by The Behrg
The chewing finally ceased and the woman stretched forward as far as she could, half of her face lit up by the hanging bulb, the other covered in shadow. Blood and guts clung to her chin and lower lip.
“Little help?”
She tossed something toward Donavon, something that made a splat as it struck the floor in front of him.
It was the rat’s head.
Its glassy eyes, like marbles, reflected the yellow light from the hanging bulb, giving the false illusion that somehow it was still alive. Donavon was up on his feet within seconds, hobbling away from the chained woman and her offering.
By the time Kenny returned, he was no longer in the attic, but sitting on the hanging staircase below it, his injured foot elevated on a dusty shelf.
“Brought you this,” Kenny said, holding up a roll of gauze. “Couldn’t find any Band-Aids.”
“You find any antiseptics? Something to clean the wound out with?”
Those same filed teeth crunching down on rat guts had torn into his flesh. Who knew what kind of disease he might now be carrying?
“I didn’t look. But … Ta-da!” Kenny held up a fat joint, which quickly morphed into two as he played some sleight-of-hand trick. He tapped both against his palm, lighting them and handing one over. “I worked with a magician once, running sound and lights. Sort of a stage hand. Fun while it lasted.”
“I bet,” Donavon said, trying to hide his complete lack of interest. He inhaled deeply, knowing the marijuana would be as good a painkiller as any. “So what broke you two up?”
“Creative differences.” Kenny giggled, spawned by some inside joke Donavon had no desire to be a part of. “Hey, I was thinking maybe the, uh, banshee woman up there is like that dude the cops took, you know? I mean, Sir William seemed to know who that other Indian guy was. I doubt he’d just lock up anyone; maybe she’s just as important? But what got me thinking was maybe we could use her to offer a trade or something. You know, to get Faye back.”
For the first time since Donavon had been left alone with the overweight videographer, he found himself grateful for the man’s company. “That’s freaking brilliant. But we’ve still got that light outside. How will we get a message to anyone?”
“Well, I was thinking about that too. It’s not ideal, but I might have a plan.”
As Kenny explained his idea, whatever hope Donavon had felt quickly dissipated. This wasn’t a plan, it was something a six-year old would have concocted. Donavon was forced to play the role of a parent, nodding along and encouraging the idiocy presented to him.
After all, what could it hurt?
He wouldn’t be the one to carry out the fool’s plan.
Verse XV.
Dugan strode beside Zephyr through the empty halls of the Facility, trailing behind Oso and the rest of his crew. A crew which was slowly diminishing.
First Leech, now Cy.
He should have been comforted that neither of the losses had resulted from direct confrontation or a lack of skills on the part of his men. That both stemmed from betrayal however, in one form or another, was much more disheartening.
Leech, Cy, General Gutierrez … even his own daughter.
He watched the ponytail of the native in front of him sway side to side with each step, oily water dripping from its end. Dugan trusted Oso more than any other man or woman alive. Was even that trust misplaced?
Oso hadn’t been known as the Bear when they had first met. He had been called Enapay, “brave” in the Pemoni dialect, though the native had abandoned his tribe and their ways in his youth. They had found him in a deeper part of the Amazon in Brazil, across invisible lines which represented borders to but roadmaps and atlases. Only Cy and Rojo had been with him then, though in reality they had all three been part of someone else’s team, Dugan included.
Murdock Iglesias. An American Spaniard. He held a contract with Synosis Gen. and, like Dugan, had been more interested in people than plants.
People with secrets.
One of his most effective forms of coaxing information from someone, or “trading” with them, as he referred to it, was a method devised from the Satare-Mawe tribe, utilizing bullet ants. Paraponera clavata, they earned the nickname from their venomous sting, purported to be as painful as being shot with a bullet. The intensity of the pain from a single bite lasted over twenty-four hours, and in some cases, depending on the amount of venom injected, up to a week.
