The Running Free part 4
They- Jem
Rona sat in a chair with her feet dangling over the arm. She leaned over to pick up a fax that had come through a few minutes ago. She glanced at the name and called up the account number. It didn’t ring any bells until she got to the mission objective. There wasn’t one. She punched a few numbers on the keyboard and pulled up another section of the file. The gate activity was strange. It was noted as starting when the member was very young, yet the log was empty. Though this account member was a gate opener, she had opened no gates recently. No completed missions, no failed missions. There were no director notations on the account. At all. That in itself was a red flag. Every account had a director step in at some point or it wouldn’t be an account. It would never come across the regional system unless a local director okayed it. Maybe it was just a dummy account and someone was testing a gate?
She decided to look in on the minutes before the fax since none of the notes before that made sense. Rona rotated her neck on her shoulders and crossed her legs. Some of these requests came after intense situations. Even though they just watched the scene unfold, sometimes request reviews could be shocking. She had never dealt with a toughy on her own. She was sort of looking forward to it. She switched on the phone’s voicemail, turned on the little light outside of her door, shut it, and touched the monitor.
She suddenly stood in a cell of what was obviously a poorly kept prison. She peered at the wall closest to her. It was covered in tiny flowers. Each one exactly the same as the others. Tiny brick red flowers. There was writing behind the flowers. Rona leaned closer but couldn’t really make out any of the words. The flowers were intensely bright. They made it hard to focus on the individual letters. Perhaps it was written in a different language.
Rona turned toward the bed when she heard a moan. A skinny girl maybe late teens, early twenties lay under a thin blanket coated with grime and soaked with sweat. Shivering, the girl threw it on the floor. She rose unsteadily to her feet. She would not stay in this place much longer.
The world swayed as she hobbled to the bars a few feet in front of her. She took several deep breaths to combat the nausea. She wasn’t sure what they’d doped her with now but it was worse than the last batch. Her head was pounding. Her muscles trembled just with the effort of standing.
The despair of the prisoners accosted each of her senses. Every surface of the damp cell radiated with it. The smell of it wafting by made both the girl and Rona’s nostrils flare. The wails of it stabbed their eardrums. Rona could taste it on her tongue each time the girl tried to swallow the bile that rose in her throat. It was always strange to feel what was going on in someone else’s body.
‘At least I don’t have to see it anymore,’ the girl thought and laughed a little hysterically. How the hell was she going to blow this popsicle stand without the use of her eyes? What had they done to her?
She pushed with all her strength against the bars. Leaned her head against them wearily when they didn’t budge. She’d never felt so weak in her entire life. When she first got herself thrown in here, the bars had some give. They would bend just slightly when she tried them. The thought that it would be wise to know this at a more opportune moment had gone out the window with the first series of tests. Not that there was actually a window anywhere in this entire prison.
“It’s time,” someone whispered. “They’re coming.” Rona looked around but saw no one.
“I know,” the girl said. They always came around shortly after she woke up. She figured it was to see how quickly the drugs wore off. Each time it took longer. Well, it felt like it took longer. There really was no way for her to judge the passing of time. She etched her leg with a tiny sliver of steel each time they brought her back to her cell. Each shaving left just a tiny ridge after the skin healed over it.
Four. Four times she’d been dosed with a massive amount of drugs. The way it affected her system, she couldn’t even imagine what it would do to a human being. She couldn’t handle it anymore. It must have been weeks since she’d last seen land. Or felt a cool breeze on her skin. Or heard her old man’s voice.
She heard boots on the grating of the floor just a cell away. Letting go of the bars, she swayed and tumbled to the floor. The sickly groan was exaggerated but not completely fake.
The guard paused at her cell door. She could hear him blow the air out of his mouth in frustration. The faint click as he depressed a button on his radio. “Subject 77G is down again.”
“On my way,” was the only response. Facing away from the guard, she smiled weakly. Party time.
The guard waited for his back up to arrive before opening the cell door. She may look sick but he’d seen what some of these ‘sick’ prisoners could do. The damage they could inflict.
“Looks like she got a pretty good dose, man.” The second guard noted. His uniform matched the first’s. She smiled. She liked when things matched.
“She always does,” the first guard replied.
“Still, she should be awake by now. It’s always the little ones they put through the most go se.”
