The troopers didn’t patrol the aisle nor bring anything to drink or eat. She wouldn’t eat what they offered anyway. And she refused to accept Chesterton’s story. Tom Vanicek had proven himself a hard man to kill, and there was a quiet furious joy still alive in his daughter knowing Tom would extract biblical vengeance on anyone who moved again her – or her brother.
But she couldn’t throw off Chesterton’s words in full. The truth was, Tom and Lucas might be dead. And Lilianna would quickly join them if she broke now.
“Hey!” she called out – using her “girl” voice. It wasn’t hard to inflect it with the right amount of fear, though the innocence was lacking. She clutched the cage mesh instead and at the last moment yanked down the front of her polo top so the neckline tore.
There was nothing in the straw for a weapon. Not even a pot to shit. Nothing about the cubicle showed recent use – but then Lila saw the scratch marks around the timber mechanism of the gate carved by human nails. No dog could be so precise.
A figure cleared its throat and the shadows stirred as the trooper advanced towards her down the orange-lit corridor.
Lilianna wasn’t prepared to see a female trooper regarding her impassively, and the innocent, flirtatious, zesty smile she’d somehow fashioned on her mud- and blood-encrusted features turned instantly ridiculous under the hard-faced blonde’s disapproving look.
“You want something?” the woman asked. “You s’posed to keep quiet.”
Lilianna’s face fell into tatters just like her half-baked plan.
“I’m just . . . I just need to pee. . . .”
“Been holdin’ on?”
“Yes.”
Lilianna tried to say it brightly. It didn’t work. The woman’s look was like a blowtorch.
“Stupid of you,” the woman replied stony-voiced. “You ain’t gettin’ out till tonight, when Greerson comes.”
Lila’s mouth moved yet no words came. The tendons stood out on the guard’s bared forearms, the rest of her packed into Kevlar and khaki. She even wore a name tag: McGill.
“Bunker down,” the woman told her. “Storm comin’ in.”
“Wait!”
McGill growled, but pitched her voice low like worried about getting caught.
“Keep your damned fuckin’ voice down, I said.”
Lila had no idea what to say and McGill started her retreat.
“Wait, please.”
The blonde woman looked at her with a hard expression broken too many times in the past to break again now. Utter hopelessness overwhelmed Lilianna and she sagged against the cage door.
“How can you do this?” she asked. “I’m a woman. You’re a –”
“You’re an enemy of the people,” the trooper said. “That’s enough for me. They take it out on you and leave the rest of us the fuck alone.”
Lilianna gasped a reply, but the woman turned and marched away.
*
LILIANNA DIDN’T KNOW whether the light faded or her eyes grew tired. She blinked awake at a harsh scraping metal noise, surprised to see Aurora moving in the cell next door. With straw caught in her hair, the girl knelt in torn clothes working at the door to her kennel.
“Aurora,” Lila said.
The other woman turned to shoosh her, and in so doing revealed the full extent of her tragedy. One of her eyes was swollen shut and her hair and face were streaked with mucus, grime, and blood. Mostly blood. Her lone open eye glared with urgency as she put a finger to her lips and pointed meaningfully to indicate their captors. The rest of their shared disaster plunged in on Lila’s sleep-befuddled thoughts, and she leapt into one corner to vomit, but nothing but a mouthful of soapy bile came out, just like in the movies.
At some point in her panic, Lilianna started praying. Then she caught herself doing it.
“I’ve got a piece of wire,” Aurora whispered. “See?”
Lila forced herself back to her friend. The wire was little more than a nail. Aurora’d etched more of those telltale marks around the wooden latch on her cage door, doing little more than damaging old paint. A bright, almost hostile fever-look burnt in Aurora’s eyes, daring Lila to shatter her completely with any truth more horrible than what she’d already endured. Lilianna nodded slowly, mute, navigating her own terror as well as the mood. Then she turned to her own kennel gate, unable to glimpse if any guards were on watch nearby.
“We have to get out of here,” Aurora whispered again.
“I know.”
