by L. K. Hill
“Why don’t you want to talk to me?” Kyra asked gently. “Do they punish us for talking?”
The woman gave her a side long glance. “Not if we stay quiet mostly.”
Kyra frowned. “Then why—”
“That guard is one of the mean ones. He’s crazy. Didn’t you hear what he said? He’s coming back to get you. They’re gonna…do things to you. They might take one of us with you. I don’t want to be seen talking to you.”
She got to her feet and headed toward the opposite side of the cage. Kyra reached up and grabbed her arm. The woman swiveled toward her with such suddenness, her fist raised, that Kyra let her go and leaned back.
“I got thirty pounds on you, Kiddo,” the woman said. “You don’t want to talk to me again.”
This time, Kyra let her go. The woman went to the far side of the cage—only a few feet away, but as far as she could get from Kyra in the confined space—and sat down, running a hand through her thick, matted hair. Kyra sighed. She thought about approaching one of the others, but dismissed the idea. She wouldn’t get any more information from them than she had from the woman.
“Supra? Is that you?”
The deep, yet soft voice came from behind her, and Kyra twisted around on her butt to stare in the other direction. One cage over, yet clearly visible through the chain link, lay Big Johnny.
“Johnny!”
“Shhh!” The hissing came from every prisoner within twenty feet, along with icy cold stares.
Kyra lowered her voice, still making it loud enough for Johnny to hear her. “Are you okay?”
He nodded, then dropped his eyes. “I’m real hungry, though.”
A pang of sorrow tunneled through Kyra’s chest. He lay on his stomach in the cage, dirtier and more haggard than usual. His clothes hung on him as though he’d recently lost weight. Big Johnny never had trouble filling out his clothes, hence the name. Sadie had said something about him being missing, and Kyra dismissed it. “How long have you been here, Johnny?”
He shrugged. When he raised pleading, childlike eyes to her. “You got somethin’ to eat, Supra?”
She shook her head. “No, but I’ll work on that, okay?”
He nodded, looking encouraged.
“How’d they get you in here, Johnny?” Kyra asked. She couldn’t imagine anyone wrestling the huge man-child into one of the tiny kennels, and he was too simple-minded to respond to verbal threats in the same way adults did.
Several of the prisoners around them hissed at Kyra to be quiet. She ignored them.
“Mr. Jenkins had a shiny gold coin. He said I could have it if I did what he said. So I did. But then he locked the door. And,” Johnny sniffled like the young child he was at heart. “And he didn’t even give me the coin.” His lower lip trembled, and fat tears coursed down his tan cheeks. Kyra’s chest hurt for him.
She took a deep breath to steady her own emotions. “It’s going to be all right, Johnny. We’re going to get out of here.”
Several of the prisoners around them turned scornful gazes on her, and from behind, there came a scoff. Kyra turned her head to find the black woman glaring at her. “Why would you tell him that? It’s a lie.”
Kyra merely gazed at the woman until she dropped her eyes.
“It’s not like he understands anyway,” the woman muttered.
“Exactly,” Kyra said, too quietly for any except those in her cage to hear. “He can’t understand, so why frighten him?” Kyra wanted to tell these people that help was coming. She didn’t dare. There was no telling how they’d react; no telling if the people running this freak show had spies among the prisoners. Maybe that was paranoia rearing its ugly head, but Kyra wasn’t about to chance it.
She turned back to Big Johnny. “I’ll figure this out, Johnny,” she said more loudly. “I’ll get us out of here. I promise.”
Something hit the chain link in front of Kyra’s face so violently that she fell backward onto her butt. A man caged in the kennel between hers and Johnny’s stood looking down at her angrily. Both his hair and full beard were dark in color, but whether natural, or a result of filth, she couldn’t say. He had bloodshot eyes and gray teeth. His fist had connected with the fence in front of her. “Shut up,” he rasped. “They’re coming.”
