by Jake Bible
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” a voice said. “Hold still there.”
Kinsey’s eyes shot open and she scrambled as far away from the voice as she could. Her back jammed against more cold stone and she felt pain everywhere. Before she could get a look at who spoke to her, Kinsey’s stomach rebelled and she turned her head and vomited. Only thin liquid came up, mostly yellow bile, and she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand before trying to focus once more on the voice.
“Who are you? Where am I?” she asked.
“You don’t remember?” Dr. Logan asked, sitting on an upturned log close to a small, guttering flame that seemed to be coming right off the rock wall next to him. “Dr. Will Logan. I found you by theBrocchinia gargantua? Does that ring a bell?”
“Bronchitis plant, right,” Kinsey said, but she didn’t relax. “You were hiding in the bushes. Showed up when that thing puked me out.”
“Yes, that is an apt description,” Dr. Logan replied. “By the way, how did you get it to, uh, puke you out?”
“Containment net,” Kinsey said. “I burned its belly.”
“This?” Dr. Logan asked. He held up the containment net’s black box. “Interesting device. It is no longer operational, unfortunately. It would be handy to have in this environment. You wouldn’t happen to have another, would you?”
“Not on me,” Kinsey said.
The two fell silent as Kinsey studied the man.
In his early forties, or maybe late thirties, Dr. Logan was handsome, but in a soft way. He didn’t have a rugged bone about him, yet he looked like he could take on a challenge or two. There was something in his eyes, how they bore into Kinsey and shone with the promise of knowledge or the promise of adventure finding the knowledge. He reminded her of a mix between Darren and Gunnar.
But there was something else there, as well. Something…
“Can I check your vitals?” Dr. Logan asked, pulling Kinsey from her thoughts. He held up a stethoscope. “Just want to make sure you’re on the mend. TheBrocchinia gargantua nectar isn’t something we take for granted around here.”
“Where is here?” Kinsey asked, her eyes studying her surroundings quickly before locking back on Dr. Logan. “Is this a cave? Am I in a cave?”
“Yes, you are in a cave,” Dr. Logan said. “And you are safe. No one here wants to hurt you. Quite the opposite. We need you to help us.”
“Help you? How?” Kinsey asked.
“Help us get the hell off this island,” Dr. Logan said. “It stopped being a place of discovery a long time ago and is now just a place of nightmares. I would like to leave these nightmares.”
“No shit,” Kinsey laughed dryly. “Who is us? How many of you are there?”
Dr. Logan set the stethoscope aside. “Military. Of course. I guess I need to go through an examination from you before I can be allowed to do my own examination of you. I have met more than a few soldiers for hire in my day and every last one of you has trust issues.” He filled the cave with his own dry laugh. “Which is ironic since you are trained to obey orders without question. What mind is conditioned that way?”
“I have trust issues for a lot of reasons, not because I’m military,” Kinsey said. “And I’m not a soldier for hire.”
“You aren’t?” Dr. Logan asked, looking Kinsey up and down. “Then what branch of the military are you with? I’d say Special Operations Forces, but I’m not familiar with your uniform. Is that some type of chain mail?”
Kinsey looked down and was surprised to see her compression suit still on. Dr. Logan grinned at that surprise.
“If I was a bad guy, I’m pretty sure I would have stripped that off you,” Dr. Logan said. “If for no reason other than to put you in a compromising position of weakness. Nudity tends to undermine aggression, in my experience.”
“I was a Marine. I could give two shits about being naked,” Kinsey said. “Cocks out and all that shit.”
Dr. Logan raised an eyebrow.
“No, I do not have a cock,” Kinsey said.
“Good to know,” Dr. Logan responded. “I have seen stranger things on this island.”
“Who is the us?” Kinsey asked again.
“There is myself, Dr. Harley Werth, and Dr. Lucas Sales,” Dr. Logan said.
Kinsey waited, but when Dr. Logan didn’t add any names she shook her head. “That’s it? Three of you?”
