What does he mean appease the Good Mother? Is that their god? The leader walks up to my brother and lifts up his sleeping head. “Yes,” he moans in pleasure, his brown body rocking against the Jeep. “This one’s cries will wake Good Mother to our troubles. She will bless us.”

His cries? This is not happening. I want that man’s soiled hands off my brother. I got to get my hands free. Got to.

“I ain’t kidding.” Bennett says, a frenzied look creeping up in his eyes. He points at me. “See for yourself.”

The leader draws back his hand from where it cupped Ethan’s face. He looks as if he’ll scold Bennett again, but he turns slowly. Three lines of ash mar each cheek, and a pink scar slashes through his upper lip, a sore festering in the corner of his mouth.

My heartbeat picks up at every step he takes. The others come now too, crowding behind their leader, leering with brown, cracked teeth, their painted faces. Behind me the rope around my hands twangs loose a notch. It’ll be wide enough to pull free any minute. The leader’s rifle hangs loosely on his back like a child’s forgotten toy. If he’s got ammo in that gun, I might have a chance.

The leader leans in until I can smell the animal fat in his greasy, black braid. His calloused fingers reach for me and I cringe. He grips my chin and wrenches my head from side to side. If my mouth weren’t so dry, I’d spit on him. I grit my teeth and keep working on the twine.

“No benders,” he says to Bennett.

“She’s got breasts,” Bennett says.

The leader pokes at the sore on his mouth with his tongue as he looks me over again. He grabs my shirt and pulls me to him.

“A woman would make the Good Mother pleased,” he says, nodding. “Oh yes. Very pleased indeed.”

My heart is thrumming in my chest. I can smell excitement on him like a thick musk. He tugs up my shirt, revealing the dirty cotton binding on my breasts. His fingers trace my skin. His panting pulses against my neck. The sick longing on his face is unmistakable.

My right wrist slips out of the twine. I’m free! I wait as the leader leans toward me, his fingers reaching for the cotton binding on my chest. I force myself to look away from the Rider’s spit-flecked tongue that circles his dark red lips. The shotgun, I think. In a minute it’ll be mine.

He flicks out a small knife of whittled bone and slips it under the binding on my breasts. I feel the coolness of the blade against my stomach. I turn my eyes skyward and wait to be exposed. The bottom of the bandage frays against the blade. I close my eyes.

A gun blast crashes through the desert.

As if in slow motion, a bullet removes half of the leader’s head.