Locked Out (No Way Out Series Book 2)

by Shari J. Ryan

  “I have a plan,” I tell her. It’s the same plan I’ve had since I got here. “I think I can get us out.”

  I hate how hope fills her eyes. I hate the possibility of her believing what I’m saying. I hate that I’ve convinced myself of this lousy ounce of hope. “You can’t get us out,” she says, taking the pistol from my hand. I grab her wrist and twist it around so the barrel is against my forehead.

  “Kill me first. If you can kill me, you can do what you want to yourself, but I’m not going on without you.”

  “I hate you,” she grunts. “I hate you, Sin.”

  “I’m pretty sure you told me you loved me just a couple of hours ago.”

  “But I hate you now, because you reminded me of how fickle love is, and how confused I must have been for the past week.”

  “You weren’t confused. I was confused. I love you, Reese. I shouldn’t love you. It’s been a week. But it’s like we’re the last two people standing on this godforsaken earth, and when that happens, you can either love the other person or hate them. And I don’t hate you. I would have shot you dead if I did. And you would have shot me by now if you in fact hated me. There is no gray area here—there’s love and hate. Your actions with that pistol will define which of those two you decide upon. Do you love me or hate me?”

  She drops the pistol and lowers her head back down, closing her eyes. “Asshole,” she breathes.

  “Hold that thought,” I warn her. I take the rubbing alcohol out and pour it over her oozing wounds. Her shrieks pierce my ears, but I deserve it. I didn’t warn her first. I use the last two bandages to cover the largest of the flesh wounds. “You’re going to be okay.” I help her sit up, and as she’s up straight, she slaps me with whatever strength she must have had left. It stings like a bitch, but I deserved that too. “Do you have more clothes in your bag from my mother’s closet? Your shit is all torn up.”

  She nods her head, looking over toward her bag that’s surprisingly still intact. That’s how desperate these assholes are. They’ll eat flesh before looking for actual food. I go through her bag and toss a pair of jeans and a white t-shirt at her. “How much farther is it to wherever we’re going?”

  “I found running water about five miles away.”

  “Help me up,” she demands. Without thinking, I scoop my hands under her arms and bring her to her feet.

  “Are you steady?”

  She nods, holding her head with both hands. “Yeah, I’ll be okay.”

  “Get changed,” I tell her. I reach into my bag and grab the water I pulled from the stream. “Here, drink this.”

  She carefully slips off her ravaged pants and shirt, revealing how many more bite marks are covering her body. Jesus. “Where did they come from?” she asks.

  “They were probably following us after our encounter with Rooter. Look, I know I’m a little controlling, and in your eyes, I’m probably acting as an arrogant know-it-all, but it’s only because I’ve been here long enough to study these people, their behavioral patterns, and the stages of starvation. I can tell you just by looking at someone how long they’ve been here, how long they’ll survive, and when is the last time they’ve likely eaten.”

  She pulls the shirt over her head, squinting against the pain. “Is that going to happen to me? Or you?”

  I shrug my shoulders because I honestly don’t know. I want to say it depends on the strength of our minds, but it’s like our minds become diseased when hunger fully takes over. The next stage of starvation is what she just encountered. She and I aren’t there yet, and I don’t know exactly what will happen when we reach that point, but I’m hoping we find food. I just haven’t found much hope in that department yet. “I can lie to you and say no, but I’m going to try my hardest to stop lying to you.” The thought of doing to Reese what those animals just did to her causes a pain in my stomach, but when all control is lost, I’m not sure what will happen.

  9

  Chapter Nine

  REESE

  I thought I was dying. I even had a smile on my face. That was only until the shadows overwhelmed me with a cool breeze, followed by the heat of several mouths hovering over my exposed skin. We don’t live in a world where vampires, zombies and werewolves exist, yet that was all I could consider. This isn’t real life. But it is. They weren’t monsters; they were starving human beings who will revert to any sort of behavior to satiate their hunger. I tried to fight back, but I lost the struggle when teeth sunk through the flesh on my thigh. The pain was like nothing I had ever experienced. I’m not sure I’d even know how to describe it, rather than thick nails plunging into me as if my skin were nothing more than a delicate piece of bread. I’m not sure how I have the strength to walk or continue on this endless trek, but I’m seeing now my choices are limited.

