The Maddening: Book 2 in the Terror Saga

by Nicholas Head

  Marisha picked up the pace, wanting a better look at the generically named "laborers." Her body pushed back against her will to move faster. The harder she pressed, the faster they went. Unnaturally going and going, showing no signs of exhaustion.

  She came up on the left side, just far enough ahead of one of them, hoping to at least get a look at one of their faces. With Quinn a few steps ahead, he shouldn't notice her. Marisha whipped in front, but the female turned away, but not before she got a good look at her face. The woman's features we taught, awake, but stiff as if being propped up artificially.

  Marisha jumped in front again, hoping to get another look, but the woman stuck her arm out and pushed her back with unexpected strength. Catching herself before she fell, Marisha glimpsed something thick and silver hanging around the woman's neck. It was almost like a necklace, maybe even a collar.

  I need to get a better look.

  "Stay back," the female shotgunned at her with a growl.

  The woman’s huge, bloodshot eyes stared through her, teeth chattering as if she were freezing. She feverishly pulled at the loose skin hanging from her neck. Marisha moved in closer, trying to get a closer look at the item around her neck. The smell was awful, almost like urine and acid.

  It had been a while since she had been around that smell, and it was never a good thing.

  “Step back, or you kill me,” the woman said, her voice quieter, her words staccato.

  Marisha reached out to put a hand on the woman’s shoulder, quickly causing her to flinch. “I’m not here to hurt you. You can trust me. Let me help you.”

  “No,”

  “At least tell me your name,” Marisha pleaded.

  “Why?” Her words driving through gritted teeth.

  The laborer closest to them quickly glanced but turned back, moving fast, creating a distance between them.

  “It’s what people do.”

  “Ahnah. Now, leave me alone.” She said, her tone shifting down.

  Marisha gripped her arm and slowed them down. Ahnah feigned a struggle but gave up quickly. They continued in lockstep, hoping to not arouse suspicion.

  “What are we really doing out here,” Marisha asked.

  “A supply run, we have to do these sometimes, but Quinn already told you that.”

  “You and I know that’s not true,” Marisha said, lowering her voice to a whisper. “There's not enough stuff in that trailer to trade for anything of value. So what’s all this really about.”

  “He’ll kill me if I tell you,” Ahnah said. She pulled away again, but Marisha sped up.

  “Who?” Marisha said.

  “Quinn. He's crazy.”

  Colleen

  Colleen’s trip down to Kali’s office was far less daunting than the second time around. With all the mysteries gone, it seemed little more than a musty office nestled in the back corner of a basement. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, allowing her to see what else they had stored in the basement.

  While most of the items lay under white sheets and plastic tarps, pushed against the walls, the larger objects could still be seen either hanging from the ceiling or spread out on the ground. A massive, partially fossilized dinosaur skeleton, pieced together with one-inch thick steel cables, lay spread out on the floor. The skulls with nearly foot-long teeth all arranged in a row, completing the nightmarish grin.

  Shelves pushed against the walls were stacked to the brim with jars and jars of preserved animals and other mysterious creatures Colleen had never seen, all floating in an amber-colored liquid suspension.

  “It’s amazing all the magical things lost to us after the Shifting.”

  Startled, Colleen turned her head to find Kali standing just behind her. Her hands behind her back, her head tilted to the side, eyes focused on something just off to the side.

  “My apologies. I didn’t mean to scare you. I could see you looking around.” Her whimsical voice was much more inviting than when they had first met.

  “It’s no problem. It’s a nice collection you have here. You don’t mind, do you?”

  Kali moved up beside her, putting her hand on the small of Colleen’s back. She had changed clothes from that morning, putting on a pair of Khaki knee-length shorts and a well-worn white tank top, her hair pulled up in a messy bun.

  “Not at all. That’s what all this is for. Unfortunately, the vast majority of,” Kali huffed then waved a hand, “Who am I kidding? Everyone but me, and it seems you as well now, couldn't care less about any of this.”

