Escaping Grace: A Turning Grace Novel

by Davis, J. Q.

  “What happened to him? Did he hang himself?” asked Ian.

  “I don’t know,” V responded.

  “How could he reach up there? There’s nothing he could have stood on,” Sonny pointed out.

  And it was true. The cell was empty except for his body.

  Ian stepped closer to the bars and leaned in a little to get a better view. “Whatever happened to him happened a while ago because he reeks,” he said, covering his nose.

  “V, what is this place?” I asked, not understanding what I was looking at. From how Dr. Roberson explained it, I imagined East Cocos to be like the Z lab. Maybe just another place for treatment. But it seemed rundown and dilapidated. It was dirty and scary. And apparently had people hanging by their necks!

  “I heard it was a jail long ago, but I had no idea it still was,” he responded.

  That sent chills through me. A jail? These sick Zombrids were being held captive?

  “Should we help the guy down?” Sonny asked.

  “No.” V got closer to the bars as well. He paused for a moment to examine the man’s body. “He’s been dead a long time, and I don’t think he hung himself.”

  “You think someone did this to him?”

  “I think he may have been someone’s meal,” he answered.

  A muffled groan came from behind us. We all turned around at the same time to examine the row of darkened jail cells that aligned the other wall.

  Destiny rushed over to the first cell and looked in. When she realized it was empty, she moved on to the next, then the next.

  Until finally, she stopped at the fourth one and let out a loud cry.

  “Abby!”

  We all ran over to her and peered into the cell.

  We couldn’t see her completely. She was huddled up in the dark, far corner of the cell. All we could hear was the groaning, which seemed to be growing louder and longer.

  “Abby, baby. It’s me. It’s Destiny. I’m here to get you out,” she whispered softly as she held on tightly to the metal bars.

  “Destiny, we can’t get her out,” Ian said.

  “Abby. Please, let me see you. It’s okay.”

  “Get back,” V demanded.

  Something didn’t feel right.

  I glanced at Destiny, who looked like she was hoping the metal bars would just go straight through her. She pressed her body against them, trying to get a better view of Abby.

  The moaning got louder…and sounded more strained. It was getting longer, and I wondered how someone could make such a sound without having to catch their breath.

  “Abby, I’m gonna get you outta here. Just let me see your face,” Destiny cried. She pleaded with her and spoke as sweet as she could through her tears.

  We all stood silently, waiting for Abby to make a move…any move.

  There was a rustling noise and Destiny stopped talking.

  Then, without warning, Abby slammed into the cell bars. We jumped simultaneously at the sound of her body crushing into the metal.

  The dim light seemed to be enough to illuminate her face. She opened her mouth and snarled, showing her gritty, decaying teeth. What little hair on her head barely moved as she tilted it to the side and stared at us. She didn’t blink, and the whites of her eyes were bloodshot…and empty.

  From the little information I got of Abby, it would seem that she was in her early twenties. But the twenties seemed a long way off. She looked like she was thirty years older. Her face was wrinkled, and the skin seemed to be sliding off her. Her cheeks were sunken in, and the bones protruded out.

  In a quick, sharp movement, she turned her gaze to Destiny, who was still holding on tightly to the bars. They were inches away from each other and Destiny seemed speechless at the now ghastly sight of her girlfriend.

  “Destiny, move back,” V whispered while he slowly walked closer to her. But she didn’t move. Her shoulders started shaking uncontrollably and although her back was to me, I could tell she was sobbing.

  Before V could reach her to pull her back, Abby slid her very unhealthy, skinny arm straight through the bar in one rapid motion. Destiny didn’t have any time to dodge her and before we knew it, Abby had Destiny’s long black and blue hair gripped firmly in her hand.

  Destiny yelled at the pain of her hair being pulled and Abby moaned louder. She grabbed Abby’s wrist in an attempt to make her release it, but Abby wouldn’t budge.

