Skin Game

by Tonia Brown

  “She’s just a lady,” one man said. “Where in the hell is she gonna go in a locked basement?”

  “I guess so,” another man said. “I really wanna see what that surprise is.”

  “So do I. We didn’t come all this way to play nanny to a bunch of little girls while everyone else gets our reward. Let’s just leave ‘em.”

  “Dillon will kill us if we just leave her alone.”

  “No he won’t. If Dillon finds her wandering around, it serves her right. He will be mad but not at us. He’ll be mad at her, for walking around like she owns the damned place. We can always say we left her alone for just a minute. Like, maybe, we both had to go to the bathroom at the same time.”

  “Hey, that sounds like a good idea. Come on, let’s go watch the rest of the show. I wonder what Dillon has planned.”

  “I don’t know but I hear it’s gonna be incredible.”

  The voices faded, followed by a door slamming shut. No doubt they locked it as well, but at least they were gone.

  “How did you know they would leave?” I said.

  “They always leave me alone,” Mab said. She pulled a pen knife from her bosom and began fiddling with the lock. It popped in seconds and she pulled the door wide open. Mab feigned a cutesy, baby tone I used to hear the girls in the bordello use. “I’m just a stupid woman. What do I know about escaping?” She smirked and held the door open for me. “Come on, Jack, let’s get our men and get the hell out of Truth.”

  I followed her out of the room and into the hallway, bringing the lamp with us. There were a few smaller doorways on either side of us as well as an impressively huge door at the end of the hall. Mab went to the door opposite us and pulled on the handle. It opened. She looked to me and raised her eyebrows. She pushed open the door and we stepped inside.

  The room beyond was a jumble of work and day to day living. One corner of the room hosted a few cots, a dressing table, and a chamber pot. Work benches and book shelves lined the other walls, each nearly covered in stacks of books and handfuls of papers. Vials and glass bottles lay scattered all over the tabletops, each filled with some kind of liquid. A huge chalkboard dominated the center wall and was covered in gibberish. At least it was gibberish to me. For all I knew it was the secret to eternal life. That’s when it hit me, this was a laboratory. I suppose the notes and vials and giant blackboard should’ve been the giveaway.

  Either that or the folks in ragged lab coats crowded in the corner.

  “Hello?” Mab said from the doorway.

  One of the men whipped about, brandishing what looked like a piece of glass wrapped in a bit of linen at us. I guess it was a makeshift weapon, because the folks here didn’t have much else. I nearly gasped when I recognized him as Jacob Bowing. The man in Mab’s photograph. The man I was trying so desperately to get across the border to find. He had lost a lot of weight since that photograph, and there was one more important difference in him.

  His irises were circled with a fine layer of frost.

  “Who are you?” he said.

  “She’s the one that saved my life,” Stretch said.

  “Stretch?” Mab said, a strained desperation in her voice.

  He emerged from the circle, pushing past them to cross the room. Stretch sported a bandage across his forehead and a long one wound around his left forearm. His right eye was swollen and his lip was busted open and bleeding. When he reached Mab, he didn’t settle for a handshake or a hug. He did something far better.

  He kissed her.

  He bent over, wrapped his hands around her face, all but lifting her off of her feet to meet him as he planted a huge kiss right on her lips. If we hadn’t been in fear of our lives, it would’ve been the most romantic thing I had ever seen. Aww, who am I kidding? I was the most romantic thing I had ever seen.

  Because she kissed him back.

  She didn’t push him off or struggle under his weight. She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him closer, leaning into that kiss to end all kisses. It was sweet and timeless and just about the most beautiful moment in my life.

  After a second or two, the pair parted. She looked up at him, blinking in surprise. He stared down at her. They both shared a matching, goofy grin.

  “I love you, hon,” Stretch said. “I shoulda told you that first day I saw you. I love you. I’ve always loved you. It liked to have killed me when you left. And now you’re back. I don’t know if you can ever love a man like me, but—”

  Mab put her trembling fingers over his mouth. “Can we talk about this later?”

