Hounded | Book 3 | Hounded 3

by Douglas, Ellie

  Bellamy’s head began to hurt. He was thinking and, so far, the only logical idea was to get more vehicles or another truck or bus. He and Lily returned to the group.

  “I like the idea of Alcatraz. However, it’s too far to travel, not to mention we’d have to obtain and operate a boat, and the same would apply for Liberty Island. Any other thoughts, please speak now.”

  “I can,” came a meek voice over the noise of the others. He wasn’t heard, so he said it louder.

  “I can!” Everyone stopped talking and looked at him. A short man in his 40s with sandy shoulder-length hair, honey-colored eyes, and a thin moustache, he yelled this time.

  “I can!” He hadn’t realized everyone was already staring at him.

  “You can what, captain a ferryboat?” Anya asked happily, giving him a bright smile.

  “Yes. Before the SD-16 virus took over, it was what I did for a job. I ferried people from New York to the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and other surrounding areas. So I can,” he said again before he bowed his head and shuffled his feet.

  “What’s your name?” Ankti asked through another session of wet coughs, trying to make him feel more like one of the group.

  “Tylor McNaught, I came with Ethan’s group.”

  “Nice to meet you.” A collective welcoming came from Bellamy’s group. With a purpose in mind and a relocation goal, the people simmered down into calmer discussions on topics covering food, water, and weapons. They all have valid points, thought Bellamy as he stood holding Lily and listening to everyone.

  “Okay, I’ve made up my mind. First, Cody is right about the transport. Anya’s idea is brilliant, just too far away – sorry, Anya. I’m inclined to relocate all of us to Liberty Island. We just have to get to New York – and find transportation for that – and then pray there’s a ferry docked on the New York side to get us to the island. We can use the city for supplies, making trips when needed. Hell, we could even grow our own damn vegetables. It’s big enough there to do a hell of a lot. I won’t sugarcoat it, though. This trip will be grueling in every sense of the word. Some of us have already been as far as Sleepy Hollow, and from what I hear, there isn’t much left of the cities between here and there,” Bellamy said as his mind ticked along.

  “Remember what I told you about New York City?” Jasper said, pushing his way through the crowd to be up front and heard.

  “Yes, I remember. You said it was burning, there were looters, people going mad on each other, a shit-ton of dogs. Now it will be overrun with human zombies as well.” But Bellamy looked at Jasper with optimism in his eyes.

  “Perhaps with the months that have passed since I left, it might have died down some. We can keep to the coastline and avoid the more populated areas, aye mate,” Jasper said, pitching higher with his Australian accent. A few in the group giggled at it and others had a hard time understanding him.

  Bellamy nodded. “We’re going to have to get more weapons and ammunition. We’ll search the cities as we pass through to New York,” Bellamy said with a new gleam in his eyes. “I’ll take my brother Calloway and Nakos to look for transportation. Harry, Ethan and Oliver will keep you all safe.” He paused, allowing that to sink in, and then added, “Be quiet and support one another, and be on alert for intruders. We’ll be as quick as we can.”

  People began to speak all at once again. The three men said their good-byes to their families and left in the Mazda.

  CHAPTER 17

  CLARKE AND HIS TROOPS

  “Well, where’s the fucking women?” Clarke barked.

  The leader of the search group stepped forward, hard-faced, with his triangle-shaped body with long dark dreadlocks sticking out of his beret like squashed spider legs. “We lost them, sir, no sign of them anywhere.”

  Clarke thrust his Colt 357 hard against Dreadlock’s face. The end of the barrel caught his nose, breaking it. Blood gushed out and spilled to the floor.

  “What’d I tell you? Bring back the women! You go out and bring ’em back or I’ll split your head open like it was a cantaloupe. You hear me?”

  Dreadlocks nodded. While cupping his swelled and bleeding nose with one hand, he raised his other to signal the other men back out.

  “Don’t return without the women, ’less you wish your heads to be mounted on my new office wall!” Clarke bellowed while taking shots to the sides of their feet, making them dance hurriedly into the forest.