  V jumped into action, also grabbing Abby’s wrist, but he didn’t seem to have any luck with it either. That’s when the disbelief set in. There was no way that this girl was stronger than V!

  Destiny and V wrestled with the arm for a few more moments until V let go abruptly and let out a pained cry.

  He immediately clasped onto his arm.

  I ran over to him. “What happened!”

  “She bit me!” He moved his hand to reveal a large hole in his forearm in the shape of a mouth. The skin was torn away and blood was gushing out of him like a fountain.

  “Destiny!” someone yelled.

  When I turned away from V’s injury to look at what was happening, I wished in that moment that I hadn’t.

  Destiny’s body was shaking as she tried with all she had in her to fight against the strength of Abby. Abby was pulling Destiny’s face closer and closer to the metal bars. She was bearing her teeth like a ramped dog, pressing her face against the bars so hard that it looked as if it was going to squish right through them. The bars were actually indenting her skin, making her face look like it was memory foam.

  “Ian and Charlie, grab hold of her and pull her away!” I yelled while I tore a piece of my t-shirt to wrap around V’s arm.

  But before they could reach her, Abby pulled Destiny’s head back and slammed it up against the metal. A loud ping sounded before we watched her body go limp.

  Abby made one last long moan, then pulled Destiny’s face between the bars as much as she could and sunk her teeth in.

  We all stood motionless, unable to speak or move while we watched Abby pull and chew the flesh away from Destiny’s face. Her movements were fluid and fast, almost like we were watching this all happen in fast forward.

  “Ian, come on! Let’s pull her away! Now!” V demanded, gently pushing me aside and out of his way.

  V grabbed Abby’s arm and twisted while Ian pulled Destiny by the waist. A cracking sound came from her arm, and I knew V had to break it in order to get her to let go.

  Ian held on to Destiny’s dead weight and laid her onto the ground gently. Sonny, Charlie, and I ran over to her side.

  “Oh my God!” Charlie shrieked.

  My hand inadvertently covered my mouth, because I guess I didn’t know what else to do. It was a horrific sight.

  Her face was completely covered in blood. The skin of her forehead looked like it was cut with a serrated knife, and the rigid pieces that were left flapped over her hairline and the rest of her face. The one eye she had left dangled off the side of her face from a single vein.

  Her right cheek was missing, exposing her teeth and cheekbone. Her breathing was shallow, and she was taking long, raspy breathes. This was due to the fact that she no longer had a nose. There was just a hole in her face.

  “Oh my God! What do we do?” Charlie asked, clearly in a panic.

  “We have to get her out of here,” V said, bending down to assess her injuries.

  “What about this medical stuff? Can’t we like…do something here? She’s losing a lot of blood!” Sonny yelped.

  “Are you a doctor?” Ian asked sarcastically.

  “No, but we can try some—”

  “Shh!” V interrupted.

  We all shut up immediately and looked at him.

  The feeling that we weren’t alone washed over me, and it was confirmed when I heard the distant sound of voices and footsteps on the grated catwalk above us.

  Chapter 14

  La Cabeza

  “…y entonces me beso!”

  “¿Que! Hombre, ¡eres afortunado!
”

  I mouthed “what do we do” to V. He looked around before pointing over my shoulder. I turned to see that there was a door to another room.

  Ian, Sonny, and Charlie saw the door as well and began walking slowly and quietly in that direction.

  V leaned over and picked Destiny up with one swoop. He winced. I knew for sure it wasn’t because Destiny was too heavy. I glanced at his arm and saw that the piece of my t-shirt I wrapped around it was already drenched in blood.

  We scurried to the other room and closed the door softly.

  A bluish-white fluorescent light flickered above us. The room was not very big and from what I could tell, it seemed to be some sort of surgical area. There were more gurneys, but with large light fixtures hanging over each one and push trays filled with surgical tools scattered everywhere. It didn’t have that sterile feel, not like the Z lab.

