Page 45 of Fresh Flesh

Maisie

I losetrack of time while I’m on the listing ship. One day is pretty much just like the one before it. The first time the sun came out from behind the sheen of iron gray clouds, I rejoiced. At least it would be warmer.

Of course, then I realized what it meant to be out under the sun on the deck of a ship. The merciless sun beat down on me all day and now I thank god whenever the cloud cover is intact in the morning.

I’ve learned a thing or two about survival on this ship. It’s not easy. If someone slows their work too much, they are sent to the kitchen. If someone gets hurt, they get sent to the kitchen.

Which is why I haven’t sought treatment for the sores on my ankles. They’re getting worse. I think the one on my right ankle might even be infected. It burns non stop, so much so that I have trouble sleeping.

The chains pinch so badly whenever I move every day is torture. I stick to myself, and try to do my job and avoid the whip wielding taskmaster Gren. I’ve heard his name uttered by Grens and other humans—Dlark. He’s considered extreme even by his own people’s standards. However, the Grens mostly think it’s funny that he treats the human cargo with such abject cruelty.

The humans do their best to stay out of his way, and avoid making him upset.

My back is criss crossed with half healed whip wounds from gaining his ire. Sometimes I can’t help it. My ankles hurt so much walking that I can’t help hobbling along. My body literally won’t let me walk any faster.

Sometimes I know that I need to choose between pain on my ankles and pain in my back. At least they wash down the whip wounds with sea water, which stings like hell but also disinfects the cuts.

After what feels like years at sea but is probably only a week, land comes into sight. On the one hand I’m happy at the thought of not having the deck roll under my feet constantly. I eventually got over having sea sickness all the time. It’s only about half the time now. My voice has gone hoarse from vomiting.

The one upside of the puking is that I’ve lost enough weight that the chains aren’t quite as tight as they had been.

But land isn’t necessarily a good sign. It could mean that some of us are about to end up on the cook’s fire.

Dlark cracks his whip against a human’s male’s back, grinning when a red trench splits open.

“Line up! Your torment is at an end. Soon you’ll be inside of Gregoran bellies, and all of this will be over.”

My heart pounds in my chest as I line up with the others. I don’t dare refuse. A pair of guards stand at the end of the gangplank as it is lowered onto the docks. I think we’re in the area that used to be Seattle, Washington. I see about half the space needle still standing.

Not that it does me much good to know where I am.

The guards at the end of the gangplank strip the manacles off of each human as they disembark. At first I wonder why they bother, but then I realize that the chains are a valuable resource. The ship captain doesn’t want to lose his property.

They loosen the chains from my ankles at last. I gasp as a quarter wide chunk of skin comes away with the manacles.

“What in the hell is this?”

A rotund Gren leaning on a walking stick comes over to me and glares.

“Those wounds look infected. You want to sell me infected meat?”

The two guards look at my ankles, and then at each other, and shrug.

“You,” one of them tells me “back on the ship.”

My cruelly tight chains are the only thing that saves my life in Seattle.

When I’m back on the ship, Dlark goes to refasten manacles on my ankles, but the Gren ship captain stops him.

“Knock it off, Dlark. You had her chains on much too tight, and now we can’t offload her with the others.”

The captain’s eyes narrow to slits as he looks at me, and a leering grin spreads on his scaled face.

“Besides, I have something else in mind for her. She is young and most likely fertile since she keeps begging us for pads. We can use her to breed more stock.”

My heart catches in my throat. Breeding stock? They’re going to force me to have sex with human males, strange human males to boot, and then carry their children to term…all so they can have more humans to eat.

I toy with the idea of saying I’m infertile, but my next stop would be the kitchen for sure.

“Take her to the med bay,” the captain says to Dlark. “Tell them to test her blood and give her a thorough examination. We’ll be onloading healthier specimens soon to join her.”

Dlark grabs my arm and drags me away, muttering about how I got him in trouble. He gives me a couple of lashes before shoving me inside of the medbay.

At least, I’m safe from his whip.

For a while.

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