The Relict (Book 1): Drawing Blood (11 page)

Chapter Eighteen

The prisoners had begun to line up outside the white building for their blood donation.

Matt was standing with Barrett and Chong in the middle of the line. All three were nervous, because there was no sign of Murphy. Juarez had been the last one keeping an eye on the traitor, but he wasn’t in line either.

Tyra eventually emerged from another part of the compound, and took a place in line next to Matt.

“How are you feeling?” he asked her.

“How should one feel after negotiating their first hit for hire?”

After her answer, Tyra caught herself, making sure she didn’t look like she was going through some kind of meltdown. The last thing she wanted to do was hand Matt an excuse to exclude her from the first escape.

“Look, I just want to tell you how much I appreciate what you did. I mean, I already have enough shit that I’m trying to square away.”

Tyra felt uncomfortable listening to Matt trying to express himself emotionally – the long pauses between just a few words; the way he was digging the right heel of his boot into the dirt; and the way he avoided eye contact with her.

But she held her tongue until he was finished.

“I heard what you said… and I appreciate it. But, here’s the thing… Matt, look at me…”

Matt froze, then cast his eyes in her direction.

“I know it’s probably been mostly guys you’ve been running around with for… probably forever,” said Tyra. “I’m not a guy, but there’s some advantages that come along with that fact… advantages perhaps you might be overlooking. One of them is that you can… talk to me… about anything.”

Matt looked away.

Tyra saw his reaction… then endured his silence… before switching to plan “B.”

“Look, I probably should have said something sooner. Now I feel bad, because part of the deal I made with Grouse was for you to make his bed for the next six months.”

Matt looked up at her and chuckled.

“Where is the motherfucker?”

Barrett’s words not only broke the eye contact between her and Matt, it was the first time Tyra realized that Murphy wasn’t standing in line with them.

“He’s not here? “

“No sign of him, and we’re due to go into the dairy farm any second,” said Barrett.

They all scanned the compound.

The silence was broken up by Chong, the blind prisoner.

“Want me to go look for him?”

The group broke out in nervous laughter.

Tyra then caught sight of Juarez emerging from the alley near the prisoners’ mess hall.

But he was alone.

“I was following him all around the compound for the entire day and at one point, I could just tell he knew what I was doing,” said Juarez as he joined the others in line. “So I handed the surveillance off to Tiello. That was about forty minutes ago.”

“Tiello” was Vittorio Salatiello, a young and muscular Italian who had been visiting family in the States when the takeover occurred. Hearing what Juarez had done made Tyra feel better about the situation. She was confident Tiello would be able to handle Murphy if he got out of line.

The doors opened to the dairy farm. Goons rolled out from the main entrance and began to establish their positions up and down the line of prisoners.

“Okay, juice boxes, let’s start moving into the building…”

The line surged forward, but Matt, Tyra, and the others stood their ground, waiting for a sighting of either Tiello or Murphy.

“What are you juice boxes waiting for? A private invitation!”

One of the goons was in their faces about the gap in the line.

They all acted as if the guard wasn’t speaking to them.

“Start moving or all of you will be heading to the infirmary!”

When he still couldn’t get their attention, the goon shoved Juarez.

“There’s Tiello,” whispered Tyra.

The Italian was entering from the north side, nearest the black tower.

Alone.

But then Murphy appeared, just a few feet behind him.

Tiello knew enough not to approach Juarez or Tyra, instead grabbing a place at the back of the line.

Right in front of Murphy.

When he got a chance, the Italian threw out his chin in their direction. Everything was all right.

The goon slapped his baton hard against Barrett’s wide back. He and the goon stared at each other until Barrett shouted out, “C’mon, boys and girls, it’s time to give back to the community. Two pints is all they ask…”

When Matt stepped up to be examined by Dietz, he acted like he was dizzy.

“You don’t look good?” said Dietz.

“Exactly. Now pretend like you need to examine me for a few more minutes,” said Matt, as he looked at the line behind him.

The camp doctor did as he was told, eventually motioning to one of the goons to divert the other prisoners standing in his line.

Matt started to cough.

“Okay, first you pretended to be dizzy, now you’re coughing,” said Dietz. “Please settle on something so it doesn’t look like you’re making it up as you go along…”

Matt started blinking his eyes uncontrollably.