They rolled her over just to make sure she was really out. The first guard kicked her none too gently in the ribs. The air whooshed out of her lungs. She whimpered softly and bit the inside of her lip to keep from screaming. ‘What a shit,’ the girl thought. Rona agreed.
“Hey,” the second guard said. “Let’s just get her to the infirmary. Man, you’re such a dick.”
“Whatever,” the shit bent and hefted her upper body. The second lifted her feet and together they plopped her onto a gurney. They wheeled her down the hallway toward the infirmary. She kept her ears open and her mouth shut. She knew where they were just by the sounds. The first time she’d woken up, the drugs had affected her strangely. They’d wheeled her to the infirmary under heavy guard. Now, it was just the two.
They thought she was docile now. Tame like the others. She held back the next hysterical bubble of laughter. It might tip them off if she started laughing like a mad woman.
They rolled past the heavy doors that led into the depths of the prison. She listened to them clang shut. Almost there. Two more hallways.
There. She felt them. They were ready. She could do this. “All it takes is faith and trust,” someone whispered. Rona spun around to check the hallway as she followed along. There was no one else about.
“And a little bit of pixie dust,” the girl finished, sitting up in the gurney. An alarm sounded somewhere in the distance that had nothing to do with her.
“Fuckers,” Rona whispered. Now that she concentrated, she could feel them attacking the other side of the fort. The side that housed the guards. The girl’s head turned in Rona’s direction. Never before had anyone acknowledged her presence in a review. It was creepy. Chills went up her spine and her arms broke out in goose bumps.
The guards stopped walking. Everything slowed down. The girl heard the shit going for his gun. Reaching behind her head she grabbed his wrist. Couldn’t have gunfire calling more guards. She squeezed until she felt him drop the gun. Then she punched him in the face with his own fist. She heard him topple to the floor with a muffled oomph.
The second cleared leather faster once he realized what was happening. She threw herself over the side of the bed and landed ass first on the hard metal grating of the floor. It knocked the air from her lungs. For a second she didn’t move. He didn’t fire his gun because all he’d seen was a blur of movement. There she sat on the bed and then the bed was empty. He hadn’t even blinked.
Using just her arms on the floor she spun her legs around and knocked him off his feet. She crawled forward and quickly grabbed one of the two discarded guns. “Left,” the other voice whispered. The girl leaned far to her left and picked up the second gun. Lucky for her, she could smell the oil and the gunpowder. She held his gun in his face. She heard his jaw drop in surprise.
“They- they said you were blind now,” he stammered.
“They lied,” she lied. One handed she popped the clip out of the shit’s gun. She felt along the edge of it, counting bullets as she went. “Unbuckle your holster.”
“No. I can’t give up my gun.”
She pulled back the hammer of the shit’s gun. “I’m trying to make this easier on you,” she told him brandishing the gun a little too close for comfort. He hastily unbuckled the belt and held it out to her. “Put it on me.” He leaned forward and wrapped the belt around her waist. Cinched as tight as it would go, it still rode very low on her hips. If she weren’t careful, it would fall off. She put the shit’s gun in the holster and kept the second’s trained on him.
“Just don’t try anything, alright?” She heard his neck creak and could only assume he was nodding yes. A wave of nausea rolled over her. She blew out a breath that moved the curls around her face. She stood as confidently as possible, not grabbing the gurney until she was on her feet.
“Now,” she told the second. “Pick up the shit and put him here.” He didn’t ask questions this time. She thought a small prayer of thanks. She hopped onto the edge of the gurney beside the shit. “Now, take us to the morgue.”
“The morgue?” He expected her to go straight for the shuttle bay. She gestured in the direction of the morgue with the gun. He stopped asking questions and wheeled the gurney back the way they’d come. She could feel the dead. They were as ready as she was to get off this hunk of metal.
The doors softly whooshed shut behind them. She hopped heavily off the gurney. When everything stopped swaying, she smashed the second on the head with the butt of his gun. He crumpled to the floor. She pushed the shit off the gurney. Then she staggered across the room to the first metal drawer that contained a body. She pulled it open.
The girl couldn’t see him in the traditional sense of the word, but she could see him. He was a young dark skinned guy that had obviously died of starvation. She whispered that she was sorry for what she was about to do. Then, with a grunt, shoved him out of the drawer onto the floor. There was no way she could carry even his tiny body. She opened the next two drawers following the same process. A tall woman who still had blood coating half of her face and a middle-aged bald man fell in a grotesque pileup.
