She groaned.
Everything hurt, why did she hurt?
You don't go to bed and wake up hurting!
...well, okay, yeah you do. But not like this. You wake up with a crick in your neck or a back ache. You don't feel like someone laid you out and beat you near to death, like your arms were stretched and stretched and stretched, like you'd run mile after mile after mile. Like you'd been worked near to death.
That's not something that happens. Or, at least, not something that you know that happens.
Maybe it does?
Her head throbbed, and she tried to open her eyes, but it was so bright, so she changed her mind and closed them again. That was fine, she could try again later.
...and figure out where she was. That was a bit more important. Because she was definitely not in her room.
For one, her room did not smell like horse ass.
And her room was not this bright. And there weren't men talking in her room, unless she left her tv on which she knew she hadn't because she hadn't turned it on last night. And her bed didn't move, didn't rattle and clatter and jostle beneath her, and she definitely didn't fall asleep sitting up.
"Good day, gentlemen!"
And that voice sounded pretty damn familiar, though she couldn't quite say why.
"Whoa..." her bed(?) jerked and she nearly toppled over, listed to the side and struck something soft and squishy, but also scratchy and smelling badly of dirt and body odor.
"Don't do anything stupid, nobody gets shot."
'Shot?!'
Yeah, probably a good time to finally figure out where the hell she was. So she forced her eyes open, the world hazy as though she'd been struck in the head instead of just having a nasty headache, the light worse than a blow, browns and whites and blacks all a blur that slowly sorted itself out.
And if it weren't for the sheer amount of pain she was in, she would have taken it for a dream.
"Act like fools, and the pair of you will be dead in a minute."
A pair of women sat in front of her, craning their heads towards the voice that was so painfully familiar, dressed in filthy black and white striped prison rags. Though neither of them could be any older than twenty five they both looked so worn that, if she weren't so close, she might have took them for forty, even fifty. Dust and dirt layered their faces and, from the way her face itched she feared that hers was the same. Their hair, blond on one, brown on the other, was wild and matted, would probably have been near elbow length if it was brushed but, uncared for as it was, they were little more than bush-like balls that barely reached passed their shoulders.
"Now, what are your names?"
They sat on a wooden bench that, she realized, looking around, was mounted on a wagon. From the smell of horse ass and the whickering and stomping, she'd wager that it was a horse-drawn wagon, at that. They were caged in it, so a horse-drawn prison wagon.
"Jenkins, and Milliken."
Those names sounded awful familiar but, like the voice, she couldn't place them. And she couldn't blame herself honestly, she was kind of scrambled.
After all, she'd woken up in a horse-drawn prison wagon after falling asleep in her bed. Like you do.
"Well, Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Milliken… throw your guns to the ground… and get on down here." that voice drawled. There was a clatter, ("That's it,") then a pair of thuds ("I'm very glad to meet you.") and she assumed the pair had done as they'd been asked, she was a bit distracted and, besides, there was a large piece of wood stopping her from seeing what was happening.
"It's not worth being rash. You boys get paid a salary. You get that salary whether these people escape or not." the women, all three (she'd noticed the third while looking around, a dark haired woman that was probably thirty but looked to be in her fifties or sixties), perked up at that, "Your wives presumably want you alive?"
'Probably not,' the thought came to her abruptly, though she didn't yet know who, exactly, this pair was. But somehow she had a feeling of one of them (Jenkins, she was pretty sure) talking poorly of his wife.
"Let 'em out."
There was a moment of silence and she thought that, surely, they must be stupid, because the man's voice brooked no argument and they'd obeyed him so far, and then "Now! Please." and there is nothing scarier than a man who says a calm please while threatening you, and the pair seemed to agree, two blue-suited men in the dumbest hats walking backward to fumblingly unlock the door to their cage and why did they look so familiar?
The other women raised their hands in the air and so she did the same, feeling the fool because she couldn't see around them and see why, and oh shit she wasn't wearing her glasses, "You all run away." They dropped their hands, moved to do so, and then she could just barely make out a gloved hand pointing at her, "Aside from you."
Because of course she was special.