by Lukens, Mark
A ripper bounced off the fence, screaming after being shocked. More were coming.
Kate wondered if the rippers could short out the car batteries hooked up to the fence if enough of them grabbed onto the fence.
“Max, we need to go.”
Max set the phone down on the pavement and grabbed the small cloth sack from the box. He opened it with shaking fingers and shined his flashlight down inside, his face going slack with horror. “Oh God . . . no.”
“Max, we need to go.”
Max wasn’t listening.
Another ripper hit the fence, screaming after he bounced off it.
Kate got to her feet.
Max shoved the sack and the phone back into the wood box and closed it, picked it up, and fell in beside Kate, both of them running back to the doorway at the back of the store.
CHAPTER 38
Kate
“Look what they did to her,” Max raged when they were back inside the loading bay of the store.
Kate and Max had run back to the door as more and more rippers ran down along the fence line, screaming and yelling, throwing rocks and sticks. Tina and Fernando had joined them halfway to the open back door. Jo waited at the doorway, opening the door wide so all four of them could get inside the store.
Dozens more rippers ran out from the woods, a few grabbing onto the chain-link fence and shocking themselves. Kate wondered again how long the car batteries were going to last.
Jo backed out of the doorway so Max could rush inside first; he seemed oblivious to the rippers outside, fixated on getting the wooden box safely inside. Kate followed him inside, then Tina, and then Fernando. Jo closed the metal door and locked it.
Kate could still hear the rippers outside. They were worked up. They were starving, getting more and more desperate for food each day.
Max went to the middle of the loading bay and practically collapsed down on the floor, cradling the wooden box in his hands, setting it down so gently on the concrete, opening the lid and pulling the cell phone out.
Kate, Jo, Tina, Fernando, and the doctor huddled around him.
“What is it?” Jo asked. “A cell phone?”
“A video on the phone,” Kate told her. “A video of Petra.”
“A video?” Jo asked, like the idea of a video was suddenly science-fiction technology. “What’s she doing on the video?”
Kate gave a small shrug. “I don’t know. I haven’t had time to watch it.”
“They’ve got her,” Max said, still watching the phone’s screen. “The Dragon’s got her.”
“Are they . . . are they demanding something?” Jo asked, but it seemed like she already knew the answer as soon as she asked the question.
“There’s something else in the box,” Kate said.
“What?” Jo asked.
Kate looked at Max. “Max? You need to open the cloth sack in there. Show us what it is.”
Max set the phone down and pulled out the cloth. He laid the cloth open, revealing four severed fingers.
“Oh shit,” Fernando whispered.
“Her fingers,” Max said. “They cut off her fingers.” There were tears in his eyes. “And they’re going to do more.”
*
Fifteen minutes later they had all watched the video on the cell phone. The battery on the phone was getting low and Max wanted to turn the phone off to save the battery. The footage hadn’t been that long, only one minute and forty-two seconds. The footage was a little shaky, someone holding the phone in a dining room inside a house, moving closer to Petra who sat at one end of a table with a bowl of soup and plate of crackers in front of her. But Petra wasn’t eating.
A guard of some kind stood just beyond Petra, standing sentry in a corner, ramrod straight, eyes staring straight ahead, pistol at his side. Someone was talking to Petra off screen, someone with a deep and smooth voice, a lilting southern accent.
The Dragon.
But the camera never panned over to the other end of the table where the Dragon sat. Petra only looked at the phone once, only speaking once right at the beginning of the video: “What are you doing? Filming me?”
The footage in the dining room stopped, and then a man’s face filled the screen a second later, a mean face with an evil smile and cold eyes. He wasn’t the Dragon; it wasn’t the same voice. But he warned that bad things were going to continue happening to Petra if they didn’t voluntarily vacate the store. He said they could even take a pack of food and water with each of them.
“She has all of her fingers in the video,” Kate told Max.
“It might have been taken before they . . .” He let his words die away, unable to finish his sentence. “He’s using her as bait. Trying to get us to leave. Just like he did with Lance, Crystal, and Dale.”
Kate remembered how that had worked out.
“You don’t know that they’ve hurt her,” Kate said. “You don’t know for sure those are her fingers.”
Max didn’t answer.
The fingers seemed to be a woman’s fingers, but Kate continued: “They could be anyone’s fingers. Maybe fingers taken from a dead person or a ripper. Or some other prisoner.”
Jo sighed heavily like she was about to deliver some bad news. “We can’t give them this store.”
Max turned to Jo, his eyes already glowering with rage. “I can’t lose her.”
“And I can’t lose everyone here,” Jo snapped, matching the ferocity of his stare.
“I think all of us need to rest,” Kate said. She touched Max’s arm, forcing his attention away from Jo and onto her. “I need to check on Brooke. Will you come with me?”
Max stared at her for a moment, the anger draining out of him suddenly. Now he looked exhausted, ready to collapse where he stood. His eyes were a soft, gentle brown again. He nodded without a word and got to his feet.
Kate left with Max. She felt Jo’s eyes on them as they walked away, Fernando and Tina’s eyes too. In the silence the rippers could still be heard outside the loading bay’s walls, somewhere out there beyond the fence.
