by J. S. Carter
Ryan stepped around us. “Kyle wants you to give her a checkup before he puts her to work.”
Puts her to work?
It was almost amazing how he had a natural talent to make me feel like utter garbage. I could feel Martha squeeze my hand. At least I wasn’t alone.
“Why?”
“Use your imagination. You’ve got five minutes.” He gave the room one last once-over, probably checking for any sharp objects that I might be able to use against him, then walked outside.
By the time I brought my attention back to Martha, she had already been taking me in.
“Are you okay?”
The sudden empathy was almost too much to handle. “Yeah.” I gave her a reassuring nod. “I’m fine.”
She scrunched her face and I could tell she wanted to press the question, but I was glad she didn’t. She looked back down at my arm before patting at her chest pocket to find and put on a pair of glasses. “Well, go ahead and take a seat, I guess.”
I did as I was told and tried to stay still while she pulled down a corner of my shirt.
“How’s the shoulder?” She checked the bandage next to my neck. It probably should have been changed a long time ago, but I did manage to keep it dry. Mostly, anyway.
“Better.”
She put a hand on my chin and turned my head to the side, looking at the bruise around my eye. “Any boyfriends?”
The question left me puzzled until I realized that it must have been a part of Ryan's checkup. I supposed it was in everyone's best interest to go along with his demands, though I preferred not to think about my sexcapades—or lack thereof. I sighed. “A couple.”
“At the same time?”
“No.” I watched a grin spread across her face and she managed to make me smile. I could feel my face putting the unfamiliar muscles to use.
“You look beautiful. You should do that more often.”
I managed another one. It had been a while since I heard all three of those words in the same sentence. Sometimes they’d be accompanied by some sort of awkward sexual tension, but I didn’t think that would be a problem this time around.
She looked at me curiously and I could see the swelled up version of her eyes through her lenses. “Well as far as I’m concerned, whatever you’ve done before isn’t anyone else’s business, but if you want, I can tell them you used to give it away like Christmas.”
I smirked. “No...” Between her and Chris, I was starting to think I had underestimated the amount of good people left in the world. Yet after a brief pause, the smile was gone. It still made me sad to bring up the opposite. “You know what he's doing... don't you?” I had a feeling that I didn't have to mention Ryan by name and I was pretty sure she knew what I was talking about.
She let out a breath and took her glasses off, looking down for a moment before saying anything. When she finally did, her tone was more hopeful than anything I had been expecting. “I've lived in this house my whole life. I've never left this town. I've treated more people here than I can bare to count, including my husband. We watched our daughter walk across these floors and saw her fall in love and start her own family.” She squeezed my hand again, her next words strong with the memories of her past. “I am not going to run.”
I slowly began to put two and two together: the house, her story, the picture on the mantel, the little girl that had found me in the middle of the field and everything else that I had seen her do. I let it out quietly. “Amanda's your granddaughter, isn't she?” I watched as Martha brought her focus back onto my shoulder and she went back to work on my bandage.
“She's the single best thing to ever come out of this place.”
I winced reflexively and my skin started to sting, but her answer wasn't good enough for me.
If that's true, then why aren't you doing anything to help her?
“You're scared...” I refocused on her to see she had stopped moving entirely. “You're scared of what they might do to Amanda even though you know that just by being here she's being hurt every day. So you don't do anything. You're scared that she'll end up like your daughter...”
She let go of me. “My daughter was killed in front of her only child. I pray to God every day that Amanda was too young to remember anything about it. So yes, you're right. I am scared. What else did you have in mind?”
I didn't have an answer. I couldn't have possibly expected anything like that. “I-I'm sorry... I didn't—”
“No...” She thumbed at a spent wrap and stared at it for a moment. “No, it's not your fault. I'm sorry.” Her silence replaced the motion of her hands until she slowly got back to work. “But you're right. This is no place for her, even if she's safe for the time being.” Her eyes fell back onto me. “She asked about you this morning.”
As if I hadn't felt bad enough about Amanda before. Now I had to disarm my way through an emotional mine filled conversation. “How is she?”
“Considering everything that's been going on lately?” She managed a half-cocked grin. “Better. I had half a mind to kill her myself. She wouldn't stop talking about you.”
Me?
The mental image of the quiet kid staring at me with nothing to say begged to differ. “Why?”
“She likes you.”
There's her first problem.
“And she was paranoid that she would accidentally lose this...” Martha reached into a small pocket and pulled out the familiar heart shaped pendant. I could feel my stomach sink like a rock at the sight of it.
“It's beautiful.” Martha held up the necklace. “Was it a gift?”
I shook my head.
More like a curse.
She lifted it up over my head and I instantly flinched and almost smacked her hand away from me, the new wrap on my shoulder already pulled taught from the effort.
“What's wrong?” She looked at me like I was crazy. It was exactly what I was afraid of.
“I just...” I let myself ease back towards her and tried to relax. “Bad memories...” I stared at the chain coiling around itself. It looked more delicate than I had remembered.
