The Meek (Unbound Trilogy Book 1)

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The Meek (Unbound Trilogy Book 1) Page 2

by J. D. Palmer


  “Fuck me for an idiot.”

  I speak just to speak, cursing myself part in genuine frustration and part in an attempt to draw some response from the girl. She barely flinches, her hand momentarily pausing on her shoulder.

  “I shouldn’t have trusted him. I should’ve known.”

  Does she listen? Am I heard?

  “We need to get out of here.”

  I stare at her. Tall and thin, long dark hair over pale skin. Angled cheekbones next to a button nose covered with a heavy sprinkling of freckles. Thick, full lips. Dark eyebrows over light green eyes. She would be gorgeous if there were some spark of life. But she is vacant, hollow, the shell of a human. Beautiful in the way a mannequin is beautiful.

  Stuart dresses her in children’s dresses even though she has to be at least twenty years old. Dresses with Disney characters or cartoon animals or large bows. Dresses with polka dots and lace streamers, dresses bright with color but always too small. How long has she been here? Her chains are longer than mine. She could walk around the room if she wanted to although she would not be able to reach me. There is a bathroom past her bed that only she has access to. It’s disgusting how jealous I am of that. She barely uses it, eating and drinking only when prompted by Stuart. But when she does I can tell the chain is barely long enough, the links quivering and scraping on the wall as she goes about her business.

  The room is a bright white on all sides but for one wall that is painted a disgusting puke green color. The green is scratched in places, showing white beneath it. There is a large hole in the plaster near the floor. Two bolts sit in the corner, two more holes sit empty next to it. I look away. I feel like if I stare at that wall long enough I might see the horror behind its imperfections.

  Her bare feet, toenails carefully kept a bright pink by Stuart, rest on the scuffed and ripped blue carpet that covers her half of the room. A black line made of some rubber divides the carpet from my half of the room. I sit on large pieces of rough stone, some jutting up an inch higher than the plane of the floor, others shallow pits haphazardly mortared together by thick swathes of cement. I can tell it was done in a hurry.

  It is hot in our prison, stuffy, my arms sticky with sweat. Flies cluster around my stained blankets and one buzzes around my head. I make a half-hearted swipe at it, the heavy chains making the attempt comically pathetic. I scoot away from my blanket across the abrasive floor of my corner to the edge of my chains.

  You cannot be still in this room. Humid and hot, your skin sticky and uncomfortable even without the sores and bites that cover your body. It reminds me of when I used to take my dog to the veterinarian’s clinic. Sitting in a waiting room with other animals and just feeling the fear. The floor and walls are soaked with it, the air cloyed with the terror of animals past and present. Buildings always remember. I don’t know if I believe in ghosts but I do know this room will be haunted no matter what happens to us.

  “I think I needed to see someone so badly, to talk about what happened. To make sure that this isn’t some, you know, horrible dream.” I know I’m repeating myself. I’ve said these things to her before. Almost every day that I have been here. I am a dog gnawing on a bone because the bone is the only thing he has.

  “I didn’t trust him. In my heart. But he seemed nice and I just…”

  I feel foolish complaining about my plight in the face of hers. I rub my neck, probing at the raw sore as the chains that bind me to the wall clink and scrape the afternoon dirge.

  “My name is Harlan.”

  In case she didn’t hear me yesterday. Or the day before.

  She turns to the window. It looks out over the neighbor’s yard and I can see the top of an orange tree. Sometimes a bird. The highlight of my day.

  “Tell me your name, at least. You don’t have to speak, just spell it in the air or something.”

  Nothing but the phantom washcloth traveling over her collarbone and down her arm.

  I quit talking. Stuart will come soon. In the past ten days I have learned his routine. A pattern that he rarely, if ever, strays from.

  Every other day he frees me from the chains and fits me with a pair of large shock collars. The bands are made from thick black leather and he positions them so that the two packs that deliver the volts straddle the sides of my neck. I know that he modified them. I can’t believe that they would be used on dogs.

  Maybe they aren’t for dogs?