“That’s it,” Dr. Logan replied. “Three of us. We recently had a fourth, but he’s been missing a while. I’m not holding out hope.”
“Are you all that survived the explosion?” Kinsey asked.
Dr. Logan grimaced and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Well, that is hard to explain.”
“Try me,” Kinsey insisted.
“How about this,” Dr. Logan proposed. “You ask a question, I give an answer, then I take a reading. I need to check your heart, your lungs, make sure you don’t have any cerebral damage—”
“Do I sound like I have cerebral damage?” Kinsey asked. Her head hurt like ten kinds of split fuck, but she wasn’t going to admit that. “No deals. You answer my questions. If I decide not to kick your ass when you’re done then I’ll let you examine me.”
“What if you die while asking your questions?” Dr. Logan responded. “Which is a very likely outcome considering what you have been through.”
“If I was going to die then I would have died,” Kinsey said. “Trust me. I’ve woken up from more near death experiences than I can even remember.”
“Overdoses,” Dr. Logan said. It was a statement, not a question. “That’s the survivor I’m looking at. I thought you had more going on than just a grunt.”
“You don’t like military, do you?” Kinsey asked.
“Not really,” Dr. Logan admitted and held up a hand. “I have my reasons, trust me. But those reasons are personal and off limits. You want to ask questions then ask questions about this island, not about my past.”
Kinsey pursed her lips and struggled with the hundred snarky, personal questions that came to mind. She focused on one, unable to just blindly obey the man.
“Were you a junkie too?” she asked.
Dr. Logan grinned and nodded. “How could you tell?”
“You recognized me,” Kinsey replied. “Takes one to know one.”
“That it does,” Dr. Logan said.
Kinsey sat there and thought for a minute then extended her arm.
“Come and do your poking and prodding,” Kinsey said. “But I am going to ask you a fuck ton of questions while you do.”
“That works for me,” Dr. Logan said as he grabbed his stethoscope again and stood up. “But no poking and prodding. Just listening.”
“I’m keeping this suit on,” Kinsey insisted. “So you better be able to listen through this.”
“I can,” Dr. Logan said. “I’ve checked you a couple times since we brought you here. Sorry if that breaks any consent issues you may have, but I’m claiming Hippocratic oath and basic human decency on that one.”
“Then your answers better be really good,” Kinsey said. “Or I kick your ass.”
Dr. Logan paused. “I have the feeling you are only half kidding.”
“I have the feeling I’m not kidding at all,” Kinsey replied, but there was a small smile teasing her lips.
“Yes, well, we’ll leave that statement there for now,” Dr. Logan said.
He had a small smile teasing his lips as well, but the way it didn’t meet his eyes troubled Kinsey slightly. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she had a distinct feeling that ex-junkie may not have been correct. The guy smelled like he was still using. But usingwhat was what Kinsey couldn’t figure out.
Chapter Six- Better Choose Now
The air was thick with the smell of copper. It was a smell that Thorne knew too well.
“Fuck,” he muttered as he tried to open his eyes. The pain in his head was almost too much to deal with, but he willed his lids to obey and quickly wished he hadn’t. “Double fuck.
”
He was hanging upside down by his ankles, his hands bound together and hanging below his head, which was the only reason he was able to wake up since most of his blood was pooling in his arms and hands instead of his head. Thorne had done his share of stringing people up over the years and knew that even with the blood rushing to his extremities, he didn’t have long before cerebral hemorrhaging began and he’d be dead as fuck.
“Uncle Vinny?” Shane whispered and Thorne looked to his right.
“Shane,” Thorne sighed. “How do you feel?”
Even hanging upside down, Shane was able to shrug sarcastically. “Oh, you know, just hanging out.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Lucy groaned. “He made that joke when I asked him the same question. Then again when Darren woke up.”
“Stick with a good one when you find it,” Shane replied. “And, fuck, man, when will I get another chance to use a pun like that again?”
“Probably the next time Ballantine sends us to our deaths,” Darren said.
