Vike brought the purple, pony toy up on Doc’s shoulder again still holding the hunting knife. He used the shrill, high, cartoon voice again.
He said, “Behave yourself, Johnny Bravo, or you won’t be so pretty when I’m done with you.”
Coop sighed, “Damn, Vike, why do you have to be so loud? Did your parents not pay attention to you or something?”
Vike kept the pony and the knife by Doc’s neck as the truck bounced over the rough road.
He said in his normal, loud voice, “They put me in a basket in the river and I was raised by crocodiles. Why do you ask?”
We drove more quickly once we were out of sight of the zombies we had been leading. They took us along a road that skirted the outside of the town and hooked back over the way we had come. We ended up pulling off the road and up a trail that led to a campground in the woods.
There were abandoned campers falling apart in the tall grass. The active vehicles were mostly trucks. Some were armored, there were larger cargo vehicles, and there were pick-up trucks. There were motorcycles with The Riding Dead on the sides and All These Loose Ends. Most of them were loaded on trailers behind the pick-up trucks and strapped into place.
Coop stepped out of the truck and Hoss drove the rest of us on beyond the vehicles. There were a few men walking around. They looked like the ones we had met in our truck. They were all wearing their leathers, but they weren’t all armed. There were no women or children.
We pulled to a stop on the back edge of the camp facing away from the people and vehicles. I didn’t try to turn my head with the gun still resting there. There were a couple paths leading away from the campground between the crumbling campers out near the edges of the field. Hoss turned off the truck and we waited.
Vike reached back up and started feeling around Doc’s sides and pockets again. He tried to reach into Doc’s pants pockets. Doc grunted quietly, but didn’t move or say anything. Vike patted Doc’s leg. I hoped the invisible gunman they called Bam wasn’t going to start feeling on me after all they had said.
Vike said, “What’s that there?”
Doc answered, “Bullets for the .45 you picked up off the floor.”
“Oh, great,” Vike barked, “Take those out and hand them to me slow before Coop gets back and hurry up, please.”
Doc reached in his pocket and pulled them out somewhere between slowly and hurriedly.
“Come on, come on,” Vike said.
Doc reached back with his closed hand. Vike set down the knife and the pony somewhere and held his hand under Doc’s. The bullets clicked as they fell into Vike’s palm. He took them back and let them rattle as they hit the metal floor of the cargo section. He brought his hand back up and felt around Doc’s thighs.
“Is that all of it, Doc?” Vike asked.
Doc answered, “That’s all of it.”
“What do you guys want to eat tonight?” Doc asked.
I just wanted to sit quietly while we could. Vike smoothed down his long mustache with his thumb and forefinger.
Vike said, “I wouldn’t worry about that just yet. We’ve got a process and you ain’t through it yet. If you’re apt to take advice, I wouldn’t talk much unless you’re asked a question and I wouldn’t talk much then either. If they decide to let you live for a while, don’t be cute with Old Cuss or most anyone else. He won’t appreciate it from you. Don’t be smart around Coop in front of Old Cuss. If you make him look bad, he’ll have to cut you up to make up for it. You hearing me, Doc?”
Vike flicked Doc’s ear with his forefinger. Doc flinched.
He answered, “I hear you. Why you helping us out like this?”
There was a long pause. I could see Vike look at the man behind me. Hoss turned his head to glance back, but didn’t say anything.
Vike said, “If you’re half as good as you say you are, I’m interested to see what food tastes like when people are cooking for their lives. If you aren’t that good, I’m going to be the one that will have to help you both out of your skins. I guess I’m rooting for you, so I only have to slice once instead of twice.”
“We should probably stop talking for now, Vike,” Hoss said facing forward. “We don’t know what they’re going to decide.”
“Oh, what do I care?” Vike said leaning back out of my view. “Someone’s going to die no matter how this works out.”
A shadow passed over me from the window on my right and then the passenger side door in front opened.
