Cortez finished his first prayer of the day, bowed to Mecca and stood. Anna finished up her prayers and turned to smile at him. She had taken to joining him in his devotions every day. She prayed to Christ while he gave thanks to Allah most merciful and the Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him.
It had become their little ritual. They had also begun to discuss one another's faiths, with a genuine willingness to learn from each other. Cortez's respect for the extraordinary young lady had grown tenfold.
Cortez had noticed that the fallen woman's respect for Anna had also grown, the two of them seemed quite close after their night on the mountain. This, along with her effectiveness in a fight, had made Cortez hate Linda less.
Linda was at the stove when they climbed back in the vehicle. "How do you like your rat?" she said. "Rare, medium or burnt?"
"Don't we have anything else to eat?" said Greaves. "Rat gives me indigestion."
"Don't you have a pill for that?" said Linda winking at Anna. "I'm afraid rat's the only thing on the menu. You should be thankful I managed to catch these. All we've got is those two tins of corn, which may or may not be edible. They come from that batch we scavenged in West Point, half of which weren't edible. 'Cept for that we've got some wizened apples we picked a few weeks back. Way I see it, that's lunch and dinner taken care of."
Greaves pulled a face. "We'll make Torrington in a few hours," he said. "It's just over the border in Wyoming. I'm sure we can pick up some rations there."
"What's in Torrington?" said Linda "The world's last surviving Walmart?"
"No. Beneath the City Hall and Police Department on 21st Avenue is an underground complex of offices built by military intelligence. It has an independent generator which can easily be started, and a host of cutting-edge information technology. Doubtless there will also be food stores down there somewhere."
"And stuff we can sell?" said Linda.
"Yes. There will be lots of things we can sell."
"But you've got your own particular reason for going there haven't you?" said Linda. Cortez had noticed that she could never take anything on trust. She always had to question and undermine Greaves. She probably did not like men very much, Cortez thought. Considering what she did for a living, this didn't surprise him.
"There are schematics on the memory stick we retrieved in Indiana that I have to access. They show the underground laboratories near Little Bighorn in Montana. I need to study them to find us a way in. Torrington is the only place on the way with computers that I can realistically get to work."
"What is it with you and underground buildings? Everyplace you take us is hidden deep within the bowels of the earth. Did one of your ancestors breed with a mole or something?" Greaves ignored her question. Linda finished cooking and they ate in silence.
"You know there's a few things that bother me about this whole trip," said Linda, after gnawing the last bit of flesh off her rat bones. Cortez sighed. He was just beginning to find her company bearable. "I know I was hired to take you to Montana. But I don't know if I'm happy with what's going to happen once we get there."
"What do you mean?"
"You know exactly what I mean. When we do break into this underground laboratory with Anna, what happens next?"
"Why, we save the world of course."
"You mean you infect an innocent girl with an experimental virus that's supposed to be a hundred times deadlier than the one that just wiped out most of the planet. I'm sorry, but the more I think about your story, the less I buy it."
"But I explained about the Doomsday Virus. I told you that Anna was specially bred to be its host."
"You gave us some wild science-fiction story about a virus that's going to fall in love with a girl and make her an immortal goddess. That sounds a lot more like a fairy tale than hard science to me."
"But it's true," said Greaves. "Who's the scientist here, me or you? I've seen and helped create things that are beyond the comprehension of most human beings. Who are you to start questioning me?"
"Okay then. Let's say everything you told us is true. That Anna is the special one chosen by the Doomsday Virus and that you got to her before your old buddies did. How do we know we're not playing right into their hands by bringing her to their laboratory? Come to that how do we know you're not still working for them and that all this is part of their plan to get their hands on Anna?"
"If I was still working for an organisation with the resources that they have why the hell would I put my life in constant danger travelling across the country like this?" said Greaves. "And why do you suddenly care so much? Like you said, you were hired to do a job."
"Because it's stopped being just a job. Because I care about Anna and I don't want you to put her in danger or feed her up to some killer plague germs."
Cortez couldn't keep his mouth shut any longer. "I never thought I'd say this but I agree with the whore."
"Thanks big guy, you sure know how to sweet talk a girl."
"I'm not trying to flatter you," said Cortez. "But I do share your misgivings. You've paid me well Greaves. I've earned what you've given me and it's fair to say the rewards have been good. Nonetheless a man has his limits."