  As soon as he puts them on he presses a button for one collar just to remind me what I will be facing. Every day. It drops me to my knees, jaw locked open, heart squeezed into a chest suddenly too small as electricity races through my thin body. I need a full minute to recover. Rather, I needed a minute at first. Now I think it’s more like three or four, depending on how impatient he is.

  I live in fear of what two of them will do to me. God I hate those collars. The very sight of them paralyzes me with terror. Even if he just holds them up and shows them to me I start shaking. A dog stuck in an evil Pavlovian dystopia.

  As soon as my limbs stop spasming he takes me outside to forage for food and water. I get to pull the small cart up and down the hill. Not an activity I enjoy, but I look forward to these days. A chance to walk around, to smell fresh air and to see birds… To look for the opportunity to escape. Stuart is smart, though. The moment my eyes start to roam he zaps me.

  I find my hands rubbing my neck again, tracing the scabs and oily slickness of more recent burns. I try to limber up, stretching as far as the chains will allow.

  There is a knock on the door that leads to the garage. He always fucking knocks, as if we have a choice. After a polite pause the door swings open and his uneven tread begins to make the slow climb up the stairs that lead to our room.

  Stuart pokes his head around the corner and knocks on the wall. “Hello there.” The same thing every day.

  He is a tall, sinewy man in his fifties. His hair is white, long and unruly, completely at odds with a face that is freshly shaven. A pointed nose sits above a mouth that houses teeth of every shade of brown. He laughs often but with no confidence. A man who laughs because people tend to think no ill of someone who laughs a lot.

  “Might I come in?”

  He doesn’t wait for a response but immediately limps into the room, a plate full of food in one hand, the other moves to hide something behind his back. Something is wrong with his hip, his right leg swinging out into a sweeping step as he walks. I wonder if I would have suspected his ill intentions had I not considered him infirm, an old man too run down by the world to pose a threat. I curse myself for a fool. Again and again I want the moment in which I trusted him back.

  I keep my eyes down and he pats my head as he walks by. He has made my place in his world very clear. I am nothing more than a dog to be trained. I will perform physical labor and he, in turn, will house me. He acknowledges my presence but neglects to involve me in the life he has created for himself and the girl. If I stay out of the way and stay quiet he provides me with food and water. If I speak to him without being prompted then I am punished.

  The first day I yelled at him, screaming to be released. He stripped me naked and starved me, leaving me chained for three days. I pissed in the corner. I was forced to shit myself. The reek of my blankets is a constant reminder of the power he has over me.

  Last week I found a hidden stash of canned goods in an apartment. He told me I did a good job and gave me an extra portion of food that night. The surge of pride I felt was nothing compared to the revulsion that followed.

  Long brown toenails click on the stone as he passes me to the small corner in which the girl’s bed resides. He is always barefoot except for when we go looking for food. He often makes the girl rub his gnarled, calloused feet as he talks to her. Ripped shorts and a stained t-shirt complete the devil’s ensemble.

  He sets the plate of food down on mattress next to her, then uses a finger to dig into his pocket to produce two pills. One pink, one blue. “Don’t forget to take your med
icine today.” He pretends that he isn’t commanding her to take them now, in front of him. She puts the pills in her mouth, not bothering with water to swallow them.

  “Show me.”

  She opens her mouth and he ducks down to peer inside, using one spotted hand to cup her chin.

  “Good girl.” He moves his hand up from her chin to her cheek, cradling her head and looking deep into her vacant eyes. “I have a gift for you, my dearest one.” Always with the gifts. He pulls his arm from behind his back and presents the girl with a book. When she doesn’t reach for it he places it on her lap, kneeling in front of her. A grimy finger with a long fingernail traces her cheek, then brushes a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. “Remember this? You were reading it when we met.”

  The girl stares down at the book, her body completely still. He stares down at her, the smallest frown on his face as he patiently waits for a response. “I thought we could read it together tonight. Would you like to do that?” She brings her vacant gaze up to him and he takes this as acquiescence. “Good. Good. I look forward to it.”

