by Jack Kilborn
“Uhhhhhnnnnnn,” it said.
Georgia dropped her hands. “Holy shit. This thing is freaking alive?”
The man’s face was a ruin. Eyes gone. Ears gone. A big scar across the scalp. When he opened his mouth to make that hideous sound, Georgia noted the tongue was also missing.
“The pet Lester’s best friend,” Lester said. “Except for Doctor. And Georgia girl.”
“Did you do this to him, Lester?”
“Lester didn’t do this. Doctor gave him to Lester.”
Georgia stared, fascinated. It was at once the most horrible and most amazing thing she’d ever seen.
“Want to see the pet do the funny dance?” Lester asked.
She nodded.
Lester walked over to the tool cabinet and grabbed something. He brought it over to the crate. It was a broomstick, with a nail sticking out the end.
When Lester poked his pet in the butt with it, the thing flopped around, rocking back and forth. When it rolled onto its back, Georgia noted that its genitals were also gone.
“Does Georgia girl want to make the pet do the funny dance?”
The next thing Georgia knew, the broomstick had been pressed into her hands. She stared down at this poor pathetic creature, rolling around in its own mess on a pile of dirty hay, and realized that any semblance of humanity it might have once had was now long gone. This wasn’t a person anymore. Just a mindless thing.
The thing began to roll again, making a moaning sound, and Georgia realized that without even being aware of it she’d given it a poke.
So she poked it again. And again.
The fourth time, she began to laugh.
“So I see you have a new guest for your playroom, Lester. But why isn’t she strapped onto your play table?”
Georgia turned, surprised at the voice, and saw an old man in a lab coat standing in the doorway. She instinctively backed away, bumping into Lester.
“This is Georgia girl. Georgia girl is Lester’s girlfriend. Georgia girl and Lester had sex and are going to make babies.”
Georgia looked up at Lester, then unconsciously rubbed her belly. She decided that now wasn’t the best time to tell him how she got along with babies.
The old man clucked his tongue. “You tried to make babies before, Lester. Do you remember? But whenever you get a new girlfriend you always wind up biting her too much. How many times have we been through this?”
“Georgia girl is different.”
The old man glanced at the stick she held, and then nodded. “Yes. Yes she certainly seems to be, doesn’t she?”
“You must be the doctor,” Georgia said, finding her voice. “Lester’s friend.”
“Indeed, indeed I am. Doctor Plincer. You like playing with Lester’s pet, I see.”
“He’s funny,” Georgia said.
“Funny? Hmm. Yes, I suppose he is. No real brain activity anymore. Delta waves. More like delta bumps. Full frontal lobotomy. But he is kind of funny. Especially when you stick him with the nail. Yes?”
Georgia wondered if this was some sort of test. She responded by giving Lester’s pet a few more pokes.
The doctor stroked his dirty chin. “Interesting. Very interesting. Sadistic personality. No remorse. Obvious sociopathic tendencies. And I don’t see a single bite mark on you. For one of Lester’s girlfriends, that’s remarkable. Did he happen to tell you what kind of doctor I am?”
Georgia shook her head. She couldn’t tell if she passed this old coot’s stupid test or not.
“I’m a brain specialist. Perhaps the foremost in the world. And I think, I think that you would be perfect for my experiments.”
“Lester is keeping Georgia girl.” Lester draped his long arms over her.
Doctor Plincer nodded. “But of course, Lester, of course. But perhaps your little girlfriend could be,” he smacked his lips, “enhanced. By the procedure.”
Georgia didn’t like the sound of that at all.
“Lester doesn’t want Georgia girl to be like the ferals,” Lester said. “Lester and Georgia girl are going to make babies.”
“This one won’t go feral, Lester. This one has all the traits I’m looking for. Plus she’s young. Strong.”
From somewhere else in the prison, Georgia heard screaming. A girl. It sounded like Laneesha.
“Lester won’t let Doctor take Georgia girl.”
“You hear that, Frankenstein?” Georgia said. “Back the fuck off.”