"A man has his limits," said Greaves. "What the fuck does that mean?"
"It means that I too care about Anna. There is something special about her and I don't want to see her used like some lab rat in one of your experiments."
"Of course she's special," said Greaves. Cortez had never seen him so close to losing control. "I've been saying that right from the start. Don't you see what we're a part of? Don't you realise what we could do? We could change the whole world for the better. All this chaos and disorder, all this pain and death and suffering. It doesn't have to be for nothing. We could build a new world. We could bring about paradise on Earth."
"Paradise is to be found in the hereafter," said Cortez. "With Allah, the almighty."
"And what if you're wrong?" said Linda. "What if we end up wiping out what's left of humanity?"
"My friends," said Anna, joining the conversation for the first time. "I thank you both from the bottom of my heart for your concern. And I too never thought I would say this, but I agree with Mr Greaves."
"You do?" said Greaves. There were tears of gratitude in his eyes. "I mean of course you do. Obviously you do."
"I have prayed long and hard for guidance since you told me about my true origins, about this disease for which you say I'm to be a host and Mr Greaves is right, all this suffering and death doesn't have to be for nothing."
"Exactly," Greaves said, there was a trace of hysteria in his voice. Cortez had not realised quite how much this meant to him. "Of course it doesn't."
"I know what Mr Greaves has said to be true because I have felt this contagion calling to me, calling to every part of my being. As I said to you Mistress Linda it knows I am coming and it hungers for my company. Hungers like Satan himself hungers for lost souls. I have searched every part of my being and I have spoken almost constantly with my Maker and I now believe there is a reason why I alone, out of all the poor children, crafted by Satan's scientific arts, am alive. This plague is more dangerous than anyone, including you Mr Greaves, realise. Yet it is my destiny to be joined with it. God himself has willed it thus."
"Anna," said Linda. "Do you know what you're saying?"
"Yes Mistress Linda I do. I have spent all my life asking God to reveal my purpose in life. The folk of my community were good folk, gentle, honest and true. But as you have pointed out Mr Greaves, it was not easy growing up as the only Native American within the whole community. My momma and poppa never told me how I came to live with them. As you might imagine matters of birth and conception weren't spoken about much by my people. Every attempt was made to keep our minds and our bodies from sinning. What my momma did tell me was that she was sure God singled me out for a special purpose. From the moment she held me in her arms she said that she knew this to be true. She knew it with as much conviction as she knew that the sun would rise the next day, that her name was Sarah Bontraeger and the Lord Jesus Christ died so that we might be redeemed from all our sin. I was often teased as a little girl by the other children because I was so different, because no-one knew who my grandparents were. If you went back two generations, more or less everyone in the community could trace their kin back to ties with everyone else's. It was a point of pride for most of them.
"Sometimes when the teasing got too much for me, I ran and hid and cried. I would call out to Jesus to help me, to give me his comfort and to show me the special purpose he had for me. Once in a while I would feel his hand on my shoulder. I would know then, in these moments, what my Momma had always told me was true. He did have something special in store for me and when the time was right he would reveal it to me. I have been through trying times of late and I have fallen in with bad people, present company excluded. Yet my strength, my rod and my comfort still has always been my belief that I have a special purpose in God. This is my purpose to join with this evil plague and to turn it to God's will."
"No Anna," said Greaves. "It is not evil. It is just a collection of self-replicating micro-organisms. It has no purpose, no intent and no will. Not until it joins with you."
"With respect Mr Greaves," said Anna. "You have not felt its call. It is evil alright, and I must pray with all my heart for strength, so that I may do the right thing when the time comes."
"You are just full of surprises," said Linda. "You don't say nothing for days, then you come out with a big speech like that."
"Yes mistress Linda," said Anna. "I hope I have not bored you with my story. In fact my throat is dry and I would like some water if you wouldn't mind."
Cortez got up and fetched her a drink. "I was not bored at all by your story," he said. "If you don't mind. I should like to hear more."
"What would you like know Mr Cortez?"
"I am curious as to how you ended up in the house of sin where we found you?"
"Ah yes, there," said Anna and she stared into the distance.
"If it is too distressing we do not have to talk of it."
"No, no, that's alright. I think, for the sake of my own sanity, I sometimes believe that all happened to a different person. I have changed so much since I left the community. Since I met you all. I believe I have even begun to talk differently."
