The Culling: Book 1 (The Culling Series)

by Tricia Wentworth

  “No.”

  All of a sudden, I am hit with the urge to kiss him. Really kiss him, like the night of the attack when I thought he might be dead. Is what Bennett said true? If I shut off my mind and just give in, what would it be like? Would it be like that every time?

  “Do you just want me to go?”

  “No.”

  Before I can over think it, I quickly go towards him. I slow down once I get to him, becoming shyer. I place my hand on his chest while he puts a hand on my waist like he usually does. I feel his heart beat under my sweaty hand. I grab onto his shirt and lean in for the kiss. It starts soft and caring then gets more urgent. I shut my mind off and just listen to my body.

  Don’t think. Just feel.

  Minutes later, I feel a coldness as he pulls away abruptly. I open my eyes to see that I’m once again against the wall and vaguely remember him moving me there. We are both breathing heavily and his eyes are…sensuous. Downright sensuous. Somehow my hands have traveled up to his hair, which is looking a little messy.

  We just breathe heavily for a moment while we look at one another and he takes a step back.

  I grin. “Why always the wall?”

  “It’s either that or the bed and that seems a bit inappropriate,” he says out of breath and then clenches his jaw adding, “Tell me that wasn’t goodbye?”

  I can clearly see the pain he is trying and failing to mask. I take a deep breath and slowly smile, shaking my head. “I have no idea what that was, but no, I don’t think that was goodbye.”

  He crashes into me again and there is more kissing. Though he is a man of few words, I know that he is telling me how much he cares, that he doesn’t want to lose me. His hands roam up my arms and down over my back, resting on my lower back as he pulls me even closer.

  He pulls away suddenly and we are both breathing heavy again.

  “I’m leaving.” He shakes his head.

  “Okay...” I say with a deep breath and wonder if I did something wrong. Other than the obvious.

  “Before we get out of control,” he adds, trying not to smile as he stares me down.

  I blush and start to feel bad for what just happened. For the first time in my life I wonder what it would be like to go that far, cross that line. I have always kind of thought of sex and the whole reproducing thing as a chore since having children is required by law and all, but now I’m thinking it might not be so bad after all. Not that I am ready to find out or anything.

  Yikes. Double yikes. Yikes on yikes.

  He reaches for my hand in reassurance. “I don’t mean that, Reagan. You aren’t the kind of girl that sleeps around. I know that and respect that. More than you know. We wouldn’t do that unless we were married. You don’t even have to worry about it with me. We won’t be crossing that line any time soon. I just meant I didn’t want to get carried away. You aren’t mine to get carried away with.”

  Other than feeling a huge, drowning dose of guilt, his words both excite me and pain me, and I wonder what it would be like to be Lyncoln’s wife. He takes my face in both of his hands and gives me one last kiss on the forehead and then quickly leaves.

  I change into my pajamas although the thought of staying in my gear is intriguing now that I smell like Lyncoln. By the time my head hits the pillow, I know what a horrible mistake I’ve made. I know now, without a doubt, that I love two different men. When exactly did that happen?

  And even worse, if I turn off my brain like Bennett said and let them have an equal chance, who will I choose? No one else is going to make this decision for me. It’s one I have to make for myself.

  Chapter 24

  The next morning while others begin their sims, Lyncoln, Henry, and I are pulled into a room with Attie, Knox, Taggert, and Bennett. I feel awkward around Bennett because of our conversation the night before, but try to put on a good face. Too bad I can never conceal my emotions very well. I know I am doing a poor job of it because Lyncoln’s hand finds its way to my knee under the table, which is what he always does when he knows I’m struggling with some sort of inner demon.

  “So two things today,” Taggert begins with an air of seriousness. “The first of which is that you will be given confidential information we have on the leaders of the drifters. You will know their faces, their names, and some of the evil things they have been up to. We want you to know as much as you can about these people.”

  He pauses and then continues, “The second of which is that you will begin to sit in on the interrogations of the drifters we have in custody starting tomorrow.”

