Surviving Passion Read online

  Surviving Passion

  by

  Maia Underwood

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  SURVIVING PASSION

  Copyright ©2010 by Maia Underwood

  ISBN: 1451513283

  www.maiaunderwood.com

  All Rights Reserved

  Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio, or television reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher and author.

  First Edition, February 2010

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  Surviving Passion

  by Maia Underwood

  Book Design and Editor: Jo-Anne Craine - Type A Creative

  Cover Design: Jeff Lee Johnson

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For everyone who has woken up to the knowledge that what they’d been looking for was right in front of them all along.

  One

  Selena’s footsteps made no sound as she crept up the stairs of the derelict house. Her almond-shaped eyes narrowed as she tried to see in the low light. The interior was dim and dusty, typical of these abandoned homes, but this place in particular held a special interest for her. As she reached the upstairs hallway, she gave herself permission to smile. The hall was lined with well-stocked bookshelves.

  The young woman paused, listening carefully for any sound of movement that would reveal anything living here, whether animal or human. It was silent. She set about inspecting her find. Years of debris covered long-forgotten stories. Selena gently brushed at the bindings as the dust fell away, revealing titles written a lifetime ago. She couldn’t stifle a cough as the dust whorled around her.

  Brushing back a strand of her long, unkempt chestnut brown hair, Selena inspected them one at a time. Fiction, fiction and more fiction made up this collection. She sighed with disappointment. A solitary “How To” manual managed to get her hopes up, but it turned out to be written for some computer program. Useless. Only when every single book had been examined did she turn to leave, empty-handed.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t like a good story. It was just that in these times, there was no room to indulge in frivolous reading. She had enjoyed the stuff when she was younger and still traveling with her parents, but things were different now. What Selena needed was survival information or anything at all that might make life easier. She quietly made her way down the stairs, carefully avoiding loose boards or rubble that might trip her up. Something could be alerted to her presence, or worse, she could be injured and she could afford neither.

  Stepping outside the ramshackle home, Selena found her pack where she left it; leaning against the shed outside in the dry grass. She crouched to grab it and looking up, stole a peaceful moment to watch the sun as it set. The gauzy clouds glowed orange and pink over the dry hills, darkly speckled with oak trees in the distance. When the light show was over and the colors had faded, Selena turned to the shed and slid its metal door open. There was room enough to stretch out alongside a pair of old bikes and various gardening tools within. She pulled the door halfway closed so she could more easily hear the outside. Lying down with her pack as a pillow, she folded her arms on her chest and closed her eyes.

  Being trapped was the riskiest situation of all, Selena reckoned, so she rarely put herself in a position where she could be easily cornered. This was why she avoided sleeping inside houses. They were too confining. So far, she had done a good job of avoiding roving bands of people, or worse, other solitary folk. She kept her parents’ advice at the forefront of her thoughts at all times. Don’t be seen.

  While their warnings remained in her life, her parents did not. Selena’s mother had passed of cancer ten years ago and her father was killed four years later. He’d been shot by a group of three men who wanted everything he had. They decided that he was hiding something, and they couldn’t beat it out of him, so they killed him. They were right. He had his eighteen-year old daughter hiding in terror only forty feet away. Selena winced at the memory. She knew her powerlessness would haunt her for the rest of her life. Sometimes in the evenings she’d indulge in fantasies of killing them and preventing her father’s death. At the time she had been unprepared; she had no weapon, not even her sling. Her father had made her promise to always remain hidden if they ran afoul of anyone. This habit was Selena’s primary survival rule for the majority of her life. It had saved her from death and worse on the day of that nightmare, but without her family, she’d become something of a ghost.

  Keeping a low profile was the smartest thing any woman could do in times like these, but Selena’s case was more extreme than most. She was unmistakably beautiful. Her Spanish-Asian heritage gave her lustrous, straight, rich brown hair, alluring almond eyes, and light, coffee-colored skin. Her lips were full and round and her build was petite and slender. She often wondered if there had been a worse time in history to look like she did. It would have been much easier if she could have pretended to be a man, like some women she had known. Selena envied them. She could not hide what she was, and having grown up with a small group of survivors, the danger became apparent when she was only twelve. A few of the men in their community began showing her inappropriate attention, but her father was not a violent person. In the past, twelve was considered far too young for sexual advances and most people still did consider it wrong, but there were no laws to enforce these sentiments. Not anymore.

  When Selena was only six years old, the global economy had crumbled, forcing the closure of many industrial and corporate giants; and bringing the essential transportation and distribution of goods to a grinding halt. At first, everyone waited passively for things to get better, but the situation only declined over the following three years. When access to energy slowed to a trickle over the span of a few months, the old way of life began to disintegrate. In a matter of weeks, global anarchy took root, preventing the recovery of systems of technology, government, communication, and over time, everything else that held civilization together. The economic difficulties triggering the Crash had already brought desperation into the global population. Many survivors argued that for this reason, the descent into chaos was well underway before the magnitude of the collapse was truly apparent. The riots, raiding and mob-driven mayhem that ensued were responsible for the demise of the much of the population, but it was the over-reliance on technology and economic infrastructure that, over time, had finished off all but the most intrepid survivors.

