Captive (The Survival Race)

by K. M. Fawcett

  Knees bent in a solid stance, Addy lifted the statue onto her shoulder like a baseball bat. She took a few deep psyche-up breaths, preparing for a glass-shattering home run.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  She screamed and dropped the gnome onto the cushions. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve come for you.”

  “Why?”

  “Hell, woman, you gonna play twenty questions or do you want to escape?”

  Addy jumped to the cushions and then off the couch. “You’re going to help me escape?”

  “No. I’m helping us escape.”

  “Are you serious? You’ll freeze out there.” Max was still wearing torn pants and a T-shirt.

  “Let me worry about that. You said you were a strong woman and that you can make it to the equator.”

  “That’s right.”

  “It’s a long and dangerous journey.”

  “I know.”

  “Then know this. My life isn’t worth spit. If I get caught again, I’m dead for good. You slow me down, I leave you behind.”

  She gulped.

  “Still want to escape?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then get your rope and follow me.”

  Inside Duncan’s bedroom, Max rattled the doorknob to the closet. He took a little tool out of his pocket and picked the lock.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Getting supplies.” He disappeared inside.

  “But I already have a bottle of whiskey.”

  He peaked out from behind the door. “You have no clue what’s in here, do you?”

  Evidently, more than whiskey. She followed him into Duncan’s secret closet. The little room, lined floor to ceiling with shelves, had been packed with books, clothing, pictures, cups, plates, guns, knives, and boxes of God knew what other Earth treasures.

  A folded khaki uniform atop one of the boxes caught her attention. It couldn’t be, could it? Though it had been washed clean, the heady fragrance of wood smoke clung to the fabric. “Why would he hide this from me?”

  “Damn you, Duncan,” Max muttered, and tossed a box aside.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The guy collects seven guns but only one with ammunition.”

  “One is better than none.”

  “Hardly. There’re only three bullets in it. He rummaged through some other boxes and whistled in awe when he unsheathed a Rambo-looking knife. “I’ll be damned.”

  She returned the uniform to the shelf. “What?”

  “Kedric’s Flesheater.” He turned the fourteen-inch stainless-steel weapon in his hand. “Nine-inch blade. Short handle with finger grooves for a secure grip. A recurved lower edge designed to cut through a man and keep better edge contact than a straight knife. This is one serious weapon.”

  Addy gulped. He certainly knew his knives.

  “How the hell did Duncan get this?” Max sheathed the Flesheater, stuffing it and the gun into his backpack along with some other items before leaving the room.

  He relocked the closet and led Addy back to the main room. “Put this on.” He tossed her Duncan’s cloak. “I don’t want your thermal suit giving us away out there.”

  Max sublimated the door to the Yard and they slipped out into the dark night, heading straight to HuBReC.

  “Why are we back at the infirmary?”

  Max didn’t answer. He climbed to the top of the foyer’s shelf, pulled out his all-purpose tool, and easily unscrewed a ceiling panel. “Come on.” He disappeared into the ductwork.

  Once she joined him, he repositioned the panel over the hole, pocketed the large screws and crawled above HuBReC until they came to another panel. This one he plucked out without needing to unscrew it first.

  Max took off his pack, leaving it in the duct, and lowered himself through the ceiling, hanging for a moment before dropping onto a counter. His presence triggered the lights.

  There were no windows or observation walls in the examination room, so that minimized the chance of anyone seeing them. She doubted any Hyboreans were working at this late hour. Unless they had an emergency, they usually clocked out before their evening meal.

  Max motioned for her to come down. Following his lead, she took off her pack and lowered herself through the hole, feet dangling. His arms encircled her legs, and he slid her down his hard body. Once her feet touched the countertop, she leaped out of his arms, pulse pounding from more than the fear of getting caught.

  She had to get ahold of herself. If she were going to escape with the guy, they were bound to touch each other.

