by James, Guy
Maybe that was only to get us out of town, Senna thought, suspecting the drugs were scarce and hard to come by.
She went to the bars of the cell and peered down the hall. There was no one there.
Then she examined the padlock that kept the door in place and turned back to the children.
“Do you have anything metal or plastic?” she asked. “Bobby pins, clips, clasps, bracelets, anything?”
She ran her fingers through her own hair and checked her own pockets as the children took stock of what they had on them. After finding that she had nothing, she walked around the cell, quickly scanning the floor. There was nothing useful.
The brothers had cleaned her out when they’d captured her. God how she wished she’d been quicker to the draw when they grabbed her; at the very least she could’ve sounded the alarm sooner.
Now Jack was dead—no, not even dead, but turned into a zombie, which was much worse—and Senna knew what was being done to Molly and Rad—the same thing that the normal cannibals did with their prisoners. Soon she and the children would meet equally grim fates. The notion of defeat was creeping into her, as much as she was trying to keep it out in the chill air beyond the threshold.
Their belts and shoes had been taken from them, and their pockets emptied, but Acrisius and Saul hadn’t done nearly as good a job of it as they should have. That’s not to say the New Crozet prisoners should’ve been turned upside down and shaken, but something just short of that.
Their clothes should’ve been searched more carefully, had the Order been doing it right, but Acrisius and Saul—who were the only ones Brother Mardu still trusted with tasks like this—had been in a hurry to commence a lovemaking session. Brother Acrisius, as it turned out, had needed some serious soothing after his experience in the town, and Saul was more than happy to rush the search if it meant he’d get to submit to his master sooner.
With a gleam that wasn’t quite hope in her eyes, Sasha offered up two bobby pins and a butterfly clip, all of which had been in one of her pockets. Senna looked them over, trying to hide her disappointment.
“Okay,” Senna said as she turned to Jenny, “what about you?”
Jenny produced a lone, bronze-colored bangle. It was open in the middle, and made for a child’s wrist. Senna guessed that Rad had made it—he sometimes tried his hand at metalwork with the tools he’d gathered over the years. He loved making things for the children.
“Thank you Rad,” she mouthed. “God, Rad.”
She took the bangle and pulled at its ends, opening up the metal band as wide as she could, until it was stretched almost straight. She crept back to the door of the cell, and, with the undone piece of metal in her hand, reached through the bars.
She was positioning her lock pick in front of the padlock’s keyhole when there came a noise, and someone, one of the Order’s number, was entering the truck.
7
Senna quickly withdrew the bangle and hid it in her pocket, then sprang backward to the spot where she’d woken. She waved the children to a corner of the cell and slumped into position, pretending that she was still unconscious. She made her eyes into the narrowest slits she could manage while still looking at the bars of the cell, distorted though the view was made by her squinting.
There were dragging footsteps and audible breathing, each of which grew heavier and more lethargic as the visitor came closer.
Then the footsteps stopped.
Senna could see there was someone at the door, wearing the cloak of the Order.
“Come here, child,” he said. “Come with me and you’ll be fed and watered.”
Senna’s face flushed, growing hot with anger, as she recognized the voice.
“Now,” he said, his voice changing seamlessly to a growl. “Don’t you make me ask again.” So much for the more flies with honey approach.
Senna pushed downward on the building anger, concentrating it and increasing the pressure inside her.
The lock clicked, the door opened, and the brother entered.
With each short inward breath through her nose, she was stoking the flames in her belly, consolidating the compressed heat and adding to it.
Now!
She sprang to her feet, the distilled venom in her burning away all of her body’s painful cries, and in two bounds she was on him.
Brother Acrisius’s sallow cheeks drooped with alarm. His eyes grew wide and his mouth lolled open as he put his arms up in front of his face to defend himself. Senna sprang on him, the undone bangle gripped firmly in her hand, and stabbed, easily maneuvering past his clumsy defenses and plunging the edge of the metal into his eye. There was a faint pop, like a slight sizzle of bacon grease in a pan heard from an upstairs bedroom behind a mostly-shut door.
Acrisius squealed and fell backward. There was something in his eye and it was going in farther, behind the eye, like a searing poker that yearned to fry his brain. Senna pushed him forward, pinning his body against the bars of the cell and putting more pressure on her hand, driving the clasp deeper.
She lost track of her surroundings then, an uncharacteristic lapse for a spotter. All she could think of was Brother Acrisius’s pain, and how to increase it. She wanted him to suffer for a very long time. But there were the children to think of, priorities greater than her own revenge.
Brother Acrisius’s hands went to his eye, clawing at it, trying to dig the metal intrusion out as Senna pressed it deeper into the socket and knocked his hands away with her own free hand. He was soft and weak, a boil that had been inexpertly shaped into a form akin to that of a man, a boil that she was now lancing with an appropriately dull implement.
“Do you feel that, motherfucker?” she hissed through clenched teeth. “How does that feel? You fucking like that? Deeper? Did you say you wanted it deeper? Okay.”
She pressed harder and Acrisius’s squeal became a scream so horrible she felt it in her bones.
