“Why’s that, Phil? Is DHS no longer recruiting graduates from Subway University?”
“We don’t recruit. We instruct and they obey,” Phil thundered. “Same goes for you, and we are flat-out tired of the excuses.” He pointed toward the pantry, where a group of young women were huddled. “That’s your workforce over there. Wrangle them, get their heads right, and prepare the hardworking staff of this camp a legitimate breakfast, not some unseasoned, bland concoction fit for a hog trough. And don’t fuck it up, or I promise you, there’ll be hell to pay.” Phil and guard number three hastily took their leave, leaving the most considerate of the trio to lag behind with his conscience showing.
Sasha ogled him with a brow raised.
“I just wanted to say that I’m sorry for what happened,” the guard said. “Phil isn’t usually this…brash. Something you said must’ve set him off.”
Sasha felt her busted lip, grinning behind her fingertips. “Oh, precious, that’s sweet. But it’s fine and I’m fine. I can take a beating.”
“That doesn’t mean you should. I can have someone stop by and clean up that cut for you…seeing as how a trip to the infirmary’s been ruled out.”
Sasha kindly refused his offer.
“Okay.” He poked his thumb at the door. “I’d better get going…before McCracken cracks his whip.”
Sasha sniggered, jutting her chin toward the pantry. “Before you do, any idea what the real problem is here? I get the feeling ole Phil was holding back the full story.”
The guard sighed. “No one knows, really. Lack of flavor has always been a problem, but every day it’s a new excuse. Lately they’ve been saying substituting is necessary because we’re running low on the most popular items, which is somewhat difficult to believe. I know we’re mandated to ration our foodstuffs once they reach a certain threshold, but the consensus is that mountains are being made out of molehills.” He looked to the door. “I’d better go.”
Sasha stood by her lonesome and watched him leave, then spent a moment gauging the setting. “Another fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into.” Hands to her hips, she shuffled over to the group of younger girls clustered together at the commercial pantry. Once close enough, Sasha began recognizing voices and faces. The girls had been amongst those her motorcycle club had kidnapped, terrorized and forgotten, left to rot in locked basements in the neighborhood they’d sequestered. The same ones she had lobbied Chad and Mark Mason to locate and free if the valley survived an impending attack, the ones Sasha had gone along with them to do just that, only to find themselves captured and imprisoned by the DHS.
One of the girls turned and inhaled a scream at seeing Sasha’s face. “Oh my gosh!”
The others followed suit, all but one seeming to cower in her presence.
“Geez, ladies. By those reactions, I can’t tell if you’re happy to see me.” Sasha tilted her head. “Relax, it’s me; but not the old me, she’s dead, and the MC is toast. I’m not an elder or Dan’s old lady anymore; I’m just Sasha. A prisoner in this stink box, same as you.”
One of the girls pushed her way through the others to get a better look. “It’s really you?”
“It’s me.” Sasha gently brushed the girl’s hair with her fingers. “It’s Carly, right?”
“You remembered.”
“Barely, doll. Barely.”
Carly reached for Sasha. “We…heard you were dead.”
“An exaggeration, sort of. I think I was dead for a few days, then God gifted me this wicked twist of fate.”
Carly giggled, enshrouded by Sasha’s arms, inciting a few chuckles from the others. “How did you get here?”
“The same way all of you did. A ride on a blacked-out float in a federal agent parade. Ironically, it happened right after a couple of friends and I went looking for you guys. Sorry we didn’t make it in time. How’ve you all been holding up?”
“It hasn’t been that bad, all things considered,” a redhead to Carly’s right said. “The beds are better than sleeping on a concrete floor, and we haven’t had to worry about someone barging into our room in the middle of the night.”
Sasha smiled internally. She’d hoped for this, that the girls, if taken here, would be fostered and treated more fairly than they had by the club. It wasn’t living by their own free will, but at least it was living. “I want to hear more, but we can do our catching-up later, chicas. I’ve been informed that breakfast is expected soon, and the guards are in a bit of an uproar over shoddy cooking skills.”
Carly pulled away. “It has nothing to do with cooking skills…it’s the lack of things to cook.”
Sasha squinted. “Really…”
“Yeah. We keep telling them that, but they won’t listen to us,” another girl said. “Bunch of chauvinistic jackoffs.”
“No one wants to admit it, but we’re running out of food,” Carly explained. “The whole camp has been rationing for months, but something else has been going on—something shady. Every time we open this door, we find more stuff missing. We think staff has been coming in after hours and taking what they want for themselves. And we’re afraid to say anything about it because we know they’ll just blame us for it.”
Sasha slid past and looked inside. “Whoa. This is a sad state of affairs unless you adore steel cut oats, powdered nonfat milk and salt. Damn, that’s a lot of salt. What do these germs usually prefer to eat in the morning?”
Carly chuckled. “Are you kidding? All they want are the same things every day—bacon, eggs and fresh coffee, all the shit we don’t have.”
“We used to get all the bacon fresh,” the redhead said, “but that stopped when they slaughtered the last hog a month ago. We started using the freeze-dried, ready-to-eat stuff, and we’re almost out of that. All our eggs came from
