“He thinks I owe him money,” she whispered through the dark.
“And do you?”
Sarah was quiet, so I took her silence as yes. I sighed and tried to fight my way through the drugs to some sort of clarity. The dust mote pixies had followed me and were laughing as they bit each other’s necks and I tried to figure out how exactly we were going to get out of this.
The pixies gave off an eerie red glow that lit up the lid of the trunk just enough for me to see the emergency release was still in tact; apparently they hadn’t planned on kidnapping otherwise I was sure they would have disabled it.
“Sarah, do you see the release to your left?”
She was quiet for a moment, “Um, Angie? I can’t see shit in here.”
“It’s above your head and to left, pull it and as soon as the trunk opens, we roll out the back.”
“What drugs are you on that you can see the release?”
“Fuck you; you’re just jealous the vampire pixies Manson sent to dance for me are trying to save my life,” I shot back while edging myself closer to the door and bracing myself to jump.
I heard Sarah’s hand fumble around in the dark for a moment, “Fuck me, you’re right!” She exclaimed. “Ok, in 3, 2, 1” and pulled the lever. The trunk swung open so fast I was worried it was going to slam back down on us but took a deep breath, grabbed Sarah’s arm and rolled out the back of the car before it could close.
We hit the pavement hard. Wrapped up in each other, we rolled over one another several times across the street until we finally came to a stop. Tires were screeching from the guys trying to stop the car and get us, so we didn’t waste any time hobbling to our feet and darting through the bushes between two houses on the street and into one backyard after another. I was sure I was leaving a blood trail behind but figured the pixies would take care of that so they wouldn’t find us.
Footsteps pounded behind us as Sarah and I rolled into a large rose bush and froze as a porch light shot into the darkness, spotlighting the guys.
“What the fuck are you doing in my yard? Get the fuck off my property before I shoot!” Apparently we’d picked the right house as I peeked out from the thorns to see an elderly portly man step onto the patio bathed in the searchlight with a rifle aimed at Javier’s head.
Javier and his thugs tripped over themselves hopping the fence and racing back to the street, the old man hot on their heels with his gun still aimed and shouting obscenities. It was hilarious, but now wasn’t the time to collapse into giggles; I had a rose bush to fend off.
The search light went out and I heard the door slam and tires squeal, which meant the thugs and the old man were gone and the yard was once again bathed in the partial light of a waning moon.
Sarah and I rolled quietly out of the bush, carefully pulling thorns out from where they’d lodged themselves into our flesh and hopped over the fence and into the night.
Chapter 9:
If I had to guess, I’d say we’d been walking for at least two hours as I tracked the sun’s progress across the sky. It was well after noon and the heat was unbearable. There wasn’t a part of me that wasn’t drenched in sweat and all I could do was let it drip into my eyes since my hands were cuffed behind my back. I was now sporting several tiny scratches from the trees and bushes we’d passed that had caught my bare skin and was officially in a really foul mood.
The trees had become sparse and I started to hear activity ahead of us. The heartbeats of our captors sped up in anticipation which only filled the rest of us with dread. Looking around, Chloe and Penny looked about as awful as I felt; the only one who seemed unfazed was Johnny, who’d been walking the whole time next to his mother like a silent sentinel. The men hadn’t bothered to cuff him, which was either really smart or really dumb on their part; I was hoping for the latter.
The men became more wary of their footsteps, which caused me to as well. Looking down, I started to see hidden traps and trip wires scattered around and hidden by dirt and leaves; an effective if not primitive alarm system. At least I wouldn’t have to worry about the dead wherever we were going, at least not until I killed every last one of these guys. I’d let my guard down at the Dome and that hadn’t gone very well for me; I wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice.
Finally emerging from the forest, we were suddenly standing at the edge of a large field surrounding a massive farm all encompassed by an 8 ft. chain link fence topped with barbed wire. A giant house was situated in the middle with a few smaller buildings scattered around the property. There were more men stationed around the perimeter and at the buildings and from what I could tell, they were all armed to the teeth.
Stopping to take it all in and try to memorize the layout, the guy with the iron grip on my arm yanked me forward, causing me to stumble. I glared up at him and continued walking. He had to be 6’5” and looked like the poster child for the KKK. It was like walking into every horror movie set in the deep south I’d ever seen; I wouldn’t be surprised if Leatherface came tearing out of the main house at any moment with a chainsaw in our direction.
The leader of our captors stopped at an entrance and exchanged words I couldn’t make out with the guards. After a few moments the gate swung open and we were led through. None of the men said anything as we passed, just looked at us curiously as they stood guard. We were being led around the edge of the property towards the back of the main house and I started to panic when I saw a door that led to a seemingly underground building.
Digging my feet into the dirt, I stopped walking and started to struggle in earnest. Nope, I was absolutely not going underground again; it just wasn’t happening.
The Ogre with my arm tightened his grasp which only made me struggle and kick more. He grumbled something I couldn’t make out under his breath before he locked his arms around my waist and knocked the wind out of me by throwing me over his shoulder. Blood rushed to my ears at suddenly being upside down and staring at his back. My hands were still cuffed and his arm was wrapped around my legs, preventing me from kicking. All I could do was wiggle, which did absolutely nothing. The sunglasses I’d scored just hours earlier fell from my face and I swallowed my terror as I watched the man behind us step on them.
Panic would get me nowhere. I had to stay calm, not just for myself but for the others. But fuck; they just didn’t know what horrors could happen in dark underground places. They didn’t know but I did and with all the blood in my head and my heart racing it was almost enough to make me lose consciousness.
