Just as Obe broke his paralysis and stepped forward, he noticed one other man outside the group. He was calmly seated on an upturned plastic bucket across from the dumpster. His position was at least twenty feet from the descending bags.
The solitary figure was Leb, and Obe wondered what possible reason he could have for this strange behavior. 'Get yours early', huh? Obe thought. But you don't take your own advice.
He had liked Leb more than the others, but this disquieted him. He realized he should be very careful about who he should trust, and turned back to the clamor of men to assess how to get his food.
2
A scream came from the center of the crowd and Obe peered into the swarm under the women's fishing rods. A real fight had broken out over a satchel of food. Fists were being thrown as another trio of men wrestled on the ground under the feet of all the others. A small clearing formed but quickly closed in on top of them as another bag dropped. Finally one wrestler was thrown hard against the brick wall, and Obe cringed. As the fallen man slumped into unconsciousness a hearty cheer erupted from the women above. Obe saw the victim had been Rein.
The two leftover men had strangely not fought amongst themselves for the satchel. In fact, Obe was amazed to see one of them casually toss the food bag to the other man. Soon it was safely secured behind a zippered jumpsuit, and both men went back for another bag.
Two bags later Obe's assumption was confirmed. Another fight broke out and again it was these two against just one man. The same result occurred. The outsider was tossed aside and a satchel of food had been won. Then the pair simply strolled out of the alley. Nobody challenged them in any way. They were friends, Obe saw. True friends. The first he'd seen on the island. And despite his growing anxiety, Obe smiled.
He joined the growing frenzy with a renewed hope, but found himself blocked by the extremely tall man he'd seen while seeking out Rein. This emaciated bear, as Obe thought of him, was trying to reach over the others from the back row. Obe found a small space between men and began squeezing through it but he was blocked again and shoved rudely backward.
Adapt or die, he reminded himself, and tried again.
With a mighty push using leverage against another man, Obe gained access into the meat of the mob and was suddenly wedged in place, still well outside the center. It seemed impossible in the density of men, but his feet kept tripping up and he nearly fell down.
They were all struggling and pushing now. It appeared that most of the satchels were gone and Obe could feel the spreading of group anxiety. At least one man would not eat today. Maybe two or even five. That's how the women worked. Like many of the men not directly under the women's fishing poles, Obe could only wait nervously until a few more men were gone and the group had thinned.
Whenever a man burst from the center of the mob, the hole he left closed in instantly. As he shouldered his way to freedom, arms grabbed and scratched at him from all directions. But each of these hungry veterans held on with both arms crossed over the protected treasure.
A barrel-chested man who had probably been outright fat back home came barging through the crowd. Obe grabbed his wrist and pulled hard. Without even looking at him, the man spun his back to Obe and swung around with the elbow of his other arm. It met squarely on Obe's nose.
White light exploded and blood sprayed. Intense pain shot through him and a torrent of fury came. He screamed in agony and rage as the once-fat man lumbered away unharmed. Nobody seemed to notice or care. As his vision fought to recover, he heard the trailing chorus of approving cheers from above. The women had seen and had loved it.
He was easily pushed backward into the emptiness of the alley where he fell hard onto the ground. And just that quickly he was an outsider again, a misplaced and overmatched Greenhorn. He sat there, dazed. He touched the bridge of his nose and winced. Broken! he thought. I'll kill that asshole!
Blood was pouring down his face. He tried plugging his nostrils with his fingertips but the pain was too much and he let the blood flow. He sat instead and fumed, debilitated by his frustration.
"Are we feeling angry, pig?" the women had liked to ask things like this while pulling toenails or breaking fingers. "It is unmanly to let a little pain rule your emotions. Ask yourself how a woman deals with childbirth. Imagine, if you would be so kind, squeezing a watermelon through a hole the size of a lemon. And if you can't imagine it, we can show you. It's been done before. Now, pig, are you still angry?"
He shook himself aware. He would not think about those bitches now. He had food to get, and he was running out of chances. The group under the descending bags was no longer a crowd. In fact, by the time his nose stopped bleeding there were only five men left clambering under the wooden crate.
