LIFERS Chapter Thirty Two

Jill had removed the cable-tie that held her pony-tail in place and was sitting on the floor in front of the heater as she dried her hair. She looked up to see Nick stood by the oil drum, he slotted a cartridge of film into his camera and left the spent cartridge discarded on the drum. Behind, Gregg paced the floor and muttered something she couldn’t quite hear.

She turned to see him take short, stunted steps back and forth; his concerns for the missing girls all too obvious, but something else troubled him, and she had a good idea that what she kept under her T-shirt was capable of ending those troubles.

She wasn’t one hundred percent certain why she brought it back; the simple fact is, the bag was there so she took it, but Gregg hadn’t mentioned it since she indicated that she had it. So was he reluctant to take it from her? Was he trying to brave it out? There was only one way to be sure, but she couldn’t just pull it out and pass it to him in front of Nick.

‘Hey, Nick,’ she said. ‘You not gonna get one of our friend out there?’

Nick peered over his glasses. ‘Excuse me?’

‘Sheldon, you, photograph?’

He smiled. ‘You betcha,’ he said. ‘Just reloaded and ready to go.’

When Nick pushed the up button and ducked under the shutter, Jill hit the stop button and walked over to Gregg. She pulled the bag from under her T-shirt and looked him in the eye, but for the life of her she couldn’t think of anything to say, except, ‘Here.’

..

Gregg looked at the bag of dark-red liquid in her hand and thought of everything it symbolised. In a way it was nourishment, but in so many other ways it was an enemy, an enemy that posed a threat to his very way of life, a threat to all he felt acceptable and normal, and this was in no way either of those.

‘You don’t have to take it if you don’t want to,’ she said. ‘And even if you do, you don’t have to use it. It’s just in case.’

‘Just in case of what? The honey-salt?’

Jill shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

Gregg looked over her shoulder to see Nick from the back of his knees down as he snapped-away at Sheldon’s remains. He looked again at the bag she held and the urge to just reach out and take it from her felt beyond his control, and then, before he knew why, the bag was in his hand.

Jill raised her brow. ‘I hope bringing that back was the right thing to do,’ she said.

Gregg didn’t reply. He needed to fathom out what the hell just happened. Without influence on his part; his hand had made its own decision and taken the bag from her and tucked it straight into his jacket pocket. But not only that, there was his anxiety level, it seemed to have dropped on the promise of things to come. Was he already that addicted to something he hadn’t even tasted, except for the flavour of his own after a paper cut?

‘You okay, Gregg?’

‘Yeah, it’s just … just like you just said; even though I have it I don’t have to use it.’

‘Can I say something, in case you do?’

Gregg waited.

She looked at the pocket where he’d put the bag. ‘If you drink what’s in there, there may be no turning back.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘And if I do need to use it, it’ll be to keep my strength up to finish this job and for no other reason.’

‘You could always bite him,’ she said, inclining her head toward Nick.

Gregg looked again at the chunky legs. ‘Far too high in cholesterol, and besides, he’d probably give me indigestion.’ He lifted his head, shouted. ‘Nick, get in here, there’s something we need to discuss.’

After one final snap of Sheldon, Nick ducked under the shutter and closed it after him. He placed his camera on the oil drum and was about to turn when the boom of a shotgun rang out from across the street. Some of its shot hit the bottom of the falling shutter and some of it hit the floor at Nick’s feet. Nick rolled about the floor and screamed like he’d just stepped on a landmine and had his leg blown off, but Gregg and Jill had to wait for the shutter to close all the way before they could go over to him.

‘Oh Christ, is it bad? No, don’t tell me, I’d rather not know. It is though isn’t it? It must be. I can’t feel any pain. Did I lose a whole foot?’

A hole had been blasted in the toe area of Nick’s right shoe, Gregg pulled it off along with the very damp sock beneath and found only four toes. He looked inside the shoe, even held it up-side-down, shook it, but still no toe fell out.

Nick looked at his foot and then at the damaged shoe. ‘Hah.’

Jill and Gregg looked at each other. ‘Hah?’ Jill said.