  He nodded as he kissed the tips of her fingers.

  “You the one gonna get us out of here?” someone asked.

  The beleaguered men parted, revealing a battered and bruised Mr. Theo at the center. I wanted to run to his side, to leap on him, latch myself to his neck and never let go. Instead, I swallowed back this urge and waited. I wondered if he would recognize me even with the dark hair. I also didn’t want to blindside him with my existence. After all, I was supposed to be dead. I stood near the doorway, half wanting to run, half wanting to fall down at his feet, all frozen to the spot.

  An older woman daubed at Theo’s shoulder, patting at a stream of blood, cleaning the wound. Her eyes were frosted as well. “Is this our rescue party?” She snorted. “A doting cow and a skinny calf? Pitiful.”

  “Cow?” Mab said. “You listen here—”

  “Hon,” Stretch said, grabbing her shoulder and holding her back. “Just ignore her. This is Doctor Chambers. She’s, well…”

  “She’s a bit of a bitch,” Mr. Theo said.

  Chambers laughed. “He is right. I am a bitch.” She tossed her gauze to the table and extended a bloody hand to Mab. “I won’t apologize, but I will ask you to understand. I haven’t been myself since I lost my freedom to that idiot upstairs.”

  Mab took a few steps forward and shook hands with her. “Not a problem. I have been known to be a bit moody myself.”

  “These are the men you’ve been looking for,” Stretch said. He pointed around the room to the men, in turn. “This is Bowing and Reynolds.”

  Reynolds eyes were also encircled in that strange frost.

  How many people were immune now?

  “Doctors, I mean,” Stretch said.

  “I got that much,” Mab said. She shook each of their hands.

  “The other ones didn’t make it,” Stretch said.

  “That’s a shame,” Mab said. She at last held her hand out to my mentor. “And you must be Theophilus Jackson.”

  He grabbed her hand and gave it a strong, single pump before releasing it again. “I am. You’re Miss Maribel Deacon. I’ve heard a lot of about you.” Mr. Theo shot a quick glance to Stretch. “All good. Glowing, in fact.”

  “Don’t believe a word of it,” Mab said.

  “Then you’re not here to rescue us?” Reynolds said.

  “That much is true,” Mab said. “I was sent out here by the US Government to find you and bring you back.”

  This won a few sighs of relief from the tired men.

  “Thank God,” Reynolds said.

  Mab continued, “I am also part of a reconnaissance mission to determine the Syndicate’s threat.”

  “About time,” Bowing said. “I’ve been trying to tell them for years how much danger we are all in. Mortimer wouldn’t listen. My bosses wouldn’t listen. No one would listen.”

  “They’ll listen now,” she said. “My contacts back east are just waiting to hear from me. With everything I’ve seen, the Syndicate is going down.”

  “I still don’t think I understand what a Syndicate even is,” Reynolds said. “One day I am teaching biology and the next I am kidnapped and forced to work on some secret cure. I don’t know what I am doing here.”

  “Not to worry,” Stretch said. “Miss Mab will get us out of here. I
guarantee. Won’t she, Theo. Theo?” Stretch waved his hand over Mr. Theo’s eyes, but couldn’t get the man’s attention.

  Mr. Theo wasn’t interested in what Stretch had to say, because Mr. Theo was staring at me.

  * * *

  Theo

  I stared long and hard at the young man in the doorway. There was something about him, something familiar. I’d not been much for faces or names in my life. I usually didn’t care if I ever meet someone a second time. Yet something about that young man called out to me. Something in his face. In his eyes.

  Then she smiled, and I knew.

  “Sam?” I whispered.

  She smiled wider, tears rising to her blue eyes. Sliding the hat from her darkened hair, she took a few tentative steps toward me. Her nervous hands worried the brim of the hat.