Just then the emaciated bear came running with a bag clutched in his arms. Obe reached out a hand as he passed, hoping to trip him, have him fall and land on his face. Maybe break his nose. But the tall man wrenched hard with his foot and inadvertently kicked Obe square in the face.
More lightning. More pain. More hatred. But these only lasted a moment. The world suddenly began to spin and swirl, and like the many times it had happened in the fortress, Obe consciously knew he was about to pass out. In the split second before it happened, he realized the bear's bag of food may have very well been the last that the women were willing to give.
3
He was being taken out of his box and down the corridor of little square doors. Taken left, away from a desk lamp that provided the only source of light.
Correction. An enormous woman named Rhonda was dragging him down that corridor. Minutes before, he'd found himself naked and chained inside a box of some kind. The last thing he remembered before that was sharing drinks in Hawaii with a gorgeous girl he'd only met a couple days before. How he'd gotten to Hawaii was an amazing story he had been planning on telling and retelling to all his friends. But how he'd gotten to this place was a complete mystery.
Rhonda had opened the door to his little box after he'd begun screaming for help. Then she'd introduced herself and made him a simple deal: If he kissed her feet before she counted to three, she would be kind when cutting off his testicles. He'd been too shocked and still too pissed to react, so he'd ended up doing nothing while she counted.
Now, however, he was wishing he had. Rhonda's fake smile had been exchanged instantly for fury when she'd gotten to three. Then she had reached into the box, grabbed him by the short chain between his wrists, and hauled him out with one arm. Her strength was amazing. He struggled but was surprisingly weak and went with her helplessly.
I've been drugged! he realized with fear.
At the end of the corridor she swung him around the corner and into the adjacent hallway like a dead weight. The chain between his ankles clanked loudly on the cement floor. The bracelets dug into his wrists, his very first injury. She took him through one of just three full-sized doors in that hallway.
Rhonda flipped a switch and a blinding light came on. "You should have kissed my feet, pig." She grabbed him by the ankle chain with the other hand and in one deft motion lifted and dropped him onto a cold metal table. He fought some more despite his weakness– tried to grab her wrists– but she overpowered him with ease. In seconds she had him strapped to the table. One wide leather belt was secured across his chest. A second was put across his stomach while his wrists were fit into table shackles. A third belt was put over one knee but underneath the other.
She grabbed the free leg and hoisted his foot high in the air. Hanging from the ceiling was another strap with a loop at the end. Rhonda slipped his foot in the loop, tightened it around his ankle, then sharply pulled the strap short. His hamstring was wrenched and stretched violently, and he screamed.
"Oh, that's nothing," Rhonda said. "Wait until we break you." She crossed the room to a cabinet, pulled out a leather doctor's bag, and placed it on a small cart. He struggled with the straps. He tried to kick his elevated leg free, even to just reposition and drop the strai
n on it. Rhonda ignored him.
She took a few items out of the bag and positioned them one at a time on the empty space next to his strapped leg. "Do you know why you are here, pig?"
"No!" He was truly frightened now. Then she held up a scalpel and gave him the first real fright of his life. She spoke, of course, with that smooth, porcelain voice they would all eventually use on him.
"It's because you've been bad. You should be killed. I should cut your jugular and bleed you to death right now. You don't deserve to live. But this," she spread her arms wide, "is Monroe's Island. And what we do here… is educate. And that means you have a chance, pig. If you pay attention and learn quickly, you just might make it home alive… and a far better person." She moved closer to his face, waving the scalpel slowly back and forth like a magic wand. "But you didn't kiss my feet, so it's time for your first lesson. I hate it when men behave badly."
She paused, looked him in the eye, and suddenly screamed at him. "BAAAAD!" He jumped, but she only straightened and went on, perfectly calm once again. "The next time I tell you to do something, I want you to remember that this could have been quick. I can perform this entire operation, incision to suture, in just three minutes. But you didn't listen, so it has become your first lesson."
