Exchange Rate Read online

  “Hey, what are you doing?” A guard approached me from the tower on my left, zipping up his pants. He glanced around me, clutching the base of his rifle. “Go back to your bunker.” As he got closer and his features became more discernible, I recognized him as the man who had offered to go with me to get herbs in the forest before Shane had sent him on his way. Had he been transferred to night shift as punishment?

  He stopped when he realized who I was. Glancing over his shoulder at the tower, he looked back at me. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

  I pointed at the gate. “I need to go get those plants. It’s an emergency.” I didn’t want to hurt the guy, if I even could. My heart rate beat like hummingbird’s wings and I breathed hard. I’m not sure if it was from the run or from the fear I was going to get turned back.

  “What’s an emergency?” He stepped toward me, trained to help but also to stop.

  Gasping, I tried to hold back the tears of anxiety, but after a moment, I stopped struggling. Maybe they would help. Hot liquid filled them to the brim and over. “Rowan’s injured. I need mint and ginger for the coming infection. If I don’t make a compress, he’s going to get a fever and maybe die.” I wished. A compress of mint and ginger? I was going crazy. Actually, I didn’t care what he believed or understood, just let me out already!

  Eyes wide, the guard waved his arms above his head toward the other tower. A second later the gate swung open. “Hold on and I’ll come with you. I just need to grab a flashlight.” He turned back to the tower, breaking into a run.

  The second and third gates opened as well. I couldn’t wait for the guard. As desperately as I wanted that flashlight, I needed out more. I wrapped my arms around my stomach and bent into a small crouch. He opened the door at the bottom and ducked inside. The split second didn’t go to waste.

  Jolting forward, I broke into a sprint. Knees high and thrusting me forward, I pumped my arms, driving hard. Something I’d learned in track – the faster my arms moved the faster my legs.

  I ignored the stabbing pain at my sides and close to my pelvis and dug harder.

  Through gate one. Gate two.

  A shout behind me.

  The gates started to swing shut, they creaked and moaned.

  I slipped between the panels of chain link of gate three before they slammed shut. But I didn’t stop. I pushed forward, hard, across the gravel perimeter and into the forest line.

  And I didn’t stop. The wind whipped my face, chapping my cheeks with the cold.

  Go, Kelly. Go!

  When I did stop, I bent at the waist and curled around my stomach, vomiting into the bushes beside a tree.

  Holy crap, what had I just done? I was out. On my own. Unsure. Scared. Certain of one thing – I was pregnant and the baby was only coming out one way. I’d just escaped the inescapable.

