Death Springs Eternal: The Rift Book III (47 page)

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” he grunted. “Fucking smile.”

Marcy swayed from side to side, her expression blank. She could barely hear his words.

Cody leaned forward and pressed his liquor-reeking lips to her ear. “Even if you don’t smile now, I promise you’ll do it later.” With that he licked her cheek and dragged her to the podium. Her right breast popped out of the negligee, which received a raucous cheer from the crowd, but she felt too weak to do anything about it.

She stood next to her captor as he raised his hands, obviously relishing in the adoration and agitation the mob displayed. His thoughts started trickling into her head, so disturbing she thought she might puke. Pictures of disemboweled animals, young girls with surgical cuts maiming their faces, the backs of men’s heads after their brains had been blown out; all harassed her every sense, threatening to take her over. In order to halt it, she took to scanning faces in the crowd.

She picked over them one by one, seeing none she recognized until her eyes found a teenage boy with freckles and large, watering eyes. It was Christopher. He was soaked from the rain, holding a staff in his hand and dressed in a gray suit that almost looked like a replica Confederate uniform. His expression was blank, and when she attempted to steer her thoughts away from Cody and focus on him, she found his mind to be blank as well. The kid looked broken, useless, a toy soldier standing among the real thing. Her heart went out to him.

She thought of Billy, of Kelsey Forrest, of John and Katy Terry, of Joanna Jacks and Carl Roberson and everyone else who’d made the trip to
Richmond
. She wondered if they were all okay, or if they’d suffered the same fate as
Leon
, executed by a bunch of backward, racist pricks. She hoped not. Billy was her savior, her teacher, the father figure who loved her unconditionally. If he was gone, she saw no point in moving forward.

From there her contemplations drifted to worried thoughts about the children, Andy and Francis, Meghan Stoddard, Jackie Balonetti, Bliss Hargrove, Danny Trumaine. Regret poured in, guilt over how much she failed her mother and father, how she was forced to kill her younger sister after she’d slaughtered them…

Wait.

Not her memories, not her life.

What the…

Her train of thought was interrupted by a new deluge of pain, regrets and fears and shame. It was a cone of sound, coming from the tent at the far corner of the clearing, sitting between two of the bleachers. Silent screams lashed against her eardrums, though not a sound had been made. They were the cries of the doomed, the subjects of the evening’s vile festivities. Their images became clear, and she could see every face, experience every moment of trepidation. She suffered as they suffered, cold and afraid with no way out. Her heart sank. She reached out, trying to let them know she was sorry, that there was nothing she could do, but her power died the moment it left her body.

She had nothing left.

*
  
*
  
*

Cody’s arms shot out to his side, Jesus-Christ-Pose-Style, and the raucous crowd quieted to a murmur. The music cut out as well, but still he could barely hear the patrons over the bleat of the driving rain. All eyes were on him, malicious, expectant. He puffed out his cheeks and leaned forward, pressing his lips against the microphone atop the podium.

“All right people!” he shouted. “Let’s start this thing!”

The crowd erupted all over again, and in the distance the tent flap opened. Cody signaled to Ronnie Maggette, who’d been elected auctioneer for the night, and the pudgy bald man waddled over, his eyes locked on the woman standing to Cody’s right. His eyebrows arched and a sly grin appeared on his face. Cody glanced at Marcy, noticed her right breast had popped out of the slinky little outfit he’d made her wear, and hastily worked to put it back in its place. The girl didn’t react to his touch. She just stood there, eyes closed, body swaying. He gave her boob a squeeze, still got no reaction, and glowered. He grabbed Maggette on the way by and stared daggers into the guy’s eyes. Maggette lowered his head and shivered. His hands began shaking. It took Cody a second to realize why.

Cody had his palm on the butt of his pistol.

He let his fingers slip off the cold handle and grabbed Maggette’s lapel.

“I ain’t gonna kill you, you dumb fuck,” he whispered, trying not to move his lips so those in the audience wouldn’t notice the problem. “But look at my girl that way again and I might.”

Maggette’s head bobbed up and down nervously. Cody stepped to the side, and the portly man strode up to the podium.

“First item up for auction tonight,” said Maggette in his high-pitched, rapid voice. “Lot one. Twenty-nine years of age, five foot five, one hundred twenty pounds. Hair auburn, on top and below. Average breast size, all-natural. Bidding will start once the item is presented. Please bring it out now…”

Guards escorted a skittish-looking woman from the tent. She was naked as the day she was born, and her jaw chattered. Rain pummeled her, making her hair a wet, stringy mess. She kept trying to cover herself but the guards were having none of it. Each time an arm rose up, there was a harsh slap forcing it back down. She slipped on the grass and almost fell, which got her a jab in the back from a rifle.

Upon spotting the naked woman, the crowd’s cheering kicked up about a hundred decibels. The stage shook under Cody’s feet as he watched his flock. Their eyes kept turning from the nude girl to him, and he could see the hunger and deference in their expressions. A grin stretched across his lips. They were
this close
to worshiping the ground he walked on.