Lila kept herself breathing rather than talking. She threw off the irrational desire to shake the living bejeesus out of the cage door. Then she resisted the urge to slump in defeat again.
“I’m sorry, Aurora.”
“Sorry?”
“You’re only here . . . because you tried to help me.”
“You helped me,” Aurora said. “Before. The Incident.”
Lila nodded, monastic and overwrought.
“Do you see a way out of this, Lila?”
“Not yet,” Lilianna said sadly. “Not yet.”
And her sigh was replaced by the sound of engines in the gathering dark.
*
CAR DOORS SLAMMED, but their tormentors took their time gossiping in the yard outside. Men’s voices snickering and trading barbs carried on the wild wind, lost in translation as if the breeze stole the very words from the air as it scoured through the network of stale and foul kennels.
Lilianna fought off the shakes by focusing her breath. Aurora watched intently, as if desperate for cues. That meant it didn’t make sense when Lilianna started standing and squatting in rapid order – limbering up for what she imagined as their one chance at freedom.
The men’s chatter reached a crescendo when someone whooped and rattled the fence outside, which transmitted into the kennels like the buzzing of telegraph wires. Scuffling booted footfalls and then the clustered intrusion of more living shadows into the light presaged the company’s approach.
Denny Greerson came first.
“Well there she is,” the goat-faced, sickly-haired Safety Chief said.
A malevolent twinkle in his eye sent a knife of fear deep into Lilianna’s chest as it occurred to her Greerson wouldn’t dare such harsh treatment if her father still lived. Yet again, Lilianna fell into a blinking, gulping mess as all fortitude abandoned her, which only emboldened Greerson’s slithering laugh.
“Lila,” Aurora called across to her and shook the wire mesh. “Lila, get up.”
“Oh now now,” Greerson chuckled. “I think this little bitch knows what’s coming – what’s always been coming. You liked that black boy? We’re gonna get him too, if we haven’t already. But Vegas is going straight into the grinder. Nothin’ like you . . . Lilianna. Even that pretentious fuckin’ name . . . Play your cards right honey, and maybe I’ll give you to Yusuf when I’m finished, since you like ‘em so dark.”
“Fuck you, Greerson,” Lila said deliberately. “My father’s going to slit your –”
“Tom Vanicek’s as good as dead.”
Greerson punctuated the remark with a snotty snort. He stood dressed for the promised hunt. Night vision goggles hung against his armored vest.
“What, no one told you yet?” he asked her.
Lilianna stood carefully and moved to the back of the cell.
“You said ‘As good as dead’,” she replied.
Greerson scanned her like a hard-to-read book, then grin-grimaced.
“Let’s just say there’s a plan underway even as we speak,” the Chief said quietly. “Your father’s got a rendezvous with destiny . . . and an old friend.”
“I thought you were his friend,” Lila said.
“He’s a good man,” Greerson agreed. “Staunch. Not like me. Sorry. I go weak in the presence of beauty.” And he winked at her. “Sorry, Lilianna. I’ll do whatever I have to, if there’s something I want.”
“You want me?”
“Got you already, babe,” he told her. “Just takin’ my time with
it.”
“Yeah?” Lila tried to focus as if the whole conversation wasn’t leading to her rape and murder. “What’s the plan, then?”
“Well, first, we’ve got to get you out of there,” Greerson told her. He said it friendly-like, despite the intent. He motioned into the kennel as if the ball were in her court. “You play nice, I’m going to let you out for a run.”
“A ‘run’,” she mimicked him.
“It’s a little sport we have around here,” Greerson said. “Could become the new national pastime. I don’t think I understood when Ernie first showed me, but I do now. A beauty like you, it’s not enough just to take you. I could do that anytime. Anyone could.”
The urge to vomit coursed through Lilianna again and she ignored that too. Fluctuating gorge trapped in the back of her throat, she kept her leveled eyes on the ironically-named Safety Chief as the other corrupt troopers Yusuf, Slinky, and McGill squeezed past to unlatch Aurora’s cage. Aurora started freaking out, clutching onto the wire divider and forcing the two men to roughly haul her out. McGill punched the girl in the kidneys to unfasten her from the fence and then stood back, a mute witness rather than a participant, or at least telling herself that. The men beside her muttered some kind of similar remark, “You watch us work, Jerri,” and the look that crossed the hard blonde woman’s face extinguished any hopes Lilianna entertained.
