by R. A. Rock
I took off and the guard beside me immediately reached out to grab me, but I twisted away avoiding his grasp.
“Hey,” he called out after me, but not too loud, as if he didn’t want to attract Brett’s attention.
“Stop,” he said, following me but making it pretty obvious that he didn’t want Brett to notice what was going on. He probably didn’t want to be the next one up there having to be beaten up in front of everyone.
“You can’t do that,” he said, as I hit the crowd and began shoving people out of my way with my elbows and shoulders, since my hands were still tied.
I smiled to myself.
I don’t do well with orders. Just ask Chad.
I can’t? Really?
Just watch me.
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAD
I shifted my weight back and forth, flexing my muscles — ready to jump into action if needed. Not that Yumi ever needed me to save her.
Still, I couldn’t help but want to.
Maybe it’s a guy thing.
The sun was heading toward the horizon, though it would still be an hour or two before sunset and I had to squint to keep my eyes on her as she took off through the throng that stood at the edge of his compound. We had all been gathered here, forced to watch Brett beat his unfortunate victim — part of the disgusting way he held power over these people.
Yumi went down almost immediately, tackled by the guard but I waited, mostly unconcerned, because I know how good she is. It’s kind of a turn on to watch her fight. But I pushed those thoughts away. I was not thinking about Yumi like that. Not now. Not today. Maybe not ever again.
I heard the smack of flesh hitting flesh and a grunt from the guard. A few of the people around them, looked down at the struggle but most still had their eyes fixed on the macabre spectacle of Brett beating up a woman who could not fight back.
I held my breath for a moment.
Had he actually stopped her?
A second later, Yumi’s black head — as expected — appeared again in the crowd, moving towards Brett where he had punched the woman again. The woman’s eyes were watering and but she held it together. I wondered who she was.
“Chad, are you sure she should be doing this?” Grace said, shuffling till she was beside me.
“No, I’m not,” I answered quietly, trying to avoid attracting any more attention. “In fact, my idea was to hide her fighting skills till we needed them to escape. Let them think she was harmless, so that they’d be unsuspecting when we broke out.”
“But now…” Grace said, her eyes never leaving Yumi’s dark head as she made her way through the crowd. A few more people had noticed her and were watching her with confused eyes but Brett was so intent on beating the woman that he never even noticed.
And I noticed that no one else tried to stop her.
“Now, the Yumi’s out of the bag.”
“Yeah, well, he’s getting exactly what’s coming to him,” Grace said, her eyes smouldering at the injustice she was witnessing. “We should head up there. We’re probably going to have to make sure she doesn’t outright kill him.”
I nodded, eyes on Yumi.
“You’re right. Let’s go.”
“Should we come?” Shiv put in and Audrey looked inquisitive.
“You guys stay here. Be our backup. Come if you think you’re needed.”
Shiv and Audrey nodded and Grace and I moved as unobtrusively as possible through the crowd.
At the front, Yumi burst out of the wall of people, surprising Brett completely. She lifted her still bound hands and dealt him a brutal strike to the head, making him stagger away from the woman.
“Get out of here,” Yumi said to the woman, who didn’t move but only stared at her as if she couldn’t quite understand what was happening.
It wasn’t surprising. Yumi often has that effect on people.
“I’ll go get her,” Grace said, immediately altering course.
“Try to hide her for a while until he’s cooled down or we’ve figured something out,” I said and she nodded, pushing through the crowd on an angle towards the woman. I continued plowing through the people on a direct course with Yumi and Brett.
Brett swung a big obvious punch at Yumi and she easily ducked. Then he came up with a slow undercut that she spun away from. He was a decent fighter, I would give him that. And the knock to the head she had just given him was probably what was making him so slow. But being a decent fighter was not going cut it with Yumi.
Especially Yumi on a rampage to defend someone.
She whipped a roundhouse kick at him, hitting him in the head. His eyes rolled back for a moment, until he shook his head to clear it.
How does she maintain that level of flexibility when our lives have been so crazy lately, I wondered, elbowing a man in the side to force him to move.
Then I wondered why we all didn’t have guns to our heads right now. The answer was immediately apparent. Nobody liked what Brett was doing — not even his guards, or maybe especially not his guards — so they were letting us put a stop to it.
That was interesting and I filed it away, making a mental note that Brett’s people were not loyal to him.
I finally stepped free of the crowd and watched Yumi beat him up. It couldn’t be called a fight, since she had knocked him stupid with that first kick and was now systematically inflicting pain on him that wouldn’t render him unconscious, nor show the next day.
It was slightly disturbing… but that’s Yumi for you.
You don’t want to get on her bad side.
I ignored the stab of pain in my chest that reminded me I was unlikely to ever get off her bad side after what I had done. But that didn’t matter. And I pushed aside my useless hurt feelings and focused on the matter at hand.
I needed to stop her, before she killed him and we had a riot on our hands. I didn’t think the apathy of these people and their hatred of Brett would actually allow us to kill him.
