by Davis, J. Q.
“Grace, I don’t hear Charlie or the guys anymore. Should we go back in there?” Sonny asked.
“No, we need to find another way out.”
“Hey, mate. Are you okay?”
V didn’t answer.
“We need to get him to Dr. Roberson. He’s lost a lot of blood,” I informed them.
“There’s a door over there,” Sonny pointed.
Ian and Sonny went ahead. Upon opening the door to the other room, a cloud of smoke rushed out and a blast of cold air clashed with my warm skin.
We walked into what I was assuming to be a cooler of some sort.
“It’s freezing in here. What the hell is this place?” Sonny asked through chattering teeth.
“It’s like a freezer,” Ian declared.
A row of shelves filled with deep containers lined the wall in front of us. To our right were more shelves and another door. To our left was a plastic curtain-like divider.
“Come on, the door is this way,” I called out behind me, holding on with all my might to V’s waist to keep him from falling down.
“What’s over here?” Ian asked.
“Ian, we don’t have time to explore. We have to—”
“Oh my God! Grace!” Sonny shrieked.
I turned my head. “Sonny, keep it down! What’s wrong?”
“You have to come. Now!”
Shit. I found a piece of the wall that was suitable for V to lean against.
After gently setting him down, I made my way to Sonny and Ian. They were standing and staring at something in front of them.
I pushed the plastic curtain to the side.
My jaw dropped open as I took in the horror that my eyes were forced to see.
Do you know what a freezer in a butcher shop looks like? Normally it’s rows of animal carcass hanging on hooks. Most of the time it would be the torso or the legs of a dead, skinned animal. The red meat and white bone could usually be seen, along with some ribs.
Well…this was exactly that; rows of dead meat hanging on hooks.
Only, they weren’t animals.
They were people.
Actual people…
Dead humans hanging upside down on meat hooks. Their arms hung freely below their heads. Their feet were bound by rope.
They were all naked, and I felt guilty for looking at them. But I couldn’t help it. I had to look.
The skin on each one seemed to be intact, but I couldn’t tell what the colors were. They all appeared to have the same blue, almost transparent-like tint, with the addition of ice crystals.
“They are all dead, Grace.”
“Yes, Sonny. I know.”
“Who are they?” Ian asked as he walked closer to one. A man. He lifted his finger and poked at his torso, causing the dead man to sway from side to side.
I walked closer to one too. She was a naked woman and all of her private parts were exposed. Poor thing was being violated, and she didn’t even know it.
I kneeled down and tilted my head to fix the upside down effect. I focused on the woman’s face, trying to determine if maybe I’d seen her before. But she didn’t look familiar. She just looked like a sleeping, frozen stranger.
There were no cuts or bruises on her entire body. No marks to indicate that she was murdered or killed in a horrific way. Her skin was pristine…like porcelain.
“Ian, these aren’t the Zombrids that lived with you all, are they?” I asked. I didn’t count them, but from the look of it there seemed to be about fifteen bodies.
“No,” he answered, walking further back in between them. “I have never seen these people before.”
“I don’t understand. Were they killed? Are they like…our food?” Sonny asked in a high-pitched voice. She was frightened, I could tell. I have seen my fair share of carnage already. When I came to from…doing what I did to Phoebe, the sight of her disemboweled body was awful and gruesome.
I hoped that I would never have to see that again, but I knew what a dead person looked like. Eric’s body was less horrifying. And for Ian, well apparently he had been around more dead bodies than I ever wanted to be.
But Sonny was a newbie. She’d never eaten another human being before. This was the first time she’s seen a truly dead person.
Her sentence seeped into my mind and I finally registered it. Were these people our food? Our understanding was that we were being fed boar and other animals on the island. Over the past few months, my menu has changed. And according to Dr. Roberson, it was another form of meat found on the island.
Monkeys were what he said, but what if it wasn’t?
“Grace!” Ian yelled.
I glanced in his direction through the sea of lifeless bodies.
“Grace, you have to come see this!”
An enormous part of me was fighting to keep my feet planted right where they were. But the tiny part of curiosity was too overwhelming.
I maneuvered through the hanging people, trying my hardest not to touch them. As I made my way toward the back of the freezer, I noticed these bodies didn’t seem as untouched as the first few. Some had cuts and pieces of their body parts missing.
I tried not to look at them.
When I reached Ian, Sonny was standing next to him. Her hand was covering her mouth and tears were streaming down her face. My heart began to race at the sight of Sonny silently crying. “What’s wrong?”
I glanced over in the direction they were looking. It was another body, hanging motionless. I looked up and allowed my eyes to analyze the corpse from its feet down.
It was naked like the rest of them, only its body didn’t seem as…intact as the rest of them. There were chunks of its leg missing and some out of its thigh. They were clean cuts, clearly done with some kind of surgical tool. There was no blood of course, simply just pinkish-red holes.
As my eyes followed its physique, I was able to soon determine this corpse was a man. Below his man-parts was his torso, also hacked up in different areas. He seemed to have had a really nice body at some point. Muscular and fit.
