by Dana Fredsti
“You need to stop that. You’ll hurt yourself.”
“Stop hurting her,” Gabriel growled.
Jake sighed. “Look. I’ve told you. They don’t feel it. They’re not like us.” He punched the knife tip in and out of my left thigh so quickly I didn’t register the pain until a few seconds after he’d withdrawn it.
Then it hurt like hell. I managed to hold back all but a small whimper.
“I will kill you, you son of a bitch…”
Jake giggled. “Sure! Maybe a piece of you will go down the wrong pipe. It could happen.” He held up the last filet of Ashley he’d sliced off, and let it slide down his throat like an oyster. His eyes closed in bliss.
“Seriously, Gabe, this is quality meat here.”
The knife dipped down toward my stomach.
This can’t be happening, I thought. I did not survive all the shit the world had thrown at me, just to end up as steak tartare for a nut job.
Then that sharp blade cut into me an inch or two to the left of my naval. The pain was excruciating. I didn’t even try and hold back the screams. They were the only release I had.
When Jake finished with his latest slice, he cocked his head in Gabriel’s direction.
“Seriously. You need to eat. They told me to get you to eat. And if you don’t eat, that means no more fresh meat for me, unless I find it myself.” He looked down at me with what I can only describe as a fond expression. “It was really nice of you to find me instead, Ashley. That’s probably going to make you my favorite meal ever.”
“If I eat… will you let her go?” Gabriel got to his feet slowly.
“Gabriel, no!” The words wrenched themselves from my throat, which was already raw from screaming.
“You want me to let her go?” Jake looked at him indignantly. “I mean… are you crazy? That last one was plain old ahi. This one is otoro. You just… seriously, check it out.”
Jake slowly approached Gabriel, holding out the strip of flesh he’d just carved from my stomach, like someone trying to tempt a feral cat.
“Just smell this,” Jake whispered. “Soooo good.”
He held it up to Gabriel’s nose.
I watched as Gabriel, almost against his will, inhaled. His eyes shut for a moment, his expression that of a connoisseur smelling a particularly good wine.
Jake smiled happily. “I know, right?”
Then he stepped just a little bit closer.
“Now you gotta taste it.”
Jake brought my flesh up to Gabriel’s mouth and touched it to his lips, all the while talking in a singsong voice, as if to a child, “Tasty tasty tasty treat, open up, it’s fun to eat!”
He rubbed the meat—I had to think of it that way, or I’d go crazy—around Gabriel’s mouth, smearing blood on his lips and chin. Gabriel jerked his head to one side, then the other. His hands strained against the metal holding him to the wall. Jake giggled and then popped the piece of flesh into Gabriel’s mouth.
No no no…
Gabriel’s mouth went slack. His tongue crept out to taste the blood. His eyes opened, blazing with a feral desire that terrified me.
Spit it out, I thought. Oh god, please spit it out…
Gabriel swallowed.
“Good, huh?”
Jake and I both watched the rapturous expression on Gabriel’s face as he savored the taste sensation of human flesh. It might have been my imagination, but I could have sworn his color improved almost immediately.
“More.” Gabriel looked at Jake, then over at me. The feral hunger in his eyes terrified me. Blood and saliva trickled from the sides of his mouth. “I want more.”
Jake beamed. “Sure! Hang on, I’ll throw another shrimp on the barbie.” He raised the knife and headed back in my direction.
“No.” Gabriel licked his lips again. “I want… I want to do it myself.”
Jake looked as though he was going to cry, a proud father watching his son catch his first big fish.
“Sure. Okay!” Pulling a key out of a blood-encrusted jeans pocket, he eagerly unlocked the shackles holding Gabriel’s arms to the wall. They fell off his wrists with a metallic clank. He then handed Gabriel the key so he could undo the ankle shackle himself.
He did so clumsily, rubbing his wrists to restore circulation.
I wondered how long he’d been chained up in here with Jake trying to change his diet from vegan to cannibal. It didn’t take him long to recover his balance, and he moved with terrifying purpose across the room to where I lay strapped on to the cot.
