No, not stopped—it just couldn’t go any farther.
And it wasn’t an “it,” but a man. A dirty, foul-smelling man wearing nothing but tattered boxers. His arms were extended, blackened and crooked nails trying to (strangle) reach for her even as pale gray eyes (Gray, not lifeless black pits like a ghoul’s) bulged against their sockets.
Jesus. What kind of hell have I fallen into?
The man strained against the chain connected to the choker around his throat and growled at her like a rabid dog. He pulled at his restraints, but the chain wouldn’t budge, and it wasn’t going to no matter how hard or often he jerked on it. The iron links snaked out of a concrete block buried in the dirt floor behind him. It was unbreakable.
God, I hope it’s unbreakable.
Blood. There was so much blood. It was in the air, mingling with sweat and desperation, and settled on the tip of her tongue. It was all she could do to start breathing through her mouth so she wouldn’t choke on the stench.
There was old dried blood along the man’s neck, trickles of it originating from the gashes in his skin from all the straining he had done against the round metal cuff that was about an inch high. If that caused him any amount of pain, he didn’t show it as he attempted to reach her. The man wasn’t a ghoul, but he could have passed for one easily.
Gaby wasn’t sure what to do next. The man (even though he barely looked like one) was making noises, but not loud enough to alarm her. Not yet, anyway. But if he started screaming, what was she going to do? She couldn’t shoot to silence him, because that would bring everyone to the shack even faster.
And yet, if he opened his mouth and did more than just make guttural sounds…
If she didn’t recognize the hints of humanity in his eyes, she wouldn’t have known he wasn’t an undead creature. He was painfully thin, his skin desiccated even with just the half dozen or so thin streams of moonlight coming through holes in the ceiling for her to see with.
Five feet of tainted space separated them, but only two feet from where his bony fingers ended and her face began. It was close enough for her to be absolutely 100 percent certain he was very much still (barely) human. There were scars all along his body—his arms and legs, thighs and chest, as if he had been flogged regularly, allowed to heal, then tortured again. His hair went all the way down to his shoulders and were covered in dirt and leaves, and she thought she might have seen something moving in them.
You’re imagining things.
It wasn’t just the figure in the shack with her that gave off a merciless stench. The entire room did. There were scraps of food around her feet, some half-buried in the dirt. It took a few seconds before she understood why that was—because the prisoner couldn’t get to them.
There were remnants of old blood splatters and other liquids along all four walls. Something (somethings) was stuck on the ceiling above her, but she looked away before she could be sure what they were. She didn’t want to know.
She lowered her gun and took another step back, and the man suddenly stopped fighting his chains. Something that might have been resignation flashed across his pockmarked and bearded face as he simply stood there with his arms at his sides, watching her back. His restraints sagged behind him, the chain links jingling before going quiet on the filthy floor.
Gaby stared back at it, unable to look away.
This is wrong. This is so very wrong.
She finally found the strength to turn around and face the door. Anything to look away from those dead gray eyes.
There was a security window at the top of the door that she hadn’t seen from the other side because it was covered with a stained curtain. She brushed it slightly aside now and peered out, just as two figures dashed across the shack and disappeared out of view. They were heading in the direction of the perimeter fence, somewhere behind her, responding to the gunfire she had heard earlier. Only some people, though, and not everyone, if the still-dark windows along most of the buildings that she could see were any indication.
Clank-clank as the chains moved against the ground behind her.
Gaby looked back, alarmed. But there was no need to: the prisoner had returned to the back of the shack, where he remained standing. She could just barely make out his rail-thin outline, and she might have thought she was looking at a skeleton display in a science lab if she didn’t know any better.
Jesus, this is so wrong.
She took a step back toward him and the prisoner (and that was what he was, she was sure of it now) followed her movement with his eyes. Not that she could actually make out the gray pupils anymore, but she could feel them on her.
“Who are you?” Gaby asked. “What is this place?”
He didn’t answer her, and she wondered if he even could. After all, the only sounds he’d managed since she came inside was the animal-like growl. She didn’t think the choker was keeping him from talking. It didn’t look tight enough to constrict his voice or harm him unless he struggled against it. The blood and scars along his neck were evidence that he had done plenty of that in the past.
“Who are you?” Gaby asked again. “Why did they put you in here?”
There was no response, but she continued to feel his eyes on her.
“What is this place?”
Nothing.
“Are you being punished?”
Still nothing. He hadn’t moved since retreating, and she wasn’t entirely sure he was even breathing, but of course he had to be, because he was still alive. He was still human.
Well, mostly.
“What is this building?” she asked. “Why are they keeping you in here? What did you do?”
Silence. Stillness.
Are you sure he’s actually breathing?
“Who are you?”
Nothing.
“Why are you in here?”
A clink as a part of his chain moved in the darkness.
“Why are they punishing you?”
Those eyes, watching her back…
“Do you even understand me?”
If he did, he didn’t answer.
