The Bleeding Crowd

by Jessica Dall

  Dahlia looked at Heather. “How long do we have?”

  Heather shrugged. “It’s about three or four hours until sunrise. Best case scenario, we’re long gone before that.”

  Dahlia bit the inside of her cheek. “I suppose, if you’re all willing to take the risk... I don’t think we need standard operating procedure... no one’s planning on suing for wrongful death I take it.”

  “Who would prosecute you for us?” Ben spoke at last.

  She looked at him, watching his eyes slide away at once. “All right then. Who wants to be the guinea pig and go first?”

  Nobody moved. All of the men lowered their eyes as if afraid she would single them out.

  “I will.” Ben pushed himself off the wall and met her eyes in challenge. “You’re a good enough doctor from what I’ve seen.”

  Pulling her shoulders back, Dahlia nodded and turned to Heather. “Okay. I need a blanket and some water and get them out of there. I can’t very well work through those bars.

  Heather nodded for the other guard to get the supplies and opened the cell.

  “Can we work in the hall?” Dahlia frowned. “I’m not a fan of willingly stepping into places that someone could lock me in.”

  “I’m not going to lock you in.” Heather looked at her.

  “It’s just the principle,” Dahlia said.

  “They’ll see you if you’re in the hall.” Heather frowned and then sighed. “How about you go in there, but I let you have the key while you’re in there? Is that satisfactory?”

  Dahlia nodded, letting Heather pull the door open before taking the key and directing her to place the bag near the bars of the cell. When the other guard returned, she set the water by the bag.

  Dahlia knelt and meticulously set some jars near her knees. She looked at Ben, watching him steadfastly avoid her eyes. She looked away.

  “Take off your shirt.”

  He did so in silence.

  She glanced up, her eyes never getting as far as his face before looking away. “Lie down. I’m going to use a mild topical anesthetic to numb the site some. It should help a little, but to be honest, this is probably going to hurt like a bitch.”

  “I’ll survive I’m sure.” Ben lay down, staring at the ceiling.

  She looked at some of the other men. “Hold onto his shoulders in case he jumps. He mustn’t flinch.”

  No one moved, and then everyone took their places, almost ceremoniously, around Ben as if he had offered to be a sacrifice to some archaic higher power. Dahlia poured a little water on her hands, rubbing them together before pouring a bit of rubbing alcohol on her palms and the scalpel. She strove to pull her nerves together enough to keep her hands from shaking.

  “Everything all right?” the other guard asked.

  “Just, gathering myself,” she said, taking a deep breath.

  “We’re—”

  Heather placed a hand on the other guard’s shoulder, hushing her. Dahlia heard the woman shift uneasily, but nothing else made a sound. She released her breath slowly and shifted the scalpel in her hand before touching the edge of the scar with her other hand. She pressed her finger directly next to where the scar started. Ben tensed some, but then forced himself to relax. Bringing the scalpel down to just above the scar, she waited for her hand to still before cutting. At the first stroke, he jerked, but remained silent, the vein in his neck protruding some as his friends held his body still.

  She cut as far as the scar went, trying to ignore the look of pain on his face, wiping away the pooling blood. Not far below the skin, she saw something thin, silver, and metallic. She studied it for a second, not wanting to wait too long while he bled.

  She looked at Heather. “Is there a light?”

  Heather shook her head.

  Dahlia released a breath and wiped the blood away again, trying to keep the site clean before the blood could congeal. With care, she used the flat edge of the scalpel to press the top of the chip down a little to see its broad edge. Ben inhaled sharply, his head jerking back, but he didn’t complain.

  “It doesn’t look too deep.” Dahlia wiped again. “I mean, it’s deep, but not—”

  Ben let out a ragged breath.

  She looked at his face. His eyes were closed, scrunched up so that his forehead and the corner of his eyes were deeply wrinkled. He was slowly blanching, all the color draining out of his face. It looked scary. Painful.

  She picked up the tweezers, rubbing them with alcohol quickly before turning back to him. “All I can really do is pull. It’ll hurt. Might kill you. I really don’t know.”