  The lucky few that remained had to know a thing or two about survival after the shelves of all of the supermarkets were emptied, which had happened in the first couple of weeks.

  Most people banded together, forming loose clans where individuals depended on cooperation from others for survival. A few chose to go it alone rather than live at the mercy of some patchwork community, whose rules or ideals could be every kind of crazy. When it became clear to them that Selena wasn’t safe in their community any longer, her parents chose to take her and leave.

  Without law enforcement to keep order, whoever had the brawn often made the rules. This made life especially hard on women. When a man stepped out of line, he could only be punished if the other men around were up to the risky task. Most people seemed to feel that it wasn’t worth it to stick their necks out for someone else, even if they did happen to care. The more base and primitive tendencies of certain individuals were appar
ent as soon as it was clear that there was a problem. What society had once considered normal standards of behavior were long gone.

  There wasn’t always safety in numbers. In Selena’s case, one man in particular had become predatory, so rather than remain, her parents decided they would strike out on their own. The family adopted an extremely elusive lifestyle to keep her safe. They had been on the run together for six years. Since her father died, she’d spent the last four years on her own.

  Living without her parents turned out to be much more difficult than Selena had anticipated. Her father had been an anthropologist, so he knew all about the crafting of blades from various kinds of stones. His hobby was leatherworking. Selena had happily sat at his side and soaked up his skills and technique by the time she was sixteen. She was also fortunate to have a mother who had been a nurse. Selena didn’t like sewing up wounds and re-setting bones but it was crucial to know how. She had the skills, but there was something to be said for sharing the work. Loneliness was the trade-off for staying alive.

  Not all of Selena’s skills had been passed down from her parents. All three of them learned a great deal from their fellow survivors, and through trial and error. They learned to ride horses, identify herbs, and build snares to capture small animals.

  Selena never stayed in one place for long. She spent most of her life wandering around the southwest of what used to be called America.

  Despite her many blessings, Selena always felt like she was lingering on the edge of survival. After the loss of her parents she resolved to keep learning and had taken to scouring abandoned towns like this one for books that offered useful information. She devoured anything she found that had to do with plant uses, tracking, horses, weapons crafting, and other relevant subjects. These books were hard to come by, and lately it seemed she had been having less and less luck. She missed the days when her parents were with her and she could afford to indulge in the novels that frequented the shelves of homes like the one she’d just explored. Reading also kept the art of conversation alive, even if only in her mind; she hadn’t spoken to another human being since her father.

  With the pleasant memories of her favorite stories stirring in her mind, Selena drifted into her usual light sleep.

  She could not say how long she had been resting when she heard the sounds. Sitting bolt upright, she strained her ears to listen. When Selena crawled near the open shed door, hoof beats and voices became rapidly clearer. She peered out silently as her heart began to beat louder than the horses’ feet. These people came too close, too fast for her to run without the risk of being seen. To her mounting horror, they reined up just outside the house. Watching from within the darkness of the shed, she could see that one of them had dismounted about fifteen feet away from her hiding place.

  “Fuck,” she mouthed with growing panic as he made directly for the shed.

  Selena zipped to the corner next to the door and kept still as she heard water running. He was peeing on the shed. Keeping her breathing quiet as possible, she prayed for him to leave and sidestepped the little puddle that leaked under the wall. Her nose wrinkled at the smell.

  After what seemed like forever, the man’s footfalls receded as he joined his companions talking loudly amongst themselves. Their banter was raucous and hard to decipher, but she wasn’t really listening. Selena scanned the area to make sure no one was near, grabbed her pack and snuck out silently. The damned moon is too bright, she thought, trying to keep to the shadows. The barren terrain was no help. She couldn’t just run out on foot with no cover. If they saw her, there would be nowhere to go, and they had horses. She cursed herself as she realized just how isolated this house was. Selena wondered fervently why she had picked the one at the edge of town.

  Judging by the sounds of the voices and the bang of the front door, the men had gone inside. Using all her skill to keep her steps silent, Selena edged along the wall of the house and peered around the corner to where the horses were tethered. Oddly, there was no one watching them. Selena saw her best way out at once. Taking a deep breath and steeling herself, she hunched down and ran forward as noiselessly as she could manage. When she reached the animals, her hands shook terribly but still managed to untie the leggiest among them. She prayed silently that it was as fast as it looked.

  “It’s a girl,” hissed a voice urgently from a window. “It’s a girl!”

