Savage Run Read Online Free Page B

father heard about it, he’d bring out his Palka the second I
walked in the door and use it on me, the iron stick thrashing
against my ten-year-old palms. He would deliberately hit the
insides of my hands so that no one else would see. “Can’t be
looking like that delivering to our superiors, now, can we?”
    On the day I met Gemma, I had been working
at the hospital for six days. It was in the dead of winter, and the
snow was coming down like a solid white curtain. Biking around kept
me from freezing to death, but my knuckles and toes were
numb—frozen stiff. I had just finished delivering thirty-one
deliveries—the most I’d ever had. Returning to the hospital well
after dark, the snow coming down hard, my legs felt like
overstretched elastics and all I wanted was to sink myself into bed
and get warm. But just as I was leaving to go home, an emergency
delivery came in on my Pharmaceutical Scantron for Mistress
Johansen—the chief surgeon’s mother. Of course I couldn’t go home,
but I wanted to, oh, I wanted to. Dragging my feet to the pharmacy,
my PS stopped working—I think the battery ran out. I told the
apothecary I was there to pick up the prescription for Mrs.
Johnson. Coincidentally, there was a prescription there for that
very person. Since the names were so similar, and I was exhausted
and hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast, I didn’t notice
that I had pronounced the name wrong. The apothecary said she knew
about the delivery, and she handed me the prescription. I rode all
the way to the very uppermost house on Mount Zalo, delivered the
medicine, and returned to the hospital with the old lady’s
signature. When I came back, there was a different apothecary. He
noticed the mistake almost before I had walked through the door,
and contacted Mrs. Johansen right away. Thankfully, she hadn’t
taken the drugs yet. Not that it mattered. It would only have
knocked her out for the night with no damage done. The apothecary
was nice enough about it, letting me off with only a few harsh
words. I hopped on my bike and headed home. But the closer I got to
the Laborer sector, the stronger the nervous gnawing feeling grew
in my gut. I knew that my father would find out sooner or later, if
he hadn’t already. I waited outside the entrance to our sector,
tall steel gates guarded by Unifers twenty four seven. I couldn’t
go home. I knew what was in store for me, and I thought it might be
better to stay out here and die than face what was coming. But a
Unifer noticed me hiding behind the bush and fired a couple of
shots in my direction so I’d come out. He didn’t hit me, but it
scared me half to death. Grabbing me by the arm, he escorted me
home.
    Walking through the narrow mud-packed
streets to our trailer, I passed a woman I had never seen. She
smiled at me with an encouraging and warm expression before
vanishing into a trailer close to ours. Approaching home, I saw my
father waiting at the front door, beating the Palka in his hand. He
thanked the Unifer and apologized profusely on my behalf for being
such a defiant, ignorant child. I still remember watching as the
Unifer walked away, and I even found myself wishing that I could go
with him. Instead, I forced myself to walk inside, the feeling of
utter terror coursing through my veins. Had I just had some
strength left in my legs, I would have run away, but my legs didn’t
have an ounce of strength left in them.
    The physical punishment wasn’t as bad as I
imagined, an angry fist in my face and a few dozen Palka lashes in
my palms. But there are some punishments that last so much longer
than physical pain. With each whip, my father repeated over and
over, how all these years, he wanted a boy, but he only had me. A
girl who had murdered the love between him, and the woman he loved.
Murderer! Murderer! He would say again and again as the lashes
slowly drew out the blood from my palms.
    At age ten, I wasn’t mature enough to
realize that I didn’t murder