by Baker, LJ
Ben pushed Dan through the door and into the room. His wrists were bound in front of him and he stumbled in with a limp. They'd shot him. That much was clear, but from the looks of him, they had done a lot more.
Dan's eyes met mine as soon as he was inside the room and he closed them for a long moment, then looked down at the floor. Ben kicked him in the back of the legs and he fell to his knees. It was enough to cause a shooting pain through my chest and I didn't know how I would hold out when they did worse.
"You want to rethink giving me that knife yet, ducking? Or should we see how your boyfriend here enjoys his intestines on the outside of his body?" John snickered and looked over Dan on the floor near his feet.
Dan straightened the best he could and looked me right in the eyes. "Don't give it to him, Andi. No matter what he does to me."
John turned and kicked Dan in the face with his filthy boot. He fell to the side and spit blood onto the floor beside him.
"Your boyfriend is brave, but we'll see if he can keep that up when I'm peeling his skin off, strip by strip. Though I do believe you will give in first, duckling. Watching your boyfriend fall apart, literally, does tend to be a little more difficult than you might anticipate.
John turned to me and raised an eyebrow. "Last chance." He held out a hand in my direction, being careful to stay just far enough back so that I couldn't swipe at him with the knife. I thought about doing just that. I could probably have lunged at him and cut his hand, but he would likely have grabbed my wrist and yanked me from my hiding place. It wasn't like I would be safe there for long, but I wasn't ready to give up and every second I held onto that knife, was one more second I was alive.
John shrugged and turned to face Dan. "Suit yourself."
Dan glared at him, defiant. "Do your best asshole." He spat a bloody glob at John's feet.
John laughed and pulled a knife from his belt holster. "Oh, I intend to."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I held onto my knife, because really, at that point, it was all I could do. Sure, I could have given it up and maybe saved Dan some torture, but in the end, I knew, they were going to do horrible things to each of us. Nothing I did would stop that. All I could hope for, was to stay alive just a little bit longer.
John kicked Dan over onto his side facing me and slid his knife up the back of his shirt to expose his back. Dan's eyes met mine and a tear fell down his cheek. My heart shattered into a million pieces as his eyes fell closed, his thick lashes soft against his face.
As John bent with the knife, I sprang forward. My own survival no longer first on my mind. I couldn't let it happen. It all occurred so fast. I was out of the corner and on top of him in an instant. My knife made contact, slashing across his cheek. Blood dripped down into my face as he flipped me over onto my back, pried the weapon from my hand and sent it flying across the room.
He shoved me to the floor, his whole body covered mine and pressed so hard it was difficult to take a breath. Stunned by the action, Ben froze just long enough for Dan to get to his feet and grab the knife that was in my hand seconds before. He pounced on Ben and slit his throat, dropping him into a heap on the floor.
One asshole down.
John had a knife pressed into my ribs, which he pushed against me a little harder each time I struggled. He flipped the two of us over and positioned me in front of him, the knife still against my side.
"That's too bad. That idiot was my brother-in-law. Oh well." He shrugged. "Now you better drop that knife before your girlfriend loses her spleen."
"Don't, Dan." I pleaded with him. "He'll kill us both anyway."
John laughed. It was the sort of sound you'd expect to hear from an evil villain in a super hero movie. "Now it's her turn to be self-sacrificing. You are both adorable. Now drop the fucking knife, or this gets messy."
Dan took a step forward and smiled. "This is already messy." He let his eyes drop down to Ben on the floor.
"Oh, you think I give a shit about him? Or even the other one out there? I'd have killed them myself when I grew tired of them. Just as I will both of you. Right now, it's just a matter of how quickly."
Our options were few, but I knew that Dan and Will had a chance to get out alive, if it wasn't for me. If Dan could take John out, I knew he'd be able to handle Tim and get Will out. My last thought was of Janet. She sacrificed herself to try to save us. She died, saving me.
