by Tonia Brown
“I see,” Dillon said. “Well then, we shall make him suffer all the more for that.”
“And I can be present?” I asked.
“Certainly. You are as vicious as you are beautiful. We shall go directly.”
“Tonight?”
“Why not? No time like the present.” Dillon stood, offering me his arm. “I think the rest of your dinner can wait. Trust me, you don’t want to tour the stockyard on a full stomach.”
“As you wish.” I took his arm in mine, and to my surprise, he shuddered at our contact. Had he been anyone else, at any other time or place, I would have found this enchanting. But here, it fell as flat as the landscape and as sour as the dead themselves. I forced a smile and added, for good measure, “My Lord.”
“My Lord?” he echoed, another grin crossing his endlessly smiling face. “I quite like the sound of that. Yes, I like that very much.”
“I thought you would.”
“Well, my Lady, shall we take a turn in the stockyard?”
“Let’s.”
And so, with calculated patience, I humored his practiced manners as he led me toward the nightmare known as the stockyard.
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Chapter Eighteen
I felt like quite the queen while on the arm of Dillon as we strolled about his empire. All the men of the town, and the few women we passed along the way, intently watched us, eyeing me with envy. He tried to hide his game, but I could tell Dillon was deliberately parading me about, taking a long and complex route to the stockyard just for the chance to show me his town, and to show me off to his townsfolk. This didn’t bother me, however. Again, it had been a long time since I was in such a position. It was nice to be treated like a lady.
The stockyard turned out to be an underground affair. The town played host to an old mine, which Dillon had converted into a series of corrals and sickbays. It was also more heavily guarded than I first imagined. Four well-armed men were stationed on each side of the double-door entryway—a mouth to the mines below that served as both entrance and exit. It was not only hard to break into, it would be just as hard to escape from.
The first thing to strike me about the place was the smell. A single undead, alone, smelled as unpleasant as say … a piece of rotten fruit. Several together provided a headier scent, but not to a level one would consider unbearable. However, the smell wafting from the mouth of the mines was intense, to say the least. Rather than the odor of a single rotting fruit, it smelled as if an entire orchard had been laid to waste. Then strewn with actual waste. Then set on fire, and that fire extinguished with the entrails of a thousand festering goats left to rot in the noonday sun during a particularly hot summer’s day. I wrinkled my nose and attempted to keep my breaths shallow, lest my host deem my nature too delicate for this venture.
We stopped just inside the entrance, at a small check-in station. It seemed that, by his own laws, not even Dillon could enter or exit without proper clearance. (I wondered if it was the same kind of clearance they gave at the border, and if I would find myself on the receiving end of a strip search on the way out.) We gave our names to a clerk, a nervous man made even more so by the presence of his master. As I related my information, Dillon helped himself to a stack of round metal canisters.
“Here,” he said, offering one to me. “Put some of this under your nose.”
I opened it and peered inside, scowling at the slimy green contents. “I don’t think so.”
“You’ll need it,” Dillon explained. “Just rub a bit under your nose, and it will dampen the scent of the place.”
“I don’t need it,” I insisted. “I’ve smelled the dead before. I’ll be fine.”
“Nonsense. I see you are already made uncomfortable by the smell, but let me assure you: From here on in, it’s almost overpowering. The mines have very little ventilation, so the odor of the dead has no place to go. It lingers, and it festers. This helps some.”
“What’s in it?”
“Herbs or some such. I don’t make it, but I understand it works wonders. Trust me, Samantha. You won’t be able to stand the stench without it.”
“What about you?”
“I don’t need it.”
He gave me a worried look, so I obeyed, taking a small bit of the balm and swiping it under my nose. The smell—a strong mix of mint, clove and some foreign scent I couldn’t place—overwhelmed me at once, pricking my nostrils and bringing tears to my eyes. It wasn’t unpleasant, but at the same time, it wasn’t a smell I would choose to inhale. I tried not to cough and gag, but alas, it couldn’t be helped.