  Things just got real.

  ~~~

  I couldn’t travel on the road I’d seen from the gate. If Rowan really wanted me back, he had cars he could follow me in. The thought that he might follow me had me standing as straight as I could. Sharp pains on the sides of my stomach bent me over again. I tried not to cry out, but my whimper escaped even as I clamped my hand over my mouth. My eyes closed and I focused on breathing.

  How did I know the baby was okay? Fear I’d made the worst mistake for my child immobilized me. I tightened my fingers on the bark of the tree, clutching the rough wood to keep me from returning.

  The rumble of an engine tore through the early morning dawn.

  I dropped to my knees. That was fast. Was Rowan out or had he sent men to search for me? I could only imagine how things accelerated back at our bunker. He’d have John and Bodey up, interrogating them. The guys would be so worried. Bodey was going to be so mad at me.

  But that’s okay. Because I was mad at him.

  The engine passed, the fading rumble laughing at me. I wasn’t mad at Bodey. How could I be when I missed him so much? On my knees, I dug my fingers into the dirt, pressing my forehead to the ground.

  I had to get moving. They would search for me, but I needed to go. I’d stay off the road but stay close. I didn’t have any idea where I was going otherwise.

  Sticking to the shadows, I stepped forward. Every step I took pulled me further from Bodey and John. Every step took me closer toward finding help.

  The stabbing pain faded and my breathing stabilized. I wouldn’t run unless I needed to. I didn’t have the resources for anything else. I pulled the utility knife out and gripped the metal handle for a sense of security. I had to make it as far as I could during the daylight hours. I was on my own and who knew what was out there.

  Hopefully, I hadn’t just exchanged my baby’s life for the rest of ours and yet...

  Was that such a terrible rate?

  ***The end of Exchange Rate, stay tuned for the conclusion of the series in Worth of Souls and find out just what Kelly’s worth has to do with her salvation and if she can save John and Bodey in a world redefined by war.

  Keep reading for the first chapter of Worth of Souls.

  To enter contests and get excerpts, shorts, and so much more that is available only to her Survival Subscribers, please join Bonnie’s survival mailing list so you’ll be aware of her latest releases and get all kinds of fun survival tips! Come be a SURVIVOR!

  For a list with covers and descriptions as well as links to all of Bonnie’s other works, please click here.

  About the Author

  Bonnie R. Paulson is all about survival. Do you have what it takes to turn the page?

  Find Bonnie at

  Twitter: @bonnierpaulson

  Facebook: http://facebook.com/bonpaulson

  www.bonnierpaulson.net

  [email protected]

  You Tube

  Worth of Souls,

  Chapter 1

  How could I be sure Rowan wouldn’t kill my husband? Or my father-in-law?

  I leaned forward on a peeling white-ish wicker chair standing guard on an old wraparound porch – veranda I think I’d heard them called once. I folded my hands, leaning my head down and staring at the worn and faded deck.

  The house wasn’t mine. I hadn’t had my own home since the one I’d shared with Mom in Post Falls. Where was I now? Did the small section of homes have a name? Or would it be lumped in with a once-famous resort town?

  The baby kicked me in my ribs, forcing me to lean back in the chair, the tight weaving creaking with my movement. My back ached. My legs hurt. My breasts pushed against the bonds of my bra.

  I had doubled-backed to the compound. I couldn’t go very far. Rowan wouldn’t stop hunting me, and as long as I didn’t go far, he wouldn’t find me. Every other day the Jeep roared off down the road and every day, I watched the towers for Bodey to return to his shifts.

  Climbing Tamarack trees wasn’t easy, but as the only trees in the forest that actually didn’t fit in as evergreens, they were my only options. The needles were just barely coming in with spring in full swing and the woods coming to life around me.

  Every afternoon I returned to the neighborhood where the gardens had been left unattended and the greenhouses grew things year-round, or tried to. The only real vegetable or fruit I’d found worth eating was rhubarb, bright red stalked rhubarb. Tart with minimal sweetness, the vegetable’s only redeeming quality was that it was edible.

  If something happened to Bodey or John, I could always use the poisonous leaves to finish the baby and me off. Not that I would. I had an uncanny ability to survive.

  I chuckled. The sound disarming in the quiet of the afternoon. Survival was only an accident. How I hadn’t died was beyond me. Between Shane, Charlie, Rowan, the re-emergence of Shane at the community, and escaping the confines of Freedom Pass into the wilds by myself – at six months pregnant, I should’ve died sooner rather than later. As it was, I still might not make it.

  Sleeping inside had its drawbacks. I couldn’t hear anything unless I slept by the window, but if I wa
sn’t careful, then someone would be on me before I could do anything. I’d reached my third trimester and moving quickly wasn’t a possibility, unless it was to fall.

  I’d left the community to go for help. I had to save Bodey, my husband, and his dad, John. But how far could I go without clear directions? What did I expect from myself exactly? I was pregnant and had no food, no way to stay warm. No real logical sense to be honest.

  Not for the first time, I bowed my head and murmured to anyone that would listen. “I need help. I need help. Please.” What if someone saw my desperate act of prayer? I didn’t even know who exactly I prayed to, but I had nothing else. All of my options were gone.

  I could just run. Just get out of there. I had approximately three months left before I would need to get help delivering the baby. Certainly, I could find someone somewhere safe by then.

  If I ran, though, I’d be leaving Bodey and John. I couldn’t do that. I’d already abandoned them to the repercussions of me leaving the compound. They couldn’t know that I was leaving, running away, but Rowan wouldn’t care.

  He’d make them pay.

  And then I would suffer.

  The house I’d chosen had a manual pump out back, just to the side of the greenhouse. One thing Mom had always reminded her pregnant friends was to stay hydrated. I’m not sure how to tell if I was doing that or not, but I tried. Pushing myself carefully from the chair, I leaned backwards, stabilizing myself with a hand to the side of the small of my back.

  Once I’d reached the bottom of the steps, I kicked aside the noxious Canada thistle clutching at my jeans. Everywhere I went something clawed at me, people, plants, everything.

  I missed my daily showers I’d gotten in the compound. I brushed past overgrown plants encroaching on the handset stone path. Whoever had lived there had taken pride in their home with carefully matching paint on the greenhouse, main building and three outbuildings, and sheets on all the furniture inside the house.

  They’d left, probably expecting to return but not for a long time. I couldn’t tell when they’d gone exactly, but with how rundown things had gotten, it must have been more than a winter season. I snuck my hand under my belly, a habit I’d formed and couldn’t seem to stop.

  A crackling of branches breaking and needles rustling startled me. Past the greenhouse, just on the edge of the clearing for the home site, more noises like a large animal broke through the undergrowth at a breakneck speed.

  I waddled to the side, tucking myself into the dark, spider-web decorated corner between the shop and house. Unruly raspberry branches covered me, waving with my sudden appearance among them.

  Getting eaten by a bear or a mountain lion wasn’t on my survival check list, however, I would prefer that to the alternative of being tortured and killed by Rowan and/or Shane.

  A man’s voice, stern and commanding, cut through the peaceful ambience of the home I’d all but claimed as my own. “Check the house.”

  Worth of Souls