This Dying World (Book 2): Abandon All Hope Page 32

  Screams filled the room as a spot of red blossomed on the dingy white sheets. Larry snipped again and again, the sickening crack of bone and the wet muted sound of meat flaying open turned my already unsteady stomach. He laughed with each cut, his eyes wild with bloodlust as the red stain spread further across the sheet.

  Bobby looked over his shoulder, taunting the woman as her tortured howls bounced through the concrete halls. Jeffery sobbed as he balled his fists, his body shaking with each renewed scream.

  My mind broke. Memories and images from my past poured into my psyche. I couldn’t take my eyes from the rose red blood painting the white cotton sheet crimson. I heard her screams and smelled the gunpowder. I felt the gun in my hand, heavy and cold. I felt the press of the dead against the ambulance crushing in on us. I saw Abby’s form laying under the sheet as her blood poured from the bullet hole I put in her head.

  I screamed, lunging at the man who’d orchestrated this freak show. Pain exploded through my body and sent me tumbling on the hard concrete, my fingertips just brushing his well-polished shoes. He took a step backward, his smile replaced by a faint snarl.

  “You can be broken,” he sneered at me. “You will be broken, again and again I will break you until your mind cannot take any more. Then I will break you again. You will show me your fear, Mr. Foster.”

  I stretched for him again, the press of the bars against my shoulder lighting up my nerves in white hot agony. There was no logic in what I was doing, I simply acted on instinct. He ignored me, turning his attention back to the torture being inflicted on the woman.

  “You could have achieved your goal with one cut, Lawrence,” Professor scolded.

  “I’m taking my time!” Larry shouted back manically. “I want to enjoy this!”

  “That is enough, Mr. Parker!” The Professor snapped impatiently.

  “I’m going to take as many as I want!” Larry shouted wildly.

  “Lawrence!” Professor shouted, his accent slipping again. “She is still mine! You only do what you are told! You know what happens if you disobey me!”

  Larry tore his eyes away from the bloodshed he had created, casting a murderous glare at the man he served. The woman shrieked as he reached down and yanked something free.

  He marched up to Professor, throwing his bolt cutters to the floor and coming face to face with him. Professor stared him down until Larry backed away from the standoff.

  “You know what to do with that,” Professor said through smoldering anger.

  Larry glowered at him a moment longer before turning away and facing me. He reached a bloody hand into his pocket, producing a small roll of scotch tape. He stepped to the bars of my cage, smiling at me with a toothy grin.

  “Take a look,” he chuckled. He opened his other blood soaked hand, displaying a mutilated finger in his palm. Several deep slices had been cut into the meat, the gashes starting at the tip of the finger and ending at the knuckle. Splinters of cracked bone poked through the flesh, with the final cut that had removed the digit made close to the hand.

  He unrolled a long strip of tape and affixed the finger to my bars in a macabre display. Larry backed away, laughing as he retreated down the hall.

  Bobby shoved Jeffery down to the floor and delivered a hard kick to his midsection. He retched, the smell of vomited eggs and bacon filling the hollow space.

  “You purchased that,” Professor said with glee. “Your inability to follow my rules directly resulted in her pain. You are not to touch this display. Use it to remind yourself of who is in charge of our little community. Someone will return with more food. It is your breakfast. No one else shall eat it.” He turned his attention to the teenager still standing over a vomiting Jeffery. “Robert, it is time to leave these people alone. And Jeffery, you and your lovely wife may speak now.”

  The familiar burn of hate filled my being as I watched the two men walk away. I wanted to kill them, imagining my hands around the man’s throat until I felt his windpipe crush under my thumbs. But even if I could break free from my cell, I was in no condition to be anything more than a mild irritant to them.

  I turned my attention to the couple across the hall, and my rage evaporated as guilt’s cold fingers took hold of my soul.

  Jeffery held his wife to his chest. Her tortured wails had quieted to deep sobs as her husband tried his best to comfort her. Tears poured down his cheeks in unending streams as he gently rocked his wife. He balled up a bit of the dirty sheet covering her cot and pressed it against the wound to try to quell the bleeding from her mutilated hand.

