Fuck. I can’t do this anymore. No, screw that—I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m done. I’m at the end of my fucking rope, and there’s nothing that’s holding me back—
But that’s not true. I know I’m just feeling sorry for myself; that’s why giving up sounds like a good option.
The door opens, admitting a bunch of heavily-armed and -armored men. They regard me about as wearily as I must be looking back at them. I know several of them on sight. The one keeping in the back is a true sadist, but usually only after he’s made sure I can’t kick back. Most of the others are just doing what they’re told, and I have the distinct suspicion that they’re afraid that refusal would get them to end up on the other side of the cell doors. I have zero sympathy with their plight, just as they have with mine.
The guard at the front sees me at the back of my cell, in my usual half-crouch, hands splayed across the wall at my back—so I can pounce. “Are we gonna do this again?” he grumbles, more observation than question. I don’t reply—if they want to treat me like an animal, they’ll get one. Slowly, they advance into the room, which is crowded immediately and there’s not enough space for all of them to enter. They are watching my every move—and still I make it through their front rank as I explode toward them. It’s a futile exercise at best, but my options to stick it to the man are very limited, so I take every petty triumph I can get. After weeks of the same, they know my moves and it only takes them five minutes until I’m pinned on the ground, my will to fight not so much gone as beaten out of me for the moment. The gash in my side has opened once more and is shooting agony through my chest, and while I’m hungry as fuck, I’m also exhausted from the fight and days of starvation that preceded it. A few more kicks, and my wrists are bound together, for once in front of my body. I try to make the best of that, but a few punches in the kidneys have me hunched over, spitting blood, gritting my teeth to keep from making a sound—and complying as they push me out of the cell.
It’s a short trek only, all too familiar. With every step I am forced to take, my trepidation rises. I allow my mind to take a break—thinking positive thoughts has never been my thing and I doubt even the most woo-woo new-age guru could hold on to that down here for long, but I’m very fond of losing myself in memories or stupid what-if scenarios. Not of me splitting that asshole’s skull—although I do spend some quality time each day picturing that in minute detail. No, something that actually distracts me; makes me feel warm and cozy; something that gives me a reason to tell myself that I need to hold on one more day, and one more after that. The only thing that can accomplish that is thinking of Bree.
My favorite thing to lose myself in isn’t an actual memory, but an impossible scenario: what if the world had never gone to shit? What if we’d both survived me bringing down the Green Fields Biotech building on us, and then fled together? Or I ended up in prison and Romanoff had taught her all she needed to know to help him spring me, and then we absconded to some tropical paradise with no extradition treaty to the US? All wide, sandy beaches and lush, tropical forests; we’d drink coconut water and eat grilled fish that we’d spear in the shallow waters. Sunshine every day, and not a care for anything in the world. I can never tell her the next part—although I doubt I’ll ever share this silly fantasy with her. In my dreams, she never changed from how I first got to know her. She never grew lean and hard, never got that knee-jerk reaction of suspecting someone would do her harm on first contact; never lost most of her toes and a third of her fingers. Her ass is juicy and round as she sashays across the beach to where I’m lounging, her tits swaying gently in their bikini-top prison. Don’t ask me why my wife isn’t naked in my wank fantasy; maybe because I love changing that. Realistically, it’s that fake sense of innocence that’s powering that—Adam and Eve in paradise, and no damn snake or apple in sight. But lots and lots of sinning going on, although since we’re married, that’s debatable. Not our fault that we can’t produce offspring—we can still try, right? Yet most of the time, I don’t even think of sex with her; probably because that’s the last thing on my mind when I flee to the beach. We talk. I tease her, make her laugh; make her frown, sometimes even throw things at me. We chat about the most inane things. We discuss the great philosophical questions of the ages. I know her well enough that her answers are tantalizingly close to accurate; sometimes she even gets offended or picks a fight with me, just because she’s a stubborn minx and can’t accept that she’s wrong and I’m right. I love how she grins down at me when she is right and I’m wrong as she crawls up my body and settles down—
It’s funny, really, that my mind recreates her as she used to be, when my survival hinges solely on how she is now—crafty, deadly, ruthless, and hopefully busy working on a plan to get me out of here. I have no idea how many days and weeks have passed; I lost track of time under the influence of the drugs they give me, and when I realized how much I was off only days into this, I gave up trying. It doesn’t matter, really—any additional hour is too much, and has been too much for way too many days in a row. I know that, realistically, it will have taken her days, if not weeks to rejoin civilization, and it’s anyone’s guess where she decided to head next. I would have headed to Dispatch since it’s closer, but I know she hates Rita, and she might very well have learned something that nixed that plan from the start. It’s a long, long way to California, and longer still to gather resources and people and plot an action plan… but I really fucking need to get out of here!
