“Tim? What’s going on?” My throat spasms and I cough so hard I think I’m going to vomit. I fall to my side, my vision blurring as I continue to cough. When I eventually get it under control, I kneel back up and put my eye to the hole again.
A couple of seconds pass and Tim pushes his door wider open, and I struggle to understand what I’m seeing, my mind not conceiving the possibility until it’s too obvious too ignore.
Tim walks toward Phil, whose body is hanging from the ceiling by his feet. He’s hanging over a bath, his arms hanging limping by his head. He turns to look at Tim, and I see his battered face. I’m so focused on his disfigured and battered face and trying to understand what the hell is going on that I almost miss Tim picking up his hammer.
Phil’s face is swollen and purple, as if he’s been being beaten for hours. He’s unrecognizable but I’d know his Hawaiian shirt anywhere. I blink to clear my blurry vision, my stomach clenching in knots. Tim glances across at me, holding Phil’s swinging body steady and forcing him to look toward my door.
“Say hello to your friend,” he says to Phil. And then he swings his hammer into Phil’s face. It smashes into his nose, sending an explosion of blood and cartilage spraying outwards like a firework.
Phil calls out, a groan and howl of pain, and then nothing but muffled grunts of agony as Tim swings again, this time catching him in the eye socket and making the bone shatter and his eyeball explode. I call out, my fingernails digging into the wood of the door as I grip the doorframe to stop myself from falling over. Tim swings again and again, blood splattering up his clothing. I gag and call out, my fists hitting against the door as my eyes widen.
Tim turns to look at my door once more, knowing that I’m watching him. And this time I don’t miss his smile. He pulls a long knife from his belt loop and reaches across Phil before dragging it across his throat. Blood gushes out of the slice across his neck and into the bathtub below him, covering his already mutilated, bloody face.
I gag and back away from my door, scooting back as quickly as I can until my back hits the wall behind me. I drag a hand across my face, wanting to wake myself up from this nightmare. When that doesn’t do the trick I pinch myself so hard I break the skin, but I’m still here, in this living nightmare. I slap myself across the face, once, twice, three times, until my eyes sting and my hand aches. But I’m still here, and this is still happening.
“You okay in there, Mikey?” Tim calls to me, amusement alight in his voice.
I don’t answer. I can’t answer. The horror of this situation is fully hitting me. The memories of eating the meat and feeling tired. Of seasoning the meat with Tim, and no doubt poisoning us unbeknownst to me. I feel sick and tired and scared. How could I not be? I just watched someone be beaten to death with a hammer—his face smashed in before his throat was slit and the blood drained from his body.
Scared? No, I’m fucking petrified.
More so because what he just did to Phil was for amusement only. He slit his throat after he’d butchered him. When he could have easily ended things quickly for Phil, he chose not to. The world is spinning and the sound of my blood is rushing in my ears.
“Ricky?” I call loudly. “Rickkyyy!” I roar out his name, praying to anything and everything that he’ll say something—a murmur, a groan, I’d even take a grunt of pain right now—but his voice never comes.
I hear footsteps, the sound getting louder as they come toward my door, and then Tim’s laughter. He taps on the door, his mouth close to the wood when he speaks so that his words are muffled but still understandable. “You enjoy your rest?” He laughs again. “You ready for something to eat and drink?” Another laugh.
“Stop playing with your food, Tim,” Clare scolds.
Tim laughs again. “Don’t worry, we don’t kill all of our food right away. Sometimes, when we luck out like we’ve done with your group, we keep you for a while. Fatten you up for when our supplies run low again.”
He laughs again and a tremor runs through my body as the full situation becomes so blatant that I can’t dismiss it anymore. I can’t pretend that this is a dream that I’ll wake up from, or a misunderstanding that Tim or Clare will be able to explain away.
I twist my wrists back and forth, testing how tight the ties are around them, and then I scoot back toward the door and look through the handle hole again.
Phil is still hanging from the ceiling, the blood flow a slow drip from his neck now. It’s too late for him, and probably too late for Ricky too. But I’m still alive, and from what Tim just said, I will be for a while yet while they…fatten me up. How will they do that, I wonder. When food is so scarce already, why would they waste their valuable rations on me?