"Yeah," said Linda, "I'd noticed that. We'll have you cussing and spitting on the floor yet."
"That may take a while Mistress Linda," said Anna with a smile. "When The Cull came – I believe that's what you call it isn't it? – it came early to my community. Some of us took sick and died within days. It was only a few at first. We tried praying, of course, but for once God didn't seem to heed our words. Then more and more of us fell. We thought we had brought the wrath of the Lord down on our heads. There was much lamentation and self reproach, we begged God for a sign to tell us what we had done wrong, to show us how to put it right. But nothing came. There was much despair in those last days as our loved ones and all the people we had grown up with died before our eyes. We sent parties to the outside world to bring us help but none of them returned. Then there was only a handful of us left at this point, locked away in our own homes with what few provisions we had left. Momma and poppa were two of the last to go. I buried them in our back yard and I cried for days. There wasn't anyone else I could turn to for help. There were dead bodies everywhere and all our cemeteries had run out of space. I tended to the last of my brothers and sisters in the community, tried to make their last hours as comfortable as I could. Then there was just me."
Anna paused for a minute, drank some more water and took a deep breath. "You have to understand that the community was my whole world. I knew of no other life outside of it. My world had ended along with the lives of everyone I knew. The outside world was a complete mystery to me. The Amish way of life has not changed in two hundred years. Even though there was no-one left in the whole settlement I was still afraid to leave. I confess I even prayed to God to take me too, so I could join my community in heaven. "
"So what happened?" said Linda, "How did you end up leaving?"
"I was starving and delirious and suddenly I felt Jesus by my side. I knew that he wanted me to live and to leave the settlement. Only in the outside world could he reveal his purpose to me. So I collected a few possession and I set off to the nearest town. Nothing could have prepared me for what I came across."
"I imagine it would be like travelling forward two hundred years in time," said Greaves. "Or visiting another planet that was far more technologically advanced."
Anna looked at him with a puzzled expression. "Once again you must excuse me Mr Greaves but I haven't the faintest idea what you are talking about."
"Never mind. Please continue."
"I walked for days. My feet were sore and I rubbed up some awful blisters, then a man pulled up in one of them horseless buggies. The noise and the smell it made. He offered me a lift. He had heard on his… radiator, I think he called it. No, wait that's not right…"
"Radio," said Linda.
"Yes, thank you Mistress Linda. He had heard on his radio that there were people alive in the city and that there was help to be had there. He was awful kind to me, fed me and looked after me, but he died soon after we arrived in Harrisburg. The plague took him too. I was mighty sad about this. I had no idea how to fend for myself in the city. I was scared all the time and people just kept dying. The corpses were rotting by the roadsides. The smell was everywhere."
"They were bad times for us all," said Cortez.
"I was captured by a gang of men. Scavs they called themselves. They sold me and several other poor girls to the Neo-Clergy. I thought I was safe in the hands of men of God, but their faith was nothing like the faith I knew. They kept me prisoner for a long while. Then one of them said I was too old to be used for my blood, even though I was a Red Indian. I do not understand what he meant though."
"John-Paul Rohare Baptiste, the founder of the Neo-Clergy, is said to have stayed alive through transfusion," said Greaves. "That's when you take someone else's blood and put it in your body. He did this to children allegedly, thousands were taken."
"Oh," said Anna. "Anyway, eventually they sold me to Mr Edwards. I don't know how long I was there. I went inside myself. I pretended that none of it was happening to me. It was not my body that was being violated and shamed. I was somewhere else. But so was Jesus. I prayed often to him, pleaded with him. Surely this was not the purpose he had in mind for me. Then you came for me. I thought you had come to kill me. That's what happened to the girls they were done with. But I was wrong. Then, just after the night that I spent with Mistress Linda on the hillside, Jesus came to me. Though I was fallen and shamed, he came to me like he came to Mary Magdalen. And finally he revealed his purpose."
"Well we better not keep him waiting then," said Linda and jumped behind the wheel. "Next stop Torrington."
"Are you sure you know the way?' Linda said. The damnable woman could not let any opportunity to question or undermine him go by. She was worse than his mother.