She went back to the shit and gropingly searched the front of his jacket. The last time she had seen him, he had a large knife tucked casually in a pocket. Her clumsy fingers finally found it. She wasted no time slashing the shit’s throat. He gurgled some but made no movement that indicated he was waking. As she tucked the knife in the holster, her stomach cramped violently. She fell to her knees beside the shit. She caught herself by placing a hand in the pool of blood next to his head, slipped a bit, and ended up coated almost to her elbow in blood.
She managed to pull herself to her feet once more. She staggered in a circle around the skinny carcasses, sprinkling the shit’s blood on the floor as she went. The air in the room grew heavy as she walked. When she got back to the other side of the gurney, she breathed a great sigh and fell to her knees. Rona still stood near the entrance. The hair on her neck and arms stood on end.
Isla willed the trio awake. She could feel the power from the shit’s death flowing through her. She focused all that energy toward the three corpses on the floor. “Come on, dudes,” she whispered aloud. “Come on. Wake up.”
She knelt between the three corpses and drew something on the ground with the blood. Then she touched the man’s forehead, leaving a smear of blood. “Come on.” She was mumbling again. Rona thought it was a prayer of some kind. She didn’t recognize the language. She wasn’t sure if she couldn’t recognize it because of the girl’s obvious illness or because it was a language she didn’t know.
It was all the girl could do to kneel beside the tiny man and not pass out. Something was wrong. She’d never taken so long to recuperate. Her senses should be back online by now. Before they’d begun drugging her, she’d never been truly sick a day in her life.
Rona tilted her head and watched as the man’s jaw clicked. He licked the shit’s blood off the hand she offered him. His mouth was moving but no sound was coming out. “Oh, thank you.” She sat cross-legged on the floor. Tears of exhaustion rolled down her face. Knowing that they were running out of time, she finally touched the man’s hand. He blinked and rolled his eyes up to meet hers.
She reached up to smear more of the shit’s blood on her hands. Repeated the process with the tall woman and the bald man. Each woke and stared vacantly at her once their foreheads were marked similarly to the first.
Rona stepped closer. She couldn’t see the design the girl had drawn on the floor. She held her hand up above the circle the shit’s blood formed. She pushed against the invisible wall keeping her out. When it began to tingle she drew back.
The girl’s eyes widened. Her terrified gaze met Rona’s. Her breathing grew ragged. She could see a shadow outside of the circle.
“Stand up,” she whispered. They stood. “Jackson, please be asleep. Jackson?” she asked. Rona gasped. Then the tiny man came forward, knelt beside her, and hugged her. She breathed deeply to take in his scent. With a stifled sob, she leaned against the body Jackson had chosen. His arms wrapped around her tightly. He could feel her ribs and the bones in her back.
“We need to get a move on, Isla,” he advised. She nodded. She felt worse than she’d felt just a few moments ago.
“Something’s not okay,” she continued to whisper. “There’s someone outside the circle.” The tiny man’s head turned. He looked directly at Rona.
“It’s probably just a reviewer,” he patted her hair. “Don’t worry about it. We aren’t going to make any requests.”
“Ok but I’m- not feeling- right.” She turned her head away from him and dry heaved. There was nothing in her to throw up. Jackson picked her up. He knelt beside the shit and coated his hand in blood as Isla had before. He held it up to her mouth.
“You need some nourishment. You’re burning up,” he told her. “This will have to do for now.”
“No,” she said weakly. She turned her head away from the still warm blood. “That dude was a total douche bag.” Jackson sighed and wiped the tiny man’s hand on the shit’s uniform jacket. They didn’t match quite as well with the shit covered in blood.
“You. Come here,” he instructed the tall woman. Gently he deposited Isla in her arms. He unbuckled the holster and wrapped it around the tiny man’s waist. He drew one of the guns and made sure the safety was off. He laid the gun in Isla’s lap. Put her hand on it so she’d know where it was. Even in her confusion her hand gripped the gun. It seemed to calm her some.
Zombies were so handy. Isla giggled. Rona noticed that eyes that had only been milky were now glassy as well. A sheen of sweat covered the girl’s face. Just a few more moments and they’d be on their way. She was blacking out. Losing time.