I looked up at Dan. His eyes were focused on the knife pressed up against me. His eyes came up and met mine. I knew I had to act before he decided to drop the knife and give in to save me.
"I love you. Tell Will I love him."
I slipped one arm out from under John's grasp and slammed the butt of my palm into his nose with all my strength. Hot, thick blood spilled over my hand and he made a sound that was something like a deep gurgle with a crunch. Dan lunged forward, but it was too late.
The knife slid into me with a searing ache that radiated out in a spiral and scorched my flesh, inside and out. The room swirled red and black, with star bursts that covered my whole field of vision. Nausea flooded me and I fell against John, our blood mixed together before everything went black.
***
My eyes fluttered open and the pain hit me like a brick, forcing them closed once again. My body was being pulled, squeezed, pressed. I wanted to fight, push whatever hands were on me off, but I couldn't move or speak, or even keep my eyes open.
I could make out my name, but it sounded so far away. Arms were around me and I was being carried. Where to, I didn't know, but at that point, it didn't even matter. I was tired, so tired and the relentless pain spread over me in waves. I just wanted it to stop. I squeezed my eyes and tensed, thinking if I tried, I could will consciousness away. I wouldn't get my wish.
I tried to pull my eyelids open, but bright lights pierced my vision and I squeezed them shut again. I was no longer in the bedroom.
Ripping of fabric, cold metal, warm liquid, the smell of alcohol.
I tried to take a breath and coughed. Droplets of warm blood splattered up and landed on my face. There was a sharp stab in my side close to the searing, and then relief. A numbness washed over the area and I was able to open my eyes. Breathing was still difficult, but after a moment, my eyes adjusted and I could see that I was in the back room. Derek stood over me and I thought for sure I had to be dead, because that made no sense at all.
"What is…" I tried to speak, but it was too much effort to get the words out.
Dan leaned over and rubbed his hand over my cheek. "Don't try to talk."
So maybe I was alive.
And Dan was alive.
Where was Will?
My eyes closed and sleep took over.
When I opened my eyes again, the bright light was off and Derek was calling my name.
"Andi? You need to open your eyes. Yeah, that's it. No, don't close them. Stay with me, hon."
Dan squeezed my hand and smiled over me. He was a mess. One of his eyes was dark purple and swollen shut, his lip was busted open, and he looked like he was target practice for a professional boxer.
"There you are, love. Open those beautiful blue eyes." Dan smiled and winced. It had to hurt to move any part of his face in that condition.
"Sit. It's your turn." Derek turned to Dan and held up one of Mom's suture kits.
I tried to prop myself up to look around the room. "Where's Will?" I whispered, because really, a whisper was all I was capable of. Each breath took all the energy I had and it felt like there was fifty pounds of bricks sitting on my chest. Derek took my hand and helped me to sit. The room spun around me and I wasn't quite sure I was going to be able to pull off sitting upright. After a moment, it passed and Derek lifted me into a chair.
"Don't try to move." He held a finger up in warning then tugged at Dan to sit on the exam table. "We need to get you stitched up and we don't have all day."
Dan nodded and complied. He pulled off what remained of his shirt and hopped up on the small ta
ble. His face was bad, but the rest of him was worse. He was shot in the arm, had various stab wounds, and was nearly covered in bruises. I'd never seen anyone alive in that bad of shape and couldn't imagine why Derek didn't take care of him first.
I tried to take a deep breath, but was rewarded with a sharp stab in the chest that nearly knocked me over out of the chair. Once the pain passed, I took a shallow breath and made an attempt to speak again. "Will?" was all I could manage to get out.
"He's in the bedroom. You have some broken ribs and I'm not completely sure he didn't nick your spleen. Don't try to breathe too deep." Derek went about stitching and bandaging Dan up. I still didn't know how he got there, but I was glad to have him. As a medic, Derek had the knowledge to fix things that we might ordinarily be shit out of luck with. I wanted to ask, but I settled for leaning back in the chair and watching him sew Dan back up.