Greerson waited until they dragged Aurora past. Then he opened Lila’s cage door and stepped back, a thumb in his belt, expecting something. Chesterton stood just off-stage with his AR15 lowered. Lilianna’s eyes flicked to him, then back to Greerson.
“Chester told me you’re going to hunt us,” she said. “Aren’t you going to even up the game?”
Greerson snorted, though not without an annoyed look to his lieutenant.
“‘Even up the game’,” he replied. “What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’ve got all that gear and we’ve got nothing,” Lila said.
“That’s the general idea.”
“Give me a blade at least,” Lila said.
The suggestion genuinely amused the Chief.
“I’m not giving you a knife, honey,” he said. “You’re still Vanicek’s daughter. I seen you in action, babe. I’m not that dumb.”
“Good,” Lila said. “Then you know what you’re doing.”
Greerson couldn’t understand her answer – a threat amid the ramifications of the decision he’d made throwing his lot in with Ernest Wilhelm. Greerson glanced to Chesterton as if his second-in-command might supply more details. But the burly redhead only shrugged, picking at his dense beard, disavowal as clear as McGill before. They were gate guards at Auschwitz, just doing their jobs.
“What do you mean, ‘I understand what I’m doing’?” Greerson asked (and misquoted) her.
“You’re not hunting rabbits now, Denny,” Lila snapped. Her voice coiled with revulsion. “You want to hunt, but you’re too smart to make it a real sport. I’m going to live long enough to make sure you know it.”
Greerson exploded in laughter, but Chesterton stayed silent. Greerson glared at his subordinate with a rageful look, annoyed at his lack of back-up, then he snarled at Lilianna as if resisting the urge to step into the cage and force her submission. He clearly begrudged the look of wariness his features slowly assumed.
“You boys!” he called out to Slinky and Yusuf. “Once you got the other one prepped, get back in here.”
He shoot an accusing look at Chesterton.
“Check her over, one last time,” he said. “Make sure she’s not carrying.”
Then Greerson shouldered his hunting rifle and trudged away.
*
THEY’D BROUGHT another hostage with them, but the young man hadn’t taken the excursion well. He lay in a tangle of bony limbs on the ground in front of the lead vehicle’s headlights.
The trooper they called Apache stood watch beside the freshly-arrived vehicles. The other new trooper with him wore a full visor helm despite the dark. He kept his Ak47 trained on Lilianna as if all Denny Greerson’s fears were well founded. But Yusuf drove a knee into Lila’s ribs as they dragged her from the kennels, and once she went down, that was it. The dark-skinned man kicked her twice in succession.
She curled in a ball, saving her strength as the assault stopped as soon as it started. Greerson barked something fiercely, and the two guards dragged her out into the open space and dumped her beside Aurora. The young man opposite sat up reluctantly, as if blinking awake, bewildered and terrified and woefully under-prepared for the elements. He wore no shoes, his skinny jeans were as torn as his tattered black t-shirt. He clearly favored a broken arm. Eyes like lamps turned on the two young women, but he did it without words.
Astonishingly, the young man then lay down again and covered his head with his other arm.
“Get up, yo,” Apache said.
Their captive failed to co-operate. By then, Greerson, Yusuf, Slinky and Chesterton had circled. Aurora twisted her gaze around as if expecting a friendly face, and thus Lilianna’s heart died as she bunkered down, waiting for another kicking.
“He won’t get up,” the guard said.
“Can’t hunt if they don’t run, Apache,” Greerson replied. “What’d you do to him?”
The big Native American man only shrugged and sniffed.