  Max jumped to the floor with a sharp intake of air. The guy had only been healing for two weeks—how did he maneuver so well on his broken leg?

  “Come here.” Max was holding what looked like oversized wire cutters. “If you leave the apartment complex with your choker on, it will alert your master.”

  “Really? What about cutting it? Won’t that alert him?”

  “Not in here.”

  “Why not?”

  “Chokers shut off automatically in exam rooms. They screw with the instrumentation. Kind of like electrical devices at takeoff or cell phones in a hospital.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Because I’ve never been shocked in an exam room when I should have been. On more than one occasion.” He snapped off her chain, and it fell to the floor.

  Rubbing her neck, she thought back to the exam room a few days ago. Xanthrag hadn’t shocked her after she’d punched and bit him. He waited until she was out of the exam area before hurling his vengeance.

  Max snapped his own choker then used adhesives found in a drawer to tape them to the top inside wall of a cabinet.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Buying time.” He quickly put everything back where he found it before they climbed back through the ceiling. The lights below shut off. She crawled behind him in the dark space until he stopped and snapped on a lightstick. The duct made a ninety-degree turn straight up.

  Her breaths came out in puffs of white. At least the cold duct air prevented her from overheating. She thought about discarding Duncan’s cloak, but feared a Hyborean maintenance worker might find it. There couldn’t be any trace of their escape.

  “You first.” He moved aside so she could pass.

  Standing in the duct, she glanced upward. “That has to be over thirty feet tall.”

  “Forty-one.” Max snapped off the light. “This is the easy part. If you’ve changed your mind about escaping, tell me now.”

  “No way.” She pushed the cloak behind her shoulders, planted her feet and hands on each side of the duct and carefully shimmy-stepped up, thankful for the nonskid grip on her Hyborean shoes and the ridges every ten feet where two pieces of ductwork had been fastened together.

  She climbed and rested and climbed and rested until she reached a T at the top. “Which way?”

  “Left.” He pushed her legs up. A moment later she sensed his arms, his head, then the rest of his body emerge from the hole. She barely caught her breath before Max continued on past her. They crawled for what felt like hours through a dark maze. Up. Down. Left. Right. For the hundredth time she fought the urge to ask him if he had any clue where he was going.

  “This is it.” Max easily lifted another ventilation panel. So that was what he’d been doing these past nights after disappearing from the kennel. Unscrewing panels. Preparing for an escape.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “Xanthrag’s apartment.”

  “What?” His large hand covered her mouth, crushing her lips to her teeth. She struggled in his grip but he pulled her hard to his chest, holding tight.

  Did Regan make him bring her here? Had they struck some sort of deal? Why did she listen to this bastard? She knew she couldn’t trust anybody.

  “Settle down, woman.” His whispered breath was hot in her ear. “We can’t survive the arctic without thermal cream and protective gear. Xanthrag keeps
them in this room.”

  When Addy stopped moving, his grip relaxed. “I’m going to remove my hand. Don’t make a sound. Understand?”

  She nodded.

  He let her go. “Stay here while I retrieve the gear. If I get caught, stay quiet, stay hidden. No matter what you hear, do not let Xanthrag find you.”

  Her heart pounded for him. And for herself. If Max got caught, she couldn’t survive the outside temperatures without that special gear. If Max got caught, she couldn’t escape. If Max got caught, she didn’t know how to get out of the ductwork.

  He retrieved her bedsheet rope from his backpack, tugged on it to be sure the knots were secure, and tied one end to a bracket in the ductwork before climbing down. Lights illuminated a room full of gladiator equipment. Swords, knives, bows and arrows, and other weapons stood behind a transparent case. Not sparing them a glance, Max moved by the weapons to the colorful thermal suits hanging from wall pegs. He took the lightest color, a winter gray, and found matching tall, chunky-soled, piratelike boots.

  Holding her breath, Addy watched him sneak around the room gathering things, stuffing them into his pack and rearranging the clothing on the pegs, making it less obvious something was missing.

