Chapter 11
Maddie and Marcus woke to mutual embarrassment and uncomfortableness, reminiscent to both as times of drunken horniness in their younger, and not so younger, years. Smiling sheepishly, Maddie was gathering her clothes and moving into the ventilation room, with a blanket wrapped around her.
Marcus wanted to watch her go, intently, but didn't want to stare. When she came out she was glowing and grinning, but he wasn't sure if he had been that bad or if he had made an impression. He was dressing as well, just stepping into his pants and unconsciously looking down at his crotch while debating this. He came back to reality with a sound from her direction, realizing that he should probably try to remember that he wasn't alone from here on out.
She must have sensed his confusion, or maybe it showed. She stepped over in one fluid motion and kissed him on the cheek, then rubbed it off with a quick and light swiping motion. She smiled, and it felt like a hand had just clenched around his heart, not metaphorically, but physically. It almost pained him, and he was getting light-headed. He was thankful that she turned away to finish assembling the travel needs.
Wow, he thought, I'm in real trouble here...
Once the gear was together and everything was strapped down tight, Marcus climbed out of the shelter. Maddie handed the packs up, then the rifle and shotgun and stood on the chair to get a grip upon the edge of the opening, with Marcus pulling her up by her other hand. They caught eyes again, and Marcus thought he was going to fall over and drop them both back in, but he managed to pull it off and fell back, as if the effort had been that great.
“Trying to say I'm fat?” she jokingly questioned.
He smiled a big smile that time, she knew he had teeth, she just hadn't seen them yet, and while not a supermodel, he was actually a very attractive man, for an old dude.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Marcus yelped and dropped and blood spray appeared on Maddie's face and coat. She didn't have to look far to see what had happened as four men, in all white, were walking toward them carrying assault rifles. A fifth was on the ground, holding the side of his head, as another berated him. From the sound of it, Maddie guessed he wasn't supposed to shoot until he was told.
She looked down at Marcus, dropping to her knees and instinctively putting her hand over the smoking hole in the left side of his coat. Panic was trying to latch on, but she was focused on the task at hand; he was starting to bleed profusely. She leaned back, trying to quickly assess the situation. He had been shot in the left thigh, his left index finger was missing and there was a smoking hole in his coat. She leaned back to him, lifting his arm to elevate the hand and slow the bleeding, while she tried to find the bandages they had packed.
The sound of the men moving near her made her look up. They were just standing there, a few feet away. One motioned with his gun to move away, and she did without hesitation. She knew they meant business, and the fact that they were left alive longer than the others already seemed to be a bright point to focus on. Two of the men took their packs off, while the other two started removing Maddie and Marcus' gear and guns. The two with their packs off were apparently attending to the wounds.
When they opened his coat and cut open his pants, she was grateful to see the wounds were less severe than she would have thought. The bullet impacting his chest had skimmed along the breastplate and exited the left shoulder, and while damaging, if the bleeding was controlled, it was survivable. The leg wound was a grazing shot, tearing into fat and tissue, but not too much muscle or any bone.
The hand was another matter. One man held his arm and actually sat on him, while the other injected a needle repeatedly into the open wound where his finger and knuckle used to be. He was squirming and moaning, but she doubted he had the strength to fight or resist, and was likely in shock already. She knew they were numbing it. As he passed out from shock or the pain, they scrubbed it, bandaged it and cleaned up the other injuries. While passed out, he received two more injections, probably antibiotics and a painkiller, she suspected. Thank God... she said in her mind.
Then the men rudely woke Marcus with slaps to the face, put zip-tie handcuffs on Maddie and tried to get them walking. Marcus was not walking anywhere. He was hurt. They ended up carrying him, each man in turn, all the way back. Periodically dropping him to rest, check his vital signs and change carriers.
No whales emerged or broke the surface when they went by, but each of the men in white stared intensely at the black-glass surface. Maddie noted that they were nearly up against the wall that eventually led to the trench, as far from the edge of the breathing hole as they could get. The hole seemed to have expanded here. After catching small bits of chatter from her captors, she realized there had been seven people when they left, and the whales had taken one under. Marcus hadn't told her that part.