CHAPTER SIX
CHAD
After about a minute of Yumi kicking the shit out of Brett, I figured it was time to put a stop to this. She was behind Brett, with her tied hands at his neck. She was squeezing the life out of him with her forearms and he was grasping at her hands and making a noise that sounded like help.
At this point, the crowd grew uneasy. I gazed out at the gathering that stood in the open area near the shed they were using as our prison. Many of the people had their hands up in an attempt to shield their eyes from the afternoon sun.
I could almost see the thought process going through their heads.
If they let Yumi kill him, they would be free of him but then they would also have to make decisions for themselves and start doing whatever he was now doing for them — maybe providing them with food and a place to sleep, protection, that sort of thing.
If they didn’t help him soon and he didn’t die, they would all be suffering for a long time.
A heartbeat later, one of the guards came to a decision and stepped forward, putting a gun to Yumi’s back. She stopped moving but I noticed she hadn’t stopped squeezing Brett’s neck.
“Let him go,” the man said and Yumi’s eyes darted to my face as she considered whether or not to listen.
“He was beating this woman for no good reason,” she pointed out.
“I know that. And you need to let him go now,” the man said and pushed the gun harder into her back. She let up a little so that Brett was able to take swift, shallow breaths.
The gun worried me a bit. No doubt the guy was thinking about the repercussions of not helping Brett right away and he might get trigger happy if Yumi pissed him off.
Which was extremely likely.
She was pretty good at pissing people off.
I stepped forward, holding my hands up, twisting against the ropes so that I could put my palms towards him in a gesture of surrender. He let me approach.
“Yumi,” I said quietly.
“What?” she spat at me a
nd I pressed my lips together. She was the only person who could get under my skin. I was a diplomat. Remaining calm was as natural to me as breathing. But not with Yumi. She could always get to me. This time all it took was her tone of voice.
“Please,” was all I said but I saw her shoulders drop immediately and she huffed out her breath, letting Brett go.
He fell to the ground and some of his guards and followers, or whatever they were, moved forward to pick him up and carry him away.
But Yumi stopped them, leaning over the man who honestly looked half dead.
“Hey Brett,” she said and he opened his eyes. “If you ever touch that woman again, or any of my friends…”
She stared into his eyes.
“I will personally hunt you down and kill you… painfully.”
He blinked several times, fear in his eyes.
“Understand?”
He made no movement but started to close his eyes again. Yumi reached her tied hands over and twisted his ear. He whined.
“Do you understand?” she said, again.
He gave one nod. But now he was angry.
Shit. We needed to get out of here.
Now.
We could not be in this camp when he felt better. That would be a really bad scene. In fact…
I moved to Yumi as she stood up.
“Come on,” I hissed, scanning the crowd for Shiv, and Audrey. We needed to escape right now. We would catch up with Grace and the other prisoner later. “We need to get out of here.”
“I don’t think so.” One of our guards held a gun, pointing it at Yumi.
Yumi gave me a look, rolling her eyes.
“Okay, I give up, alright?” she said, holding up her hands as best she could with them tied together. He narrowed his eyes at her.
“I’m tied up,” she said, her eyes innocent. “What harm could I do?”
The guard stared at her and then snorted in amusement. He schooled his features almost immediately again.
“Okay, let’s go,” he said. But I knew she was going to try something. The guard seemed to figure that out as well and instead of holding the gun on her, pointed it at me instead.
“Try anything and he dies,” he said, a smug expression on his face.
Her face fell.
“Okay, okay. I won’t try anything,” she said, and I marvelled that she still was concerned enough about me to care whether the guy shot me or not. Of course, she probably just wanted to kill me herself.
I caught sight of Shiv and Audrey being herded by a couple other guards back into the shed and the four of us were soon sitting on the dirt floor, untied.
“Where’s Grace?” Audrey said as soon as the door shut.
We all looked at each other.
“Are you kidding me?” Shiv said standing up again, his eyes wild. “No one knows where she is?”
Heads shook.
“That was some show you put on out there,” he said to Yumi. “And now Grace is gone? We don’t know where?”
Yumi and I stared at each other in dismay. Grace was my real sister and she was like a sister to Yumi. And Shiv loved her more than he loved physics and that’s saying a lot.
“Jesus,” Shiv said, putting his head in his hands. “We are so fucked.”
I completely agreed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
YUMI
I stumbled and nearly fell on the broken and degrading asphalt of the abandoned highway we were walking on. It was nearly noon and the four of us were on our way to Brett’s prison camp accompanied by way more guards than were strictly necessary for four people.
My hands were bound so tightly behind me that I was losing feeling in my arms. And my feet were tied in makeshift shackles so I had to shuffle. The guards weren’t taking any chances of any of them ending up like Brett yesterday.
Can’t say I blamed them.
One of the guards pushed me, making me almost face plant, as he passed Chad and I. I twisted and landed on my tail bone. Fuck that hurt. He moved past us with a grin, quickly catching up to the guards ahead as I slowly got to my feet again.
