by Kirk Allmond
He was decidedly heavy, but she managed to drag him half a mile into the woods in just a few minutes before he latched on to a small tree with his legs. Renee was angry now. She bent down and made herself visible in front of the man. She was holding a very large knife to his groin. "I need you to talk, but you don't need your balls to talk. Now,” she said, “let go." Renee pushed the knife to give extra emphasis to her words. He let go immediately, and she dragged him another few hundred yards over a small rise in the forest. "What's your name, soldier?" she asked as she rolled him onto his back and tied his legs a few feet up in an oak tree. She unwrapped the cord from around his mouth and pulled out the socks. Leaving several wraps of the cord around his neck, she decided that she would loop it around a low branch of a second tree. Then she sat down by his head. Renee pulled the neck-rope tight and looked him in the eye. The sounds of the forest surrounded her, and in this moment, it was only her and this man. Renee focused all of her rage and anger into him, forcing herself to try to be someone she wasn’t.
"Specialist Caleb Rowe, ma'am," he wheezed.
"Good, Caleb,” she replied. “How many women are in the dorm?"
"Specialist Caleb Rowe, ma'am," he repeated.
"Really, Caleb? That's how we're going to play this?" Renee pulled the rope hard enough to lift his head up off the ground. The specialist gasped for breath, and after a few seconds, his eyes started to bulge. She let his head down and asked again, "How many women are in the dorm?"
"Specialist Caleb Rowe, ma'am."
Renee stuffed the socks back in his mouth, yanked on the rope, and drove her knife into the outside of his thigh. A twinge of doubt crept through her mind. This wasn't her. She felt outside of herself, almost as if she was watching herself torture this man. Then she remembered her children and brothers, the torture they were about to endure, and all doubt was erased. Renee sneered now.
The socks muffled the man’s screams. Renee twisted the knife a little and then let off on the neck rope. "How many women are in the dorm?" she asked. Her voice was pure silk. She removed the knife and stuck it in the dirt beside her. When he stopped screaming, she took the socks out of his mouth.
"About sixty," he said between low moans.
"Good, this is how conversation goes. How many soldiers are there on the base?"
"I can't give you tactical information. Please don't kill me."
"I will kill you if I have to, Caleb. After that, I’ll bring another of you here. Maybe if he sees your corpse while I ask him, he’ll be more willing to tell me what I have to know," Renee said. Her children were in there somewhere. "Eventually, someone will tell me. I would rather it was you."
Renee reached in her pack and grabbed a t-shirt from the bottom, wrapped it around Caleb's thigh, and tied it tightly.
"Don't make me hurt you anymore," she said softly. The strain of this interrogation was wearing on her because she wasn’t designed for this. This was Victor’s territory. He had an ability to be ruthless when he had to; she felt like she was pretending to be Victor. There wasn’t any other way. It had to be done, and this was the only way to do it.
"We have four battalions," he spat out. Then anticipating her next question, he added, "About twenty-five hundred soldiers, plus command."
"What is the plan for the new captives you picked up yesterday?" asked Renee.
"They'll be trained. The only way to survive in this world is to fight," he said.
"What do you mean, ‘trained’?"
"They’ll be made to see why they should be here. If they can't be reasoned with, they’ll understand the consequences of not following orders," he said, locking eyes with her.
Renee was running out of questions and still hadn't figured out what she was going to do with this guy when she finished with him. She wouldn't kill him, but she couldn't just set him free. It wouldn't be hard for them to figure out that Maya and Holly were her children.
----
Victor woke up in his small cell, freezing. They'd taken all of his clothes except his underwear, and he hadn't even been given a blanket. The mattress on the small bunk was plastic, and where his skin touched the plastic, he'd sweated. The sweat was now making him even colder. He did some jumping jacks to try to get the blood flowing.
Soon, the guard was walking up the hall, pushing a cart with a stack of pants and shirts on it. He handed a pair of military-issue pants and a gray t-shirt through the bars and said, "Put these on."