  I feel the blood drain from my face as Lyncoln gives my knee a squeeze. By interrogations, he really means torture. I am going to “sit in” on torture? If they are so worried about me being ladylike, is that really ladylike at all? Then I think of Isabella and have to refrain from running to vomit in the trash can. I don’t want to see her face. Ever.

  “And what exactly will that entail?” Attie asks nervously. I smile at her, appreciative for her asking so I didn’t have to. We are both dealing with Oliver’s death and Isabella’s betrayal the best way we know how, but that doesn’t mean it’s always pretty. And seeing his murderer doesn’t seem like the best way to help us with that grief either.

  “You might as well see it all. In order to lead our country, you need to know all that goes on to keep it safe. The good, the bad, and the downright ugly,” Taggert says ominously. “But we will, of course, debrief afterwards.”

  Great. Sounds lovely.

  Henry and Lyncoln look equally as excited as I do and I wonder what of all this they already know or have seen and what will be new to them.

  Bennett then starts a slideshow on some of the drifters. I look at picture after picture. You would think since we blame the spread of Trident on North Korea, more of them would look like they came from there. But less than half of them look like they have any sort of Asian heritage. They have a variety of skin color combinations just as we do. I begin to wonder what made these normal, every-day-looking people so angry they would feel it necessary to take lives in the post-Trident era. Has there not been enough death for them? Will they take down what is left of the United States’ government at the cost of the entire human race?

  We take a quiz on the major drifter leaders at the end of the afternoon and Attie, Knox and I are all exhausted from trying to memorize this new information. Lyncoln and Henry not as much because they probably already knew it. I put a lot of pressure on myself to retain the information because I feel the more we know, the better prepared we are to prevent future attacks.

  The cloud of what we will witness tomorrow is also hanging over my head. I wonder if all the couples got that information today or if it was just the group I was in. I sure hope I don’t have to watch Isabella being tortured tomorrow. I don’t want to see her ever again. End of discussion. Period.

  Dinner time with my new group of friends is the only thing that gets me through most days, and especially this day; Oliver’s death has brought us all even closer. Trent and Knox, both from Galveston, banter back and forth and have us all laughing. We rarely leave the cafeteria before 2000 hours these days, liking the extra time spent with one another. I can’t imagine what it will be like when there are fewer of us, even worse if Marisol is still in the bunch, although even she has been making more of an effort to be not as hateful since Oliver’s death.

  That night before I go to bed, I dream of Isabella being tortured. Even after what she did to Oliver, I’m not sure I can stomach the sight of what I will see tomorrow.

  ****

  The next morning, much to my dismay, October, Sapphire, and Hugh are all gone. I knew it was bound to happen eventually, but it doesn’t lessen the blow any. I’m also pretty quick with math to notice that there are seven couples, plus one. That “plus one” is my doing and a big decision I will have to make soon, within five days to be exact. Although I have made it to the final 15 of the Culling candidates, I feel as if this is the hardest thing I have ever
done and it is only going to get harder. Today is the day I have to see the torture.

  Yay.

  At DIA, Henry sits beside me with Knox and Attie behind us. Lyncoln is nowhere to be found, probably doing whatever it is he does. We are behind some sort of glass. We can see the interrogation room, but the interrogation room can’t see us, thus we are in what they call “the observation room”. Somewhere on the opposite wall, hides a similar room, “the control room”, which has the only door that leads directly into the interrogation room. That’s where the dudes that decide what method of torture to try next sit and watch. So Hadenfelt is somewhere on the opposite side of the room I am looking in.

  Fortunately, when they bring in the subject of today’s interrogation, I find it’s a man instead of Isabella. I let out a breath of air in relief but stop as I take a good look at him. I assume he is the lone surviving drifter from the night of the masquerade. They roughly tie him, hands behind his back, to a chair in the middle of the room and we are ready to begin.

