Hollow Stars by Amanda Hocking

Author:Amanda Hocking [Hocking, Amanda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-10-12T18:30:00+00:00

25

Harlow

Neither Elmyra nor her son returned the next day or the day after that. It was hard to know exactly how much time had passed, but we could see the sky through a hole in the roof and cracks in the walls.

By then, Kimber and I had drank all the water, even though it smelled suspiciously like sewage, and we had managed to get down a few bits of rancid meat. Even when starving, the maggots were nearly impossible for me to contend with.

But it had only been a few days since I’d eaten, so maybe I would feel differently in a week.

Kimber paced the short perimeter of the stall, which was how she spent most of the time we’d been here. Her long legs completed her walk in several quick strides, as she stalked around like a caged lioness.

Kerrigan was dozing in the corner, and that was also how he spent the majority of the days and nights. It was hard to tell if his exhaustion was from his injuries, starvation, and blood loss, or if it was only a symptom of the virus.

I alternated between standing and sitting, with me spending more time on my feet as my sprained ankle healed. I always stared through the cracks in the walls and gaps in the bars, looking for a way to escape, for any sign of hope.

“What if they never come back to feed us?” Kimber asked as she paced.

“They’ll come back,” I said as I chewed my nails, and I was growing less and less convinced the longer we went without seeing any of the Loths. “What would be the point of dragging us back here and throwing us in a stall to let us starve to death?”

“Maybe that was always their plan,” she countered. “Maybe they mean to eat us. They wouldn’t be the first cannibals I’ve met.”

“Maybe, but why wouldn’t they just kill us then?” I asked. “When you go deer hunting, you bring home a carcass, not a living animal you store in your stable.”

“Who says they won’t butcher us once they know we’re not infected? This whole quarantine is to ensure that they don’t eat tainted meat,” Kimber figured.

“Good news for me is that I won’t be anybody’s dinner then,” Kerrigan chimed in tiredly.

Kimber stopped walking and looked over at him. He still appeared to be sleeping, and he’d been intermittently talking to us without opening his eyes. His skin was pale, and his forehead was shiny with sweat despite the chill in the air.

“We can’t stay here,” Kimber said definitively, her eyes still locked on him. “We’re going to die one way or another if we don’t get the fuck out of this stall.”

“You say that like we haven’t been trying,” I reminded her in a hushed whisper.

All three of us had searched every inch of this stall, looking for a weakness we could exploit. Despite the shabby appearance, everything was astonishingly reinforced. Any gaps were only millimeters wide, and holes were closed with sheet metal, other than the one in the roof, but that was much too far to reach.

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