“Listen up, everyone,” Coop said. “Cuss hadn’t decided yet. We should have covered their heads coming in and we didn’t. I expected to dump them on the side of the road until this cooking thing came up, so I didn’t think about it until we were pulling in. I covered us by saying maybe we should torture them for information. If Cuss finds out we drove them in looking around, he’s going to take our eyes for it. I don’t think anyone was paying attention to them, so we may get by, if we keep quiet about it.”
Coop tossed a roll of duct tape between Doc and me. I didn’t hear it hit, so I assume one of them caught it. Bam didn’t move his gun, so I figured it must have been Vike. I heard two pieces rip up and then tear loose. Bam finally pulled the gun away from my head, but I didn’t dare move.
Vike said, “We don’t have bags to hood them, Coop.”
“Use the tape over their eyes too,” Coop said. “Just do it fast.”
Vike reached around Doc’s head and smoothed the tape down over his lips. Bam pulled the tape over my eyes and the world vanished. There were two more rips and then my mouth was covered too.
Vike said, “We should just go ahead and put one over their nostrils and make them airtight. We can watch them squirm for breath.”
“Do it, if you want,” Hoss said. “Just shut up about it, so we don’t get in trouble.”
I heard the tape rip again and I ducked my head. I wanted to protect my nose and airway with my hands, but I was afraid to provoke them by lifting my hands. I clasped them tight in my lap to control myself.
I imagined I was one of the bodies in Collin Trasker’s mystery house. He was paying for old sins and I had gotten dragged along with his punishment because I chose to stay silent.
***
The door next to me was opened and I was pulled out. I was shuffled through the grass with someone pulling my arm. We stopped after a while. I heard metal and creaking in front of me and distant conversations behind me.
A voice I didn’t recognize said, “Step up.”
I lifted my foot up and felt out with my toe. I got slapped on the back of the head.
Hoss said, “Not you, stupid.”
After a moment, I was pulled forward a few steps.
A voice said, “Step up.”
I got shoved on my side.
Hoss said, “They said, step up, stupid.”
I lifted my foot up in the air again.
Another voice said, “Higher, kid.”
I reached my foot up higher and found the bumper of a truck. I was pushed forward and tripped over another step. I was shoved down to sitting on a hard floor and my hands were pulled over my head.
The voice said, “Keep your wrists together over your head.”
The sound was echoing inside wherever we were. A chain rattled against the wall behind me and cuffs were locked tightly over my hands. The floor rocked and squeaked as the owner of the voice walked heavily outside. The doors closed and latched and the room became instantly stifling.
I wasn’t sure if Doc was in here with me. I heard other chains down the line. There was whispering and crying. It sounded like girls.
A woman’s voice spoke out where I could hear it. Her words were muffled. The chains and people’s shoes shuffling along the floor echoed in the stuffy chamber. Her words were more distant and didn’t catch the walls like the metal and my own breathing. I wondered if she was real.
“Are you two new?” she asked.
We didn’t answer, of course. I heard someone across from me moan faintly and then sniff out a wet snort of air. It sounded low, but it could have been another woman. I thought maybe it was Doc struggling with his tape. The muffled voice spoke again.
“They have you gagged, I gather,” she said. “Don’t struggle. It will only make it worse.”
There was crying down the line and a choked sob. There were more women’s voices shushing and whispering. It sounded like the words were for comforting, but the tone sounded drawn and afraid. It sounded like they were telling the criers to be quiet. I hoped that approach worked better here than it did under my bed years ago.
“Everything will be …” the voice stopped.
Something was banging around outside, but then moved away.
“Well,” the voice said, “It won’t be okay, but you can survive and that might have to do for now.”
Somebody shushed and the voice stopped for a while. I just sat with my hands going numb and raw above my head. I kept sliding down and feeling like I couldn’t breathe. I felt a moment of panic each time I tried to push myself back up and my feet wouldn’t catch. I sat up leaning forward and sat up leaning back. Eventually, I’d get tired and start sliding down again until there wasn’t enough air pulling through my nostrils between the strips of tape.
The voice hissed out from through its filter or out of my imagination again.
