The Chosen Ones Read Free

us like pets. Or like the cattle
we were. To them we were food. No thoughts, no emotions, no more.
    I watched the boy as he scooped
up meat with this dirty fingers and shoved it into his mouth like one unsure if
it would be his last meal. Maybe it would. Maybe here we had little to eat, and
would have to fend for ourselves. The thought didn’t upset me like it should
have.
    I’d seen the boy before, peeking
at me like I was some oddity, like the two-headed chicken that had been born in
our compound three years ago. I didn’t want to be an oddity. I didn’t want
Kelly gazing at me with sympathy, or Will with disgust. Determined, I focused
on my body, and uncurled my legs. My limbs protested, pain breaking through the
numbness. I’d been too still for far too long.
    “What’s your name?” I grimaced,
attempting to think of something other than the thrumming ache pulsing through
me. But I had moved, and the moment felt like one of the miracles I’d read
about from a God I couldn’t began to understand.  
    He swallowed his bite. “Jimmy,
but I think I want to be called Jim. Sounds older, don’t you think?”
    I felt the first smile in days
begin to curl my lips. “How…” Cringing, I swallowed over the painful dryness in
my throat. My entire body felt as brittle as the grass in midsummer. “How long
have you been here?”
    “Four years, maybe.” He frowned,
setting the empty dish down. “Not sure.”
    Four years. He’d been here four
years? I scanned the dark corridors, the depressing environment. How had they
survived this long, hiding in dank, abandoned buildings? He would have been
almost a babe then. What sort of life was this for a child? Desolate, I closed
my eyes. Maybe my siblings were better off not knowing what lay ahead.
    “I came with my sister.” He hesitated,
unsure, lost. “They were transporting us to the castle to become servants and
we escaped with help from Will. But somehow we were separated.”
    Will? He would have been young four
years ago, too young to be rescuing children and fighting beautiful ones. Had
he been fifteen? Fourteen? He was probably only nineteen or twenty now. How
long had Will been a part of this world?
    I stretched my fingers, cringing
over the tightness of my tendons and muscles, fully expecting something to snap
off. Even in the low light I could see the bones, the narrowness of my wrists.
Will was right, I had lost weight. It upset me. When all I’d wanted to do minutes
before was curl up and die, for some reason at that moment I grew angry. Angry that
the beautiful ones had captured my freedom as they’d destroyed my mind. Angry
that Jim was here with no mother, no father, hiding for his life. But mostly
angry that I had given up.  
    “How many of us are here?”
    He shrugged again, looking
thoughtful. “Probably around twenty-five. They come and go.”
    I rolled my feet, the boots I’d
been given heavy and cumbersome on my weak ankles. “Come and go?”
    “Oh yes,” he said, nodding.
“There are many groups out there, always on the move.”
    Many groups. Startled, I paused.
Many chosen ones who had escaped? The realization that there were more of us
shocked, but buoyed me. My mind began to spin slowly, like a rusty wheel
desperate to work. “Jim, how much land is out there?”
    “Lots!” He pulled a small book
from his back pocket, his face glowing. His interest was suddenly mine. “Look.”
    He settled next to me on my pile
of ratty blankets and opened the book. But the picture made no sense to me. With
an unsteady hand, I pulled the lantern closer, highlighting his dirty face.
    “I found this awhile back. It’s
amazing.” He pointed to a circle on the page. “This is earth. The world where
we live.”
    Leery, I frowned. “What do you
mean?”
    “This!” He pointed to the ground,
his excitement almost tangible. For the first time in weeks I felt something
stir within, something that felt oddly like life. “What we’re standing on is