Even as he said it, the sound of boots tromping toward them in unison reached her ears. A dozen guards, none of whom she recognized, stopped several cages before Johnny’s. The silence among the prisoners was so loud, Kyra could almost hear their hearts beating. One of the guards opened one of the kennels and yanked two people out. The two prisoners—a man and a woman, by their statures, though they were too far away for her to see clearly—fought and kicked, but once out of the kennels, two guards secured each of them, and they stopped struggling.
The group of guards moved closer, running their eyes over the prisoners, who universally cowered back into the shadows and dropped their eyes. Seemingly at random, cages were opened and prisoners yanked out. Kyra’s breath caught in her throat when they opened the door to Big Johnny’s cage. The guards only glanced at him dismissively. They probably figured he was more trouble than they were willing to put up with. Instead they snatched up a young woman, not much older than Kyra, who went without much of a fight. Most the guards grabbed put up a pathetic amount of resistance, but it was something. A few didn’t bother all. Their expressions were those of utter defeat, resignation to their fate.
Kyra’s cage was the furthest one down on her side that contained prisoners. The guards had chosen five Mirelings, now, and the man leading them, a lean, squirrelly-looking guy with beady, deep-set eyes and a strong jaw, came to stand in front of her cage. Kyra got slowly to her feet as he approached, and stood straight, shoulders back and knees locked, meeting his gaze glare for glare. After a moment, his glare faded to mild amusement.
He opened her cage, and a pang of fear hit her at being taken. You could still be dead before I get there. She hadn’t registered the panic in Gabe’s voice over the phone. She could hear it in memory.
The guard stepped into the cage, and all the prisoners except Kyra tried to make themselves smaller, to blend into the chain link. The man whimpering on the ground whimpered louder, but made no movement. The guard stepped so close to her that his chest brushed her shoulder. She didn’t turn her body to face him, but forced herself to look up into his face and meet his glare. He raised a hand and brushed the backs of his knuckles over her bare neck. Cold, black chills whispered down her spine.
His fingers dug into her neck. She gasped. He put his mouth right near her ear. “I understand why Jenkins asked for you,” he whispered. “I wish I could take you with us now, but I’m not allowed.” Using his grip on her neck, he shoved her away from him violently. She spun, not wanting to land with her back to him, and fell against the far wall of chain link. Gripping the thin metal, she caught herself with a painful jolt and barely managed to stay upright. The beady-eyed man wore a sinister smirk. He spun casually on his toe, grabbed the prisoner on the ground by his ankle, and dragged him toward the door of the kennel.
Kyra felt a stab of relief at not being chosen. She quashed it ruthlessly. She would not allow herself to feel relief that someone else would be victimized. Leaping forward, she grabbed the whimpering prisoner under the arms and braced each of her feet against one side of the kennel door. The guard turned in surprise at the resistance, and his face darkened when he saw her.
“Let him go.” It was a command he expected to be obeyed.
“No,” Kyra said through gritted teeth. Her entire body trembled, but she kept her voice carefully controlled. “You can’t take him.”
The guard dropped the prisoner’s leg and stalked toward her. She threw her arm over her head in defense. The butt of the guard’s gun went up swiftly and came down faster.
When Kyra pushed through the darkness and opened her eyes again, the whimpering prisoner had been pulled out of the kennel and yanked to his feet. The guard was still re-locking the
kennel door.
Kyra raised her head painfully. Dark, viscous liquid dripped from her forehead down onto her arm, and she groaned, fighting vertigo as she pulled herself into a sitting position. The chosen prisoners, escorted by the armed guards, were already nearly out of sight.
“You’ve got stones. I’ll give you that,” the black woman said from three feet away. “You’ll un-learn that eventually. Best if you do it sooner rather than later, though.”
“I’m not going to un-learn it,” Kyra practically spat, though her anger came from the pain more than anything else.
The woman raised an eyebrow at her. “What’s the point? They’ll just kill you faster.”
“But they will kill us either way,” Kyra said, fighting through the pounding pain in her temples. “Why not go out with a bang?”
