Me, I just want to know how a beetle got that large. Bugs shouldn't be that big, should they? How does that even happen? Maybe I didn't see it properly. Maybe it was something else—
Hightower stops in his cocky saunter and stares at the lump in the middle of the street that the beetle rose from. He looks back at me, and his normally pale face is ghost white.
"What?" I blurt out, and my voice sounds hollow and far away thanks to my ringing ears. I set my bike down and start walking toward him. "What is it?"
He shakes his head and puts a hand up. "Don't come any closer."
Don't come any closer? Yeah, right. Now I have to see. I take a few steps forward…and stop when I see the tendrils of blonde hair. I see the empty eye sockets next, and I realize I'm looking at what's left of a person. I press my fingers to my mouth, horrified. The bug was…
"I think it's Hailey," Hightower says, his voice somber.
Oh god. Hailey was in the panty program, but the moment she found out we were being served up to dragons, she panicked and left. I'd heard that she went back to whoring in the fort, but maybe she decided to take her chances outside. I fight back the sickness creeping up in my throat. "Do you think it was nomads that got her? Or something else?"
"It wasn't a dragon, if that's what you're asking." He glances around, grimacing.
"How do you know?"
"A dragon would have kept her, or ate her whole. He wouldn't have left her carcass behind." He nudges at the lump with his boot and then glances over at me. "You want her clothes?"
"What? No!"
"You said you wanted scrap—"
"Not hers! Not like this!" I hug my arms to my chest. "I want to go back, please."
I'm done with scavenging today. We haven't even made it to the area we've decided to pick through, but I don't care. I'm cold and miserable and I stare at the dead carcass of a woman I knew not too long ago. Hailey was excited to be in the panty program. She wanted to be one of Lord Azar's harem…and then when she found out that wasn't going to happen, she bailed out. She hated dragons more than she liked the free food and safety of the program.
Is this what's going to happen to me if I can't manage to snare a dragon? I feel helpless. I don't even know how to get one of the monsters to look in my direction.
I don't even know if I want them to. I feel like I'm trapped between two terrible choices. What's that old saying my dad used to use? Frying pan or fire?
I have no idea which one is better.
Hightower doesn't get on his bike, though. He jogs into the bushes, ignoring my protests, and scans them. A moment later, he picks something up and makes a disgusted noise. "It stinks," he calls out, grinning, and holds the giant dead bug up by one of its spindly legs. The thing's dead, a hole blown into the side of it, but I didn't mistake the size.
It really is enormous, bigger than Hightower's torso.
All the more reason to head back to the fort. "Can we just go, please?"
"I'm taking this back to show the boys," he says, looking around for something to drag it on. He finds a rotten bit of cardboard and tosses the thing onto it. The dead bug makes a wet sound as it lands, and then Hightower hauls the entire thing in my direction. "I had no idea this shit got so big!"
"Me either," I murmur. I mean, our world has been taken over by dragons, so I'm willing to believe a lot of stuff at this point. Golden-retriever-sized bugs? Sure. It's a lot less crazy than fire-breathing dragons.
As he straps the dead, smelly thing onto the back of his bike, I can't help but think about my dream. I had supersized bugs in those, too. I rub my arms again, shivering. "What about Hailey?"
Hightower looks over at me, confused. "What about her?"
I gesture at her dead body. "We're not going to just leave her, are we? It's wrong. She's a person."
"She's coyote food," he says bluntly. "I'm not going to dirty my hands."
So much for Hightower being nicer than the other guards. At the end of the day, he's just another stupid guy with a gun and a bit of power going to his head. Angry, I dismount from my bike and storm toward the nearest building.
"Where the fuck are you going?" he calls after me.
"I'm going to find something to cover her up," I yell back. "Try and stop me."
He doesn't, of course. Hightower can't lay a hand on me. Instead, he remains by his bicycle, fooling with the huge dead bug and posing the legs in weird positions as if he's never seen a dead creature before. Idiot. I swallow back the angry words I'm dying to spit and pick through the trash at the nearest building until I find a couple of mud-covered plastic sheets. They'll have to do. I drag them over to the body, doing my best not to look at poor Hailey's remains, and cover her as best I can.