Tim puts his hand on Phil’s back, dragging the shirt off his body. His T-shirt comes next, and everything is thrown into the corner of the room. I watch in horror and fascination as Tim takes his blade and slices down Phil’s side, from hip to armpit, until he has one long thin strip of flesh dangling from his fingertips. Fresh blood dribbles from the wound and trails down Phil’s dead body, and I gag and look away.
Sweat is trailing down the sides of my face, dripping into my eyes and blurring my vision, and I rub it away with the side of my arm. I take a deep, shaky breath, chewing on the inside of my cheek to try and calm myself down. My head is becoming clearer and my muscles stronger with each passing minute, but something is still keeping me tethered to the drowsy world in which I awoke. My wrists are stinging from the zip ties around them, my ankles too, but they’re the least of my worries.
I look back through the hole, seeing that Tim has stopped slicing away at Phil, but the odor of burning can be smelled from somewhere. I’ve always been afraid of fire, and the thought of burning to death is my biggest fear. It stems from my own mother almost burning our home down when I was a little kid—her haste to save herself meaning that she left me behind. Luckily firemen arrived in time and got me out, but the fear has stayed with me ever since. Yet right now I’d welcome dying by fire rather than having what just happened to Phil happen to me. It isn’t just the thought of becoming someone’s meal, their sustenance, that scares me, but watching Phil’s head being beaten to a pulp while he was still alive.
Death is never a happy occasion—at least not in this life. There’s no easy or good way to go. Death by deader, death by gun, death by knife attack, or even fire. They’re all shitty options, but Phil’s death is the one I fear, and after all the groups I’ve been with, it seems the most fitting for me.
Perhaps that’s why I fear it so much.
Because it’s always been inevitable.
Clare’s wheelchair suddenly comes from around the corner and begins rolling toward me. On her lap is her Sons of Anarchy blanket and Jax Teller’s face grinning back at me. I scoot away from the door as Tim follows her and they get closer to the door. I listen as latches and bolts are slid back, and then the door slowly opens inwards. Tim stands behind Clare, a rifle held high and Candy and Cane both at his side. Clare smiles as I cower in the corner almost pissing myself.
She doesn’t say anything for a long time, instead choosing to watch me carefully, her thin smile held steady on her face. Eventually she speaks, and as she speaks, I notice the plate on her lap with the freshly cooked meat on it.
“Thought you might be hungry. It’s been a long day for you, I’m sure. I know I get hungry when I worry.” Her voice is soft—kind, almost—but there’s something maniacal in the undertones. She lifts the plate on her lap and holds it toward me. Both dogs sniff the air, their tails wagging in their eagerness for the food.
I frown but stay where I am. I’m vastly outnumbered, my hands are still tied, and my muscles are still too weak. In the background I can still see Phil’s lifeless body swinging over the bathtub, the blood dripping from him. Clare glances up at Tim and he reaches down and takes the plate from her before lowering the gun.
“Girls, ready,” he says, and both Candy and Cane come forward. Tim places the p
late on the floor and slides it across to me.
I look down once and then back up as the two dogs stalk slowly toward me, their teeth bared at me.
“Best eat that before it gets cold,” Clare says. “We don’t like to waste food around here, and Candy and Cane are hungry girls. If you don’t eat it—” she starts, but I cut her off.
“Fuck you!” I snap. “I’m not eating a damn thing.” I laugh loudly, ignoring the dogs’ growls growing louder. “You really think I’m going to let you fatten me up like a turkey for Thanksgiving? Fuck. You.” I spit at the floor in front of her. “Let the dogs eat whatever that is.”
Tim barks out a laugh and both dogs snap their teeth at me. “You misunderstand, Mikey. If you don’t eat it, they’ll eat you.”
At first I think I’ve misunderstood, but as I watch Candy and Cane stalking slowly toward me, their gazes on me and not on the plate of food, I know he’s right. This is what they’ve been trained to do. This is how they survived. Death by dog seems just as bad as the death Phil just received. I’ve had a dog bite before, I know how painful it is. How could I stand being eaten to death? Would it be quick? Probably not.
