And throughout all this, I didn’t respond, didn’t move or stop him. I knew that anything I did was likely to make him snap into violence again. I sat as rigid and passive as I could while my heart beat faster and faster. I prayed for the journey to end. Wherever we were going, it couldn’t be any worse than this.
I was wrong.
When the car stopped, Volos hauled me out and led me up a hill towards a huge, dark building. I couldn’t see any windows at all. It looked industrial but we weren’t in an industrial part of a city...we weren’t in a city at all, from what little I could see in the darkness. There were no lights, no traffic noise, just fields.
He took me through a door and into a room with long tracks on the ceiling, from which dangled hooks. Even at a time like this, the mechanics still caught the attention of my weird brain. There was something familiar about it but I couldn’t remember what it reminded me of.
Volos pushed through some strange, soft, rubbery doors and—
The light was the first shock. Everything was painted white and every surface was being blasted by violently bright lights that hurt my eyes. The room was huge, cold and completely alien. There didn’t seem to be a soft edge anywhere.
As I blinked, I saw shoulder-height metal rails. They made it seem claustrophobic even with the room’s huge size. It was a little like being in a line at a theme park, the room designed to funnel you a certain way. Only where a theme park is all about fun and lightness, this room had been sucked clean of everything remotely comforting. Some rooms, like Mom’s trailer, made you feel good. This had no feel at all, as if it wasn’t even designed for people.
Volos stayed outside the rails but roughly pushed me forward between them. They guided me into a metal box barely wide enough to stand in. Doors closed behind me and, for a second, I was trapped. Then Volos heaved on a lever, cursing at its stiffness, and the metal doors in front of me hinged open. That’s when I saw her.
She was walking towards me, but on the far side of the metal barrier. She was about my age, maybe a year or two younger. She had long brown hair that fell like mist, right down to the middle of her back.
She was utterly naked.
Every step was precise. As if she’d experienced what happened if you walked too quickly or too slowly and she never wanted to experience it again.
Her eyes were focused on the middle distance. She clearly saw me, standing almost right in front of her, but her eyes stayed straight ahead, not even glancing. I saw her chest rise and fall more quickly, though, and her lips tightened as she passed.
She was too scared to look.
And as my eyes adjusted to the harshness of the lights, I saw more women behind her. Seven, eight, ten, more. All naked. All following the first at neatly-spaced intervals.#p#分页标题#e#
Volos’s hands pushed me forward. My sneakers squeaked on the floor and I saw it was black rubber, almost like a gym. What is this place?!
I turned a corner and saw a line of….
My brain didn’t want to process it. Cells. I mentally branded them cells.
Except they weren’t like a prison cell. They were too long, too narrow. Volos pushed me into one, slammed the door and secured it with a padlock, and left me there.
That’s when I noticed the smell. It permeated the whole place, soaked into the walls and floor by years of use. Not a smell a person should ever experience. The smell of not just fear but absolute loss of hope.
I allowed it in, then. I couldn’t shut it out any longer. I let my brain put together the pieces: the huge, echoey room, the guiding barriers, the rubber floor….
This wasn’t a cell I was in. It was a stall, designed for a cow.
And this was a slaughterhouse.
52
Carrick
When the cops had left, I sneaked across the street and into the compound, then into Scooter’s workshop. And there, armed with a hacksaw, I finally managed to get the cuffs off. Then I used a spare rear view mirror to take a look at the back of my head. It was a mess: I had a powder burn from the gun going off so close, and there was a deep, bloody wound across my scalp where the bullet had grazed me. It wouldn’t kill me but it hurt like hell.
I slapped a dressing on it—it was the best I could do, for now. I was soaked and exhausted but there was no time to rest. I had to move. I had to get Annabelle back. I headed for my bike—
And stopped.
I had no leads. I had no one to go to for help. I had nothing. I was just one guy.
My eyes fell on the line of Harleys parked in front of the clubhouse. A line of cold, silent steel when it should have been a row of growling, thumping engines and guys climbing onto them to do battle.