Victor gladly put the clothes on and was grateful for the warmth. He continued his jumping jacks until a different man came back, only his cart was empty. "You better save your strength. You're gonna need it today," he said.
"What happens today?"
"You'll be tested, assigned to your group for ongoing training, and you'll meet your commanding officer," he said simply.
"I don't have a commanding officer. I'm not joining the army."
The man smiled, almost sympathetically. "You're already joined, brother," the soldier said, walking away.
Victor sat down on his bunk and tried to figure a way out of this. He couldn’t fight his way out as long as they were keeping Max, Maya, and Holly somewhere separate. Victor had no idea where they were. He didn’t dare risk talking to Max, since both times he’d sent thoughts to people, Lightfoot’s men had known about it. Victor knew Max would be doing everything in his power to hide his abilities from the men and that meant not broadcasting his thoughts. Sitting around and waiting for something to happen was not something Tookes enjoyed doing. Taking charge and making it happen was much more his style. He didn’t like this, and it was worse because he had no other choice.
He was having an absurd idea about making a rush for Lightfoot when the soldier came back and ordered him to stand up. “Put these on,” he said, tossing Tookes a pair of handcuffs. “Behind your back.”
Vic handcuffed himself and stepped towards the door to his cell. The guard opened the door and pointed down the hallway.
Victor was escorted down the stairs, outside, and down two blocks to a huge open field with bleachers on one end. The bleachers were full to capacity with soldiers, and there were lines of men standing in perfect formation on the far side. The guard walked Victor down in front of the bleachers and turned him to face the stands. Even with all of the men in the bleachers, the air was relatively silent. It made Victor uneasy. Shortly after Tookes was brought out, Marshall, John, Shelton, and even old Reggie Walton were escorted out to join him. They were all in handcuffs.
Lightfoot stood up on the podium, a proud smile on his face. The men cheered. The applause lasted a full minute before the general raised his hands and quieted the men. “We have three new immunes,” he said. More applause. “They will be joining your ranks soon enough, adding their strengths to ours. Soon, we will take this world back from the infected and start the re-growth!” The cheers were louder this time. Lightfoot raised both hands to quiet them once more. “But first, we have some business to attend to. Bring the prisoner.”
A naked man wearing only wrist and ankle shackles was pushed out from behind the stand. Chains ran from the cuffs to his ankles; he was only able to take small steps. His guard pushed him harder and harder, eventually shoving him to the ground. The naked man struggled to stand up, only to be pushed down again. The man that was his “escort” smirked as he pushed the man back to the ground.
“This man was overheard speaking out against leadership.” A small ripple of murmurs spread through the crowd. “The crime for questioning orders is losing your tongue.”
The murmurs swiftly changed to roaring applause. It was almost like being at a professional football game before the end of the world. Lightfoot used public torture as entertainment for his men, and they ate it up.
The general lowered his hand, and all the men stopped. “Carry out the sentence.”
The naked man’s guard forced his mouth open and pulled his tongue out. Naked guy struggled to get free, but he had no leverage without his hands. Th
e chains to his ankles would only let him raise his arms to his belly button. The guard pulled out his knife and sawed away at the man’s tongue. Every cut brought another scream from the man. It took several cuts before he tossed a small piece of flesh towards Lightfoot.
“This man has also been convicted of inciting a rebellion. The penalty for rebellion is death.”
Another guard pushed a naked woman forward. Her face was battered; a small cut over her eye had bled down her cheek. The naked guy let out a gurgling scream, recognition on his face. The woman, who couldn’t be a day over sixteen, yelled, “Daddy!” as she looked at the tongue-less man. She struggled to break free, but the guard held her steady. Tears were already streaming down her cheeks, and deep sobs wracked her body.