Jake dipped a finger into the raw wound he’d just inflicted and popped the tip into his mouth, licking the blood with a rapturous expression. Then he set the knife on top of my bare and bloody stomach, grinned and stepped away with a little bow.
“You’re never gonna want to go back after this.”
I gazed pleadingly up at Gabriel as he put both hands on my thighs, running them up to my hips, his eyes glazed with a lust that had nothing to do with sex and yet everything to do with my naked flesh. He leaned down and nuzzled the curve of my neck, inhaling deeply.
“Oh, Ash,” he said thickly, “you smell so nice…”
And my brains are spicy. The thought bubbled up out of nowhere and I gave a choked laugh that turned into a sob. Tears trickled from my eyes as Gabriel continued to touch me in an obscene parody of a lover’s embrace. He ran his tongue down to my collarbone, nipping softly at my skin as he continued along my right arm to the wound in my forearm. He gave a small groan of ecstasy as he very gently licked the blood dripping in rivulets.
“Gabriel… you don’t want to do this,” I whispered.
“Shhhh…” He put a finger up to my mouth, rubbing the ball of his thumb along my jawline. His other hand wandered back down to my stomach, where it found the waiting knife. His fingers curled around the handle, then tightened.
My insides churned as he lifted it, looking from the blade to me as if deciding where to cut first.
“Hurry up,” Jake urged. “I’m hungry!”
“Shut up,” Gabriel snapped. “I don’t want to rush this.” He placed the blade against the front of my right thigh, the edge resting lightly against my skin. I tried not to anticipate how much it would hurt when he cut into me, but despite my efforts to control my fear, my breath came in increasingly shallow gasps as I began to hyperventilate.
I gave an involuntary shriek of pain as the blade suddenly bit into me.
Jake giggled.
“Nice one! It’s great when they’re still lively, right?”
Gabriel nodded as he sliced the blade just a little bit deeper. I gasped at the white-hot agony, trying not to scream again if only to deny Jake that satisfaction. He stepped in closer, hovering behind Gabriel’s shoulder, craning his neck to get a good look.
“Come on already,” he begged, practically dancing up and down as strings of drool dribbled from his mouth to his chin. “I’m ready for filet mignon!”
Gabriel gave a smile absolutely devoid of humor before his face hardened and he growled.
“Here you go.”
He turned and plunged the knife into Jake’s stomach.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Jake’s eyes went wide with shock. He held out one hand, the other clutching the wound as blood spurted out between his fingers. His breath left him in a drawn-out exhale that reminded me of Romero in Escape from New York. Which was kind of ironic since I’d always thought that was just bad method acting.
He crumpled to his knees, staring up at Gabriel with an expression of total betrayal. Gabriel smiled and, in a move so quick I could barely follow it, slashed the blade along Jake’s throat. Then he turned back to me and sliced the same blade through the restraints holding my wrists and ankles. Dropping the knife on my chest, he strode over to a pile of clothes against one wall. Scooping them up, he tossed them next to the cot, my boots tumbling to one side and landing with a quiet thud on the concrete.
I struggled to a sitting position and
swung my legs over the edge of the cot. The blood rushed to my head and I fought the inevitable wave of nausea that seemed to be a daily occurrence for me these days.
“Is… is there any water?” It hurt to talk. I felt like someone had taken a grater to my throat. I tasted blood where I’d bitten the inside of my mouth to try to stop the screams.
“Get dressed and get out of here, Ash.” He wiped one hand across his mouth, then again, as if trying to scrub something away.
“Gabriel, what—” I reached for my clothes, trying to untangle pants from the shirt. Pieces of Kevlar fell out of the bundle, along with my underwear. My skin crawled with the thought that Jake had touched them, pulled them off of my unconscious form. If I’d had my choice, I’d have burned them on the spot. But since I didn’t particularly want to run around naked, I opted to buck up and get over it.
