"Jo, they've given you two options. Trial by jury for murder one or you plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter and serve five to seven years. Maybe three with very good behavior."
Her mouth dropped open. "Five to seven years?"
Foster glanced at her over his wire-rimmed glasses with a disapproving frown from the top to the bottom of his face. "Or trial by jury for murder one. With the death penalty as an option."
She scraped her hands over her tired, dirty face. "Either way I'm looking at prison."
"Better five to seven than life or deathrow."
She waved her hand at him. "I know, I know how this goes. I don't have a fucking choice, now do I?"
"Of course you do, but as your attorney I'd recommend the voluntary manslaughter charge."
She pulled her knees to her chest and stared out the window. "I'll never have a solid job again. Not one that I love…"
If she looked at Foster she would see the, well maybe you shouldn't have murdered that man, look on his sleazy face. Instead she tapped her toes on the shiny, cracked vinyl of the chair cushion, listening to the scuffing of the jail sneakers.
Murder. If someone had told her she would be prosecuted for murder at the ripe old age of twenty-seven she would have laughed in their faces. She wasn't a murderer. She couldn't even bear to stomp on spiders or crickets.
Outside the window the birds chittered and chirped, enjoying their freedom. She would give anything to fly away. To be anywhere but there. To be holding Daniel's hand again. His warm, calloused hand. But Daniel lived in another state now with another woman and more grief than one man should have to carry.
Everything was her fault.
The worst part? She didn't have one iota of regret for what she'd done. She just regretted that she got caught. Regretted throwing her marriage away. Regretted the dark, deep place she'd lived in for the past three years.
Jo cleared her throat and looked back at Foster, the balding asshole. "Fine. What do I have to do?"
Everything had been sealed and completed in less than a month. Packaged up and sent up the river on a crowded, sweaty bus with a bunch of unruly, screaming women. Jo paid them no heed, preferring to watch the trees zoom by as they came closer and closer to their destination. Fear and bile filled her throat, but Jo kept her face as impassive as possible. Any sign of weakness and these women would eat her alive.
Outside the day was sunny and full of life. The kind of day Jo and Daniel loved. They'd sneak off into the woods to shoot their guns in true redneck fashion. Tin cans and bulls-eyes. Jo was better at it than Daniel. She'd grown up around all that shit, while he'd sat on his pansy ass and studied engineering books.
Jo had introduced him to the wild side of life, the redneck side and he'd fucking loved it.
The bus juttered and brought her back to the present, to the women in the drab gray jumpsuits, the shouts, the clinking of chains around them. There was no going back to who she was. There never would be.
She tried to sleep, only managing to successfully doze here and there, jumping awake when the bus flew over a speed bump or pothole.
Though she truly awakened when the bus rolled to a stop and the bus driver leaned forward. "What in the holy rolling fuck is that?"
Jo glanced out the window and gasped as a graying hand slapped her window. She jerked back into the women beside her who shoved her forward. "Get the fuck off me."
"Shut your goddamn whore mouth and look the fuck over there," Jo said jerking her cuffs in the direction of the pounding hand.
"Whore mouth? Bitch who—"
"—enough! Look at those people. They're…they're sick."
The bus driver glanced back at them and shook her head. "I ain't dying for you all. Not today."
When she opened the doors, chaos ensued. The screaming escalated from a dull roar to a high pitched shrieking that pierced her ears.
The sick people boarded the bus shortly after the driver had gotten off.
Jo watched with morbid fascination as the first sick person bit into the neck of the nearest guard, sending warm gussets of sticky red blood oozing down her body. She felt rooted to the spot, unable to move as her seat partner jerked her chain over and over.
More and more sick people boarded the bus and Jo slithered down in the seat as more of her fellow detainees began to get eaten. The irony smell of blood wafted back to her, making her retch slightly.
She gave a hysterical laugh. She'd asked God so many times to get her out of this. Was this his sick twisted way of answering her? She trembled, a coward to the end. Death was not what she wanted. No, she wanted life. She'd always wanted life.
She scrambled back into the cold metal of the bus as the woman beside her was taken down. In her line of work, Jo had seen a lot of shitty things. Lots of dead, bloated corpses. Kid corpses. Emaciated corpses. Bloody and mangled corpses. But they'd never stood up and walked, never had eaten another human.
Looking at them, she realized they weren't people. No, some of them were in the early stages of rigor mortis, walking with a stiff gait. Others still had blotchy patches where the blood had pooled underneath the surface of their skin. They were most certainly dead. And hungry.
A hand grabbed her foot and she whimpered, trying to yank her leg away. But the hand grabbing her leg was warm and when she glanced down she saw one of the guards, bloody and dying, slide the keys under the seat.
Jo mouthed the words thank you and snatched them up, quickly unlocking her cuffs. For a brief moment she thought about seeing if there was anyone else to rescue, but decided against it. These were the dregs of society and the less that lived, the better.
Scrambling up onto the seat, she yanked her gray sweatshirt off and wrapped it around her elbow before smashing it through the window of the bus. She bashed and bashed until there was no more glass and wriggled out of the bus, climbing on top.
Jo rolled onto her back, panting. One minute. She would give herself one minute and then it would be time to run.
As luck would have it, most of the dead were on the bus, occupied with devouring the living. That's when Jo made her escape into the woods, grabbing a sharp stick as she went along. She swerved and bobbed around the trees, avoiding what animals and dead things she could.
It was nightfall when she finally collapsed against a tree, panting, her lungs on fire as she desperately tried to suck in breath after breath.
Shelter, her brain screamed at her. Shelter and water.
She glanced up and laughed when she saw the smoke curling up into the night sky. Perfection.
She approached the campsite with the utmost of care, eyes shifting back and forth, looking, looking for one of the dead or one of the living. The only thing she saw was a big, broad man hunched over the fire. There was no way she wanted to tussle or trade or band with him. A man like that could throw her over his shoulder and carry her off into the nearest cave to do whatever.
It didn't occur to her that he might be a good guy. Too many people had let her down for that.
Jo held her stick up and tiptoed towards the man, until she could press the stick to his neck. He jerked by a half inch and looked up at her with an incredulous look on his handsome, chiseled face.
She smiled and leaned down. "Give me your shit or I will kill you."