And I need to see her. Touch her, make sure she’s real, and that she’s okay. Just because I’ve convinced myself that she is alive and well because Cortez hasn’t used her against me yet doesn’t mean it’s true. That’s a sobering thought, enough so to chase away the dream of tropical beaches and skimpy bikini tops.
We arrive at what has turned into my least favorite spot in the world—the interrogation room. I try hard to will myself back to the beach—it’s not like I can ignore or drown out what happens to my physical body, but I can damn well try. As I get pushed through the door, I allow myself one fleeting look around—dread doesn’t keep curiosity at bay. Sometimes I amuse myself with trying to come up with worse things that I could do to him with what is at hand than what he is doing to me.
And that’s when I see her—half-dressed in all her glory, but very much the real her. I don’t allow myself to think it’s a hallucination—I’ve had my share of those, but not even my fucked-up mind would dream her up bound in this room. There’s blood in the corner of her mouth and below her nose, and smeared across one cheek. Her nose looks a little puffy—freshly broken—and there’s a bruise forming on her jaw. Completely unrealistic that my wife of all people got into a fight. Considering what I know of this place and what I’ve heard of the festivities outside of the arena, my bet is that she picked that fight—and won. She looks to be in high spirits, which is good—and high as a fucking kite, I realize, which is not.
I avert my eyes as soon as I realize it’s her. I’m in no shape to act well right now, but I can pretend to sink into some kind of stupor. Because I’m staring at the floor, it takes me a few moments to recognize the man in a similar kneeling position as Bree—Richards. Good for him for growing out his beard; makes him look older than his twenty years. I know he’s older than that but paired with that damn good-boy attitude that he rolled out at the base in Canada, I couldn’t help but call him Baby Face a time or two. While Bree seems hyper alert, he appears drowsy. Both of them have some weird paint smeared across their faces, and her hair is partly undone, bits still in braids but the entire bunch in a ponytail in the back that the wind has teased up in bits. It makes her look feral and wild, and I find myself slightly appreciative, although the getup is very impractical for fighting.
I’m not sure what emotion is stronger in me—hope and relief that, just maybe, I’ll get out here soon; or utter dread because this feels like a minute away from my worst nightmare.
Since the rack is full, one of the guards has to
hold my bound hands up. I do my best to become as heavy as possible as I slouch down and forward, petty comforts and all that. That they haven’t restrained me better gives me hope; Cortez obviously doesn’t know who Bree is to me, or else he wouldn’t be so negligent. If he really was about to have her gang raped in front of me, he would have shackled me into the stocks first to make it impossible for me to free myself, even if I converted on the spot. That’s two rooms further down the corridor.
While I still try to assess the situation, Bree is yammering away, her sometimes exuberant nature dialed up two-hundred percent. I wonder who she’s emulating—a twisted mix of Bates and Romanoff, maybe? There’s none of the sneering and demanding going on I’d have expected of her under normal circumstances, but right now that’s a good thing.
“Big fan of yours,” she croons in my direction. I don’t look up but if I roll my eyes, I can see the grin on her face—and it’s real. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she sounds like a hyperactive fangirl. “Loved the move with the heart. That was awesome! Hey, can I get an autograph, maybe? You I’d even offer my boobs to for that.”
My initial reaction isn’t joy at the prospect of my wife offering up her lovely goods to me. No, I want to cringe and hide, the realization that she must have seen my stunt in the arena making me physically ill. Shame slams through my mind, for a few seconds even overwhelming the latent panic. I should take comfort in the fact that she’s a terrible actress—even though she’s doing a good job right now—which means she’s not lying through her teeth, but little does that do to alleviate my self-loathing. One of her guards snickers—most of them aren’t above “bewbs!” kind of humor—which reminds me that it’s not just her and me having a heart-to-heart. I lock down my muscles and force myself not to react. I can cringe the rest of my hopefully very long life. Right now, being an impassive sack of meat is more important than self-flagellation, whether deserved or not.
Bree looks very self-satisfied with her performance. As she gets no real reaction out of anyone, she heaves a theatrical sigh and turns to the asshole himself. “Look, I really appreciate the meet and greet, but this is getting weird. Just ask what you wanna know. Promise, I’ll tell you.” Again, she sounds honest, down to the light hint of exasperation and an appropriate amount of trepidation, although she doesn’t look afraid. She’s not even tense.
Cortez barely glances at her as she speaks, his gaze dropping to me instead. I get very interested in the dirt at his feet. I know something is coming now, and it’s my turn not to give her away. True enough, he orders his goons to shoot Bree and Richards up with another hit. I don’t react. Whatever she’s on, she can take a few doses more of everything they love to dish out here. She may be smaller than me, but the fact that she survived Raynor’s operating room with her sanity intact means she’s tougher than me on so many levels.
Bree mutters something under her breath as they shoot her up, which, moments later, gets drowned out by her hysterical laughter as she throws her head back, as much as she can with her wrists secured above her. She sounds more and more like a braying donkey, although a more guttural note comes through as well that I know from something else than merely tickling her. At least someone is having the time of her life. Why am I even surprised?