Greaves told himself again, he was above things like emotions. He let it wash over him. She was simply trying to cope with the obvious inferiority she felt in his presence. Many people acted that way around him. He had learned to live with it. It didn't bother him. Was an elephant bothered by the gnats that buzzed about its hide? No. So why should he be bothered by those whose intellect was beneath his? She was there for a purpose, that was all.
They were in a corridor in the City Hall and Police Department on 21st Avenue. Thankfully the whole building was deserted. Annoyingly it did not fit the layouts he had memorised. They had obviously changed it. They had to have changed it, he was never wrong, never.
"No wait," he said. "We should be over by the cells. Of course, damn these ridiculous bureaucrats, they've no idea how to draw up a simple building layout." He knew that Linda and Anna were exchanging a look. Linda was trying to turn her against him, it was another one of her stupid little games. No matter though, when the time came, Anna would realise the truth and see everything he had done for her. How meticulously he had worked it all out. Then no amount of snide comments and vulgar put-downs would dampen her view of him.
She was going to save the world and he was going to make that happen. Only someone of his ability could do that. Then everyone would have to admit how exceptional he really was.
Greaves led them through the ruined offices that had once housed Torrington's finest. All that remained were the remnants of a few desks and some filing cabinets that had been wrenched open and set alight. Marvellous what humanity can do when it regresses into barbarism.
Beyond the offices and down a flight of stairs were the cells. They were dank and desolate. No-one had been near them for years, the air was stale and Greaves could see skeletons in two of them.
"I don't get it," said Linda. "If you're gonna spend billions of tax payers dollars on a super secret underground complex why would you put the entrance by a bunch of holding cells. I mean aren't you gonna be seen going in an out all the time, by the worst kind of people?"
Greaves sighed, how could he put this simply? "This isn't an entrance. We're looking for an emergency exit. One that was seldom, if ever, used. They built two of them. One comes out in a remote location some distance away and the other comes out here in case they had to evacuate quickly. They didn't want to be seen coming out, they needed complete deniability, which meant they'd have to kill whoever saw them leaving. Who would you rather have them take out, a bunch of girl guides or a bunch of junkies and rapists?"
"Why didn't they just build the whole complex miles from anywhere?" Linda said. "Then they could evacuate as much as they liked and no-one would see 'em."
"I don't know," said Greaves, he could feel himself losing control. He hated that. "Did I build the complex? No. Am I from military intelligence? No! Why are you bothering me with your questions?"
"'Cos it's fun. Wind him up and watch him go. Anyway, military intelligence, now there's a contradiction in terms."
"Now it pains me to say this," said Greaves. "But for once I agree with you."
"Steady on. Don't you have a pill for that?"
"I don't carry cyanide," said Greaves. Anna smiled and Linda smirked, conceding defeat. Now that was a snappy comeback.
They were just around the corner from the cells, standing in front of a steel security door marked 'DANGER – HIGH VOLTAGE!' This was to keep away any nosey cell guards. Greaves started tapping the wall around the jamb.
"What you doing?" asked Linda.
"I'm checking for termites. What does it look like?"
"I dunno." Linda shrugged.
Greaves found the hollow part of the wall. That's where the wires were. "Cortez, why not make yourself useful and punch a hole in the wall here?"
Cortez spun round and held a finger to his lips, listening. Everyone was quiet.
Eventually Linda whispered. "You hear something?"
"I'm not sure. Probably a rat, or some plaster falling. I better go look just to be sure."
Cortez padded off back to the cells. Linda took the butt of her shotgun and knocked a hole in the plaster for Greaves. He reached in and pulled out the wires. Hopefully they would still have residual power in them, or he would have wasted a lot of time.
"If this is the exit," said Linda. "Why didn't we just go in by the entrance?'
"Just in case there's someone still in there," said Greaves, cutting three wires and stripping the insulation. "You can never be too cautious."
Greaves twisted the copper of the three wires together in the right order, creating the feedback loop he needed. There was a sound of steel grating as the ancient door mechanism ground into life. The door moved with a jerk and swung open a couple of inches. Just wide enough to see the corridor beyond but not to squeeze through.
Linda chuckled. "Well that was handy."
Greaves lost his temper and punched the wall. He bruised two knuckles and yelped with pain. Luckily Cortez appeared and saved him from another of Linda's wisecracks.
"Couldn't see anything." He said. "What happened here?"
"The stinking door's jammed," Greaves said, shaking his hand. "We can't get through, we're going to have to force it."