  On the wall opposite the suits, dozens of holographic movie clips played images of men fighting and killing huge angry beasts and each other. One showed a large dirty-blond man covered with blood. Regan. He ran a sword through another bloody gladiator who staggered forward. Regan kicked him and he fell onto his back in the snow. Max’s green eyes stared at the sky, sightless. Dead.

  Regan stepped on Max’s chest and raised his arms in victory. The hologram paused, faded out, and replayed from the battle’s beginning.

  Addy couldn’t stop watching it. It sickened her and mesmerized her at the same time. Two men fighting to the death. Yet the one who had died was now moving around the room below.

  “You okay?” The top of Max’s head was a foot away from the top of hers. Mesmerized by the battle images, she hadn’t realized he’d climbed back up the rope.

  “Uh, yeah.” Addy pulled her head back inside the duct.

  “Here.” He handed her a tube of cream, a pair of dark gray boots, and goggles. “Strip down, rub this in, and put the boots on. Save the goggles for outside.”

  “You want me to undress right here?”

  He pulled off his T-shirt. “Hell, woman, its not like I haven’t seen you naked before.” He squeezed the tube and rubbed white cream on his chest.

  Hot anger flooded her body. If she had been outside, she’d have melted the street. Grinding her teeth together to keep from yelling at him, and risk someone hearing them, she turned her back to the jerk. Scooting away into the darkness, she unhooked Duncan’s cloak and peeled off her thermal suit.

  “Apply the cream thick. Don’t miss any skin, including toes, scalp, nose, and eyelids.”

  It didn’t take long before the thermal cream started working. Heat covered her body like an electric blanket, and by the time she donned the gladiator suit and lightweight boots, sweat had broken out on her forehead. She wiped her brow, turned around, and caught Max taking things out of her backpack.

  “Hey,” she whispered.

  “You have too much shit in here. It’ll slow you down. Take only the essentials.”

  “These are the essentials.”

  “You’re carrying too much food.”

  “I’m pregnant. I need all this food.” Addy grabbed the bag and stuffed her things back in. She was barely able to close the zipper. So what if his pack was half full and lighter? What would the guy eat and drink? If he thought she’d share her food with him…

  “Climb down the sheets. I’ll drop the backpacks to you.”

  “No way. You’re going to leave me.”

  She heard the annoyance in his exhale. “I need to untie the rope and replace the vent.”

  “Oh. Right.” She climbed down, praying a Hyborean wouldn’t walk in on them, trying not to think about what would happen if one did.

  When the rope fell to the floor at her feet, she looked up to see Max hanging by one hand and covering the hole as best he could with the other. He let go and fell to the floor with a loud thud certain to draw attention. Her heart sped.

  Max stuffed the rope into his backpack, gathered their discarded clothing, and then sublimated a two-foot square hatch on the wall. A rotting stench wafted up.

  “After you.”

  “You want me to climb into the garbage chute?” Images popped into her head of Luke, Leia, and Han Solo in the trash compactor. “What if the Hyboreans decide to compact it while we’re in there?”

  “Don’t worry. They don’t do that.”

  “They don’t?”

  “No.” Max climbed into the shaft legs first. “They incinerate it.”

  “What?” she said, but he had slid out of view.

  Addy glanced back at the repeating holographic pictures of violence and death. If she stayed, that could very well be her baby’s fate. Heck, if she stayed that could very well be her fate.

  She climbed into the chute, held her breath, and slid down. A light at the end grew brighter and brighter before she splash-landed in liquid and garbage.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d follow.”

  “What, and miss out on bathing in this lovely stench?” Pinching her nose and breathing through her mouth gave little relief. Her stomach convulsed and she dry-heaved. The refuse reeked to both moons orbiting this damn planet.

