"HI, I'M MAX."
***
It was cold and dark inside the cell.
A cold air seemed to sweep through the room in short but chilling gusts every few seconds, making her fingertips shake. Her breath was visible in the air, but the darkness of the night prevented her from seeing it. She managed to bring her fingertips up to touch her pale cheeks after a few moments, trying to regain the feeling in each of her fingers. They felt like ice cubes against her blood encrusted face, but she kept them there, gradually regaining the feeling in each finger with the heat radiating off of her face. She looked down, blinked her eyes harshly, and looked up again.
She still couldn't see a thing.
She could barely feel any sensations either, from her fingertips to the soles of her feet. She felt like a plank of wood, almost unable to move anything. It seemed like she could only feel the cold parts of her body: the exposed corner of her neck, her shoe-less feet, her fingertips, her nose that seemed to jut out of her head like a popsicle dangling off of the edge of a small wooden stick. Not that the frozen dessert was common anymore, but she had learned that imagining such luxuries almost made them come true, if only for a moment.
She reached down to feel the edge of the cell, discovering that it was, in fact, made of metal. The wall underneath her bare right shoulder felt almost like tin roof material (like the one on the local farm), confirming her thoughts that this wasn't a prison.
It was somewhere they made after the world went to shit.
Ignoring the pain in her left knee, she stretched her right leg out in front of her, trying to gauge the width of the cell she was in. To her surprise, the container was much larger than a prison cell. Her foot could not find the opposite wall, even as she felt her muscles strain to reach the other side. She wouldn't be able to tell its actual size without moving from her sitting position, and there was no way that was happening.
She shivered again, as if noticing the chill in the air for the first time once again. Her body was pressed to the metal wall behind her, and the touch of the metal was making her much colder than she would have been otherwise. But based on the echo of her labored breathing in the space, there wasn't much else in the cell with her.
She shook her head again as she shivered, accidentally taking in the distinct smell of her own blood layered on top of the skin underneath her nose.
This was another level of shit. When she was younger, they taught her how to not get abducted.
In a car? Kick out the tail light. Grabbed from behind? Kick their shins and run like hell. Never get taken to a second location, yell for help as much as you can, and whenever you get the chance: kick the crap out of whoever tried to take you.
She let out a small breathy laugh at the thought. If only her brother could see her now.
Here she was: totally and completely abducted. In the middle of the fucking apocalypse, no less. Apparently, dead bodies getting up and walking around wasn't enough for people. They had to continue to abduct young women. They were almost too predictable. Even worse, there was no tail light to kick out, there was no one grabbing her from behind, she'd let herself be taken here (albeit reluctantly), and it was too damn cold to yell for help. The beating the crap out of whoever those people were was still up for negotiation.
She tried to move her body a bit more, shifting her right foot flat against the floor so she could attempt to push her leg, and the rest of her body, up. She felt her toes curl and gasped in pain when she heard her left knee emit a small pop.
But, after the noise, she was slightly more able to move her leg without excruciating pain, so she took that as an improvement. She gave a small sigh of relief. Mama did always say to look on the bright side.
She leaned her back against the wall of the cell for a moment as she stood with her eyes closed, taking a short time to wish away the pain. Her head was supported by the surface and felt like it might fall off and roll away if she didn't have the wall to keep it atop her shoulders.
She remembered Joshua, if only he could see her now. She was fighting to survive, all alone. She always seemed to remember Joshua when these situations arose. She always tried to think of what he would do if he were standing where she was.
But he wasn't. She was here. She needed to remember that. They weren't, but she was. And if she wanted to stay here, she needed to fight to stay. She needed to prepare for that.
Stretching her arms out in front of her in the darkness, she took a small step forward to test her leg. It still hurt like a bitch, but she was sure she could walk despite the pain. Continuing her trek into the dark abyss, she took a step on her left leg and felt her joints groan in pain. If it weren't for the sheer volume of her breathing as she tried to force more air into her lungs, she was sure she would have heard the noise coming from her injured knee.
But her legs stayed standing, so she kept walking.
After a few moments of cluelessly wandering in the dark with no idea of her surroundings, she felt cold metal hit her finger tips. The other side of the cell. She guessed it was about ten feet wide (it had taken her about twelve broken steps to get across the width of the floor).
She'd found nothing useful to her in the cell, so all she could do was wait for something more to happen. The hours passed slowly because of her impatience, and her legs ached against the cold floor. But the morning came with the realization that it wouldn't be dark forever. The cell lit up considerably with several small cracks in the outer walls of the metal. She could finally see some of her surroundings, mostly due to the small opening in what appeared to be the rusted edge of a train car door.
She could finally see her bruised feet and hands through the bangs of her short red hair. Moving her hair out of her eyes slightly, she was taken back to a time when she was scolded kindly, her hair pushed out of her eyes by soft hands and gentle touches. But that time had passed. Instead of light touches, her hair was caked with the dirt, sweat, and blood that came from days alone in the woods. She could barely even tell it was red. She could also clearly see her once-white bloodstained tank top along with her ripped cargo pants that definitely didn't start out that way. If she could even call the clothes hers.