Gratification washed over him. He hadn’t felt this good since he was a kid back in
Florida
. There’d been these frogs back home, big black suckers with orange underbellies. They made quite a ruckus at night, and he hated them. So one day he swiped a box of firecrackers from his mom’s dresser and proceeded to gather up a bunch of them. He taped M-200s to their bodies, lit the wicks, and let them hop off. Seconds later, when the explosive went off, they became soaring, fleshy tangles of black, red, gray, and green. There’d been power in his hand then, just like there was when he killed that girl in the desert, just like there was now, standing on the stage, listening to the roaring chants, feeling the adulation bestowed upon him. He felt godlike, as if he held the power of life and death in his hands.

Yeah, that’s what it was like, only ten times better.

*
  
*
  
*

Marcy drifted away from her captor and collapsed in the folding chair she’d been in before. Her eyes were focused on the woman being led across the wet grass and up the steps to the center platform. She didn’t need to read the girl’s thoughts to know who she was—Charlize, a pretty radiologist who’d assisted
Leon
in retraining her leg muscles after Marcy awoke from her long slumber. Nice girl. Smart. And soon to be ruined.

She squeezed her eyes shut, until a rough hand squeezed her knee. It was
Jackson
, sitting in the chair beside her, frowning.

“What the fuck’s your problem?” he asked.

With his attention all on her, the hatred inside bubbled to the surface. It made the invading notions slightly more bearable.

“Fuck you,” she said.

“Fuck me? Fuck
me
? Who you think you are? I
own
you.” His fingers curled into fists and he ground his teeth. “I should send you down with the rest of them, let the boys have you.”

Marcy grinned despite her pain. “You should, but you won’t.”

“Wanna bet, bitch?”

“How much?”

“Well…huh? Oh, why you…”

The muscles in Cody’s neck tensed, but the rest of his body didn’t move. Marcy knew he wanted to belt her one right then and there, to run her through with his fists before performing other, more lewd acts. His mind was an open book to her now, louder and more present than the rest. She let her grin stretch wider, egging him on, torturing him. He punched his own thigh and scowled. He felt he was in command, loving the moment, an idol to be respected. He wouldn’t allow himself to be seen losing control. At least not yet.

He leaned forward. His lips grazed her ear and he poked his tongue in. Revulsion made Marcy shiver.

“You won’t be so brave when we’re alone,” he whispered. Marcy received a vision of a young girl with dark skin and straight black hair, her body battered and broken, used up and tossed aside as if she were less than human. Cody grinned. Marcy felt close to passing out.

Invasive fingers caressed her barely-covered breast and crept their way up her thigh. The rain picked up in intensity, filling the gaps in her thoughts with its constant
rat-tat-tat.
Marcy turned her attention to the festivities at hand, watching the soldiers in attendance pull parkas, blankets, magazines—anything they could get their hands on—over their heads in a futile effort to keep dry. And still Ronnie Maggette’s voice rattled on while girl after girl was forced down the walk of shame, to stand on the pedestal like pitiable caricatures of Greek goddesses. They shielded their eyes from the spotlights’ harsh beams, hair plastered to their foreheads, some openly sobbing, others staring blankly, others standing defiant and strong, as the bids were collected. Marcy experienced both their pain and the exuberance of the purchasers, a contradiction that made it feel like her insides were slowly being devoured, like flesh in the maw of the undead.

The undead, and their lack of pretense, were preferable to this.

To fight back the onset of nausea she started humming. She scanned her memory for a tune to latch onto, and one came almost instantly. She put her lips together, ignoring the hand slithering up her thigh that was much too similar to Percy’s slimy feelers. The tune wasn’t pleasant, and she heard a deep, grumbling voice in the back of her mind, but at least it allowed her, for the first time since her encounter with
Leon
, to push all invading thoughts from her brain.

She closed her eyes, and reminiscence washed over her. Singing filled her ears, the voice of a man-child filled with wrath and angst. She was brought back to a time long ago, gazing upon a face she at one time wished she’d forgotten, the same face that had allowed her to regain her memory when Infection spread through her veins, making her forget who she was.

I know he has sought you out in his dreams
, Trudy had said,
and I know that you have done the same.

The presence was so close, so
real.
She experienced fear and guilt, rage and distress. She saw through a young man’s eyes, all gritting teeth and clenched fists, as he gazed through the sea of flesh, searching, violence seeping from his every pore. And though he’d grown, though he was much more a man now than the child she’d known, his inner turmoil was the same.

“Josh?”

Marcy’s eyes shot open and she glanced around in panic. Cody yelped in surprise as she leapt from her chair. His hands grasped at her, snagging on the back of the negligee and tearing it. She felt part of the material shred, exposing more of herself, but didn’t care. Again Trudy’s words filled her mind.
You need to find each other.
A locked door in her brain’s storehouse swung open, exposing to her subconscious the events that had led him to the here and now. Dreams, visions, picnics in the grass, a stroll across an empty park, conversations, and instructions. It was like being walloped in the head with a hammer.

She stopped at the edge of the stage, head whipping around, searching for a sign of him. The view from inside Josh’s head faded, leaving her naked to her own thoughts and processes. She tried to get it back, but it seemed that door had been sealed shut. Yet she’d seen all she needed to, enough to know this man-child she used to call
boyfriend
was about to do something very, very stupid. She bellowed at the top of her lungs, her voice overwhelmed by the raucous cheers and falling rain.