They all put their shoulders against the door and strained. Nothing happened for a moment, then finally it creaked and gave just a little. Then it stopped. They pushed and grunted some more but the thing wasn't moving.
"It's no use," said Greaves. "We'll just have to wriggle through this gap."
There was a short corridor on the other side. Greaves tried the lights. They came on. Thank God there was still power. Now all they had to do was find some working PCs. Greaves was suddenly very excited. It had been so long since he'd had the pleasure of sitting in front of a computer. He hadn't realised how much he'd missed it. Oh to stay here a few days. To comb their databases, to work out some new algorithms and just wallow in the luxury of it.
After a brief exploration they came to a room full of PCs. Greaves sat down and booted several up. To his extreme disappointment the machines weren't anywhere near as hi-tech as he'd believed they would be. In fact the most impressive models there were at least five years out of date, most of them were ten years behind and practically obsolete. Only two were able to read his memory stick, and only then after he'd done a bit of work on their operating systems.
He didn't mind too much though. It was a pleasure just to run his fingers over a keyboard again. He was lost to what was going on around him. Greaves was exploring the schematics of the lab's layout, seeing how his old colleagues had organised everything. Checking out how far they had moved on. Finding all the weak spots in their security and working out how to exploit them.
It brought back many memories. The sights and sounds of a lab, the distinctive smells. The laborious gathering of data and the sudden excitement as you approached a breakthrough, all of it came flooding back.
It was only at the last minute he noticed Cortez and Linda's agitation. They were spooked about something they'd heard. Greaves turned and saw they had their weapons at the ready. They were about to leave the room.
That's when the canister rattled across the floor. It was hissing.
"Hold your breath," Greaves shouted but it was too late.
It felt like his flesh and bones had turned to salt water taffy, his body now long and stringy.
Greaves turned to look at the computer screen. The white lines on the blue background showing the layout of the lab seemed to stretch away into infinity. Like a black hole their gravity was inescapable. He was pulled into the screen. Pulled in between the endless white lines. Down, down, down, or was it across?
Some tiny part of his brain kept screaming out to him that it was just the gas.
It must be some secret military compound, left over from before The Cull. It had hallucinogenic properties. He had to fight it. To get up and get out of there.
But the pull of the lines and the blue background between them was just too great.
So he fell.
Sound came back first. From a long way away to begin with. He could hear something slapping against skin, then he felt a tingling sensation. No, it was more like pain, pain in his cheek. Someone was slapping him across the face.
"Welcome back sleeping beauty." He heard a voice with a Mid-West accent say as he shook his head to try and clear it. His vision was blurred and he blinked to bring it back into focus. There were three figures standing in front of him. He moved his head around and saw four more figures in the room. Greaves had a throbbing headache and he felt nauseous but his sight righted itself.
He was tied to a chair, with his hands behind his back, in one of the offices in the Police Department. Two of the men in front of him were grinning – hate filled malevolent grins. The other just looked mean. Greaves was suddenly very frightened.
"Now that you're awake," said the man in the middle. "Maybe we should introduce ourselves." He had short brown hair, acne and really bad teeth, he was probably in his late twenties. The man to his left was around six-five in height with close cropped hair, a moustache and the physique of someone who worked out a lot. He was the oldest, probably in his mid-thirties. The other man in front of Greaves looked Hispanic, he had black hair and swarthy skin.
"Now we all," said Acne, "are from the Neo-Clergy. Good, honest God fearing folk, and we don't take that kindly to you UTN motherfuckers riding into our town and attempting to massacre our women and children like you did in Montana. So you got exactly five seconds to tell me what you're planning on doing here, or I can't be held responsible for what's going to happen to you."
Greaves cleared his throat. "Honestly," he said. "I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about."
"Is the wrong answer," shouted Acne like he was some game show host. "So Jed here is going to have a little play with you. Then we'll see if you feel more like talking to us. Show him your toys Jed."
The guy with the moustache pulled out what looked like a big car battery, with a handle and two jump leads attached.
"Now Jed here," said Acne. "Used to wear a badge and work in these very offices keeping the streets clean from scum like you. So he knows a thing or two about getting pissants to talk, ain't that right Jed?"
"Sure is Billy Joe."
"How many volts," said Billy Joe. "Can you get out of that machine of yours?"
"'Bout five thousand. Maybe even ten if I work her hard."
