by Brett, Cal
When the sun came up the next morning, he was still alone. In the dawning light, he pulled up his shirt to see dark purple bruising over his skin from Trent’s beating. When he moved, even slightly, it hurt. Since it was also painful to lie still, he shuffled about in his small space to transfer the ache from one place to another.
He was shifting from side to side. Sitting on one cold butt cheek then the other when he heard a door open. It didn’t sound like the stairwell door but he couldn’t be sure. For a moment he worried that the dead may have found a way in, but the echo of footsteps coming down the hall was steady and confident. These were the heavy, booted paces of someone moving with purpose. Unlike the ravenous pasty creatures in the street who seemed to wander aimlessly without any direction until they found prey.
Trent entered the room with Kelly over his shoulder, wrapped in a blanket. He plopped her down on the spot where he had taken her and re-connected her to the tether. Robbie could tell she was alive, but her face was pale and she had a distant look in her eyes. She didn’t say anything, just sat there staring.
Trent pulled a bottle of water from one of his packs and filled Robbie’s dog bowl. “There you go sport!” He chuckled.
Robbie said nothing.
“Wooo! I need to go talk to a man about a horse,” Trent announced. Then he started back out the door and laughed, “Keep an eye on her for me will you, Rob?!”
After he was gone, Kelly began to sob “I’m sorry Robbie, so sorry…”
There was a long pause followed by Robbie speaking in a calm and subdued voice, “It’s ok Kelly. We’re going to get through this. We may both have to do… things, but we are going to get through it. We’re going to survive. We just have to be strong.”
She felt relief hearing his words with no judgement or admonition and suddenly felt physically and emotionally exhausted. “Ok, thank you,” She said quietly. Then she lay there staring at the ceiling until sleep took her and she faded off into troubling dreams and nightmares.
Chapter 3
Days crawled by slowly while Trent took out his aggressions and whims on his two captives. It hadn’t taken long for him to beat out the location of their main food supply. He beat them again when he found out that it was in the basement of the same building they were in. It angered him that it had been so close all along and he had not found it himself. Especially given that it was logical to keep the supplies close by, in the cold underground of the building’s storage rooms.
He made Robbie go with him when he went to check it out, just to be sure they weren’t trying to trick him into walking into a den of trapped undead down in the dark. Robbie, still tied, shivered in the corner as Trent went through their stacks of canned food and bottled water. Their tormentor opened a few cans of fruit and ate them in front of the younger man just to be cruel.
After the fight was out of him, Kelly watched as Robbie sank into a depressed haze. He stared blankly at the walls and only spoke when she asked him yes-or-no questions. In spite of the abuses she suffered, Kelly felt like the best way to keep them both alive was to engage with Trent, to talk to him and make sure he thought of them as people. Maybe even people he wanted to keep around… even if only for entertainment.
She laughed at his jokes and agreed with his tirades against the idiots out in the world. When he looked out the window and angrily accused the crowds of undead below of getting what they deserved, she would nod and say he was right.
To her surprise, this had been effective if only to the degree that they were still alive and the beatings and torture had lessened. She had also been able to convince him that they didn’t need to be tied up so completely all the time and he had reduced their bonds to only what was needed to keep them in place. Catering to his huge ego also paid off in that he would occasionally do things for them. Weird things, but at least not angry, deadly things.
“Wake up, buttercups!” Trent called out cheerily when he returned to the utility room late one afternoon.
Robbie had been dozing and startled awake at the noise. He winced as pain shot through his limbs. His muscles and bones ached from lying on the cold floor. Kelly turned from watching the sky through the tinted window to see that Trent carried two buckets full of water. He set them down sloppily on the floor and began digging things out of his backpack.
“You are not going to believe this,” the older man said excitedly, as he set the buckets up on small metal frames. He then produced small cans of Sterno and slid them into the gap underneath. He lit the gelled heating oil and stood back proudly from the flame and exclaimed, “Ta dah!”
“That’s great, Trent!” Kelly said with practiced enthusiasm on her face but internally worried about what he was up to, “What do you have in mind?”
Both Kelly and Rob’s hearts jerked when Trent withdrew a large pair of scissors. He held them up and snapped them open and closed.
“Snip, snip!” He said with glee.
“I don’t understand,” Kelly stammered. “What is that for? What are you going to do?”
Trent didn’t answer but instead, giddily slid a plastic chair over and indicated she should move off the floor and into the seat.
Kelly hesitantly cooperated, moving nervously into the chair. “You’re kind of freaking me out Trent. What’s going on?”
“You’ll see,” he said. “Don’t worry, you’re going to like this.”
She sat rigid, as he moved one of the buckets behind her and began using a cup to ladle warm water over her hair. The water ran down her face and splashed onto the concrete floor. She squinted as the warm liquid washed over her eyes. It burned, but she feared closing them fully without knowing what he was up to.
Adding to her confusion, a fragrant floral scent hit her nose as she felt the older man begin massaging something into her hair.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Trent said from behind her, “I picked ‘Island Flowers’ but if you have a favorite just tell me and I’ll keep an eye out the next time I’m at the salon.”