No longer oozing blood, Dan stood and ran his hand over the bandage on his arm. "Getting shot frigging hurts." He half-laughed, then doubled over in pain.
"Yeah, it does. So do broken ribs. You might wanna lay off the comedy for a bit." Derek rolled his eyes and tossed the surgical gloves he had on in the trash, then walked over to me. "How ya feeling?"
"Alive." My throat was dry and scratchy making the words sound like more of a croak.
He sighed and squatted down to my level. "I'm glad for that. I wish I'd gotten here sooner."
"Is Will okay?" I needed confirmation, proof, that he was actually alive.
Derek nodded. "Yeah, he's going to be fine. Maybe a little concussion, but he's in better shape than you two."
"And those guys?" Ben was dead. I knew that much. I'd watched Dan slit his throat, but the other two I wasn't sure about.
"They're both dead, Andi. You don't have to worry about them anymore."
I took a small breath and felt something close to relief when I realized what he said. "Wait, both?"
"Yes. They were both in the bedroom, dead. I checked."
I looked at Dan, hoping he would tell me the other one was dead too, or that Derek just missed one, but he had the same confused look as me.
"But, there were three of them."
"Three?" Derek's eyes went straight to Dan for confirmation as he stood back up.
Dan nodded.
Derek felt the gun on his waist, and glanced around the room. "Okay. Three. So there's one unaccounted for." He disappeared from the room and left Dan and me there, broken and confused.
Dan picked his bloody knife up from the counter and wiped it off on his discarded shirt. I knew he was thinking of going out there to help Derek, but he was in no shape to do any such thing.
"Hey." I grabbed the waist if his jeans and held on with the little strength I had. "Stay here."
"I'm fine, love. All patched up." He waved his hand across his chest and smiled. "See? Good as new."
I held back a laugh because I knew it would hurt. "You're a mess, you idiot."
"I'll be fine." He tried to pull out from my grasp but I held on.
"Don't leave me."
His smile fell and his face softened. "I'm not leaving you."
He pulled the other chair over and sat next to me. A moment later the door opened and Derek walked back in.
"It's all clear. Whoever else was here, is gone now."
Will peeked his head in behind Derek and smiled when he saw me. "Hey you."
His face was almost as bad as Dan's, minus the gashes.
"Okay, well we need to finish getting you guys patched up and figure out what we're doing. If there's another one, then we don't know if he's coming back, or if he will have friends with him when he does."
Apparently, Will's arm was broken and Derek went about putting a cast on it. Unfortunately for Will, the only cast bandages we had were hot pink.
"Maybe you should give him the pony shirt back, Andi. It will match his pretty new arm bling." Dan laughed and immediately regretted it as he grabbed his ribs in pain.
Will narrowed his eyes and smirked. "Keep it up assjacket and I'll crack jokes every chance I get. How's the ribs feeling funny guy?"
I grabbed my middle and groaned. "Uh mine aren't doing so good. Can we lay off the torture for a bit?" I pulled myself up and took the few steps to the med cabinet, making sure to hold on to the counter for support. I found the pain medication and held up the bottle to Derek for approval.
He nodded. "Just take it easy on those. They'll make you sleepy. Oh and none for you." He motioned to Will. "Give the concussion a couple days to subside."
"Aren't you going to be here?" Will asked.
Derek shrugged. "I'm not so sure you guys should be here. Besides, I could drop dead five minutes from now. You should know what to do."
"But, you're not leaving yet, are you?" The thought of Derek leaving with the three of us in that condition made my heart jump up to my throat and flip around a few times. "I mean, you can't just—"
"Andi, I'm not going anywhere. Calm down. I do think that we should rethink staying here though. With you guys in this kind of shape, it's probably best to get out of here right now. Maybe even come back to the base until everyone is all healed up."
I sighed. I didn't want to think about going back to the military base. It wasn't that it was an awful place. It wasn't, but it wasn't where we wanted to be. Though I couldn't help but think that if we had just stayed there and not left, we would have been better off. Except that I wouldn't have found Dan. But then again, Janet would be alive.