Gritting my teeth, I pulled on the underwear, then shoved my legs into the BDUs, hissing in pain as the pants scraped against the cut on my thigh and the open wound on my stomach. Shirt and Kevlar followed, fabric sinking into the wounds on my forearms. Oh, it hurt like a son of a bitch—I might as well have lit a match and shoved the flame in there.
“Here.” Gabriel dumped my weapons on the cot next to me, then retreated to the far side of the room, watching me.
As I pulled my socks on and laced the boots, I stared up at him, a mixture of hope and fear rising in my chest. His color definitely looked better and the madness, that horrible hunger, was gone from his eyes.
Gabriel—my Gabriel—was back. I got to my feet and started toward him. He shot his hand up to stop me, his expression fierce.
“Stay away from me.”
“Gabriel, I’ve been through hell to find you,” I said, trying to control my hurt. Don’t I at least get a hug?” My attempt at a joking tone failed miserably. All I managed was to sound totally pathetic.
He shook his head, violently this time.
“You need to stay back, Ash.”
“Why?”
“They’ve been trying to get me to eat human flesh ever since they brought me here,” he said. “Bastard wouldn’t let me take any more antiserum. I’m…” He stopped, swallowed. “I’ve been so hungry, Ash. I could feel the disease spreading through me. Knew what I’d become if I didn’t give in.”
He paused, shut his eyes for a moment.
“I couldn’t watch Jake torture you,” he said softly. “He would have eaten you alive, bit by bit, and I would have had to watch. The only way I could stop him was to let him think I’d given in. Make him believe I’d join him. And the only thing that would convince him was taking that first bite.”
His eyes reopened, raw hunger shining from them. I forced myself not to flinch and stayed where I was. He licked his lips, an unconscious and disturbing gesture.
“It took everything I had not to cut another piece out of you.”
“But you didn’t,” I said. I held his gaze, even though it took everything I had not to recoil in horror. “You controlled it. That has to count for something.”
His expression flashed between revulsion and desire as he replied with a whisper. “I can still taste you.”
This is so the wrong place to hear him say that.
“You can control this, Gabriel. You can be cured. Simone and Dr. Albert helped you before, and there’s no reason to believe they can’t do something for you now.” I was rewarded with a sliver of hope in his eyes. It wasn’t much, but it was better than the bleak despair. “So come with me.”
I reached out to him. He started to reach back… but then his hand dropped to his side, the despair returning. Gabriel shook his head slowly, back and forth without stopping.
“Ash, you need to leave now.”
“Fine,” I said shortly. “You’re coming with me.”
The head-shaking became almost violent.
“I can’t!”
Enough is enough. I strode forward and grabbed him by the shirt, trying not to grimace at the feel of crusted filth on the fabric.
“You are going with me,” I growled, staring up into those hunger-glazed eyes. “I need you. The rest of the team needs you. And stop shaking your head!” Something snapped inside and I slammed him against the wall hard enough to cause his head to snap back and hit the concrete.
Rage joined the hunger in his eyes. Growling, he reached for me with both hands. I knocked them out of the way and punched him in the jaw once, then again, setting my knuckles on fire with pain and leaving him momentarily dazed. I took a few steps back and waited, poised to defend myself and wallop the shit out of him if necessary.
Gabriel stepped forward, stumbled, and then regained his balance. He looked at me, his expression wiped clean of anything but rueful admiration.
“Damn. That hurts,” he said, rubbing his jaw with one hand.
“Good,” I snapped. “I need you to focus. We have to get our people out of here, and I can’t do it alone. So you need to pull yourself together and control this shit! And then maybe—just maybe—Simone can help you!”
He heaved a long drawn-out sigh, his back straightening.
“Okay. What the hell are our people doing here?”
“You didn’t know?”
“No. I’ve been stuck in here the last few days with—” He gave a terse nod toward Jake’s corpse.
Which was now moving.
“Son of a bitch,” I muttered. I grabbed my katana off the cot. Jake, now a full-fledged zombie instead of a half-dead crazy pants cannibal, lurched to his feet and gave a plaintive moan as he saw me. I drew my sword and cut his head off in one smooth move. Very Yojimbo versus El Zombiachi.
