Outbreak: A Survival Thriller (9 page)

“Enough with that nonsense,” he
says. “I can’t stand when you people plead for things. You’re just lucky none
of us are partial to boys. As for the girl, well, you can forget about her, Mr.
Knight-in-Shining-Caked-Blood. She’s meat.”

I close my eyes and try to
control my panicked breathing. My stomach hurts, and I’m nauseated, probably
from hunger, though the gas fumes aren’t helping. How long have I been out?
It’s dark in the warehouse, which means the windows are either boarded up, or
the sun is warming up some other part of the globe.

If it’s nighttime, I’m in serious
trouble.

“I can get weapons,” I say. “Give
you
wha
-whatever you want.”

The guy goes rigid suddenly,
puffing his chest and standing as erect as a butler. I expect him to curse or
spit at me, but instead he holds out his open palm to shake my hand.

I glance at it. Then I study his
face to see if he’s joking.

“Oh, that’s right,” he says. “You’re
tied to the table.” Retracting his hand, he clears his throat. “We haven’t been
formally introduced. The name is Sanders, like the fried chicken guy. Colonel
Sanders, get it? Everyone just calls me the Colonel now. Not without
well-earned respect.”

Yeah, right.
Well-earned
respect that comes from calling your friends names like “faggot” when you feel
insecure about something.

The Colonel
points at Bandanna.
“This gentleman over here is Olin; couldn’t think of
a nickname for him, though he always wears a bandanna so I call him ‘
faggy
bandanna-wearing gentleman’”—Olin smiles at
this—“while this hirsute and debonair
caballero
over here”—he swings his finger at the man who had driven the Jeep—“is
Russell, but we call him Wheels because he loves to bitch and moan if we don’t
let him drive the Wrangler.”

The Colonel
points at me.
“And you, young squire, what is your name and family
crest?”

I ignore his stupid mannerisms
and stutter out what I can.

“K-Kip,” I say, unable to control
my shivering now. It’s only going to sap my strength. I need to compose myself,
but I’m in the grip of a panic attack, which hasn’t happened since I was a kid.
Thoughts of Melanie and my father and the antibiotics in my pack swirl
maddeningly in my head.

The Colonel chuckles.

“Kip,” he says, lowering his
face—and his stinking,
pube
-like
beard—over mine. “What kind of a wussy name is that?”

“Short for—for Kevin,” I
say. “Melanie. Where is she? What did you do to her?”

“Nothing yet. But I told you.
She’s meat.” Then, with a mocking squint and an equally mocking voice, he says,
“What is she, anyway, your girlfriend? How sweet.”

As I lie there shivering, he struts
over to the other table, waves Bandanna aside, and picks out an instrument.
When he comes back, he holds it over me just right so the blade flashes in the lantern’s
glow as he twists it.

I’ve never seen a scalpel up
close. Never knew they could be so sharp. It looks like it could cut through
diamond. But the blade isn’t what scares me. It’s the small size of it. A hunting
knife would have told a different, and more predictable, story. The scalpel,
however, is tiny in his bearish hand. This tells me the Colonel is going to
take his sweet time with whatever torture he has planned.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,
Kipper. Mind if I call you that?”

He actually waits for me to
answer. My mouth is clamped shut, and I’m breathing so hard I can feel my
nostrils stretching. I never look away from the scalpel as I gasp a reply.

“Yes.”

“Yes, you
do
mind?”

“No.”

“No, what?” he says.

His bushy eyebrows shoot up in
amusement. This isn’t about finding my stash and surviving. It’s about having
fun, passing the time,
showing
off to his
buddies—both of who, strangely enough, remain completely silent.

I give him what he wants.

“No, sir.”

“Very good. Now, this here is a
scalpel. See these nicks and scratches?” He holds it over my face so I can study
two nicks in the blade. “They’re from hitting bones during the cutting process.
I’m no doctor, you see, and sometimes, my hands shake.”

He holds the scalpel over my
face. It’s perfectly steady. A few seconds pass before he suddenly shakes it,
forcing me to squeeze my eyes shut so I don’t lose one.