"Maybe even ten-thousand volts. Now am I right in thinking that would hurt if you were to attach those jump leads to a part of someone's body? Say maybe their nuts?"
"It'd hurt like a motherfucker Billy Joe. Hurt like a motherfucker."
"Look," said Greaves, failing to keep the panic out of his voice. "This is ridiculous. I don't know what you want from me but you've got the wrong person. I was just passing through that's all. And the Neo-Clergy, aren't they completely defunct?"
"Completely defunct. Do you hear that Chico?" Billy Joe said to the Hispanic guy. "Completely defunct, do you like them fancy words he's using?"
Chico shook his head. "No sir."
"Me neither. And for your information the Neo-Clergy is getting stronger and stronger everyday, in spite of you and your UTN buddies trying to slaughter us all."
"I'm not from the UTN. I don't even know what the UTN is."
"Then why are you travelling with that Redskin bitch huh?" said Billy Joe. "Answer me that. What you doing in them offices underground that not even Jed here's ever heard about."
"We're just scavs. We were just passing through, thought we'd look for something we could sell. That girl, she's just someone we picked up."
"You know," said Billy Joe. "I'm liking your answers less and less. We been watching you from the moment you hit town boy. Since when do scavs drive a fancy motor home like yours, huh? Since when do scavs break into secret buildings no-one knows about and settle down to play on a computer when, to the best of my knowledge, they're as rare as hen's teeth. You're up to something. Now I've tried to find out the nice way, but you're just not playing ball. So you brought this on yourself. You remember that when you're crying and screaming for your mama."
Jed unbuckled Greaves' belt and yanked down his trousers. His genitals shrank back in on themselves.
"Well now," said Billy Joe with a filthy laugh. "They sure don't call you Moby Dick back home do they? You sure we got enough to work with Jed?"
"This'll do," Jed grunted.
"No wait," said Greaves. "Please don't do this. I'm begging you please don't do it. There's been a mistake. A terrible mistake. Please don't, please, AAAHHH!"
Jed applied the jump lead clips to Greaves' testicles. The cold metal teeth bit into his balls, sending shooting pains right up into his abdomen.
"Think that hurts do you?" said Billy Joe. "Trust me you haven't felt pain yet."
Jed connected the leads to the battery. Greaves felt the burning heat from the clips first, charring his flesh. He screamed but that wasn't the worst of it.
Seven thousand volts shot through his body. It felt like someone had punched him in the nuts. But the punch travelled right through his whole frame, pounding every molecule in his body on the way. His spine arced and his muscles went into spasm as he writhed and fought the ropes that held him to the chair.
Jed flicked a switch and Greaves slumped back down, whimpering and sobbing. His legs were jerking and twitching. He struggled for breath, but his chest wouldn't move properly, his lungs wouldn't inflate, none of his body would do what he told it.
"Oh God," he said eventually. "Oh God please, please stop this."
"Sorry partner," said Billy Joe. "But I don't think you've had enough yet. He had enough yet Jed?"
"No sir," said Jed and fired it up again.
Another surge tore through Greaves' body. Stronger, more excruciating. The pressure was intolerable. He felt it trying to push its way out of his skull. His eyeballs strained as though they were going to pop out of his sockets. His mouth filled with blood. He'd bitten his tongue off. Oh God he had, he'd bitten it clean off. And then there was the smell, burnt flesh. His flesh.
Greaves dropped back into the chair. Had it stopped? He couldn't tell. The leads weren't connected any more. It must have stopped but it didn't feel like it had. His whole body quivered. His muscles were in knots. He wanted to scream. He wanted to vomit. He wanted his mother to put her arms around him and kiss it all better. Oh God mother, look what they've done. Look what they've done to me.
"You ready to talk now friend?" said Chico in a soft voice. He put his arm around Greaves. "It's the only way to make 'em stop."
Greaves nodded his head. Blood spilled out of his mouth. He tried to find his breath. What about his tongue? If he'd bitten it off he couldn't talk. If he couldn't talk they'd do it again. Oh God please not again! He'd have to tell them about his tongue. But how could he tell them without a tongue. Oh God no, oh please!
Turns out he hadn't bitten it off, just bitten a chunk out of it. It hurt like hell. Every bit of him hurt like hell. Even his eyelashes and his toenails throbbed and ached. He drew a breath and it came out like a sob. Every time he breathed out he cried harder.
