The Remaining: Fractured (2 page)

***

Angela opened her eyes and found herself in darkness.

The air was cold and musty with the smell of greasy engine components. She tried to fight off panic and had trouble breathing for a moment. Like she was drowning in a tub of dirty engine oil. She could picture where she was, even though she couldn’t see. The rusted box of a shipping container, filled with abandoned mechanical components. A place to put things to keep them out of the way until they might be useful again.

She could hear people moving about outside, so it must’ve been daytime, but no light reached her in the trailer where Jerry had thrown her away. She caught her breath and calmed herself, the memories fading like storm clouds that have passed on, rumbling in the distance as they leave a path of beaten fields behind them. She listened to the pulse of her heart and eventually it was steady.

She sat for a long time in one position, then another. Her mind only wandered so far. It ran a circular groove around the same questions, like a dog on a short chain: Where was Abby? Where was Sam? Where was Lee? And was he even still alive? What was happening outside of these four rusted walls?

How long had she been locked away?

Days, she thought, but she couldn’t be sure.

It was difficult to gauge the time. She slept when she wasn’t tired, remained wide-awake when bone-aching weariness tried to blanket her. She’d been given water and food once, but it had been a while ago. Now she felt starved and her mouth was dry as sawdust.

How long were they going to keep her there?

How long were they going to keep her from seeing her daughter?

She jolted at the sound of the chains being drawn back from the doors of the shipping container. She rose unsteadily to her feet. Felt faint for a moment, felt her scalp tingle with lightheadedness. Outside the doors she could hear murmured voices. She strained to pick out what they said, but it was like the darkness dampened her ears as well as her eyes.

The doors clanked loudly. Harsh light erupted through the shadows. She squinted against it, felt her pupils constrict painfully. A gust of wind came in with it, seeming to give the light substance, and it chilled her instantly. She shrugged her shoulders, wrapped her arms around herself.

A silhouette stood in the center of the opening. She could not see the details of it, but she knew who it was. She could see the casual coolness of his body language, the long jacket hanging down to mid-thigh. The shotgun slung from his shoulder. A sawed-off contraption of his own creation.

She took a step back, feeling exposed. Her palms were moist and clammy. Every time she thought of him, every time she thought of that damn gun, she just pictured it bursting Bus’ chest open. She saw her hands sinking into the gore. The stickiness in the webbing of her fingers. The way it clotted under her fingernails. Bus looking up at her and saying, “Take it. You have to…”

She swallowed. Took a breath. “Where’s my daughter?”

Jerry stepped into the trailer, regarding her blankly. His hair was combed nicely, as it seemed to always be, no matter the situation. The only thing that told her that Jerry had been under any stress at all over the course of the past few days was the pale stubble along his jaw. Usually he kept himself shaven.

She waited for him to speak. His eyes meandered unpleasantly over her. The silence became long and deliberate. Just another weapon that Jerry wielded to chip away at her.

He crossed his arms. “You’re a bit of a conundrum, Angela.”

She considered that for a moment, not sure how to take it. Pretty sure it wasn’t a compliment.

He took another step closer. “Reminds me of that old saying about women: can’t live with ‘em; can’t kill ‘em.”

Angela wanted to hold his gaze, but she was tired and her eyes drifted off to the right, to the open doors, hoping to see someone that she knew, someone that would help her, but there was only the expanse of dirt and gravel that made up the backside of the Camp Ryder building, where people rarely went. The “back yard,” they called it.

“Let’s just be honest, shall we?” he said, flatly.

She clenched her jaw. Didn’t respond.

“It would be easier for me if you were dead.” He spoke thoughtfully. “And yet I didn’t kill you. I had an
opportunity
to kill you, but I didn’t. Which, in retrospect, was a poor decision on my part. However, now everybody knows that you’re in this trailer being held captive. And there are quite a few people in Camp Ryder that still view you in a positive light. So, if I were to kill you right now then I think people would…dislike that. So now I find myself in a dilemma, Angela. A conundrum.”

