“Just another pussy,” Barrett said with a neutral voice.
And I wanted to kill him too.
But I didn’t. I didn’t move a muscle. I was too afraid that if they knew I was awake, then they’d stop talking. I wanted to know everything they knew about Rose. Where she was being kept, how they’d been treating her…how they thought she was going to die. Because I wouldn’t let it happen.
“Say, how’s Sam know her? She seemed right torn up after seeing her in the arena.” Here it was, the prying queries following the disarming joyfulness. Patented Stash.
“They’re strangers,” Barrett lied, almost convincingly.
“Didn’t seem like strangers to me,” the older man countered, and I could picture the sly smile on his face and the way he saw through even Barrett’s façade.
“The two met at the airport, stuck together for a while. Like I said, basically strangers.”
“Hmm,” Stash breathed out. “Want a beer?” He changed the subject, and I heard the chair scrape against the hard ground again.
“Yeah, if it’s cold.” Barrett didn’t get up.
I waited calmly, quietly, as Stash’s boots thudded against the floor. The sound grew weaker for a while, and then louder again, until the screeching of him moving the chair announced that he was back at the table.
“Fucking hate this brand,” Stash mumbled. A fizzy pop sound followed, and a sharp clink of a beer cap falling to the table. “It’s shit, but the fucking apocalypse, man. Beggars and choosers and all that.”
“You don’t seem to be having a hard time with it, old man.” Barrett laughed, a long, howling sound to go along with his wolfy nickname.
“Never liked people. Never much cared for shopping and the trappings of suburbia or city life. Bunch of folks dying don’t change my world view any.” Such casual brutality. Let the world die, let it burn, let the entire planet be a landscape of graves, it didn’t matter to Stash.
“Makes it damn hard to do business though,” Barrett grumbled, and I heard the sound of another beer cap popping. “Bet half my fucking buyers are dead.”
“Or undead. Maybe you can sell to them. Zombies on cocaine might be damned interesting.”
Both men were quiet for a moment, and then their dual laughs shouted out into the stratosphere, a concussive explosion of criminal minds in sync.
Stash was still chuckling when he tried to bring the conversation back around to Rose.
“So, they’re really not close then? Sam and the Brit?”
“No,” Barrett said sharply, his laughter ending abruptly.
But this time Stash didn’t heed the warning. He continued to press like he hadn’t heard the response.
“Sure seems like they were close. Like family almost.” Stash paused, maybe took a sip of beer. “Hey, did you tell Sam that Rose was here? I mean, hell, you’d have seen her in Nathan’s office early on, right?”
“I didn’t.” Two clipped words, and a warning between them.
“You didn’t tell her or you didn’t see her at Nathan’s?” Stash was pushing his luck, even I knew that, but he didn’t seem to care. Not this time.
“Why the fuck you want to know?”
“Just curious if your woman is going to raise shit tomorrow. Nathan’s not going to back down. And Charlie’s not going to let her off the hook. Not now.”
“What do you mean?” Barrett’s voice held less of the edge now, and there was a thread of… almost worry running through his words.
“That girl, barely a damn woman, challenged Nathan to a fight. Ain’t no coming back from that. Tiny girl like her? Won’t last one fucking round.”
At this revelation from Stash, I couldn’t take it anymore. I could no longer pretend to be asleep. Despite the god-awful pain in my head, I sat up and tried to blink away the brain-spinning ache.
“Did you know, Barrett?” It wasn’t the question I wanted to ask first… I wanted to know about the fight. I needed to know when it was, and how I could stop it. But my mouth had other ideas. Or maybe it was my heart… Did he know she was here already? Had he seen her, seen her in pain, and done nothing?
Had he kept Rose from me?
Barrett and Stash turned to look at me. Stash’s lips were upturned slightly, a glint in his gaze as he watched me and waited for a new show to unfold. Barrett’s face was stern, eyes empty pools of fucking nothingness.
“Barrett,” I said his name again, a hand over my chest now as a dull ache in the center of my body joined the pain in my head. “Did you know Rose was here?”
He stood and walked nearer to me. His giant frame cast a long shadow as he hovered over me. Maybe he did it to intimidate me, but he blocked out some of the brightness of the lights above, so instead of scaring me, he helped me. I blinked slower now, staring up at him and ready to unleash the hungry beast inside of me if need be.
“Did. You. Know.” I didn’t make it a question this time. I punctuated each word, forcing them out between my teeth like so much brittle glass. I already knew the answer. His silence had given me everything I needed, but I was still chewing on the broken idea that Barrett was on my side. I’d given him my body…given him my trust when I knew, down in my soul, that I shouldn’t have.
I shouldn’t have been surprised.
I should have been prepared.
“Yes.” The one word falling from his lips was a shotgun shell exploding. A thousand pieces of shrapnel slammed into my body.
He’d known.
“You fucking knew.” I sat there for a minute, my body feeling like a blank canvas as I processed what I’d already known, but now had to face because the wall was gone. The truth was out there, exposed and raw. I couldn’t throw a blanket over it and pretend it didn’t exist anymore.