  He didn’t attempt to answer.

  Dahlia wiped once again and slipped the tweezers on either side of the chip, pulling gently. It didn’t move. She released a breath and jerked her hand back.

  The chip followed, sliding out roughly.

  Ben gave a hoarse yell, the man closest to his head covering his mouth.

  Dahlia glanced, just quickly enough to see the sweat coming off his forehead, his skin so pale that it looked green under the buzzing lights. She didn’t ask how he was. She knew more than enough, and, if it was worse than it looked, she really didn’t want to know. Quickly she cleaned the site and bandaged it, trying to staunch the bleeding as quickly as possible. She pressed on the site for longer than needed until she could fight off the feeling of urgency and then sat back on her heels. Ben continued to breathe in ragged gasps.

  She nodded the men away from holding him, touching his face gently before freezing. Her hand dropped awkwardly, and she placed her hand on her thigh. “Try to breathe deeply for me.”

  Ben swallowed, but forced himself to breathe more slowly.

  She paused. “Can you move?”

  He stayed still for a long moment before nodding shortly.

  “Move your fingers if you can,” she said. “Then your toes.”

  He did what she asked in slow motion.

  “Is he okay?” one of the younger boys ventured to ask.

  “Seems to be.” Dahlia took a needle and pricked his big toe.

  He flinched. “What the fuck was that for?”

  “Reflexes,” she said. “Don’t move so much; you need your strength.”

  “I think I’m doing pretty well considering the circumstances.”

  “Well, you aren’t dead, so there’s that,” Dahlia said. “Someone help him sit up.”

  “I can do it myself.” He pushed himself up, arm shaking only a little.

  Dahlia frowned, but didn’t berate him. “I’d give you pain pills, but they’d make you loopy. I think we should wait until we’re not in mortal danger for that.”

  Ben nodded, focusing on the gauze that covered his shoulder.

  “If you can lift your arm, you can put your shirt on,” Dahlia said, looking at the other men. “Who’s next?”

  By the end of the seven men, Dahlia was pulling out chips within a few minutes. It wasn’t any less painful, but at least it meant less time to suffer. The youngest boy cried. The rest had given the same muffled shouts as Ben, a couple whimpering as they moved away from the blanket.

  Dahlia rinsed the scalpel and tweezers, paused a moment, and then packed everything away. She stood and looked at the guards. Heather watched her along with the other guard from the hallway.

  “I assume you know a way out of here?”

  Heather nodded. “Are we good to go?”

  “I suppose.” Dahlia looked at the men.

  The light grew a little brighter.

  “We need to go.” The other guard looked at the roof. “The camera’s going to go back online soon enough. We need to get as far away from here as possible as soon as possible.”

  Heather nodded once. “Check the hallway.”

  Despite the fortress-like look of the prison, with Heather and the other guard’s keys, it wasn’t hard to get out. Heather and the other guard were expected to be there, and with the systems half running they were able to shepherd the men out of the tunnels and into the forest w
ithout so much as running into anyone who would question them about it. They kept moving until the last lights from the city were gone leaving them in near darkness.

  * * * *

  Ben looked at the sky. It would be dawn soon. He pressed a hand to his shoulder, wincing. The wound still throbbed, but he’d survive. He’d had worse. Dahlia caught the corner of his eye, moving between the men checking their arms. He waited for her to reach the end of the line before moving off a little. He looped around, ending up beside her.

  “It might be time to drug some of the guys, especially the younger ones.”

  Dahlia started, and spun to face him. “Oh, most of them seem okay. Anyway, Heather’s friend has my bag. I didn’t get her name.”

  “Des?”

  “If that’s the other guard.” Dahlia shrugged. “There’s Vicodin in there if someone needs it, not a lot, but... if... Ask around, one pill to each one who needs it. You can find the right bottle, right? V-I-C-O—”

  “I got it.” Ben cut her off. “You don’t have to stay. We’re not far out of town. Heather can show you the way back.”