The goop that was left of his eye was making its way down his cheek, toward his spittle-launching mouth. Tears were flowing generously from the remaining good eye.
He reached for something at his side and Senna saw it and her free hand flew to his, and then they were both holding the handle of his knife.
“No you fucking don’t,” she said. “You’re mine now.”
She put a knee in his crotch once, twice, three times, and his body sagged, the weight of it on the bangle inviting the metal farther into his skull to flirt with the beginnings of his sick grey matter.
He was growing hoarse in his screaming, and he kept writhing feebly, trying to get at his knife.
“Still not deep enough for you?” Senna said. “You don’t quite feel it? You’re a hard nut to crack, Brother Fuck. Let’s see what we can do about that.”
Senna pulled Acrisius’s knife free, swung it backward, and stabbed upward into his groin.
Agony filled Acrisius’s world and he cried out as the blade went into the space between his penis and testicles, finding a nice morsel for skewering between the frank and the beans. His hands darted to his genitals, but Senna was already pulling the knife twistingly out.
Then the blade was out, and she was backing away from him, but not too far, not just yet. For now she was moving back just enough so he could appreciate the situation, so he could take it all in.
He grabbed at what was left of his manhood, his hands seeking to stem the flow of blood there. The pain was worse than anything he could ever have imagined, and now he’d never have to try, because he was feeling it, and it was out of this world.
Howling, he moved toward her, his mouth biting at the air as blood flowed in small streams from his mangled reproductive organs, through the fingers of his hands, and down his legs to the floor. His now pierced bladder let go, and a small volume of foul-smelling urine joined the blood and moved past it, the yellow liquid moving with greater speed from his body like a liquid projectile.
He crumpled and fell into the puddle, one hand moving to cover his eye sock
et, and the other remaining in place at his crotch. The howls became whimpers, but to Senna they were pitiless emissions, just like the piss. The ooze that had been his eye was now running over his upper lip and into his mouth. His Order’s cloak was growing heavy with blood.
Senna leaned over his writhing body, which was struggling to get away from her but making no progress, like a bug on its back that couldn’t figure out how to flip over.
“Look at me,” she said, and then louder, “look at me. Use your good eye.”
He obeyed.
She kicked once, planting the blow squarely between his legs. He screamed, and his remaining eye rolled upward, leaving behind a bloodshot white that was an unhealthy yellow, more the color of a scrambled egg than the white of a human eye.
“No,” Senna said, and kicked him again.
He began to sob now, and his eye closed tightly.
“No,” Senna repeated. “I told you to look at me. So do it.”
He did, forcing his eyelids open.
“Good,” Senna said. “This is for what you did to my people, to the children, and to me.”
She took the exposed end of the bangle in her fingers, and, just as he reached to stop her, she put the blade of the knife against his nose, and positioned its point above his still-working eye.
“If you move, and if you roll your eye at me again, this knife is going back where it belongs. Understand?”
He nodded, barely. “Please,” he began, and he would’ve tried pleading with her and begging for his life, but as soon as she heard the word leave his mouth she turned the knife in her hand and carved a small section from his nose. As if motivated by his new screams, blood from the wound began to run down his lips and chin.
Apparently, this wasn’t enough for Senna, because in her spiraling rage she pushed the bangle deeper, and deeper, until the blood that was obscuring the mangled eye was bubbling up around the metal of the clasp. He was squealing like a stuck hog now, his paralyzed side moving involuntarily as the rest of his body twitched. She twisted the metal, like she was trying to work the blood up into a paste to butter on some toast. His bowels let go, and he would’ve pissed himself had Senna not already punctured his bladder.
“You disgusting child-killer. You cannibal. You foul piece of shit.” And she added, stammering, “Child-murderer.”
And that reminded her—the children. They were here with her, they were behind her, and she had to get them out of the camp, now.
She raised her hand over the whimpering semi-paralytic’s head and opened her palm, splaying her fingers. He only just had time to realize what she was about to do.
“Die a thousand deaths in hell,” she said, and clapped her hand on top of his eye, pounding the metal all the way through the gelatinous soup bubbling bloodily in his eye socket, and into his brain, skull-fucking him to death with the band.
Brother Acrisius’s body heaved, and, for a moment, he seemed like he was trying to reach up and touch the ceiling. Then his fleshy mass settled back down to the floor and what little had been left clenched in his bowels, now completely freed, began the oozing journey from his body. He died, and even though he was still warm, he looked like he’d gotten a head start on the whole rotting away thing.
Good for you, Senna thought. Being early to the party was a good character trait. Latecomers were rude and pretentious.
She wondered for a moment about trying to pull the bangle out to see the brain matter clinging to it, the grey bits that would look like overwatered oatmeal—the mind of a very sick and sadistic man.
Then she felt eyes on her, turned around, and realized that the children had been watching her. But for how long? It didn’t matter, not right now. She went to them, tucking the knife into the top of her beltless pants.
She knelt and spoke to Jenny and Sasha, whose faces were pale with terror and splotched red from crying.
“We’re going to run away now. We’ll see who else we can save and then we’re going to get away from this place and never come back.”