  This was also where the beeping noise was coming from. I rushed over to the monitor. I quickly glanced over it, trying to figure out how to turn it off. Instead, I spotted the plug and pulled it out of the wall.

  V set Destiny down on one of the gurneys. Charlie ran to her side and began nurturing her.

  “What now, mate?” Ian asked V in a whisper.

  “We hope those guys don’t come in here.”

  “What about Destiny? She isn’t doing so well,” Charlie informed us.

  I walked over to see for myself. It was hard to look at her. She no longer had a face, and even if she did live through this, how the hell were we supposed to fix her?

  I glanced at V and noticed he was pressing down on his arm. “Are you okay?”

  He only nodded.

  “Now he knows how I felt,” Sonny snorted.

  I shot her a dirty look.

  The voices outside the room seemed to be getting closer. V stepped near the door to get a better listen.

  After a second, he turned and motioned for us to make our way through a door that seemed to lead into another room.

  “What about Destiny,” Ian whispered.

  “They will probably just think she’s supposed to be in here,” V whispered back.

  We all moved quickly and silently, except Charlie. She was still at Destiny’s side.

  “Charlie,” I whispered loudly. “Come on.”

  “I can’t leave her,” she responded with tears running down her face. “What are they going to do to her?”

  This was an interesting sight to see. Charlie, who was normally a tough, sarcastic girl, appeared to have been shedding that exterior and replacing it with genuine emotion as she huddled over Destiny’s motionless body. The only time I have ever seen any kind of nurturing was toward Maddi, which made total sense considering what happened in her former life.

  Her connection with Maddi went much deeper than just friendship. She saw Maddi as the daughter she almost had.

  Now she was sobbing over her friend, another person that she could potentially lose.

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen to her, Charlie. But we have to hide,” I answered back.

  A shadow appeared under the door. I glanced at Charlie. “Charlie, please,” I begged.

  The tears were streaming down her face and falling in drops on Destiny’s body. She looked at me and simply shook her head no…and didn’t move a muscle.

  I furrowed my brows, wondering what was going to happen when these two guys come in here. We didn’t even know who they were, except that they were definitely workers of Dr. Roberson and this facility.

  The knob on the door turned. I spun around and slide through the crack of the slightly open door. I shut it quietly and pressed my ear up against it.

  “Hey! ¿Que haces!” the man yelled in Spanish.

  “Please, my friend! She’s hurt!” Charlie explained. I could hear the crying in her voice.

  “Migual, ¡Ven aca!” He then changed his language to English, but with an accent that almost made it still sound Spanish. “You no be here!”

  “Please, we have to tell Dr. Roberson! She’s hurt!”

  There was a sound of things being shoved around.

  “What’s happening?” Sonny asked behind me.

  “Where’s Charlie?” Ian asked. His expression was filled with concern.

  I didn’t respond in order to focus on what was happening in the other room.

  “Hand up! Hand up, now!” one of the guys yelled.

  “She’s in pain! We have to help her!”

  There were more sounds of objects being moved around. I held my breath.

  “Stop it!” Charlie yelled.

  Ian tried to push me away from the door. “What are they doing to Charlie?”

  I pushed him back before he could reach for the door knob to open it. “Ian, wait!”

  “Miguel, ¡hacerlo!”

  “Let me go!” Charlie yelled.

  “¡Hacerlo!”

  And then…bang!

  Was that a gunshot? Holy shit! That was a gunshot!

  “What was that? Was that a gun?” Sonny asked with horror in her tone.

  Ian tried to push past me again, but I held him back. “Stop it,” I whispered loudly. “We can’t go out there.”

  I pushed my ear harder against the door, desperate to hear something, anything from Charlie.

  “Tenemos que cortar la cabeza.”

  Son of a bitch! Why was Spanish their first language?

  I hadn’t been here that long, but I managed to pick up a few things here and there. That combined with the one Spanish class I took sophomore year at Middleton should have been enough.