I felt the ogre start down the stairs and bit my lip to keep from crying out; that would only get me hit and that wasn’t something I needed at the moment. I tried to turn my head to see behind us but my neck wouldn’t stretch that far; all I could see were stairs and the fading sunlight as we went deeper and deeper until the only light cast was from the work lights attached to the walls.
The air was stale and damp and it was several degrees cooler which was nice, but still not where I wanted to be. All I could see was the concrete floor and water was dripping somewhere in the background of the shuffling feet.
We finally stopped and I held my breath before the ogre took another couple of steps before tossing me off his shoulder and onto the ground with as much effort as I would toss a bag of potatoes.
I landed on my ass with a ‘huff’ of air, the look of indignation lost on my captor as he yanked my arms from behind me, unlocked the cuffs and pocketed them before turning towards the door.
Before I had the chance to say anything, the ogre and the man who’d been steering Chloe took our cuffs and left the cell, locking the door behind us. We sat there for a moment staring at each other while rubbing our wrists before we started looking around.
It was literally a cell; 3 solid concrete walls made up the back and the sidewalls with a barred wall at the front. It was like a tiny, dirty underground prison and the horror movie just got so much worse.
“Chloe? Angie?” Ty’s voice was seriously the best sound I’d heard in hours. I scooted forward and pressed my face between the bars trying to see into the other cells.
“Ty? Yeah me and Chloe are ok. Where’s everyone else?” I replied.
“Johnny and I are next to you,” Penny called out quietly.
“Earl’s with me,” Ty started. “They beat him pretty bad but he’s still alive, just unconscious. Has anyone seen Roscoe? He ran when they overpowered us.”
“Jack and I are here too,” Bash’s voice called out from further down the hall. So they’d split us all up; smart of them.
“No we never saw Roscoe, is everyone ok or at least breathing?” I became concerned that Jack hadn’t answered himself.
“Jack doesn’t look so hot, they beat him too, but I think he’s still weak from the transfusion.” The fear in Bash’s voice caused a surge of adrenaline to do a swandive through my nervous system and I momentarily thought about trying to bend the bars using brute force. Running my fingers down the rusted metal, I quickly dismissed that idea as completely insane and tried to focus. Jack needed antibiotics and fast.
“Wait,” I looked behind me to see Chloe digging through her pockets only to produce a couple of bottles of pills proudly.
I crawled back to her and took them from her hands, trying to read the labels in the near darkness. “Why were these in your pockets?” I asked. One of the bottles was penicillin and the other was oxycodone.
I looked up at her and she looked away sheepishly. “You just never know when you might lose a backpack,” she finally answered. My stomach dropped but this wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have at the moment. There was only one reason someone would pocket a bottle of prescription painkillers and it wasn’t “just in case I lost my backpack”.
Fuck. I’ll worry about that later
.
Ty and Earl were in the cell across from ours, Penny and Johnny were to our left and from what I could tell, Bash and Jack were across from them. Bash and Earl needed the pain killers and Jack would need both so I headed back to the front of our cell and smooshed as much of myself in between the bars as I could.
“Here Ty, catch.” I rolled the bottles towards him as hard as I could and felt relieved as they made it across the hall and into their cell.
He grabbed them and tried to read the labels like I had. “Earl needs the oxy,” I started.
Ty nodded his head and started to open the bottle. I could just make out his form move to the back of the cell and place 2 pills in Earl’s mouth, helping them down with a bottle of water sitting on the floor next to him.
Once he was done, he moved to end of the cell and reached between the bars and around the corner. “Bash,” he said, hand outstretched with both bottles.
Bash took them and pulled them into his cell. It was too far from mine for me to see inside. “Bash, give Jack 2 oxy and 2 penicillin for now and take 1 oxy yourself. Hang onto those, you’ll both need more soon,” Penny said, reminding me yet again why I was so happy she was here.
I heard rustling in his cell and what sounded like a moan and a cough before the sound of bottles being shoved into his pocket. Taking a quick look around, there was a bucket in the back corner of the cell and shackles on the wall. I didn’t even want to think about what the bucket was for.
There were 2 bottles of water sitting on the floor next to the bucket and I crawled over to them, tossed one to Chloe and drank the other. The water was warm but welcome considering we hadn’t had anything to eat or drink in hours.
I leaned against the wall after draining half the bottle and just focused on breathing. We were all alive and together. I had no idea who these people were or why they’d taken us but I knew it wouldn’t be long before we found out and we were now down 2 fighters, which left me, Penny and the kids and no one knew where Roscoe was. Our chances of an escape weren’t looking so great which only left diplomacy but the odds of these being reasonable men were likely slim to none.
5 days. We stayed locked in our cells for 5 days. Occasionally someone would come down and throw food and water into our cells and we quickly learned what the buckets were for and how to empty them into the small drains in the floor running along the back walls.
We didn’t speak much at first, just slept a lot and tried to heal our wounds. My mind kept playing the events of the last week and a half on an endless loop that just wouldn’t end and I was nearing madness. If it weren’t for the others there to keep me grounded, there was a good chance I’d have lost my mind altogether.
At one point someone had come and taken Bash, only to return him with a more sturdy cast on his arm, but that was it. We weren’t questioned, we weren’t abused, we weren’t anything. My anxiety at being captured had all but disappeared as the days dragged on and was replaced with an almost peace. At least locked down here we hadn’t had to worry about fighting the dead and could get some sleep, even if it was on a concrete floor while pooping in buckets with an audience.