"I'm sorry," he said as the snot dripped off his nose and the blood ran down his chin. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
"That's okay," said Chico gently rubbing his back. "You take your time. Now, what were you and your UTN buddies doing down in them offices?"
"I was… I was…" Greaves swallowed and wished he hadn't. His throat was on fire. He couldn't talk. It hurt too much. He had to talk or they'd hurt him more. "I was l-l-look… ing… at… pl-plans."
"Plans for what? Some building you want to blow up?"
Greaves shook his head. "Plans… for a… lab-lab-laboratory."
"A laboratory?" said Billy Joe. "What the fuck would you know about a laboratory?"
"I'm – I'm a… scientist. I used to work with… with the men in this laboratory, back before… back before The Cull."
"And why were you looking at these plans?" said Chico. "What's in this laboratory?"
"A virus. A special Doomsday Virus."
"And what's so special about it?"
"There's no other virus like it. You can programme it, like a computer. You can programme it so that it only kills the people you want it to kill. It's the ultimate biological weapon."
"And where is this laboratory?" said Chico. "Is it here in Torrington?"
"No. It's in Montana. Near the Little Bighorn. What used to be the river, before it dried up."
"Little Bighorn," said Billy Joe. "Ain't that where Custer killed all them redskins?"
"No," said Chico. "They killed him and all his men. It was another massacre."
"That figures," said Billy Joe. "That's why them fucking Injuns would hide it there."
"It isn't the Native Americans who've hidden it," said Greaves. He felt like a schoolboy, desperate to please his teachers with the right answers. "It's a powerful, secret organisation. They existed before The Cull and they're still around."
"And you planned to steal the virus from them," said Chico. "Is that right?"
Greaves nodded his head, then hung it in shame.
"You wanted to wipe out every white man didn't you?" said Jed. The veins were throbbing in his temples. "You wanted to kill every decent Christian man, woman and child so you could have the whole country to your stinking heathen selves. Isn't that right? Isn't it! Why you sick fucks. You make me want to puke."
Jed flew at Greaves. He swung his right arm in a powerful upper cut. It smacked into Greaves' face and he felt the chair actually leave the ground with the force of the punch. Two teeth flew out of his mouth and he landed on his back. Tiny gold stars reverberated inside his head and he lost consciousness again.
Greaves was not in a good shape when they brought him back. His face was covered in blood. His trousers were around his ankles and his loins were blackened and burned. This was not the work of men who knew what they were doing, it was the work of amateurs.
Cortez thought them beneath contempt.
"You next big guy," said the one whose face was covered in blemishes. The man with the moustache tied Greaves to bars of the cell where Linda and Anna were also bound.
There were two other men with them. They both wore white robes with the red circle that marked them out as Neo-Clergy soldiers. They carried pump-action shotguns that they stuck in Cortez's face as the blemished one untied his hands from the bars but left them bound together.
"You need a hand there Billy Joe?" said the moustached one.
"Got it covered thanks Jed. Now big feller, up on your feet, and don't try nothing stupid. These boys here got awful itchy trigger fingers."
Cortez stood slowly. His legs tingled after sitting down for so long.
"This way," said Billy Joe and led him into the offices.
There were three other men waiting there. Billy Joe and Jed greeted one of them as Chico. Cortez assessed the situation. There was a chair in the centre of the room. That's where they had worked Greaves over and in the corner was the electrical machine they had used.
"Now sit yourself down real slow in that chair there," said Billy Joe. "Jed here's going to untie your hands and tie them behind you. If you even look as though you're going to resist, you got six armed men here who will put bullets in you."
Just as Cortez had thought, amateurs. Rank amateurs.
Cortez held his bound hands up close to his chest so Jed had to lean in to untie him. He was flanked on both sides by Neo-Clergy soldiers aiming their weapons at his head. Cortez pressed his wrists together to make them more difficult to untie and to appear more securely fastened than they actually were. His hands were free before Jed realised it. Cortez jumped on this split-second advantage.
He took hold of Jed's shirt and pulled him off balance. Then he grabbed both shotgun barrels and pulled them hard. He aimed one at the soldier on his right and one at Jed's head.