  I prepare to leave. After leaving his little gifts we usually depart to “get the day’s work done.”

  He caresses her cheek with one hand, the other tracing a path along her bare thigh. “You need to shave. We will have to have a bath tonight, I think.” He pats her leg before standing. His face falls as he approaches me, nose wrinkling at the stench.

  It’s a small victory.

  “Come along, Burden.” He never refers to me by name, instead calling me his “beast of burden,” or lately just “Burden.” Stuart leads me from the house and I resist the urge to sprint away. He walks two feet behind me, humming a wordless tune, only speaking to order me in one direction or another. I scan the street, looking for something sharp and he jerks on the leash that is attached to the collars.

  He always knows.

  I push the cart ahead of me, its oiled wheels gliding soundlessly over the pavement. Trask Avenue is empty but for the birds and squirrels. Cars are parked next to the curb in front of silent houses, as if this were just a lazy Sunday in a quiet neighborhood. Birds chirp and caw and go about their business. Squirrels race along power lines and across rooftops. There is a black SUV wrecked into a tree that spoils the sleepy mien. A crow struts around a brown heap of rags partially hidden by a car, a glint of bone peeking out from the bundle. It’s the small things that remind you that the world is not right.

  A cat races across our path and down the street a pack of dogs turn the corner. I stop as Stuart yanks me to a halt. He cocks the gun he carries but the dogs move on down the road, their sidelong glances seeming to say, “not today.”

  We turn onto Redlands Street and start angling down the hill as the ocean comes into view. Another boat has washed up on shore since our last outing, the seagulls gathering in droves, diving and shrieking as they rip apart whatever it is that they found.

  It’s not hard to guess.

  He jerks the leash and we veer onto Ringe Avenue towards a new row of homes. It’s a flat stretch of road running parallel to the beach, the garish buildings competing to stand higher than the house across from it to accord themselves some small view of the ocean without stepping outside.

  Stuart wears a grimace and I know our trip down the hill strained his hip. There is no way he could pull the wagon on his own, and it’s my lone comfort knowing just how much he needs me. As we get farther from his home and preserved food becomes more scarce he will need me even more. So he can’t kill me… Unless he decides to take the girl and go to a place with better pickings. Or he finds someone else.

  We stop in front of an elaborate white house made with a combination of white stucco and black and brown brickwork. A red USC flag hangs limply over the balcony, ripped and grimy and spotted by bird droppings. The building is enclosed by a large steel fence with a gate in front of the driveway. It functioned on an automated system and I struggle to lift the apparatus off the latch and slide it open. Stuart watches me impassively as I jerk and pull and eventually work it open. By the end I’m soaked in sweat and bent over by coughs.

  I am getting weaker.

  I push the cart to the garage door and pound on the faux wood paneling. I listen closely, the memory of what happened on our last food run is engraved on my arm. I had started to open a door only to be driven backwards by a large brown dog. It had once been large, to be exact, patchy fur revealing the protruding rib cage of a starving animal. It couldn’t bark, for some reason. I think it had had its vocal chords snipped. Its silence as it tore at my arm made the attack even more frightening. As if it were personal.

  I beat at the dog with my free arm until it let go, but it continued to leap at me, weak legs propelling it towards my throat. I looked to Stuart at one point. He had the gun out but made no move to use it. “Bullets are too precious to waste, Burden.”

  I tried to back away and the dog followed. It was crazed, no anger or fear in the attack, just the desire to inflict harm. The scabs on my arm are a constant reminder of that day.

  I’ll never forget forcing the animal to the ground, kneeling on its back legs, and squeezing its throat until its pain and fear and life were all gone. I hate that I had to do that. I hate Stuart more for forcing me into that position.

  Just inside the door was the body of its master. The dog had been starving but the man was untouched, pristine but for the ravages of the sickness. I tell myself the dog wanted to die. That I gave it the mercy it was seeking.

  So I listen, straining my ears for claws scrabbling across tile or for a low growl. Nothing. The house is silent. Thank you god. At a nod from Stuart I try the door. It’s locked. Even as everyone was getting sick, and dying, and despairing, they locked everything.