  “We had nothing like this back home, at least not that I knew about.”

  Colleen noticed a strand of gray hair had fallen down. Kali quickly swept it out of the way, hiding it back in the bun.

  “My parents kept the looters and people looking to burn anything for warmth out of here. My father had worked here as an evolutionary biologist. You passed his office on the way up here.” Kali pointed to the opposite corner, “and my mother had been the assistant curator, in charge of all the items you don’t see displayed upstairs.”

  “Curator?” colleen asked.

  “It’s like a librarian for the books that no one gets to see. The office where we met was once her’s.”

  Colleen’s eyes drifted over the items on shelves again, finally resting on several jars with grotesque, unrecognizable creatures floating in a faint amber liquid. She took a few steps forward, dusting one of them off, and kneeled down to get a better look. Inside was a fishlike animal, but it wasn’t wholly a fish. Instead, it had three eyes, with fins in all the wrong places, and a mouth twisted in a terrifying scowl. Thin needles of teeth jutting out like porcupine quills. On the back half, grafted, were the hairy legs from what looked to be a large rodent. Each of the three toes tipped with thin, deadly talons. The jar beside it contained the head of a snake mated to the slender body of a lizard. This one was much less striking.

  “What are all these? They can’t be real.” An acrid taste tickled the back of her throat.

  “Of course not.” Kali laughed, “I believe the museum got these from a private collection many years back. These were a madman’s attempts at animal experimentation, a failed experiment. They would have been proudly displayed a hundred years ago, but items like these would have been considered tacky in my mother’s museum. Less scientific and more kitsch in modern times, stored away down here for historical posterity.”

  Colleen walked to the end of the shelf, Kali staying uncomfortably close behind. Turning the corner, she passed hundreds of more specimen jars, with the majority being animal fetuses in various states of development. Something caught her eye, causing her to do a double-take. She pushed a specimen jar aside, seeing ten toes, two legs, but not that of any animal she knew. What it was could fit in her palm.

  It was human except for what she had not expected to see. Where once had been a human head was now that of an owl’s. Colleen pulled back, not believing what she saw.

  “I see you found some of the more disturbing items. Later on in life, that same madman has tried human experimentation as well. While visually arresting, its history of what humans used to think could be done with a simple surgery.”

  Colleen kept walking, passing other similar specimens. Not pausing until she was back into the light. She had toured the Fort Worth Museum of Natural History many times, seeing nothing even remotely as disturbing as what she had just seen.

  “Is this what you meant when you said things lost to us after the Shifting? I think we could lose things like these and be okay.”

  “Not so much things, but knowledge. Did you know that humans once thought the gods threw that lighting down in the sky? Or that someone stole fire from those same gods to give to the humans? His name was Prometheus and was punished by those gods by being chained to a rock for all eternity. Each day an eagle would fly down and eat his liver, bit by bit, and each night it would grow back, only for the same thing to happen all over again. Prometheus was a champion for humans and was punished for giving them s
omething valuable.”

  “That’s dumb,” Colleen said.

  “Is it?” Kali said, pursing her lips.

  “Why wouldn’t it be? We know exactly what causes those things. It’s not like we would forget knowledge like that?”

  “You would think not. Let me give you another example. The Egyptian civilization predates us over thousands of years. They built pyramids that still stand as marvels of engineering, using only the most basic tools. Even before the Shifting engineers stood in amazement at the Egyptian feats. Or take the ancient Greek culture, over two thousand years ago. Their knowledge of alternative medicine is still lost to time. We still don’t know to this very day and might never understand what they truly knew. Could you imagine the good we could do with all that knowledge?”

  Colleen tugged at her earlobe. “I don’t see—”

  “Only five hundred years ago, intelligent people thought things they could not explain were caused by demons and evil spirits. Yet a thousand years before them, they knew that not to be the case. You see! It was easier to blame it on superstitious nonsense than to say they did not know, or they would find out.”