Both weapons went off as the soldier's fingers pulled against their triggers. The right shotgun unloaded both barrels into Jed's skull. The cartridges took off most of his face before tearing into the gut of the soldier on Cortez's left. That soldier's shotgun unloaded only one barrel into the chest of the soldier on Cortez's right. He was sent spinning backwards, robes on fire and a big hole in his chest.
Jed fell forward and dropped half his brains into Cortez's lap. The soldier on his left doubled over in pain clutching the back of the chair. Cortez slipped Jed's knife out of its sheath with his left hand and kicked him off. Then he stood and took hold of the gut-shot soldier's shotgun with his right hand, catching hold of the soldier from behind and putting the man between him and the other four armed men as he backed towards the door.
Finally they reacted. Most of their shots went wide as Cortez backed out of the room, Two shots thudded into the soldier he was using as a shield. The man screamed as they did, cursing his comrades.
As he got to the door Cortez fired the shotgun, winging another robed soldier. The man fell to ground screaming. Cortez jammed Jed's knife into the throat of the soldier he was holding then sliced outwards cutting through tendons, flesh and arteries. Blood spattered Chico, Billy Joe and the other soldier and they leaped backwards. This gave Cortez time to get into the corridor.
He stepped out and pressed himself flat against the wall. Billy Joe poked his head out of the room, looked up and down the passage, and Cortez drove Jed's knife right into his left eyeball. Billie Joe's face registered surprise and horror, then he fell back through the door and died from the six inches of sharpened steel that had punctured his brain. That would make the other three guys in the room think twice before leaving.
Cortez edged along the wall with the shotgun trained on the doorway. He was heading back to the cells. He kicked open a door with a broken safety glass window and stopped for a second to pick a shard of glass out of the broken wire.
Arriving back at the cells Cortez used the glass to cut through the rope that held Linda to the bars.
"I expected you sooner," she said. "You run into trouble?"
"Nothing too bad. It's strictly amateur night back there."
"You bring any weapons?"
Cortez held up the shotgun and the shard of glass. "Just these."
"Do I get to the play with the big one?" Cortez shook his head and tossed her the shard of glass. "Oh you're a cheap date." Linda said.
Cortez held his finger to his lips to silence her and motioned her to follow him. Greaves moaned in pain.
They walked up the corridor and stood either side of the door to the cells, their backs to the wall. They heard footsteps down the corridor and shouted directions, often conflicting. Linda looked wryly at Cortez. He nodded. She knew he was right.
The two robed soldiers burst into the cells first. The second was the one Cortez had winged. He was holding his shotgun in his right hand, which hung limply down at his side. He held his wounded shoulder with his left hand. Linda came up behind him, lifted his elbow with her left hand and jammed the shard of glass into his chest with her right. The man dropped to his knees and fell forward, driving the tip of the shard right through his body and out of his back.
Before his comrade had time to turn round, Cortez unloaded the remaining shotgun cartridge into the back of his head, blowing his face and brains all over the floor.
The footsteps stopped then went back up the corridor. Cortez glanced round to see Chico beating a hasty retreat.
Linda and Cortez pursued him up the corridor. When they got to the office a window was open and there was no sign of the man. They heard a motorbike start up and Cortez approached the window with care. He saw Chico speeding away.
"You were right about amateur hour," said Linda. "How'd these jokers get the drop on us in the first place?"
"One lucky punch can sometimes turn a fight. You should see how the others are doing. I'll look around for our things."
Cortez found their weapons and Greaves' great coat and carried them back to the cells.
Anna was free when he got there and Linda was helping Greaves pull his trousers back up. He was wincing and moaning from the pain. He looked like he'd been burned pretty bad.
Greaves looked up at the sound of pills rattling in his great coat. "I told them about the Doomsday Virus," he said. "I told them where to find it. I told them everything. Except about Anna. I didn't mention Anna." Then he burst into tears.
Linda put her arm around him and pulled him to her breast. "There, there. Come to mama."
Greaves put his arms around her waist and curled into her like a little boy. "Mommy, I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I just couldn't take the pain. I'm sorry. I just couldn't take it."
"That's alright. You get it all out. You're safe now. They can't hurt you anymore. You have a good cry about it."
Greaves continued to sob and Linda comforted him. Cortez had known of several men who used to cry on whores once they had come. Linda had probably comforted clients this way a hundred times before. It was obviously nothing new to her.
But for a few minutes it almost made Cortez like her.