“Oops! Almost got ya, Kipper!”

He chuckles. I glare at him,
breathing through clenched teeth.

“Just stop,” I say.

He ignores me. Now he’s just
standing there, studying my midsection like he’s wondering which part of it to slice
open first.

“The spleen, I gather, is located
between the hypothalamus and the trachea,” he says, either completely insane or
having the time of his life, “which leads me to believe that a quarter-staff
incision beneath the right circadian nerve structure—no, that’s not
right. Maybe if I cut from the balls up…”

He approaches me, blade extended,
aimed at my crotch.

“Okay, okay,” I say, pausing him.
“I can take you to my stash. But my father’s inside. He’s armed. He’ll shoot
you, but—but not if you let me get him out of there.”

The Colonel’s arms cross over his
chest, one hand twiddling the scalpel.

“So we just let you and your daddy
go, is that it?”

I lick my lips. Maybe I’m getting
somewhere. “I’ll make you a deal. Let
me and Melanie go into
the house
. We’ll convince my dad to leave unarmed, and then the three of
us will disappear. You can have the house and everything in it. It’s yours, and
no one has to die.”

The Colonel taps his chin with
the scalpel’s blunt end, taking on a pensive look.

“Very idealistic,” he says. “So,
let’s say I agree to let you, Papa Smurf, and little Robin Hood-in-a-Skirt go scampering
away into the woods together. What’s to say you won’t come back later to mess
with my affairs?”

“Because it’s too risky,” I say.
“There are three of you, all carrying guns. But I’ll be unarmed with only an
old man and a scared girl.”

Something I said causes Wheels to
launch himself into a standing position. He is easily taller than six feet.

“She ain’t just a scared girl,” Wheels
says. “Someone trained her. I saw how she held that bow and went for that
arrow. Besides, I called dibs on her—”

The Colonel cuts him off. “Noted,
capit
á
n
.
You’ve convinced me not to turn my life around and protect the
innocent children after all, which I deeply appreciate.”

Shaking his head and swearing
under his breath, Wheels lowers himself onto the crate. Bandanna watches him,
chuckling.

“Innocent children,” Bandanna
says. “That’s rich.”

Wheels lets
out a frustrated grunt.

As I make sense of what has just
happened, I feel a pang of hope. Their way of interacting with each
other—the awkward displays of masculinity; the minor bouts of distrust, like
the Colonel saying he used to work in the FBI; Wheels thinking the Colonel
would just give away a girl he had already claimed—tells me that these guys
are new to capturing survivors. They have no set of rules, no protocol in
place. The nicks on the scalpel are most likely a lie meant to scare me.

This is all a game, a chance for
them to outdo each other, maybe experiment with different styles and attitudes.
That would explain the Colonel’s childish arrogance and his stupid nicknames,
and the way Wheels and Bandanna just stand there, waiting to see what happens
next.

If I’m right, then that makes me
a player—which also means I can win.

Or at least cheat.

“Who was he?” I ask the Colonel
as he again makes his way to the metal instruments on the table. “The man you
threw to the infected yesterday.”

“You were watching us, eh? Or do
you consult with owls, young Kip?”

He lifts a ballpeen hammer. I
wince at the thought of the hammer’s blunt tip causing gruesome damage to one
of my testicles.

“For your information, he was my
half-brother,” the Colonel says, lowering the hammer and picking up a pair of
scissors that squeaks as he flexes it. “My mother’s bastard child from the fag lover
she took before my old man made an honest woman out of her. Bobby was always
trying to tell me what to do, how to run things
.
”

“You killed your own brother?” I
say.

He shrugs as if to say,
What
else could I do?

“Sure I did. You see, his last
name was Lee, so everyone started calling him General, like the great General Robert
E. Lee, the old Civil War guy. Since a general ranks higher than a colonel—”

Bandanna snickers at this. The
Colonel, still holding the scissors, grins and shrugs again in a gesture of
helplessness. It’s obvious he’s enjoying the attention.

Wheels,
oblivious, has
taken off one of his boots and is scratching the skin
between his toes, emitting a foul smell. He’s probably heard this story a
million times.