  Stuart points to the ground and I lie down on my back next to the wall with my hands raised up in the air, palms to the sky. A formation of birds fly over me and I wonder where they are going. I wonder if they are heading north towards Montana and I lift my head to follow them, as if by watching them long enough they will take some small part of me with them. Tell Jessica I love her. Tell her that I am I alive, and that I will—

  A blast of electricity courses through me as Stuart presses the button for one of my collars. My head cracks against the pavement and my vision swims. I black out for a second. Upon waking I immediately start to retch.

  “Move closer to the wall.” I scoot over, body still shivering, guts roiling.

  He loops the cord of the controller around his wrist and reaches into the cart to grab the crowbar. He slides the end into the doorjamb next to the handle and begins to pry, his eyes shifting back and forth from me and back to the door. He has no need to be worried, I have no desire to try anything at this moment.

  Once the door is open a fetid stench rushes forth to greet us. I retch again, bile stinging my throat as Stuart ties a handkerchief over his mouth and nose and ushers me inside.

  “Inside, Burden. Now.”

  Three figures, one tall and two short, lie wrapped in white sheets on the garage floor. A fourth figure sits in a chair, a Bible on his lap and a gun in his hand. His head lolls back, his mouth open as if in the deepest of sleep, a father snoring in a chair but for the blood matting his hair and coating the wall behind him.

  The bodies of the man’s family are in the way of the cart. I stoop and drag them to the side. I wrapped my friend in bed sheets before I buried him, too. I wonder if I would have killed myself as well had I seen all of my family die before my eyes. I was close with my friend, but maybe not that close. Never did it occur to me to kill myself.

  Not until recently.

  “Let’s head in.” Stuart opens the door to the home and waves me in. I enter on unsteady feet, bracing myself on the door. My head hurts from smacking it on the pavement. I lean against the wall inside, trying to collect myself. I barely hear Stuart’s voice, slowly registering the command and tottering over to a pantry. I am a mindless drone, my mind empty as I carry cans back and fo
rth to the cart.

  We return to the house as the sun begins to set. I’m coated in sweat even as a chill sets in. It took everything I had to pull the cart full of the canned goods up the street. I am tired, and ashamed, and want nothing more than for this day to end.

  “You stink, Burden.”

  We deposit the goods inside the gate and then Stuart marches me down to the ocean. A long walk on weak legs back down that damned hill. He allows me five minutes to piss, and defecate, and clean myself in the salty brine. He stands in the sand, monitoring me, his hand poised over the button that would kill me should he set it off in the water.

  I’m not feeling strong enough to stand so I sit and let the waves wash up over me. Paper and plastic cups and green gobs of some unknown detritus float around me, wash up and adhere to my skin until the next wave. I do not care. My ears ring and I can’t think beyond the throbbing in my head. I rub sand and water over my body. Tentative fingers probe the lump on the back of my head. My hand comes away bloody.

  You will pay for this. Please somebody make him pay for this.

  We return and he shackles me to my corner. He fills my bucket of water and leaves a small plate of food before delicately unlocking the girl from her chains and leading her from the room. I do not know where they go but when they return her hair is always wet. Depending on the night he will read to her, or talk about trivial matters, and sometimes he combs her hair. He does this knowing I’m in the room. Perhaps he doesn’t care. I think he enjoys showing me how helpless we both are.

  I do not even see them leave tonight, nor do I hear them return. I lick the water from my bowl and collapse onto my blanket, broken in mind and spirit.

  Chapter 2

  I drive a large truck, nervous hands sweating on the steering wheel as I guide it up a steep hill. Two tons of hay sit on the trailer behind me. Jessica rides shotgun, feet up on the dashboard. Blonde hair and hay of the same color frame her beautiful face. She is laughing at my discomfort. I shouldn’t be driving. If I fuck this haul up, or worse the truck or trailer, then her dad will kill me. But a bet is a bet. I try to look calm.

 

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