  The man before us in “interrogation” looks like he hasn’t had a bite to eat since the night of the attack, which was almost three weeks ago. The fact that it’s hard to determine what ethnicity he is means he probably has multiple. His skin is only slightly darker than Lyncoln’s naturally dark complexion. This man isn’t a huge man, but he isn’t small either. Though he’s sitting so it’s hard to tell, I would guess he was five foot nine or so. And way too thin currently. In the way he sits calm and aware as he looks at his interrogators, I get the sense that he is a very intelligent fella. Apparently just not intelligent enough to not attack us.

  We are only about ten minutes in when I can feel the bile climbing up my throat. What type of person does it take to conduct these things? After Oliver’s death, I thought I had experienced enough violence for a lifetime.

  “You have told us that you answer to Marcel.” An evil-looking soldier paces in front of the drifter, formalities now taken care of. He has a huge jug of water and a towel in his hands. Surely nothing too harmful can come from those weapons, right?

  “Now. I would like to know who specifically you were sent for.”

  “I told you...” the drifter starts. He has blood stains and dirt everywhere. I’m sure he smells like urine. He has no shirt and his pants are torn. The fact that he is bruised and missing a fingernail tells me this isn’t the beginning of the torture for him.

  It makes me feel absolutely hateful. And not towards the man being tortured.

  Before he has a chance to finish and answer the question, another soldier helps hold him down and tilt the chair back. They place the towel over his face and start slowly dumping the water onto the towel and his face. They don’t stop until the entire jug is gone. The man is coughing, spitting, and struggling to breathe.

  They are going to drown him. That is my only thought in watching this all go down. Why? How is this effective? Does he fear for his life? Yes. But more than anything he just hates his captors. I bet he even hates us more than he did before he took part in the attack.

  The drifter refuses to give them any new information and they move next time to two jugs, continuing all the way up to four. I have no idea how the drifter survives, and for a moment I think he is gone, but they stop, allowing him to puke up a bunch of water. As the interrogation finishes, the drifter too weak to continue on, I realize I have been squeezing Henry’s hand so hard he is starting to lose circulation to some of his fingers.

  “I’m sorry,” I say to him while fighting back tears. I have just seen the ugliness of humans at its finest.

  “It’s okay, beautiful,” he says softly and rubs my back with his freshly released hand. I know from the look on his face that this is something he has seen before. He knew it was going to be like this. I also know he isn’t a fan of it as his green eyes seem icy with dislike for the process. “Are you okay?” he asks concerned as he looks me over.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think I’m okay with this,” I say knowing that I one-hundred-percent am not.

  “Yeah, me neither. I kind of like Lyncoln’s outlook on it,” he says with a shrug.

  “Which is?”

  “Which is if they are dumb enough to provoke us and shoot at us, then they are dumb enough to deserve to die.” He pauses. “Seems pretty brutal, but it’s actually a way more humane way of dealing with the drifters.”

  I’m not sure I like either option but before I can think it through Henry adds, “What are we supposed to do, Reagan? If we let them go, there will be more incidents like the night of the masquerade. If we torture them, we are stooping to their level. There isn’t an easy right answer here.”

  Knowing he is right and just wanting to get out of there, we stand to leave to go to our debriefing room. I give a sobbing Attie a hug around her shoulders where she sits. I know the entire time she was thinking of ways she could save the drifter instead of ways she could harm him. As hard as this is on me, I’m sure it’s even harder on her. Knox seems oddly fine. Of all of us, he seems to be dealing with it the best, on the outside anyway. For as intelligent as he is, I wonder what his opinions on this would be.

  Unfortunately, the Head of Interrogations, Marisol’s father, runs our debriefing with Taggert. Listening to him spout out the research and meaning behind what I just saw makes my hatred for it intensify. None of us seem okay with what he is talking about. And he’s talking about torture methods so nonchalantly.

  This is messed up.