She said, “You have to do what they say. Ignore the names they call you. Ignore what is happening to your bodies. This isn’t your fault and you are not a slut or a whore because of what they do to you. You have to hide your mind and heart from it, if you want to survive. That is all we have right now. They are just men and they can’t reach your soul, if you don’t let them.”
Someone shushed again and see stopped talking. She couldn’t see us either. She thought we were girls. She thought we were here for the same reason she was.
Maybe we are, I thought.
I felt a slick taste in my throat after the thought. I panicked and had trouble snorting in enough air. If I threw up behind the tape, I would die. I tried to breath my slowly and failed.
I couldn’t picture her face from her voice. All I had was the voice telling me how to be safe in a world full of monsters. Maybe this was a memory and was not really happening outside my mind.
She hissed. “Don’t let them in. When they take you, just go. Go where they can’t reach your mind with your body. Go!”
I shook suddenly from the push of her voice. My chains rapped against my cuffs and the walls with the motion.
My mother had held the ankle of the monster as she was eaten. The window was too far up and I was afraid to jump. She had hissed for me to go. My mom was sending me away bodily. Zombies could reach our minds and I suspected the Riding Dead could too. My mom had told me to go. I hurled myself out the window as the monster was grabbing at me. It wasn’t like falling in a cartoon. She had hissed for me to go … save my sister.
I shuddered as I jolted out of the memory in the growing, blind heat of the dungeon I was really inside. Sending my mind somewhere else wasn’t so great either. I had my own mystery house full of dead family and monsters. I didn’t want to go back there either.
I didn’t go back, I thought.
The doors opened and the men walked in again. I tried to go like the voice told me, but I was focused on the sounds of their shoes. The chains deeper in the vehicle were jangled. There were a lot of stifled whimpers. The men walked back out and to the doors again. The voice spoke very faintly above my head.
She said, “I’m not here.”
The monsters left me and took her like they had done before and like before I felt guilty and grateful. The doors closed again and several people exhaled haggard breath that they had been holding.
This happened twice more as the day grew hotter and my energy to pull myself back upright from the floor weakened.
Don’t throw up, I commanded myself.
The next time the door opened a man’s voice asked, “Which one?”
Another man answered, “The one with the white mop on his head.”
They rattled the chains across from me and took someone else out. I heard the tape rip and Doc grunted.
“Holy smokes,” he groaned, “Can I get something to-”
The door slammed shut on his voice. The women were muttering among themselves. I hung my head and tried not to cry behind the tape because the tears had nowhere to go either. I felt sweat running under my hair, over my forehead, it vanished over the tape, then reconnected with my skin below the tape, it ran down my nose, and then dripped off into my lap as I hung my head.
The doors opened again. They were hauling more people into the hot box. They didn’t have to tell them to step up. The women were wheezing and heaving for breath as they were sat down and rechained. The men were walking back out again and closing the doors.
The woman’s voice whispered again, “You’re safe. They’re done for the night. Something big is going on tonight. You have to be prepared for what’s coming next.”
The men swung the doors open again and she stopped talking.
One of them said, “The kid … okay.”
My arms exploded pain through my shoulders as they pulled at my chains while they uncuffed them. I groaned as they lifted me up to my feet. I couldn’t drop my arms below my shoulders as they pulled me forward.
The voice called, “I’m sorry. I was wrong.”
***
A man’s voice growled, “Shut up, Linda, or I’ll tape your mouth shut under there.”
I stumbled as they pulled me down off the platform and bumper. The cool air hit me like a splash of water. I sucked air in through my nose and nearly choked on my dry throat.
The doors closed behind me leaving my voice named Linda inside.
The tape was ripped off my mouth and I gagged as thick saliva ran over my raw lips and chin like paste. Before I could appreciate the agony of it, the tape was ripped away from my eyes. I was sure my eyelids had come loose. The tears were fiery painful as they poured out from whatever was left of my face. I must have looked like a zombie with my arms stuck out and my face like raw meat. If that was what zombies felt like, I had no intention of becoming one.
I decided that if I could run away and have them shoot me instead of going back in that torturous room, that’s what I would do it. I was not the kind of survivor Linda was.