Kelly remained quiet and still as Trent washed and conditioned her hair. Then her heart skipped a beat as she heard the metallic snip snip of the scissors.
“Your split ends are out of control, girl,” Trent sing-songed as he pulled and cut her long, tangled locks. When he was done, he washed it again and toweled it dry.
Kelly wasn’t sure how to react to the spa treatment. Trent was clearly psychotic, but he had put a lot of work into the haircut. The towel even smelled clean.
“There we go,” Trent said. “Fresh and clean as the morning dew. Now let’s see how we look.”
“Ok,” Kelly stammered.
“Bet you would never have guessed I owned a chain of hair salons before all this,” Trent said as he unhooked the leash and clicked a longer chain from the wall into place on her collar. “I mean how many straight male stylists are there, right?”
“I don’t know. I guess I never noticed.” She lied, “But I never would have guessed. How did I get to be so special?”
“I just miss working in the shop sometimes,” Trent said as he helped her to her feet. She turned and he pointed her to a full-length mirror he had placed against the wall. “I really liked doing hair back in the day and I was damned good at it. Aren’t you lucky I found you?”
“Yea,” Kelly said unsure. “Yes, so lucky.”
“What do you think?” He said with a smile.
Kelly stared at herself. She was surprised to see that her hair was nicely shaped with an intentional mussy look. Running her fingers through it she noticed that the grease and dirt she had become accustomed to was gone. Replaced with clean feeling locks that came down to her shoulders. The smell and tingle of the shampoo was strange after so long without any kind of bath.
“Sorry I don’t have a blow dryer to do it properly,” Trent said, “but we got a good effect with the towel don’t you think?”
“Y…Yes” she answered still in shock over her transformation, “Its beautiful.”
&
nbsp; Trent’s personality was indeed, unlike anyone she had ever encountered at a salon; gay or straight. But, she wondered, how anyone would know who was crazy and who wasn’t, in the old world. Back then, they would have to hide it, in public anyway. These days, it might actually help with survival to be a raving psycho who is unafraid to lie, steal, hurt or kill to get what they want. She recalled reading a study in her college psychology class that found one percent of people are psychopaths and four percent are sociopaths.
After giving her a few minutes to admire his handiwork in the mirror Trent strapped her back into the chair and announced he had some errands to run. He gathered up his salon tools and was gone as suddenly as he arrived.
She looked over at Robbie, who sat on the floor leaning against the pipes.
“What the fuck was that?” Robbie said when he was sure Trent was out of earshot.
“I don’t know.” Kelly replied. “Add that to the list of crazy shit to think about in this world.”
“Yea.” Robbie answered. “Your hair looks nice though.”
“Shut up,” Kelly snapped.
She sat there thinking back through all the bad things she had done in her life. The times she had talked back to her mother, not left tips for waiters, or taken someone for granted. She had once kissed another boy when she and Roy had just started dating. It was a thing she felt very guilty about afterward. But, she could not come up with enough bad karma to justify the universe putting them in the path of a violent, socio-psychopath madman like Trent.
She lost track of the time, being tied up in the small room, and sometimes Trent would come in angry and lock them in the janitor’s closet for long periods. It was dark there and she didn’t know if hours or days had passed. Trent used her mostly but found ways to humiliate and abuse Robbie as well.
Most mornings they would wake to Trent rattling their chains. “Wake up, bitches! Let’s go!” He would say. “Get up off your asses! It stinks in here. We’re going to the roof.”
The flat area on the top of the building was partially covered by rusting air conditioning equipment and other old world mechanical workings. A few areas were open in between all the equipment and from there they could see most of downtown as well as the rolling tree-covered hills in the distance. For a short time, they could breathe the fresh air and enjoy the sun on their skin. Even the small pebbles set in the tar covering the rooftop felt nice against their feet after the cold dirty concrete down below.
Trent would follow them out and tug them over to the corner they had turned into their toilet. They had attached a long wide plank that hung out over one of the building’s low walls. The plank had several holes in it so they could sit and do their business. Below was a narrow ally that had a large storm drain in the middle. They had felt pretty clever months before, when they had set up the arrangement. It seemed the safest and most sanitary option they had. The smell from the alley could waft up to the roof at times but eventually it would rain and everything would wash into the drain.
The alley below was partially fenced at either end so that the undead could get in or out but not easily. Sometimes a group of them would get stuck there and just amble back and forth until something outside became interesting enough that they pushed their way back through the loosely hanging chain link. Their activities on the roof often caused such crowds to gather in the alley, frantically clawing at the walls to get to the human meat far above, only to be rewarded by a stream of urine or human excrement in which, Kelly and Robbie had noted, they did not seem interested.
The low wall had heavy, metal brackets that may have been used to attach cable, at some point in the past, and Trent used them to tie Robbie and Kelly to each end of the board.
“Do your business and clean up good, I aint wiping anybody’s ass.” Trent said one morning as he walked away towards a connecting wall. He lit a cigarette and looked out over the city. Then he propped his foot up onto the low wall and gazed down at the main street. It was crowded with the shuffling forms of the dead. He chuckled at the former denizens of the city now doomed to wander around aimlessly until their bones turned to dust. ‘That’s probably not much different than what you idiots were doing before,’ he mused.