As part of an initiation rite to become a warrior, the Satare-Mawe would fill a glove made of tree leaves and sap with hundreds of the bullet ants, after first rendering them unconscious with natural sedatives. The boy or young man, wanting to prove himself worthy, would thrust his hand into the glove and keep it on for at least half an hour. After, of course, the vicious beasts had regained their consciousness. Without wristwatches or iPhones, the tribe would know the allotted time had passed when the glove could no longer stay on the initiate’s arm due to the uncontrollable shaking from the victim.
Murdock, however, hadn’t limited his experimentation to a candidate’s hand or arm. He would have the bullet ants ingested. Washed down with booze or water, but alive. And then he’d wait as the little bastards would eat their way out from the inside.
Oso had been a prisoner of the Comando Vermelho, a faction of the largest criminal organization in all of Brazil, El Primeiro Comando da Capital, or PCC. Murdock had been tipped off, through an overtly productive “trade,” of the whereabouts of the native warrior, a nomad who had purportedly traveled between the different native tribes and clans of South America. From the rumors they had heard, the PCC was too afraid to kill the man, superstitious talk of spirits and demons following in the native’s path like an elongated shadow.
After freeing Enapay from the Pit, where the PCC had kept him bound, Murdock made it clear their objective wasn’t a rescue mission. It was a transfer from one prison to another.
Oso retaliated by killing two of the men on guard that night. While he was bound.
Before they had been able to detain him anew, Oso had taken a black curved blade from one of the guards, a blade the PCC had originally confiscated from him. He sliced through the coils around his wrists, but rather than run or use the blade to threaten the others coming for him, he pulled his own tongue out with one hand as far as he could extend it and then, with a clean motion, severed it from his own mouth.
It was his last statement to Murdock, a clear message that they would learn nothing from him. Shortly thereafter, Murdock put Dugan in charge of the native warrior. It was a decision the man would later regret. A decision that cost him his life.
Dugan fingered the leather journal held in the inner pocket close to his breast. Murdock’s name was buried somewhere within those pages. While Dugan had contemplated feeding bullet ants to the man, they had left him bound and gagged, then set his tent on fire. A quicker death. Though no less painful.
As they approached the control room in the Facility, a thought struck Dugan, displacing the dark reverie of past years.
“Wait!”
The men stopped in front of the door, glancing back at him.
“You said the control room was secured.”
“By Cy.” Rojo stepped back from the doorway.
“Nice. You let the traitor with the explosives secure the only room we actually need,” Zephyr said. Sweat dripped from his face, his eyelids fluttering as if he were having difficulty staying awake. Considering the amount of blood loss from his amputated arm, coupled with whatever drugs were in him, he probably was.
Swollen yellowed bandages entombed the stub just above his right elbow, his hospital gown clinging to his muscled body except for the opening at the back, where his pale ass hung out for all to see. Surprisingly, not a single one of the men had made a joke about it.
At least not yet.
“He might not have done anything to it,” Kendall said. “I mean, we don’t know it’s rigged for sure.”
“Yeah, be my guest.” Rojo mot
ioned him to the door.
“We’re running blind without it,” Kendall said. “We need more intel on the conditions outside; plus, we don’t even know where Stanton and his army of goons went.”
“I’m telling you, there weren’t that many,” Zephyr said. “I put down three or four before the service elevator closed.”
“What’s ‘not that many?’” Dugan asked.
“I don’t know. Eight or nine?”
“Yeah, eight or nine plus however many he already had down there,” Rojo said.
Marcus and his hired henchmen had fled shortly after the garage doors exploded. Too many unknowns regarding the light flooding in. Of course, a hand grenade and Zephyr’s SRM shotgun may have had something to do with their retreat as well.
Dugan still wasn’t certain how Stanton, the corporate yes-man, had set things up so quickly since the earthquake. Unless Umner had these plans in motion for longer than Dugan cared to think about.
“Service elevators don’t connect to the Freezer, do they?” Rojo asked.
“Nothing connects to the Freezer,” Dugan said. “And that’s not where they’d go.”