“There must be something wrong with your ears. Clearly you’re having difficulty hearing a word I’m saying to you,” said Dietz.

He turned, blinking his eyes, and looked in all the lines for Murphy, but didn’t see him. “Where the fuck is he?” said Matt under his breath.

“Murphy?”

“Yeah…”

In between checking Matt’s blood pressure and writing down the figures, Dietz continued to check the lines of prisoners.

“I’m sorry to hear you’re feeling ill,” said Dietz, as he shone the light into Matt’s eyes. “I wish I could be more help…”

He then clicked off the penlight and motioned to one of the goons.

“He’s good to go…”

Matt’s eyes widened with surprise, which Dietz saw even though he was no longer shining a light toward them.

“Murphy just entered the building,” the doctor said under his breath. Then in a louder voice he said to Matt, “Look, your eyes will be fine. Just stop whacking off so much…”

Matt entered his donation stall and began disrobing.

“Are you there Ty?”

“Yeah, right in the next stall,” she answered.

“Any sign of him?”

“No, not yet.”

Two of the goons entered his stall and looked to make sure Matt had plugged himself into the blood-donation machine.

“Mind if I do the honors?”

“Yeah, go ahead,” said Matt. “Glad I could bring some sunshine to your day.”

The goon flipped the switch on the machine and exited the stall.

Matt grimaced at the initial sting of the needles plunging into his skin.

“There he is…”

Her words got him to look up, but he couldn’t see above the stall door.

Matt carefully stood upright, knowing that if he pulled any of the blood plugs from his body it would send a signal to the main control room and it would trigger a response from the goon squad.

He finally saw Murphy in a stall directly across the way from Matt and Tyra. It was actually on the other side of the dairy-farm building, with about fifty feet dividing the two areas of blood-donation stalls. Smack in the middle of the building was the CCC security office, a glass-encased edifice two stories above all the donation stalls.

“Do you see him?”

“Yeah, I see him.”

“And…”

“And we have a problem.”

Murphy was not wired up to give blood. Instead he was talking to a goon. When the guard left Murphy’s donation stall, he was making a beeline to the main security room.

“Any ideas?”

“Where's Grouse?”

“He’s not yet in the building and it will be too late when he gets here.”

Matt looked around. He tried to think of something… but nothing was coming to him. It probably didn’t help that his blood was rushing from his body so fast the red tubes were starting to blur.

“We can't wait for tonight,” Tyra said, her voice just above the hum of the blood-donation machines.

He narrowed his eyes to see that the goon who had been talking to Murphy was headed upstairs to the building’s security room.

“We got to do it now. I’m going to disconnect from the donor machine.”

“Matt, you won’t get twenty feet from your stall before the goons are all over you.”

“You’re right. That’s why you need to get Juarez or Barrett to take care of Murphy. I’ll create the diversion.”

“Matt… be careful...”

He didn’t hear her. Matt was already removing the pads from his body… while he began screaming at the top of his lungs.

Chapter Nineteen

Matt’s screams were finally drowned out by the building’s alarms.

Tyra didn’t think it was possible, but the reverb from the alarm was causing her more pain than the donor plugs siphoning blood from her body.

She waited until the CCC guards moved past her stall before she began ripping off the machine’s pads from her skin.

And through it all she kept a watchful eye on Murphy across the way in his stall.

Bang… bang… bang… The goons were trying to gain entry to Matt’s stall, but he had used the donation machine’s plastic tubing to tie shut the door.

When one of the guards finally kicked open the door to Matt’s stall, they saw it was empty. They looked up and saw Matt standing on top of the stall’s back wall. He had used the contents of his own donor tube to cover every inch of his skin with blood. As he stood there laughing at the goons, Matt looked like a devilish fiend.

As the guards rushed into the stall toward him, Matt simply leaped over to the next stall wall. He then began running on the narrow beam that divided the different stalls.

Tyra emerged from her pen and grabbed some quick glances up and down the strip that divided the north and south maze of stalls.

There was about one-hundred-twenty-five feet of concrete between where she stood and where Murphy was cowering in his stall.

Juarez and Barrett burst out of their stalls and moved to Tyra.

“Remember, he has to be strangled, and then his body needs to go back to the barracks...”

