7. Skin farms

Runt.

You can smell a skin farm before you come across it. First it's the bones in the desert with insects crawling through their eye sockets, then it's the metal spikes in the ground, and then it's the smell. It smells like sweaty bodies drenched in intestines left in the beating down sun above us. Which the farms practically are.

Dan had once told me that they weren't always here, and that they only started appearing after the war because people needed other people to work for them. In different ways. Disgusting ways. You could hear the people screaming and shouting after the ear shattering sound of a whip cracking through the air.

We were just behind a dune and on our stomachs. The sun beat the back of my neck and my arms were turning the same color as my hair. The skin farm was at least a kilometer away, but farmers were scouring the metal spikes for any run a ways still alive. They wore leather aprons and were shirtless – both the men and women – and had thick black gloves on their hands. They looked like the cartoon characters in the picture books they used to read in the orphanage.

Except they wore gas masks speckled with blood.

Except they held rusted pieces of metal that passed for machetes.

Cleo spat and put away her binoculars. "Her Majesty owns the entire West Coast and she can't even deal with this shit."

She's pretty busy, Cleo.

"Don't give me that." She drew her rifle. "Why don't we pop off a few and let some of the people in there run free."

I pushed the muzzle down before the eye piece could catch the sunlight and alert one of the farmers. We were here to find the Nomads, not kill the farmers. And if we kill a few of the farmers, the people in there would be blamed and mauled for it. All of them could be mauled for it. Dan's mum had been one of those people, and there are probably other kids out there with their parents in there. I didn't want to do that to anyone. For my big brother's sake at least.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" she hissed. "You're just like Hera. We can kill a few of the farmers without a hassle and keep moving."

I shook my head and pushed hers down. A farmer had glanced up at us, her outburst had told them we were here. Hera may own the West Coast, but I doubt the farmers would care about that. They saw credits, they saw workers, and they saw food.

The groans and low growls of the farmers begun getting closer. The swishing of the sand moving underneath their heavy boots filled the air. The tap of their machetes touching their steel tipped boots counting down. I had to hold Cleo in place, she was squirming and biting my hand as I clamped it over her mouth. She used to be pretty easy to take care of on the ground, but she'd gotten much stronger, and she was taller than me – so she had leverage.

This was the first time I was glad the nuns had sown my mouth shut, because Cleo began drawing blood from my palm. I forced her head into the sand as the first farmer broke the top of the hill.

He roared.

We backpedalled and rolled down the sand dune.

He charged and swung the machete. Two other farmers bellowed and joined him. He was fat and slow, but his arms were thick with muscle – all from tearing away tendons from bone. A woman with a single pony tail and no other hair had claws screwed into her fingers, like Hera's nails, but rusted metal that drew its own blood from her fingers as she swung them wildly. The air sung as the razors split it.

The last was a little boy with a chainsaw and a smile carved into his gas mask. The chainsaw spluttered and coughed, eventually roaring into life.

Cleo kicked away from me and sprung up – sidearm in fist and a grin on her face. "How about it Runt?" she yelled. "Kill 'em and make their boss tell us where the Nomads are!"

That's a bad-

She wasn't looking at me to see my hands. Not listening again. No one ever does. Just once would be amazing. Tick and Dan would listen to me for hours, but they died and they're not here anymore. So I only have my younger sister – a maniac who wants to prove herself to no one but herself.

I tackled her as the woman swung and the butcher cut through the air with his rusted machete. The blade whistled past my ear as we dived into the sand. I rolled as the boy giggled and dug into the dirt next to my arm with his chainsaw.

Cleo slammed in a clip and shot out the boy's knees. The boy wailed and Cleo slammed a boot into his gut. She finished him off with three shots that blew apart his head. The smell was the first to hit, and then the bone fragments jutting out of the tender pink tissue of his brain.

Hera had killed her sister like that. And now she'd just done the same.

The man swung again and I dodged. The tip of the machete caught my arm and tore away my black t-shirt sleeve. Pain shot down my arm, it wasn't a deep cut, but the blade must have had something coating it. My arm felt numb and hung limp, moving it was like moving it through the sand. He lunged but it was clumsy and slow. I darted to the right and kicked his knee, it buckled but didn't snap. I kicked again and it was like kicking a brick wall. They did nothing but make him roar even louder. I ducked as he swung the machete again, this time a little faster than before.

Faster? No. I was just getting slower, my feet weren't moving as fast, the stub that was left of my tongue flopped around in my mouth. Even my heart beat felt like slow drums thumping in my ears.

Cleo shrieked.

I spared a second.

The woman with claws had dug one into her thigh. Her rifle and sidearm were nowhere to be seen. Panic was rooting itself into her face as the woman began digging the claw in deeper. An inch, and then two, and then three. She punched the lady in her throat but she also seemed slow – pain and whatever was on their weapons was going to end up killing her.