Dillon had a good laugh at my reaction before he held out his arm once more.
“Come, my Lady,” he said. “Our prey waits.”
I took his arm with a nod, still unable to speak. Armed with a lantern, he led me down a long tunnel, moving me in front of him as the opening narrowed to a few feet. We slipped past a series of sentries, more and more guards, too many to count, until we reached a closed door built into the earthen tunnel. The closer we drew to the door, the more the smell of the place came upon me, yet the herbal balm held its ground, keeping the worst of it at bay. By the time we reached the door, I was praising the stuff, and thanking Dillon for recommending it. He received my gratitude with few words as he reached past me to unlock the door.
“Last chance,” he said as he laid a hand on the door. “There are things down here I am unsure a lady should see. Much less my Lady.” He stressed those last words, as if reminding me of my place in his imagined world.
“I worked the trade long enough,” I said. “I’m sure I’ve seen far worse. Besides, I asked you to bring me here. Not the other way around.”
“Oh, but I do love a woman who knows what she wants. And is able to get it.”
With that said, he pushed the door open. A wall of stale and heavy undead air hit me with all the force of a mule’s kick, threatening to drop me to my knees in revulsion.
“Dear God,” I whined as I plugged my nose and tried to breathe through my mouth.
“Don’t breathe through your mouth,” he warned. “You’ll only get the taste of it, which is worse than just the smell. Inhale, slow and steady, and you will get used to it in time.”
I followed his suggestion before the scent had a chance to latch itself to my tongue. Breathing through my nose once more, I stared into the tunnel beyond the door. A faint mix of moans and screams and growls rolled up the length of the passageway. We stood there for several moments before I realized Dillon was waiting for my signal to move along.
“We’re about two hundred feet underground now,” he said. “And deeper we go. It reminds me a bit of a journey to the underworld. Doesn’t it?”
“You mean Hell?” I asked.
“Not at all.” He cleared his throat to recite, “If thou openest not the gate to let me enter, I will break the door, I will wrench the lock, I will smash the door-posts, I will force the doors. I will bring up the dead to eat the living. And the dead will outnumber the living.” He tipped his head to me. “Do you know where that comes from?”
“No.”
“The goddess Ishtar gave that speech to the gatekeeper of the underworld. She wanted to enter to retrieve the soul of her departed lover. In a way, she was a lot like you, only you’re here to watch a man suffer instead of liberating him.”
Made uncomfortable by this line of discussion, I said, “Tell me more about the stockyard.”
“Certainly. We only use the first five hundred feet or so of the mines. This is divided into three areas. The cells, the infirmary, and the pens. The cells are for the punishment of the living, while the pens are for the containment of the dead. The infirmary serves as a buffer between the two, and houses those sentenced to deliberate infection, as well as the medical treatment of those infected by accident or attack.”
“I see,” I said. “Then we’ll find Clint in the infirmary?”
“Yes, ma’am. Right this way.”
We pushed past a heavy canvas curtain and stepped out of the tunnel into a dimly lit room. I half-expected some filthy, rat-infested mayhem covered in piss and waste and littered with the entrails of those who had suffered the conversion. To my surprise, the place was fairly well kept, all things considered, a task accomplished by a pair of men masked with bandanas, and who scrubbed up even our very steps as we walked by.
Tables lined the walls, serving as makeshift cots for the victims undergoing the infection process—or in this case, just the one. The cries of suffering were louder here, though still muffled under the constant groans of the undead.
“Tony,” Dillon said as one of the masked men approached him.
“Sir,” the man answered, the word subdued behind his bandana.
Unlike the men of the town above, this one didn’t give me a passing glance. I also noticed that no handshake was offered. It seemed the rules of etiquette were different in a place where the dreaded infection was in the very air itself.
“How’s the work coming?” Dillon asked.
