Hunted: A Suspense Collection

by J. L. Drake

  Jack grunted and forced himself to his feet. The pain was ebbing and he managed the action with only a slight hiss of pain.

  “Sonya made that very clear,” he muttered.

  “Good,” Jennings said. “Now get yourself cleaned up. We have work to do.” He turned and headed toward the showers to get ready for surgery.

  “Cocky old fucker,” Jack snarled. “I still can’t believe she stabbed me in the nuts!”

  Roger stood still and silent, watching Jennings disappear around the corner. While he thought Sonya’s method had been a bit extreme, he was, in a way, happy she’d done something to Jack to wake him up. The business they were in was serious and dangerous. They couldn’t afford to work with someone who was even slightly sloppy.

  “Just go get yourself cleaned up so we can get back to work,” Roger said, turning back to the naked man on the table. “We have to get him on the surgical table before they come back. There’s a small bathroom over there you can use.” He nodded to a far corner of the large room. “You can wash up really quick and then help me.”

  Jack staggered slowly toward the bathroom, holding his crotch with both hands.

  “Make sure you get all the blood off your hands!” Roger called after him, allowing himself to smile for the first time since Sonya’s arrival. Damn, she’s a crazy bitch, he thought and chuckled with a shake of his head.

  ***

  Jennings was taking off his shirt when Sonya walked out of the shower. She grabbed a towel from a pile on an old wooden bench, glanced his way, and started to dry herself off, not even trying to hide her nakedness. They’d worked together for a long time and it wasn’t the first time he’d seen her without clothes on.

  “What did he do to anger you, my dear?” Jennings asked with an air of authoritative detachment. “Something serious, I hope, because you can’t go doing things to our co-workers on a whim.”

  She smiled and shrugged. “Nothing he’ll be stupid enough to do again. I have our contact at the hospital set up, so there shouldn’t be any trouble moving everything.”

  He looked at her, watching her slide on underwear and faded blue scrubs. “That’s good to know,” he said, letting her change the subject. “We’ll see how smooth this one goes before we decide how long we’ll be here.”

  She nodded, sitting down to put on a pair of rubber clogs. “I’ll have the patient prepped and ready for you when you get out there.” She stood and pulled up her blonde hair, twisting it into a tight knot on the top of her head before wrapping a hair tie around it. After grabbing a face mask and a hair net from beside the towels on the bench, she headed for the doorway. She paused just before exiting and looked back at him with her moss-green eyes. “Do you think I should give him more drugs? You arrived sooner than anticipated…I was planning on giving him more while we waited for you, but now I don’t think it’s necessary.”

  “I agree,” Jennings said. “We shouldn’t need to, but we’ll see once I get out there. Go ahead and start the IV, so we can give him something quickly if we need to.”

  “Okay,” she said and left the locker room.

  ***

  Jack stared at himself in the filmy, cracked mirror over the bathroom sink. Looking down at the once white porcelain basin, he grimaced as a cockroach skidded down the black hole of the drain. The one bare bulb hanging from the ceiling did little to light the room, which he was thankful for. It was completely filthy and disgusting. He and Roger weren’t allowed to use the locker room Dr. Jennings and Sonya shared, as they insisted on keeping it as uncontaminated as possible, so he knew Roger had used these facilities previously. The evidence was found in a container of antibacterial hand soap on the sink and a roll of paper towels on the small counter to the left.

  Slowly, being extremely careful, he undid the fly of his jeans and peeled his pants and underwear from his wound, hissing and gritting his teeth at the painful ache in his groin. He closed his eyes for a moment before looking down at his testicles—sure enough, the wound was small and shallow, which surprised him.

  Reaching over and unrolling a few paper towels from the roll, he folded them and pumped some of the soap on before adding water, soaking the makeshift washcloth. He gingerly washed his wound, flinching at the sting of the rough towels and soap.

  After he was done cleaning himself, he lamented on not grabbing a bandage before coming into the bathroom, but it had been the last thing on his mind—he’d been more concerned with the condition of his “boys.” Now, knowing they were going to survive, he wished he’d thought things through better.

  Unrolling a few more paper towels, he folded them and slid them into his boxer briefs to catch the trickle of blood that still seeped from his body. He tugged his pants up and started thinking about how he could pay Sonya back while he washed his hands. By the time he left the bathroom he was grinning, pleased with his own thoughts of revenge.

  ***

  Roger—expecting to be a referee between Sonya and Jack—was shocked when they both came back out into the main room at about the same time and acted like nothing had happened. Neither of them said anything and they promptly got to work: Sonya, prepping the IV, and Jack, preparing to help lift Bill’s body over onto the table.

  “You okay, man?” Roger asked Jack as they got ready to lift.

  “Yup, fine,” Jack replied, and smiled.

  Roger raised his eyebrow, silently questioning Jack’s easy acceptance of the recent occurrence—he didn’t answer, only smiled in reply.

  “You guys almost done playing with Bill?” Sonya asked, exasperated. She was ready to prep him and was still waiting on them to move the man.

  “Coming your way right now,” Roger said, and with a few grunts, they lifted Bill and carried him through the clear plastic curtains hanging around the makeshift OR.