Besides, in the back of my mind there’s still hope that I can escape this situation. There’s still a chance of getting out of here alive. They don’t want me dead yet, and I can free my hands once I get my strength back. The drugs they poisoned me with are wearing off, and my senses are coming back. There’s still a chance, and while there’s still a chance I still have to try.
I reach over and pick up the plate, my hands shaking so hard that I nearly drop it again. My eyes are trying to work out what’s on it. It’s dark, and the only light spilling into the room is the light from the end of the hallway, behind Tim and Clare, so it takes me a while to work it out. Eventually I realize it’s meat. I pick up the thin slice of meat by my fingertips, noticing that my hands are still shaking with both anger and fear.
It’s warm, just cooked, and I frown down at it, feeling like Hansel being fattened up for the witch. Candy and Cane bark and snap their teeth at me and I put it to my lips and take a small bite. I look up, watching as Clare’s smile grows larger. Behind her Phil’s body swings lightly back and forth, the strip of flesh missing from his side almost like an alarm bell ringing inside my head.
My hand freezes and nausea bubbles up my throat. I drop the flesh and the plate all at the same time. The plate smashes and the dogs bark again. I gag and cough, wanting to be sick, but everything in my stomach stubbornly refuses to leave me, my own body betraying me.
I try to stand up, but my ankles are tied together and my legs are too weak so I fall back to the ground, ending up on my knees. Tim is laughing, his loud boom of a laugh echoing in my head. The dogs are snarling and barking, but I can’t get up. I’m frozen on my hands and knees, my head low to my chest as I continue to gag and heave.
I think of the meat we ate earlier, the burnt offerings of what we thought was squirrel and snake and possum, and I call out, my stomach retching at the idea of what I’d already eaten.
Humans. People. Men, women, children? Who the fuck knows.
“You’re sick!” I scream, all dignity gone out the window. “You’re fucking sick!”
Tim continues to laugh and Candy comes forward, her hot breath at the back of my neck. I cry out and flinch, pulling away from her, but then Cane is at my waist, her face reaching under me to nuzzle and nip at my stomach. I cry out again, trying to get away from them as they bark and push at me, their teeth catching on my clothing and tearing at it.
I scream and roll away, kicking out with everything I have until my foot makes contact with one of the dogs and they cry out.
“All right all right, that’s enough, Tim.” Clare’s stern voice comes from somewhere.
Candy and Cane are pulled off me, and I kneel up and fall almost instantly to the ground before shuffling my body into a tight ball in the corner.
“You don’t have a choice about this,” Clare says, her tone calm. “You can either try to enjoy these last precious days on this earth, or you can go out now, painfully.”
I look around to her, watching her as she watches me. “Fuck you,” I whisper back to her.
Tim is holding onto the two dogs by their collars, and at the sound of my voice they both bark and try to attack, but Tim keeps a firm grip on them. Clare looks up at Tim, her expression displeased.
“That man you found and killed, he was Candy and Cane’s dinner. We keep one person just for them,” Tim smiles. “Gotta’ keep the dogs fed somehow.” He smiles.
The sound of deaders banging on the doors downstairs draws her attention away from me. The dogs stop reaching for me, their ears perked up as they quit jumping and wait for their master to tell them what to do.
“We’ll be back,” Clare says. And then she turns her wheelchair around and rolls away.
Tim glares in at me one last time before turning around and dragging the dogs away with him. He must let go of the two dogs because I hear their nails clicking on the wooden floorboards as they run down the corridor, and then the door to my room is slammed shut and the locks put back in place.
I stay in the corner, listening to the deaders and the dogs fighting outside for some time. Listening to the soft murmur of Clare and Tim talking as the rest of the night air fills with silence.
I stare into the blackness, my heart still racing as my thoughts whirl in a hundred different directions at once. Is this it? Is this how I’ll go? After everything I’ve been through. The people I’d helped, the people I hadn’t. The deaths I caused, and the ones I prevented.