I’m talking to a dead man. He might still be technically alive, but he might as well be dead.
She was turning back to the door when a voice said, “You’re going to die.”
Gaby looked back at the prisoner. He hadn’t left the shadowed part of the shack, but it was he who had spoken. Who else could it be? His voice was whispery and pained, as if every word took a great deal of effort. She might not even have heard him if it wasn’t so quiet.
“What?” Gaby said. “What did you say?”
“You’re going to die,” he said.
She took a step toward him again, to get a better look at his face. “Why? Why am I going to die?”
“You shouldn’t have come here,” he said, his voice seeming to grow louder, like he was gaining strength with every word—or remembering how to talk again.
“Here? Fenton? You’re talking about Fenton?”
“Yes…”
“Who are you?”
“You’re going to die.”
“Yeah, we already covered that.” Gaby stopped at the same spot where she’d been when he first tried—but failed—to reach her. She was using an old, dry piece of bread as a marker. “Who are you? Why did they put you in here? What did you do?”
“You’re going to die,” the man whispered.
“Do you have a name?”
“You’re going to die…”
“Yeah, yeah, I heard—”
He lunged at her, but she was ready for it and took a quick step back.
Like before, the chains pulled taut, and his fingers came two feet short of reaching her neck. His eyes bulged, his face contorted into something that was more animal than man.
“You’re going to die!” he said, and he had nearly shouted the words out that time. No, not really a shout, but it had been loud enough to concern her. “You’re—”
She punched him in the face with a balled
right fist before he could finish his sentence. There was the very loud crunch of his nose breaking, and blood sprayed the shack. The prisoner stumbled back into the shadows, his chains jingling loudly behind him, then louder still when he fell to the floor on his butt and seemed to lie down on his side.
Gaby wiped her bloodied knuckles on her pant legs and listened to his labored breathing. She ignored the sudden pangs of guilt and turned back to the door and peered out from behind the curtain again.
Besides, what was punching a barely-standing man inside a shack after the last twenty-four hours? Seducing and then stabbing a man in the brain with his own knife, abandoning Reese, and most painful of all, losing her entire team in Kohl’s Port…
So stop thinking about it!
The activity outside had wound down, so whatever had happened at the fence that caused all the alarm must have been dealt with. The building she’d run into the shack to escape earlier was completely dark again. The fact that the entire town—or this section of it, anyway—hadn’t woken up when someone opened fire with a fully automatic rifle likely meant it wasn’t an unusual occurrence.
They’re used to it. That’s the only explanation.
She looked over her shoulder back at the prisoner, but he hadn’t moved from the floor. One of his legs—the feet was covered in scars and old, dried blood, the skin a ghoulish tan brown color—stuck out of the shadows like a forgotten appendage. The big toe might have been…chewed on.
Gaby quickly glanced back out the shack and focused on the world outside. It was a lot easier than facing that thing back there.
How the hell was she going to get out of Fenton? How long did she even have before they discovered she was missing? Were the guards never going to check on her? She should have been happy, but the lack of response worried her.
You’re just being paranoid.
Maybe, but she couldn’t help herself. It didn’t make any sense that her guards wouldn’t check in on her at least once during the night, because if they had, they would have already discovered Bruce’s body in her stall.
And yet, there was nothing. No loud sirens (assuming Fenton had sirens) or a search party hunting her down.
Stop it. You’re just being paranoid.
She sighed and thought, Say it one more time, and you might finally believe it.
“You’re going to die,” a voice whispered behind her.
Gaby turned around and looked at the prisoner.
He hadn’t gotten off the floor and didn’t seem to have moved at all—if he was even still capable—since the last time she looked, but like before, she thought she could feel his eyes on her.
“You’ll never leave Fenton alive,” the man said, the words coming out between every wheezing breath. “No one does. No one ever does…”
“You’ll never leave Fenton alive. No one does. No one ever does…”
She had tried to ask him what he meant, but he wouldn’t answer. He’d just repeated the same thing:
“You’re going to die.”
Then he stopped talking completely.
The only reason she knew he hadn’t died on her was because she could still hear his terrible wheezing. He might have gone to sleep or just decided to save his strength. She couldn’t see enough of his body except for that awful and scarred foot of his to tell either way, and didn’t want to lean any closer to find out.
Gaby sat on the floor in the corner of the shack next to the door instead. She had the SIG Sauer in her hands, but besides listening to the prisoner struggling for every breath and the absolute silence outside the building, there was nothing else to do. At least, nothing that she could think of.
I have to get out of this place.
But that was easier said than done. How was she going to get past a ten-foot fence with barbed wire? Maybe she could try swimming her way out. There would be land on the other side of the lake. But how far away? She knew someone who was a great swimmer, but it had never occurred to Gaby to ask him for some lessons.
So much for that idea.
She glanced at her watch instead.
