Outbreak: A Survival Thriller (10 page)

“I’m going to test you,” the
Colonel says. “If what you say is true, and torture won’t be enough to get you
to spill the beeswax, I’ll know in a matter of minutes.”

“If I scream?” I ask him, holding
his gaze.

He wags the scalpel at me. “You
scream, and I’ll know you’re weak. I’ll keep right on going until you tell me
where your stash is located, and what kinds of booby traps your old man has set
up around the house. I find out you’re lying, and when I get back, we’ll have a
second date in Hell, you and I.”

“You won’t get anything,” I tell
him. “You’re just wasting time and daylight.”

Bandanna emerges from the
darkness to my right. He leans over me.

“So get it over with,” he says in
his raspy voice. “Save yourself the trouble. Tell us where it is.”

I spit in his face—pale,
foamy flecks that make him recoil, blinking and muttering curses. My body
tenses in anticipation of his response. He pulls back an arm to slap me, but
the Colonel reaches across the table and levels the scalpel at him. Bandanna
freezes.

“What the fuck, Colonel?”

“
My
prisoner, remember?”

Bandanna nods and backs away.
Crossing his arms, he leans against a stack and watches while the Colonel focuses
on my clenched hand.

“Open sesame,” he says. “Let me
see those fingernails. Or maybe you’re too scared. Is that it, Kipper? Should
we maybe talk about your house instead?”

I raise my hand, but the fingers
remain bent inward against my palm.

All but one of
them.

I extend my middle finger, a
symbolic
fuck you
I want badly to say
out loud.

“Your move,” I say instead.

The Colonel chuckles,
shaking his greasy head.
“You know what, Kipper? I like you. If it makes
you feel any better, I think you could have been one of us.”

I ignore him and concentrate on
the darkness above us. I try to project myself into it so my consciousness is
no more than a distant satellite orbiting my body, dead space between the two.
A barrier to keep away the pain.
My father tried to teach me
this technique once.

I never got the hang of it.

The Colonel starts on my middle
finger. I feel a tickle as the blade slips between the nail and the skin
beneath it. When it severs the connective tissue binding the two, the pain is
so great I’m amazed by it.

My spine rises off the table as
my back takes on the shape of Melanie’s compound bow.

Pain is just a signal
.
A message.
Background music.

A silent scream claws its way out
of my chest. It beats the walls of my throat, desperate to break free. I
swallow it down.

“
Thattaboy
,
Kipper,” the Colonel says.

He flicks something away.
My fingernail, probably.

Then he starts on my ring finger
again, slipping the blade under my nail.

Oh God, holy shit, the pain!

It’s just a signal, a message,
background
music. You can tune it out. You can tune it out, just a signal,
a
message, background music, like in those elevators, the
people standing around, tuning out the pain, the music, the background
elevators…

Blinding, sparkling
pain—stars against the blackness. I thrust myself toward them, reaching for
the escape that lies beyond.

Another finger—another
nail…another journey to those stars.

Laughing. They’re laughing at me.

I flatten my back against the
table, holding back tears, gritting my teeth in silence.

Another finger—my thumb,
this time—gets torn open at the tip, and new stars are birthed against
the darkness. My teeth are clenched so tightly together that I wonder if I’ll
ever be able to open my mouth. The phrase,
Pain
is just a signal,
becomes more rapid, harder to hold on to, a flailing rope
I try to grab like I’m drowning, and the phrase is my lifeline.

If I let go, I’ll sink into the
pain. I’ll let its current carry me away, and I’ll scream just to be able to
breathe again. I’ll howl and beg and yell for the Colonel to stop and let me
go, for the men to go raid my house at 113 Exeter Road, Peltham Park, NH 03812,
my father
be
damned.

Melanie takes my hand.

I don’t see her. She is a phantom
resting its warm weight against me.

It doesn’t matter,
she whispers into my mind, filling it.
But I do. I matter because you love me. The
pain is nothing. It doesn’t exist.

But I do.

That’s when it comes out of me.

“More,” I tell Wheels and the
Colonel, and suddenly I’m hysterical, free, my body shaking like I’m possessed,
cannibalizing the screams and shitting them out as laughter. “More, more, more,
more, more, more…!”

