The Discarded

Chapter 1

Monday September 1st 2014

The dirt trail wasn't much to bet his life on. But last chances were always ugly bitches with lying eyes.

He ran his hand over the gritty rust that crept cancerously over the iron gate. Decay etched out the name 'Primrose,' a butcher's yard where kids were flensed of innocence. A waist-high wall of stone bracketed the gate, slickly black with old rain, it ran unbroken in both directions, a cage for the wounded.

Hesitating on the final step, he shook his head. The time to back out was gone, lost in the maybes of the past. He set his foot down on the hard-packed trail with only the ancient trees and their shorter-lived kin marking the moment. Dripping with the remains of an early morning rain, the twisted wood kept its silent vigil draped in moss.

He tightened the military duffel that rode his back. In its prime it had travelled the world and served in two wars, decades before he stole it from the Goodwill. Faded from years of abuse, the old soul was threadbare from uncaring hands. A spider's web of duct tape kept its wounds from bleeding the only things he owned onto the dirt.

Sneakers, more gray tape and hope than sole, scuffed along the hard ground. He was used to city streets and carefully manicured parks, the lost places tread by the forgotten. This forest of elder trees and thick roots that tore the trail into hills and valleys was too wild for a soul calloused by the treachery of the streets.

Sweat slicked his hair as he walked, curses spilling from his lips at the dirt road. Cesare gave a grunt of relief when he spotted the wooden bench slick with moss, the girl on it getting a searching look. Under the cover of the duffel, his hand slipped into his hoodie and wrapped around the cool handle of his gun.

Women are dangerous. The first time, it was a girl waiting for him after school. He'd gotten lost trying to impress her and hadn't seen the guys coming up behind him. It was an hour before he'd been able to pick himself up from the ground after they'd taken what they wanted. There'd been others, women who wanted something from him—food, drink, a blanket—always wanting something, but never wanting him.

He slumped onto the bench with a groan, uncaring of the water soaking his pants or the dirt that coated his hoodie. The dirt would blend in, hiding itself among its kin. The hoodie was birthed black and beautiful, but time had worn it down to a faded, ugly grey.

As sweat cooled across his body, he gave the girl a closer look, hand steady on his gun. Her tailored black dress hugged a massive set of muscled shoulders. Ebony folds sheathed arms that bulged with hardened hills of potential violence, a modest neckline hinting at cleavage. Stripped of softness, her face was a monument to life's brutal lessons and a strength that endures. It missed being beautiful—too hard for anything so easy. Blond hair chained into an intricate weaving of braided gold ran down her back in a cable of sun kissed grace. Shining like silver, a steel claymore shaped into a Christian Cross nestled between her breasts. This was a woman who matched her strength against the world and found the world wanting.

She kept her head down over her iPad, uncaring of the boy that had sat next to her. "Any signal?"

"Why don't you check for yourself?" she said without looking up from her electronic god.

Relaxing back in slacker fashion, a smile flitted across his face. She'd answered, he might just have a chance.

"Never had a cell phone." Curiosity sharpened under his words; her dark green eyes moving over him from the tips of his duct taped shoes to his bowl cut brown hair.

"Oh." The simple word condemned with casual power. Being poor wasn't like having a disease, people forgave being sick. The one sin the world never forgave was weakness. Losing your legs didn't make you half a man. But eating out of garbage's, turned you into a mistake worth only disgust.