  She shook her head. “I stole from the hospital. I took a lot from the hospital. Between that and, well, they’ve probably found your chips by now. Paired with me disappearing and everything else, they’ll put it together pretty fast.”

  “You know I didn’t send Heather to—”

  “I know,” Dahlia said. “I made my choice.”

  Ben nodded, sticking his hands into his pockets. “Thank you.”

  Dahlia pressed her lips together. “Someone came to me for help. Asked me for medical help. It was my professional duty to help them.”

  Ben didn’t respond.

  “Dahlia?” Heather moved towards her.

  “Yeah?”

  “We’re going to need your comm unit. There’s a GPS in it.”

  Dahlia set her hand on her hip, sliding it against her waistband. “I... I must have lost it somewhere last night.”

  “All the better.” Heather nodded. “We don’t want it here. All the guys okay?”

  “I...” She didn’t move her hand off her waistband. “Yes. Yes, they’re fine. I think I need to go sit down. If any of the guys need something for the pain, give them a Vicodin. They’re in an orange container. One pill each.”

  Heather nodded.

  “If you’ll excuse me.” Dahlia nodded and moved away.

  Ben watched her, opened his mouth, and then shut it. “I need to talk to Jude.”

  Heather nodded, watching him move in the opposite direction.

  Chapter Ten

  Ben obviously not only did not want to talk to Dahlia and instead avoided her. The rest of the group introduced themselves, but he stayed by himself.

  They were a small group, the two guards, Heather and Desiree—Des for short—Dahlia, Ben and the six other men. With Ben not paying attention, the man who had been at the gate, Jude, had taken over keeping the younger men in line. For the most part, those five seemed to be a strange combination. The youngest, Zechariah—Zechs—and Abel, were brothers, neither of which could have been very far into their teen years, and then David, Cyrus, and Isaac, who seemed to have nothing in common with each other, other than the fact that they followed Ben with what almost seemed to be a religious fervor made up the rest.

  Jude was difficult to figure out. He appeared to be the de facto leader of the group taking care of the day-to-day matters of the group, but was more than willing to let Ben retain a sort of figurehead status. He seemed diplomatic. His entire demeanor was non-confrontational, almost shockingly different from Ben’s physicality. If Ben had shaken her views on men, Jude blew them out of the water all together. Of course, he could have just been an exception to a generally true rule. He did seem to lie outside the boundaries of everything else she had grown to expect. His skin was darker than that normally found in the area. It wasn’t a far north city, but he looked like he would have been suited to be at least a couple thousand kilometers south of them with darkly tanned skin and near black eyes. What had made him end up in their climate was anybody’s guess...though she had never been to the camps. Maybe they were kept more diverse than the towns. Their viability to the climate would hardly be as much of an issue.

  “Can we stop?” Dahlia shook her foot, hopping awkwardly, trying to get a rock out of her shoe.

  “Again?” Isaac frowned.

  “What can I say?” Dahlia bent, sliding the shoe off. “I never was the outdoorsy type. Really not much of an exerciser in general. Haven’t walked this much in years.”

  “Great.” Des rolled her eyes. “I’m going to say it right now; I’m not going to be the one to carry her if she wears out.”

  “I wouldn’t let you carry me.” She pulled on her shoe .

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I don’t know.” Dahlia crossed her arms. “Maybe that I wouldn’t let you carry me?”

  Des opened her mouth, but Heather cut her off. “Okay, girls, let’s calm down a little.”

  “I say we find the nearest town and drop her off.” Des leaned against a tree. “I mean, what’s really going to happen? You can fix a sprained ankle, Heath.”

  “She’s a fully trained doctor,” Heather said. “She can help us. I kiss boo-boos.”

  Dahlia sat down heavily. “You’re a doctor?”

  “Not technically.” Heather shook her head. “I was taken off track at fourteen.”

  “Right.” Dahlia nodded, putting her legs out in front of her to stretch.

  “Then there are those of us who were never put on a track to begin with,” Ben mumbled.