  I sip on the oddly tasting water Sin has given me. He told me it’s clean and I wouldn’t care if it wasn’t right now, but my body is craving every ounce of the liquid. “There’s one thing I don’t understand, Sin.”

  “Yeah?”

  “There are starving people all over the world, and yet, I haven’t heard of a case where those people suddenly turn into cannibals. So, why here?”

  “‘Why’ is always the question. Why are we here? Why are we alive? Why do we fight for the food that is likely poisoning our brains?” The food. It’s the food. “Reese, they want us dead. All of us.”

  It isn’t bad enough they’re holding us here as prisoners? Why not just execute us and save the trouble? I’d ask, but I’m guessing there’s a roundabout answer for that too, just like everything else.

  We walk up on a small creek. Water. Nothing has ever looked so beautiful. I want to drink it and feel it, drown in it. “Is this real?”

  Sin laughs quietly. “Yeah, it’s dirty, but—”

  “It’s water.” I peel off my shirt and my pants because I need to feel the water on my skin. Stepping out of my boots, I place them neatly along the edge, yearning to feel the coolness against my body.

  “What are you doing?” Sin asks.

  “Jumping in. What does it look like I’m doing?” I squat down to test my finger in the water, untrusting after the last pool of contamination we came across. I allow my finger to linger for several seconds before confirming the water won’t try to eat me alive again.

  “You have open wounds all over your body, Reese.” I shouldn’t have to be reminded of this. It hurts like hell, but the water made me forget about everything else for just a quick minute. I release a long breath, acknowledging that he’s right. Am I in hell? Is that what this is? Did I do something so wrong in my life to deserve this?

  I sit down on the edge, still in my underwear. “Are you going in?” I ask Sin.

  “I wouldn’t do that to you,” he says quietly.

  I look back at him, the look on his face, wanting to call his bluff after all of the shit he has done to me. “You can go in. Don’t waste the opportunity because of me.”

  Sin walks over and sits down beside me. “I’m not going in.” I hear his words, but my eyes and focus are directed on the toad perched on a rock across the creek.

  “Sin,” I whisper, slowly lifting my hand to point at the toad. My stomach turns and screams and my mouth waters. “Sin.” I try to get his attention again, but he isn’t looking at the toad. His eyes are set beyond the creek, squinting into the distance. He stands up and pulls his gun out, hopping a few rocks to cross the water. I try to focus on what he’s looking at it, but I don’t see anything. I hear the blast from his gun and I scoot backwards toward my clothes, quickly dressing myself. I step into my boots and follow him. “Sin?”

  After moving through the maze of trees, I find Sin crouched down on the ground, hovering over something. His hands are on his head and laughter begins. I slow my strides as I approach him, feeling a tad nervous about what he’s covering. As I approach his back, I see a dead hawk lying in front of him. He drops his gun and scoops his hands under the bird, bringing it up to his face. “Hung
ry?” he asks me.

  Does he need to ask? “Can we start a fire?”

  “We don’t need a fire.” He leans forward and wraps his mouth around the hawk’s body. My throat tightens and my stomach gurgles with pain. I shudder at the thought of eating this thing raw, but Sin doesn’t think twice about it. He manages to take a decent bite out of it and then falls backward onto his butt with relief. “It’s good.”

  “Sin,” I whisper softly. “Starvation wouldn’t entice humans to eat uncooked animals, right?”

  He looks up at me with an unsettled look on his face. “I’m starving,” he says.

  So am I, but…I can’t do that. He hands the bird over to me and the stench brings a wave of nausea with it. I shake my head. “I can’t.”