My eyes lowered to his neck and then his head, which didn’t seem to be round like a head should be. There was a large portion missing.
And then…I looked at his face.
My knees buckled and before I knew it, they banged onto the freezing ground.
His face.
“Grace?” I felt a hand on my shoulder and heard Sonny’s soft sobs in my right ear.
This couldn’t be. There was no way.
“That son of a bitch,” Ian murmured.
“Grace, how could he have done this?” Sonny asked.
“He must have kidnapped him, and then lied to Grace.”
This couldn’t be him. He left! He left and went home! He wrote me a note. How could this be him?
“But why would he have done that? Why would he kill any of these people?” Sonny asked, desperate for an answer.
This wasn’t him. If it was him he would have the tattoo. The phoenix.
I leaned over to examine his arm.
If it wasn’t there, then this wasn’t him. Just someone who looked like him. That’s all. We all had someone in the world that looked like they could be our twin, right?
“Grace?”
I closed my eyes and prayed.
Please, don’t let this be him.
And when I opened them. And there it was. The phoenix.
Chapter 15
The Monster
My chest caved in. It was him. It was Tristen Miles. Hanging from a meat hook. Dead.
I closed my eyes again and fought to catch my breath. I felt the tears threatening to rush out of me like a broken fire hydrant, but I held them back. I couldn’t cry just yet.
I stood up quickly. “We have to get the hell out of here.”
“And go where? Dr. Roberson is obviously evil. He’s killing people!” Ian pointed out.
I hurried back to V, who was now practically lying on the floor.
“We need to find a way off
this damn island,” I asserted.
“I can call my parents. Daddy can have a boat here in no time,” Sonny offered.
“Ian, help me with V.” We each grabbed an arm and lifted V onto his feet. “Sonny, it will take days for a boat to get here. We need a plane or a helicopter.”
“Daddy has both!” She pulled out her cell phone. “Shit! No reception.”
“Right now we just need to get the hell out of this place first. If those guys catch us, we’re dead,” Ian reminded us.
We headed out another door, one that didn’t lead us into the room where God knew what happened to Charlie and Destiny, and out of the cooler. I didn’t pay much attention to our surroundings. My mind got left behind in the freezer with Tristen and the sounds of what might have been Destiny and Charlie’s demise.
How could Tristen be dead? There was no doubt in my mind that Dr. Roberson was behind all of this; Tristen, those other dead bodies, the two men fighting with Charlie.
He lied to me. Tristen never left me on his own accord. And he probably didn’t even write that note. I mean, it was his handwriting, but there were a million reasons why that could have been. Dr. Roberson could have forced him to write it, or maybe he did have to leave but Dr. Roberson snatched him up before he made if off the island.
I could feel my heart squeezing with grief as I thought about how it might have all went down. Was he beat up? Did he feel anything when they cut pieces of his body?
I felt anger more than anything. Anger because from the moment I met Dr. Roberson, I knew he was up to no good. Why didn’t I listen to my gut?
Maybe because all I wanted to do was eat. And it was his fault!
My mind cleared for a moment, which was when I realized we had somehow made it outside and back into the jungle.
Ian and I struggled to keep V balanced. We lost some of our Zombrid strength since we haven’t eaten in some time now. V was almost unconscious, so having to hold him up above the ground seemed like an impossible task, but we were managing somehow.
Sonny was behind us on her phone, trying to get in touch with her daddy.
“He’s in bad shape, Grace. How could a bite do this to him?”
“I don’t know. We just need to get him back to the huts.”
“Then what?” Ian asked, strain from carrying V in his voice.
“Well, I’m not handing him over to Dr. Roberson. Who knows what he’ll do to him. I guess I’m gonna go to the Z lab and try to talk to him.” I tried not to sound frightened when I said that. Deep down, I was. Obviously he was capable of more than I’d imagined. But I needed to find out what his end game was here. And I needed to figure out a way off this island.
“I can’t get through to Daddy. Once we get to the hut, I can get on my computer,” Sonny said behind us.
“Just do what you can, Sonny.”
We hurried through the jungle as quickly as we could. It was late, and the smell of a rainstorm was in the air.
There was silence until we finally reached the beach. The sound of the waves crashing onto the shore broke up the thoughts of what was going to happen next, and I let out a sigh of relief. We were finally as far as we could be from the Killer Duo back at East Cocos.
“Oh my! What happened?” Estelle stood up from the steps of the porch of the Laguna hut.
She opened the door and we stumbled in. Deciding to go into the first suite on the right, we pushed through the door and practically threw V onto the bed.
“Damn,” Ian said between catches of breath. “That is one heavy man!”
I assessed his condition. He was still pale and sweating from every pore of his body. His lips were white and he was clearly out of it. I laid my head on his chest to listen to his heartbeat. It was beating, but barely.
“Sonny, get on the computer and see what you can find out about transportation. Estelle, please grab some cold rags and anything you can find to clean up V’s wound. I’m going to the Z lab.”
“What do you want me to do?” Ian asked.
“I want you to find a way out of here. You’ve been here a long time. Maybe you and Estelle can fill Sonny in on where a plane or helicopter can land if she gets one.”
