I dared not call out or make him aware that I was alive. I glanced around myself. Torsos hung on hooks from the roof, their midriffs sliced open, their guts in gooey, sloppy piles beneath them. My heart rate quickened and again, I quietly bucked against the restraints. From the other side of the room came soft, groggy whimpers. I tensed, straining my ears. The butcher also turned and followed the mumbles to a waking body. With two swift whacks the moaning stopped.
Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Oh, shit! I scanned the room for an escape when footsteps neared my head. Immediately, I froze and closed my eyes. Stop breathing. Stop breathing. As the rope attached to my wrists and ankles was cut, I slumped from the painful hold. Instinctively, I played dead, allowing my body to flop as the butcher lifted me up and dumped me on the steel table. The collection of warm blood splashed beneath me, spilling over the sides. I kept my eyes gently closed, watching him through a tiny slit. All I could see was a blood-soaked black leather apron.
The butcher extended my left arm away from my body for a clear cut. He smeared the blooded blade across his apron, cleaning it. My heart quickened. At the end of the table, he had stacked up a small pile of severed hands. With a small twitch, I jerked my right foot out, knocking the pile to the floor. As soon as the butcher turned around, I sat up and kicked him as hard as I could in an attempt to propel myself out of his reach. But I was too weak and his thick body felt like kicking a brick wall. He barely budged, and spun back before I had a chance to scramble off the table. I lunged for his knife, grabbing his wrist, but the blood on my hands made it hard to keep my grip.
He tore his arm away and pushed me back against the table. Oh no! I bucked, kicked, and clawed at his fingers ringed around my collar. The blood beneath me made the surface slippery. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! He reared his arm back but stopped. His eyes focused on something on my neck. Disappointed, he dropped his arm.
“You’re not for eatin’.” He dropped the knife on the table beside him. I lifted my hand to my neck where his eyes had focused and felt a plastic choker. “Dwayne,” he called into the other room. “Your drifter lives.”
Drifter? Another man walked in from the other room, chewing loudly. I pushed up onto my elbows. Over his shoulder hung an automatic rifle and handcuffs that swung as he walked. He looked me up and down with light blue eyes.
“Nice. I’ll take her down. They should still be there.” As he spoke, brown drool bubbled out of the side of his mouth. “You didn’t chop anything off yet, did ya?”
I shot my eyes between the two then back at the disembowelled bodies.
Dwayne’s curdled smile dropped, noticing my reactions to the room. “Wait a minute…” He stepped forward and grabbed the back of my head, forcing my focus onto him. From his inner pocket, he pulled out a syringe and flicked the cap off. “I don’t think this one is completely gone yet. What’s your name, girl?” I didn’t answer. He showed me the needle, watching my eyes enlarge. “I know you can understand me.”
I did my best to soften my horrified expression, but it was hard to loosen the fear out of my tight muscles.
“I’m so hungry.” I mimicked the drifter from the woods, trying to match the weightless drone of his speech. But my own voice trembled against my ears. I had to hide it. Swallow it back down. “Do you have any spare change?” As steady as I could, I lifted my hand.
Dwayne’s grip didn’t loosen, which means he wasn’t buying my act, which means I had to up my crazy. I cupped my hands into the blood and lifted it up to my nose. Despite every part of me kicking back with revolt, I sniffed into my palms, pretending the blood was something else. Something sweet. My face scrunched. “Hmm, the tomatoes smell wonderful.”
He dropped his hold. “Hmm…whatever. I’ll take her down. Make sure we have enough meat for tonight.” He dragged me off the table and into a long corridor. Out the window, I could see into an empty town and a street barricaded with tollbooths and wire fences. An underground train station awaited us at the bottom of the stairs. Blinding lights disorientated me as I walked across the platform toward the waiting train. Graffiti and scorch marks painted the metal body where fire had caught, smearing blackened wings across the windows.
“Lez? Marcus! Wait up,” Dwayne called as we approached a group of men waiting beside the train. “Just pulled her from produce. She’s good to go.”
