The Bleeding Crowd

by Jessica Dall

  “Sorry that these aren’t quite as nice as your last accommodations.” Lisa slid through the door without Dahlia hearing it open.

  “I’m sure it’s eating you up inside,” she said.

  “You and your boyfriend have very similar bantering styles.” She sat down in the larger of the two chairs.

  Dahlia just stared at her. “So what is this? Some attempt to get us all to turn against each other?”

  “We just want some information.” Lisa watched her. “Simple enough. If you can give us that, we’ll let you go right now.”

  “Bullshit.” She crossed her arms and glared back.

  Lisa shrugged that off. “This isn’t your fight. Why should you have to die for it?”

  “I seem to have made it my fight,” she responded.

  “You’re a woman, you have a home,” Lisa said. “Wouldn’t you like to go home?”

  Dahlia studied her for a long moment, leaning on one of the walls. “So, I tell you want you want and you’ll send me home? Is that the deal?”

  Lisa sat up straighter, nodded, and then paused for another long moment. “Let’s not insult both of our intelligences here. You know you’re lying out of your ass and you should know I’m not buying it.”

  A flash of anger crossed Lisa’s features, but melted at once into a smile. “Please, sit.”

  “I’d rather stand.” Dahlia didn’t move.

  “All right,” Lisa said. “Let’s try this again. You tell us what we want to know, we execute your friends in the least painful way possible and send you into exile rather than sentence you to death. You can spend the rest of your life on a tropical island somewhere.”

  “Now you see, you should have started with that,” Dahlia said. “It would have made you seem less like a liar and lend more plausibility to an unbelievable offer.”

  “Still don’t find it agreeable?” Lisa eyed her.

  She didn’t answer.

  Lisa nodded. “What if we send your little boyfriend, what’s his name, Ben, with you?”

  Dahlia froze.

  “Let you go,” Lisa continued. “Live on your little island, undisturbed. You two could have a long and happy life together, I’m sure. At least as long as you can before a man starts driving you insane. That appeal to you more?”

  She paused as if considering the offer. “Perhaps.”

  “Then just tell us what we want to know.”

  “It might appeal to me more than living on an island all by myself, but it isn’t enough to make me tell you what you want to know. It doesn’t mean I don’t think that you’re still talking out of your ass.”

  “We’ll work it out, and I’ll sign a contract stating exactly what you get,” Lisa said.

  “What good is a signed piece of paper when the people offering it have the only means of recourse in the event they renege on their signed promise?”

  “You are really very smart,” Lisa said.

  “Thank you.”

  “It’s probably not a good thing. It’ll end up with you in a lot of pain more than likely.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Dahlia responded.

  “You’re all right with that?”

  “I made my bed. I’m resigned to lying in it.”

  “Strong will.”

  “Stubbornness even,” Dahlia said.

  “We’ll have to work on that then.”

  * * * *

  The throbbing pain in Ben’s shoulder made what minutes he could get of sleep short and painful. As soon as Dahlia had gone, the dull ache in the limb had fully blossomed into pain. He had still yet to figure out if it was just a delayed reaction, or if there was some psychology behind it.

  He released a long breath and looked at Jude who was sleeping on the floor without nearly as much trouble as he was having in the bed. Something between annoyance and jealousy shot through him briefly, and he considered ‘accidentally’ dropping something on Jude to wake him, but managed to control the urge. Anyway, to drop something he’d actually have to lift it, and. while his strength was returning, he wasn’t going to be able to use his left arm that well.

  The waiting had to be the worst of it. He could deal with the pain. He could deal with the stress. He just couldn’t stand this waiting game Lisa had set up. He didn’t know where Dahlia was or even if she was all right. He assumed they’d keep her alive if nothing else, if only to use her as a bargaining chip.

  His stomach flipped. She should be with them. Well, she shouldn’t have been there at all, but if she was going to insist on putting herself in danger, she should at least be where he could protect her. She wasn’t like the rest of them. She hadn’t grown up with the knowledge that something needed to be done. She hadn’t grown up learning the skills one would need to be able to do that. The face she had shown while trying to help him. She was scared. She had no idea what she was doing. Truthfully there was no reason she should have known.

  He released another breath, finally forcing himself up to sitting. He stood and moved to the door favoring his hurt shoulder. He knocked on the door.

  Lisa opened it within seconds.

  Ben frowned. “You’re sort of scary, you know that?”

  “I try,” she said. “Need something?”

  He looked back at Jude for a second, and then her. “You’re deal’s still good I take it?”

  She smiled smugly.

  The room she took him to was small but comfortable. It had a full-sized bed with only a couple inches between it and the wall across from it. She motioned for him to take a seat. He didn’t.

  She sighed. “If you’re going to want to deal, not using up all your energy trying to stand will probably be a good idea.”

  He frowned, but sat all the same.

  She studied him. “How’s the shoulder?”

  “How do you think?” he responded.

  She moved to the small dresser in the room, pulling out two white pills. She offered them to him with a glass of water, smiling at the wary look he gave her. “It’s just a painkiller.”