  After five long hot hours in the forest, the troops began to head back defeated. Some considered taking off, not wanting to have their heads mounted on Clarke’s wall.

  Another two hours of trekking through the forest, they now faced the road, everything looking just the same as before. If they hadn’t marked their way, they would have been lost. “X marks the spot,” someone could be heard cheering.

  A fast-moving van came around the corner, so the men ducked back into the edge of the forest. “Quickly,” Dreadlocks said as he raised his.38 Special, aiming at the tires.

  “Looks like we get to keep our heads, boys.”

  With precision, the men shot out the tires and the van slid sideways. The noise of metal being rent and dragged over the asphalt was almost deafening. The travelers could be heard screaming as the van flipped and rolled five times before coming to a grinding standstill. The men were on it before anyone inside could even blink. One of the passengers had his arm out a broken window. Dreadlocks caught the man’s arm and snapped it upward, splitting the bone in half.

  “Shut the fuck up and keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle unless you want them all broken off!” Dreadlocks hissed viciously.

  “What are you cocksuckers waiting on? Get up here and retrieve the women, and kill everything else.”

  “Yes sir,” came a collective squall from the hunters.

  They worked fast. A fuel leak dictated as much. Once they’d gotten everyone out, they were surprised to see that out of the eight passengers, six were females.

  They were all cut up. Two had broken legs, one had a gash to her cheek, and another had glass lodged in her head and a piece sticking out the side of her temple.

  The two men were made to kneel. Each took a shot to the head, falling forward like folded beach chairs.

  The women began screaming and wailing. One was clipped across the cheek as an example to the others. The women began to cry and moan softly in pain.

  The two with broken legs howled as they were dragged up. Unable to stand, they collapsed to the road. Dreadlocks was in no mood. He would have shot them all, had it not been for Clarke’s voice rolling around in his head. Bring the women back alive.

  “Carry those bitches!” Dreadlocks barked as he marched the other women forward into the forest.

  Dreadlocks returned with the six women, who were quickly examined by the gang’s doctor and then promptly dumped into the warehouse where Clarke had found the dungeon once used by the deranged, psychopathic, rapist-killer, Justin Reed.

  Clarke didn’t know about Reed. He assumed the dungeon had belonged to one of the current townspeople that had escaped. He was going to have fun in that dungeon. The toys he found there were beyond his wildest dreams.

  He had also stumbled across the bag of nipples. Tipping them out over the floor, he found them disgusting, yet oddly invigorating. What he found repulsive was the photos of the men wearing women’s skins like sheep’s wool. That he couldn’t handle. Burning the photos, he walked through the cloud of smoke like a vampire out of a foggy London city street.

  “Well, well, well… Who have we here?” he asked as he passed by each of the women, flicking the tops of their heads with his fingers. His eyes glowed when he came across the third one. When she looked up at him, he saw she wasn’t any older than sixteen, and this aroused him.

  “What’s your name, bitch?” he asked as he forced her to her feet. Blood from a head wound had dried around her ears. Her left wrist was twisted into an abnormal shape, clearly broken. Her knees were swollen and bruised, raging sev
eral shades of purple. The top of her collarbone was equally yellowed and purpled.

  “Fuck you!” she spat at Clarke.

  “Good girl, I like them feisty,” he said, wiping the spit off his cheek and pushing her back down.

  “Listen up, bitches! You’re going to tell me where the others are, and if you don’t, my good friend over there will start clipping your fingers with my best friend the cigar cutter.”

  The women each looked at one another, their cries picking up to a volume Clarke wasn’t tolerating. He shot his Colt into the air, screaming at them. “Shut up and spill the beans, or start losing your fingers!”

  Displaying the cigar cutter, Sampson approached the girls. He wore a long black jacket that could have been mistaken for a trench coat, thick heavy workman’s boots, dark blue jeans, and a dusty, dirty, and stained white tee from which his chest hair sprung up like upturned daisies. His face terrified the women, not because of his full beard and terrible haircut, but from the burns that scarred one side of his face, disfiguring him into one ugly FUBAR – fucked up beyond all recognition.

