“Is your car over there?” the girl asked.
“Maybe…”
“You’re good to go?”
“I think so. Thanks a lot. I really appreciate it.”
“No worries. I know what it’s like to be new around here.”
I nodded as I kept moving toward the gravel parking lot.
The girl smiled and turned back toward the stables.
“What are you doing, Tiara?” a voice called out. The man with the duffel bag.
“What’s wrong?” the girl said.
“That girl there… she’s one of the new hires.”
“New hires?” She looked back over to me. “Blimey. So that’s why she was in the back.”
“My god you’re an idiot.”
“Bugger off,” she said. And then she started running after me.
I started to run, too; I was relieved to see that I was able to move quite a bit faster. I was out of the lot and up the road before she’d even cleared the parked cars.
“You’ve got the controller, Gary,” she yelled. “Close the bloody gate!”
I saw the gate as I rounded a bend in the road. And true to my luck, it was closing.
I didn’t bother trying to speed up. It was closed long before I could have reached it, and the fence it sealed off was almost as high as the one in the back paddocks.
I sat down on the grass and waited.
Tiara and the man with the duffel bag arrived soon enough.
“This is one of the new hires?” she asked.
“Obviously.”
“We’re using girls now? And why the hell isn’t she drugged?”
“I already told Cadance. She’s immune.”
“Bullocks.”
“Please stop saying that.”
She jabbed a finger into his shoulder. “Don’t push me, Gary. I’m pretty sure you work for me.”
“I work for your father, who works for Ms. Shannard.”
“And she isn’t here… so I’m it.”
“You don’t want to cross her, darling.”
“I’m not scared of Kathleen Shannard,” Tiara said.
“You should be.”
She laughed. “Oooo… I think I just pissed myself.”
The man sighed and looked at me. I didn’t feel that much sympathy for the man who’d shot an electrical current into my boobs.
“You can’t keep me here,” I said.
“We can’t let you go,” Gary said. “So what are the alternatives?”
“As long as she digs her own fecking grave,” Tiara said.
“What are you actually expecting from me?” I asked. “Am I supposed to live in a horse stall and shovel muck all day?”
“Among other things,” Gary said. “That was the main point of bringing you here, yes.”
“And drugging the seven shades of shit out of her,” Tiara said. “But you couldn’t get that part right, Gary.”
“Do you understand the concept of immunity?”
Tiara knelt down and grabbed me by my chin. She stared into my eyes for a moment. “Take her back to the table,” she said. “Drug her again.”
“I’m not doing that. She’s immune.”
“You’d better be sure of that,” Tiara said. “What if you’re wrong? What will Ms. Shannard say then?”
“I’m not wrong,” he said.
“You sure?”
“Well… it might kill her.”
“I hope it does,” someone else said. Cadance knelt down beside me, her mouth cut and still bleeding. “Do you see what this bitch did to me?”
“She kicked your ass,” Gary said.
“Shut up. And pick her up.”
“She’s gotta weigh one-forty.”
“Shut up,” I said.
“If she dies on the table,” Tiara said. “Well… problem solved, I guess.”
“I suppose,” Gary said.
He lifted me up and threw me over his shoulder.
I decided not to bother kicking my legs like an idiot. I knew I had no way to escape. They’d drug me again, whatever that meant. And I wasn’t sure whether it would be a good thing for those drugs not to work.
So far the other options didn’t sound too good.
They took me back into the long building that connected the stables, Gary carrying me past over a dozen doors before they found the right one, completely identical to the others.
Tiara unlocked it and Gary brought me to what I’m pretty sure was an operating table for horses, with a motorized crane hanging overtop and a bench with more padding than you’d expect.
My wrists and ankles were bound to the four poles at each corner of the table, with my head hanging ever so slightly off the edge. I’d expected them to strip me down, probably from seeing too many bad cartoons of alien probing, but that didn’t happen. That’s a good thing, what with my Hello Kitty underwear; it always looks a lot cooler in the store.
“I’m not dealing with the mess if she dies,” Gary said as he put on a pair of latex gloves.
“Don’t worry,” Cadance said, “we’ll feed her to the pigs.”
“Again, Cadance… that was a joke. You’d better not poison my pigs with all the crap I’m about to shoot into this girl.”
“You’re not making me feel good about this,” I said.
“It could be worse,” Tiara said.
“It will be worse,” Cadance said. “I’ll make sure of that.”
“Hold her by the neck,” Gary said. “You, Cadance. And Tiara… try to pin her elbows. She needs to be still.”
The girls held me down and it hurt like hell.
I didn’t fight it. I’ve given enough blood to know that there’s no upside to making someone miss your vein.
Gary took out a syringe and injected a light green fluid into my arm.
I laid on the table and waited, not that I had any other choice.
He watched me. I wasn’t sure what he was expecting to see.
He licked his lips again.
Cadance kept her grip on my neck, pressing harder than she needed to but apparently a tiny bit less than it’d take to kill me.
“Now what?” I gasped.
“Nothing,” Gary said.
No one did anything for almost a full minute, aside from Cadance’s continuing squeeze on my airway.
“Yup,” Gary said. “Nothing. I told you, Tiara. This girl’s immune to the toxin. Just like Ms.—”
“How can you be so sure?” Tiara asked. “I mean, honestly…”
“Well, she’s still awake… she hasn’t vomited… she hasn’t soiled herself…”
“Can I go now?” I asked as Cadance loosened her grip on my throat.
“You’re not winning us over,” she said.
“We can’t let her go,” Gary said. “Ms. Shannard’s told me what to do.”
“We’re supposed to kill her?”
“I won’t tell anybody,” I said. “Just let me go and I’ll forget all about it.”
“Now you’re just pissing us off,” Cadance said.
“You can’t just kill me.”
“I’m open to suggestions,” Tiara said. “Give me something I can use to change their minds.”
“We have to kill her,” Gary said. “She’s more dangerous than you girls realize.”
Tiara stomped her feet like an eight-year-old. “You’re not in charge,” she said. “I’m in charge.”
“So we should give Ms. Shannard a call to ask who’s running things here? Come on, Tiara… your father’s already hanging on a thread here.”
“You’re on a thread, buddy,” Cadance said.
“Look,” Gary said, “it’s simple. Ms. Shannard gives the orders. She told me to bring these girls here and she told me to watch this one for immunity. So that’s what I’ve done. And Amanda here is immune, just like she expected.”
“So she got one right,” Cadance said.
“We need zombies,” Gary said. “That was the point of this. Amanda is not a zombie.”
“A zombie?” I said.