Brooke and Tiger were outside the tent when Kate and Max walked up, the cat in her lap, purring and content. Brooke had her drawing tablet on the floor beside her, a pencil on top of it, a battery-powered lantern beside her. Rebecca and Patrick, the young boy she took care of, were a few tents down. Maybe the close proximity of others near the collection of tents made Brooke feel a little more comfortable, but she still looked scared.
“You okay?” Kate asked her.
“Where did you go? Did you go outside?”
For a moment Kate thought about lying to Brooke; it was a natural reaction to try to shield her from any more horrors than she needed to endure, but maybe lying to her wasn’t the best option. Brooke had seen enough horrors already, that was true, but she was going to see many more in the future. They all were. A chill ran through Kate as she thought about the wooden box that the drone had dropped off. What if it had been a bomb? She would be dead or dying right now. Max too. Brooke would be alone after that, on her own again. Of course Jo would be here. And the doc, Fernando, Tina, and the others, but Brooke would be traumatized again, starting over with new people who she would have to learn to trust, until those people died or got sick or were eaten by rippers, then it all started over again.
Kate shut off those thoughts. What good would it do to lie to Brooke? She would see right through it.
“There was a box delivered by a drone. You know what a drone is, right?”
Brooke nodded.
“The box had a cell phone inside with a video on it. Petra is on the video. The Dragon has her.”
This wasn’t news to Brooke, she already knew that, she’d seen it in her dreams, drawn it in her tablet.
“You didn’t see anything else in your dreams?” Max asked Brooke.
Brooke shook her head, glancing down for a moment like she’d done something wrong and was being scolded. “I don’t remember the dreams. When I dream . . . it’s like . . . like I don’t see
anything.”
“Like your mind is blank?” Kate asked.
Brooke looked at Kate, a little life back in her blue eyes, the hint of a smile at one corner of her mouth. She nodded. “Yeah. Blank.”
“Like you’re zoning out,” Kate said.
“But you’re still remembering images from your dreams,” Max insisted.
Brooke shrugged.
Max gave up. “Well, if you remember anything from your dreams, anything about Petra or the Dragon, you’ll tell us, right? Petra needs our help. The Dragon has her, but we don’t know where they are.”
Brooke stared at Max and nodded. Tiger got up and sauntered over to his food bowl to nibble on the hard food.
“You should try to get a few hours of rest,” Kate told Max. “Maybe something will come to you in your dreams.”
“Like Hell Town?” he asked.
“Yeah, like Hell Town.”
“I’m sure that’s where they are. We just don’t know where the town is.” He was quiet for just a moment, all energy draining out of him again, exhaustion taking over. “I think you’re right. I need a few hours of sleep.”
Kate watched Max walk away toward his tent at the far side of their little neighborhood. She jumped to her feet and caught up to Max before he got to his tent.
He turned around, staring at her. “Come to tuck me in?”
“Promise me you’re not going to take off on your own in the middle of the night.”
Max smiled, but it was a lifeless smile. “I won’t.”
“We all need to stay together. If we all decide to stay here or decide to leave, we should do it together. At least the three of us.”
He nodded, the smile slipping away.
“Promise me,” she said again.
“I promise,” he whispered.
She still wasn’t sure she could believe him.
CHAPTER 39
Petra
Petra woke up on the bed, the blankets pulled up to her chin. She sat up, pushing the covers back. For just a second she was still trapped in her nightmare, forgetting for a moment where she was.
And then she remembered—she was locked in the basement under the Dragon’s home.
Something had torn her from sleep, from the sticky tendrils of the dream she’d been having, a dream she’d had before, the dream of being in the hospital bed. The hospital room felt so cold in the dream, like the basement. And dark like the basement. She’d heard Diego coming down the hall toward her room, walking slowly, knowing she had nowhere to run. But when Diego got to the door she knew it wasn’t him anymore. It had never been him. The Dragon was on the other side of her hospital room door, unlocking it, the locks sounding so loud in the silence.
And now she heard those same sounds: someone unlocking the door to the basement at the top of the stairs. She couldn’t see all of the stairs from the basement, the wall blocking most of them, only the landing and the last few steps visible. The basement was dark. She had the one battery-powered lantern down here, but she didn’t use it much, conserving the batteries. Who knew if she would get any more batteries for it? But it wasn’t as dark as before; daylight seeped in around the short, heavy curtains covering the small rectangular windows on the far wall.
Someone was coming down the steps.
Jacob? The Dragon?
It sounded like only one person.
The daylight from the stairwell splashed down to the bottom steps, a swath of light painted along the basement floor and then fading to darkness, the daylight barely illuminating the objects and furniture closest to the stairwell. Petra could barely make out the bookcase of books, the small table and two chairs, the cedar chest at the foot of her bed.
She was still fully dressed, her boots at the side of her bed. She whipped her legs out from under the blankets and shoved her feet into the boots, pulling up on the laces and tying them quickly. Whoever was on the steps was either taking his time or treading them very carefully; it gave her time to tie the laces of her hiking boots. Her feet felt like blocks of ice inside the shoes, her body so cold her joints felt rusty, but the now-flowing adrenaline was warming her up quickly.