Laughter. That’s the secret. Dad
had it wrong. I’m laughing, and suddenly the pain isn’t so bad, because that’s
the music right there.

I laugh at them, not with
amusement, but with the ravenous hunger that fuels the infected—hunger
not for food, but for more reasons to laugh at their stupid, worthless plans,
and their stupid, worthless fucking lives that are no more than a virus, the
weakest kind.

“I’ll be goddamned,” the Colonel
says over my maniacal laughter, though he isn’t laughing the slightest bit.
Neither is Wheels, who’s glaring at me beneath furrowed brows—or
Bandanna, who’s standing nearby with his mouth forming an O of surprise.

Finally my laughter dies away. The
pain is still there, but it’s like an alarm I’ve gotten used to hearing. I look
at the Colonel, who studies me with a slanted gaze, like he’s suddenly not sure
what to do.

“You gave your word,” I say.

The Colonel wipes sweat off my
forehead with one hand. “That I did, brave Kipper. That I did.”

He motions for the others to undo
my binds. Wheels and Bandanna get to it—grudgingly, I sense from their
expressions, but silent as a pair of mimes. The Colonel waits for them to
finish, then slips my gloves out of his back pocket and throws them at me,
probably so I can use them to stanch the bleeding.

“You’re going to show me where
your stash is,” he tells me as I slip on the gloves. “That’s step number one. Then
you’re going to enter your humble abode like nothing bad ever happened to you
in your whole life.
But
you’re going
to come back out carrying your father’s head ten minutes after you go in. Not a
single minute extra, not even if you eat your veggies. Do you comprehend my
vibe, Kipper? Are you processing our palaver?”

Despite the nickname and the
mannerisms, his voice is flat and serious, his face even more so. If this is a
game, then it’s a totally new level for both of us.

“Or what?” I say. “What happens
if I don’t come out in ten minutes?”

He leans toward me, clamps his
hand around my neck, and draws me close. Our foreheads touch, and I have to
endure his nauseating breath.

“Any funny business while
you’re
in that house, Kipper, and I’ll inflict so much pain
on your little girlfriend that ripping off
her
fingernails will just be the foreplay.”

On my way out of the warehouse, I
see why the entire place reeks of gasoline.

The Colonel and his men have
gathered a stockpile of it in the center of the main storage area. There are
entire stacks of shelves loaded with red, five-gallon polyethylene cans. I see them
only briefly in what little light Bandanna casts from the lantern as we walk
by, but I can tell there are at least four full stacks holding twenty or more
cans on each shelf.

It’s a rough estimate, but at the
very least—assuming the cans are full—we’re talking about a few
hundred gallons of gasoline. It’s the equivalent of a treasure chest full of
gold coins for someone in pre-Outbreak society.

I dwell on these numbers as the
Colonel leads me across the main storage area. My wrists are bound together by
twine at the small of my back. More of it ties my ankles together, giving me
enough slack so I can walk but not run. I shuffle
along,
taking in every detail I can, expecting to emerge into sunlight soon. Then
maybe I’ll find out where this place is located.

Instead of leading me to the
exit, the Colonel takes me to see Melanie.

She’s sitting on the floor in the
corner, her back against the wall and her knees drawn up to her chest. In front
of her is an empty stack. Sandwiched between the two, she looks tiny and
vulnerable, like a homeless girl out on a cold night begging for change.

“Melanie,” I say.

Bandanna blows out the lantern,
sets it on the floor, and turns on a pocket flashlight. He shines the beam in
her eyes, making her wince. Her face looks puffy and her hair is a ratty,
sweat-soaked mess that hangs in shreds over her eyes. Her right hand is
suspended above her shoulder, dangling from a pair of handcuffs attached to a
metal loop embedded in the wall.

“Kip?” she says.

“Are you okay? Did they hurt
you?”

“I’ll live,” she says.

The Colonel puts a hand on my
shoulder to discourage me from getting any closer. I twist away from his grasp.
He responds by grabbing the neck of my coverall and yanking me back.

“Not so fast, Kipper.”

