Clearing his throat, Danny glanced in his rearview mirror at the nanny then to his side at Dolly. “I’m going to pick up some people that one of Madam’s workers took yesterday. I don’t want to leave them, but I don’t know how far I’m taking them.”
Dolly whispered, “Okay.” Dolly sounded uncomfortable, and Danny was sure she was. But what else could he do?
“What’s your name?” Danny asked the nanny. He didn’t know it, and that felt dirty.
“Maria,” she answered quickly but tempered as if she thought she’d given intel to an enemy.
Dolly turned in her seat then, eyes wide, a smile on her face. “I really like that name.”
“Stay in the car,” Danny ordered and exited the car immediately, so he wouldn’t have to offer more explanations. How could he explain what he did not know, understand, or excuse--the cages and what they were for?
Opening the door to the building surrounding the cages, Danny caught the fetid aroma of people and bodily effluvia that had nowhere to go.
Shuddering and breathing through his mouth, Danny remembered the first time he’d been here. He’d heard whispers about the cages, and he’d wanted to see what they were, what his mother hid in them.
He’d found Jug passed out on the floor of his office, snoring noisily. He hadn’t wanted to turn on a light for fear of waking Jug, but he hadn’t needed to. When he went into the room with the cages, there was enough light to see hell.
Oddly enough, that was the same night he first encountered Chandler and told her to find the Martinez sisters if she wanted to live. He’d saved Chandler.
He willed the bad part of the memory away, but it and the memory of Chandler were enough to compel him to save these people, even if that meant simply releasing them, giving them a chance to get away and get the word out.
He stepped into the cage room and turned on the light.
Three faces covered in dirt, old tears, and sweat looked up at him. They blinked rapidly at the onslaught of light and tried to focus on who had turned on the light. They gasped not when they saw him but when they could finally see what was around them: the lines of cages, the evidence of their bodily functions in the corners of their cages. They shrank away in shame.
Keys dangling from his fingers, Danny walked toward them, suddenly speechless. What words did he have for these silent, defeated people? “Ignore the melted corpse on the office floor, forget that my mother planned to serve you up for dinner, come with me” didn’t seem to cut it.
“I will not hurt you,” Danny announced, unlocking a cage and reaching in to help a man out of it. “I’m here to get you out of this place,” he said and opened the second cage then the third. They all stood there, hunched over, eyes darting about, trembling.
“Come with me,” Danny said. “We have to move fast. Please, save your questions for later, when we are out of the city. Let’s go!”
Danny ran from the cages room, through the office, and out to the parking lot, not bothering to see if they had followed him. He had done his part. He had kept his word to Jen. If they did not follow him, that was on them.
“What’s your name?” Dolly asked the man tightly squeezed in next to her.
Danny marveled at his little sister. She hadn’t complained of the pungent smell from the three who had run to the vehicle behind him or asked from where they’d come.
“Damon,” the man answered, lifelessly.
Dolly asked no more, as if she could sense the grief and despair that hung from his and the others’ shoulders.
The moments in a person’s life when the utter truth of everything you have known about yourself comes up in one, big, blinding flash are rare but genuine. After that, you aren’t the same; the world to you is now either ugly or beautiful. There is no in between, no compromise.
Damon knew from now on his world would be ugly beyond imagining. He had come here to document what Nutri-Corp had done to these states, how it had taken over everything; how the head of a drug empire—who called herself Madam—had literally stolen away the southern tier of states all the way to California by causing its people to be nothing more than addicts. Addicts who lived like video game creatures in run-down buildings, houses, or wherever they could lay their heads. These addicts spent their days licking Madam’s boots or working her machine for one more pill.
To Damon’s amazement, Nutri-Corp followers did these things while dealing with side effects that would scare anyone away except the most fanatic horror movie aficionado. YUM was so addictive, nothing else but the next pill mattered.
He thought it would be so simple; it should have been simple. Get in, film what she was doing, go back, and release the footage to the masses. What was left of the government would step in, rid them of YUM, Madam, and her cartel. That would also save his brother. Done and done, Damon believed he’d be home in a couple of weeks. Then a couple of weeks after that, he’d be giving interviews on every news station around. He’d have to get an agent to manage all the speaking gigs he’d get, events where he could set his own speaker fees.
As he’d driven toward Nutri-Corp-land, Damon could see his brother's face in his mind's eye. Damon had never really liked his brother. Damon was a tech nerd, and his brother was a cocky, loud bully. But his brother nonetheless. Damon thought it was his final duty to save him.
Now, however, Damon wanted to run as quickly as he could away from here and with nothing. They’d taken his camera. They’d taken his footage. All he could hope for now was that the men who’d captured Damon and his two assistants and put them in those God-awful cages hadn’t found the vehicle Damon had hidden in Old Town.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
And She Meant It
Lola had packed and unpacked her backpack and a cooler three times. She couldn’t judge how much she should or shouldn't take. How did you pack for a situation that made you feel as you were about to dive headfirst into a dark hole that had no bottom?
She had a feeling, a stupid little nudge of intuition that after today, after this trip to The Hills and whatever came after that, everything would be different. That didn’t bother her; things needed to be different. What bothered her was not knowing how it would be different.