One things was certain.

I wasn't going to lose another sibling.

I sprinted away from the man. I tripped over myself as the woman brought her claws down into Cleo's forearm, she screamed and tried to worm her way out of her grip, but the claws were in too deep, they were tearing through muscle. Soon they'll start splitting bone.

I was going to slaughter her.

I forced myself up and darted forward. The woman wailed and raked her nails across the air. I didn't care. I jumped and kicked her side. The sound of snapping ribs accompanied Cleo's scream. I wrapped my good arm around the woman's throat and threw her off of Cleo. I tore out one of her nails and drove it into her gut and forced it even deeper.

She screamed. I pushed. She tried to claw my back with her other arm. I slammed my forehead into hers – the beady black eye glass cracked and her panicked blue eyes shown through. I twisted the gnarled metal and tore it out of her stomach, she fell in a heap at my feet.

The man roared a beast's roar and gripped onto the boy's chainsaw in his other hand. The numbness was slowly spreading through my body, my right eye lid was drooping more than my left and even breathing was getting harder – like my lungs were trying to pump sand instead of air.

It would have to be quick, and Cleo needed help.

I flipped the combat knife and caught it. I threw it, its blade whistled through the air and sailed past the man's head. I clenched my fist and the ring on my thumb pulsed, I drew back my hand and the blade flipped in the air. It dug into his thick neck. I pulled even more and the gristly sound of the knife cutting through his spine filled the biting dry desert atmosphere. He shrieked and clawed at his neck, but it was too late.

The knife's black blade burst from his neck and hurtled towards me. I caught it and his body fell.

I staggered towards our backpacks at the top of the sand dune, weaving past the dead boy and woman. Their blood already muddy pools around them. I shook my head and hit my forehead with my palm, the haze of whatever was in me was making my world swim. My stomach flipped and the bitter taste of acid filled my mouth. The gunfire like heartbeat ripping past my ears was deafening.

I rummaged through the backpack and slapped on a cold patch onto my right arm. It was soothing, but the blur in my eyes didn't leave. We had anti venoms deeper in our packs, but Cleo was priority.

I dragged myself and the bags towards her. She had torn off a piece of her shirt and tied it around her thigh and forearm.

She slapped away my hands before I could put a cold patch on her thigh.

"I can do it by myself," she snapped. She winced as the white square connected with the deep gash. She slapped my hands away again when I reached for her forearm. "I said I can deal with it, Runt!"

I ignored her and dug through the packs for the anti-venom. It was getting harder to move. I sat down and put the pack in between my knees, the sun seemed hotter and the smells of the dead was settling on me. The sun was right above us now and was making waves in the desert.

I hate the heat.

I brought out two green syringes and Cleo snatched one away. She tore off the cap with her teeth and jabbed it into her side and squeezed out the green liquid. I pulled off the cap and did the same – the numbness receded but not by much, the earth stopped swimming, but it kept swaying. Like a baby's crib.

Are you okay? I asked.

"Christ sake," she spat. "You're not my sister. So leave me alone."

I was just asking, Cleo.

"How about you mind your own damn business," she muttered. "I didn't ask for your help with that woman."

I wanted to help you.

"I didn't fucking ask for it."

It clicked. That woman had Hera's nails in a twisted way, and she'd managed to hurt her. And if that woman had hurt her, then what would Hera do? Someone who trains every day, someone who's always sharpening her nails, someone who's always alert and not slowed down by starvation like the female farmer. She'd just seen how much further she had to go to actually beat Hera.

If that woman had almost killed her, Hera would do it within a second.

I hugged her.

She pushed me away and the tears finally broke out. "I hate you. I hate everything about you. I hate how you smile at Hera, I hate the way she's always patting your back and giving you all the hard missions." She punched the sand. "Fuck you, Runt. She makes me look weak because of you!"

I sat back.

"You just sit there like a good little girl and do everything she says without question!" She was shouting now, more of the Farmers would come if she kept it up. But I wasn't going to stop her, I'd been listening ever since Dan fell from the bridge, and I'd keep listening for my sister. "I don't even remember how my family looks like because of Hera! All I have is this stupid thing." She tore off the silver necklace with her sister's name on it and threw it into the sand.

I reached towards it but she kicked away my hand. "Don't you dare touch that," she growled. "Almost three years of working my ass off, and I'm nowhere near her level." The last word a whisper being caught in the wind.

I hugged her again, but this time she didn't push me away. She dug her face into my neck and called out for her dead sister. Her sharp breaths bit into my neck, her arms pressed me against her and the shakes running through her body shook mine as well.

She eventually fell silent. Her body shuddered and her breaths brushed my neck and pushed away her cold tears. "You remind me of her, and she died. And just like that night, I'm not strong enough to protect you."

I hate the heat.