Thorne rotated his head slowly, already feeling the pressure start to build to lethal levels.
“Injury report,” Thorne ordered.
“We’re good,” Darren replied. “Except for the obvious.”
“We haven’t been hanging for too long,” Shane said, his voice serious for once. “My vision is good. Hasn’t started to darken yet.”
“Mine is,” Lucy said. “We have what, five minutes before we bleed out our ears?”
“Probably,” Thorne grunted. “What do we know?”
“Modern facility,” Darren said. “Metal walls, metal and tile floors, halogen lights above us. There used to be tables in here, so I’m guessing it was a lab.”
“Messy lab, considering the drain in the center of the floor,” Shane said.
Thorne looked over and spotted the drain. He also spotted the dark stains around the drain. There were similar stains directly underneath him.
“We aren’t the first they’ve put in here,” Thorne said.
“Yeah, we know,” Shane said.
“Any sign of who brought us in?” Thorne asked.
“Not so far,” Darren replied. “But we’ve only been awake for a few minutes.”
Thorne looked about and tricked his brain into righting the images. It was a skill every SEAL learned since hanging upside down while keeping your wits was definitely in the job description. Darren was correct- metal walls, metal and tile floor, scuff marks and outlines where table legs used to be. They were in a former lab. But it was much more than that.
“Abattoir,” Thorne said.
“Oh, man,” Shane said.
“A what?” Lucy asked.
“Slaughterhouse,” Darren said. “We’re the meat.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Lucy nearly shrieked. “What the fuck?”
“Yay,” Shane said. “I get to be a Reynolds burger. I always thought I’d go out in a blaze of glory, not as part of someone’s bowel movement.”
“It’s not over yet,” Thorne said. “They’ll be back to get us soon. Letting us hang upside down like this is actually spoiling the meat. This is intimidation, not torture.”
“Gonna have to argue with you on that point, Uncle Vinny,” Shane said. “Gravity is shoving my balls up into my brains, so I’m going with torture.”
There was a rattling at the door and Thorne grinned.
“We’re about to find out,” Thorne said. “Hurry. Weapons?”
“Pretty sure we’re stripped clean,” Darren said. “Except for our boots. My arms are dead asleep so I haven’t been able to check.”
“Me neither,” Shane said.
“Same,” Lucy added as the door opened and six figures came lurching into the room.
Figures that Thorne could only describe as mutants of some kind. They certainly weren’t human. If he’d been on the B3, he would have heard Mike’s naming suggestion.
Croanderthals.
The lead croanderthal grunted and more lights began to flicker and come to life as someone hit the switch.
“Ballantine,” the lead croanderthal said.
Thorne had no idea how to respond. He didn’t know what he was responding to, let alone how to form the words.
Shane, on the other hand, had no problem.
“Holy shit,” he said. “It’s the fucking mutant Flintstones.”
There were several snarls and hisses from five of the six, but the lead croanderthal only raised a thick lip to reveal a couple very sharp teeth.
“Ballantine,” the figure said.
Recognition slammed into Thorne’s brain and he realized he knew the figure. It was the same face he saw as he was paralyzed in the jungle, before unconsciousness took him.
“What about Ballantine?” Thorne asked.
“Ballantine come here,” the lead croanderthal, a woman by the anatomy that peeked out from the tattered remains of the dirty rags she wore. “Ballantine come you.”
“I don’t think my uncle and Ballantine are close enough for Ballantine to come him,” Shane said.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Thorne snapped. “Seriously?”
“I plead defense mechanism,” Shane said. “Or too much blood to the brain.”
The croanderthal woman motioned and four of the other croanderthals, all men by their obvious anatomy, moved to the wall behind Thorne and company. Thorne felt his bonds lurch then the floor was racing up at him. He hit hard, but most of his body was numb anyway, so he didn’t feel too much pain. That would kick in later, he was more than sure of it.