“So where would they go?” Kendall asked.
“The only place he thinks he can get me to lay down my arms.”
“The commissary,” Chupa said, surprising Dugan.
“Are you kidding? That’s the worst place to defend a position. And didn’t they move everyone …” Kendall stopped mid-sentence, finally realizing what Marcus intended. Almost all of the personnel in the Facility had been relocated to the lower level, where the commissary was located. One location. The first step for a mass execution. “You think he’ll actually do it?”
“A mass flashing,” Rojo said.
“I do,” Dugan said. “He’s been planning it all along; or someone has. And what better way to get the great Dugan to surrender than to threaten the lives of a hundred people?”
“Guess he doesn’t know you that well,” Zephyr said. He held his SRM tucked in the crook of his arm. Even though he was right handed, he carried the weapon in his left with an expertise that might have fooled even a range master.
“It’s not the worst play I’ve seen.” Dugan shook his head, different scenarios playing out of how they might best appropriate the room, but there were too many variables. Too many traps Marcus and his men could have already laid.
“It’s ugly,” Zephyr said, knowing exactly what Dugan was coming up against.
“Oso?” Dugan asked. But the native only shook his head. There wasn’t a clear way through, not without jeopardizing all of their lives. “That backstabbing son-of-a-bitch.” Dugan found himself pacing. He wasn’t sure what frustrated him more, that they were up against a no-win situation or that Marcus Stanton was the man responsible for it.
“My mother used to say the best way to win a battle is to never show up,” Chupa said. “This, to her sons who were carrying arms at age eight.”
Dugan ran his hand across the stubble on his face. “You don’t show up, the enemy wins. That’s not an option. But if we can somehow immobilize them …”
“Bury ‘em,” Zephyr said. “Kick out the stilts that are holding up their shelter. Let them rot underground.”
“We could take out the exits,” Kendall said. “There’s what, three stairwells and two elevators?”
“There’s another two hidden stairwells, but it could be done,” Dugan said.
“We’d have to hit ‘em at the same time,” Kendall said. “Rojo has more fireworks than Cy could ever dream of.”
Rojo brushed Kendall aside to get a clearer line on Dugan. “What about the rest of the people down there? All those civilians?”
“Not our problem,” Zephyr said.
“They’re the bait,” Dugan said.
“Yeah, and what happens when Marcus finds out nothing’s biting?” Rojo asked.
Dugan let out a sigh. “Everyone knew the risks when they signed up to come here.”
“No, Dugan, you’re wrong. Half of these people still think we’re out looking for new species of dandelions! Or at least they did before the earthquake. They didn’t sign up for this.”
“There’s not always a sign-up sheet for shit hitting the fan. Doesn’t mean you won’t still get sprayed.”
Rojo let the shoulder strap of his assault rifle drop, the gun dangling close to the ground. “We can’t do this. Not this many.”
“You never complained when it was Oso’s brothers and sisters you were bagging,” Zephyr said.
“There’s over a hundred people down there! You’re all okay with just letting them die?”
“Marcus’d probably kill them if we go in heavy anyway,” Kendall said.
“Probably still kill them if we gave Dugan up,” Zephyr said. “What choice do we have?”
“You want your own notebook, Rojo? To start writing down names?” Chupa asked.
“Yeah, one with kitties and princesses on it,” Kendall said.
“Someone started his period,” Chupa whispered conspiratorially, bringing one hand up to his mouth in an overly dramatic gesture.
Dugan quickly cut back in. “Rojo, if there was another option or something we could do, we’d do it.”
“That’s just the thing. I don’t think we would.”
Oso jotted a note on his pad with a pen he must have swiped from one of the rooms they had passed. He tore off the sheet, but instead of handing it to Dugan, he shoved it toward Rojo.
“What?” Rojo took the sheet, scanning the page. Then he crumbled it into a ball and tossed it to the floor. He shook his head.
Dugan strode over to Rojo, standing directly in front of him. “We’re done talking about this. Understand?”