He ran a palm gently along the side of his hair. “If I keep you locked up, people will start to wonder why. Sure, there are only maybe a half-dozen or so that think of you as a friend. But they’ll talk. And then others will talk. And before I know it, everyone’s beating down my door and telling me to set you free. So obviously I can’t keep you locked up here indefinitely, despite how much I’d like that. On the other hand, if I let you out to see your children, then what reassurance do I have that you’ll play nice?”

Angela grasped at the one hope that seemed tangible: “Please, Jerry. Just let me be with my daughter. I won’t cause problems.”

“Ah,” Jerry smiled without pleasure. “You say that now, but when some time has passed and you’re getting comfortable again, you’ll talk. You’ll have…unkind things to say about me. You’ll be the little bad apple that spoils the whole bunch.”

Angela shook her head firmly. “I won’t, Jerry. I won’t. Just let me be with Abby.”

Jerry’s eyes glimmered with a strange light. He reached out to her, speaking as he did. “I’m going to let you be with Abby. I’m going to do that for you, Angela…”

His hand touched her shoulder, glided up towards her neck.

Without thinking, Angela jerked her body away and swatted at his hand.

Jerry lurched in close, so that she had no room to run and he reached the other arm around her shoulder and pulled her down. She wasn’t sure what he was doing, but then she felt his fist slam into her stomach. Just once. But surprisingly hard.

She doubled over, wheezing, and then collapsed onto her side.

She tried to catch her breath, tried to force air into her lungs, but it just kept leaking back out of her mouth with a weird groaning noise. It shocked her, but then the pain started to grow. Dull at first, and then sharp. Made her stomach feel hollow and achy.

She finally caught a breath and coughed. She watched a gob of saliva fly out of her own mouth and hit the metal floor, still trailing a glistening strand back to her lips.

Jerry sank down to his knees over her, put his hand on her neck, squeezing hard enough to let her know that she should be very still, but not so hard that it pinched her airway. Then he leaned down close to her face so that his lips brushed her ear and his hot breath moistened it.

“You see, Angela, I would never hurt you. Not like that. Because I’m just not that kind of person. But I know men that are. And if I were to allow you this kindness, if I were to let you stay in Camp Ryder and live peacefully with your child, and if you were then to repay my kindness with disrespect...well, then those men that do things for me might find you, Angela. Maybe in the middle of the night when you’re snug in your bed, cradling your daughter. They might find you there, and they might do terrible things, Angela. Things that don’t heal with time. Things that fuck you up in the head. Things that might fuck Abby up in the head, because she’ll see it happen. She’ll see every bit of it. Do I make myself abundantly clear?”

Her face pressed against the floor, staring at the trail of her own spit across it, she nodded slowly under the pressure of his hand on her neck. “Yes, I understand.”

Then Jerry stood up and brushed the knees of his pants off. He regarded her with disdain, then turned and left her lying there, apparently with nothing further to say. Behind him, the doors to the trailer remained open, and another freezing gust of wind whipped through as though it might sweep her out of the enclosure like a pile of dead leaves.

Angela coughed again, sat up, rubbing her neck. She shook all over. But there was something else to it besides plain old fear. There was a tension that spread itself across her frame. Like there was a winch in the core of her body and it was connected by steel cables to all of her limbs, and someone had just tightened it a few notches. The kind of tension that eventually breaks, and breaks violently.

She picked herself up off the floor, the throbbing in her gut making it difficult to stand up straight. She bent over, hands on her knees for a moment, staring at the ground, trying to make the pain subside. Finally she forced herself upright and stepped to the edge of the trailer.

She stood there, looking right and then left.

No guards.

No people to see her leave.

She could run right now. Escape Camp Ryder.

But where else would she go?

She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling suddenly and incredibly alone. Abandoned. Without hope. Like she was caught behind enemy lines. What was there for her now? To quietly go about her life like everything was normal? Ignore Bus’ murder? Ignore Jerry’s threats?

She touched her stomach again, found it tender like a bruise.

