“Finally, your organs begin to shut down. One. By. One. If you’re lucky you’ll die after the first one goes. If not, you’ll be forced to endure weeks of pain—like the intestines being ripped from your body whole.” My mouth dropped open and I gawked at him. Nobody had ever fully explained it to me that way. “I’ve been there,” he went on. “I’ve been on death’s doorstep. And I can name at least a hundred other people who have done exactly what I did. Hell, they would have done exactly what I did to lick the crumbs off someone’s plate. So forgive me for choosing life instead of an agonizing death.”
I shook my head. Even though I thought that maybe, he made the right decision time. There was no excuse for him still doing everything Mr. Baker commanded him to. “How long do you think Mr. Baker is going to keep you around, knowing that you’re letting the people he wants killed, go? Owen, that is something you really have to think about. Are you willing to murder another human being—an innocent human so that you can eat? And if you say yes that would be the most sad, pitiful, and selfish thing that I’ve ever heard.”
He looked down at his hands. “Well, technically, I’m not the one who’ll be doing the killing.”
“Owen,” I snapped.
He shrugged. “I wouldn’t. Mark controls all of the cannibals in this area.”
I couldn’t believe that he was still trying to…
Wait… “What?”
“Mark controls all of the cannibals in this area,” he repeated.
“What do you mean ‘controls’ them?”
“He operates them. He put computer chips in their brains that allows him to control them.”
This was startling news. And I couldn’t stomach it. I was starting to feel queasy. I didn’t want him to tell me anymore. Every time he revealed something new felt like a bomb going off inside of me. “Are you trying to say that the cannibals aren’t real?”
“Oh, no, don’t get me wrong, they are definitely real. I’ve seen the real ones up close. But the ones around here, yeah, they are like cyborgs. Mark used to operate them from the control panel upstairs.”
“He controls who they eat?”
“Well, most of the time. The chip in their brain can be turned on and off from the control panel, but Mark is the only one who knows the code. He would never tell me what it was.”
“The ones you were with?”
“Yes.”
The next question was stuck in my throat. I almost didn’t want to ask it at all, then, suddenly, I blurted out, “Did they kill Monica? Did Mr. Baker make them kill Monica?” I flinched, expecting him to say yes quickly.
“No. They didn’t.”
“But she is dead, right? And she was killed.”
Owen nodded. “Yes to both. She is dead and she was killed, but not by the cannibals.”
“Then by who?”
“One of the decayed ones.”
“No…” I cupped my hands over my mouth when I thought of Monica enduring hours of torture, her limbs being hacked away, before she was finally eaten alive. “That can’t be.” I almost wanted him to say that a cannibal consumed her. At least then I knew she would have been given a merciful death. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“How can you be sure?”
Owen looked away from me and didn’t meet my gaze. “You don’t want to know.”
“I do, though.”
“No you don’t.”
Part of me wanted to know and part of me didn’t. What if it was too gruesome for me to handle? What would I say to her family? I already had to tell them that their daughter didn’t just disappear, I had to tell them that she had been murdered. “Just tell me, Owen.” Better that I found out sooner rather than later.
Owen opened his mouth to answer me and a light started flickering behind us. I looked at him, puzzled. “What’s going on?” I asked.
“I have to go.”
“No,” I pleaded. “Please don’t go.”
“I’m sorry.” He started the lift and it began going down.
“Owen, please,” I begged. “You don’t have to go with him. You can stay here with me.”
“No,” he said. “I can’t.”
The lift came to a halt, looming right above the floor in the mess hall. “Can you at least tell me what happened to Monica? How do you know that she was killed by a decayed one?” Owen set me down on the floor and the lift started going back in to the ceiling. “Owen, tell me!” I shouted, not caring if I woke up the entire colony.
Just before the lift went up and cut off Owen’s head from my view he said, “I know that Monica was killed by a decayed one. And I know it for sure because I found her head.”
Chapter 21: All Good Things Eventually Come to an End
And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.
Hours after Owen dropped me off, I lied awake, disturbing images passing in and out of my subconscious mind. First, images of Monica, her brown hair spread out along the loose ashes of the earth’s surface, her face contorted in agony as she begged and pleaded for her life. Then Mr. Baker came into focus as he pounded away the keys on the control panel keyboard, typing things like “Attack!” or “Eat Them!”
Finally, I saw myself, strapped down to a hospital gurney. A surgeon with a scalpel hovered above me, lowering it slowly, inch by inch. I tried to scream but I had no voice and the closer the scalpel came to the top of my head, the more real the thought felt. It was like I was seconds away from receiving a lobotomy without an anesthetic.
Someone was tugging on my arm and I started to panic. I thrashed violently, feeling my palm connect with a person’s cheek. “Ouch,” Frankie whimpered, and then she started wailing. “Mommy! Mommy!”
I bolted upright in my bed and realized I was having a nightmare. Frankie recoiled, sulking over to her bed, and she curled up into a little ball. She sobbed softly and I exhaled slowly.
“Frankie, come here,” I said convincingly.
She whipped her head and snapped, “No!” before tucking it back into her lap.
“Frankie, I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I was having a bad dream.”
“You slapped me!” she cried as she rocked back and forth.
“I promise I didn’t mean to.” I twitched my head to the side. “Now, come over here and lie down with me.” I scooted closer to the dirt wall and patted the empty side of my cot.
Frankie hesitated, unfolding herself from her ball as my mother rushed through the door. “What’s going on?” she gasped, winded.
“I was having a nightmare and I accidentally slapped Frankie across the face,” I admitted.
She looked at Frankie solemnly and rushed to her bed side. “Oh, baby, are you okay?” she asked, whispering in a comforting tone.
Frankie dug her balled up fist in her eye and dried her tears. “Yeah,” she murmured.
“I’m sure Georgie didn’t mean to slap you.” My mother glared at me. “Right, Georgie?”
I rolled my eyes. “I already apologized, Mom.”
Her eyes shifted to the end of the bed and zoomed in on something. “What’s that?” she asked as I followed her gaze.
At the end of my bed was a white envelope and my name had been scrawled across the front of it. “I honestly don’t know.” I crawled toward the edge of my bed and picked up the envelope.
“Oh, a love letter,” she teased. “I bet it’s from Colin Martin.”
Just my mother mentioning his name made me want to hurl. Colin Martin was a coward and not only that, he was involved in a conspiracy to commit murder, my murder. I bet my mother wouldn’t think so I highly of him when I told her that. “It’s not from Colin Martin,” I corrected. “It’s from someone else.” I knew very well that it was a letter from Owen.