As they turned to look at me, I quickly mimicked the dull look of a drifter. I tightened my shoulders to my neck, my fingers curled into clenched claws. For extra effect, I even jerked my neck with a tick as I muttered under my breath. I had watched drifters for years but never had I had to act like one. I mimicked what I remembered, my mind flashing back to Mister Rodgers’ body lying within a halo of red. One of the men checked my collar before nodding.
“Throw her in. We’re already behind schedule.” He turned and signalled to the driver.
The group of men parted, each walking to a separate carriage. Dwayne stayed behind and shoved into the train. The accumulating heat and stench hit me first. I stumbled into the chest of man. He swung toward me, his ear held to his shoulder as though clued together. I immediately stiffened and backed up. Staggering bodies filled the carriage, shoulder pressed tight against shoulder. Puddles of piss circled their legs as they stood dazed and drugged like zombies. One of the armed men stepped in after me, shoving me further into the centre of the carriage as the train doors beeped closed.
Rusted wheels rocked the train forward. I braced myself against the pole, watching Dwayne and the platform disappear behind us through the window. With it disappeared my hope of tracking back to Diesel. Anxious sweat teased my hair and dampened my armpits. I felt suffocated as I pulled my hands to my chest, fearful of touching anyone in case they exploded into a frenzy of rage. Feral sounds curdled around me in an orchestra of moaning, crying, muttering and panting as they masturbated, obliviously to the eyes watching.
I slowly weaved around the drifters, each step soft, quiet and delicately placed, and toward the window. Hundreds of drifters, all tagged with different coloured collars, were crammed into the adjoining carriages. They twitched and jerked and clenched their muscles, frustrated but unable to understand what angered them.
I reached the window and pressed both palms against the glass. My reflection caught in the dark walls opposite where around my neck squeezed a tight yellow choker. There was a word written on the band but it was too small to read.
The woman next to me, who was crouched into a squat chewing the cuff of her sleeve, wore a blue collar with the word ‘Harvest’ scratched into it.
On the red collars was the word ‘Bait,’ on the green collars was ‘Bomb,’ and on the black collars was ‘Produce.’ Carefully, I eased through the mob, looking for another yellow tag when I spotted one on a girl. She had her head bowed so the crisp cut of yellow stuck out against her light hair. I eased her hair away from her neck. Etched into the plastic was the word ‘Sex.’ I grabbed my own collar as though it could bite me.
“Oh God, no!” I pinched and twisted the plastic in my hands, unable to undo the clasp.
The girl turned around at my voice. She was young, probably fifteen years old. In her gaze, I imagined Annie and my stomach churned. Blue eyes blinked back. They widened and understood that I was here, mentally here, and behind the unshed tears sat emotion. Fear. It was the first time I had ever looked into a drifter’s eyes and recognised emotion reflected in them. She didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything. I reached down and held her hands, unsure what else I could do. She squeezed my hands back.
After about an hour of travelling through dark, underground tunnels a static light cut across the carriage. The wheels screeched as the drifters stumbled forward at the abrupt halt. I remained huddled against the wall where the other girl with the yellow tag sat. She hadn’t said a word but hugged herself into the side of my body. I felt sick for her. Worried, protective. I soothed her hair, imagining Annie’s small body shivering next to me. I looked at the poacher manning the exit.
As the train docked and the doors opened, a draft of hot, toxic fumes made the air hazy.
I stood and looked out the window onto a lit platform. Green light sickened the room, camouflaging the glint of metallic silver from the two large automatic torrents nesting in the corners. Puddles of blood appeared black on the tiled floor, littered with old cigarette butts and shattered glass. At the end of the platform were heavily armoured doors, a camera surveillance head and two large metal barrels cocooned with barbed wire. A weak fire lit the bin’s belly with amber. A man missing an arm rose from his lawn chair out front, the rifle in between his knees now resting on his shoulder pads. He knocked on the door beside him as another two men walked out.
They met with the poachers in the middle of the platform and exchanged papers. I looked out the other window toward a black wall. The bricks looked wet and chipped with age.