  “I’m good.”

  “I haven’t gotten anything out of you so far,” she said. “Why would I poison you now?”

  He hesitated, but swallowed them.

  She sat in a chair across from him. “So then, what deal are you looking for?”

  “Simple enough.” Ben leaned back, clenching his jaw. “I tell you what you want to know, and you send Dahlia home. She’s here for me, not the cause. Without me she’ll be a model citizen, I assure you.”

  “We can’t just pretend she isn’t a threat.”

  “So monitor her. She’s not a fighter. She’s not going to get any wise ideas like I would.”

  “You think she would like being monitored the rest of her life?”

  “When the only other choice is not to have a life at all?”

  Lisa nodded, assessing him. “In return you tell us what we want to know.”

  “That’s the deal.” Ben nodded.

  “I think it’s a fair trade,” Lisa said.

  “So what?” Ben swallowed. “Do we shake on it?”

  Lisa held out her hand, shaking his before pulling back. “I’ll get someone to interview you. Don’t go anywhere.”

  “Where would I go,” Ben mumbled quietly enough that she wouldn’t hear him.

  The door shut and clicked after her.

  * * * *

  A guard came for Dahlia and grabbed her arm. She shook the woman off. If she was going to be shuffled around like a farm animal, she was going to do it without being manhandled. The woman pressed on her back, shoved her into another room, and shut the door behind her. The door locked before she so much as had the chance to regain her footing.

  Jude stood. “You’re back.”

  Dahlia caught her balance from being unceremoniously shoved into the room. “Seems that way.”

  “I was worried...” Jude didn’t seem capable of finishing the thought.

  “I’m fine.” She looked around the familiar roo
m. “Where’s Ben?”

  “I don’t know,” Jude said, the relief on his face from seeing her faded at once.

  “Please don’t let him have done something stupid,” she mumbled, searching the room as if it held some clue.

  “You’re all right?” Jude looked at her.

  “Fine.” She released a breath. “They tried to convince me to tell them where the others were. Gave me some cock and bull story about letting me go if I told them. I told them to go to hell...not that I could have told them anything if I wanted to.”

  “They tried the same thing here.” Jude nodded. “Said...fuck.”

  “They said to fuck?” Dahlia’s eyebrows knitted.

  “No.” Jude rubbed his hand over his face. “I was just swearing.”

  “I’m confused.”

  “They said that if we told them what they wanted to know they would let us choose which one of us was going to make it past this week.”

  Dahlia continued to look at him.

  “They gave him the chance to get you out of here,” Jude said.

  “They aren’t going to...” She shook her head. “He wouldn’t fall for that.”

  “He loves you,” Jude said. “He feels guilty about getting you here.”

  “He didn’t...” She waved away the unpleasant thought before continuing, “If there’s anything he cares about more than me, more than anything else, it’s this cause. He wouldn’t throw everything away for the fool’s chance that—”

  “You know he would,” Jude insisted.

  “He couldn’t have.” She looked at the door.

  “He finally admitted to himself that he’s fallen for you. When he commits to something, he really commits. He’d do anything for the cause. Now he’ll do anything—”

  “If that’s what happened, he’s an idiot,” Dahlia said.

  Jude just looked at her.

  She shook her head, moving to the window. “We need to find a way out of here.”

  “What?” Jude frowned.

  “If he was that much of an idiot...if he told them what they wanted to know, anything they want to know, they don’t need us anymore. Trying to get something out of us is the only reason they haven’t killed us yet as far as I can figure. There has to be a way out of here.”

  “What about Ben?”

  Dahlia shook her head, pulling at the window. “It’s sealed.”

  Jude paused but released a breath. “There’s an air vent.”

  Dahlia looked at it. “Too small. We wouldn’t fit.”

  “You might,” he said.

  “I doubt it.” She looked around. “Anyway, I’m not leaving you behind. Ben might have been enough of an idiot to sell you downriver, but we’ve made it this far, I’m not leaving without you now.”

  “I don’t think he was thinking about me at all.”

  “That’s why I said idiot and not jerk.” Dahlia looked around. “There has to be...”

  “I don’t think there is,” Jude said.

  She looked around, then sat heavily on the bed. “Damn it!” She picked up the glass on the nightstand and threw it at the wall. It shattered loudly covering the floor nearby with shards.

  “Jesus Christ, Lia,” Jude moved towards the wall, picking up the bigger pieces of the glass. “Be upset, don’t make it so we can’t walk—”

  She held her hand up. “Did you hear that?”

  “The shattering? Yeah I managed to.”

  She waved him away moving through the shattered glass to the wall. She knocked lightly before turning back around. “Come here.”

  He frowned, but kicked some of the glass out of the way and stood next to her.

  She grabbed his arms and kissed him, holding him so he couldn’t fully recoil.

  “Wha...?” He shifted, uncomfortable.

  “Play along.” She pulled him back to her fully, kissing him before moving to his neck and ear. “They know what we’re doing here, I just don’t know if they can see us. Either way they’ll be suspicious if we’re just whispering.”