  Colleen's eyebrows went up and she pressed her lips together, unsure what to make of all of this new information, “I still don’t know what any of this has to do with me or anything, really? If you are saying we will forget where fire comes from, then I have to say I don’t believe you.”

  “It was just an example. I don't mean simple things like that. I’m talking more like scientific advancement and research. We’ve already regressed past anyone really knowing the reason for the Shifting. Knowledge lost when the world went silent.”

  Colleen perked up, looking Kali in the eye. Her mother had talked about what happened, but not why it happened or even how. Dr. Vasquez had blamed it on laziness and arrogance, a cure being worse than the disease. What’s that meant, she didn’t know. He hadn’t said more than that in his journals.

  “And you do know what caused it?”

  “I don’t have all the details, no, but we got too overconfident with what we learned and that knowledge got into some very dangerous hands.

  “You think someone caused this? How does one person drive the entire world into extinction? You can’t possibly believe that’s what happened. We would have heard about it. Secrets don’t stay that way for long.”

  Colleen didn’t want to let on to the reason for her trip, still not trusting Kali. She took a few small steps away, making room between them.

  “I have my hypothesis from the information I’ve gathered, but you are correct. It is that, just a hypothesis.”

  ‘So,” Colleen said, looking around. She stepped forward and picked up a jar. “What was it you needed from me?"

  “I wanted to ask you if you planned on staying for much longer, and if you were, how long?"

  “We'll be gone as soon as Marisha gets back. If it's payment you are looking for, then I am sorry to disappoint but everything we have is spoken for. It's not like this was a planned stop.”

  Kali put her hand up and cracked a smile. “No payment is necessary. Our mission is to take care of those less fortunate.”

  “You all have an odd way of doing that. That reminds me of something, Yamuna, you know Yamuna, right? Your niece has this wild theory that the group won't be back for a few more days. I seem to remember you telling me it would be today. If that's the case, then I'm not okay with that.”

  Colleen looked at a calm and collected Kali, searching for signs of a tell.

  “Is that all Yamuna told you? She doesn't always have all the—”

  "Are you saying that she's wrong?”

  Kali shrugged her shoulders and sucked air through her teeth. “Sometimes these things take longer than expected. I might have undershot the timeframe when we spoke earlier. For that, I apologize.”

  Colleen wasn’t about to let Kali talk herself out of this one.

  “Yes or No?”“Yes, they will be a few days. I wasn't sure what to think of you when you first arrived, so keeping information close to my chest was in my — our, best interests.”

  Forty-Nine

  Marisha

  “I'm sure I made myself clear, girl.” Quinn snarled.

  He spun around and puffed up his chest, his heavy steps pounding towards her, the thick vein pulsing in his forehead. Quinn balled his hands up, his fists turning bright red, knuckles white.

  “You don't own these people, dude," she shot back. He was laying the condescension on thick.

  “Don't do this, Marisha,” Garrick yelled. “It's not worth it.”

  “I don't?” Quinn laughed.

  “Wow, I guess they were right. You are a raging psycho,” she said.

  Quinn lunged at Marisha, but she was quick enough to pull away. He flew past her as she rocked back on her heels. Stumbling forward, he fell to the ground, not fast enough to catch himself. His hands sliding across the asphalt as an enraged scream escaped his lips. The laborers scattered like scared animals, afraid of their master.

  Marisha looked around for a place to run.

  There was nothing. Was she always this impulsive?

  They had just crossed onto a bridge, and she really should have planned this better. The sign above her head read Spencer Island Bridge. With Quinn behind her, she had to keep her distance if she was to live.

  Quinn pushed himself back up and stalked toward her again. His hand slipped down his back into his waistband.

  Garrick ran toward them, waving his hands, his eyes wide like saucers.

  “Don't, Quinn. She meant nothing by it.” He pled with an unsteady voice.