She reached under his testicles and lifted them. "They call these the family jewels. A quaint little term, isn't it? Well, you've proven that you don't deserve a family. It's a wonder what kind of an influence you'd have on a younger male of our species. Probably just spawn another pig, and then where would we be as a society? One step lower, that's where.
"We cut off the testicles to ensure the betterment of the human race," she finished. And swiftly, she sliced the base of his left testicle. Blood poured out, soaking the back of his thighs and buttocks.
He screamed again, more in fear than in pain. His muscles flexed taut as he pulled against the restraints.
"Don't be bad," she warned, and he stopped. "You must learn to control your anger. It is unmanly to let a little pain rule your emotions." She sliced again at the same spot. Vaguely, he felt something loosen and drop. He was reminded of an overfilled trash bag whose drawstrings had snapped.
He screamed again, struggled again, and she took the loosened testicle between two fingers and squeezed. He screamed more, truly loud this time, flailing against the straps, and she squeezed harder still. A clammy slickness washed over the left half of his body. He managed to only gurgle but didn't move. Rhonda smiled, hummed pleasantly, then finally released her grip.
"So far I'm not impressed," she said. "I heard you yelling for help. I always hear every pathetic word from every pathetic man. I don't sleep. I'm like your shadow, always there. Did you really think someone would come and save you?" She looked at him, apparently expecting an answer. "Seriously, did you?" He didn't say anything. Instead he locked eyes with his captor and wished a thousand horrible deaths on her.
"Fine," she sighed. "I hope you don't turn out to be a weakling like the last few I've had. Though I do love my work, I must say that it's refreshing to find a student now and then who progresses at the proper pace. Not too quickly, not too slowly. Like my own little Goldilocks. It's wonderful research for my book, you see." She cut again, deeper and around the bottom.
"Unghhh."
"Better," she said. "It's the fighting you need to repress first." She flicked the bloody scalpel as she motioned with her hands. Drops of blood flew off it and landed somewhere on the floor. "You know, you may be here in our fortress anywhere from a few weeks to nearly a year. The record is seventeen months. Of course that was a long time ago. We know better ways to help you learn than we did back then. But if they fail completely… we simply give up. It is true that some men cannot be educated."
She cut again, incredibly deep. He screamed again, twisted against the straps. He couldn't help it, and even as he awaited another agonizing squeeze she touched his chest with a hot, bloody fingertip. His raised leg was numbing, sending a message of sharp, poisonous needles to his brain.
Then he opened his eyes, looked, and saw it wasn't her fingertip she had placed on his chest but his own testicle. Rhonda ignored the dreadfulness of this action and commented, "But I don't think you'll turn out to be one of those. You'll be broken soon, won't you? A quick start. But then you'll be as stubbornly slow as the rest of them to actually learn, I believe. Eventually, though, you will learn. I can see it in your freaky little eyes. And once you're on your way, it's only a matter of training you for your real test. That's when we release you and see how you've learned."
He breathed rhythmically, unaware how closely it resembled Lamaze, while he stared at his own bloody testicle, rising and falling quickly with his breaths. The clammy left side of his body phased out and was replaced by a whole-body wooziness. He felt her two fingers take hold of his right testicle and his rhythmic breathing sped up.
"Now then," Rhonda said. "About that last scream of yours…" and she squeezed again with what felt like all the might hidden in her strong hands, and for the first time in his life, he passed out.
4
Obe stirred and felt the thick throb from his nose immediately. His face was on the graveled asphalt of the alley. In the nearby horizon he saw Rein stirring from his own long break from consciousness. He sat slowly up and saw Leb to his other side, still sitting on his bucket, simply watching. Obe shook his head in more confusion and turned back. Under the elevated crate, there were still three men straining their arms and necks at a descending satchel of food. His absence from the turmoil had been brief.