Marcus awoke tied to a chair. Next to him Maddie, sat with a concerned look on her face. He processed what he remembered, each thought in turn, until he understood what was going on again. There were two guards in the room with them, their guns pointed right at them. He felt drugged, and looked down to see the bandages on his chest, shoulder and leg, and while he couldn't see it, he felt the throbbing in his hand that was telling him something was wrong there as well. He was somewhat confused, thinking he should be dead if these people had him.
He tried to give her a reassuring look, though the pain of movement made him wince. He coughed and asked the guards for a cigarette. Neither even changed their expression. Marcus just grinned. They heard the outer door open, and in walked the sniper and Blue Eyes, the former not even making eye-contact and moving to the far side of the room, the latter smiling a large and bright smile, though it did not have the trusting, disarming effect of most bright smiles. This was a smile of triumph, one of expected power and control over the situation. It was a smug smile.
“Sterling is my name,” he announced, “And I already know yours, but you knew that, didn't you? See,” he said smiling, “now this is fun!”
He had an English accent, not too obvious, but it was there. He looked right into their eyes when he talked; Maddie found it difficult to hold his gaze for long. The piercing blue was almost white at times, and she felt as though he looked through her, more than at her.
“You're only alive because I want you to be. Do what I say and you'll not be harmed further, choose not to, and ...” he trailed off, turning his head toward the sniper in the corner. The same smug grin was on his face when he looked back at them. “You spoke with them, didn't you?” he queried Marcus.
“I did,” Marcus replied.
“Interesting creatures, wouldn't you agree?”
“Looks like they've been getting the better of you for a while,” Marcus replied with a mischievous grin.
“Indeed, but no longer. This is it, these are the last and I have them. Do you know that the noises you heard yesterday were the sounds of the exit channel being blocked? They have no way out; I've surveyed the ice above and below for hundreds of miles. See, we're not just going to harvest them.”
At this, both Marcus and Maddie looked at each other, then back to Sterling.
“There are not enough of them left anymore. We need to keep some alive to breed, because the materials in the horns cannot be synthesized, we've tried for centuries. And the influences of people are taking their toll: warming climate, depleted food, over-hunting and pollution. These are the last of them, and now they are trapped, which is why I've decided to add something new to the timetable. Something just for you two,” he stated, then grinned.
They were both untied from the chairs, although, their hands were left bound behind their backs. Movement was excruciating for Marcus, and while he tried valiantly, he could not hold back the moans and grunts.
The two guards herded them into an adjoining room, where a sealed medical lab, was centered in the room. One of the invaders was tied to a chair, just as Marcus and Maddie had been a moment ago, though he was blindfolded. Marcus knew, this was t
he man who fumbled the maintenance shed incident, leading to the unplanned explosion. This was his punishment.
There was one of Maddie's co-workers in the room too, crouched in the corner, hands tied behind her back and blindfolded. From Maddie's expression, Marcus assumed that she didn't know her at all. Someone opened the door and must have told the woman to get up. Then a piece of paper came into view, and a man with a masked face wearing surgical gloves pushed the button on a can of compressed air, used to clean computer keyboards. A fine white dust cloud puffed out, encircling the woman's head. The door was slammed shut.
Marcus knew what was coming. The woman started convulsing, fell down writhing and flopped and turned until she was no longer restrained or blindfolded. She began screaming like a wild animal and pulled out a patch of her hair so violently, it slung little droplets of blood in an arc across the room, covering part of the window in tiny, red freckles. Almost instantly, she noticed the man in the chair and with no hesitation, ran straight to him and attacked like a rabid dog: scratching, biting and hitting until they were both covered in blood and he was sideways on the floor, no longer moving.
She was even attacking the chair, biting it and tearing out several teeth in the process more than once. Then she ran around screaming, and screaming, for what seemed like forever, eventually settling into a corner and seething. She wasn't breathing, it was seething. Spittle and blood streamed out with each cycle of breath, and her shredded lips flopped with each exhalation. One of her broken teeth protruded almost horizontally out of her ragged mouth.
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