I stood up shaking, hands fisted at my sides. Though my head still hurt like a motherfucker, that was a backdrop to the rage ricocheting through every part of me. I welcomed the way my vision started to go pink, welcomed the way the inferno built in my stomach and warmed through my veins until my fingers felt like matchsticks. I would kill him for doing this. For letting her go through…whatever horrors she’d gone through. And then I’d kill Stash. Tear them both limb from limb and devour them whole. My mouth began to water at the thought.
“What in the ever-lovin’ fuck…” Stash’s voice, though I recognized it, was a soft whisper against the backdrop of the beast being unleashed.
“You might want to leave,” Barrett growled, turning to glance at Stash behind him.
“My damn building,” the older man protested.
“Barrett.” I spoke softly, which surprised me. “Look at me.”
Monsters should be loud and frightening.
They should be so fucking scary that you piss your pants right then and there.
They hide in closets.
Under beds.
They thrive in darkness.
But I was starting to understand now…
Monsters can be beautiful things too.
Disarming.
They can trick you with their good looks, like Nathan.
They can lull you into comfort with their pretty words, like Stash.
Or they could pretend that they were your protector, just like Barrett.
Sometimes the prettiest faces hide the ugliest secrets.
And sometimes the most horrendous things happen beneath the brightest lights.
I blinked, focusing, the world gone crimson.
Barrett was staring at me. Stash was moving behind him, a length of rope in his hands.
I let the demon loose, to do whatever she wanted. I was a passenger.
Lunging for Barrett, I extended my hands toward his face. My nails were long, filthy, cracked. I drove them into his forehead and dragged them down the sides of his face until his large hands found my waist and he pushed me roughly away.
I rocked backwards, faster reflexes than I’d ever had and a dancer’s memory helping me keep my balance with little trouble. My fingers were
still hooked claws, arms extended toward Barrett as my gaze roved wildly. I seemed to process everything faster in beast mode, everything blood-red and gnarly. Stash was out of sight, along with the rope he’d been holding.
I backed away from Barrett and turned quickly to the side to find Stash behind me. He was closing in, rope knotted into a makeshift lasso now.
“Calm down, girl. Ain’t nobody want to hurt you.” He wasn’t smiling as he spoke, his hands handling the rope with care. He had experience, I realized. Roping cattle maybe. Or maybe wrangling the dead.
A sound like a mountain lion worked its way up my throat as my anger grew. It was feral as it exited my mouth. It was inhuman. I was inhuman. I forced myself to stop and think. I couldn’t win this fight. I knew that. But the monster inside would rather die, right here and now, than back down. I swallowed, my mouth acidic.
“Stay the fuck away from me,” I growled, the monster still above the surface, mouth spitting out water, gasping to regain total control.
I felt movement and I turned my attention to Barrett.
He was fast, faster even than I was while flush with monstrous abilities. His face now bore long, bleeding scratches. Wet redness was dripping from his jawline to seep into the collar of his shirt. He grabbed me before I could stop him and pulled me in to his body, my back to his chest. I fought; kicking and roaring to be free like I was a wild animal. And in a way, I was.
“Calm the fuck down, Sam. Calm the fuck down or I’m going to kill you right here and now. Don’t think that I won’t! You’ll never have a chance to see Rose again. You’ll just be fucking dead. Real dead this time.”
I flailed against him, but his words found their mark. They drilled into my psyche until the rational remnants of my mind were reached.
I would die.
Now.
I’d never see Rose again.
I’d never have the chance to save her.
I needed to calm down.
I screamed, a full-body yell that rocked my balance and tried to send me falling limply toward the floor. But Barrett’s strong grip kept me upright. Stash was staring at us, unused rope in his grip. He knew there was something wrong with me now. It wasn’t just a suspicion after seeing the pink in my eyes.
“Barrett?” The older man breathed out the name.
“I’ll tell you later. But for right now, Stash, do me a goddamn solid and leave us alone.”
I half expected Stash to say “my building,” but he wasn’t a fundamentally stupid man. He didn’t press his luck this time. I think if he had, the lone wolf might have finally bitten him.
When Stash was gone and I had calmed somewhat—my breathing less erratic and some of the crimson flushing from my vision—Barrett finally released me.
Everything was still hazy and a shade of blush, but the monster was whispering inside of me instead of shouting now. Taunting me. Warning me.
“You should have told me,” I finally said, voice quavering.
“Not telling you was the right decision. You’d have done something stupid.”
“Don’t act like you were protecting me.” I glared at him. “You did it for you, Barrett. Period.”
We lapsed into silence then.
He knew I was right and he knew that there was no winning this round. No talking me down. I’d seen his true colors, and I didn’t like them. And now, he had seen mine. Yet something told me that my true colors, my monster, was what kept him from killing me. That the thing inside of me was what he found the most alluring of all. Not the human woman. Not the dancer.
I didn’t know what he was thinking about as he moved back to the table and sat down to nurse his now-warm beer and the red scratches down his face.
But I only had one thing on my mind.
Rose.
And how I was going to save her.
Chapter Seven.
Rose
“Wash and eat up,” Sandra said coldly as she led me into a small room without giving me a second glance.