Would it be different-good? Or by this time next week would she be in a YUM factory, twitching, spinning, or whatever else while pulling levers to feed Madam’s machine. That wasn’t Lola’s darkest thought. When that image popped up, almost instantly an image of Suzy pulling the same lever while she twitched with uncontrollable tics replaced it. Each time that image of Suzy came to her, Lola unpacked the backpack and the cooler one more time.
“Almost ready?” asked Chandler, now at her side, a warm hand on her back, rubbing, stroking.
Lola shrugged Chandler’s hand away. That was the same way she had soothed BD. Lola hated leftovers. The gesture might be kind, but for Lola it was spoiled, used up, and offended her.
Chandler put her hand down. She moved to sit on the bed in front of Lola. Chandler ran her hands up the back of Lola’s legs and rested her face against Lola’s stomach. Lola stiffened, becoming more witness and statue than human to such an intimate gesture.
Chandler felt Lola go stiff but ignored it. She wrapped her arms around Lola’s waist and hugged harder. Lola relaxed even though an emotional tug of war raged inside her. She wanted Chandler to win, but the odds were against her. Lola would soften but would not bend. She was incapable of it.
Chandler let go. When she stood, she saw BD watching from the hallway. He quickly turned and walked away.
“When all this is done. I can stay with you,” Chandler whispered. Not a request or a demand. Only a theory.
Lola sighed and returned to repacking her backpack. She hadn’t bothered to answer Chandler because she didn’t have one.
“What’s that!” Dolly screamed, her small hands clenching Danny’s arm.
Maria, the nanny instinctively grabbed Dolly in a protective embrace before rushing Dolly back into the car.
When they’d first arrived in Old Town Dolly had asked to get out, have a look.
“Is this how people used to live? Is this where you lived?” she asked her nanny, who only smiled in response at the girl.
Danny had seen no harm in allowing Dolly to have a quick look around the block. He momentarily considered sneaking her into the library, showing her Suzy’s hideaway, but he came to his senses. They were in a hurry. It wouldn’t be too much longer before Madam noticed that Dolly was gone.
Danny’s eyes went to where Dolly pointed. Coming down the street toward them was a Popper and a tiny one at that. Danny wasn’t sure if it was a child... It was. He could see it now. It was a boy who skipped, twirled, skipped again. Danny pushed away his dread and let curiosity take over.
The closer the boy got, Danny saw the outline of the boy's ribs through his shirt. His teeth were missing, and there was no hair on his head except for a few long strands. What once was a boy was now a thing; certainly not human, not anymore.
Maria prayed while shoving Dolly into the car. “Let’s go! Now!” Maria yelled at Danny.
But Danny had reached out, tempted to touch the boy to see if he was real. He’d seen Poppers a million times before but not like this. Danny couldn’t help but wonder if this was one of Madam’s tricks. Popper animatronics.
The boy had almost reached Danny. One more twirl and they would be face to face…
Someone grabbed Danny by the hair and yanked him so hard he almost stumbled. Danny spun, fist raised. Maria. She slapped him, pointed to his sister, and grasped him by his shirt. Her eyes both pleaded and scolded him.
The hair-pull and slap instantly forgiven, Danny and Maria got into the car, closing the door as the boy slammed himself against it. Dolly screamed, sending a chill down Danny’s spine. Had she been screaming the whole time?
Panting hard, Danny got the vehicle in gear and mashed the accelerator beneath his foot. They sped away from Old Town, and Danny vowed to himself he would never see that place again.
Smiles from Nutri-Corp officers greeted Sir when he walked into a command center on the edge of town. It was always good to witness the smiles on the men's faces when they saw him, then the frown plus quaking in their boots when they saw Madam. That never got old.
Sir knew they all feared Madam, but no one, not one person, knew the things that Sir did about her. They didn’t seem to remember that Madam was very much human, like them. That fact Sir kept close to his heart.
The men visibly relaxed when they saw Madam was not with him. Sir could be nosy about the camera feeds without drawing attention from whoever in this room was one of Madam's many snitches.
Sir needed to divert them away from Danny and wherever he was going, something that would give his daughter time to fly away, far away, he hoped, from her mother. He had no intention of returning home today, and he desperately hoped neither would Dolly.
Looking over the video feeds Sir spotted a car turn a corner in Old Town—and it wasn’t the vehicle Danny had been in when he and Dolly left the house.
“Hey!” he said, pointing to the moving car. “There’s someone driving in Old Town. Don’t you think that deserves attention?”
For the barest of seconds they all looked at him in terror. The room exploded with activity: orders issued, vehicles dispatched, alerts sounding.
Sir hid his smile, but an idea struck him. “Get every single one of our drones on that car and...” Sir paused then added, “Send the Hunters.”
Damon's hands rested on the steering wheel. He drank in the stale air of his car, not caring how many trillions of dust particles he breathed in. The road was open in front of them, no traffic, no signs of life on the highway. The promise of freedom from all that was Madam and YUM was not far up the road.