“Because you’ll go out sooner!”
Kyra glanced up to find the woman looking at her like she was crazy. “If you want to live out what’s left of your life in a tiny cage, looking forward only to a terrible death, one you’ll go to meek as a lamb, you be my guest. I won’t do that.”
“The longer we stay alive, the more likely that we’ll get out,” the woman said, a note of pleading entered her voice.
Kyra sighed. There was hope in that, if the misguided sort. The pain had faded to a dull throb, now. She scooted closer to the woman and forced the acid out of her voice. “Help me. Please.”
The woman laughed darkly. “To do what? Get yourself killed faster? I think you’ve got that handled.”
“You have no idea,” Kyra muttered, causing the woman to look mildly alarmed before tuning her gaze away again. “I just want to know what you know,” Kyra pressed. “What have you seen since you got here?”
“Why?” the woman sounded exasperated.
Kyra studied the woman for a moment, then made a decision. “Because there’s help on the way.”
The woman studied Kyra’s face with rock-hard eyes. “I don’t believe you.”
“You’re too far back here to have seen everything that happened,” Kyra talked as rapidly as she could. “But I came in, then got away. Obviously they caught me again. Before they did, I managed to make a phone call. I’m telling you, people are coming for us. We could get out of here. Tonight. But I need to know everything you know about what they’re doing. Once help gets here, everyone will scatter and we’ll lose valuable details.”
The woman’s frown deepened. “Are you a cop?”
Kyra shook her head. “No.”
The woman gave her a don’t-be-stupid look. “Really? Because that’s the only thing that would make any kind of sense about you.”
Kyra laughed in spite of herself, fully aware that it probably sounded maniacal. “You’re right and believe me, I know that. But I’m really not a cop.”
The woman heaved a long suffering sigh, then shrugged. “What do you want to know?”
“How long have you been here?”
“Four days, I think. I went through withdrawals for the first two, so they’re kinda hazy.”
“And what have you seen?”
The woman motioned to the cage around them. “This.”
Kyra shook her head. “I need more than that. Can you tell me specifically what’s happened each day?”
“I’m telling you, Kiddo. This is it. I’m a drunk. They promised me booze and a good time, so I came with them. I’m outta money and needed something bad. They locked me in here and haven’t touched me since. At first I shook and hurt. That’s passed now, but that only means my time’s coming.”
“How do you know?” Kyra asked.
The woman shrugged. “I think they leave most of us for a week or so before they pick us.”
“Why so long?”
“Because they don’t feed us. They never take anyone until we’re too weak to fight back.”
The woman was probably right. The prisoners taken by the guards were the weakest of the weak. Easily overpowered. She ran a hand over her red wig. “But what do they—”
As if on cue, the screaming started, echoing through the warehouse, followed by a multitude of cheers. Kyra’s head snapped toward the sound. She couldn’t see much of anything from so far back, but many people occupied the warehouse again. By the sound of it, most of those who’d left had returned.
The screams reared up, over and over again, unmistakably male. It wasn’t something Kyra was accustomed to hearing from a grown man. It dug at her like an ice pick to the bone, spreading a feeling of darkness through her limbs. The screams burrowed through her insides as if dicing up pieces of her soul.
She tried to think of other questions to ask the woman, just to focus on something else, but with the screams in her ears, she couldn’t think in a straight line. “Why?” she finally managed.
The woman, whose eyes had taken on a haunted cast, shrugged again. “People pay to see other people tortured.” Her voice dropped so low that Kyra could barely hear it. “They make a lot of money here.”
Most of the prisoners around her had clasped their hands over their ears. Some rocked back and forth, chanting to themselves. Kyra understood the appeal of that behavior, if it helped drown out the screams. She turned her head to look back at Big Johnny. He stared at her, eyes desperately pleading, fat tears scurrying down his cheeks once more.
Tears came to Kyra’s eyes, and she trembled in earnest, more violently with each scream. The woman beside her slid her hand into Kyra’s, and they gripped one another weakly.