  Quinn finally pulled out his gun, letting it rest on his thigh.

  “Who are you to speak for any of us,” Marisha said, motioning back and forth between her and the laborers now cowering on the ground.

  She feverishly picked at her fingers, drawing blood. She looked down to see the damage. A desire to quickly count in sevens overtook her.

  “7 14 21 28 35… 42.”

  “Stop, Marisha. Don't do this. Let's talk this out.”

  “Look at him. He doesn't want to talk,” her voice shaky. “He pulled a gun on me just for talking to these people. You've got to be blind if you think he's going to be reasonable.”

  “Stay out of it, Garrick,” Quinn growled. He gripped the gun with his other hand, keeping it at a low ready. “I told you she would be nothing but trouble like she always has been, and you just had to bring her along.”

  “Just put the gun down. I promise I'll make sure she doesn't do anything else.”

  “What?” Marisha said, staring Garrick down, “I don't need you to keep me in line. He's the one who needs a leash.”

  Quinn's index finger inched to the trigger, his fingers tightening around the wooden grip, the stainless steel barrel shaking.

  “See, she isn't going to listen. This girl isn't who you thought she was.” Quinn said, his face twisted into a fearsome scowl. “She doesn't love you, hell, she doesn't even remember you. She isn't worth it. We need to cut our losses if we plan on making our delivery.”

  Marisha backed up, peering over her shoulder. The railing was only a few feet from her back.

  “I have one question. How is it you keep them in line? That's quite the accomplishment,” she said.

  Quinn put one hand down and reached into his pocket, keeping the gun pointed at her. He pulled out a small black device, his fingers searching for a button. Suddenly, the laborers begin to spasm, their bodies contorting as they pulled at the silver devices around their necks.

  “See, just a click of the button, and they do anything you want.” A devilish grin stretched from ear to ear. He was enjoying it, “Works great on dogs too. I have to thank my wife Kali for this one.”

  Marisha’s breath hitched in her throat. She stroked her throat and grimaced. This psycho made her toes curl.

  “Tell me,” Marisha said, stepping back, shoes crunching on loose gravel, “and be honest,” just a few
more steps and she could go no further, “what are these people for? These people are what you're trading, aren't they? If you're going to kill me, at least tell the truth. It's not like I can do anything now. You’ve won.”

  Her back pressed against the rail; she reached back, gripped the bar, and pushed herself up.

  “Sometimes you have to do things, unpleasant things. It's a dog eat dog world out there. You can’t possibly be that naïve. Don’t worry, they'll have a nice enough life once they work off their debt.” He was so worked up. Saliva was flying off in every direction.

  Marisha pushed herself up one more rung, almost to the top. Quinn must still have tunnel vision, unaware of her movements.

  “And what about the girl? She's all of what...fifteen, sixteen years old? What do you think they’re going to do with her?”

  “What they do with their property after taking delivery is none of my concern.”

  She pushed up one last time. Her butt now on the rail, she lifted a leg up, swinging it over. “You're such a big man. Drugging up young girls, selling them for what? Medicine, food, maybe more drugs for you?”

  “I make the hard decisions while people like you—”

  Quinn raised the weapon up, the barrel now aimed at her chest. She could see his finger twitching against the trigger. His eyes were red with rage.

  “No, don't!” Garrick, halfway between the two of them, sprinted towards Quinn, waving his arms.

  “I should have done this a long time ago, you w—”

  Garrick crashed into Quinn, knocking his arm back, a shot rang out, Crack!, stopping Marisha dead in her tracks. Quinn recovered instantly. He was much too strong, tossing his brother aside with one arm.

  Crack! Quinn stumbled and fired again. The next shot was still off target but much closer, ricocheting off the road and into the metal railing. Marisha felt the vibration in her hands. She swung another leg over and looked down, the river didn't look to be flowing that fast, but from this height, it would almost certainly be suicide.