  He looks back down at the hawk, thoughts running through his tired eyes. “Shit.” Looking back up at me with concern. “What the hell is wrong with me?”

  I don’t want to answer him. I don’t want to point out the truth faster than it takes him to comprehend that there is no difference between him and the other prisoners here. “It’s okay. You’re just hungry.”

  “No, I’ve hit the next phase,” he says.

  “Phase?”

  “The food here is injected with a hormone that alters the chemical balance of our brains. When starvation ensues for too long, the part of our brain that tells us to cook our food and to dislike eating our own species no longer works properly. It happens in some faster than others. The food is all laced to maintain the population here. For those who continuously lose the food battle, they will eventually end up like this—me—or like those who attacked you earlier.” His words are defining the fears I was considering. The thought of Sin attacking me, or me attacking him for survival has sickened me.

  “Is there anything else you should tell me? These secrets and revelations keep popping up and taking the wind out of me, and I wish you would just share it all, Sin.”

  “What else is there to know? This is going to happen to you, too. Is that what you wanted to hear?” No. That isn’t what I wanted to hear. I wanted to wish and hope I was strong enough not to conform to Neanderthal behaviors.

  He looks at me for a long minute before standing up and grabbing some loose pieces of wood from the nearby trees. “Grab some dry leaves over there,” he tells me. I do as he says and bring the little amount of brush I can find over to him, watching as he quickly starts a small fire.

  “That was fast.”

  “Survival 101. Never took the class?”

  “Afraid I missed that one,” I tell him.

  “Here.” He tugs at my arm so I sit down beside him and he wraps one of his arms around me, shifting us so I’m in front of the fire. “Take these sticks.” I place my hands around them as his hands cover mine. With a quick motion, we both continue rubbing the sticks against each other as small puffs of smoke billow off to the side. He removes one of his hands to add in some of the leaves I collected. He holds a couple of them up to the flame long enough to catch and burn along with the sticks. It only takes a few minutes before we have a decent size flame growing.

  Sin grabs another stick and impales the hawk before holding it over the flame. My stomach is turning angrier the longer we have to wait and the thought of taking a quick bite as he just did minutes ago doesn’t seem as revolting as it did. I close my eyes, inhaling the burning scent, trying to avoid looking at the bird. But my mouth continues to water, and my patience is gone. My starvation is more than prominent, the pains within me surging beyond the outer pains.

  “This should be good enough that you won’t get sick from eating this.” Won’t he get sick after eating it raw? He tears off one of the legs and hands to me. My mouth fills with water and I take a bite, quickly following it with several more, feeling the urging to fill my stomach at a rate that will surely make me sick. “Hey, slow down. You can’t eat that much, you’ll vomit it all up. You haven’t eaten much in days and your stomach is not a normal size.” I look at him, waiting for him to crack a smile and tell me he’s joking. I want to eat as much as I can and I don’t quite care about becoming sick after. Feeling full isn’t something I’ve felt in longer than I can remember.

  “I’m still hungry,” I tell him, shoving more food into my mouth.

  He takes the bird from my hands and takes a bite for himself. “Take a break. Trust me.” Sin’s eyes close as he takes several small bites. I even think I hear a soft moan escape his lips, similar to the sounds he was making when we were satisfying a different hunger, and the sound makes me want to hear it more. “This is a damn good bird.”

  The hunger within my stomach turns to a dull pain, a manageable pain. A type of sensation I don’t remember feeling before. Maybe it’s fullness, or maybe it’s my body going into shock after eating meat. I haven’t eaten anything like this since the pot roast Mom made the night before I was taken. The first few months I was locked in the shed, I would try to imagine and remember what the savory taste was like, how it made my taste buds tingle. After a while, though, I forgot what it tasted like. I couldn’t figure out how to imagine it anymore. I have forgotten what almost everything tastes like. Nothing sweet has touched my tongue in over three years. I imagine it would hurt my teeth if I were to taste it now. I imagine my tongue wouldn’t know how to react to such an incredible sensation.