“Fine, sir,” Tony said. “We’ve had one pass today, but he has been moved to the pens already. If I had known you were coming down, I would’ve waited for you.”
“Not at all. I came for something else entirely.” Dillon turned to me to explain. “Tony and his assistant, Leon, handle the process from initial infection to full conversion. They also act as our physicians, treating the wounded and the sick both here and in our hospice above. They are among my most trusted men.”
“Thank you, sir,” Tony said.
“They also ensure that the infection is contained. They disinfect the place around the clock to make sure the virus doesn’t escape on someone’s clothes or skin.”
“You do a fine job of it,” I said.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Tony said.
“Where is that traitor I sent here this afternoon?” Dillon asked.
“Clint, sir? He’s over here.”
“Is he …”
“Yes, sir.” Tony patted his hands together in a nervous gesture. “I thought you said to get started right away on him.”
“I did,” Dillon said. “You were right in doing so. I should be so lucky to have everyone follow my orders to such a degree. We came down hoping to catch a glimpse of his induction. But we shall settle for his suffering.”
The masked man relaxed. “Oh, well then, that can be arranged. Come. I’ll fetch you some chairs.”
Dillon motioned for me to follow Tony, and I repressed the urge to turn and run. This was madness beyond anything I could have ever conceived. All at once, I found myself wishing this was all just a bad dream from which I would wake at any moment. Wake and find myself back in my bed at the workhouse, or even at the bordello. Anywhere but here in the midst of such insanity. My desire to flee almost overpowered my hopes of eventual escape. Here in the veritable belly of the beast, I wanted nothing more than to run. Even if it meant getting shot in the back before I could take my first step. But I held back the tide of my disgust. I returned to biding my time. I continued to feign interest in both the situation and my host.
As we approached the bound form of Clint, he caught sight of Dillon and began to writhe with such ferocity that I was almost sure he would escape. I stayed back a bit, but Dillon, certain of the power of his restraint system, stepped on up to the man. He leaned over, right into Clint’s reddened face, and gave the man a grin that was anything but friendly.
“How are we doing?” Dillon asked. “Enjoying our stay?”
Clint set to writhing more as he grumbled a series of muffled words, most of which I couldn’t make out, but I’m sure the language was harsh enough to burn the hairs off the gruffest man’s ears.
“My Lady here tells me you had your hands on her,” Dillon said.
Clinton lifted his head, slowly, to see me for what I assumed was the first time. A growl rose from him. He sounded like a wild animal in his unbridled rage.
“She says you groped her,” Dillon said. “That you fondled her against her will.”
The bound man didn’t deny it. He just continued to growl and stare at me, throwing daggers of hate my way as his balm-coated nostrils flared wide.
“I don’t like being disobeyed,” Dillon said. “But I abhor having my property mishandled even more.” He sighed as he backed away from the restrained man. “Yet, seeing as you are already infected and there is little else I can do to torment you, I will have to be satisfied with the knowledge that I was right to send you here in the first place.” He gasped with excitement as an idea came upon him, snapping his fingers at the pair of men behind us. “I know he’s already infected, but let’s see how he handles the new mix.”
“We are still testing it, sir,” Tony said. “It’s still unstable. It’s liable to make his brain explode before it turns him.”
A grin spread over his face like a split across a spoiled fruit. (In other words, he looked as rotten as he was.) “Good. I should like to see that.”
“But … it will get bits everywhere.”
“Then you shall have extra cleaning to do. Won’t you?”
Tony must’ve picked up on the warning tone of Dillon’s voice, if not the terrible grin on the man’s face, for he turned to his assistant and snapped, “You heard what he said! Go and fetch a vial of the new compound.”
Leon darted out of one of several doors to do just that.
Dillon patted his jacket, feeling each pocket for something that he couldn’t seem to find. “Damn. I left my tobacco pouch in my other coat. Tony? Does Marcus still smoke?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well then, I’ll just go borrow some of his. Nothing like a soothing pipe to accompany a good show.” Dillon touched my shoulder. “I won’t be a minute. You stay here.”