A sharp bell rang, jerking me around. The men boarded the train and started to usher the drifters out into groups. The red tags were grouped together, as were the blues and greens. I walked out with the yellow-tagged girl, who buried her head into my side. Sharp, flickering lights lined the subway tunnel ahead of the docked train. The white lights caught the silvery glint of the coiled barbed wires that had been carefully placed along the tracks. Booby-trapped to stopped trains, but not people.
The women sold into the sex industry never lasted long. Sex went beyond the satisfaction of climax. It had been perverted; tools, weapons, props, and acids were used. During the centuries, sexual pleasure became linked with torture, and some men could only get off with a female screaming beneath them.
The yellow-tagged girl was small and skinny. She would be destroyed too quickly, but not quick enough to be considered a mercy. We walked in a mass of zombified bodies, where near the front of the crowd a fight broke out. I couldn’t see the brawl but felt the wave of bodies fall away from the commotion. Fear rippled down the line. Gunshots were fired. I pulled the girl closer to me, using the distraction to leap back onto the tracks in between the two train carriages. She pulled back, shaking her head, but I urged her to follow.
“It’s okay.” In her large scared eyes, all I saw was Annie. That’s all I could think of. I didn’t let her shake me loose. “We have to leave.” My voice fell into automatic rhythm as though I was speaking to my little sister, trying to rationalise with a young child. Instinct pushed me forward.
I pulled her up against the wet wall and slid along the narrow ledge toward the front of the train. The space between was tight and the damp bricks soaked the back of my shirt. Reaching the front carriage, I peered my head around before indicating for her to move forward first. She squeezed through the narrowing gap and leapt across into the open tunnel. As I followed her, my broader body got caught. I wiggled back and angled my shoulders differently. Before I could wiggle through, a hand grabbed me.
I was pulled off balance, hitting my back against the train. A gun was pressed to my right temple. I clenched beneath it as the man turned and barked at the girl to return. I screamed at her to run.
She spun around and sprinted into the tunnel ahead. I watched her go, running hard past the first ball of barbwire, blonde hair whipping back when a sudden explosion ricocheted up the tunnel’s throat. The noise, amplified within the pipe, slammed against my ears, burrowing into my head. Heat smacked me, searing my cheeks and neck as a gust of soot-filled wind caught in the glistening sweat across my face. Pieces of rock and human chunks scattered around the dark, smoky crater.
It took too long for my brain to register what had just happened. I was still looking for her among the caressing shadows, expecting her to scramble back up. A large portion of her body remained intact, but her legs were gone. A piece of her clothing fluttered past me, caught in the hot draft.
The man dragged me back to the platform and threw me onto my side. Voices were lost behind the ringing in my ears. I could see them arguing, their arms pointing this way and that, but I couldn’t hear anything. Numbness cocooned me. My body and mind went into shock. They pulled me up into a walk, dragging me across the threshold. But I couldn’t think of them. I couldn’t think of me.
All I could think of was the yellow-tagged girl, who, in an instant, was gone.
Chapter Three:
I couldn’t believe what had just happened.
I gripped my hands through my hair, unable to blink away the splatter of red skin. It made me think back to the rocks. Did water cover them, or was it blood? I tried to think of the ball of barbed wiring, to the way it glistened against the light. Was that blood too? I felt sick with guilt. Everywhere I went, death reared its unforgiving head. I used to recognise it only in the strangers on the sidewalks, but now I felt the true sting of death. I gripped my hands to still my trembling. I didn’t think nor care to hide my tears. Beyond the armoured doors, the stench of fumes got thicker. The place was a cold maze, a concrete tomb. It reminded me of Alpha except instead of cells lined with criminal madmen, the madmen sat free against the walls. Card games were set up as they cleaned their rifles, eyeing me as I marched past. They searched me for concealed weapons, explosives or spyware and then I was left in an office.
My clothes were stripped off and dumped at my feet so I had to crouch down to put them back on. They kept my shoes though, leaving me in wet socks.
