“Trashy-boy is our friend,” agreed the woman with the glasses.

“He told you about me?”

“Hell yeah, he did. Told us all about all ya’ll. That little shit is either Mince or Neeko. Probably Neeko. He’s a scout and you think you’re Queen Shit, am I right?” The woman seemed very happy and she beamed a great smile. “Dahlia the Pack Leader. Dahlia, the fat girl with a knife who thinks she’s the baddest bitch in the apocalypse.”

Dahlia’s heart was tearing loose from its moorings and sinking in her chest. She wanted to throw up. She wanted to kill Trash. She wanted to crawl into a hole and die.

Instead she drew her knife.

It wasn’t the one she’d used to fight her way out of high school a million years ago. This was a heavy-bladed kukri knife, the signature weapon of the Ghurkas of Nepal, one of the fiercest fighting forces in history. Mr. Church had taught her how to use it, showing her how the weight of the blade could be used to generate a lot of whipping speed, and how it could be used to cleave through bone. Dahlia always liked knives, and that one seemed to want to be in her hand. It came alive when she drew it and maybe she did, too. What had the woman called her? Fat girl with a knife. Had those really been Trash’s words?

Dahlia was heartsick and terrified. Once the handle of the knife was seated into her fist, the blade curving outward with its graceful and deadly elegance, the fear seemed to recede.

“Get behind me,” she said to Neeko, and Dahlia barely even recognized her own voice.

Neeko didn’t move.

The five Rovers laughed. At her. At the fat girl with the weird knife.

And then she was among them.

— 27 —: THE WARRIOR WOMAN

— 27 —

THE WARRIOR WOMAN

The first thing Rachael was aware of was the wrongness.

She was in darkness and yet moving. She was not walking but her feet were moving. She was in pain.

A lot of pain.

Her head felt like it was broken. Cracked. Shattered. There was warmth on her cheeks and in her hair. Blood. She blinked, trying to clear her eyes, but there was so much blood there, too, that for a time she was blinded.

“She’s coming out of it,” said a voice. Her traumatized brain tried to tie the voice to a name, a face, but there was something wrong with her memory. Pieces of it seemed to have been hammered into meaningless shapes or broken off entirely. She wasn’t entirely sure she could recall her own name. However, two other names floated through the churning waters of her thoughts.

Jason.

Claudia.

Who were they?

She wished the world would stop moving so she could pull the cracked pieces of herself together. If they would stop dragging her along she could figure it all out and . . .