“Normally I like it when my prisoners talk,” he said cutting her off smoothly, without raising his voice. “They usually slip up and give me more useful information than they might under torture. But you? I get the feeling all you’re going to do give me is a headache.”
The bubbly woman let out her small laughter and was rewarded when a few of the Corsairs behind the group also chuckled.
“So, here’s how it’s going to go,” the leader went on, “I’m going to ask you questions and you will answer them, and if you lie…well, let’s just say you don’t want to do that. I can be a real nice guy, but for some reason, man! Lying just gets to me. And no, it’s not lost on me that I’m a bloodthirsty Corsair. We’re actually far more honest than one would think.”
“Whew, that is a relief,” Eve snorted. “For a second there, I was worried we’d gotten mixed up with dishonest murderers. Please, tell me your rapists will cuddle with me afterwards. I love a good post-rape cuddle.” Only the bubbly woman laughed at the sarcasm and then only for a few moments.
The man steepled his fingers beneath his chin, pretending not to have heard her. “Let’s start with the lot of you taking off those masks so I can see your pretty faces.” He only cared what the two women looked like. Pleased at what he saw, he nodded, genially. “Now give us your names.”
Eve paused with her head cocked slightly as if listening, however she was actually waiting. Eventually, she said, “I hate to be that kinda girl, but that wasn’t a question. Questions end in what’s called a question mark.” She drew one in the air. Now, the bubbly woman’s laugh was so small she couldn’t have blown out a birthday candle with it.
When Eve didn’t get the reaction she’d been hoping for, she flicked her hand as if shooing away a fly. “Okay, like, whatever. My name is like, Eve and I’m like, a total Gemini. I dig black dudes but not if they’re, like, all into sports all the time. Like I care what some dude does with a ball?”
Bubbles, as Eve had silently nicknamed the woman, was now too amazed to laugh. She was nodding her head as if Eve had just preached the Gospel.
“Wow, you are a trip,” the man said.
“Why thank you, big black dude,” Eve said and then hopped up, bottom first, onto the immense couch, momentarily displacing the two women on either side, who lifted slightly before settling down.
Bubbles grinned at her. “His name is Tony Tibbs.” She pointed helpfully at the black man in case Eve was as cataclysmically slow as she.
“Ignore her,” Tony said and then twitched slightly as Bubbles even laughed at this. Taking his own advice, he turned to focus squarely on Eve and said, “Your name is Eve and you are the ‘girl doctor.’ Isn’t that what she told you?”
Cast off and forgotten in the corner like an old shoe was the man who’d let them into the warehouse in the first place. He sat huddled in on himself, shaking from the disease running amok in his system. Stu glanced over and saw the fear in his hollow eyes.
Desperately, he nodded. “Yes, sir. That’s what she said. I swear it.”
“I didn’t lie,” Eve said. “I am the girl doctor. I’m very smart, you know about pills and gall bladders and all that. You know there are six different bladders in the human body?” It seemed like as fine a number as any and had just spat it out. “Check my bag. It’s filled with doctor stuff.”
Tony didn’t care if there were a hundred bladders in the body. “And what makes you think we need a doctor? I’ve already taken care of the issue with everyone. It was the water. It didn’t take a ‘doctor’ to figure that out.”
“If you’ve figured it out,” Mike said, doing his best to control his voice, which sounded high-pitched and childish. “Why is everyone still sick?” He had been about to point at the cowering man, however his shaking hand had betrayed him. Mike was afraid right down to his core and his fear was making his innards shake and vibrate. They had been caught, hooked like a fish right through the mouth and there’d be no wiggling off the hook.
The Corsairs weren’t like normal people. They had a terrifying reputation. Cruel, sadistic torture would only be the beginning. It would last as long as the victim remained screaming. When a person was reduced to an incoherent gurgling mess, a revolting butchery would follow, one they would insist on displaying for the world to see.
That was the general fate of the men. Women, if they were even somewhat pretty, would become slaves, collared, chained, weighted down to prevent escape. Rapes and beatings would be endless. Some women went raving mad, others turned catatonic, but many learned to fake pleasure to avoid the worst of the pain, telling themselves that “someday” they’d escape but slowly, day-by-day becoming what they despised.