They were all pissed at me for getting them in trouble with Brett. They had been rough with me since we left the compound. And I sported a bunch of new bruises and cuts because of it. But I didn’t care. I’d had worse. They couldn’t bother me.
We had heard it whispered through the camp that Brett had been pretty hard on almost everyone after my little attempt to rescue the woman who had disappeared with Grace. Brett hadn’t liked that I had kicked his ass. And he hand’t liked that no one had stopped me. So, they were all taking their frustration out on me. If only I had someone to take my frustration out on.
I began my awkward shuffle again and Chad fell in beside me. He hadn’t left my side since we had heard the gates of Brett’s compound screech shut behind us.
“You okay?” Chad whispered from where he walked beside me with no guard pushing him, his hands bound loosely, and no shackles on his ankles. He was always a bit of golden boy. Everybody liked him. He could sweet-talk himself out of absolutely any situation. Well, except this one.
Right now he was looking at me with concern in his blue eyes and the last thing I needed was his compassion, so I turned up my bitch metre. It was the only thing that would save me if Chad started being nice to me. I couldn’t take sympathy and I would be reduced to a sobbing, snotty-nosed wreck if I let him be kind.
No, I needed to push him away. Hard. So he would understand, I didn’t want his help or his kindness.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, aloud, not giving a shit if the guards could hear. “I’d be better if our escape attempt had actually worked.”
His face clouded over.
“That wasn’t my fault, Yumi, and you know it.”
“You just had to stop and help that old guy? He would have been fine. Thirty more seconds and we would have been out and away. Shiv and Audrey were already gone.”
“Fine?” He shook his head, raising his voice, too, as if he couldn’t help it. “The guy was down on the ground and being kicked by a gang of teenagers. They might have killed him if I hadn’t stopped them.”
It made me nauseated to think of it. And if he hadn’t stopped to kick those kids’ asses, I would have. Still, that wasn’t the point.
“You’re too soft, Chad,” I said, with contempt.
“And you’re too hard, Yumi.”
“Nothing wrong with being tough,” I said, staring down the road. The beautiful fall colours barely penetrated my awareness, so lost in my own misery was I.
“Yeah? Well, you could have left me,” he said, his voice quiet. And I held my breath in shock. “You could have escaped.”
He had a point. Why hadn’t I just fucking left him?
“You’re so tough, why didn’t you just leave me?”
He was challenging me but there was something behind the question. A hope, perhaps, that I had to squash.
The silence stretched and I struggled to find an excuse that he would buy.
“Right,” I said, finding my voice at last. “And have Grace kill me for leaving her precious brother behind. Sure, like that was a possibility.”
I glanced over at him and found him studying me… with disappointment. Good. That was good.
“Of course,” he said. “You did it for Grace.”
“Damn straight.”
Grace. Now there was another problem.
Grace had disappeared with the woman and we hadn’t been able to find out anything about her since. Shiv was going out of his mind with worry and the rest of us weren’t much better.
This was supposed to be a fun experiment. Or at the least, an easy mission. And it was turning into the mother of all fuck-ups.
We had been immediately captured upon arrival by some two-bit warlord and hadn’t been able to escape — a fact that I was deeply ashamed of. Grace had disappeared. And the damn bracelets, as he called them, were somewhere in a safe in Brett’s camp — which we had now l
eft far behind us.
At least, we assumed they were still there and that he hadn’t yet traded them in Wabowden for home-brew.
“Look Chad,” I said, lowering my voice, though the guards were a good fifty feet ahead of us and Shiv and Audrey were now fifty feet behind. “We have got to get away from these guys, find Grace, get the… bracelets… back. And get the hell out of here.”
“I know, Yumi,” he said, clenching his teeth. “I know. It’s all I’ve been thinking about since we got here.”
“So?” I said. “What’s the plan?”
He didn’t answer, just stared down the broken highway, his eyes troubled.
“You do have a plan, right?”
“I do. But it sucks. And it involves you and Audrey…” he stopped, unwilling to finish his sentence.
“Me and Audrey…?” I paused for him to fill in the blank.
He looked like he didn’t want to say it.
“…distracting the guards.”
I raised my eyebrows and then frowned hard.
“Distracting them how?”
He winced.
“With your feminine wiles?”
“Jesus, are you kidding me, Chad? What are you talking about?”
“Look,” he said. “You two distract them when we’re getting water at the next stream. Shiv and I will hit them with rocks and knock them out.”
“Hit them with rocks? Is this the best you’ve got?”
Man, we were in bad shape if that was the best plan Chad could think of.
“We have no weapons, Yumi. There’s more of them than even you can take on at once. The only time they relax a little is when we stop for a drink of water. It’s our only chance to surprise them. Especially if you two do your part.”
“Our part?” I said and narrowed my eyes at him. “Which feminine wiles exactly were you referring to?”
His eyes dropped to my chest and then darted quickly back up to my face.
“What colour is your bra?”
Shit. He couldn’t be serious.
I studied him.