  “Dear God in Heaven,” I said as I stood. “Is it really you?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  We lingered there, in that uncertain moment, both of us doubting and hoping, hungry but hesitant, joyous but confused. Then she rushed forward and I folded her into my waiting arms. She cried. I thought she would never stop crying. I also never wanted it to end. I never wanted to let her go. I was crying myself before I knew it. I hadn’t wept since I lost my daughter.

  There was no one else in that moment. Just her and me, together again at last.

  “I thought you were dead,” I said into her hair.

  “I missed you so much,” she said. “I never thought I would see you again.”

  “That makes two of us.” It took about all the effort I could muster, but I finally pulled her away from me. I held her at arm’s length, taking in a much of her as I could. “I don’t understand. How is this possible?”

  “Doc Bowden warned me,” she said. “He helped me get ready and I was able to sneak away while they, you know, captured you.”

  “Clever. You always were clever.”

  She looked away, shyly. Same old Sam.

  “What are you doing here?” I said.

  “I’ve come to rescue you,” she said.

  I glanced to Mab, who nodded.

  “It’s true,” Mab said. “She’s been a tremendous help to me.”

  “She?” Chambers said. “Now there’s a genuine surprise for once.” She clapped, slow and steady. “Well bully for you, young lady.”

  “I knew she was a she,” Reynolds said.

  “Shut up, Graeme,” Bowing said.

  “We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for her,” Stretch said. “She’s one brave gal.”

  “I know,” I said. I hugged Sam to me one more time before I let her go again.

  She slid out of my arms but grabbed my hand, squeezing hard. I suspected it would take an act of God Himself to make her let me go again. I knew I had no intention of letting her go.

  “If I remember correctly,” Chambers said, “she’s the reason you’re here too, Theo.”

  I squeezed Sam’s hand in return, ignoring Chambers’s crude remark. “Then you knew, Stretch?”

  “Well, yeah,” the man said. “She made me promise not to say anything.”

  “I did,” Sam said.

  “While I’m enjoying this reunion,” Stretch said, “don’t you think we ought to be getting out of here?”

  “How?” Reynolds said. “You think Dillon’s just going to let us walk out of here?”

  “Yes I do,” Mab. “I think Dillon’s going to be distracted enough as it is.”

  “Distracted?” I said. “How?”

  Reynolds and Bowing took on a grave silence, looking everywhere but at me. Chambers grinned right at me, once again proving she knew no shame.

  “How?” I said again.

  “You don’t know?” Mab said.

  “No,” I said. “Is someone going to tell me?”

  Mab opened her mouth to speak, and was cut short by the muffled screams of several men. I looked up, as did everyone, to the ceiling. The cellar filled with the sounds of struggle, shrieks of pain, and the thunderous roar of gunfire. All of this bore that slight muffle of distance. Whatever was happening, it all was taking place beyond the cellar doors. I looked back to the others. Stretch shrugged at me. Somewhere in the noise, Sam had released my hand, absentmindedly touching her empty holster.

  Good girl.

  “What is going on up there?” I said.

  Chambers, grin still wide, laughed. “Dillon is getting a taste of his own medicine.”

  “Too late,” Reynolds said. He cupped his face in his hands and began to rock back and forth on his seat. “Too late.”

  “Keep it together, man,” Bowing said.

  “We have to get out of here,” Mab said.

  “Not until you tell me what’s happening,” I demanded.

  “Dillon gave all of his men the cure,” Sam said. “He was gonna release the revs and see who survived.”

  “Sounds like he did as promised,” Stretch said.

  “Which means,” I said, “we are surrounded by an outbreak.”

  “What are we going to do?” Stretch said.

  There rose a sudden, desperate thumping from the doors down the hallway.

  Sam dashed to the laboratory door and leaned out into the hall. She spun around in the doorway to face us again. “Someone’s beating on the doors.”

  “Let us in!” came a shout from down the hall. This was followed by screams. The thumping stopped.

  “Damn it,” Mab said.

  “They won’t be able to get in,” Chambers said. “The door is bolted and only Dillon has the key.”