  As he is explaining yet another method of torture, an archaic form of whipping, and why it is effective, I quickly rub my temple to prevent myself from saying something I shouldn’t. I just need to get out of this room before I get myself in trouble. Henry has his arm around the chair I’m sitting in and reaches across to hold my hand as well.

  Hadenfelt notices it and hones in on us.

  “What?” he snaps. Seeing his haughty stare, so eerily similar to his daughter’s, is enough to make my temper flare. “We’ve done the research and trained for this for years. My interrogations are a well-oiled machine. We get results,” he says loudly.

  “No,” I pipe up. “You get more hatred and a whole slug of false information. If you got results we wouldn’t be in a war right now.”

  Hadenfelt glares, his own temper now showing through. Henry tenses beside me, like he’s ready to defend me at any given moment.

  “You think there’s a better way?” he laughs in my face.

  I don’t hesitate. “I know there has to be.”

  He smiles. And it’s terrifying. “Be my guest then. You wanna lead the interrogations tomorrow?” he challenges.

  Henry stands abruptly, surprising me.

  “Maxwell,” Taggert warns him.

  Henry turns to Taggert, looking livid. “I’m not going to let him bait her.”

  Taggert nods and sends Hadenfelt a glare that has him sitting down. “We’re done here today, kids. Emotions are obviously running high and I can understand that given what you just saw. Interrogations resume tomorrow.”

  Henry doesn’t hesitate to grab my hand and get us out of there, with Attie and Knox not far behind.

  In the hallway I whisper to Henry, “Thanks for having my back.”

  He smirks. “Anytime, beautiful. Did you see his face though? ‘If you got results we wouldn’t be in a war right now.’ I swear you could put the devil himself right in his place.” He laughs and shakes his head.

  That makes me laugh, and by the time we head to supper, I’m feeling better despite what I was forced to see today.

  ****

  The next day we are on bottle four of waterboarding with the same drifter. Lyncoln and Henry are both in the observation room with Knox, Attie, and I when I can’t take it any longer. I stand up and move to leave, not caring if I fail whatever test this is.

  They are going to kill that man. Eventually, they will kill him. I’m sure of it. I refuse to sit there and watch it happen. His lungs cannot take much more. Lyncoln is sitting closest
to the door and tries to stop me, but I throw his arm away and slam the door shut on my way out. I refuse to sit by and watch someone die. Someone else.

  In the hallway, I try to decide if I want to go back to the practice range to shoot off some steam or go back to Mile High to my room, anywhere but here really. But instead of either of those reasonable options, I keep thinking of Hadenfelt’s challenge from the day before and decide to act rashly. I am probably going to regret what I am about to do, and it may or may not get me sent home. I know either Henry or Lyncoln is about to come check on me, so I don’t have the chance to think anything through.

  The only thought I have is, “I’m going to get in deep crap for this.”

  I ignore a warning glance from Jamie and open the next door, to what I assume is the control room for the interrogation. I find I am correct as I stand in a room similar to the one I was just sitting in. Four people sit at a desk with papers everywhere and all turn their heads my direction in surprise. I’m fortunate that Henry and Lyncoln can’t see in this room or they would be here in a heartbeat to stop me from what I am about to do.

  “You can’t be in here,” Hadenfelt snaps and I can feel through his stare that he doesn’t like me one bit. Like Henry’s comparison, I think I might be staring into the eyes of the devil himself. And he has crumbs on his shirt. Was he actually eating while watching a man being tortured?

  “What do you think you’re doing?” another man I’ve never seen before asks, almost matching Hadenfelt in the degree of hate radiating off of him.

  “I think I want a shot at it,” I say boldly even though I’m so nervous I think I might pass out.

  My heart is pounding a mile a minute and my hands are sweaty. Jamie is right beside me shifting back and forth on his feet and looks like he is thinking about picking me up and carrying me out of here.

  “Excuse me?” Hadenfelt looks at me incredulously and then rudely laughs. He actually leans in to laugh in my face, for the second day in a row, while the other two just look on curiously.