The memory of all the joking they had done on the way in about the open spaces, lack of people, no backup of cars on the highway, now haunted Damon. The joke had been on them. Back then--perhaps only a week ago but who knew because there was no way to know how long they’d been in those cages--Madam and YUM were nothing more than urban legends. But the reality was worse than any nightmare, any dystopian novel, any disaster movie he’d ever seen. Damon had come here because of a promise to his brother, but now he knew how unprepared he’d been. He’d played adventurer, but all he’d been was a tourist entering the gates of hell.
Before anyone else could do it for him, Damon belittled himself, telling himself he’d been nothing more than an idiot with a camera, all bluster and bravado, dreaming of fame and fortune. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Damon clenched the steering wheel, his knuckles going white. He jammed his foot harder on the gas pedal. The emptiness of everything around him nipped at his heels, urging him on. He should never have come here; he should have turned back at the first chance.
But how could he abandon his brother?
The cage came to mind, tightening his fingers even more on the steering wheel. The slick feel of filth, the smell of it that lingered in his nostrils still. How could he have saved his brother when he was locked up in a cage?
But now he was free. What did he do? Damon ran away without question as fast as his legs could carry him, like a child running from invisible monsters. He left his only family behind because he was too afraid, too much of a coward.
He glanced at the rearview mirror. Both of his friends were sound asleep in the backseat. Now, it was safe to cry. Tears filled his eyes, blurred his vision. He wiped them away, the unspeakable grime on his hands smearing deeper into his pores...
Damon heard then saw the drones. A lightning-fast buzzing blur flashed ahead of the car, and he looked up through the windshield to see dozens of drones hovering above them and keeping pace with the speed of the car.
Over the roar of the car’s engine, over the incessant buzzing of the drones, Damon heard the far-off blare of a trumpet. One of his friends shot upright from her doze, primal fear in her eyes.
“What the hell is that?”
The Hunt had been an urban legend, too.
Damon leaned to his right and vomited on the passenger seat, one eye still on the road and his foot mashed on the gas pedal. The whir of the drones got closer, making the roof of the car vibrate. The hair on Damon’s neck stood on end.
In the rearview mirror he saw a dot on the road behind him, then another and another and more of them. Moving quickly, they grew from dots to cars closing in on them.
Damon fought down his terror, but how to get away from whatever was behind them eluded him. He pressed the accelerator harder. The car shook as the speedometer needle shot past ninety miles per hour.
The noise of a trumpet grew louder. The drones hissed above them. The open windows carried the sound of laughter to the car. Joyful hoots and mocking shouts surrounded Damon. He jammed the gas pedal against the floorboard, and the car surged forward, its vibration now rattling his teeth.
“I don’t want to be taken again! I don’t want them to take me!” his friend screamed.
The car door opened before Damon could look or react. Something hit the road hard, and the noise of screaming stopped. In the rearview mirror, he caught sight of the cars racing behind him driving over a lump in the road.
“Drive off the overpass! Kill us! Kill us!” his other friend shouted from the back seat. “Kill us before they can take us! DO IT!” She lunged at the steering wheel from the back seat, and Damon pushed her away.
She fisted her hands in Damon's hair and jumped over the seat to kneel in his fresh vomit. Screaming, she grabbed at the wheel with one hand and pointed to an upcoming overpass with the other.
The yowling of the trumpet overcame the screaming in Damon’s ear. The laughter and shouting grew nearer.
He had to choose. Now.
He jerked the steering wheel toward the overpass. His friend laughed in triumph. The car crashed through the barrier, going airborne. Damon’s body lifted from his seat, and he hung there, weightless. He closed his eyes to prepare for impact and hoped the
y’d both be blessed with the mercy of death.
Madam screamed, kicked off her heels, stomped her feet, and screamed again in the living room of her home.
Mathew was not responding to calls.
Dolly and Danny were gone.
Which meant only one thing, Danny had taken his sister. Without bothering to check the signals from the trackers in both of them, Madam knew exactly where they were.
Chapter Thirty
Pink Toxicity
Eight years ago
“Is it alive?”
Madam's flicked back and forth, looking for a hint of what had happened when she passed out. Had she passed out? Madam wasn’t sure. She was awake now. There was pain. Intense pain. Then black. Then nothing. Then quiet. Now she was strung out on the panic of wanting answers.
Madam’s eyes fluttered along with her thoughts, both losing a race against her emotions. She was awake and wanting answers.
“Tell me if it’s alive...NOW.” Madam demanded of the room more than anyone in particular. She had a sense that her doctor was there and her nurse, but she wasn’t sure.
A male voice, her nurse responded. “Yes, Madam. A healthy baby girl.”
She then heard a female voice not close by whisper, “And thankfully not one of those monstrous stillborns.”
Madam recognized the voice of her doctor, a woman who’d refused to take YUM, who’d told Madam she’d rather be tossed out to the hunt before she’d swallow “that pink toxicity.”
Madam had wanted that day and every day since to throat-punch her doctor for speaking ill of YUM, but she needed this doctor, so she kept her fists to herself and instead strategized.
Garden : A Dystopian Horror Novel Page 21