Kyra had never lied to herself about the harsh realities of the Slip Mire, and she wouldn’t have thought it could be any worse that what she’d already experienced. Until now. Tonight, with eyes wide open, she’d made her way into hell.
***
Kyra didn’t know how much time had passed when she became aware of the change. Half an hour? An hour? It felt like longer but she couldn’t be sure. She considered plugging her ears, but rejected the idea. She wasn’t a hider. She would never have come to Abstreuse if that was her nature. She would rather look the darkness in its face, stab it in the mouth and claw her way out than close her eyes and hope for the best.
Even so, she had to find a way to distract herself. She kept her mind on Gabe, the one beacon of light left to grasp. He’d be here soon. Resting her forehead on her fingertips, she attempted to re-see everything she’d observed since she first entered the warehouse. Faces, the layout of the building, what she heard, who talked to whom. She imagined giving Gabe—and most likely Shaun—a detailed report. It kept her mind focused and working.
That focus also kept her from realizing right away that the noises around her had changed. Her head snapped up. Sometime in the past few minutes, the blood-curdling screams had stopped. The cheers had fallen silent as well. Noise still filled the room, but now it was a low roar. The rumble of dozens of people talking over one another. More shouts came, but they were controlled, not terrified; people calling to one another across the large, crowded room.
People ran past her cage. Only one or two at first. Then small groups. More and more.
Kyra leapt to her feet and wrapped her fingers around the chain link. “What’s happening? What’s happening?” She didn’t know who she was talking to. Those outside the cage would hardly be inclined to explain anything to a prisoner. And those inside were as clueless as she.
One cry rose above the others. “Cops!”
Kyra sagged against the chain link. They’d arrived. Gabe was somewhere close by.
A hand dug into her arm and she turned to find the black woman looking down at her with worried eyes. “What’s going on?”
“The help we talked about is here.”
The woman stared at her blankly. “The help you meant is the cops?”
“Yeah. Why?”
Pop, pop, pop. BOOM.
The unmistakable sound of gunfire came from the front of the warehouse and Kyra jumped. The pops probably came from hand guns. That might have been the cops. The boom definitely came fro
m something bigger, though. Kyra couldn’t have said what. She’d brought several guns to Abstreuse with her. All were small, easily concealable weapons. Now that she thought about it, several of the guards had large, rifle-like guns strapped to their backs.
“Great,” the woman muttered. “Now we’ll all get shot. Cops bring guns you stupid bitch. You’ve put us right in the middle of a gun fight.”
“These people are gonna hack us to pieces,” Kyra growled at her.
“Well we’re gonna die anyway, now.”
“Not necessarily,” Kyra said loudly. The Mirelings in her cage and the others around her were listening closely and growing more agitated by the second. “Stay low, be quiet, and stay calm,” she said, loudly enough that they could all hear her. “It’ll take the cops some time to get everything under control. After that, they’ll let us all out.”
It seemed to mollify most of them, even if they did shift their eyes more nervously than before. The black woman didn’t look convinced. “You can’t promise that.”
Kyra grabbed the woman’s arm and lowered her voice. “I’m not suggesting we’re out of danger here,” she hissed through gritted teeth. “But there’s no reason to scare everyone. If we lay low, we’ll be okay. Rescue is here. What more do you want?”
The woman glared hard at Kyra before ripping her arm out of Kyra’s grip and sitting sullenly on the floor. Kyra took a calming breath before following suit. She would rather do jumping jacks than sit, but the lower they were, the less likely they’d be hit by a stray bullet.
Pop, pop, pop. BOOM.
The sounds came again and again, the exact same pattern in close succession, and getting louder each time. The closer they came, the more foreboding settled in Kyra’s chest. Gunfire between the cops and the guards should be more random than that. Why the pattern?
While the din of shouts and yells still filled the warehouse, Kyra became aware of a tide of different noise that seemed to be coming closer with the gunfire. Horrified wails.
“What’s going on?” the black woman asked.