“I would totally beat the living shit out of you caveman fucks,” Shane said as he lay in a helpless heap, half his body draped over Lucy. “But that would mean moving. Which isn’t happening.”
“Wait until the pins and needles hit,” Lucy said. “Abattoir or not, this is about to turn into a torture chamber.”
“Good point,” Shane said. “Hey, Grog and friends, you guys got more of that numbing shit we can save for later? I really hate it when my leg falls asleep then wakes up. That shit hurts like a mother—”
One of the croanderthal men grabbed Shane from behind and slammed a heavy, hairy fist into his head a few times until Shane’s eye rolled up and he was out.
Thorne felt guilty for all of a split second at the brief relief that his nephew was finally silent. That relief turned to rage almost as fast, though, and Thorne focused back on the woman.
“Why do you think Ballantine will come here?” Thorne asked.
“Ballantine like that,” the croanderthal woman replied, shrugging her huge, hairy shoulders. “Ballantine like tidy.”
“She’s right about that,” Darren said. “He does like tidy. No loose ends.”
“No ends,” the croanderthal woman agreed, nodding her heavy browed head. “He come. He find. If not dead.”
“If not dead?” Thorne asked. “Why would he be dead?”
“No tell,” the mutant woman said. “Not front them.” She pointed at Darren, Lucy, and even the unconscious Shane. “Just you. Leader talk. Me. You. Talk.”
“Leader talk,” Thorne agreed. “But my Team stays here. Whatever you want to say to me, you say to them too.”
“No,” the croanderthal woman said. She shook her head and snapped her thick fingers. “No.”
The croanderthals behind Team Grendel grabbed up Darren, Lucy, and Shane. There was nothing any of them could do about it. Their limbs were still completely asleep and numb. Thorne could barely keep his head upright.
He was forced to watch helplessly as Darren and Lucy shouted and screamed at the mutants that dragged them out of the room. Two of them carried Shane, making sure his head smacked against the door jamb at least once on the way out.
That left the croanderthal woman, and a croanderthal man that stood back by the door. The croanderthal woman walked closer to Thorne and crouched close to him. But not too close. Despite his obvious incapacitation, and the binds that still held his wrists and ankles, she kept ou
t of reach. Thorne made a mental note that the woman may have been physically mutated, but intellectually she appeared sharp, despite the stunted speech pattern.
“Leader talk,” the croanderthal woman said.
“Fine,” Thorne replied. “Leader talk. Leader have a name?”
“Liu,” the croanderthal woman said.
“Liu? I know that name,” Thorne said.
“Ballantine only name care about,” the Liu croanderthal snarled. “Talk. Now. Leader me, leader you. Talk Ballantine.”
“Like I said before,fine,” Thorne said. “We talk Ballantine.”
***
“It’s been a year since the explosion?” Kinsey asked. “And you’ve been surviving in this cave since then?”
“Not quite,” Dr. Logan said as he placed the stethoscope’s disc against Kinsey chest and listened for a second. “We were in a different facility for several months. This is recent.”
“Recent? Why? What happened to the other facility? Did it explode as well?” Kinsey asked as the disc was moved about her chest.
“Hold on,” Dr. Logan said. “Stop talking and give me a couple deep breaths. This suit is not easy to hear through.”
Kinsey reluctantly let the questions drop and breathed in and out several times until Dr. Logan nodded. He removed the stethoscope from his ears and draped it across his neck in that classic motion all doctors use.
“Alright. Breathing sounds good from what I can tell. Slightly thick, but that is to be expected after your encounter with the nectar,” he stated. “Heart rate is elevated, but once again, it is expected considering you are in a fight or flight situation.”
“No flight,” Kinsey said.
“Understood,” Dr. Logan said and nodded. “Your abdomen sounds good as well, which was what I was more worried about in case you had ingested any of the nectar. That stuff will eat you from the inside out, believe me.”
“You’ve seen it happen?” Kinsey asked.
“I have,” Dr. Logan said, his face a sudden mix of anger and somber resignation.