He sat down on the wall and looked back at his two captives and wondered how long it would be before he had to kill them. It was tempting to keep Kelly, but he could never trust her. He was only keeping Robbie alive as leverage with her. He knew they would do whatever he said as long as he could threaten the other. But he wasn’t stupid, he knew they would take the first opportunity to kill him. Maybe not kill, he smiled, they were still weak in that way. Keeping their humanity and all.
He also knew they were smart so they would think of something eventually. They might not have the guts to kill him, but they would try to take him out and he couldn’t wait around forever wondering when, or how, that would happen. Also, there was the matter of food. The longer they were alive the longer he had to share the limited supplies with them. The way he had it figured they had about 3 months’ worth of rations for three people. Nine months if it was just him.
He looked over and saw Kelly with her back to him. ‘One good thing about this zombie apocalypse’ he decided ‘there aint no fat chicks. Not many chicks at all,’ he complained to himself, ‘but the ones who survived were all doing daily zombie p90x classes.’
He recalled a group he had discovered a few years back. They were holed up in their basement living on bottled water and canned fruits and vegetables. He’d been in the house looking for food when he saw the basement door was boarded up. He remembered breaking it in and looking down at the four faces staring up at him. One man and three women. They didn’t even have any weapons. ‘Idiots,’ Trent thought.
All he had to do was show them his BFK and they agreed to do whatever he wanted, he snickered. “Morons.”
He had tied them all up and strangled the guy right away, while the women screamed. Then he started working his way through them. He did every sadistic thing he could think of before ending their lives. ‘The trouble,’ he thought with a smirk, ‘is that everything gets boring after a while.’
He killed two of the women and just for fun, left the last one tied up in the dark. He laughed at her muffled pleas as he had closed the door to the basement and left her there with the rotting bodies.
He decided he would keep Kelly and Robbie alive for a little while longer. At least until he got bored.
And so it went. He did what he pleased with them. Twice a day he would walk them upstairs to use the restroom. Sometimes, if he was lazy, he would just walk them down to the janitor’s closet and let them pee in the drain intended for washing out mops and mixing paint. When Trent was away, the two captives sat quietly wondering if it was worse if he came back, or got killed out in the world and left them tied there to die.
Occasionally Trent would get into a spa mood. He would come in with the buckets of hot water. Then he would pull out his scissors and razors, and give her a haircut. During these sessions he was almost a different person. He seemed sincere and caring and talked to them about places he had been and things he had seen. They welcomed this bit of news since, other than trips to the roof, they were largely confined to their little utility room.
It was on one of these “good” days that Kelly convinced Trent to let Robbie bathe in the leftover soap and water. As he was finishing up, Trent handed Kelly a bottle of shampoo and told her to wash the young man’s hair and beard. When she was done Trent stepped over behind Robbie, who was tied to a chair, and began running his hands through his hair.
“You have good roots, Robbie,” he said. “You just need some shaping.”
With that, Trent retrieved his bag and pulled out several pairs of scissors and his straight razor. They held their breath as Trent had a habit of going from nice to evil very quickly. Robbie and Kelly stared at each other as Trent grabbed Robbie by the hair and brought up his scissor. Each time Trent brought the sharp tools, Kelly feared he w
ould stab Robbie in the neck. But he began cutting and shaving until Robbie’s face began to appear from under his long bangs.
When he was done, Robbie had gone from cave man to movie star. Kelly noted that with his shaggy beard gone he looked more like a bad boy celebrity than her little brother in law. His muscular frame, square jaw and dark wavy hair would make any Hollywood actor jealous. His green eyes glittered in a way that reminded her of Roy and she smiled at him in approval.
“Oh my god, Trent,” Kelly poured on the praise hoping to keep him in a good mood, “he looks wonderful. You did such a good job.”
“Thanks,” Trent said as he carefully put away his tools. “I just wish I had a hair dryer. I could have done amazing things.”
When he was done putting things away he said, “I’m glad you like it. How about you, Rob?”
“It’s great,” the young man acted pleased and added nervously, “never even got a cut this good back in the day.”
“Damn right you didn’t,” Trent said. “That’s a $500 cut back in my salon.”
Later, when Trent had gone, Kelly began whispering. “Robbie,” she called to him quietly, “one day we are getting the fuck out of here. Just me and you. Do not give up on me, understand?! We are not giving up. Neither one of us.”
“Yea I know,” Robbie said, his face barely visible in the moonlight. He did not sound convinced.
Chapter 4
A few days later, when they emerged onto the roof for their regular ministrations, they were greeted by a hot summer sun hanging over a light blue sky. A few small white clouds floated in the distance making the view seem more like a painting than real life. ‘A perfect day, but for the zombie apocalypse and being a madman’s captive slave,’ Kelly thought.
Trent announced that they were all getting pale and needed some sun so they would lay out on the roof for a while. He had Kelly spread out some large towels over the rooftop gravel.