Is this it?
I squeeze my eyes closed as I think about Phil, and O’Donnell. She at least avoided this death. I’m glad of that for her. And Ricky, where is Ricky? Is he dead also? Or is he locked in a similar room like me, waiting for death while he’s force-fed his own friend? The possibilities are endless.
And then I think of Nina. Of the promise I made to her. Of the sacrifice she made for me, for Adam and Joan and for all of the other people that the Forgotten would kill in the future.
I won’t give up. I can’t.
I look down at my bound wrists and flex my fingers, bringing life back into them, slowly. I press one thumb against the other, pressing harder and harder until the pain is blinding and I feel the pop of my thumb dislocating.
I’m not going to sit here and wait to die. No, sir. I’m going to get out of this room. And then I’m going to kill Tim, and Clare, and those two monstrous fucking dogs.
Or I’ll die trying.
Chapter Thirty
Nina
My gun is heavy in my hand as I charge back down the corridor, and I realize the full extent of my stupidity. I am one woman. I can’t stop this man—Fallon. What chance do I really have of ending this feud once and for all? Of killing Fallon, and then preventing the rest of his men from killing me and everyone else?
None, that’s what chance I have. None at all.
Yet still I run toward my own annihilation. I think of Mikey, of the pain in his eyes when I said goodbye. Of the situation I put him in. The choice I forced him to make. He’ll hate me forever. Whether I’m dead or not, he won’t forgive me for making him choose between my life and an innocent child’s. I know this because I wouldn’t forgive him either.
My feet pound the floor, my steps echoing through the darkness. Up ahead I smell blood, Nova’s blood, and the unmistakable scent of gunfire in the air. I charge at the door, gripping hold of the handle, and I unleash my fury on the world.
Or at least I try to, but as I squeeze the trigger on my gun, twenty more shoot in my direction and I yelp and jump backwards, the door slamming closed behind me. I stagger into the darkness, swatting myself all over as I check for gunshot wounds. I back up farther into the dark hallway.
“Fuck!” I yell out in anger, annoyed that I can’t even get this one thing right. That I can’t even go down in a blaze of glory after killing Fallon and ending Mikey a
nd everyone’s misery by eliminating his black heart. I sink farther away into the darkness as I try to formulate a new plan.
And then I hear it, through the raging of my own heart and pounding of my blood: I hear yelling and gunfire, screaming and shouting coming from behind the door. My footsteps hesitate for a split second as the door opens and light flashes into my darkness. The door closes and I know that someone is here with me. I can hear them, and they can hear me.
A gun goes off, and there’s a flash of light and an explosion to my right as a bullet ricochets off the wall next to me. I scream and move, both ducking and running all in one move. I aim in the darkness, but I don’t know where or what I’m aiming at. I shoot—once, twice. I hear a grunt of pain and they return fire, but it’s nowhere near me and then I trip on them.
They groan in pain and they lose their gun. And then I am looking down at their body, and though it’s dark, up close I can see them more clearly. Their face is turned away from me as I aim my gun down at them and they turn to look at me, their hands held up in surrender. It’s a woman. Her dark hair is covering some of her face, but her dark, fearful eyes are unmistakable.
“Please,” she begs. “Please don’t. I didn’t want to do this. It wasn’t supposed to be like this!” She covers her face with her hands as if they’ll be able to stop the bullet when it leaves my gun. As if her hands of mere bone and flesh will be able to prevent my bullet from sinking into her brain and punishing her for siding with Fallon.
My heart is raging in my chest, trying to escape through the center. I’m breathless, gasping for air as I keep my aim on her and ponder my own life and choices. The things I have done, been witness to. The things I have allowed to happen for my own survival. This woman, Shantell, we’re not that dissimilar—not really. We’ve both made bad calls, chosen the wrong paths at times. We’ve both done what we needed to to live.
And this is murder. All my kills before this have been haphazard, and spur of the moment, but this isn’t. This is a choice, and she’s pleading for her life.
Odium IV: The Dead Saga Page 25
