Never Free

Ch. 1 The Horrid Journey

Xochi’s eyes opened, her vision unfocused at first. Slowly, she made out the colossal figure next to her as an unknown man. She blinked at him as he turned to look at her.

“Who are you,” her tiny voice asked as she looked around. She was wrapped in a blanket in the back seat of a car. Another man was driving and a woman that Xochi could not recognize sat in the passenger side. This was not her bed. This was not her home. She didn’t know these people.

“Stay quiet and you’ll be fine,” the man next to her said, ignoring her question. 

“You smell like wet dirt and plants,” she said, not knowing how to filter her thoughts and words. He starred back, his expression unreadable.

“Shhh.” He pressed his index finger to his lips.

“No. Where are we going? Who are you? Who is that?” She pointed to the driver. “And who’s that?” She pointed to the lady in the front seat. “Why am I here? Where’s my mommy? I want to go home.”

“Shut her up, Jason or I’ll have to do your job for you,” the lady bit out angrily. Jason let out a long breath and pulled out some zip ties from the front pocket behind the driver’s seat. He placed Xochi’s hands in the zip ties, an exaggerated amount of plastic cord stuck out from her tiny wrists, so he cut the excess with a pocketknife from his jean pocket. He repeated the whole thing with her ankles before taking out some duct tape from under the seat. The sharp sound of him pulling a piece off startled Xochi, but she didn’t cry or even make a noise. Instead, she looked at the man, her brows furrowed and her expression annoyed.

After he placed the tape over her mouth, he re-wrapped her in the blanket so that she just looked like a wad of bedding. Jason asked the driver to pull over and when he did, Xochi was placed in the trunk. 

She did not know how many hours she spent in that trunk, but her little legs cramped and her tummy growled in hunger. There was no way for her to ask for food or water or to use the restroom. She tried when she felt she was being picked up from the trunk, still wrapped up in the oversized blanket, but she only felt the hard bottom of another trunk. 

She lost track of how many trunks she was taken out of and put into, but the sky was dark when the blanket was finally pulled back. Jason pulled the duct tape off in one painful yank. Xochi cried out and her eyes watered, but she refused to let them fall. She was hungry, thirst, dirty, and now this guy was adding hurt to the list. She was not happy.

“That hurt,” she snapped at him.

“You thirsty? Hungry,” he asked, holding up a water bottle and some saltines. Xochi’s mouth watered.

“Yes,” she answered quickly, eyes focused like lasers on the objects in his hands. He opened the water bottle and brought it to her lips, allowing her to chug as much as her little mouth could drink at one time. Once her immediate thirst was calmed, he placed a few crackers in her bound hands.

Before she could even take a bite, he threw the closed water bottle into the blanket, wrapped her up again, and carried her out of the trunk she was sitting in. At first, she thought she was being placed into another car until she heard the hammering, like someone was hammering wood. She began feeling around, pushing the blanket here and there. She could make out the rough wooden slats and it reminded her of the crate her mother once opened when she bought some artwork that had been shipped to the packhouse. Was she in a crate, she asked herself. 

She fell asleep in that box and was woken up when she felt water seep through her blanket. Icy water two or three inches high sloshed inside her rectangular case. The shock of it touching her skin made her hiss, but there was nowhere for her to go. She shivered, unable to move away from the wetness, her cover becoming more and more soaked and useless. 

Xochi almost cried from relief when she felt the box lifted and the water drained away. Moments later, she heard it: the ocean. She recognized it immediately. The waves sounded the same every summer when Xochi’s parents took her brother and her to the beach. The air smelled just as salty and smelled just as wild as on those vacations.

This is when the realization came to Xochi that these people have taken her very far from home. She didn’t think these people would return her. Her mother had warned her that there were people that would want to hurt her. Were these people the type that would hurt her?

When the lid was finally opened, Xochi was hungry, thirsty, dirty, angry, and scared. She looked like a feral animal when the cover was pulled back. Her pink nightgown stuck to her wet skin, her hair damp and sticking to her face, her little limbs useless from hours being cramped, and her body rattled from her shivers. She stared holes into the people opening the wooden crate.

Staring back at her was the same woman in the car and two small boys. The woman wore a sweet smile now, a very different expression than the one she remembered seeing in the car. 

“I’m sorry for the rough trip, but now that we’re safe, I can make sure you’re comfortable,” the woman spoke softly, her tone kind. Xochi said nothing, just pushed herself against the walls of the crate, trying to distance herself from these people. The woman backed up from the box and bent down to pick up something from a nearby tray.

“Are you hungry?” She held up a warm bowl of stew. Xochi stilled, the smell of the food finally hitting her nose. She carefully stood up, her body aching with her movements. Seeing her struggle, the woman put the bowl down and walked over to Xochi with a knife in her hands. Xochi stilled again, but this time from fear. She was unsure of what this woman would do with the knife, so she observed her. She watched as she bent over her and brought the knife to her little wrists, cutting the zip ties from her and then cutting them from her ankles, allowing her to climb out of the box.

She hadn’t even registered the relief from not being hurt before she was shoveling the warm stew into her mouth. She was so hungry and the delicious meal was better than a million moon pies. The woman walked over and poured some water into a glass from a tall pitcher.

“You should slow down,” she said as she offered Xochi some bread. “You’ll make yourself sick if you don’t.” Xochi listened, her eyes still not completely trusting the woman. “Good girl,” the lady purred.

“I really am sorry about how we brought you here,” she said after Xochi had had a few minutes of silence to eat. “We had to keep you as safe as we could. Your pack was in the middle of a war with another pack.”

“The Shaw pack. I know,” Xochi said after a bite, her mouth full. The woman raised an eyebrow.

“Your parents didn’t make it. Luckily, we were passing by, heard about the attack, and were able to get you out unharmed.” Xochi stopped chewing for a moment, then swallowed hard.

“Where’s my mom and dad?’

“The Shaw pack… killed them.” The woman looked saddened, but Xochi felt numb. Her little mind tried to understand the words, but they seemed unreal, like the stories at bedtime. The woman reached out tentatively to push a wet strand of hair from her face. Xochi didn’t move away and the woman smiled.

“My name is Amber Walton,” the lady said warmly. “Those boys up there,” she pointed to the two boys that had scuttled up the stairs some time between them opening the box and her eating. They looked over the stair's railing, faces unreadable. The boys looked to be close to her age, though maybe a little older. “Those are my sons, Brandon and Byron.” Xochi glared at them for a second before returning to the food in front of her.

She didn’t know if she should trust this woman, but she also didn’t know if there was a reason to suspect her of anything. It was much harder to decide as the woman helped clean her up after she ate, or as Amber got her into some dry, warm clothes. By the time the lady was brushing her hair and whispering kind words in Xochi’s ear, she was sure that she had misjudged the woman. She fell asleep, tired from her horrid journey, warm in Amber’s arms, and sure that the worst was over now.