Surviving the Dead 03: Warrior Within (32 page)

Leaning my back against the wall, I began experimenting. At first, it seemed impossible. My arms just weren’t long enough. But then I realized that I was holding my back too straight, and began working on relaxing it. After about an hour of stretching, pushing myself a little further each time, I managed to get my wrists halfway down my buttocks. Finally, by stepping away from the wall, blowing out all the air from my lungs, and hunching over as quickly as I could while keeping my elbows bowed outward, I finally got the cuffs over my hips and down to my thighs. From there, it was a simple matter of lying down on my side and working my feet through. Now that I could use my hands again, I relieved myself in the bucket, and then sat down in a corner to ponder my next move.

My options were pretty limited. Without my lock-pick, there was no way I was getting out of my cell, not that it would have done me any good. There was still the tunnel entrance to deal with, and even if I did somehow manage to sneak my way through, the Legion would be all over me before I made it halfway to the warehouse exit.

No, my best option for the moment was to simply play along. Grayson Morrow had told me what to expect from this part of the recruiting process, and although I wasn’t looking forward to it, knowing what lay ahead of me made it easier to deal with. It was going to suck, there was no doubt about that, but the Legion needed troops. If I could stay strong and gut it out, I could soon find myself in a position to deal some serious damage to these assholes. 

“All right then, motherfuckers,” I whispered into the darkness. “Do your worst.”

The first couple of days went by quietly. At least I think it was two days, my only way of gauging the passage of time was to fall asleep and wake up again.

When I was awake, I stretched, did some light exercises, and practiced shifting my cuffs under my feet, back to front. Moving them back was easy enough, but getting them in front of me was still a pain. I kept practicing and got a little better at it each time, slowly building up flexibility. Other than that, pacing my cell and singing to myself were my only distractions.

No one brought me any food or water during that time. The hunger didn’t bother me too much; I had gone hungry plenty of times. The thirst, however, quickly became a problem. My throat went dry, my lips felt like sandpaper, and the simple acts of blinking and swallowing became painful endeavors. By the end of the second day, I had stopped exercising and my throat was too parched to talk, much less sing. A throbbing started in the back of my head, low and faint at first, then growing and spreading until it felt like someone had opened up my skull and was pounding directly on my brain with a ball-peen hammer.

Occasionally, I heard voices drifting to me through the darkness and the pain, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Some of them had the brash, arrogant tone of Legion troops, while others were more subdued, whispering, and hesitant, as though afraid someone would hear them. I could hear their chains clinking as they were marched back and forth, and the frequent clap of something striking bare flesh. I tried to count how many of them there were, but the rattling of chains and stir of voices was too indistinct.

Finally, right about the time I was beginning to think my captors had forgotten about me, I heard footsteps approaching in the corridor. I shifted my handcuffs to my back, and waited. A lantern shone through the bars to my cell, revealing the shapes of three men standing beyond, one of them rattling a key in the lock.

“Rise and shine, maggot,” the one with the lantern said. I recognized him; he was one of the men who had dragged me down here in the first place.

I worked what little moisture into my mouth that I could manage, and tried to talk. On the first attempt, it came out as a croak.

The Russian stepped in behind him and leaned over, a hand poised behind his ear. “Sorry, what you are saying?”

The two troops behind him laughed. Whether at his comment, or his broken English, I wasn’t sure. Dimly, I noticed that all three men were carrying something. The objects were long and slender, kind of like Grabovsky’s. …

Shit. Not good.

“Don’t suppose any of you fellas could spare some water, could you?” I said, my voice as rough as broken glass.

“Sure, here you go.” The Russian pulled a bottle from his pocket, and tossed it down in front of me. “Go ahead, drink up.”

More laughter. Evidently, they didn’t know that I could move my cuffs around to the front. Just as I thought that, one of them pointed at the waste bucket in the corner.

“Hey, guys, look at that.”

The Russian stepped over and looked at it. His smile vanished, and he turned a scowl at me. In the tepid light, I noticed that he had pale gray eyes, and his nose looked to have been broken at least twice. “How is it that you are to be doing this?”

“Wanna see?” I asked, and stood up. The three of them eased back a step.

It had occurred to me that they might question how I could use the bucket with my hands bound behind my back, so in preparation, I had loosened my belt a notch so that I could shimmy my pants down by tugging at the waistband. I stepped into the circle of light and demonstrated. The Russian chuckled.

“You are not being so stupid as most maggots. At least you are knowing better than to shit yourself,” he said, as I pulled my pants up.

Lantern-Man placed the aforementioned device in a corner and stepped forward, brandishing his cane. “Can we get this show on the road? I have to be on watch in ten minutes.”

“Fine, fine,” the Russian said. He pointed his cane at me. “You see, we are having to punish you. You pushed my friend Mike to the ground. He is being stupid little shit, but is loyal, too. This is being a crime that we must not be letting pass.”

“Listen, all I did was-”

I was interrupted by a cane, wielded by the third man, cracking against the side of my face. Burning pain shot through my skull, nearly dropping me to my knees.

“You are not to be speaking without permission,” the Russian explained, his voice chiding, as though I were an unruly child.

It was in that moment that I knew, not thought, or felt, but knew, deep down in my bones, that I was going to kill that son of a bitch. Somehow, some way, I was going to get the Russian alone, and I was going to gut him like a fish. When I could open my eyes again, the three of them had surrounded me. The Russian looked at the other two men, smiled, and made an open-handed gesture in my direction.