All that was for normal prisoners. What would the Corsairs do when they saw the great black boat moored outside? It wasn’t hard to imagine the worst and that was what had Mike so frightened. Death in battle, fighting the undead or the Corsairs was one thing, a noble thing if nothing else. His coming death would be everything his mind could imagine and worse.
Clearly, Jenn had the same fears because she was sickly pale and shaking badly. Her lower lip trembled so terrifically that she was likely beyond the ability to form words. In front of them, Stu stood stiff, taut as a spring, ready to leap. It would be an ineffectual and useless leap done only for the sake of vanity and honor. Nothing could possibly come of it.
Stu readied himself, and with indecent casual ease, Tony slid a long and wickedly sharp knife from a sheath strapped to his calf. It was a deboning knife and could open Stu’s belly with only a flick of his strong wrist.
“The water solution is a work in progress,” Tony explained, dismissing Mike and his question. He didn’t care about the boy and his useless indignation. What he cared about were the two women. They were young and that made them valuable and he was in need of any currency he could get his hands on. The one hiding practically behind the boy, doing her best not to be noticed was pretty, there was no denying that, but her mousy mannerisms contrasted poorly with Eve. If he was going to get top dollar for her, he would have to sell them in separate lots.
Tony leaned far forward, staring hard at Eve. “You were going to tell me why I need a doctor?”
“Actually, I wasn’t. If you can’t noodle out how you can use someone with my unique talents, then I don’t know what to tell you, except maybe go back to your cave and try not to burn yourself if one of you accidentally makes a fire. Remember: Fire pretty, fire also ouchy.”
Bubbles hadn’t laughed in a few minutes and took the wrong time to indulge her habit. When she tittered, Tony punched her hard in the arm. Tears sprang to her eyes but she smiled through them and nearly laughed again only out of reflex.
“Is that a racial joke?” he asked Eve, leaning forward, his voice full of menace.
Eve leaned forward, too. “Yeah, it is, but don’t take it personally. You and all your friends are sub-human. You’re like the human version of dung beetles, living in a house built all of crap. Or haven’t you noticed the smell?” She paused, took a loud sniff and then screwed up her face without being in the least theatrical; it wasn’t needed. “Now, I am what one would call supra-human.”
Tony sat back, gazing at her, his lip curled. Her haughty sneer was starting to grate like sand in his teeth. “I doubt you’re even a doctor,” he remarked, half to himself.
“I doubt you’re even a Corsair. There wasn’t a boat out there. I don’t mean to be a stickler for definitions, but without a boat you’re just a land-douche. Maybe you should try wearing an eyepatch and saying ‘shiver me timbers’ after you rip off a fart. It’ll add to your mystique.”
Bubbles laughed again; a half-second hiccup that nearly gave her a heart attack. She pulled away from Tony, her lips drawn down.
“No, that’s okay,” he said, softly, relaxed now. “That was a funny one. This girl is just chock full of laughs, but we’ll see who’s laughing here pretty soon and who’ll be begging for their lives.”
Eve raised her
hand. “Ooh, pick me! Pick me! I know the answer.”
Tony chuckled, and glanced over the four. More than the usual spunk in each; after all they hadn’t begun to grovel yet, something that became tedious after the first few minutes. “Let’s have her bag. I want to see what sort of ‘doctor stuff’ this super-human has in there. Who wants to bet it’s just a bunch of re-used tampons?”
Now, Bubbles was on sure footing and her titter grew to a full-throated laugh as the other Corsairs joined in. Even Eve laughed. “Used tampons, that’s a good one. You’d think that potty humor from someone who lives in a toilet wouldn’t be so vibrantly fresh.” She leaned forward, eagerly, looking at the bag. “Come on, open it. I’m dying to see what’s inside.”