As she spoke, she looked from the eyes of one girl to the other, so that they knew she meant it.
“We’re going to get away. We will survive.” The children looked at her and at the still cooling body behind her, and she couldn’t read their faces. They appeared shell-shocked, and Jenny had flinched away from her words. Sasha’s face was streaked with tear runnels that marked curved paths through the dirt on her face, but she wasn’t crying now, just staring, wide-eyed and...afraid of…her?
Didn’t they believe her—maybe they didn’t really have a reason to think they could still get away—or was it something else? Were they angry with her? Were they scared of her now? A child should never have to see something like what Senna had just done and she knew that, but it was done, and Jenny and Sasha would have to suck it up and get over it. Yes, they’re kids, but it’s the fucking apocalypse.
I’ve got a bad side too, Senna thought, maybe even an evil one. And right now that dark part of me is going to get you kids home if I have to dismember every single fucking one of these brothers and sisters with my teeth, because I’m going to make sure you have a chance to get over this. I’m going to make sure you live long enough to have the fucking privilege of coping with what you just saw me do. Right now, anything goes, and only survival matters.
Hardened as she was, she prayed that this would be the worst they ever saw her do. In only a few minutes, she would see her wish, at least arguably, rejected. And it wouldn’t be much of a surprise, because wish processing had become a real cluster-F after the outbreak.
8
They left the truck that had been their prison for less than a day, though it felt like ages, and stole into the open campground, Senna clutching Jenny and Sasha’s hands in her own. The feel of their hands was good, reassuring, as was the weight of Brother Acrisius’s knife that was tucked into her waistband.
Three friends and that was all: Jenny, Sasha, and the knife, and they would all have to work together to have a shot at escape. Senna looked at the circle of trucks and moved away from the light filtering out from one of them.
She took in the greater layout of the campsite for the first time, now that she didn’t have a fucking escort holding a bag over her head. She used the Blue Ridge Mountains as a reference point with which to orient herself, and then she was moving away from the center of the encampment, planning to find a spot where the children could wait for her while she went to find Rosemary, and perhaps Rad and Molly, although she didn’t have high hopes for the latter two right now. The Order was hungry, and she had a feeling New Crozet’s captured adults were gone.
The rain was cold, soaking her and the children in moments, but it was refreshing, too, after being locked up in the holding cell and breathing that dank air, and after the encounter with Acrisius.
Senna heard someone coming, and guided the children into the shadows. Pulling them after her, she darted up into a nearby truck, then, quietly, crept deeper into the cab and entered the truck’s one and only room.
It was cool inside, but not cool enough to keep down the stench, which seemed to jam itself up Senna’s nose and press into her brain, wanting to go deeper and scramble everything in there and make a fine mummy out of her. What she’d stepped into was a butcher shop that specialized in all manner of human flesh, and a filthy one at that. Jenny and Sasha began to cry.
Senna saw Molly first, having almost tripped over the leg of the folding table she was on. It was the kind of table a masseuse might bring with him for a house call, except this masseuse would’ve been in the business of too-deep tissue massage.
The table was stained a maroon, and so were its legs. Molly wasn’t breathing. Her body was naked and...not all there. A leg was gone all the way up to the hip. The bones of one arm had been picked clean. Strips of flesh had been peeled from her side, showing her ribs. Her lips were gone, fixing a permanent and bloody grin on her face. From the looks of it, she’d died of blood loss, but not before a good d
eal of suffering.
And then she saw Rad. He too was lying on a folding table, naked, and strapped to it face down.
She went to him.
He was still moving—the parts that were left of him that is. What was tied down to the table was not a man in his prime, as Rad had been hours earlier, but a collection of meat and bone and blood-soaked tourniquets. A plastic shopping bag was tied sloppily around the stump of one leg. He looked more like a machine with parts missing than a man, the contraption chugging along fitfully, in a struggle that needed an end.
Why would they keep him alive like this? But of course she knew the answer to that: to keep the meat fresh. Rad was the main course, and for a chaser, perhaps the liver of a little girl, seared to perfection by Brother Mardu himself, the holiest of holies? But no, the virus wouldn’t allow that. The little ones were sacred, and not to be eaten. They were for the virus alone.
She ground her teeth into the rage that was thick in her mouth, like a mass of mealworms squirming to get out. Biting down hard, she swallowed their vile insides.
She was the shark now, and the air was swimming with blood. Brother Acrisius was already dead, but she hadn’t hurt him enough. They all needed to be hurt more, to be made to suffer, they needed to feel all that they’d made Rad feel, and worse, because they’d done it.
They were the ones whose limbs should be amputated inch by inch, who should be kept alive by a creeping team of tourniquets that gathered closer and closer around their diminishing stumps. And when they lost consciousness from the pain, they should be revived, and made to feel all of it, made to live as balls of agony, their bodies peeled away in strips.
9
Rad’s muttering brought Senna out of this darkness. He was feverish, and judging by what was coming out of his mouth, he was hallucinating as well.
“’Oppers,” he kept saying. “’Oppers, ’oppers.”