  “That’s the reason you don’t know how to read, isn’t it?” Dahlia didn’t look at him.

  “Jesus Christ, will you let that go?”

  “I tried to let all of it go,” she snapped. “Yet here I am.”

  “I didn’t ask you to come.”

  “Yeah, because sentencing yourself and six other men to death is so much nobler.”

  “Oh, so you’re the noble one here.”

  “I just did what I thought was right.”

  “So did I,” Ben said.

  “You were just being an idiot.”

  “Seems to be my constant state according to you.”

  “Well, when the shoe fits—”

  “Dahlia, enough,” Heather snapped.

  “Excuse me?” Dahlia stared at her.

  “We’re all exhausted and on edge. It’s not going to help anything if we all start biting each others’ heads off.”

  “Especially with you two bickering like an old married couple.” Des sat down.

  Ben’s head snapped in Des’ direction.

  Dahlia frowned at Des. “Married?”

  “We’ll explain the concept later.” Heather shook her head. “Do you think you can keep going a little longer? We’ll stop to sleep soon. They’re going to be running a perimeter search looking for us. We have to get as far away as possible to avoid that.”

  Dahlia sighed, but got up stiffly. “Where are we going anyway? Do we actually have a plan?”

  “We’re heading east, and we’re about thirty miles from the coast—” Jude said.

  “That’s a unit of measurement, I’m assuming,” Dahlia interjected.

  “Fifty kilometers,” Heather said. “None of the guys think in metric.”

  “They think in terms where you measure things with your feet,” Dahlia quipped.

  “It’s a standardized unit of measurement,” Ben said.

  She ignored him. “So we’re fifty kilometers from the coast. Any reason that’s where we’re headed? I imagine being on a beach would make us easier to spot.”

  “It’s where we can catch a transport that will head to New Zealand,” Heather said. “We should be there within a day or two at a fair pace.”

  “And at an unfair pace?” Isaac glanced at Dahlia out of the corner of his eye.

  Dahlia ignored him. “We’re going to New Zealand?”


  “Well it’s where everything is,” Jude said.

  “So then you’d think we’d want to stay away from New Zealand.”

  “A fish rots from the head,” Jude said. “We can’t fight everyone, so...”

  “The fact that you’ve all escaped isn’t enough. You need a full coup?”

  “Do you want to live in the forest the rest of your life?” Des looked at her.

  “No...” Dahlia began.

  “Then there isn’t much of a choice, is there?”

  Dahlia tried to think of a new plan, something that seemed less suicidal. She couldn’t think of anything. They had nowhere to go, nowhere they could realistically hide. Not with men in tow. She tilted her head back and met Des’ eyes all the same. “I don’t see how this is the better choice. What are we going to do? Just waltz in there and say, ‘Hi, we have an issue with the way things are run, mind if we take over?’ Anyway, how are we even going to get there? It’s not like we can walk into the terminal and get a ticket to New Zealand.”

  “If they aren’t looking for you yet, you can get tickets,” Heather said. “If they are...we stow away.”

  “Sounds delightful.” Dahlia looked at herself. “Do I still need to pretend to be a lesbian or can I take off this shirt?”

  No one answered so Dahlia pulled it off.

  Abel studied her. “Do all women wear clothes like that?”

  “Like what?” Dahlia looked herself over.

  “I don’t think he’s ever seen something formfitting before.” Heather glanced at her.

  “It’s a sweater.”

  “Men are men.” Heather shrugged, motioning for them to continue.

  “I suppose I should be glad I’m not in a miniskirt.”

  “We all should be.” Ben didn’t look at her. “You’re having a hard enough time keeping up wearing pants.”

  “Yeah, like you’ve ever been thankful for me keeping pants on,” she snapped.

  “What can I say? You were generally more distractible when the clothes started coming off.”

  Dahlia’s fists clenched. “You know what? You can go to hell.”

  “I’m already there, sweetheart.” Ben didn’t turn to face her.

  “I...” she started. “You know what? To hell with you. To hell with all of you.” She turned on her heel and started in another direction.