  “I’m so…sorry,” I said, choking back my own guilt riddled tears. “I didn’t know.”

  Jeffery looked up from his wife, locking his accusatory gaze on me.

  “Why couldn’t you just leave us alone?”

  Chapter 32

  My sleepless night was spent listening to the tormented cries of the woman across from me, mingled with the litany of apologies Jeffrey heaped on her as he comforted her. I tried to block it out, but my guilt would not allow me peace for the pain I had brought to the couple.

  As the sun rose the next morning, the loud clang of the lock echoed through the cell. A young woman wearing nothing but a simple blue jump suit appeared at the bars. Her brunette hair had been tied back in a very tight pony tail. Her face was so devoid of emotion it appeared as if her features had been hewn from blocks of marble.

  She marched into Jeffery’s cell, completely bypassing him on her way over to his starving wife. Weakened from starvation and blood loss, she still lay in her blood soaked cot. Without any sign of empathy, the woman grabbed his wife’s injured hand, turning it over again and again before pulling a syringe from her pocket and jamming it into her still bleeding injury. His wife cried out as she jerked her hand away.

  “Shut up or I’ll just do my work without numbing it,” she snapped. “Professor wants you stitched up, and that’s what I am going to do with or without your comfort or help.”

  The injured woman timidly held out her hand, and again the young brunette jammed the needle into the injury. The starving woman winced, but stood firm while the heartless cow plunged the medicine into the amputated stump. Five minutes later, the pulpy tissue was stitched up and bandaged, and the bitch in blue marched out of the cell and back the way she’d come.

  Jeffery moved to his shivering wife, gently caressing her emaciated face with his fingertips. He pulled her close to him and embraced her before he lay her head back down to her pillow. He stroked her long hair until her eyes closed, and she fell into a deep sleep. He shot me a hateful glare before he laid down next to her, wrapping her in his arms.

  Several days passed without another visit from the bitch in blue, Larry the sadistic asshole, Bobby the junkie, or Professor. Others would occasionally pass through, inspecting the other empty cells for who knows what. It wouldn’t have surprised me in the least if good ole Proffy sent them in to try and glean any tidbit of information from those he kept imprisoned. The only thing they learned from me is that when someone is watching, the shower curtain around the toilet would remain open to give them a nice long look at what my body turned food into.

  I spent my time recovering on what little comfort the paper thin cot provided and listening to the world around me. Except for the constant hum of what I could only assume was a generator and the whispers of my neighbors across the hall, there was very little to occupy my mind, and stave off the ghosts that continually haunted my thoughts.

  Breakfast, lunch, and dinner were served every day at the same time like clockwork. I wasn’t sure why Larry didn’t want to bring me my food anymore. He seemed pretty anxious to make my captivity as difficult as he possibly could. It could have been that the Professor knew I would spend every waking moment provoking him, or it could be that he just simply didn’t like me. I’m not sure why, I mean I’m such a likable person when kidnapped and forced to spend my days in a prison cell.

  Insert eye roll here.

  Eac
h meal was accompanied by a small cup of pills I was told to take under the daily threat of consequences. As far as I knew the man in charge had not lied to me about wanting to kill me. If he wanted me dead, he could easily have done it several times over in my sleep, or while I was awake for that matter. It’s not like I could’ve run away or anything.

  Any thought I had to refuse was instantly quashed by the sight of the rotting digit taped to the bars. The finger had been rotting for days, small bits of flesh falling to the ground into tiny mounds of oily decay. Even if that didn’t dissuade me from my natural inclination to never do what I was told…ever…the fear on the faces of Jeffery and his wife every time I interacted with another of the madman’s minions was enough to push any thoughts of rebellion from my mind.

  Even before the dead began to parade across the planet I never really worried much about the consequences of my actions. Which was why that particular moment was not the first time I’d spent locked behind bars. But I could not allow someone else to pay for my own inability to shut up when the moment called for tactical silence.