  I memorized that sentence in my head and thought long and hard about what the words meant.

  Tenemos…hmm, that was a tough one. Mos…us? We. Okay, we.

  Next word. Cortar…cortar. Corte. Cut.

  Okay! Now, cabeza. Well, you didn’t have to know Spanish to understand what that meant. Most people did. Cabeza…head.

  We. Cut. Head.

  We cut head?

  Dr. Roberson’s words repeated in my mind…A subject injected with Serum Z could live indefinitely, provided that the subject does not come into contact with flames or combustion, or machinery, tools, and anything that could cause decapitation.

  Decapitation.

  I stood up slowly, trying to decide what to do. Should we go out there? Something just happened. A gun was involved. They were getting ready to cut the heads off two people! But if we did stop them before they did that, Charlie and Destiny had a chance. A gunshot wouldn’t kill them, but it would take a few minutes for them to recover from the wound, which would be enough time to cut off some heads. But did we want to risk these guys doing the same to us? If we waltzed out there, would they instantly shoot us and chop our heads off too? And who were these guys? How could they be authorized to do such a thing? And where was Dr. Roberson?

  I was panicking…and I needed V.

  Ian must have read my panic. “What is it, Grace? What did you hear?”

  “Where’s V?”

  “We don’t know. He was in pretty bad shape from the bite.” Ian answered.

  “V,” I called out in the lowest whisper-yell I could manage.

  There was no response.

  This room seemed to be a type of storage area for the surgery one we were just in. There were rows of tall shelves, all filled with medical supplies.

  I walked down to each row, checking to see if V was somewhere in between.

  “Gracie, I’m scared.” Sonny’s voice was suddenly small. I chose to forget the fact that she just called me Gracie.

  “Sonny, we have to find V. Just hang on a minute. He has to be in here.”

  Finally, in between the fourth and fifth storage shelf, I spotted V sitting on the floor. He was hunched over with his head down, grasping onto his arm. Blood was smeared on the floor in front of him.

  “V? Are you okay,” I asked, carefully moving slowly toward him.

  I know, it was so cheesy-horror-movie-cliché, but I was truly afraid. I had
never seen V so vulnerable. Big…really muscular, brute boys don’t cry over a bite.

  “V?” I finally reached him and kneeled down to his level.

  He was trembling. I still couldn’t see the expression on his face, but I could tell by the way he was sweating and clutching on to his arm that he was in pain. His knuckles were white and the veins on the top of his hand were clearly visible.

  “We need to get you some help.”

  “Did you see her? Did you see Abby?” He asked hoarsely.

  “Yes, I did.” We all saw her.

  “What was wrong with her? Why did she look like—”

  “Death? …I don’t know.”

  “I have never seen anyone look that way. Why is she here? What happened to her and the others that were taken from the compound?”

  It seemed like he was asking himself these questions.

  I grabbed the upper portion of his arm and began to stand up. “Come on. We need to get you out of here. We need to go see Dr. Roberson.”

  He looked up at me and I tried with everything in me to conceal the gasp that was rising in my throat.

  He was as white as a ghost. His eyes were glossed over and his lips were a light shade of blue. I could fill a cup with the amount of sweat dripping off his insipid bald head.

  “I didn’t…I didn’t know about this place, Grace. I didn’t know it was like this.”

  My eyes stung with the threat of tears. He was trying to assure me that he wouldn’t have lied to me. Had he known how “sick” Abby was and how uneasy this place felt, he would have investigated.

  I tried to keep him steady as he stood up, but he swayed and staggered.

  “Grace, I don’t feel good.” Right after that statement, he turned away and coughed. Blood splattered all over the boxes of latex gloves on the shelf.

  This was more than just a bite. “Okay, come on. We have to go.”

  I fought to help him keep his balance while we walked to meet back up with Sonny and Ian.