  She snapped on her lightstick, pointed it in every direction looking for rats or other Hyborean garbage-eating animals. Perhaps only three-quarters of the garbage had been bagged in what looked like thin burlap; the rest had been mixed together, forming a brown muck. At least nothing seemed to be moving or gnawing in the dark.

  “So now what?” she asked.

  “Now, we wait.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Wait for what?” Addy asked.

  “Divine intervention.”

  “Do you have to be so cryptic?”

  “Trust me, it’s better you don’t know.”

  Trust him? She didn’t trust him as far as she could pitch him. Though nothing would please her more than throwing him headfirst into a slimy Dumpster wall. But, for now, she’d have to go along with him. What other choice did she have? If he’d leave her behind for not keeping up, what would stop him from leaving her behind for making him mad?

  “So how long will it take before we are intervened?” If she hadn’t been holding her lightstick, she would have put air quotes around the word.

  “Two hours. Maybe four. Get some sleep—tomorrow’s a long day.”

  Two to four more hours of this stench? Her stomach convulsed again. “You actually think I’ll be able to sleep in this? I don’t even want to be standing in it.”

  Snapping off his lightstick and resting his backpack on his chest, Max settled into the garbage and leaned his back against the wall. “Suit yourself.”

  After a tiring hour standing in thigh deep refuse, circling her lightstick like a lighthouse beacon, Addy picked up Max’s discarded pants and shirt and arranged them on a more stable-looking pile of garbage opposite him. She pulled on her thermal suit hood as well as the hood from the cloak to protect her hair from the sludgy wall, and sunk into her makeshift chair, backpack on her lap and lightstick in hand.

  Dampness saturated the cold air, white breath clouds formed around her, yet her body felt warm—perhaps even a little too warm.

  Max had said without the proper gear no one could survive the outside temperatures. If she had escaped alone, how long would she have lasted before freezing to death without thermal cream? Assuming no aliens caught her after the choker alarm had informed them she was outside. And that assumed she’d actually made it out of Ferly Mor’s apartment in the first place. His observation walls had probably been unbreakable.

  Queasiness due neither to pregnancy nor garbage churned her gut. Like it or not, the man she despised was
the one man she needed in order to survive.

  Max’s chest rose and fell in a steady, peaceful rhythm. What tortures had the guy experienced to make sleeping in garbage not bother him?

  “Max?”

  “Hmm.”

  “Why did you change your mind about helping me escape?”

  “You were right,” he breathed, half asleep.

  “About what?”

  “Only dying once.”

  Xanthrag’s hologram flashed in her mind’s eye. She’d never forget Max’s savage murder. Or his emaciated body on the examining table, the whip marks streaked across his back, his bones broken.

  How could he be okay now? How could he look so strong and solid and healthy after only two weeks? His wounds had healed and he’d gained weight, though he was nowhere near as muscular as he had been in the breeding box.

  “Max?” she asked again.

  “Hmm.”

  “What happened to you after they pulled you from the breeding box?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” His words were no longer sleepy.

  “I was scared for you.”

  “You were scared of me.” His eyes popped open and pierced her with a menacing glare that sent chills down her back. “You still are.”

  “And yet here I am.” She hoped she sounded braver than she felt. Why did alpha gladiators thrive on scaring the crap out of everyone? “I have to know something. Exactly what are your expectations?”

  “I expect to get out of here.”

  “I mean from me. In return for your help, you must want something.”

  “I don’t want anything from you.”

  “Then why help me?”

  “Because.”

  “Because why?”

  “Because I know how you feel.”

  “Excuuuuse me?”

  Blood simmering. Remain calm, Dawson. Boiling now. You need him to escape. Steam rising like a hot geyser. Don’t say anything you’ll re— “How dare you look me in the eye and say that? You have no idea how I feel. You violated me, Max. Knowing you’re my baby’s father makes me sick.”

  Nice going, Old Faithful. Watch him leave you in this Dumpster.

  * * *

  “You have every right to hate my guts—”

  “You’re damn right I do.” Her words echoed in the receptacle.