Land of Dust and Bones: The Secret Apocalypse Book 7 (18 page)

I practically fall out into the hallway, and I can’t believe I am free.

I am
free.

I make a promise to myself. I promise I
will never be a prisoner again. I will never let anyone tie me up or handcuff
me.

I will never trust again.

I will kill anyone who gets between me and
my friends. I will kill anyone who tries to take away my freedom, or I will die
trying.

This is the new world. Only the strong
survive.

This is what the man in the gas mask told
me.

I’m starting to believe.
I do believe…

I move up against the wall, staying hidden,
staying in the shadows. I remember Ben’s wise words.
Strike from the shadows. Strike hard. Strike fast. You will only get
one chance.

He was so right.

And I just witnessed the man in the gas
mask demonstrate this technique, this attack, this philosophy to absolute
perfection. These words, these lessons, I have learnt them from hard men. Bad
men. Killers. And their lessons, their words swirl around inside my head.

I take a few moments to catch my breath and
collect my thoughts.

What the hell am I supposed to do now?

Do I free the others first? Or do I get my
hands on a weapon?

I’m going to need a weapon eventually. A
gun. A knife. A butcher’s cleaver. I need something I can defend myself with.
Something I can use to break a prison door with, something I can use to
completely destroy it.

An axe.

A crowbar.

I have a feeling I won’t have a problem
finding a blade, something with a cutting edge. I’m about to rush off in search
of a weapon. I’m about to rush off just so I can get away from this cell. But I
force myself to stop.

To think.

I have to be smart about this.

I turn around and close the broken door
behind me, propping it upright. I do this so that from a distance, it still
looks like it’s in place. Of course, if Marko comes back he will immediately
realize that I’ve escaped. But if he sees it from a distance, it might fool
him. It might just give me some time. A few minutes. A few seconds.

Down the very end of this hallway is the
room of torture.

Down the very end of this hallway is ‘Ivan
the Terrible’.

This is where I’ll find Sarah.

This is where I will find a weapon.

This is where I need to go first.

I begin moving slowly towards the room,
towards the dim orange candlelight. I walk past the room where my friends are
being held. It takes all my strength to keep walking. There’s no point trying
to open it now. I’m definitely going to need an axe or a crowbar. So I resist
the urge to speak to them through the door, to let them know that I’m going to
do everything in my power to free them, to come back for them.

I creep on by and I want to speak to them.
I want to free them. I really, really want to. But I can’t. It will be too damn
noisy. And too damn risky. I don’t know where Marko is. Or Billy. Or Ivan.

But something tells me they are close by.

A hunch.

A gut feeling.

I continue on my way to the room where they
first brought us, where they cut Sarah’s arm off.

To the room of torture.

To the only source of light in this
Boneyard.

I hear voices.

I hear the weird grunting and moaning from
Ivan.

Marko says, “That freak in the mask has
escaped. He put a knife in Billy’s back.”

And I’m thinking to myself that I should
run away. But I can’t help it. I know there are tools in this room I can use.

I know this.

And I know Sarah is in there. I know she is
still alive.

I inch closer to the doorway, remaining
hidden behind a bunch of scrap wood, firewood. The firewood is stacked up
against the walls of the hallway. It has already been cut up, chopped into
smaller pieces, ready to build the perfect wood fire. Perfect for heating. For
Cooking.

I’m so close to the door now that if I
stand up, they will see me. I understand that I’m taking an incredible risk,
but I need to know what these guys are up to. Luckily, there’s a small gap
between some of the fire wood and the wall. I move behind the stack and crouch
down. I make myself as small as possible.

I hold my breath.

“I need you to stop the bleeding, OK?”
Marko says to Ivan. “Can you do that for me?”

Ivan responds with a grunt.

“I’m going to get the son of a bitch who
did this. He’s still around here somewhere. I know he is. And I know exactly
where he’s going. You might want to lock the hangar doors when I’m gone. And
keep your weapons close by. Protect the food. Oh, and make sure you keep the
girl alive. She’s the only one who knows where the town is.”

Marko leaves the room in a hurry, exiting
out the other door that leads into the darkened airplane hangar. He is still in
a rage. He is still not thinking straight. This gives us a small advantage, a
small window of opportunity. I need to make a move right now.

I step out from behind the stack of
firewood. I crouch in the doorway. I am careful to stay out of the light that
spills into the hall. Ivan is hunched over the work bench, the butcher’s table,
the chopping block.

He is hunched over Sarah.

Sarah is lying on her back. Her eyes are
closed. I can’t tell if she’s dead or alive. Her severed arm is above her head.
The stump is wrapped up in butcher’s paper and twine.

The butcher’s paper is soaked with blood.

I finally see her chest rise and fall. She
is alive.

Ivan suddenly turns around and for a split
second I think it’s all over.

He
knows I’m here. He has seen me.

I move back against the firewood, nearly
knocking the entire stack over. But Ivan has not seen me. He simply picks Billy
up off the floor. And puts him down on the table right next to Sarah. He then
turns him over and grabs a pair of scissors. He cuts Billy’s shirt off his back
and then inspects the knife wound. He moves over to another work bench and searches
around, looking for something.

It takes him awhile, but he eventually
finds what he’s looking for. It is a needle and thread.

He then grabs the bottle of clear fluid he
used on Sarah earlier. He pours it over Billy’s knife wound, all over his back.
He then picks up a needle and thread.