The doctor nodded again. “I see. I see. But I think, Lester my boy, that this is the best for all concerned. For me, for you, and for her. So I’m going to ask you, very nicely, to bring her to my lab. I promise no harm will come to her.”
Lester’s protective hug turned into a grab, seizing Georgia in his gigantic hands.
“Lester!” she cried, squirming to get away. She might as well have been bound with steel cable.
Doctor Plincer came closer, smiling. He was bent over with age, and Georgia could see straight down his collar. He wore no shirt beneath his lab coat, and his hairless pink chest was covered with shiny, puckered scars.
“Don’t you worry, my dear. I’m going to take very good care of you. You may even thank me for this later. Thank me, or, God forbid, try to eat me.”
Martin closed his eyes. The throb in his jaw was finally going away. He wondered how this had all gone so horribly wrong, and questioned his decision to bring everyone to this island.
He dismissed the thought quickly; regretting the past was a fool’s game. The thing to do now was think ahead. But was that even possible? What could he do to save Sara, the one-time love of his life, from the horrors in the woods?
The key to saving her was predicting her next move. What would she do next? Where would she go?
Martin rubbed his eyes, and an idea came to him.
He began to plan.
Moments after Cindy dropped the gun, Tyrone was dragging her away from the scene. It was stupid to give her the weapon. No one could have been able to look at that horrible feast and still been able to act. Tyrone would never be able to forget that image, even if he scrubbed his mind with steel wool.
He winced at the pain—he’d stuck his burned right hand under Cindy’s armpit to pull her, while his less-injured left held the torch. The extra illumination allowed them to move fast, sidestepping obstacles, watching their footing. Unfortunately, it was also like a beacon to those cannibals. From the sounds of it, they had no problems moving quickly in the dark. Tyrone guessed they were less than twenty yards behind them.
Seeing he had no choice, Tyrone ditched the torch, tossing it into a clump of bushes then tugging Cindy to the immediate left, breaking their current trajectory. Without the light it was like swimming in ink. Tyrone was forced to slow down to a quick walk, moving with one hand in front of him so he didn’t knock himself out on a tree. Gradually his night vision adjusted, and the trees thinned a bit to let occasional moonlight in, and the pair moved at a jog, Cindy in step beside Tyrone.
The figure stood in front of them, so still it almost looked like a tree. But the outline was definitely human, and there was only one, and rather than change directions yet again Tyrone lowered his head and charged.
His aim was good, and he prepared for impact, bunching up his neck and shoulder in a driving tackle.
But then, as if by magic, he was ass over head, flipping through the air, landing on his back so hard it knocked the wind out of him.
Tyrone had heard the term before, and knew what it meant, but he’d never had the wind knocked out of him before. It felt like a car was parked on his chest, and he couldn’t draw a breath, couldn’t make a sound.
This brought instant panic, and he began to flail around. Not at the figure. Just random, spastic movements, as if that could somehow fill him the with oxygen he so desperately craved. Little sparkly motes began to float through his vision. He felt close to passing out.
Then something dropped on his stomach. A person. Miraculously, the pressure
forced his diaphragm to work again, and Tyrone wheezed in air like a vacuum. He tried to raise his arms, to defend himself against whomever had thrown him, and then he heard Cindy yell, “Sara!”
“Tyrone?”
It was Sara sitting on him. She was the one who flipped him. Maybe there was more to that judo shit than Tyrone had thought.
“You beat on all yo kids like this, Sara?” he whispered.
She immediately got off him, and Tyrone felt her hand grab his, pulling to help him up. He flinched away, her touch on his raw palm making him swear.
“Are you okay, Tyrone?” Sara asked. She sounded pretty frazzled.
“Hands are messed up, ‘n my pride just took a beatin’, but I’m okay.”
Sara tried again to help him stand, this time lifting by the elbow. When he was vertical, he had to endure a hug. Then Cindy came by and also hugged him, which Tyrone found much easier to endure.
“Girl, I know this ain’t the time, but, damn, if you don’t look good in nothin’ but that bra.”