  There were times when I would run my tongue down the length of my arm so I could remember what salt tasted like. After a while, I couldn’t taste it anymore, though. I didn’t taste salt until Sin kissed me, and it made the hunger grow in more ways than I thought possible. “Do you want more?” he asks.

  I take what’s left of the bird and nibble along the meaty area, feeling the warmth of each bite fill the ache within me. “If we continue in this direction, we may find more, but it’s getting dark. Do you want to call it a night?”

  I nod my head and place the bird down against the trees behind me. “How is your head?”

  “It’s fine.” It’s not fine, but unless he’s bleeding, he won’t say otherwise. He grabs his bag and places it down behind him, lying down and resting his head on it. He takes my arm and pulls me with him, my head falling heavily against his chest as his arm tightens around me. “I’m sorry I left you earlier.”

  “It was my fault.” I wanted him to leave me behind. I wanted to die. I still might want to, but as long as I’m here within his embrace, I can tough it out a little longer.

  “Reese,” he whispers. “I really do love you. I love you for making loneliness a little less painful.”

  I close my eyes, feeling a tiny smile pinch at my lips. In a world outside of Chipley, Sin probably wouldn’t look at me, but here, I’m the only thing he has. He’s all I have. Maybe he was right about love and it’s variable meanings, and I’ll take whatever this is.

  Falling asleep has come easily, but only until Sin jerked his body out from beneath mine. He’s curled in a ball, vomiting against a tree. He doesn’t say much in between the episodes, but I attempt to rub my hand over his back, which he allows. After emptying all of the food out of his body four more times, he falls backward, clutching his stomach.

  I take a piece of the torn clothing from earlier and soak it in the creek. When I return, he’s groaning. I wipe his face down and press the cloth over the back of his neck. “I’m going to die,” he says.

  “You’re going to be okay, Sin.”

  “No, you don’t understand.”

  “You just need to get it out of your system,” I insist.

  “What if it was a trap, Reese? They can see us. They know we’re here. They know we’re trying to cheat the system. They know we’re trying to escape. And they’re not going to let us.”

  10

  Chapter Ten

  SIN

  I think there’s a hole in my stomach and I feel like I’m burning from the inside out. Someone did this to me. Someone had to have done this to me. I try to force up more bile, but there’s nothing left. My head is pounding again and I th
ink I’m seeing double. Cool water is running over my forehead and Reese is repeating something over and over, but I can’t make out what she’s saying.

  Another shooting pain writhes through me, forcing my body to contract into a tighter ball than I am already in. I have felt sorry for myself a number of times over the past several years. I’ve blamed everyone for the demise of my life and it has been those times where I have felt like giving up. Right now is one of those times. I think I’m finally losing this battle. I promised myself I would go out fighting, and God knows I have tried.

  “Sin, we have to go,” Reese shouts in my ear. How the hell am I supposed to move right now? My stomach is cramped into a tight knot and I think the rest of my senses are gone at this point too. It’s the next phase. My body is shutting down. It’s all part of the plan. “Sin.” Reese’s hands are around my wrists, pulling me up. I can hear the panic in her voice. There’s going to come a time very soon where we both choose to give up at the same time. It feels inevitable.

  A cold sting burns across my face and it helps me to focus on Reese and her hand winding up to hit me again. “Whoa,” I groan.

  “Let’s go. Now.” I watch her lift her arm and shoot her pistol a couple of times, and with the slow motion I feel like I’m moving in, I turn to see what she’s shooting. It only takes a second for me to stand the hell up and grab her by the arm. With each step I take, I feel like I’m breaking through the earth’s surface from my heavy weight. And then there are the trees that are swaying. Fuck. I don’t know if I can do this. “Where are they coming from?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, winded.

  She stops behind a tree to catch her breath, and I stop beside her, holding myself up against the tree, breathing in and out at the same rate she is. We watch as the oversized hawks fly by, several at a time. “Was it because we killed one?”