  So every time one of the douche nozzles brought me my feast of oatmeal and rice, with the occasional glass of piss water they called apple juice, I pushed aside the nausea that the site of food produced in me and finished off everything on my tray. That was followed up by whatever pharmaceutical concoction was served up that day.

  I quietly watched the ritual my neighbors went through every time a meal was delivered. She covered her head, and he scarfed down whatever was put in front of him as quickly as he could manage. I found myself turning away from her whenever I ate, despite the fact that her sheets obscured her view. It was then I finally understood why he demolished his food the way he did.

  “He threatened to kill your wife if you allowed her to eat, didn’t he?” I asked, breaking the days old silence.

  Jeffery’s eyes shot up from his plate and stared me down with hate filled eyes.

  “Yes,” a frail voice came from under the sheet.

  “Don’t talk to him,” Jeffery said through a mouthful of oatmeal.

  “He didn’t know,” she said. “It’s not his fault.”

  “You eat like that so she won’t have to suffer any longer than necessary with food that close to her,” I stated.

  His anger seemed to evaporate slightly as his eyes dropped to his plate. He swallowed hard, his eyes shimmering as moisture started to build behind the lids. He grabbed his water and quickly swallowed down the last of his meal.

  “You feel helpless to stop her suffering, and guilty for not doing anything about it.”

  He said nothing, turning away from me and walking over to his cot. He fell onto the mattress, his hands covering his face as he turned away from me.

  “I know what that’s like,” I said under my breath.

  “What the hell do you know!” he shouted, leaping from his cot and charging to the bars. “How could you know what this is like? How could you understand what it’s like to watch your wife dying in front of you and not be able to do a damn thing about it?!”

  “My wife was taken from me,” I said calmly, sitting up in my cot. My ribs popped, forcing me to take a breath before I could continue. My feet hit the cold concrete floor as I sat on the edge of the cot. My eyes fell to the floor as the images played out before me like an old movie. One I had watched a thousand times before. “She was killed by a man I could have killed that morning. I showed compassion, and for that my wife was taken from me. He brought a horde of the dead down on us, and she was bitten. I was forced to watch her die, then shoot her before she could come back. I sat with her body for hours before my family could get to me.”

  “I’m sor—” he started.

  “I know,” I interrupted, looking at him as tears streamed down my cheeks. “I know what it means to watch someone you love suffer, and I know what it is like to have someone else cause that suffering. I am at fault for what happened to her. Jeffery, I am so goddamn sorry.”

  “Jeff,” he said softly. “My name is Jeff. No one calls me Jeffery. My wife’s name is Tanya.”

  “I’m sorry, Tanya,” I said, my voice cracking as I fought back the tears.

  “Shut up,” Tanya said. The sheets drew back, her sunken face appearing from beneath. She smiled at me, her features softening despite the suffering written across her entire body. “Don’t be stupid.”

  The laugh came so suddenly I had no time to stifle it. “That’s exactly what she would have said to me,” I chuckled. “She was a strong woman. Some people thought she was a bitch to be honest, but really she was just a strong willed woman. I guess to be with me she had to be.”

  “What was her name?” Tanya asked as she propped herself up on shaky elbows.

  “Yes,” a familiar voice slithered from the darkness. The sudden taps of polished loafers approached as his silhouette gave way to the man’s well-dressed visage. Somehow in the middle of a fucking zombie apocalypse he managed to find a clean and tailored sharkskin colored suit. His impossibly white teeth caught the sunlight, glistening with malice through his serpents smile.

  “What was your wife’s name, Mr. Foster. More importantly—” his words hung in the air like razor blades waiting to lash out and lay my flesh open.

  He walked by my cell and out of view. Seconds later he returned, carrying a richly upholstered chair that looked as if it belonged at a very expensive dining room table of the rich and gaudy. He set it down in front of my cell and sat, crossing his legs as he leaned back. Setting his elbows on the armrests, he clasped his hands together as if in prayer. Leaning forward he rested his chin on his hands and smiled again.