  The strong, stringent smell of the chemicals used to keep the surgical area sanitized burned the men’s nostrils. The extra luminance from the many light stands in the small space made them blink rapidly and break out in a light sweat from the heat of the bulbs.

  Jack and Roger laid Bill on the shining, stainless steel table, then strapped down his wrists and ankles.

  Jack caught Sonya’s eye when she leaned forward to make sure they had Bill tied down properly. He winked at her.

  Cocking her head to the side, she stared at him for a moment, wondering what had gotten into him, but with a shrug she turned her attention back to the man on the table.

  “Thanks, guys,” she said. “I don’t think we’ll need you for anything else until after surgery, so you can go if you’d like. I’ll call you when we’re done.”

  “I’m going to grab something to eat,” Roger said. “You want me to pick you up something, Sonya?”

  She smiled at him. “That would be great. I’m starving.”

  “All right,” he said. “Jack, you coming? Or are you going to stay and watch?”

  “I’m comin’ with ya,” he said, following Roger to the elevator.

  ***

  “Good, you have him ready,” Jennings said when he arrived in the operating “room” a few minutes later. “The guys take off?”

  “Yup,” she said, and nodded. “They went to get something to eat.”

  He laughed. “Well, not everyone can handle this part.”

  She smiled and nodded toward Bill. “He still seems to be out…should we go ahead and start?”

  He looked at the unconscious man—noting his breathing—snapped on a pair of rubber gloves, and nodded. “Yes, I believe we will. He looks like he’s still under.”

  “Okay,” Sonya said. “I’ll call my contact and have him on standby to receive the goods.”

  As she stepped out of the tent, Jennings lifted a clean scalpel from the surgical tray and slid it into Bill’s chest—dark red blood oozed out of the wound and slid across his pasty white skin. He watched Bill closely as he made the incision, noting only slight changes in his breathing as he slid the sharp blade down to open Bill’s chest
cavity and stomach.

  Sonya stepped back inside just as Jennings was putting on a face shield, preparing to saw the sternum.

  “He’ll be ready when we need him,” she announced. “I’m going to hook him up and bleed him. Do you want me to help with the organs after I get the machine going?”

  “Sure, it’ll make it go quicker. I can work on some of the bones while you skin him later.”

  She nodded, slipped on a pair of rubber gloves, and did what was necessary to attach Bill to a modified dialysis machine. It would take the blood out of the body, but wouldn’t put anything back in, and in effect, harvest the blood efficiently.

  After that was started, she collected a handful of clear plastic bags and joined Jennings at the table to find he’d completed his work on the sternum and was fitting in a metal spacer to separate the ribs. With a crack they gave almost willingly to allow access to Bill’s lungs and heart.

  Bill’s heart rate jumped and staggered as the pain and shock registered in his body.

  “Shit,” Jennings said. “Go ahead and give him something.” He nodded to the IV.

  Sonya rushed around the table to pick up a syringe and quickly injected the clear liquid into the IV tube.

  Bill’s body reacted almost instantly and his breathing became slower and shallower, which didn’t concern them since they were going to kill him in just a few minutes.

  She tossed the syringe into a red sharps container sitting on the floor and went back around to stand by Jennings.

  He clamped off the heart and quickly cut it out before handing it to Sonya. The heart beat a couple more times before going still. Neither of them paid any attention to the man on the table whose body spasmed.

  Sonya turned to a small machine just behind where she and Jennings were standing, and attached the heart to a pump that would flush the organ with preservation solution. After the pump beeped, indicating it was done, she removed the organ from the pump, placed the heart in a bag, sealed the bag, and opened a large cooler sitting underneath the table—she was happy to see Jack had done his job and filled it with ice water earlier. After dropping in the heart, she quickly got ready for the next organ.

  One after another they repeated the procedure with each and every internal organ of Bill’s body until it was empty. They were on their last one when the bleeding machine beeped, telling them it was done extracting the blood.

  “That’s done,” Jennings said as Sonya added the last bag to the cooler. “I’m going to start on the ribs. Do you want to start on the skin?”

  “Will do,” she said with a smile, pulling the IV needle out of the deceased man’s arm.

  For the next half hour they worked like a well-oiled machine with neither of them talking, but knowing exactly what they needed to do. Even if they had tried to converse, the high pitched squeal of the saw as it cut through bone would have drowned out their voices.

  Sonya worked diligently with a small, extremely sharp knife, peeling skin back inch by inch and scraping it away from the muscles—they’d only been harvesting the skin recently, since the burn units had started taking skin donations from patients who’d had skin removed because of chafing after major weight loss. She’d quickly mastered removing the skin—she was steady with a knife and had a lot of experience parting out human beings.

  “When you’re ready, we’ll do the brain,” Jennings said, turning off the saw for a moment. “Then we can work on the muscle.”

  “I’m pretty much done with the skin right now, until I can get at the back,” Sonya said. “So we can do the brain now if you want.”

  “Great,” he said. “Grab a bag and meet me at the head.”

  Nodding and laughing, Sonya retrieved another plastic bag and waited for Jennings to saw off the top of the skull so he could slide out the sponge-tissue of the brain; it only took ten minutes before it was in the cooler with everything else.