As I geared up, sheathing the katana and pulling out the two Glocks, I gave Gabriel a brief rundown of events since he’d been kidnapped. I gave a Glock to Gabriel, along with some spare clips, and kept the other one in hand. His face tightened in pain when I told him about losing Mack and the Gunsy twins, but he kept quiet until I’d finished.
Then all he said was, “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
We left the room, Gabriel in front. He peered cautiously around the corner first, moving unsteadily—a stark contrast to his normal confident and competent grace. I wondered how long it had been since he’d had a real meal and decided not to ask.
“Any ideas where they’d be?” I asked quietly as we moved down the corridor in the direction I’d been heading.
“I only saw a little of the layout when they brought us here,” Gabriel answered just as quietly. “Dr. Albert and I were separated pretty much right from the start. They let him take some blood samples, but then they put me in a little cell by myself. That bastard tried to convince me it was my duty as a patriot to join them. Wanted me to be like him.”
His face tightened with disgust.
“I told him no fucking way. Spit in his face.” He gave a little laugh. “That’s when he had them put me in with Jake.”
“Who?” I asked. “Who put you in with Jake? Who wanted you to be like him?”
“Same bastard who had us kidnapped.”
“We’ve been trying to figure out who the hell that is since they ambushed us at UCSF.”
Gabriel stopped in his tracks so suddenly that I ran into him. He turned, putting his hands on my shoulders as he stared down at me.
“You don’t know?”
I shook my head wordlessly.
Gabriel opened his mouth to answer, but froze when we heard the distinctive ch-chak sound of rounds being cycled into chambers.
A door was open down the hallway behind us, and a half dozen armed men in black paramilitary gear stepped out, all with their weapons aimed our way. Even worse, I recognized two of them as the ones who’d been chased off by the biker boys.
Shit.
We both raised our hands without being told. I didn’t even lift my Glock. We were outnumbered and out-armed.
The two men from the park stepped forward, snatching the Glocks out of our hands. One took my blades ou
t of their sheaths and tossed them to the ground with a clatter. Then they pushed us in front of them.
I felt the barrel of a rifle nudging my back.
“Not necessary,” I said in measured tones.
“Totally necessary, bitch,” the one behind me said. He poked the barrel into my back again, harder this time. “Go on. Try something. I’d love to get some payback for Sykes and Jacobs.” He did it again, hard enough to leave a bruise. Gabriel growled softly under his breath, a low rumble that only my ears picked up. Silently willing him to stay calm, I took a deep breath and kept walking.
Now is not the time.
They marched us through the doors at the end of the corridor, which led into an octagonal-shaped room that looked for all the world like a cross between the lobby for an ’80s doctor’s office, and a men’s club. Dark leather couches and chairs were combined with metal and glass tables. Silver-framed Nagel and Olivia prints warred with fox hunting scenes framed in wood on dove-gray walls.
People in uniform, civvies, lab coats, and more mooks in black paramilitary garb hurried back and forth across the room, vanishing through other doors with an air of barely contained panic.
Good.
We crossed the lobby to a set of dark wood-panel doors. One of the paramilitary assholes rapped hard. After a beat, the doors opened inward, and Gabriel and I were escorted into a space more like a conference room, though dimly lit. Thanks to my wild card vision I didn’t have any trouble seeing details.
A long wooden conference table occupied the middle, surrounded by cushy Aeron chairs, some of them occupied. Multiple video screens ringed the walls, with a large one dominating the room at the far end. Some of the screens—including the large one—were dark, but many of them were live, and a couple were manned. As far as I could tell at a glance, about half showed various points of the facility, both inside and out.
I recognized the lighthouse, as well as the visitor’s center. Another screen showed the guard’s gatehouse and main entrance to the park, zombies crowded up against the lock gates, hands reaching through the bars. Smoke was rising from various locations, and there were a lot of armed soldiers looking really pissed off.