  Selena’s heart leapt to her throat as she vaulted onto the horse’s back and dug her heels into its sides. In that moment, men had already begun swarming out.

  “She’s got my horse,” one cried furiously. “Catch that bitch!”

  Selena’s heart pounded as she urged the animal into a dead run toward the town. If she was going to lose them, it would be among the buildings. She reached cover fast, but a darting glance back showed that her pursuers were in sight. As Selena wound around houses and darted across roads in an effort to shake them, she noticed that the buildings were growing denser and closer together. One of them towered at five or six stories high and looked very sturdy. She reined her mount in its direction and kicked hard. The beast obliged and Selena’s lead on the pursuers widened. The horse was every bit the runner she’d hoped for, and her light weight was a great advantage as well. She wove around the back of the building just before the men appeared around the last bend.

  Selena slowed her mount just enough to safely hop off and slapped its rear before dodging into an open door at the base of the building. This was no small house, so even if they managed to track her to its door, she could probably find a hiding spot. She stood still in the darkness, trying to listen over her heaving breaths. The thunder of hoof beats pounded past as her pursuers followed the horse. Forcing her breathing to steady, Selena slunk up the stairs slowly. There was no electric lighting since the Crash, of course, but the moonlight filtering through the windows was just bright enough to guide her steps.

  At the second last floor she stopped climbing, hoping simply that it would seem like an unlikely place to look. There were desks everywhere and many rooms, so Selena assumed that this was once an office building. She quickly chose a room that was separated from the hallway by a glass wall, because it might seem too obvious for a hiding place. She skirted a long table with chairs that she supposed was once used for meetings. On the wall furthest from the door stood a large storage closet with one door partially ajar. Next to it was a sideboard with spacious cupboards. When she slid one door open, she happily found that there were no shelves, so she could easily curl up inside. Selena crawled into one and lay down, trying to slow her rapidly beating heart and relax. As an afterthought, she pushed her cupboard doors open a bit. In this darkness, she would be all but invisible whether they were closed or not.

  It was late, but Selena knew that after such a dangerously close call, there would be no rest for her tonight. There was still a chance they might come looking for her, and tracking had become an essential and widespread skill in these times. With this in mind, Selena remained vigilant.

  A few hours of wakefulness passed before light started to creep through the blinds that hung half-closed in front of the window. Her ears picked up a sound. Within a few seconds, her heart was hammering again. Men’s voices. She heard the stairwell door slam and the talk became crystal clear. They were getting closer. She felt a stab of fear and tried to think. Just don’t move. They’ll never check in here. She repeated it calmly in her mind. But soon they were in the hallway. She could make out at least four voices.

  “Look everywhere,” she heard one of them say in the hallway. “Sneaky bitch might be anywhere. An’ she’s small. Check all the little cupboards and don’t let her jump out and slit your throat.”

  “I still say she didn’t come this way,” another voice argued. “Now we’re combing this goddamned building and she’s running off in some other direction.”

  “Shut up, Sam,” a third voice grumbled. “Those were fresh prints—and you’re an idiot.”

  Dammit, I should have pi
cked the closet. Selena thought ruefully, creeping swiftly from her hiding place. Craning her neck to peek over the counter through the glass, she spied a man’s head. For the moment he was facing the room opposite hers. She backed towards the closet’s open door in a crouch, never taking her eyes off him, until the shadows closed over her and she was hidden again.

  A hand clamped over her mouth and an arm wrapped around her waist. For the first time in Selena Cartwright’s life, she was caught.

  Now her panic was absolute, and its ferocity clutched her harder than her captor. Selena struggled wildly, still forcing herself to be quiet. She tried frantically to pry his big hand from her mouth but couldn’t so much as move a finger. It only made him grasp her more tightly to him. Even as she fought, she was dimly aware of the fact that he was not dragging her out of the closet.

  “Shhh,” he hissed deeply but calmly in her ear. Her heart pounded out of control, but she could think well enough to resolve that one man was less dangerous than four. He began steadily pulling her back through hanging sheets of plastic and past a stack of dead machines into the closet’s dark, far corner. After so many years of solitude, it was shocking to be in someone else’s power so completely.

  Keeping her breathing quiet was hell as the footsteps thumped through the doorway and toward the cupboards she had been in moments before. Her captor began to sink very slowly to the floor, bringing her down with him until they were both on their knees. His grip never loosened. It took all of her self-control not to try to wriggle away from the suffocating hold that pinned her so tightly against him.

  The cupboards were slamming shut as the man outside the closet thoroughly searched them. When the slamming stopped, they did not hear him walk away. Instead, his steps came toward the closet. Her captor let his hand fall away from her mouth, but he leaned forward against her back until her body folded forward and her face was close to her knees. Selena felt as though she might lose consciousness as she tried to hold her breath.