“Perfectly,” Rojo said, a weighty vehemence to his voice.
“Alright, we need to pull this off before Marcus’s goons figure out we’re not coming,” Dugan said. “Last thing we need is for them to head back up and start the next O.K. Corral.”
“Where do we start?”
The attack was perfectly coordinated, military grade HMX explosives detonating almost simultaneously from the seven separate entry points. Stairwells and elevator shafts were blown inward in a downpour of collapsing steel, concrete, and rock, resulting in an impenetrable barricade. It wasn’t the endgame Dugan had hoped for, but with Stanton and his men effectively isolated underground they could prepare for the real battle. They just had to know where it would take place.
Verse XVI.
Faye waited for her eyes to adjust. Her new prison was oddly devoid of sound, the rhythmic percussion of her own heartbeat and labored breathing the only source of life within the hollowed chamber. And yet she knew she was not alone.
Is he a god, or a devil?
Despite what the alcalde had told her, despite the horrific screams she had heard, she felt a tingle of excitement at being in the same room as this man. She had seen him levitate, had watched as the rain curved around him and then toward him, the elements bending at his will. But she had also seen another side of him. Frail and limp, his body lifeless, as Donavon carried him to the church and they tried to bring him back to consciousness on the muddy floor of the storage room.
A god or a devil. Or maybe just a man with an understanding of the natural world that went beyond comprehension.
A shiver ran through her body, goose bumps riddling her flesh, as she felt the gaze of unseen eyes. The syringe the general had given her shook in her hand. As shadows began to slowly take shape, Faye recognized the form of a body lying on the ground a few feet away.
Was he sleeping? Resting? Did he even know she was there?
Her eyes continued to adjust to the darkness, causing her to gasp. It wasn’t the Shaman lying before her. It was one of the guards.
Or what was left of him.
His chest was ripped open, ribs pulled back and protruding like misshapen fangs. She could make out the uniform, stained a grotesque black. The heavy reek of death and spilled blood crept further
into her mouth, down her nostrils, and into her head. A thick shaft was lodged through the guard’s head, pinning him to the cavern floor.
It took Faye a moment to recognize what she was really seeing, a moment longer to come to terms with it. It wasn’t a shaft or rod impaling the man’s skull.
It was a bone.
The guard’s own femur, torn free from his lower half, had been thrust through his open mouth and dislocated jaw. Gristle still clung to it like the flabby flesh on a chicken bone.
She turned back to the rusted gate at the cell’s entrance, fighting the impulse to vomit. No man could do this. She pressed her face to the bars, sucking at the air between those metal rails as if it were somehow cleaner than what existed within the cell.
“Hey! Get me out of here!”
This was no ordinary monster they had stuck her in with. This was a creature of nightmares.
“Help me,” she shouted in Spanish.
She shook the gate, spasms of rattling metal echoing down the hall. In her efforts, the syringe slipped from her hand. Landing against a rail, she heard the light thonk as it bounced back into the cell. She turned, glancing about for it, and with her first step felt its plastic casing crack beneath her foot.
“No, no, no, no.”
Her only hope for survival leaked out on the parched cavern floor.
As if to emphasize her hopelessness, a quiet shuffle came from across the room, the movement lost within the darkness.
“Stay where you are,” she said. If she thought her beating heart had been loud before, someone had just cranked that volume up to its limit. She rubbed at her eyes, the shadows swirling yet patternless before her. “I’m not afraid of you!”
The silence was worse than an answer.
“They sent me in to drug you. The alcalde, or general. He wanted me to put you under. Knock you unconscious, like last night. But I’m not going to do that.”
Not that she had a choice, but what did he need to know?
More shuffling in the darkness. Something heavy dropped to the cavern floor with a sickening plop. In a moment of rare lucidity, considering the conditions she found herself in, Faye decided that if he aimed to frighten her, she would frighten him right back. She had nothing to offer, nothing with which to bargain. Her only hope lay in turning a monster — maybe even a devil — into an ally, however unwilling.