It seemed like a lifetime ago, but it hadn’t even been an hour since she escaped from the stables. The guards should have been back by now, so why wasn’t anyone out there searching for her? Were Buck’s men really that bad at their jobs?
“Like I said, it’s a shit job. They think you’re just some yahoo causing trouble. No big deal.”
Maybe Bruce was telling the truth. Why would a couple of put-upon guys care about a “no big deal” prisoner? Or care enough to check in on her even though everything looked fine and all the doors were still locked?
She told herself to take it as a win, because the other choice was to torture herself with the why nots all night long.
Gaby closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the hard wood and tried, again, to envision some way out of Fenton.
The fence? No. She couldn’t cut it, and spending time out there looking for a weakness—maybe a literal opening that someone had left behind—would take too much time. And she didn’t have that, not with the constant patrols along the perimeter.
The marina? The same problem. Too many guards, and there was that big island nearby, not to mention the guns on the guard towers. Even if she could steal a boat, one spotlight and she was a goner.
And swimming across the lake…
You’re not that good of a swimmer. Give that stupid idea up.
So where did that leave her?
Somewhere between Jack and shit, and Jack had left for the hills.
She must have dozed off.
She wasn’t sure when it happened or for how long, but when she opened her eyes, she heard voices outside the shack.
“I told you,” someone was saying. It was a woman.
“It wasn’t like that before?” someone else asked. A man.
“Not the last time I checked.”
“You sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. You know what’s in there?”
The way the woman had said it (“You know what’s in there?”) made Gaby glance into the back of the small room at the sleeping figure. And this time she was certain he was sleeping and not dead, because the sound of his horrendously pained breathing had slowed down to a mild wheeze.
Gaby calmly slid up the length of the wall. She flexed her fingers around the SIG Sauer in her hand and slowed down her breathing.
The two people were somewhere to her right, probably in front of the door. They had gone quiet since the brief back and forth that had woken her up.
One second turned to five, before the lever moved and the door began opening.
Slowly, impossibly slowly.
A splash of moonlight washed through the door first, followed by the elongated shadow of a figure standing outside. Gaby stopped breathing entirely and lifted the gun and pointed it at the spot where an average man’s head would be when the owner stepped through the opening door next to her.
It took another painful five seconds before the steel toe of a boot stepped into the shack, followed by black pant legs. The man (and she was sure it was a man by the outline) didn’t get more than a step into the shack when he took his hand off the door, leaving it open in front of Gaby, and at the same time shielding her from his peripheral vision. It also meant she couldn’t shoot him without first stepping out of the corner because the angle of the door made keeping her gun aimed at the man’s head impossible, and she was forced to lower her arm or get hit by the door.
The owners of the voices didn’t completely step inside the shack, though by the way their shadows fell across the dirt floor, she knew they were looking at the prisoner. It was impossible not to see him back there, where the moonlight didn’t reach. If they couldn’t see him, they would have no problems hearing him struggling to breathe.
“Jesus, it smells,” the man said. “What is that smell?”
Smell? Gaby thought. Right. The smell.
She didn’t know when she had gotten use
d to the stench, but as soon as the man mentioned it, suddenly it was back. She almost gagged and had to pull the top part of her shirt over her mouth and nostrils to spare herself.
“Is he still alive?” the woman was asking.
“I can hear him breathing,” the man said.
“Are you sure?”
“I think so.”
“Is that blood?”
“Yeah. It’s everywhere. So?”
“No, look. That looks fresh…”
A brief moment of silence as the two figures peered into the shack.
“We should probably make sure,” the woman said. “Just in case they ask us when we report in.”
“We’re reporting this?” the man asked.
“Someone broke the lock. We should definitely report in.”
“Why?”
“You know who that is, right? What he did to end up in here? How many people want him dead?”
“Right, right…” Another moment of silence. Then, “Cover me.”
“Careful…”
The man stepped forward and into the shack. He had brought out some kind of metal baton, and he flicked it to extend the object out to its full length as he moved toward the prisoner. His rifle was slung over his shoulder, and he only had eyes for the black lump on the floor at the back of the shack.
That’s right. Keep looking at him. Just keep looking at him…
“Careful,” the woman said again. She was still somewhere outside the shack.
The man stopped to look back at her. “Just watch your fire.”
“I’m a better shot than you.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Gaby was looking at where the guard was standing and she thought, You’re too close. You’re way too close—
She hadn’t finished the thought when a hand snaked out of the darkness and grabbed the man’s ankle, bony fingers wrapping around his pant leg in a viselike grip.
“Rick!” the woman gasped and stepped inside the shack, even as another hand grabbed her partner’s other leg and pulled him down.
The male guard’s head and rifle simultaneously slammed against the dirt floor, the thump! so loud that Gaby actually winced. The prisoner was already scrambling out of the shadows and over Rick, moving impossibly fast for something so skeletal and malnourished. The chains jangled wildly as he climbed over his victim, the links banging against Rick’s thrashing legs.
Road To Babylon Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 40