Lightfoot stepped down from the stage and walked out onto the grass. He took the first guard’s knife, still wet with her father’s blood. He stepped up towards the girl, eyeing her up and down. “She was one of my favorites. I used her at least twice a week,” he said. “How many of you loved how well she could suck a cock?” The crowd roared with delight. “How many of you enjoyed how much she loved it in the ass? How many of you enjoyed how tight her sweet little pussy is? Her father’s actions have forced me to this.” The tongue-less father stood there, impotent as his daughter’s molesters cheered. Without another word, the general drove the blade into her lower abdomen, just below the navel. The girl screamed, matching her father’s scream in timber. Lightfoot slowly pulled upwards on the blade, opening her from the top of the pelvis to her bottom rib. The girl’s intestines trickled out of her slowly, then gained momentum and flowed out of her. Her organs fell to the ground with a sick, wet slap. Her father collapsed, sobbing. Victor couldn’t take much more of this. The gut-wrenching sounds coming from the father and daughter would haunt him for the rest of his life.
The daughter fell to the ground, still moaning in pain. Lightfoot walked over to the father and pulled his head up by the hair, forcing the man to watch as his daughter slowly bled to death on the parade field.
The General whispered to him, in a voice loud enough to carry to Victor, “This. All of this,” Lightfoot gestured with the knife, “is your fault.”
Victor knew that last part was directed at him. He knew what the threat meant, and the fire in his soul consumed him. He lost his ability to reason and took a step towards Lightfoot, murder in his eyes. Tookes was immediately flung backwards by an unseen force. When he looked up, one of the men who had been standing beside Lightfoot outside the Red River Base was looking straight at him and smiling.
Chapter 16
Exercise
Tookes stared back at the man, grinning at him. As he got to his feet, he slowly mouthed the words, "I will kill you, today." The man holding him inside a small bubble shook his head equally slowly. Victor took this opportunity to test the shield. There was nothing he could do to stop the horror in front of him right now, so he closed his eyes. He wanted them to think it was just the emotional strain of watching a daughter murdered in front of her father. Really, he had switched his vision and was studying the shield that surrounded him. He saw a thin line running from the top of the dome to the man he grinned at. The dome was almost perfect, with just a little indentation at the top where it came together.
Tookes sent out the smallest tendril he could create and touched the force field around him. It was solid, like a sheet of glass. Not unlike the armor he surrounded himself with, except inside out. He watched until he was satisfied that he could do the same thing. Now he just needed an opportunity.
When the naked girl finally stopped twitching on the ground, Lightfoot slit her father's throat. He dropped the man's head, handed the knife back to its owner, and stood up. "Burn the corpses," he said before walking off the field.
Another soldier, an eagle insignia on his uniform signifying he was a colonel, stepped down from the risers and barked out a few orders. The bleachers cleared out in seconds, and all the men lined up in perfect formation. The colonel yelled out, "Squad leader! Where is your fifth man?"
"Unknown, Sir. Specialist Caleb Rowe last reported at oh-five-hundred," the squad leader replied.
"Harris! Get the recovery team ready. One A.W.O.L, Specialist Rowe."
Five men peeled off from the group and ran at a dead sprint towards the street. They ran in perfect formation, two by two with a single man in the rear. Victor watched them until they were gone. Renee was out there somewhere; he hoped she wasn't the cause of the missing soldier.
----
When the recovery team was formed up and heading out, the Colonel continued barking out orders. Renee had seen more than she could stand. Her brothers were all right, the kids were out there somewhere, and she had to get Caleb hidden. She suddenly felt a responsibility for him. He wasn't so bad. She stabbed him in the leg, and she couldn't let him go, but she wasn't going to kill him.
Renee shot through the forest to where she had left Caleb. When she topped the rise, he was gone. The ropes were there; they'd been cut. She looked around for a sign of which way he went. She knew he couldn't have moved that quickly with the leg wound, and she'd only been gone about ten minutes, but she couldn't find a track, a broken twig, or a blood drop anywhere. "You should have paid attention to Vic when he talked about tracking," she said to no one in particular and set off to run a big arc around her spot. He hadn't gone towards the field because she would have seen him. Why wouldn't he go straight towards the field? These thoughts raced her mind as she flew in a wide arc around her spot. She stopped every fifty feet or so to listen, and on the fourth stop she heard something. Caleb was walking directly away from the training field.