They went to work.

I didn’t try to fight them, it wouldn’t have done me any good. I would only have earned myself an even worse beating.

The first few blows fell on my back and shoulders, and I let myself collapse. They kept at it, the canes lashing into my flesh like fiery rain, seeming to hit from everywhere at once. They tore into my arms, and my legs, and my back. A few blows caught me in the head, but only a few. They didn’t punch or kick me but, to be honest, I might have preferred that. The pain from each welt continued long after the blow had landed. Finally, when it felt like my whole body was
engulfed in flames, and I was just about to give in to the urge to scream, the Russian’s voice cut through the haze.

“That is being enough.” His tone was uninterested, almost bored.

Rough hands sat me up, and unlocked my handcuffs. They wrenched my arms back in front of me and locked them again.

“There. Now you can to be pissing like a man again.” The Russian chuckled. “The water is being yours. You should drink it slowly.”

He tilted my face up by placing his cane under my chin. “So. Is there anything you would be liking to say? I am giving you my permission.”

“Just one question,” I croaked.

“
Da
?”

“What’s your name?”

He tilted his head quizzically. “Why are you to be wanting this?”

So I know what to call you when I tear your spine out through your mouth
.

“So I can think of you as something other than ‘The Russian.’ ”

He stared for a moment longer, then threw his head back and laughed. The other two men chuckled nervously.

“I am to be liking you,” he said. “Perhaps you will not to be dying so quickly.”

He leaned down at the waist and lowered his voice. “Vasily. Vasily Kasikov. I am being wolf among dogs, maggot. If you want to live, you are not to be forgetting this.
Da
?”

With that, he turned on his heel and left, motioning for the other two men to follow. The door clanged shut, and the lock clattered into place. I slumped over onto my side and stayed that way for a long time.

*****

They brought me more water, two bottles a day I think. But it was another four days before they fed me. In the meantime, I got no less than two beatings a day. Sometimes three or four.

I got to know a few of the Legion troops that way. There were six of them, rotating in and out. Rat-Face was never one of them. Maybe Kasikov was afraid of what he might do if left alone with me. Or maybe it was the other way around, maybe he was afraid of what I might do to Rat-Face. If that was the case, then he was right to be worried.

The beatings became a routine. First would come the footsteps, then the light filtering through the door, and finally the jangling of the keys. The people carrying out the beatings did so with far less ceremony than the first group had. Two men would come in, order me to stand up, and then proceed to cane the living shit out of me. Once done, they would exit the cell and lock it behind them, usually without saying a word. Sometimes they would replace my waste bucket. Very considerate of them.

If I didn’t know what was going on, my sanity might very likely have fractured. The only thing keeping me stable was the knowledge that this wouldn’t go on forever. That sooner or later, they would drag me off somewhere to dig tunnels for them. What they were doing now, the isolation, the starvation, and the beatings, it was just a way to break down my resolve. To frighten me, and cow me into obedience. It certainly seemed to have worked on other people.

My first Legion-provided meal came at the end of my seventh day of captivity. It was some kind of stringy, roasted meat with boiled potatoes and a big bottle of water. I wolfed it down like it was filet mignon. There wasn’t much of it, but after going on an empty stomach for a full week, I was in heaven.

I didn’t realize until I had some food in my belly, and plenty of water to drink, just how foggy my mind had been for the last few days. After eating, the haze began to lift, and I could think clearly again.

From what Morrow had told me, I should expect another test sometime in the near future. Probably when they took me down into what the Legion called “the mines.” Not that they were actually digging up precious minerals, or anything like that. It was just what everyone called them. A phrase someone had coined.

Sitting there, alone in the darkness, I thought of Allison. I wondered what she was doing, and how she was holding up. I had no doubt that she must be worried about me. A tightness began to take hold in my chest, and I felt tears sting my eyes.

No
, I thought.
Don’t go there. Stay focused
.

Shoving thoughts of Allison aside, I pondered the methods that the Legion were using to break me down. The first thing that struck me as odd was the waste bucket. Morrow hadn’t mentioned that part. Maybe it had just slipped his mind.

If the Legion really wanted to fuck with my head, why didn’t they make me wallow in my own piss and shit? Why go to that minimal effort at sanitation? The only answer I could think of was that they didn’t want me to get sick. Human waste is a breeding ground for all kinds of nasty bacteria, and getting just a little bit of it into a cut could cause a potentially lethal infection. The more I thought about that, the more the logic became clear.

They didn’t want to kill me. Didn’t want to kill anyone they captured. They wanted to keep me alive. Not that they would hesitate to kill me if I became a problem—they most certainly would. But they didn’t want a corpse on their hands if they could help it. What they wanted was someone they could mold into a marauder or, failing that, keep around for slave labor. It made sense in an awful kind of way.

I shivered, huddled further into my corner, and tried to steel myself for what lay ahead.

*****

They left me in my cell for another three days, but the beatings stopped, and they brought me two meals a day. The meals were small, never quite enough to sate the hunger gnawing at my gut, and the amount of water they gave me was barely enough to keep me functioning. More head games. Keep me thirsty, keep me hungry, keep me distracted.

The waiting ended when Kasikov showed up with Rat-Face and Tommy. I sat cross-legged in the corner as they came in, staying silent.

Rat-Face smirked. “Looks like you finally learned to keep your mouth shut.”

I ignored him, staring blankly into the distance and doing my best to look defeated. Kasikov stepped forward and shined the lantern on me.