She heaved a frustrated sigh and tried to stand up again. Having not drunk or eaten in at least twelve hours and with her knee aching, standing up, even with the help of the wall, was certainly a feat. But she managed.
She moved closer to the door of the train car to put her ear against the cool metal. Instead of silence on the other side, she heard noise.
Voices.
She could hear voices! Not loudly, but enough so that she could tell there was a man with a deep one, and a woman with a high-pitched one. They weren't agreeing either, they seemed to be having an argument.
Then she heard the gunshots. People yelled, people she didn't recognize the voices of. The men that took her had very distinct voices. The new voices weren't shooting back, but the distinctive pops with none following them signaled that they were being shot at. Another man, one with not as gruff a voice as the first nearly screamed for the shooting to stop.
"Alright, Alright! We'll do what you asked!" The voice said, the man sounded panicked.
She flinched and suppressed a groan as she heard the door of the train car creak open. Light flooded the room, temporarily blinding her as she leaned against the far wall for support. She flinched backwards, finding a small corner of the room where the beams of light were not directly landing.
When her eyes finally adjusted to the brightness, a very large man with red hair and a distinctive mustache entered the train car. He didn't notice her at first. He was more focused on the people coming in behind him. A slightly shorter Asian man entered directly behind him, his eyes darting around the new environment suspiciously. The two exchanged eye contact, and the intense anger behind their eyes was abundantly clear.
They were followed by a long, dark-haired woman who carried herself like a soldier, a tall Black man with a nearly shredded jacket, a short-haired woman who gripped the Asian man's arms in a panic as soon as she entered the car, and a larger man who looked like he was about ready to shit his pants. A few seconds passed. The small group turned around, anxiously waiting for what she assumed was more of their people to enter.
Only two more people walked in after them. A dark-skinned woman who carried herself like a soldier as well, and a younger one, probably in her late-teens, who looked frightened and very confused. If she was being honest, they all looked quite confused.
Then again, she was also extremely confused. She couldn't exactly fault them for it.
She backed up further into the far wall, the pain in her knee increasing even more as she put pressure on it by shifting her weight. She had the strong urge to get away from the people. But where could she go? Nowhere. The wall behind her seemed more solid, and much more confining. She tried to stay silent, tried to keep her breathing even.
But she was unable to stop a small wince when she tried to move her injured foot. The red-head's ears perked up immediately at the sound, and he was the first to spot her in the corner of the dark room. The rest of the group turned to look at her as well. The redhead mechanically pushed himself in front of them, as if to protect them from some danger. She wanted to laugh. She could barely walk, much less attack them. Confused and concerned expressions were littered across their faces.
"Who the hell are you?" He said, his voice low and gruff.
He sounded like he looked. She thought to herself. No, back on track. Trying to focus, she methodically thought through what she could do, only coming to the conclusion that she was fresh out of new moves to make and fresh out of options.
She cursed her own stupidity and unsuccessfully tried to disappear into the wall behind her. She gripped the wall with her left hand as her back pushed against it, her bruised fingers aching. She could feel a particularly large cut on her right-hand reopening as she scraped the appendage against the ground.
There was nothing there. Nothing to help her, nothing to save her. She was going to die in a freaking cell, alone, afraid, and surrounded by strangers.
But she wasn't afraid. She couldn't be afraid.
"Think about it: why did grandma die?" She heard the pounding in her ears as she ran and felt the ache in the bottom of her boots with each increasingly-painful movement, as if she were still there. "She died because she was afraid." She could feel his small shoulder underneath her hand as she ran. He barely came up to her waist then, but he kept up. There wasn't any other choice. The dryness of her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth from lack of water. His words seeped into her skull. The words were inescapable, just like the monsters.
"Who are you?" The man repeated, his voice getting progressively louder as he took a step closer to her edge of the train car. She didn't reply, backing up even further into the wall.
"Look at me! Fear is what gets you killed. Don't be afraid, little man. Don't be afraid, Max. Do you hear me? Fear is a mistake, and mistakes get you killed. Do you hear me? Mistakes get ya killed."
The group could barely see what the girl looked like in the darkness. The clearest picture they could get was of her bare feet, which were black, blue, and covered in small cuts from a mix of concrete and small wood branches from the forest. Her left knee was obviously bent at a strange angle in relation to her right. The bruises that surrounded her eyes they could not see well, but they were not from such natural things. The strange group didn't have a mirror. If they had, they would have known that the scars that littered their faces were almost identical to the small woman's.
She did the only thing she could think to do. The only option she saw left that wouldn't lead to certain death.
Oh, Joshua would kill her if he knew.
But Joshua didn't know. Joshua was dead.
"Hi," She said, her voice cracking as she spoke. The weakness of her voice made sense. She hadn't spoken in days. She nervously cleared her throat as if preparing to say something important. She didn't think it at the time, but it would probably be the most important thing she ever said.
"I'm Max."