Half an hour passed before a man walked in, sucking on a cigar. I didn’t speak, just let my face harden. He didn’t look down at my body like the rest. He kept his attention on my face, on my eyes. It felt more intrusive than if he had only looked at my breasts.
“I guess we should congratulate you on really fucking things up, eh?” He took in a long puff, holding the smoke on his tongue before blowing it out in rings. “Clever, but you’re not the first person to sneak in here by pretending to be a drifter. Lucky for us, slaves with their minds still intact sell for much higher than those filled with rubble. Tell me, who do you work for? The C.D.I.S? The Black Cruisers? Or are you just another Elite puppet? They have gotten slack with hiding their spies. Or maybe they are feeding you to us, I’m not sure yet. Throw enough shit at the cracks and eventually something falls through, hm?”
When I refused to respond, he smothered his cigar out on the back of his own palm. He tensed, enjoying the pain.
“Yes, yes, here we go on the merry-go-round of the torturer and the tortured. Hear me, precious, when I tell you the only thing your silence buys me is time. Time to extract whatever information I want out of you as painfully and as creatively as I want. I have been doing this job for a very long time, and someone in my position doesn’t get here by making idle threats. You will not die. There is no scenario where you get out of here unbroken.” He finally dropped his gaze. “Scream or not, you’re not leaving here without my mark on you.” He turned, opened the door and addressed the men in the hallway. “Take this one to the bunker.”
His threats felt real but I didn’t have the sanity to save myself. The men pulled me back by my elbows and took me back through the underground station. All I could do was close my eyes and pray for it to be over soon.
The hallways I was marched down narrowed into a choke to prevent large raids from overrunning the place. I was taken down a steep flight of stairs to a bomb shelter hatch sticking out of the ground. One of the men opened the lid, releasing fumes of manure and rot. I tensed and tried to push back, eyeing the dark drop as though it was hell’s mouth. I’m going to die here, I thought.
They shoved me into the hole. I dropped, my feet slipping out beneath me, and I landed on my ass.
I glanced up just in time to watch the hatch door slam and hear the wheel knob turn into a locked position. Then there was nothing. Thick, tense darkness pressed into the sides of my vision. Immediately I stood and tightened my hands to my chest, fists clenched. Nothing moved. Nothing breathed. Was I alone down here? What I mistook for safe silence was, in fact, a dangerous game of hide-and-go-seek.
Beyond the wall of shadows I could sense footsteps. They stuck to
the walls, each step careful and soundless. Danger pricked at the back of my neck. Completely blinded, I quietly but quickly scrambled back, looking for the wall. My ears strained to catch the whispered breaths of the other prisoners trapped inside the bunker. My eyes searched the room, trying to adjust to the dark.
Something scrambled across my foot. I clamped down my teeth, resisting the urge to scream. It was small, probably just a rat. I calmed myself.
I sensed more footsteps. This time, to my right, herding me to the left. I slid myself across the wall knowing they were probably doing the same. I needed to prepare myself. My muscles tensed in my readiness. I walked on my toes, ready to sprint and dodge and kick.
One of the prisoners must have hit a rock as a sudden crack skipped across the room. Four different sets of footsteps rushed to the noise and collided. The echoes of their bodies smacking against the walls and floor amplified through the concrete room. I scrambled away from them, pressing myself as far into the corner as possible.
There was a clear winner. The losing prisoner squealed as though his tongue was being held. There was a crack followed by feet shuffling. The squealing stopped as the fight broke apart. The footsteps continued, searching the dark.
I cupped my hand to my mouth, biting back the overwhelming urge to break down and cry. Despite everything I’ve gone through, despite Alpha prison, leaving Annie, the betrayal of my family, Tristan’s and Frankie’s deaths and learning I was the Soulless, this felt like my breaking point. My chest shuddered, letting a sob escape. I tried to soften my breath but it trembled out, loud and wet. I couldn’t stop. Oh my God! Nadia, shut up! Shut up! The footsteps found me.
Soul Finder (The Immortal Gene Book 2) Page 2