Guilt bloomed in my stomach, though why, I didn’t know. I’d only sentenced myself to death, not anyone else, so her coldness towards me seemed unfounded.
“Thanks,” I said, taking in my crappy surroundings.
The room I’d been led to was small and sparse, with a small bed made from wooden pallets and blankets and a wooden table with a bowl of water on one end and a plate of food on the other. Still, it was better than Nathan’s cage. Anything was better than Nathan’s cage; even dying at his hand.
“Wow, no expenses spared for me, huh?” I turned back to her with a sad smile. I was trying to stay upbeat when in reality I felt anything but.
Sandra frowned, her gaze not quite hitting mine. “This is where…this is where the women who don’t behave go,” she replied frostily. “It’s not meant to be nice, it’s meant to teach you to behave—though that seems pointless now.”
I snorted on a laugh because she was right. I was a naughty girl and now I was about to die. I searched inside of myself for regret at what I was doing but found that there still wasn’t any. Was I having a breakdown? Surely you should be afraid of dying. And Nathan had already told me it was going to be bloody and brutal, so there was no thinking that I was going to get an easy out and be killed off with a quick blow to the back of the head.
They’d make it last. They’d make it hurt.
So why wasn’t I consumed by fear?
A thought crossed my mind that I hadn’t considered before, and then I did feel something other than acceptance, because I realized that they would probably keep me as one of their undead. Maybe I’d even be brought in and put in one of those cages before being released into the arena to kill people. Living, breathing people. Something I wouldn’t be anymore. I’d just be a monstrous thing, controlled by hunger.
After everything, they would still make me kill innocent people, and there was nothing I could do about that.
Sandra headed to the door, her footsteps hollow on the cold concrete, but nowhere near as hollow as I currently felt.
“Wait, please,” I urged, taking a step forward.
Sandra flinched back from me and I couldn’t help but be hurt by the rejection.
I held up my hands in defense. “I’m sorry, I just…I just need a friend right now.”
She looked behind her and then back to me. “I can’t talk to you, Rose,” she whispered as she tucked a loose piece of hair behind her ear. “Not if I want to stay alive, and I’ve done too much that the old me would have hated for me to die now. I’m so sorry.” She backed out of the room and closed the door behind her, and I listened to the slide of the lock across the door.
“Haven’t we all,” I muttered as I stared at the metal door and gave a wistful sigh.
Voices and footsteps sounded out from the other side of it, but after several minutes it was apparent that no one else was coming in for a friendly—or not so friendly—chat, so I turned around and looked at my room in dismay.
Sweat was clinging to every part of my body, so I headed to the little table and stripped out of the tarty clothes I was wearing and washed myself down with my bare hand and the cold water as quickly as possible before having to put the hateful clothes back on. God, what I would have given for my denim dungarees and a pair of trainers now.
The food was nothing more than a dry cereal bar and a handful of nuts that had seen better days, but I ate all of it quickly and without thinking about it too much, and then I drank the murky-looking glass of water that had been left, figuring that beggars couldn’t be choosers and I needed all my energy for tomorrow.
Not that having extra energy was going to help me at all.
I was dead.
D. E. A. D.
There was just no other way to think about it.
I waited for the terror to grip me and steal my breath away, but I could wait all day because I knew it wasn’t coming. The only thing that frightened me was becoming one of the undead.
I sat on the edge of the DIY bed and put
my head in my hands, the thought of becoming a monster terrorizing my soul. Maybe I wouldn’t turn into one of them, I decided. Maybe I would be like Sam and I would become something else. Something stronger and better.
Better, I wondered.
Was it better being what Sam was?
My thoughts were getting muddled, and despite knowing what was coming, I lay back on the bed and closed my eyes. A headache was building, the slow throb and pulse of pain behind my closed lids.
Maybe I would die in my sleep. Maybe, if I prayed hard enough, I would close my eyes and never open them again. No fight. No zombies. Just nothing.
*
I woke to the sound of the lock sliding across the door, the metal-upon-metal sound as it grinded across the rusty lock startling me and making me sit upright within seconds. My thoughts were still blurry and I rubbed at my tired eyes as Barrett came in with Nolan.
Standing up, I ran to both of them, throwing myself at Nolan and simultaneously pushing Barrett away.
“If that’s all the fuckin’ thanks I get, I shouldn’t have bothered,” Barrett drawled, not looking the least bit offended.
“You’re lucky I haven’t punched you in the face!” I shouted back.
Nolan was leaning heavily on me, though I could tell he was trying not to. His arm fell over my shoulder and we stumbled towards my bed, where I laid him down. I knelt beside him, my hand moving over his bloody features.
He looked exhausted and broken, like a man half dead and more than willing to go the full distance to the other side. I glared back at Barrett.
“Why is he here?” I said between gritted teeth. Nolan and Sam should have been miles from here by now, making their escape from this hellhole and these people.
I stood up, moving quickly to the cold bowl of water that I’d used earlier and bringing it to his side. I tore a strip of material from the ratty bedsheet and began wiping down his bloody face to reveal the cuts and bruises underneath. It wasn’t exactly sanitary but it was better than nothing.
Red Eye | Season 3 | Episode 2 Page 6