I imagine sticking the barrel of
my Glock into his mouth and pulling the trigger.

“Melanie is going to need a
babysitter while we’re out shopping,” the Colonel tells me with a pat on the
shoulder. “Lucky for us, Wheels has volunteered to keep an eye on her. Isn’t
that right, Wheels?”

“Fuckin’ right it’s right,”
Wheels says, fixing his soulless eyes on mine. The words
fatten her up
hit me again with their ominous meaning.

“I thought Olin was supposed to
be first,” I say, looking at Bandanna.

“Now that’s a damned good point,”
Bandanna says. “Why don’t I stay behind with her?”

The Colonel smacks me hard
against the back of my head. Melanie whimpers at the sight of me stumbling to
regain my balance.

“That’ll teach you to mess
around,” the Colonel says before addressing Bandanna. “She’ll be here when we return,
unless Kip fails to follow instructions, in which case, the girl may soon be
missing certain parts of her body. Not any parts you’d be interested in,
capit
á
n
.”

Bandanna accepts this with a
grateful nod.

“You hear that, Kipper?” the
Colonel says. “Won’t be any need for even a single hair on her stinky head to
get plucked if things go according to plan. But, if for some reason I don’t
return to my humble abode by sunrise, I’ve given Wheels permission to engage in
certain delights of a carnal nature with your little girlfriend. And believe you
me,
sittin
’ in a tree, when Wheels is involved, the term
‘carnal delight’ takes on a whole new meaning.” He snaps his fingers at Wheels.
“Show him what I mean.”

Wheels digs a small flashlight
out of his pocket, shines it up at his own face, and grins. This is the first
time I’ve seen him open his mouth wide enough to reveal what’s inside.

I wish he had kept it shut. His yellow
front teeth are the stuff of nightmares, each one sharpened into a fine point
that makes his entire mouth resemble that of a great white shark.

He must have already revealed his
gruesome mouth to Melanie. When I look at her again, the expression on her face
is one of pure dread. She knows as well as I do that Wheels is a cannibal.

“Let us commence, shall we?” the
Colonel says, which prompts Wheels to click off his flashlight and turn toward Melanie.

Bandanna also turns his off,
leaving Melanie and Wheels in the same pocket of darkness near the wall. Not
being able to see them launches me into a panic.

“Get away from her,” I shout.
“Keep him away!”

Bandanna approaches me. He lifts
his hands, and I see something stretched between them, maybe a length of
fabric, though I can’t tell for sure in the near-complete darkness.

The Colonel grips my shoulder
again.

“Easy now, Kipper.”

The blindfold erases my sight as
Bandanna ties it around my head, his movements brutish and painful, his low
laughter entering my ear like crushed glass.

The blindfold comes off only
after the Jeep has taken us beyond sight of the
warehouse,
though I’m still convinced the Colonel and his friends rarely take prisoners.
It’s a stupid mistake on their part. If they had been smarter or more
experienced, they would have kept the blindfold on much longer. We’re not even out
of the industrial complex yet, which gives me a chance to memorize the route.

A layer of gray-white clouds
covers the evening sky. There are maybe two hours of daylight left, which means
I wasn’t unconscious for very long. It also means that if I plan to escape and
come back for Melanie, I’ll have to do it quickly or risk having to travel by
night.

The Colonel sits with me in the
back seat, slumped against the door so he can face me. My Glock is in his right
hand. He keeps it at rest between his legs, not even aiming it.

Once we are out of the industrial
complex, I try to mark my whereabouts in relation to other
buildings—mostly houses—that I hope to recognize. But we’re not in
any part of Peltham Park I’ve ever seen before. I try not to make it obvious
that I’m scouting the area. Mostly I keep my head down, faking an expression of
utter defeat, while using my peripheral vision to study my surroundings.

Five minutes into the ride, the
Colonel launches into a speech that begins with, “You know why I love this
town?” As he speaks, I count the different turns we make to get back on Route
1. When he starts talking about the sexy waitress at what used to be his
favorite diner, my thoughts turn to Melanie, trapped in the warehouse with Wheels,
and the way the darkness engulfed her when the last flashlight was turned off.