"You don't have to move back, but consider staying a few weeks until you are all back on your feet." He patted Will's back and tossed another set of gloves into the trash. "You're all set."
Will hopped off the table and looked over his new pink cast. "Couldn't I just have broke some ribs instead?"
"Dude, you don't wish that. I've had both and I can assure you that a broken arm is much better." Dan ran his hand over the bandages that wrapped around his middle. "Besides, pink is your color." He tried to hold back laughter, unsuccessfully, and groaned in pain.
Will smirked. "This might be more fun than I realized."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Derek re-secured the basement so we could pack up what we needed to head out in the morning. We didn't really discuss where we would go, but we all knew we couldn't stay there. There was no sign of Tim, and even though he wasn't nearly as scary as John, I didn't want to be around if he returned.
Derek set himself up in the living room area to keep watch at the door. I was pretty sure he wasn't planning on sleeping, but just having him there made me feel safer. I wanted to stay out there with him and the boys, keep us all together, but Derek insisted we try to get some rest after what we'd been through. I wasn't budging on staying together though, and insisted that Dan stay in the same room as me and Will.
Derek dragged John and Ben's bodies outside, but my bedroom looked like a slaughterhouse. Blood splattered the walls and soaked the rug. It was the last place I wanted to be, so we stayed in one of the other bedrooms. Before heading off to rest, we gathered up whatever we were going to bring and set the bags near the door to grab in the morning.
There wasn't much I needed to bring. My usual bag had already contained anything that was most important to me, but I grabbed some of the new warmer clothes I'd recently picked up and the things I'd taken from my old bedroom upstairs.
The guys packed some of the food we stocked up, tools, and other things they thought might be important if we were to be on our own. I knew it was going to be the last time we could come back to the basement for a while and I was sad to leave. It was the one place, home, that I could always come back to regardless of how bad it got out in the world.
After everything was set, Derek settled in on the couch and the boys and I headed to bed. There was only one bed, so we had to share, but after what we'd been through, none of us was going to complain.
"How are you feeling, love?" Dan asked and climbed into the bed next to me.
"
Uh you were the one shot. I'm fine." I wasn't, but I didn't want him to worry.
"Wait, what?" Will propped himself up and looked over me at Dan. "When did you get shot?"
"Right after they got in. I can't believe you slept through that, Sleeping Beauty." Dan shrugged his arm out of the top of his shirt to show Will his bandaged bicep. I knew it was going to become one of those scars men bragged about having.
"Damn. I'm still not sure what happened at all. Pretty sure I was out cold for most of it."
I looked over Will's bruised face. It broke my heart to see him that way, but he had gotten off easy compared to Dan and me. The extent of my own injuries was starting to really come to my attention. My whole body was sore. It was as if I'd been trampled by a stampede of wild animals. Every inch of my body ached, in addition to the sharper pain in my side where I'd been stabbed. The cracked rib made it difficult to breathe and any movement or slightly deep breath, sent what felt like a hundred razor-sharp daggers through my chest. The pain pills took the edge off, but there wasn't anything that was going to give much relief.
Dan looked over me and frowned. "There are some things you never want to see. You can't unsee."
I reached down and squeezed his hand, knowing how difficult it was for Dan to see me hurt. To watch him get kicked in the face, or savagely beat, hurt with a pain that no words could describe. It was at least that bad for him. He felt like he was responsible to protect me, so watching someone hurt and nearly kill me, had to have been beyond difficult.
Will's eyebrows furrowed and he glanced over me. "What did they do to you?"
"Not as much as they could have. I'll be fine." I thought back to when Will had saved me from the cousins shortly after Will and I met. He'd sat at my bedside and cried, broken over what had happened to me, knowing he couldn't stop it sooner. There was no reason to make him feel that way all over again. It was over and I would live.
"Andi, I know you're not fine. Have you even looked in a mirror?"