  Towering over everyone at six-foot-five, he had the body shape of a barrel, his eyes mere slits and damaged from the facial burns.

  “I see you like Sampson,” Clarke sneered.

  “We don’t know where the others are. They’re long gone by now,” one of the women answered, as she pulled her knees to her chest and huddled into them tightly.

  “If ya don’t get more specific, Sampson won’t stop. Just look at him. He’s as eager as a frat boy gunning for his first fuck.”

  Clarke spoke so harshly, most of the women jumped as he circled them.

  “It’s true, what she said. We were at a campsite – don’t know the name – and when Bellamy didn’t return, we decided to leave. The others were waiting on Bellamy to head to…”

  “Head where? Come on and spit it out, bitch.”

  “Canada,” she said, looking at the others as if to say shut your mouths and follow my lead.

  “Canada… Canada… Ya don’t say.” Clarke rubbed the muzzle of his Colt Python as the woman sat terrified.

  “It’s true. They went looking for a bus or truck with plans to travel to Canada, and when we complained about the new location, we were just ignored as if we didn’t exist.”

  The other women agreed, all talking at once.

  “Shut the fuck up, bitches!” Clarke screamed, so loudly that the dungeon held onto his voice for a while before it died down.

  “Sampson, take off a finger. Let’s see if they change their story.” Clarke pointed to the oldest in the bunch, a thirty-eight-year-old driving instructor named Trudy Baster. She pushed her body backward, squirming and kicking out her feet.

  “Stay still, ya little worm.” Sampson crouched down and hooked her legs under his, pinning her down. Her head began to thrash back and forth with a horrifying scream as he snatched a hand. Stretching out her pinky finger, he slid it into the cigar cutter and, without any hesitation, quickly sliced it off. The bloody digit fell to the ground. Trudy grabbed hold of her bleeding stump and howled. Spit drooled out of her mouth, and she shivered, cowering away in fear once Sampson released her legs.

  “Now I’m gonna ask ya bitches one last time. Where did your leader take the group?”

  “Canada!” three of the women yelled at the same time.

  Clarke bought it this time. He didn’t think the women had the cojones to tough out another finger removal. He barked orders to Sampson to head out with a group and find them.

  “Kill everyone except the women, ya hear me?”

  “Yes, sir,” Sampson said as he exited the dungeon, leaving three troops on guard.

  “What are you going to do with us?” The youngest of the group asked as politely as she could, not wanting to be pistol-whipped.

  “What’s your name, bitch?”

  “Dallas.”

  “Dallas, funny you should ask, cause you’re gonna find out pretty damn quickly.” He laughed so devilishly that each of the women flinched. One of the guards dressed Trudy’s finger, then stepped aside. Another of the guards had begun heating a liquid in a large cauldron-like pot. The women couldn’t see what was starting to bubble, but the man stood guarding it like it was gold.

  “Two of ya got broken legs, so you’ll get your turn in a few weeks. Meanwhile, might let ya watch… Clarke licked his lips as he spoke.

  “First things first. Strip. All you bitches, strip now!”

  Two of the steely-eyed guards swept their rifles in the women’s faces. They knew they had no choice, so they began removing their clothing. Tears ran down their faces, their bodies shook, and their minds took them elsewhere to cope with what would come next.

  “Line up over here against this wall,” Clarke ordered. They shuddered like mice frightened of a giant elephant.

  “Form a fucking line, stupid bitches!” he barked again, with more aggression.

  Each of them lined up side by side. The two with broken legs remained on the floor completely naked. The guards had cut the pants off one and ripped the skirt off the other. Two were black women, the rest white.

  Clarke preferred them young and black, darker than the night sky. To him they were licorice, and he’d use them for months, years if they behaved.

  Clarke paced a line in front of the women, poking his Colt’s muzzle at their breasts. The four of them wanted nothing more than to spit in his face, rip off his balls, and feed them to the zombie dogs. But with grimacing, tightly-locked jaws, they stood there on display for him.