And I finally realize that he’s going to
stitch his brother up, stitch the knife wound closed.

Will this stop the bleeding? Will it save
his life?

How far did the knife go in? How much
damage did it do?

I find myself hoping the knife went all the
way in, that it destroyed his lung, severed his heart. I picture the knife
sliding into his back. I picture it tearing vital organs to shreds.

Come
on, Rebecca. Focus. You need to get moving.

And now is the perfect time. Marko is out
looking for the man in the gas mask. Ivan is busy. Billy is dying.

Now is the time.

I move back from the door. Back into the
hallway, back into the shadows. As far as I can tell we are in one corner of
this massive airplane hangar. And all these rooms were built for a multitude of
purposes. For storage of tools and aircraft parts. For admin offices. For
sleeping quarters of engineers and technicians and whoever else was responsible
for fixing aircraft, or stripping them down for spare parts.

And in turn, Marko and his brothers had
designated each room for its own sick purpose.

Prison cells.

Meat storage.

Torture chamber.

I keep moving away from Ivan. He is
concentrating hard on stitching up Billy’s wound. I am confident that if I keep
quiet he won’t notice me, and I can move around undetected. So I move up to the
door immediately to my right. I turn the handle slowly. It is not locked.

I push the door open, quietly, carefully.
There is a reason this door is not locked. The reason being, this room is not
used for the holding of prisoners. And I know I shouldn’t be surprised. But I
can’t help it.

This room is used for food storage.

It is a meat locker.

Human
meat.

There is something so unnerving, something
terrifying about a hanging human corpse. Both the Evo Agent and the little girl
are wrapped in plastic cling wrap. They are each hanging from a massive meat
hook, with each meat hook having been pierced through their back, right through
their chest. Underneath them is a long metal trough that is catching the blood
dripping from their lifeless bodies.

Maybe
I could use one of these hooks as a weapon.

But to do that I would need to lift one of
these guys up and off the hook. I’m not sure I’d be able to do that. I’m not
sure I have the strength, or the height.

Or the nerve.

I quickly scan the room. There is a work
bench built into the walls. Hanging above the work bench is a huge set of
knives. Contained within this set of knives is every conceivable kind of blade
for every conceivable kind of job.

Knives for carving.

For hunting.

Filleting knives.

A whole range of meat cleavers.

Stacked under the work bench is more
firewood.

And stuck into the firewood is a small axe.

A hatchet.

I rush over to the hatchet, and finally, I
have a weapon. Finally, I can defend myself. I run my finger along the cutting
edge of the blade. It is razor sharp. Perfect.

Now that I have a weapon, I need to go and
free my friends. I’m about to sneak back into the hallway, when suddenly, the
Evo Agent coughs.

And this noise, this sign of life scares
the hell out of me. I stumble back against the door. I hold the axe out in
front of my body.

“Help me…” he whispers. “Please.”

I hesitate. I don’t know why I hesitate,
but I do. Maybe it’s because these guys have been trying to kill us for so
long. And when they’re not trying to kill us, they’re lying to us, to me.
They’re leaving us behind, leaving us for dead.

So yeah, I guess that’s why I hesitated.

But I can’t leave him like this. I can’t
leave him because no one deserves to die like this. Well, maybe some people do.
But not this guy. He’s just a soldier. He was just following orders.

He’s just a kid.

I put the axe down and I grab a chair from
underneath the work bench. I position it next to the Evo Agent, sliding the
metal trough out of the way. I step up on to the chair, unsure of what to do
next.

“Lift me up,” he whispers. “You’ll need to
lift me up… so that… the hook comes out.”

“I don’t know if I’m strong enough,” I say.

“Please.”

He is dying and desperate and who the hell
am I to deny a dying man? So I wrap my arms around him in a kind of bear hug. I
lift him up and I actually feel the hook sliding out of his body.

But it is not enough.

The hook is too big.

I lose my balance and I let go of his body.
And his weight combined with gravity slams him back down onto the hook, the
sharp metal piercing his body deeper than before.

He muffles a scream. The veins in his neck
bulge to the point where I think they are actually going to burst.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I can’t do it.”

He takes a few deep, deep breaths and says,
“You can.” He says this with a calm and steady voice. He says it with more
composure than you’d expect from a dying man, from someone hanging by a meat
hook. “You were close. You can do it. Please.”

“I’ll end up killing you. I’ll end up
tearing your chest apart.”

“I’m dead anyway.”

He’s got a very good point.

I climb back up on the chair. I wrap my
arms around him again, and I lift.

Again, I feel the hook sliding out. I feel
it coming free.

“Almost there,” he whispers. “Almost…”

I lift his body up and he’s almost free,
but I can’t lift him any higher. It is physically impossible.

I freeze. I can’t lift him. But I don’t
want to drop him again.

“I can’t do it,” I say. “I can’t lift you
any higher. The hook is too big.”

“You have to do it,” he says. “It’s almost
out. Please. Don’t leave me like this…”

Goddamn it.

I hold on tight. I feel myself losing
balance. I step up onto my tippy toes. And finally the hook comes free. And the
Evo Agent is free.

But his body is no longer being supported
by anything, and as a result, I take all of his weight. This is a problem
because I’m not strong enough to take all of his weight. So together, we fall
off the chair and go crashing to the ground.