“Thanks,” Cindy said. “Look, Tyrone, about—”
“Not your fault.” He rubbed his fingertips along the small of her back. “I couldn’t do it neither. That’s why I gave you the gun.”
“You found the gun?” Sara asked.
“I dropped it.”
Tyrone pulled Cindy closer, “It’s not her fault.”
“Where are the others? Are they okay?”
Tyrone and Cindy spent the next few minutes filling Sara in on everything that had happened. Sara, in turn, told them about all she’d been through.
“Mountains of bones?” Tyrone still had his left hand on Cindy’s back. It hurt, but he could deal with it. “How many damn cannibals are the on this island?”
“These bones were old. Real old. I think Martin may have been right about there being a civil war prison here. There were thousands of soldiers missing after the war, soldiers that have never been accounted for. Thirteen thousand men died at the Confederate prison, Andersonville. Six thousand at its Union counterpart, Camp Douglas. It’s possible the Union army also had another, secret prison. A place they’d kept hidden, off the record books, in case the South won the war.”
Tyrone didn’t get it. “Those cannibals move damn fast for bein’ over a hundred years old.”
Sara shook her head. “Those people, the ones after us, they aren’t from the prison. They’re something else.”
“What are they?”
“Martin called this Plincer’s Island, and the name has been nagging at me.” Sara paused, then said, “But I think I finally remembered who he is.”
Laneesha tried to think about Brianna, tried to cling to sanity by picturing her daughter’s sweet little face, but she couldn’t concentrate over the sounds of her own agonized screams.
Georgia couldn’t move. She thought she might be strapped down, but she didn’t feel any straps. In fact, she felt naked. Naked and lying on a cold table.
Lester’s play table, as that crazy doctor had called it?
No. That had shackles, and was wooden. This table felt like metal.
She tried to open her eyes and, amazingly, she couldn’t. Nor could she turn her head, clench her fist, or so much as moan. Nothing seemed to work at all.
Georgia remembered Lester holding her tight, then the doctor sticking her with some kind of needle. Must have knocked her out. But she wasn’t knocked out any more. She was awake, and aware, and could feel. But she couldn’t move any of her muscles.
Then, abruptly, light.
It took a moment to focus, and then Georgia found herself staring up at Lester, who was leaning over her. She realized he’d opened her eyelids with his fingers.
“Don’t worry, Georgia girl. It only hurts for a little while.”
She stared hard at Lester, imploring him to stop this, to help her get away. He smiled at her, then brought something in front of her eyes.
His camera.
The flash made Georgia’s pupils painfully constrict. Then Lester stepped back, and Doctor Plincer’s face came into view.
“I can’t express, my dear, how excited I am by the opportunity to try my procedure out on you. I’ve experimented on over a hundred people, over the last decade. Not that many, considering the importance of my work. Only about ten a year, average. I’m limited, you see. Not many people visit the island. And those that do, well, I usually don’t have the opportunity to work with them. My, failures, I suppose you can call them, are quite hostile toward strangers. And quite hungry too, I’m afraid. I’m an old man, on a fixed income. I really can’t afford to feed so many.”
She felt the doctor’s hand touch her neck, then smooth her hair behind her ear. From deep within the bowels of the prison, Georgia heard screaming.
“Pardon the bluntness,” Dr. Plincer said, “but you really aren’t much to look at. You do have something about you, however. Something extraordinary. You see, most of the people I’ve had the pleasure to experiment on, they’re normal people. I’ve only had one success with a normal person. True, I’ve only had two successes with sadistic personality types, but the overall percentage is much greater. The military, they used to bring me criminals to work on, but they’ve temporarily pulled the plug on my funding. Busy doing other things, I suspect.”
Doctor Plincer kept his hand on Georgia’s ear. Then he began to squeeze the lobe. Hard. Digging his nails in. Georgia’s eyes teared up, but she couldn’t flinch away from the pain, not even a millimeter.
“The drug used to paralyze you is called succinocholine. It renders you completely immobile. This is necessary, as I’m working with a very precise area of the brain. If you moved, even slightly, you could end up being lobotomized, or having your language center damaged, or your neuron clusters regressed. That would be a waste. Unfortunately, for you, I have to keep you awake for the procedure. The brain is an amazing organ, and it has many different states of consciousness. For this experiment to be successful, you need to be in a beta wave state. Fully awake.”