  “I’m not so worried about anyone getting in as how we’re going to get out.”

  “You should be worried about far more than that,” Dillon said from the doorway.

  * * *

  Sam

  Dillon grabbed me before I could move, snatching me by the hair and pressing a blade to my throat. He snarled in my ear, “Move and I kill you.”

  I fell still as he asked.

  Mab swung her penknife in our direction.

  “You too, Miss Deacon,” Dillon said. “Drop that knife or I will cut her throat.”

  Her throat. Not his. Her.

  “You know?” I said.

  “Of course I know,” Dillon said. “Did you think a little hair color would make me forget the bitch that did this to me? Huh?” He twisted his hand tighter in my hair, eliciting a small cry from me. “I don’t know how you survived that fire but you’re going to die here tonight. I said drop your blade, Mab! Or I will kill your precious Sam!”

  Mab tossed the small knife to the floor.

  “Dillon,” Mr. Theo said as he stood, holding out his hands. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Yes, I do!” Dillon shouted. “I have to do this because of you. Because of all of you! You ruined me. You ruined my life! This was always the way it was going to happen!”

  Dillon shoved me at Mr. Theo, and I went tumbling across the floor. I landed in my mentor’s arm, the wind knocked out of me. He gathered me up and pulled me to the other side of the room, as far from the madman as possible. Mr. Theo pushed me behind him, trying to protect me with the only thing he had, himself. Stretch and Mab moved in on either side of me.

  “Stay behind us,” Mab said in a low voice.

  The screams and shrieks continued overhead. Folks pounded on the cellar door, pleading for their lives. I wanted to close my eye and shut it all out. The way I used to do when things got bad in my last life. I used to pretend I was somewhere else. I found I couldn’t do that here. As bad as this was, I didn’t want to be anywhere else. In the bordello, I had an easy life at the cost of my innocence and body. Here, I had a family, at the cost of a constant threat on my life. I was willing to pay it. I would rather die here with these people than live anywhere else.


  Our mutual enemy had drawn his pistol, aiming it at us as we cowered across the room. Something wasn’t right with him, aside from the fact that he was a raving lunatic. On the platform outside he had looked like a proud plantation owner. Now he looked just awful. His clothes were torn in places and he had a several lacerations across his face and arms. I didn’t think his little event was going the way he planned.

  “Look at you,” Dillon said. “Cowering for your lives. Just as you should be. Everyone should beg me for their life.”

  “Can’t we just rush him?” Reynolds said.

  “Don’t be daft,” Chambers said.

  “Come on,” Reynolds said. “There’s only one of him.”

  “Yes, but he’s the one that has the gun,” Dillon said. Dillon drew a deep, steadying breath. “I’m not going to sugarcoat this. Some of you are going to die today. Some of you I will let live, because I still need you. Anyone care to guess which is which?”

  No one said anything.

  In that long, awkward pause, Reynolds let out a roar, grabbed up a stool and ran across the room. He got about three feet from Dillon before the top of his head exploded in bone and blood. I let out a little scream of surprise before I could cover my mouth. Reynolds dropped his chair and slumped forward, dumping the contents of his now open skull at Dillon’s feet. The three in front of me moved in closer, tightening their circle of protection.

  Bowing stepped up, as if to help the dead man, and Dillon waved him off with the pistol.

  “Get back,” Dillon said.

  Bowing raised his hands and stepped back again.

  “Tell me what you’ve done to my men,” Dillon said.

  “We did exactly what you asked,” Bowing said. “I explained the percentage of survival was very low. Maybe one in twenty. Maybe.”

  “One in twenty?” Dillon said. He gave a bone chilling giggle. “You idiot. They are all turning. All of them. None of them are immune.”

  “Some margin of error was expected,” Bowing said. “And I warned you this wasn’t the best way to introduce the virus. You needed a controlled environment. Not that, that, chaos out there.”

  Dillon flared his nostrils. I thought I could hear him growling from where I hid.