his mouth- touched her again, this time on her hand, “Be strong now, ya hear? It’s a tough world out there, girly. But yous aint no wimp, nows is ya?”

“The only coward here is you.” Rachel spat back. “You tricked us- made us believe we were safe and then you stabbed us in the back. How can you live with yourself?”

Charles crossed his bony arms and grinned a Cheshire cat grin, all lips but no teeth. “In time you’ll learn to thank me, girly.” He pressed a wet kiss to Rachel’s forehead and spun on his heel. “All right boys, take her away.”

Rachel found it pointless to beg for them to release her. Instead, she kept still, eerily, shockingly still hoping that somehow, her deep concentration would lend her a way out of this mess.

There was a panic in the back of her chest just waiting to overflow if she let it- but she shoved it back just like she had shoved Jed’s absence for weeks because now was not the time to break down and show these monsters just how scared she really was.

Weakness- It had always been her greatest flaw- the one thing others noticed about her and the reason so many had taken advantage of her her entire nineteen years of existence. But she would not allow that to leak out here, in front of the merciless men who would only sneer in her face and enjoy the kill all the more if they knew she was terrified.

A poacher approached her and began to slip something black over her eyes. She didn’t fight him, just waited for the fabric to slip over her, effectively erasing the image of the wiry stranger named Charles and the cabin full off weapons and traps until they were nothing but a memory of a time when she had felt foolishly safe.

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A/N Did you see this coming? What do you think is going to happen to them?