‘Yeah, I lost that toe last year at a Fourth-of-July fireworks display. One of the big ones went off prematurely and knocked over part of the display rigging which it crushed my toe. I had to have the damn thing removed.’

Then another shot rang out and punctured the shutter a half dozen more times. Nick grabbed his shoe and sock and he and Jill scurried behind the empty oil drum at the side of the shutter. Gregg made it to the office to look from the window. The only building with the trajectory for the shots would be the schoolhouse across the street, and above the large main door one of the windows was open a few inches.

He leaned on the counter top and watched the small gap for movement through the heavy rain, but it wasn’t long before his thoughts turned to the red liquid that weighed so heavily in his jacket pocket, and the even heavier consequences of him using it.

He had to distract himself from the bag and its contents and the pleasure he was sure it would bring him. Because just knowing the bag was in his pocket actually gave him pleasure. Like a child’s enthusiasm and anxiety the night before Christmas, or a boy’s anticipation at watching his father pull out a set of car keys on his seventeenth birthday.

But amongst all these feelings of pleasure and anticipation, Gregg felt concern because whatever this virus was going to turn him into, it had already started to make decisions of its own; like taking the bag from Jill a few minutes ago.

He straightened and leaned back to look through the crack of the office door to see Jill perched on a small wooden box close to the heater; her head hung low, elbows on her knees and her almost dry hair had frizzed, Gonk-like. Nick stood by the oil drum where he peeled the strips off his photographs of Sheldon before he put them inside a plastic bag.

This again reminded Gregg of the plastic bag he carried, and now the realisation that his will to fight against its tightening grip had become weaker. His palms felt clammy and small beads of sweat dotted his top lip. Then there was the smell as a continual metallic tang of wet iron wafted up from his pocket. He took out the bag and turned it over and back again, held it up to his nose, breathed in deep, manipulated it between his fingers; then wondered just who the true manipulator actually was.

He pushed the bag back into his pocket determined to fight these strange urges, and in doing so felt a twinge in his shoulder, not painful, but it made him curious. He slipped his arm from his jacket and lifted the now brownish-red sleeve of his T-shirt to see a black, flaky week-old scab. He picked at one of its corners to feel the satisfying sensation as it tore away from his flesh like an extra strong band aid. The missing chunk of muscle the bullet had taken with it had already grown back and the new skin beneath the scab looked pink and felt soft to the touch.

He put his arm back into the sleeve and contemplated his situation. First off, his mangled body, which, according to Jill, had miraculously repaired itself after she’d hit him with a car. But all Gregg could remember were headlights and waking up inside that cell. So he can’t say for certain how miraculous a recovery it was. Then, and less than two hours ago, he suffered a bullet wound, which, under normal circumstances should have taken weeks to reach anywhere near its current condition, but was now completely healed.

So, looking at it from an optimist’s point of view, there actually was a positive side to all of this, and if it wasn’t for the negative side, the more sinister aspects of his condition, he may have been able to come to terms with it.

His thoughts turned to Larry and the fact that for the last twenty four hours he hadn’t been able to contact him, so he must suspect something’s wrong, he usually does. Larry had told him time and again never to bother with so-called psychics. “There never was and never will be any such thing as a true fortune teller.” he'd say, along with his usual, “Psychic my ass”.

Gregg turned his attention back to the sniper and the open window of the schoolhouse, then it occurred to him that a passageway still existed between there and the garage. They couldn’t close and lock the hatch because he needed the tunnels to get to the girls. What Gregg wanted was the sniper to come to him, and sooner or later he new he’d do just that, but they had to be prepared when he did.

He poked his head out the office door. ‘We need to watch for our friend across the street using the tunnel to get to us. Can one of you keep an eye on the hatch?’

..

Nick looped the camera around his neck. ‘I’ll do it,’ he said, and made his way around the far side of the oil truck and piled three tires together to sit on.

He pulled the gun from his pocket and waited for someone to poke their head out. One shot from the gun, and the next half dozen from his camera.
Three minutes later, and with no activity to occupy him, Nick became bored and his attention wavered.