“Isla, wake up.” he put his palm on her forehead. She turned her head in his direction but her eyes were still obviously useless. “Sis, you have to tell them to listen to me before we can leave the circle.”
“You two, listen to him now,” she whispered. The two flowers shifted their gazes from Isla to the tiny man that Jackson was controlling.
“You’re gonna be ok, hun. You’re doin’ good. Almost done,” Jackson said. “Protect her,” he told the tall woman. Then ordered both to follow him.
He instructed the tall woman to kneel just inside the circle. Isla reached to break it. She groaned in pain as her hand wiped away the shit’s blood. Rona felt the magic whoosh away. She quickly sidestepped to see what was drawn with the blood.
A tiny four leafed flower. Rona imagined it would be an exact replica of the flowers on the cell wall if it had a few months to dry. The tiny man mucked up the drawings with his foot.
He grabbed a palm unit off the desk and ordered up Isla’s records. He wouldn’t be able to understand them but hopefully one of the crew would. Once they were finished saving to the palm, he walked back over to the tall woman. He continued to whisper words of encouragement as he led the way from the morgue. They were just minutes from escape.
This section of the prison was now abandoned. All the guards hightailed it to the Fucker action as soon as it began. They could care less about some malnourished prisoner escaping when their own barracks were being attacked.
Jackson hated the Fuckers but felt bad leaving the guards. Isla mumbled something unintelligible and it strengthened his resolve. All the guards knew what was going on in this prison. They had made their own decisions and he couldn’t mourn them with Isla in the grips of a drug-induced delirium.
The made it to the stable without incident. Three zombies, their invalid creator, and Rona walked up to a loaded medical transport and left the prison as though it was a scheduled departure. The Fuckers surrounding the fort’s prison did not pause their relentless attack. The only really strange thing was what each of the five people saw.
An office parking lot for the bald man. A loaded medical van for the tall woman. An old timey fort for Rona. The tiny man saw it all. And who knew what Isla was seeing? She was chatting to herself in another language now.
The tall woman drove while Jackson checked the coordinates for the nearest village. He grimaced when he realized how close they were to Ft. Mill. Immediately, he started searching for nearby gates. They would need to leave as quickly as possible. As soon as the battle ended there would be an all points bulletin sent to the nearest directors.
The tiny man continued tapping at the screen. Rona leaned to look over his shoulder. She couldn’t make out any words on the screen. All she could see was a picture of a tiny bright pink flower. “What the fuck is the deal with these flowers?”
Isla gasped in a great gulp of air. “Pups,” she reached toward the tiny man. “Pups Jackson, pups.” Her eyes fluttered closed again. Isla took another violent gulp of air, sat up in the seat. Her eyes flew open.
Isla reached out to Jackson. “There are pups in Ft. Mill! Oh, God! Pups and kittens!”
Jackson rushed to her side and shushed her. He smoothed the hair back from her forehead and clasped her face in his hands. “Isla? Isla, honey, calm down. I’ll get help. Just rest.”
Isla grabbed his fingertips. “Promise it’s Ft. Mill. The pups and the kittens, Jackson. Take me to Angus.” Her skin was feverish and no longer sweaty. This worried him more than the sweat had. He had no idea what she was talking about, but he’d take her where she recommended. If for nothing else than the fact that it was near.
Isla lay back in the tall woman’s arms. “First a pup. Then a kitten. They say you can’t be both but if the seed is watered enough, if the fertilizer’s right…” she trailed off. She was drifting again. Not aware of her surroundings. Jackson sighed and went back to his search for transport. “Gus. Gus. Gus,” she chanted.
“The growing gets tough, the tough get growing,” Isla giggled softly. She could see that girl. That girl where a girl shouldn’t be. She reached out with shaky fingers and grabbed Rona’s arm. Both of them shrieked. Isla jerked violently and doubled over on the back seat of the van.
Rona felt a sensation of falling and suddenly she was back at her desk. She wasn’t sure which director should get the request. The account didn’t even have an origination point. The girl had mentioned Ft. Mill several times. Perhaps she should give their director a call. She looked for Ft. Mill in the information bank. Dialed the number provided.
After several rings, she got a voicemail. She left her name and office number. Asked that the director call her about some abnormal gate entries on an account. Then she fired off an email to her supervisor.