Aurora focused on Apache for a moment, recognizing one of her rapists. She then squirmed closer to Lilianna as if it were up to her friend to protect them both. And maybe it was. That’s certainly the direction this is headed, Lilianna thought to herself. Although her wrists were still bound, they remained in front of her. She lifted them to shield against the vehicle lights as Greerson nudged the twentysomething-year-old with his toe, and the captive didn’t move an inch. The Chief looked sad, like someone was ruining his special night.
“What you want us to do?” Yusuf asked from the side.
“You? Nothin’,” Greerson said. “Go collect Fuckface and go home. I expect you out here tomorrow, for clean-up. You’ll be bringing the Councilor.”
The black man looked chastened and frustrated, but nodded with understanding.
“Wilhelm not comin’ out with us tonight?” Apache asked.
Greerson shook his head, adjusting the goggles around his neck as if they suddenly interested him.
“Nope,” he replied. “Wilhelm knows the deal. And he likes to hunt alone. He was doing this long before any the rest of you guys got brought in.”
The Chief motioned back at the building and Lila somehow understood now who scrawled the words across the office face. Wilhelm’s transformation in her understanding was too great a puzzle for here and now. Maybe it was no transformation at all, anyway. Like so many others – and the others they’d faced during their years of life in the wild – the apocalypse was the cosmic sculptor teasing the true form of men and women out of the clay.
She cursed under her breath, which was a mistake. Too many eyes turned towards her. Greerson took it as his cue to grab her in one explosive movement, hauling Lilianna to her feet and almost into the air. It was all Lila could do to balance herself, and then Greerson danced back, clearly expecting some kind of mad, last-ditch resistance, saw nothing like it, but still knew Lila played a waiting game.
“Try smiling,” he said gruffly. “You’d look prettier.”
“I have something to smile about?”
“Every moment in every day.”
Greerson sucker punched her in the bread basket to drop her again.
“See?” he asked. “That could’ve been your face.”
Lila struggled to suck air and almost said to hell with it, then and there, and blacked out. It was only Aurora’s panicked mewls, almost subliminal beside her, that stilled Lilianna – or maybe that was just her excuse. Terror sank clawed fingers into her legs and again she had to fight off adrenal shakes. Someone had to know about what they were doing here. Fifty thousand survivors wouldn’t conscience this, she though
t.
“Now up you get,” Greerson said. “Time waits for no man – or wo-man.”
If that were a pun, again, only Greerson found it funny. The others watched like Dobermans waiting to be uncaged, which sent shivers up Lila’s spine. She stood, then helped Aurora shakily beside her. Greerson retreated a few steps like some kind of showman and raised his voice.
“Alright, folks,” he said. “The Councilor understands everyone wants some action. But this little hussy’s mine, clear? Everyone drew lots and if you’re not in tonight, your turn’s next. Got it?”
He addressed the last comment to Yusuf, still hovering at the edge of the group. The surly man nodded, stroking his thin fuzzy beard. A bigger form loomed out of the darkness at his side to resolve into the one they cruelly named Fuckface. Lilianna averted her eyes from the abyss of his face. Surely, he had to eat with a straw.
“So Slinky, Apache, and Chesterton, you’re all up with me, Stonefish and Hardy tonight,” Greerson said. “Understood?”
Chesterton cleared his throat, standing far back from them all.
“I’m good,” he said.
“You not taking your due, Chess?”
“Thanks all the same, Chief,” the lieutenant said. “My job’s here.”
“Alright.”
“What do we do about this one?” Slinky asked, pointing to the stricken young man.
“I tell you what,” Apache muttered. “If he’s mine, I want a fuckin’ refund, man.”
“You two can double up on number two,” Greerson told him.
He pointed to Aurora, who started shivering – and not because of the cold. The wind picked up handfuls of grass as it rushed through, and Slinky had to raise his voice to be heard.
“What about Joy Division here?”
Greerson took the question on notice. He strode back to the young man on the ground and crouched, nudging him, and when that didn’t work, he stood and kicked the hostage hard. It wasn’t a good sound. The man made a squeak, then covered his head again one-handed even more fitfully. Greerson released a sigh like a shopper ready to file a complaint.
After The Apocalypse (Book 6): Resolution Page 10