I was in mission mode.
“You going to be okay by yourself?” he asked.
I stopped at the doorway and looked back at him. “Yeah.”
“What’s going on?” Maddi stood in the hallway rubbing her eyes.
“Maddi, why don’t you go back to your room?” I advised. I walked over to her and ran my fingers through her red hair.
“Where’s Charlie?”
I took a deep breath. “She will be here soon. She told me to tell you to wait for her in your room,” I lied. I felt horrible for lying to this completely innocent little girl, but I had too much on my plate to explain what happened. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even know if I wanted to ever tell her the whole truth.
I gently turned her back into the direction of her room. She was too tired to object, and simply went back to bed.
“Okay, Maddi’s in bed. I’m going. I’ll be back.”
“Grace,” Ian called as he walked over to me. He grabbed my shoulders and squeezed. “Be careful.”
I nodded. “Ian, I don’t know what happened to Charlie, but I’m sorry.”
Sadness filled his eyes. “Let’s just hope nothing terrible happened.”
I nodded again and walked away.
Yes, we had our little moment in the jungle, but that was just a miscommunication. I wouldn’t say that it was a mistake because, well…it was nice. But I knew nothing was going to come out of it. Ian may have been a womanizing little ass at times, but he was a good guy. I knew he cared more about Charlie than he led on.
While I walked down the steps of the Laguna porch, I mentally prepared my questions. I had a ton and needed to get them sorted out before I busted into Dr. Roberson’s office and began making accusations.
I power walked across the courtyard. The drops of rain beginning to fall from the sky actually felt warm on my cool skin. I didn’t feel cold, but the familiar hunger pains in my stomach were starting up, which meant my heart rate will be slowing down more so than normal and my temperature was going to drop soon if I didn’t get some food in me. I hadn’t eaten in a few hours.
I reached inside of my purse for a bag of snacks.
Cramming the food into my mouth all at once, I stepped up to the steel door of the Z lab.
Ugh! I completely forgot that I needed V to get in here.
I pulled on the door to see if maybe it was open, but it wasn’t.
Great. How was I supposed to get in?
And just as I began pacing back and forth, trying to figure out what to do, the door opened.
Robin came out holding a manila folder and her keys.
“Grace!” She jumped. “You scared me. What are you doing here?”
She was dressed in sweatpants and a tank top, completely different than the usual business attire she wore for work.
“I need to see Dr. Roberson. Is he here?”
“Yeah, he’s upstairs. I just came in to get some paperwork I forgot. Is everything okay? Where’s V?” She seemed concerned.
“I can’t talk about it now. Just get me in, please,” I pleaded.
It didn’t take much convincing. She opened the first door, then punched the code into the second. I noticed she didn’t look up at the camera like V usually did, but when I realized that she didn’t have to because she was normally the one looking at the video from her desk, it made sense.
We walked into the waiting area.
“Grace, can you please tell me what’s going on?”
“I really can’t right now. Some things happened tonight and I really need to see Dr. Roberson. I think you should just get back to your hut and wait there.”
I felt guilty for keeping her in the dark, but I just didn’t have the time. I didn’t know what was going to happen to V in the next twenty minutes.
Again, s
he didn’t fight me on it. She just nodded and headed out the door. I knew I liked her for a reason.
I made my way straight to the elevator and to the second floor.
Beverly was not at her post, which I already knew because it was so late. Perfect. Less explanations I had to give.
I followed the same path I normally did when I had to come for testing. Inside the lab was a ghost town. None of the other researchers and doctors were in sight.
My stomach was queasy. Not enough food…and not enough balls to confront Dr. Roberson.
I walked down the hallway all the way to end. Dr. Roberson’s office door was closed.
I knocked.
Nothing.
I knocked again.
Nothing.
“Grace.”
I turned around and there he was, in his white lab coat and gold-rimmed glasses. He was evil. And I knew it the moment I met him.
“Please, come with me.”
He didn’t seem like the same creepily excited Dr. Roberson that I was used to. His facial expression was much more serious, and I wondered which was more frightening: the creepy, excited Mark or the pissed off serious Mark. Needless to say, I was hesitant…but I followed anyway.
We entered what seemed to be some kind of conference room. His assistant, the woman that traveled with us to the island, and three other men in lab coats sat at a large, shiny wooden table.
“Please have a seat,” he offered and gestured with his hand for me to sit.
“No, I think I’ll stand.” No way was I going to get comfortable. Who knew what these people had up their sleeves.
He nodded. “Very well,” he said, and then sat down at the head of the table.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Well, you tell me. You and your hut-mates decided to break into the East Cocos lab. You then harassed one of my sick subjects and cost two of your hut-mates’ lives. Not to mention, you have forever ruined my best guard.” He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. “So, Grace, you tell me what’s going on.”
My heart began to race. He just confirmed that Charlie and Destiny were dead. And that something was seriously wrong with V.
My stomach began to turn. It was hunger…and anger…and sorrow…and fright.
I glanced around the table. The other four people were watching me, waiting for me to answer. Anxiety was kicking in, and I could feel the sweat pooling on my scalp.