The bag lowered a little more and all three men jumped. Two hands grabbed it, and it easily slid off the blunted hook. All three men instantly fought. Eventually one pulled the prize to his stomach and swallowed it with his arms and torso. The other two pawed at his hands and fingers until one of them noticed another bag getting closer. Then they both gave up and the victor– a bald man with stubby arms– made his escape. As he passed by, Obe leaned away from him and saw there was a nasty scratch over one of his eyebrows.
Obe made it to his feet and approached the remaining scrum, determined to get the next– the last?– satchel of food. Rein, he noticed, was also on his feet and moving. The last two men under the crate were already fighting one another for the valuable space under one more sinking satchel, wrestling on the concrete like homeless dogs.
As Obe approached, he felt himself zoning into his running high. Each step closer brought him deeper in. He saw which of the men was winning the fight and grabbed him by the back of the jumpsuit. With a great heave he threw the man clumsily away, hoping he'd hit his head and fall unconscious. He kicked the other man as hard as he could in the thigh. The man screamed. Obe didn't care. He wanted to be the only one standing when that bag arrived. He kicked the downed man again and glanced upwards. The bag was halfway down. Just a few more seconds.
Rein had backed off, allowing Obe to take command of that space. Thank God, Obe thought.
The man beneath him grabbed Obe's ankle with two strong hands and pulled hard. Obe lurched but did not go down. He yanked twice before freeing his leg, then swung it forward, kicking the man's shoulder.
A hand landed on his own shoulder, and Obe whirled around, elbow first, and connected solidly with Rein's jaw. As Rein stumbled backward, the man Obe had tossed aside came running back, head down and shoulder first. Obe caught him in the gut and the two flew backwards, falling onto the other downed man.
Abruptly all three were in a tangled mess. Obe saw an ankle and a forearm and he hit them both with his only free hand. Then Rein jumped onto them all, snarling as he flew through the air. His outstretched hand landed palm-first into Obe's cheek. A fresh blast of pain screamed from his nose. More white light threatened to knock him out, but adrenaline kept him conscious. Somebody else was beating his back with both fists. Now the four of them rolled and punched and clawed.
Obe felt a hand scratching at his chest, which meant nothing until the zipper on his jumpsuit
was suddenly yanked opened and the hand reached inside toward his sneakers. The sleeve of the intruder's jumpsuit had slid back in the process and Obe saw a flash of rows of tiny scars. An elder!? he thought wildly. Then the hand found the toe of one sneaker and he felt that same panic-driven invasion he'd had from the crazy man in black earlier that morning.
He screamed, beating at the intruding hand with all his might. The hand jerked and nearly pulled the sneaker free. Obe yelled again, grabbed the arm with both hands and bit down on the inside forearm near the elbow with his front teeth. Skin broke. Muscle ripped. Hot blood pulsed into his mouth.
A wild scream from someone in pain. Music to Obe's ears. The hand dropped the sneaker and tried to pull away. But Obe held his teeth firm like a fighting bulldog. Finally, with one monstrous shake and tug, the arm pulled itself free and a small chunk of flesh came off in Obe's mouth. For one crazy second, the nourishment of real protein taunted him. Then revulsion hit him and he spat out the chunk, suddenly drained of the will to fight any longer.
When he rolled over, Obe saw an amazing thing. A satchel of food was right there in front of him, only a few feet from the ground and still dropping. He wriggled forward as far as he could and reached out a hand, but someone scrambled over him, dug a knee into his lower back and pushed his face to the ground. He turned his head at the last second, saving his nose yet another impact, but his cheek was raked painfully across the asphalt. He grabbed the ankle of whoever had crawled over him and held tight. He was then lurched from the other two fighting men one heave at a time.
It was then Leb appeared. He casually jogged into view and snatched the unattended bag of food from the hook. The plan was so obvious now that Obe saw it in action. Not even the first few men, the small group who had been pushed around, or the two who had fought for their food together had gotten their food with such ease. Obe was suddenly furious and he released the ankle he was holding and watched that man scrambled after Leb. Leb saw the danger just in time and sprung sideways to avoid being tackled. Then he was fleeing from the alley with a single pursuer in tow.
Man Hunt Page 15