“So what was I to do to correct
this injustice?” the Colonel says, directing his words at Bandanna, the only
person in his private audience who seems amused. “The bald-headed asshole
thinks he can start bossing me around just because
he’s
a general and I’m a lowly colonel?”

The Colonel is distracted as he
tells the story. I use the opportunity to finger the knots binding my wrists.
One of them feels loose, and I begin to pick at it.

Until I find Wheels standing over
me.

“Want to lose a finger?” he says.

His voice comes out low and
secretive. It sounds more like an offer than a threat, which means he is eager
for the opportunity to hurt me. The man is clearly a psychopath.

My hands go loose and drop to the
table.

“Hey, what’s going on over
there?” the Colonel asks, striding over.

He grabs Wheels by the front of
his shirt, backs him up against the stack of shelves, and holds the open
scissors against his neck, like he might snip his Adam’s apple in half.

“I was in the middle of a story
about my dear brother,” the Colonel says. “Have you no heart? The man is dead!”

Bandanna convulses with laughter.
I watch and listen for subtle messages in their confrontation.

“Let go of me,” Wheels says to the
Colonel, angry but calm.

“I will, but only if you play
nice. This is
my
prisoner. You get the
girl after Olin has his fun, which should only be about thirty seconds after he
starts, like last time.”

More raucous
laughter from Bandanna.
Maybe they
have
taken prisoners—a girl, it sounds like. My hope sinks.

“…
then
you can fatten her up all you want, my dear
capit
á
n
.
”

These words make it sink even
more.

I consider everything the Colonel
has just said. It seems strange that Bandanna would go first when Wheels
already “called dibs” on Melanie, unless the Colonel’s use of the phrase
“fatten her up” means that Wheels claimed her for something other than sex.

“Well, I, for one, think it’s cutting
time,” the Colonel says, releasing Wheels. “Enough chit-chat, unless we’re
talking addresses and mailbox numbers.” He turns to me and holds the open
scissors above my groin. “Well, Kipper? Have anything to disclose?”

He makes a
snip
snip
sound with the blades. Every
muscle in my body clenches.

If I tell him what he wants, it
probably won’t change his plans. He’ll kill me anyway.
And
why not?
At that point, I’d be a risk and nothing more.

I see only one option left.

“You won’t get anything from me,”
I say, meeting the Colonel’s eyes. He pinches them in curiosity. “If Melanie is
just meat and there’s nothing I can do for her, then all I have to lose is my
life. And I don’t care about that anymore. So you have two options.”

“Oh?” he says. “Kipper is giving
me
options
. Look at that.”

“Yeah,” I say, “well, you won’t
even get those if you touch me. Or I could take you to my stash. That’s the
only way you’ll find it. Up to you.”

“Hmm.” The Colonel pets his beard
with one hand, snaps the scissors with the other. His next question catches me
off guard. “Are you left-handed or right-handed, Mr. Kip?”

“Left,” I say, which is a lie.
A natural reaction.
I only hope it’s the right one. I mimic
a tone of regret. “Why? What are you going to do?”

“Hold his left hand down,” the
Colonel tells Wheels.

Wheels grabs
my left wrist and pins it to the table.

“What are you gonna do?” I say,
breathing hard.

The Colonel holds up the scissors
and studies them.

“Nah,” he says and flings them
away—a ringing sound of metal against metal as they crash into a shelf.
“I know what I need. Good old trusty friend of mine.”

He goes back to the table, picks
up the scalpel, and brings it over.

He’s standing to my left now, next
to Wheels, who is using both of his hands to pin down my wrist, even though I’m
not struggling. The sharp ache in my skull has expanded into a full-on
hurricane of pounding agony. Sweat, cold as ice, drips down the sides of my
face.

I keep quiet and try to breathe
steadily. No matter what happens, I can’t crack.

Pain is just a signal
, my father told me once, in the early months
of the Outbreak when I tried to get out of a daily workout session by
complaining about sore muscles.
A message
your nerves are sending to your brain. It’s background music you can learn to
tune out…