Suddenly, Tony wasn’t nearly so keen to open the bag. There was something frantic and beyond wild in the girl’s wide blue eyes. There was a fire in them that sent a nervous thrill down his back and he was half-tempted to have one of the others take the bag out back to inspect it, but it was too late. They were all staring at him and he wasn’t going to look weak because of a girl.
The backpack was heavy and he quickly found out why. Beneath a layer of surgical tools and bandages he found IV fluids, each a pound or so in weight. He almost stopped but Eve said, “Keep going. You’re almost there. The tampon is at the bottom.”
It wasn’t a tampon. It was a pipe bomb, and when he looked up out of the bag, he saw her holding a small walkie-talkie, her thumb hovering over the send button. “Remember when you asked who’d be begging for their lives? I think now you know.”
“What is it?” Brian Troutman asked, stepping forward. Even quicker he stepped back again as Tony pulled the heavy bomb from the pack.
“You should’ve giggled at that, Bubbles,” Eve said. “I think ol' Brian just about crapped himself and I’m no great judge of humor but that would have been funny.”
She smiled uncertainly but the ounce of wit God had given her told her she should be afraid. “What is it?” To her it looked like nothing more than a fat pipe with some tape wrapped around it. Perhaps a leftover piece of plumbing.
Eve glanced at the woman, taken aback by the question, her mind teetering between personalities. How could she ask that question? It was like not knowing what an elephant was, or a fork. Slowly Eve got herself under control. “It’s a bomb, sweetie. It’s strong enough to turn everyone in this room into jelly. And I will set it off if anyone moves.”
Brian sneered down the length of his long nose. “How do we know it’s even real? Huh? Maybe she found one from the old days or maybe she just put together a fake one.”
Tony had been thinking along the same lines. No one had seen or heard a bomb in years. There wasn’t an army base in the country that hadn’t been searched and re-searched a hundred times over the years.
“I’m with Brian. How do we know you’re not bluff…”
She thumbed the button on the radio, cutting off his words.
Chapter 21
Even through two sets of walls, the shock of the explosion was enough to make Tony’s heart flutter. The great thunderous boom was followed by an echoing crash that was nearly just as loud, and in a way, it was worse. The metal-walled warehouse acted somewhat like a huge gong when the four-hundred pound glass and steel light fixture slammed into it.
The ground as well as the air shook. As the others cowered or flinched, and in Jenn’s case gripped her cross with suddenly numb fingers, Eve grinned at the tumultuous symphony she had created. “Just like old times,” she said, wistfully addressing the ceiling which rained tiny particles of dust. Contentedly, she watched a strand of old grey spider’s web float lazily down.
Tony’s eyes were round as saucers. “How’d you do that?”
In truth, she didn’t know. Jillybean was the one who knew the formula and she guarded it fiercely, never letting Eve peek over her shoulder. “A girl has to have her secrets.”
“But you m-made that?” he asked, his mind still a little bit scrambled.
Eve rolled her eyes. “I keep forgetting I’m talking to Caveman Grog. Yes, I make big boom.” She hopped down to stand in front of him and held her hands over her ears, wearing a fearful face. “Is big scary. I know.”
Tony growled, “Watch your tone.”
Behind her Stu spoke for the first time saying only, “Oh boy.” Eve had grown as if part of the explosion had filled her with its energy, and he was sure that she was within an ace of doing something.
“Make me,” she whispered with the venom of a dozen cobras. “I’d like to see you try.” She held up the walkie-talkie which she had already switched to the next frequency, the one that would set off the pipe bomb in the room.
“You haven’t won anything,” Tony said. “If you set off the bomb, guess what? You’ll blow yourself up, too.”
Her eyes popped open and her chin dropped. “Really? Will that really happen if I press the button? Wow, I never, ever, ever knew that. But here’s what you don’t know. Mike, tell him.”
“She crazy.” This didn’t seem much like actual news and the explanation felt anti-climatic.
“Would you care to elaborate, cousin of Grog?” she snapped. “I give you an opportunity to dump all over me, to tell the world what you really feel and all you say is ‘she’s crazy?’ Would you say that I’m crazy enough to blow us up?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Yeah, you are.” He turned to the others and shrugged. “It’s no joke. She’s got different people inside of her head. This,” he gestured at Eve, “isn’t even the girl doctor. This girl is a murderer.”