The person on the steps was still taking their time, just slow and light footsteps.
And the tinkling of china plates and cups.
Food?
Petra’s stomach rumbled. She hadn’t realized she’d been so hungry until that moment. She stood up next to the bed, waiting for the person to come into view at the bottom of the steps. A moment later the woman descended the last few steps. She was young, dressed mostly in white, her blond hair pulled back with a white cloth tie. Her skin was pale, eyes big and nervous. She held a plastic tray with dishes on it in her bandaged hands, balancing them carefully—she was the woman who had served Petra the bowl of soup at last night’s dinner with the Dragon.
“I’ve got dinner for you,” the young woman said, her voice barely above a whisper. The door at the top of the stairs was still open, the daylight washing the woman in light like a glow from Heaven.
Petra was across the room in a flash, taking the tray from the woman and setting it down on the small table. “Thank you.”
The woman managed a small smile; it never touched her eyes. But it was more than that; her eyes looked empty, devoid of hope. She was ready to turn and leave, her job complete.
“Wait,” Petra whispered. “Your hands. What happened to them?”
The woman looked down at her hands wrapped in gauze, bandages, and tape. Dried blood crusted the ends of the bandages around her fingers. She was missing two of her fingers, the index one on her right hand and the middle one on her left hand, the dried blood heavier on the gauze and tape covering the nubs where her fingers used to be.
“Your fingers . . . two of them are gone.”
The woman’s face crumpled. She seemed like she was about to sob. “They took them,” she whispered.
“Why?”
“They didn’t tell me.”
The door at the top of the steps was still open. Was someone up there watching the door? Or did they trust that Petra wouldn’t dare escape because she had nowhere to run to. Even if she escaped the house, or even this hell town, where would she run to after that?
But the temptation of escape was still there. Were they tempting her with the open door?
“What’s your name?” Petra asked the woman.
“Audrey.”
“I need to get out of here, Audrey. Okay?”
Audrey just stared at Petra.
“I’m being held as a prisoner here. You know that, right?”
Audrey glanced at the stairs just behind her, the steps still washed in the muted afternoon daylight from above.
Was Audrey expected back upstairs by a certain time? Was she only allowed a few minutes down in the basement? Petra had a feeling she only had a few seconds to convince Audrey to help her, and if not convince her, then at least plant the seeds in her mind.
“You’re a prisoner here too, aren’t you?” Petra said. “All of you are. The Dragon pretends all of you are here willingly, and maybe a few of you are—his guards, Jacob, some of the Dark Angels—but I bet there are plenty of others who are not here willingly, frightened into staying here, into serving the Dragon.”
“I have to go. I’m sorry.”
“Look at your hands. Look what they’ve done to you already. You don’t think they’ll do worse? Your hands could get infected. You could get sick. You could die.”
Audrey looked down at her bandaged hands with dull eyes. Petra wondered if she was doped up or on some kind of painkillers, or maybe she was just stuck in the fog of unending shock.
“I have a place where we can go,” Petra whispered. “We have doctors there. Medicine. We’ve got food and water and guns. We can fight the Dragon and his Dark Angels. We’ve been fighting them all along. I just need to get back to them. You can come with me.”
“I need to get back up there.”
“Who’s up there? Jacob? Some of
the Dragon’s guards? Dark Angels? How many are posted outside the door? Do you know a weak spot in the wall around this town?”
Audrey was getting flustered, on the verge of panic. “I have to go. Just leave your tray and dishes on the top step in front of the door when you’re done.”
Petra wanted to say more, wanted to grab Audrey and convince her somehow. But then Audrey was gone, rushing up the stairs. A few seconds later she was through the basement door, closing it, locking it.
“Shit,” Petra said, breathing the word out into the darkness. She walked over to the windows at the top of the wall and pulled the dark curtains back, letting a little of the gray afternoon light into the basement.
She went back to the small table and sat down in front of the tray of food. She found that she wasn’t as hungry as she’d been before, but she knew she still needed to eat. Dinner was some kind of stale sliced bread with a canned gravy and beef mixture ladled over it, a bowl of small Mandarin orange slices from a can, a cup of tepid coffee with some cream and sugar already added, and a bottle of water.
The food wasn’t warm and only getting colder. It tasted terrible but she forced it down. She still needed the calories and whatever nutrients the food provided.
She had eaten dinner with the Dragon last night. She’d eaten nothing today except the dinner Audrey just brought down. Maybe that meant that her dinner dates with the Dragon were over now. But she suspected the only reason she’d been up there last night at the dining room table was so Jacob could film her with the cell phone.
A ransom video. That’s surely what Jacob had been filming. They were going to send the cell phone back to the store somehow, try to get Jo and the others to leave the store for her. Petra wondered if the others were also being used as ransom. The Dragon had told her that the others were dead, but she wasn’t so sure that was true—he could be lying.
A horrifying thought came to her. Audrey’s fingers had been taken. Had they taken Audrey’s fingers and sent them along as a motivation for the others to leave the store? Maybe they were pretending the fingers were hers, or maybe the fingers were a sign of what they would (and could) do.