  “That was easy,” Sonya said, taking a deep breath. “So, all that’s left is the bones, muscle, and the skin on the back, right?”

  “Yes,” Jennings said, smiling and looking at the clock hanging on the wall. “We’re doing good. We’re almost done and we’ve only been working for about two hours.”

  She laughed. “Would be great if we were faster.”

  He chuckled. “Yes, it would, but then we’d be sloppy.”

  She nodded. “Let’s strip off the muscle, since that will take the longest, and then I’ll call the guys. Do you want anything to eat? Roger is supposed to bring me something…”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Jennings said. “No, I don’t want anything to eat. I’ll have something when I get home.”

  She nodded, knowing he was very particular about his food.

  Within the next hour, various chunks of muscle were added to the cooler and the skin was completely removed.

  “Are we keeping the eyes?” Sonya asked, trying to remember if he’d said anything about research facilities that could use them.

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s not worth the hassle.”

  “Okay,” she said, stretching the pieces of skin she’d cut off, hanging them from clips on a makeshift clothes line strung up off to the side of the operation room. “I’ll wash these while you cut up the bones. As soon as I’m finished, I’ll call Roger and my hospital contact.”

  He nodded and started the saw again to cut up the joints holding the larger bones together, not wanting to damage them and compromise the marrow inside. Every scrap and cell they harvested went for either medical research or use, and he hated to see anything go to waste.

  Sonya had just turned on the water hose they had hanging on a retractable reel from the ceiling when the elevator door opened and a young, thin man stepped out.

  Chapter 5

  Sonya smiled, then frowned, and turned off the water hose. She let go of the nozzle, stepped over to the hanging, plastic flaps, and spread them apart so she could see the newcomer clearly.

  “Lloyd?” she asked. “Is that you? What are you doing here?”

  Jennings, having noticed Sonya’s distraction from her task, turned off the saw and walked over to her side, smiling broadly at the young man.

  “Yeah, it’s me, Sonya,” Lloyd Barnes said, coming forward to talk to them. “You seem surprised to see me. I would’ve thought you’d be expecting me.”

  Sonya frowned and glanced at Jennings.

  With a conceding shrug, Jennings smiled. “He did such a good job for us when we were in LA and then in Cleveland, I contacted Lloyd and asked him to come work with us again and help move some of the organs.”

  “I thought we were going to send more for research this time, like we did in Nashville,” Sonya said, still confused. “I have my contact at the hospital ready to take almost everything.”

  “Your contact can have what Lloyd can’t make us money on—you know we didn’t make as much as we should have in Nashville because our contacts weren’t as good,” Jennings said. “We have to make money to keep things going and you know it.”

  She nodded and turned back to Lloyd, who was standing silently, watching the exchange. “Sorry, he didn’t tell me you were coming.”

  “It’s okay, Sonya,” the young man said with a grin. “At least you know I’ll treat you right and won’t cheat you. Besides, you guys are a gold mine! I made more money from your work last year than I’d brought in the previous five years. I couldn’t just give that up, now could I?”

  “Glad we could be your cash cow,” Sonya said. She turned, stepped back into the surgical area, walked back over to the hose, gripped the nozzle, started the water, and got back to work hosing off the skin.

  Jennings and Lloyd conversed for a few minutes before Jennings returned to his task of cutting up and preparing the bones. Sonya intentionally ignored him.

  When she’d finished with the skin, she took it off the clothes line and rolled the pieces neatly before inserting them into plastic bags and adding them to the cooler. Without a word to Jennin
gs, she slipped out of the surgical area and headed for the locker room, not seeing Lloyd anywhere.

  After taking a shower and dressing in her red dress and jacket, she called Roger.

  “Hey, we’re done,” she said after he said hello. “Did you know Lloyd was coming?”

  “Yeah, I thought you knew,” he said. “Jennings didn’t tell you?”

  She sighed deeply. “No. I just wish someone had told me. Now I have to tell my contact that he’s not getting everything I thought.”

  “I got you a chicken sandwich and carrot sticks, is that okay?”

  “Sure, that sounds good. I’m still starving. See you in a few.” She chuckled and hung up the phone.

  With another deep sigh, she called her contact at the hospital to explain what was going on.

  ***

  “How mad is she?” Lloyd asked, waiting just outside the curtain while Jennings checked the dismembered man’s blood type.

  Jennings didn’t respond right away, focusing on his task, but eventually he did answer.

  “It’s not you she’s upset with,” he said, “so don’t worry about it and let me handle things, okay?”

  Lloyd nodded. “Why didn’t you tell her I was coming?”

  “Honestly,” Jennings said, “I forgot.”

  “You know how she is and what a bad idea that was, right?”

  Jennings sighed. “I’m aware of everything that is Sonya—I’ve been working with her for years. Can we drop it, please, and focus on getting these organs to someone who can use them before it’s too late?”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Lloyd said.

  “Holy shit!” Jennings exclaimed suddenly.

  “What?” Lloyd asked, almost stepping through the curtain, but stopping himself at the last minute. “What’s wrong?”