Eve felt her insides glow like hot ash. For her it was a compliment. For her murder wasn’t always a bad thing when it was done for the greater good and what was greater than her getting to live another day? Nothing as far as she could tell. “See, I’m crazy and a murderer. Look at that, Tony, at least we have that in common. Like two peas, right? And because we’re so close, I’m going to let you walk out of here. Without your guns, of course. Oh, and no food, either, sorry but I can only eat so much fish.”
Tony shook his head, the new sweat glistening on his dome like oil. “No. That’s not how this is going to work. I might let you walk out of here if we can come to some sort of agreement. If you show me how to make one of them bombs…” Her shaking head stopped him. “Okay, I understand. That information is worth quite a bit. How ‘bout this, I buy some from you. We can be like trading partners. Exclusive trading partners. The Corsairs make strong allies.”
“Interesting, interesting,” she answered, lifting the walkie-talkie to her nose and sniffing it. This was a mistake. It smelled of duct tape and new plastic. It had come straight out of the package; she could remember peeling the back off and gently setting it aside before…Her lips queered into a new sneer. Those had been Jillybean’s memories.
Clamping her mind shut on them and on her, she said, “There’s just one problem, you’re not Corsairs. The Corsairs are four-hundred miles away. Sure, you might have been Corsairs once, but now you’re just a bunch of ruffians and slavers, running a two-bit operation, squatting on my turf. You see, this is my warehouse and these are my people. And I’m running out of patience. Put your guns down and walk out of here and just keep walking before I lose my temper.”
The anger and fury in her were running high, making it hard to think about anything but pressing that little button.
“That’s a death sentence,” Tony scoffed. “It’d be quicker if you just blew us up.”
“Don’t say that,” Stu suddenly growled. “She’s very, what’s the word? Impulsive. She’s likely to…”
“Shut the hell up, Stu! I got this. I don’t need some mute hick telling me how to deal with this idiot. The only thing pieces of crap like this understand is power and I have all the power. I have power over life and death. That is why I am Queen and that is why they will bow before me. Now drop your damned guns before I get really mad!”
Her voice had been at screech level as she raved and Stu knew sh
e was very close to losing what little control she had left.
“Don’t drop them,” Tony ordered as more than one of his men seemed to be wilting before the girl’s madness. “We’ll lose any bargaining position we have. Just be cool.”
Eve turned on her heel and walked directly for the door, everyone scrambling out of her way. She wasn’t leaving. This was her kingdom and she was queen. She went right to Brian Troutman and backed him to the wall. “I bet you want this,” she said, holding the walkie-talkie in front of his face. “I bet you just wish you could snatch it right out of my hand, but are you man enough to take it?”
He didn’t dare, her thumb had the send button half-pressed. The walkie-talkie held his focus and he couldn’t take his eyes from it—beyond the little hunk of plastic were the girl’s eyes; they were twitchy and altogether insane. He had never seen anything like them and never wanted to again.
“No? You don’t want this? Well, I want your gun. Give it to me or I’ll take it from you and you know what will happen then? We’ll struggled, pushing and pulling and…” She stepped in closer and grabbed the barrel of his M16A2 with her left hand. She began to pull with the one hand, while at the same time shaking the detonator in front of his face.
“Don’t, please,” he whispered, not knowing what to do. His heart had turned to wax and was softly melting away in his fear.
His whisper showed weakness which only egged her on more and she attacked his trigger hand with her nails. When that failed to dislodge the gun, she went after his face. “Fight back,” she hissed. “Hit me. Come on, push me. Don’t be a pussy, grab the detonator and kill us all.”
Everyone was frozen around the room, staring at the spectacle, not knowing what to do. Eventually, as she became more frantic and loud, he gave up the gun and held up his hands in front of his chest. She threw it on the ground, laughing at him. She then turned to the next of the Corsairs, a man that towered over her; all the same, he backed away until he ran up against the cardboard boxes.
The Queen of the Dead Page 20