"Kill me or let me go," he said as he limped along. "If you don't kill me, they will."
"Who will?" asked Renee. "No one knows you talked to me. I'm certainly not going to tell them."
"I missed roll call. They'll have sent the recovery team after me," he said.
"So tell them I kidnapped you. Tell them you got away and were coming back."
"I can't do that. I can't go back. They'll kill me," he said again.
"What if you tell them you killed me? You will be a hero!"
"You don't get it. The recovery team wasn't sent out to bring me back," Caleb said, still limping along, "They were sent out to recover my gear."
"Just when I thought you people couldn't get any more barbaric," said Renee, putting Caleb's arm around her shoulder. He was walking straight towards a large lake.
"How are you going to get away?" asked Renee.
"I'm a good swimmer. My leg can't take running, but if I can get to the river flowing out of the lake, I can make good time, and their tracker will have a harder time finding me," he said.
"All right, Caleb. I'll help you get to the lake, but then I'm going back for my friends. Can you tell me where the ladies’ dorm is?"
"You are crazy," he said. "No one can get in or out of there. Every man's favorite duty is guarding the ladies’ dorm. The guards get special favors, the scenery isn't bad to look at, and they get eight hours in there after their shift, so there are always more than twice as many men in there as the guards."
"I'll risk it. I'm going to sound like someone I'm very close to here, but someone has to do something, and I'm the only one who will. This treatment of people can't be allowed to continue."
Caleb walked in silence for a couple of minutes, looking at Renee. "There may be some people who will do something about it. There aren't many, and I don't know who they are, but there is a rumor about a group of people working to start a rebellion in the ranks. Lightfoot has everyone so afraid of his enforcers that not many are willing to risk it. The dorm is on Battalion Street. It's the tallest of the brick barracks."
"Who are the enforcers?" Renee asked as they stopped at the edge of the lake.
"A couple of them used to be Military Police. Now they are Lightfoot's eyes and ears on the base. No one even knows how many there are, but they can all turn invisible. There's
no way to know if they're following you or spying on you. An enforcer could be standing a foot away from you right now. They know everything, and he takes their word over anyone else."
"How do I find this rumored group fighting against Lightfoot?"
"I have no idea," Caleb said. "Now, if you're not going to kill me, I'm going for a swim."
"I'm not going to kill you. Don't turn me in," said Renee.
"If I turn you in, then they'll kill both of us," Caleb replied, wading into the water. He swam well, moving strongly through the water for a dozen yards before he called back, "If you stay, they're going to kill you or put you in the dorm. Your friends will either join them or die."
"Caleb!" yelled Renee. "I'm sorry about your leg!"
Renee disappeared and bolted off to find the ladies’ dorm.
----
Victor had always hated running, and that was all they'd been doing for the last two hours. He decided that half of Lightfoot's plan had to be to keep them so exhausted they couldn't fight back. Every time he slowed, he would run into the shield over him, which not only hurt but also would knock him down. He only slowed a few times. He started working his way over towards John, an inch every four or five steps. He caught John's eye and nodded slightly. John started working over towards him. They couldn't be too obvious, and they couldn't get too close, but Tookes needed to talk to him.
It took over a mile and the group of them running around a bend in the trail before Tookes could get close enough to John to speak, but before he could, John was whispering to him.
"Tookes, mate. We gotta get the fuck outta here. I can't be fuckin' around with what's left of ya military. I gotta get to my family. Get this fucking shield off me. I'll take care of the rest."
"John, I'll get us out of here, but we have no idea where the kids are. Do you know how many soldiers are on this base? Did you notice that there is trash service? The building we were in last night had power and hot running water. There has to be thousands of soldiers on this base if they're worrying about trash collection," Victor said, pausing to give that some time to sink in. "No matter what, I'll get you to your family. Give me a couple of hours. If we haven't got something by nightfall, we'll break you out of here, and you can get to your family alone while we stay here to get the kids. We have a few hours of slack. I made a promise to you, and I intend to keep it. Be ready when I give the word."
