Page 33 of Fresh Flesh

Joras

I’m notsure how I should answer Maisie’s request.

The trip to California is not just some brief jaunt over the hills. We’re talking about a major excursion, a thousands of miles long sojourn.

It would be difficult to keep such an excursion a secret from the commanders of our regime. It would be even more difficult to justify it if we wanted to ask for permission. What am I going to tell them, that the human slave I’ve fallen in love with wants to go to the west coast? And she won’t even tell me why? Just that she has something to do there?

Which brings me to another problem. Maisie has normally not been all that tight lipped. She’s been quite, ah, obvious about what she wants from the moment we laid eyes on her, when she rolled down that hill and fell at our feet. Literally fell at our feet.

Now, though, all of a sudden, she wants to play her cards close to her chest, to use a human phrase. I don’t know what she wants to do in California, and she won’t tell me.

She’s sitting there, waiting for my answer. Her big, beautiful eyes are hopeful, but anxious. She thinks I will tell her no. And quite frankly, I should tell her no. It’s dangerous, risky, and quite possibly a treasonable offense to carry out her wishes.

Whatever she wants to do in California, it’s probably to the detriment of the Gregoran regime. That seems rather obvious.

In the end, though, I know that I can’t say no to Maisie. Whatever she wants, I want to give her if it’s at all possible.

If she asked me to tear open my chest and rip out my own beating heart and give it to her, I would.

“I’ll take you,” I say at last. I figure we can take the long route home, so to speak, swinging wide—very wide—to hit the west coast of this continent.

“Oh my god, thank you so much,” she cries, throwing her arms around my neck and smothering me with kisses. “Do you think Mlarx and Lurg will want to come along?”

I stiffen up, because that’s something I hadn’t considered. How would Mlarx and Lurg react to Maisie wanting to traipse all the way across the continent to take care of an enigmatic task she won’t even reveal the nature of?

It’s hard to imagine Mlarx not agreeing to help Maisie in whatever she wants, but I can’t be sure. Of the three of us, he is always the most dedicated to serving the Gregorian empire.

Then there’s Lurg to consider. Lurg is our leader, and ostensibly that means he should be Mr. Protocol. He should never have agreed to allow Maisie into our home in the first place, so I’m not sure as to the veracity of his character with regards to the empire.

In the end, I decide that maybe the best thing to do is not tell them what’s happening at all.

“I’m not sure if I should do that,” I reply carefully. “If they find out, I don’t know what they might do. They might tell us no. They might tell us we can’t go to the west coast.”

“Then what are you going to tell them?”

I digest that for a bit. What am I going to tell them? I need to have a really good excuse.

Then it hits me, I can use the Overseer she escaped from as that reason.

“I’ll tell them that we’re coming back eventually, but we have to take an extra long, circuitous route.”

“Why are we supposedly going to take the long way home?” she asks.

“I will tell them that the Overseer is looking for you, and very intent on having you back for his breeding program.”

She shudders. “I don’t want any of those depressed, filthy humans at the camp touching me.”

That makes me happy to hear, for some reason.

We wait until the morning, and then I send the missive off to Mlarx and Lurg. I use a text based communication so that I don’t have to lie to them over comms. Well, I’m still lying, but I’m pretty obvious about such things when I speak. A simple message of words on the screen should be safe.

Then we travel on my zoomer. I have to go back to the camp and get it. I avoid contact with the Overseer so he doesn’t ask me how my hunt is going.

We ride on the zoomer over the rolling hills and fields of what used to be America. I make sure to stay well away from any Grengoran encampments.

We make it to what used to be California, and the first thing I notice is that there are trails of smoke going into the air. The landscape is dotted with farms and homes, hidden in the mountains.

Maisie begs me to forget what I have seen. I remain tight lipped, but I’m feeling very much like a traitor.

Not that I would betray Maisie. Never in a million years.

Soon a terrible rainstorm kicks up, with winds so strong they threaten to push the zoomer out of the sky. I put us down at one of the farms, which looks like it might be abandoned.

We shelter in the barn to wait out the storm, and I wonder what the morning will bring.

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