  “I choose you.” Clarke thrust a finger toward nineteen-year-old Jess Preston. Her dark eyes ruptured into a waterfall of tears. Her brown skin was like the darkest chocolate, rich and delicious. Clarke mused over his choice.

  “What are you going to do with me?”

  He pistol-whipped her across her hip. “You don’t ask the questions. You just follow orders, are we clear?”

  Breathlessly, Jess nodded. “Finally, some respect,” he said, and wrenched her dark curly hair so she was pulled right up to his face and forced to look into his eyes.

  “Your age?”

  “Nineteen.” She wept the answer out.

  “Name?”

  “Jess.” Her voice sounded so hollow she thought she’d faint right there.

  “From now on, Jess, you will be known as Thirty-Three. So what’s your name?”

  “Jess.”

  Clarke backhanded her so hard across the face she went crumbling down. “What’s your name?”

  “Thirty-Three,” she said between bloodied gasps.

  “Right. Now you other bitches are Thirty-Four, Thirty-Five, Thirty-Six, Thirty-Seven, and Thirty-Eight. If you forget, you will be punished. Just to make it easier on all of you, your numbers are going to be branded onto your forearms. From now on, you are only a number, and when your number is called, you will come, you will obey, and you will do whatever it is I desire. You will not disobey, or so help me I will personally skin you alive.” His voice, cold as ice, shattered all of them.

  The guard watching the cauldron dunked a long branding iron into it that he’d picked up from the floor. Next to it lay others, each affixed with the numbers Clarke had issued. Glowing red-hot, it made a sizzling sound as it contacted their skin.

  Hot, searing pain traveled through each of them, making them feel like they’d just put their arms in an industrial oven. Their screams echoed inside the dungeon, tears drenching their faces and chests. They no longer had identities. They were to be caged and used as sex slaves until they were no longer needed.

  Without having to say anything, the guards began escorting the other naked women out of the dungeon. They marched them down the middle of the town and right into the jail cell. As one guard locked them in, another threw crude, cream-colored gowns inside the cell and told the women to wear them.

  The two with broken legs had to be carried, and then were thrown in with the others. Their makeshift splints almost split from t
he rough handling. They sobbed hard, until one of the guards bellowed at them to shut up or he’d silence them with his fists.

  Their voices fell silent. They quickly covered themselves with the makeshift garments, which one could only describe as cloth sacks. The only noise coming from each of them was the mucus spilling from their noses and the coughs.

  Clarke chained Jess up in a doggy-style position and began tormenting her with his tongue, licking her entire body as if she was coated in chocolate sauce. His tongue felt rough and raw. Her bruises and abrasions were no hindrance to his cruelty. He purposefully licked harder over those areas, causing her to wince in pain.

  Catching the glimmer of a blade, Jess – or Thirty-Three, as she was now known – retracted her body, pulling it taut against the chains.

  “Hush, bitch. This won’t hurt… Much.”

  Thirty-Three held her breath as she felt the cold steel glide edgeway up to the tip of her neck, where he held the blade for a breath before slicing off a strand of her curly dark hair. It fell to the ground like a feather. She watched it float down, hit the ground, and curl as though fire were burning it.

  Her mind raced and her teeth chattered as she gripped a ring in the chain while he drew the knife down her spine. He sliced very lightly, just enough to make her bleed a little, not enough to pierce too deeply.

  “Oh GOD, please stop!” she cried out.

  “Hell no, I’ve only just begun. It’s time to play, bitch!”

  “If you stop, I’ll tell you where the others really went. Just stop, please?”

  “You bitch, you all lied to me? You’ll pay for that.” He gripped a handful of her left breast roughly, pulling it sideways as if he was trying to move it to her back.

  Thirty-Three let out a bloodcurdling scream. Her legs tried to kick out, only to be snagged by the heavy chain. Her body naturally arched upward, and again the chain become taut against her.

  “Please stop!”

  “Tell me, whore, where did the others go? This time, tell me for real or I’ll slice your titties off like the bastard before me did.”