A reminder that Jerry was not all frills and politics, as he often seemed.

He was capable of violence as well.

But so am I
, she thought, remembering the feel of the bat as it struck her own husband’s skull and toppled him. Because Abby stood right behind her. She remembered the smell of gunsmoke in a dark upstairs hallway in some little abandoned house with Lee battling for his life, and she remembered how the shotgun bucked in her grip, remembered watching that lead payload as it ripped flesh and bone from human beings. And she never stopped because Abby stood right behind her.

I am violent if the right buttons are pushed
. She looked up into the gray-clad sky and her mouth tightened into something harder than what it had been before. She brought her gaze back down to the dirty world she lived in, and she stepped out of the shadow of the trailer and went to find her daughter.

            CHAPTER 2: ANOMALY

Jacob stood at the window to the neonatal room of the Johnston Memorial Hospital in Smithfield. The same place where parents had stood to look in at their newborns. Now, though, the light of a few halogen lamps gave the place a more severe appearance, and there was nothing good inside.

It seemed a perverse place to house one of these things, but it made the most practical sense. Concerns about infant abductions had caused the hospital to make the room somewhat of a fortress to keep people out. But it also worked to keep things in. With lockable doors and a reinforced, shatter proof window, it provided Jacob and Doc Hamilton with opportunities to watch their subject without being within arm’s reach of her.

So Jacob watched her, feeling a little queasy.

She was crouched against the back wall, regarding him with unreadable eyes. She was naked and horrific. The protuberance of the thing growing inside of her seemed oddly large. Perhaps indicative of some other medical problem. She still appeared dirty, but Jacob and Doc Hamilton had cleaned the worst of it off the first time they had her sedated. Partly just to relieve themselves of the smell, though it didn’t last long—she continuously defecated in the corner of the room.

The way she was crouched, Jacob could see the cause for his current concerns.

Significant vaginal bleeding.

He broke the uncomfortable eye contact with the creature inside the room and looked to his right. Doc Hamilton stood there with the ultrasound cart, gloves already on, and a syringe in his hand loaded with Propofol. A cold, nervous sweat began to break out along Doc Hamilton’s heavily receding hairline. He was a staunch supporter of Jerry, and their difference of beliefs was a source of unspoken tension between the two of them. Jacob also knew that Doc Hamilton had been slipping information to Jerry. Sort of spying on Jacob and his experiments.

On the cart with the ultrasound machine was a tray from the hospital cafeteria, slopped with some canned chicken, beans, and corn. Pretty decent eating by today’s standards, and it seemed sacrilegious to give it to one of these beasts. But they wanted to keep their subject’s pregnancy viable as long as possible. And that meant giving it as much nutrition as they could.

Everything had to be coordinated. The giving of meals, the running of tests, and checking on any medical problems, such as the bleeding. It all had to be compiled into one session, because they didn’t want to keep pumping her full of drugs. Though the sedative was considered mostly safe for a pregnancy, it also wasn’t intended to be given on a daily basis, so they tried to give the minimum amount and make their sessions brief and fruitful.

Beside Doc Hamilton, two other men stood. One held a riot shield and a pistol. The other held the makeshift dog catcher’s pole that Jacob had originally caught his test subject with. They looked at Jacob, a little nervous even though they’d done it twice already. They were two of the regular guards, and though it seemed they didn’t like what had happened at Camp Ryder, they also didn’t really resist it. And when Greg and his crew came knocking, they were clearly friends.

Jacob nodded to them. “Just remember to be gentle.”

“As gentle as we can be,” one smirked to the other.

Jacob turned back to the window. The creature still stared at him, though she had leaned forward, one hand supporting her weight. Jacob got the distinct impression that she’d seen him look away and was going to use that opportunity to creep up closer to him. Unconsciously, he stepped back away from the window.

The sound of the doors unlocking drew her attention. But she didn’t attack. She recoiled away, scrambling away from them on all fours, hissing and screeching at them. This was how she had reacted each time. Defensive, until she was cornered. Then she would start lashing out.