He looked at some steel shelves against the wall to his right, most of them were empty but some held old engine parts and worn-out tyres and rusted tools. He saw a few more tools scattered around the floor here and there, and then he noticed a small steel grid. His eyes narrowed as he read the words moulded into it:

Fuel Shut-off Valve

Of course, why hadn’t he thought of that sooner? If there’s no one around they were bound to shut the fuel off. He picked up a small, rusted screwdriver, about the size of the average pencil, and cleared away the accumulated dirt from the seam of the grid.

He forced the screwdriver into the small crack and began to pry it open. He managed to create a gap of about a half inch when the screwdriver twisted and slipped from his grip, its chamfered edge dug into the palm of his left hand, and again he cried out in pain.

‘What’s happened now?’ Jill said when she reached him.

Gregg also showed up. ‘What’s all the shouting for?’

Nick pointed. ‘I was trying to get that thing open,’ he said. ‘It could be our ticket out of here.’

Jill saw the dime-store screwdriver. ‘And you tried to open it with that thing?’

‘It was the nearest thing to hand.’

..

Gregg looked at Nick’s injury and straight away felt a wanting in the pit of his stomach; it rose to hit the back of his throat like the arid wind of a desert sandstorm and dried-out what little moisture he had. He rolled his tongue around the inside of his mouth and licked his top lip.

Not only could he detect the blood’s metallic properties, he was convinced he could taste it. He looked at Jill and the look she gave back said she’d seen his reaction to the sight of Nick’s blood.

‘I’ll go see if there’s anything in the office we can use as a bandage,’ he told her.

..

While Gregg went to search for a bandage, Jill looked around for a more robust implement to pry open the grid. She returned with the head of a pitch fork attached to about a foot of its broken handle and forced one of its prongs under the small gap. She placed one hand on the oil truck for balance and stepped on the handle to use her body weight to get it open far enough for Nick to put his good hand in and help pull it the rest of the way open.

Inside was a circular red tap, an arrow pointed to the left to indicate open, another pointed to the right to indicate close. He reached in and tried to turn the tap anti-clockwise to the open position, but it was either all the way open or seized up. He tried to turn the tap clockwise, to the closed position, and it rotated with relative ease.

‘Well that’s fucked that up,’ he said, and kicked the grid shut.

‘What were you planning on doing anyway?’

‘I was planning on getting some gas to fill my van so we can all get the hell out of here.’

‘We’re not leaving without those girls, Nick.’

‘That’s if they’re still alive,’ he said, then got to his feet.

‘I believe they’re very much alive.’

‘But you don’t know they are, and neither does he, and because of that we could all end up dead.’

‘So why don’t you leave?’ she said. ‘Let’s face it; you have what you stayed for.’

‘Okay, so I stayed to get some pictures, I admit that. But since then I really have wanted to help, I don’t like the fact that these girls are being kidnapped and murdered any more than you do, but simply hoping they’re still alive doesn’t make it so.’

‘They are alive, and don’t ask me how I know, I just do.’

Nick looked at the blood as it dripped from his hand. ‘Well I hope for all our sakes that you’re right about that.’

‘Come on,’ Jill said, and held his hand in the air as she led him to the office. ‘We need to get this dressed.’

..

Gregg had the office door not quite closed when he pulled the bag of blood from his pocket. He looked at it, stared at it, started to knead it, and again manipulated it between his fingers. He wasn’t sure if he felt guilt or fear, or perhaps a little of both, either way, he felt uncomfortable with regard to the decision he was about to make.

He raised the bag and placed a large portion of one corner on his tongue and closed his mouth over it, and then felt the blood surge past his lips as it rushed to the bottom of the upturned bag. All he had to do now was bite through the tough polythene.

He felt the plastic start to cut as the muscles in his jaw tightened; only he hadn’t instructed them to tighten. It felt like he didn’t have a choice, like it was no longer his decision to make. He resisted the almost uncontrollable urge to puncture the bag and drain it of its contents and was about to remove it from his mouth when the office door opened.