  He paused, but kissed her pressing her up against the wall. “If Ben can see us?”

  “Maybe it’ll give him a reason to recant.” She slid her hands under the back of his shirt, speaking against his lips. “The wall’s hollow.”

  “What?” he whispered.

  “There’s nothing behind that wall. Go ahead and hit it.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know.” She sighed, continuing to move her hands over him. “Put a hand out to the side like you’re bracing yourself or something. Do I have to think of everything?”

  “You’re better at it than me, apparently.”

  “Just do it if you don’t believe me,” she said.

  “I’ll take your word for it.” He released a breath.

  “Jude, give me something to work with here. I know you’re a better kisser than this.”

  “I happen to have some other things on my mind at the moment,” he shot back in a whisper.

  “Pull my hips to you or something.”

  “What?” He pulled back a bit.

  “Are you going to going to question everything I say?”

  He slid a hand low around her back and pulled her towards him.

  She returned to kissing his neck near his ear. “It’s a door.”

  “Huh?” he panted slightly.

  “It’s a door, probably into the tunnels.”

  “So we need a guard to let us out?”

  Dahlia smiled.

  He felt it, turning his head to try to see her. “What’s made you so happy?”

  She kissed him. “Heather gave me her key.”

  “What?”

  “She’s brilliant. She put her key around my neck while I was sick.”

  “She knew you’d need it?”

  “She knew she’d be with Des and that she wouldn’t need it,” she said. “Pull my shirt off.”

  Jude hesitated briefly, but didn’t question her this time, just caught the hem and pulled the shirt off over her head.

  “Do you know how to work the clasp of the necklace?” she asked against his mouth.

  “Vaguely.”

  “Try then,” she said. “Kiss my neck and try to get the chain undone.

  Jude followed her directions as she attempted to keep up pretenses.

  He groaned slightly. “You’re going to have to stop that?”

  “Stop what?” She frowned.

  “Rubbing against me like that.” Jude continued to try to get the clasp undone. “It’s hard enough to try to concentrate without you doing that.”

  She smiled to herself. “Sorry.”

  There was a long pause. Dahlia tried to move less, waiting for some sort of answer. “Is everything all right?”

  “Got it.” He straightened again.

  Dahlia placed her hand at her neck, pulling him back to her mouth to use his body to block her from the rest of the room. She slid the key down doing her best to find the seam in the wall and then the keyhole with her hand. She found it and tried to get the key to fit without looking at it. After a tense moment, it slid in with a quiet metallic noise as the pins fell into place.

  “It’s in,” she said.

  Jude tensed, but nodded.

  “On the count of three I’m going to pull it open, and we make a run for it.”

  “Run?” Jude frowned.

  “And pray to whatever powers that be they don’t notice that we’re gone long enough for us to get away,” Dahlia said. “You have a better idea?”

  He shook his head, pushing her hips back a little. He released a breath. “Ready when you are.”

  As quietly as possible Dahlia turned the lock and got a solid hold on the door. She released a breath. “All right. One, two...”

  She never said the final number, just swung the door open, pulling Jude by the shoulder after her. She faltered, barely managing to stop before the steep stairs began.

  “All right?” Jude caught her waist.

&nb
sp; “Yeah.” She nodded, looking down the dark staircase. She wavered slightly at the sense of vertigo that came over her.

  “Let me go first.”

  Dahlia didn’t so much as attempt an argument, taking his hand and letting him lead.

  “How are we going to get Ben?” Jude moved as fast as he could with her behind him.

  She didn’t answer.

  He glanced back before looking toward the stairs. “Formulating a plan?”

  She pressed her lips together tightly and shook her head. “We can’t.”

  “What?” Jude slowed.

  “We don’t know where he is.” She pressed him gently to get him to move. “We don’t know where he is or with whom. We don’t even know if he’s alive. We can’t take the time to wander around the building looking for him.”

  “So, we’re just leaving him here.”

  “We get out,” she said weakly. “We regroup. We see what we can find out there, and then we see what we can do for Ben. It won’t do anyone any good if we get caught again.”

  “He wouldn’t leave us.”

  “He sold you out,” Dahlia said.

  “He wouldn’t leave you.”

  She let out a shaky breath. “His refusal to leave me is what led to this. I don’t want to leave him, I don’t want to have to be this cold, but if Ben’s going to give up everything because of some mushy love sickness, one of us has to think clearly. One of us needs to make sure that we don’t all get killed.”

  “You love him.”

  “Yeah,” her voice broke, pushing him to force him to go faster.

  “Then how can you—?”

  “Because I have to,” she cut him off. “I have years of experience fighting off emotional urges. It isn’t what my gut is telling me to do, but it’s what my head is, and I’ve always gone with my head. I would tell Ben to do the same thing if he were in my position.”

  “He wouldn’t.”

  “Well, he’s not thinking clearly,” she said.

  Jude hit the next platform and stopped short, causing Dahlia to run into his back.