Bad memories.
But not my own.
“I'm sorry. If you don't—” Martha started.
“No.” I gently grabbed her hand before she could lower it back down. “It's okay.” I swallowed the knot past my throat. If I was going to go through with being set on fire and forced to relieve someone else's memories again, then I wanted a witness. Who better than Martha?
She reached around my neck and clipped the chains together.
I pressed my nails into the palm of my hands, fully expecting the worst to hit at any moment, but it never came. I looked down at my chest to see the lifeless heart rest against my skin. I tapped it, and still nothing.
Was it broken?
I barely paid Martha any attention as she rummaged through a backpack on the floor. “Do you remember when Amanda found you unconscious back at the camp?”
I didn’t want to, but it would have been impossible to forget.
“You were still moving and muttering something in your sleep, almost like you were having a bad dream. It’s pretty rare, but it's not unheard of for someone to develop hallucinations or paranoia when they’ve been put into a stressful situation.”
Her words stung and left a bitter taste in my mouth. I didn’t know what to say to that. It wouldn’t look good if I had to argue that I wasn’t crazy, to blame it on the necklace that I was wearing peacefully right in front of her, but before I could get anything out, she grabbed my wrist and put a small plastic bag in the palm of my hand.
I looked down to see six small white pills inside. “What's this supposed to—”
“They’re strong depressants. One at a time to take the edge off. Take 'em all and you'd be down after a few minutes. You wouldn’t feel a thing.”
I stared at her, taken back. The thought she proposed had actually never crossed my mind until then.
“Or,” she said, making me hold m
y breath, “It would have to be three per person. Depending on their size, they might not go out, but it’ll definitely slow them down. You’d have a fighting chance.”
Sound couldn’t find its way out of my mouth. That was the last thing I had expected to hear from her. A younger version would probably have been devious enough to kill everyone in a square mile with her bare hands alone.
“You’re too good for this, Jessica. In my line of work, I’ve had to see the good ones come and go over the years, but you shouldn’t have to deal with this.” She grabbed my hand and folded my fingers over the small baggie. “Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you?”
I closed my mouth and nodded as my jaw began to work again. I was going to have a lot to think about. She had given me two different ways out and they both fit in my pocket.
“Amanda’s all I have left...” Her voice trailed off, but the thoughts came across loud and clear. “Just promise me you’ll take care of her if you ever get the chance.”
Roughly hashed out escape plans immediately flung themselves across my mind. There would be so many things to think about and even then the odds would always be stacked against me. Part of me wanted to refuse, to yell at her and tell her she was crazy to think that I could ever save someone else, much less myself, but I didn’t.
“I promise.”
She squeezed my hand one last time before Ryan came back. I couldn’t tell if either of them had said anything after that as I got up to meet him in the doorway, completely oblivious to the sounds around me.
I followed Ryan back through town with neither of us saying anything. I thought there might have been more people out that might have noticed I was new or maybe even recognized me back from the camp, but Ryan wouldn’t let me near any of them, much less have an opportunity to talk. He was my personal body guard and whatever he wanted was the law of the land. It was strange, yet I almost preferred being non-autonomous. I was too busy thinking about what Martha had said to even warn other people of what was really going on.
I told Chris what had happened as soon as I got back to the apartment and showed him the plastic bag in question. Ellie had already left to look into more places that he had wanted her to visit, so I watched him stare at the pills on a table as we sat on either side. I could just make out the faint sounds of construction from outside start up again when he looked back up at me. “You're sure you wanna do this?”
“I’m not gonna kill myself.” It seemed like a harder question to answer before, but I made up my mind as soon as I saw him. If I had been alone for the past few weeks, it might have been a different story, but we were both alive. We had the chance to do something with that, so it made sense to me that we might as well try. I had also promised Sarah that I would keep going no matter what.
“Good.” Chris was a trained fighter. Surrender probably wasn’t even a part of his vocabulary. “Then we’re gonna need a plan.”
I started to get uncomfortable. The last plan I was a part of didn’t end so well. There was also the other part I conveniently forgot to tell him. We would have to go get Amanda.
He shook his head as soon as I told him. “No way. This is already gonna be risky enough as it is. We can’t spend more time that we don’t have looking for someone when we don’t even know where to start. We'll have to come back for her.”
I bit my lip. He made it sound worse when he put it like that. “Then we wait. We'll ask around. We'll spend an extra day or two or until we find her.”
“That’s assuming we get the time and the chance. What if they make you leave tomorrow morning? Even if Ryan took you somewhere again tomorrow, you would only see whatever he’d let you. You said it yourself that he wouldn’t let you out of his sight.”
He was right again. I should have known better than to argue with him. He must of had years of experience planning out missions days, weeks, or even months ahead of time. He probably had it boiled down to a science by now.
I wasn’t ready to give up on Amanda just yet, but we also had a bigger problem. We had drugs we could use to knock someone out, but we didn’t exactly have five star hotel quality room service. People came when they wanted to, sparingly, kept their distance, and for short periods of time. At that rate, our best chance would be to spike one of their drinks on New Year’s Eve.