The two prisoners nodded in unison, then looked at each other.

“Cover me…”

“No, you cover me…”

All three started to make their move, but two prisoners suddenly sprinted past them… followed by four goons waving their batons.

She looked around her. The building had quickly descended into anarchy.

The alarms continued to blare as Matt raced atop one of the main stall walls. There were two different places in the maze of stalls with wide gaps. Both areas had goons waiting for the opportunity to grab their quarry.

But both times Matt leaped across, soaring above the goons swinging their batons in the air.

He turned in the direction from which he had come to see if he could assess the progress of Tyra and the boys, but Matt couldn’t make out anything in the chaos.

Tyra, Juarez, and Barrett were weaving their way through the wave of rioting prisoners and the swarm of goons chasing after them. Pockets of fighting turned their efforts to traverse the strip into a virtual crawl.

Through it all, Tyra kept her eye glued to Murphy.

Suddenly, Juarez was hammered across the head by a passing goon. He staggered, but managed to stay on his feet… until the goon followed with a blow to Juarez’s leg that dropped him to the ground. As the same goon was pulling back for a third swing, Barrett leaped into the air and tackled him.

Tyra watched Barrett and the goon wrestle across the concrete strip while Juarez lay just a few feet away writhing in pain.

But rather than stopping to help… she kept moving toward Murphy’s stall.

A pair of athletic CCC goons were running parallel with Matt as he sprinted along another part of the stall maze.

It was almost as if the three were competing in the Post-Apocalyptic Olympics.

The guards both saw that Matt was heading toward a dead end and were hoping he wouldn’t realize it until it was too late.

But then, just as Matt approached the east wall of the building, and there was no other place to run… he disappeared.

The two CCC guards stood outside the stall getting their breath back before they began slamming their bodies against the door. On the third try they burst through… only to have Matt spray both of them with blood from a donor machine still hooked up to probably the only prisoner who had remained hooked up to the juicer throughout the chaos.

Once they were drenched in blood, Matt punched and kicked the blinded guards until they both fell unconscious to the concrete. He then grabbed one of the riot batons and took off running.

The sound of the blaring alarm, and the sight of the total chaos all around him, had chased Murphy to the back of his stall, where he cowered near the blood-donor machine.

He held his breath as the door to his stall suddenly swung open, then immediately relaxed when he saw it was just a woman… Tyra.

Murphy quickly stood up.

“Jesus, what the hell is going on out there?”

She closed the stall door behind her before answering.

“It's Haynes. He was right in the middle of getting milked when he just went batshit.”

Murphy started toward her. “What did I tell you about him?! Didn’t I say he was going to get us all killed?!!”

“Murphy, you were so right. I should have listened to you…”

She then stepped out of his way as he moved to look over the stall door.

“You're damn right I was right...”

Matt raced around a corner and skidded to a halt when a he saw an approaching guard. He turned to go back the way he came, but there were two more CCC goons. Changing courses again, Matt rushed toward the single guard coming at him. He ducked underneath the goon’s first swing, then planted a baton jab to the goon’s stomach that doubled him over.

When the goon fell to his knees, Matt was able to see the exit to the dairy building was just a short distance away. He crowned the goon with the butt of his stick and took off running.

Murphy was standing at the door of his stall when he heard some of the prisoners cheering.

“Can you believe this shit? I think they’re actually cheering this lunatic on…”

He started to turn around to see if Tyra was watching when one of the plastic tubes from his juicer looped over his head, dropped around his throat, then yanked him off his feet.

The two both slammed hard to the concrete floor.

The impact, and the confusion about what was happening, caused Murphy to delay in fighting back.

But Tyra knew exactly where she was headed.

She quickly dragged his squirming body across the concrete until she was able to plant her feet against the raised cement slab housing the blood-donation machine.

Then she wiggled sideways, until her back was braced against the stall wall.

This was the exact position Tyra held onto as she gained more and more strength, while Murphy slowly lost all of his.

The stall door suddenly flew open.

Barrett and a bloody Juarez rushed in to the stall.

They saw Tyra and Murphy’s dead body coiled up next to each other.

“Ty… Ty… it’s alright… you can stop pulling… he’s dead.”

She released the plastic cord only when Barrett grabbed her hand.

Only then did Tyra begin breathing again.