Cortez and the guards start a quick, hushed blame game that Bree disrupts by telling them that she’s been mainlining shit since yesterday—which explains her general state of exhilaration. That might change things. The state she’s in, she likely can’t fight right now, and images of watching her die of a heart attack or stroke right in front of me make my body want to gear up however much I try to relax. And it gets even better when Cortez demands, “Check if she has any other ink elsewhere.”
I want to rear up and hurl myself at him, and it costs what’s left of my self-restraint to do nothing but watch from the corner of my eye as they cut the rest of her clothes from her body. I swear to myself that I will rip every guy’s eyes out of their heads for laying them on her—Richards maybe excluded, but then he keeps studying the doors, searching for exits instead of partaking in the spectacle going on next to him. Cortez watches me as much as the proceedings, and I can’t shake the suspicion that he’s not as oblivious as he pretends to be. This is just another game to him—and soon he will draw the ace he has up his sleeve.
Or step around her to gaze at her exposed ass where my name is etched—in cursive—forever below an anatomically correct heart that suddenly takes on a very different meaning to me.
“Interesting,” Cortez observes, his eyes boring into mine from where he’s still standing behind her. “So you do have a name after all.”
Of course he makes the right connection. I wouldn’t be here otherwise. Of course he has asked me time and time again; also who the woman is whose name I carry on my body in the same place. I never really bought that he didn’t know. As much as it seemed like a good idea to get inked at the time, our choice of designs identifies us better than anything else still easily available in this world does—
Or so I fear, until Bree starts blathering again, her voice slightly more slurred than before. “That’s not his name,” she claims.
Angry—he doesn’t deal well with being laughed at—Cortez grabs her head and pulls it back until he can stare down into her face. “Explain.”
She winces, pain making her scrunch up her face. Reason number ten billion and eighty-four why I need to kill him. “Told you before, they’re just stupid tats!” she whines, a lot of the confidence of before gone. “What, you can’t be that fucking stupid and believe this shit, right? Man, come on! Seriously?” Her laugh is pained, making Cortez squint. “The names? Yeah, sure, I’m Bree Lewis and he’s Nate Miller, and I’m here to spring him from prison! My army of five thousand people is waiting just outside your walls! Just how fucking stupid do you need to be to think that?”
I want to call out to her that baiting and insulting him is not the way to go, unless she wants to lose a few more body parts. Of course I don’t know, but my guess is that he must have been an insecure little shit as a kid who got called names a lot. He’s not easy to trigger, but that always worked whenever I went for it—and I quickly learned not to go for it, not even when I was already bleeding on the ground.
Yet rather than ask someone to hand him a knife to start slicing her up, he steps away, ignoring her as she continues to babble some kind of explanation that makes no sense to me but sounds too thought-through not to hold a kernel of truth. That, in turn, makes me wonder—whose help did she get? The hair, the paint—all that is very close to what my audience in the arena is usually sporting. My first thought was that it is all camouflage to let her fit in, but now I’m not so sure.
Cortez doesn’t listen to her. He keeps studying me, and I’m having a hard time not giving him anything to study. At least the damn hunger is gone, but that’s not much of a relief; I can tell that he’s already plotting the next steps, and I don’t think it’s beyond him to try to feed her to me after he’s done. That idea should make me violently ill but it doesn’t. I wonder if there’s anything I can do to bargain for her release, but I know the moment I hint at knowing her, or simply giving a shit about her, she’ll be in a world of hurt. The mere fact that I didn’t let out my frustration on her already condemned one woman to death. I’ve learned that lesson—but it’s a bitter one.
“As usual, I won’t be getting anything out of you, huh? We’ll see.” His satisfied drawl underlines that my guess is right—and even if she’s nothing to me, what does he have to lose? Nothing. At the same time, she’s all that I have left. Turning to his flunkies, he goes all grandiose generosity. “Throw all three of them in his cell. I need those two more sober to be of any use. If I’m right, that should give them enough time to share stories and be in the right mindset to be more open to a certain kind of persuasion. If I’m wrong, maybe our nameless champion here gets to have some fun—or food. That little bit of muscle can’t have been that filling, right?”
The guards are quick to usher us outside after a fun round of redoing our wrist ties behind our backs—me at gunpoint, Bree slung over a shoulder, and Richards dragged along between two more, the rest like a swarm of hulking killer bees around us. I get in a kick that holds up the procession for a few moments, but it would have been suspicious if I’d just gone along. Bree is dumped first, with Richards a close second. More scuffling ensues as I try to avoid the inevitable, but they get me back into my hole of a home presently. Silence falls. I try to breathe through the pain as I do my best to come up with something witty to say. I hear something rustling beside me, followed by a triumphant, “Ha!”
Beyond Green Fields | Book 3 | Lost & Found [A Post-Apocalyptic Anthology] Page 5