Chris seemed past that part already. “We’re gonna need supplies: water, food, weapons. The sheriff's office is just a few blocks from here. It would be the easiest place to hold all of that in one area and there would be at least enough for the two of us. The less stops we have to make, the better.”
“Who exactly do you plan on shooting that we need to raid an entire armory?”
He looked at me like I had kicked a baby. “Who don’t you plan on shooting?”
I didn’t want to say that was typical. I just wished that it wasn’t the first thing he automatically thought of. I also didn’t mean to make a face. It was a bad habit and I needed him on my side, but I was sure he still noticed.
“Look,” he said. “It’s not this place I’m worried about, it’s everything after.”
And what about Amanda after?
“Then how come we get to go and the eleven year old girl doesn't? What do you think is gonna happen to her?”
“The world's a shit show, Tess. Life's unfair and we have to deal with it. She has to learn to deal with it. We can't risk looking for her when we barely even know if we can make it out ourselves.”
I kept my mouth shut and crossed my arms. He must have took it as a sign to keep talking.
“I don't know, okay? You tell me. Why the hell is life so unfair?” He held for a moment, his demeanor more curious now than anything else. “And since when do you care about what happens to anyone?”
“I DON'T.”
He stared at me in silence, surprised maybe.
I had mostly kept to myself the whole day we had spent together. I could have come across as self-centered, disinterested or annoyed. I wasn't sure. Now I wanted to keep going. I wanted to explain, but I didn't know how. The words had just come out like a reflex.
Amanda, Martha, Jeremy, Nick, Murphy, Chris, Ellie...
I could remember all their names when I had no damn good reason to. I did care. I cared about what happened to the people around me. It was just easier not to. If I pretended they didn't exist, I wouldn't have to worry about them. If I ran away with Chris and forgot I ever met anyone else, I wouldn't have to think about leaving them behind. I was already feeling guilty before I even did anything and I couldn't understand why I had trouble recognizing it. Since when the hell had it become the norm to not give a shit about anyone but yourself?
I was about to bring it up until we heard a knock come from the hall.
I crammed the pills back into my pocket and we both stared at the door. When nothing happened, I thought maybe Martha had gotten a hold of Amanda and she’d been able to find us. All our problems would have been solved.
I should have known better.
I stood up and watched with wide eyes as Chris slowly made his way towards the peephole when the door flew open abruptly and narrowly missed his face.
A line of men immediately burst into our room and tackled him to the ground.
I tried to move when one of them pushed me against the wall, put a taser to the side of my neck and set it off. My jaw clenched and I shut my eyes in automatic misery as pain crashed itself through every single instance of my body. I was lucky I didn’t bite my tongue off.
When I opened my eyes again, Chris’s head was flush with the floor, his face red with exertion. It had taken four other men to take him down and even then they had trouble keeping him there, but even his super powers weren’t enough for their combined weight. I only looked at the familiar taser in front of my face and willed it to death. I was starting to piece the reasons for the random violence together when the man from the school walked in and stopped in front of us.
“Imagine my surprise,” said Kyle, “When I w
oke up this fine morning to hear one of our prettiest little girls has been blabbering all across town about the bad men at school.”
Ellie.
Her little face flashed in front of my eyes until Kyle reached down for a button on the front of my chest and rolled it in between his fingers.
“It didn’t quite work out so well.”
The meaning slowly sank in and filled my limbs with dread. I couldn't move.
He gave me a curt smile and let go. “So let me explain this to you in a way that you might understand...” He held up a taser in one hand and a hammer in the other. “One of these leaves a mark, the other one doesn’t.” He balanced them. “Well, more or less.” He smiled. “I mean, we can't have our women walking around with black eyes, now can we?”
My insides instantaneously dropped five feet. I knew where this was going and I just wanted to get it over with, but I really didn’t know if I’d be able to handle it.
“You really don’t leave me with another choice.” He kept his eyes on me, then turned to the men on top of Chris. “Get him up.”
“NO!” I tried to claw at him but was held back. I never stopped. Never. I screamed the entire time, crying and cursing him out with every single insult I could possibly imagine, but I never made it past the arms pressing my back against the wall. I watched, helpless, as they picked Chris up and forced him to put his hand on the table in front of me.
They tasered him, beat him, and it still took a fifth person to get him to obey, but they made it happen.
Kyle raised the hammer above his head and waited for me to look. He wanted me to see. It was all for me, after all. “We lost a good one today. Who knows what that means for us down the road, right?” He thought about it. “I think five for one is more than fair.”
The hammer came down on Chris’s hand and his legs buckled underneath the impact. He fought harder than I would have ever been able to, but his face still withered in agony. The hammer came down again, splintering more bones and forcing them to move throughout his hand. The hits were random. They weren’t meant for each finger. They just went wherever Kyle wanted.