“If you think I should,” I said.
“Certainly. Tony will take good care of you. Won’t you, Tony?”
“Yes, sir,” the man said.
“And you don’t want to miss Clint’s suffering,” Dillon said.
“Won’t you miss it?” I asked.
“You’ve seen one man die in writhing agony, you’ve seen it a million times. I won’t be long, anyway. Marcus is just up the tunnel.”
“If you insist.”
“I do.” Dillon kissed me lightly on the forehead, once again trembling from the intimate contact. “Be back in a flash.”
I nodded my farewell, trying my best to maintain my false timidity at being left alone in the company of strange men. Either Dillon was so wrapped up in this whole high-society act that he couldn’t see that I was just playing at my coyness, or he really thought me to be the innocent babe of his dreams. How, in his warped mind, he reconciled my innocence with my brazenness, I’ll never understand. Clint continued his growling as he wriggled against his bonds. The need to flee returned to me in full force.
“Would you like to take a seat?” Tony asked.
“No, thank you,” I said. “I prefer to stand.”
Standing was one step closer to running, though in truth, I didn’t see how I was going to run from this situation. There was nowhere to go. I was alone in a house of madness, surrounded by enemies and worse. Tony moved around Clint, preparing a tray of dubious-looking instruments for the oncoming act of infection.
From the same tunnel by which he’d exited, Leon poked his head into the room. “Tony?”
“Yes,” the man said.
“Can you give us a hand? The door to the storage unit is stuck.”
“Again? Get one of the grunts to help you.”
“No way. The last time I asked one of them for a favor, I ended up locked in the pens. Those guys do not like being told what to do. Or asked. Or talked to at all.”
“Fine.” Tony looked to me for a moment. “Do you mind if I leave you here alone? I know it’s, well, kind of scary. But they are both tied tightly, and you should be quite safe.”
I nodded as I low
ered my eyes. “I suppose so. If you think it will be okay.”
“I can send in a guard if you feel uncomfortable. But really, I’ll only be gone for a minute or two.”
“I’ll be fine on my own.” I gave him a smile that seemed to lighten his mood. “Go. Hurry before Dillon gets back and finds me here alone.”
Tony’s eyes went wide. “Oh dear, yes. I hadn’t thought of that. I’ll be right back.”
The man rushed out of the room, leaving me by myself.
I watched the writhing form of Clint, and at the sight of that bound and raging bull, I formulated a plan. Maybe I didn’t have to wait for my blessed escape. Maybe I could get out of here sooner. Tonight. Right now. I moved across the room as quickly as my slippered feet could carry me, and closed the door through which the pair of physicians exited. I pulled a chair up under the handle, to bar it. I then returned to Clint’s side just as he raised the volume of his muted cries and wiggled harder against his bonds.
“Calm down,” I said in a hoarse whisper.
He ignored me, hollering behind his gag and pulling at his ties.
I came as close as I dared to him and added, “I can’t set you free if you don’t calm down.”
This had the desired effect of shutting him down completely. He fell both quiet and still as he narrowed his red-rimmed eyes at me.
“I’m going to remove the gag,” I said. “But I swear if you snap at me, or shout out that I am freeing you, then I’ll go and get that damned dose of whatever it is and give it to you myself. Understand?”
Clint nodded, once.
I untied the leather fob from his face, and he let out a much-needed exhalation.
Smacking his lips, he asked in a croak, “What gives?”
“Did you mean what you said before?” I asked. “About Dillon?”
“Depends on what I said.”
“When Dillon sentenced you to death. You said you would kill him for it. Did you mean it?”
“Well, yeah. I guess so.” Clint curled his cracked lips into an ugly snarl. “What was all that stuff about me and you? I never laid a hand on you! I mean, sure I grabbed ya a bit, but I had to make sure you-”