  “More importantly,” he repeated his grin widening. “I want to know every detail of her death.”

  “Fuck you, Jakey,” I snapped.

  “Come now, Daniel,” Professor exhaled. He cocked his head upward, his eyes falling on the decaying finger hanging on my cell. His gaze turned back to me, the ever present smile still on his lips. “Do we need another demonstration of why you should behave?”

  I clenched my teeth, grinding them together as blood pumped through my thundering heart. I stared at his smug face, trembling as anger boiled inside me.

  “What do you want to know?” I hissed.

  “That’s better,” he said, turning his sights back on me. “Now, as I said, I want to know every detail of how you got your wife killed.”

  I took a breath, and recanted the story of the most horrible experience of my life. As if he could read my pain, he would stop me at the worst memories, forcing me to go into explicit detail of every second of Abby’s misery.

  “How badly was her knee broken?” he asked. “How badly did she cry when you dragged her across the field. Did she scream when she was bitten. Do you think she enjoyed the pain? How much of her blood did you have on you? Tell me about her face when she knew she was going to die. Did you look her in the eyes when you shot her? Did you touch her brains? Did you touch her after you killed her? Were you a necrophiliac with your dearly departed wife’s corpse?”

  He showed an almost childlike glee when I was angered, and a look of sinister satisfaction when the answer I gave forced me to tears as I relived Abby’s death in graphic detail. The worse my reactions were, the happier he became.

  “Mr. Foster, I must commend you for keeping me so entertained this morning. I did not think you had it in you.”

  “Piss off,” I mumbled as I lay back on my cot, turning away from him.

  “What did you do with this Adam fellow?” he continued without the slightest recognition of my outburst. “Did you shoot him? Is that why you etched such a wonderful bit of literature onto your crude weapon. Was it a warning of vengeance?”

  “Not quite,” I said.

  “What happened to him?” he asked, his tone betraying his excitement. “Please don’t disappoint me by telling me you allowed the man to live.”

  “I crucified him,” I said with an air of dark satisfaction.

&nbs
p; “Bravo, Mr. Foster!” he cheered, clapping his hands together. “Just when I thought you could not entertain me further, you deliver the knockout punch. Well done, sir. Well done!”

  “Awesome,” I said sarcastically. “Do I get a cookie for being a good clown?”

  “I suppose you do deserve some kind of reward. Honestly, I was unsure if I was going to like you Mr. Foster. You do come off as quite brash, and my people do not care for you much. But you have given me quite the thrill today. So, what would you like? Books to pass the time? Music perhaps?”

  “I suppose early parole is out of the question?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he chuckled. “That is not in the cards for you, Mr. Foster.”

  “Okay then,” I started, turning to look him in the eyes. “Do I have your word that you will give me what I ask for?”

  “Within reason, yes you do.”

  “Good,” I smirked. “Tanya gets to eat again. Real food. No more starvation for her or any of us as long as we are your guests.”

  “Are you sure, Daniel?” he questioned, a hint of surprise in his tone. “That is what you want?”

  “That is what I want,” I replied. “No more starvation diets.”

  “You are a unique man, Mr. Foster,” he said. “In one breath you crucify a person, and in the next you beg mercy for another.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m an enigma wrapped in a riddle wrapped in a hospital gown. Are you going to lift her forced hunger strike, or are you a liar?”

  “My word is my bond,” he said. “She will no longer starve.”

  Professor stood, lifting his chair and carrying it back to wherever he found it. Motion from the cell opposite mine drew my attention to Jeff. He sat on his cot, a flash of hope spreading across his face.

  “Thank you,” he mouthed at me.

  I nodded at him and turned my attention back to the ceiling to count the paint chips again for the third time that morning.

  “Mr. Foster,” the voice that I had come to loathe interrupted my count.

  “Yes, Jakey,” I replied with annoyance.