He moved in closer, smiling. Georgia could smell his sour body odor.
“I’m using a serum. A special serum. It contains, among other things, pluriopotent stem cells. You’ve heard of stem cell research, I’m sure. The bans. The controversy. The ethical dilemma.”
The doctor scratched his chin, and a bit of dried skin flaked off. Georgia felt the crumb land on her lower lip.
“The reason stem cells are so important in research is that they are, in layman’s terms, blank. A stem cell can develop into any sort of cell at all, if properly coerced. Skin cells. Bone cells. Nerve cells. Brain cells.” Plincer shrugged. “Alas, the only continuous and plentiful source for stem cells is unborn babies. Hence the banning and the controversy. But I have an arrangement with a doctor on the mainland, one who specializes in terminating pregnancies. He supplies me with all the stem cells I require.”
Georgia willed herself to move. She had to get away from the maniac. Just a little while ago, she’d been flush with power. Master of all she surveyed. To go from total control to absolute helplessness, especially at the mercy of some crackpot doctor, was infuriating. But no matter how hard she tried, how much she concentrated, her muscles refused to obey her commands.
“Lester is right. This is going to hurt. The only way I can inject my experimental serum to the correct area of your brain is through your tear ducts. My colleagues, the fools, didn’t think it could be done. But it can. I’m going to enhance certain portions of your brain. Make them grow larger. With a little bit of luck, you may soon join my other successes. You may become a Level 6.”
Doctor Plincer held something in front of Georgia’s line of vision. A syringe. A big fucking syringe, with the longest needle Georgia had ever seen.
He can’t plunge that into my eye. Dear god sweet jesus oh no he can’t…
“From what I’ve been told, the first injection is the worst.” The doctor smacked his lips. “The five after that aren’t as bad.”
> He raised the needle above her eye, leaning in even closer, the point coming down slowly, methodically, until it rested on her tear duct. It was a minor sting, like a piece of grit caught in her eye. But Georgia couldn’t rub it away. She couldn’t even blink.
Then Doctor Plincer shoved.
The pain was preternatural. Blinding. Explosive. Like her eyeball had burst and her was brain was boiling and it went on and on and ON…
Plincer extracted the needle, sighed, and used his dirty coat sleeve to wipe away some sweat that had beaded up on his bald head. Georgia’s head still throbbed. Somehow, each thought, each sense, had taken on an almost physical manifestation. Words that she cognated felt like stab wounds, each syllable a twist of a knife. Doctor Plincer’s BO smelled like Georgia’s nose was on fire. His hand on her face was a jumper cable attached to her nerves, roasting her alive. Every single sensation, every single thought, brought agony she couldn’t escape from.
Then her vision turned red.
“Good girl. I’ll give you a lollipop later. Let me suction off some of this blood.”
Dr. Plincer held a tube to her tear duct. It hurt worse than a hornet stinging her eyeball, and the sound made her ache like her teeth were being drilled.
“What you’re feeling now is called synesthesia. It’s when each of our senses mixes up its signals on the way to the brain. It’s how someone taking LSD thinks he can smell the color red, or taste a Led Zepplin song. But in your case, every sense you have is activating your pain receptors. And because of that, I’m ashamed to admit I’ve lied to you.”
Doctor Plincer raised another syringe. “These next five injections are going to hurt quite a bit more.”
Tom’s stomach was really making noise now, loud enough for it to be heard above his stomping and crashing through the forest. The smell of cooked meat was intoxicating. The faster he got there, the faster he could stuff his face. Then he could take his meds, go to sleep, and try to enjoy the rest of this mini-vacation before his dumb-ass father sent him to that dumb-ass military academy.
He wasn’t worried about getting in trouble for the gun incident. A large component of his ADHD was an inability to take responsibility for his actions. Tom didn’t feel empathy, or remorse, especially since everything that went wrong in his life was someone else’s fault.