“That’s one pricey ho.” Tyrone whistled. “Guess when I go to college I ain’ gotta worry ‘bout no student loans.”
“Tyrone, you couldn’t get into college, even if you lived long enough to try.”
Sara jerked in the direction of the voice.
Martin.
Paulie Gunther Spence tried to stay calm. He hurt all over, and he wanted to make the doctor pay. But he didn’t want the doctor to die. Not for a long time. So he had to show restraint.
Paulie knew there were painkillers in the lab, but he didn’t know which drugs he should take. If he was able to talk, he would have asked the doctor. But he couldn’t talk, and when he tried to write what he wanted on paper, the doctor just screamed and babbled incoherently. So Paulie was forced to suffer.
The doctor would suffer with him.
Paulie was deciding where to stick the fiftieth skewer when he heard a noise behind him. He jumped away, fearing it to be Lester.
But it wasn’t Lester. It was a dirty, bearded man with ripped clothes.
Paulie walked toward him. Though he was injured, it would still be easy to subdue this skinny little man. Paulie could take his wrath out on him, keeping the doctor alive to enjoy later.
He stopped in mid-step when another dirty man came in. Then another followed. And another. And another.
They had weapons. Rusty knives. Tree branches. One had a fork.
Paulie backed away, his lips flapping, his hands raised in supplication.
The dirty people attacked. Paulie felt like he was in a barbed wire tornado, being ripped apart on all sides. Poking, stabbing, hitting, biting, gouging, bit by agonizing bit.
Stop. I don’t handle pain well.
Paulie fell to his knees, covering his face, screaming soundlessly and enduring quite a bit of pain for quite a long time as they tore him to pieces.
Martin was through fooling around. When the ferals attacked and the craziness started, he went straight for Kong’s bodyguard. A quick poke in the stomach with a hunting knife, and the man graciously gave up his gun. Martin then waited in the woods for things to settle down and Sara to appear.
She did, dragging her precious kids with her. Pathetic, really. The dumb bitch even tried to save Georgia. Probably hoping to help her.
She would have had better luck teaching an alligator to fetch.
When Lester joined the fun, Martin tagged along.
There was a bad moment, after Martin followed them into the woods, when he worried Lester would kill his wife before he got there. But, incredibly, they’d managed to take out the big guy.
Which was fine. Martin didn’t like to share anyway.
“This is how it’s going to work, Sara,” he said, basking in the fear he knew his words caused her. “We’re all going to march back to the prison like a big happy family. Then you’re going back into the trunk, and you’ll get to listen while I do all the things to Cindy that Paulie Gunther Spence did to your childhood friend, Louise. Tyrone, buddy, you’re allowed to watch. To make it more fun, every time Cindy screams, I’ll cut off one of your fingers.”
“No,” Sara said.
Martin’s grin slipped a notch. “Excuse me? You see I’m holding a gun, right?”
“Cindy, Tyrone, get behind me.”
The children listened to their surrogate mother, who then held the painting at waist-level.
Martin sneered. “What, I’m not going to shoot you because you’ve got some ugly chick?”
“It’s a Van Gogh, Martin. Worth twenty five million dollars. You’re an art lover. You wouldn’t do anything to ruin it. And you won’t shoot me in the chest or head, because you don’t want me to die that easily.”
Martin laughed, full and genuine. “You’re kidding me, right?”
He aimed right at the ugly chick’s head. When the bullet passed through the painting, it would shatter Sara’s hip.
How terribly painful, being curled up in a trunk with a broken femur.
“Put down the gun, Martin, and I’ll give you the painting.”
“You’re out of your mind,” he said.
“You won’t shoot. I know you.”
“The hell I won’t.”
Then he fired.
The impact of the bullet slammed the painting into Sara’s pelvis, but she had anticipated it and was already moving forward, rushing at him.
Martin fired again, clearly surprised, and the painting vibrated in her hands. She felt pain, her leg giving out, but momentum took her the next few steps, and then she was angling the portrait upward, swinging the sharp corner against Martin’s hand, knocking the gun away.
She thrust it at him again, aiming for his head, but now Martin was backpedaling, pulling something from his tool belt.
The hunting knife. That awful, horrifying hunting knife.
He slashed.
Sara blocked with the painting.
He thrust.
Sara blocked with the painting.
He roared, throwing himself at her, driving Sara onto her back with the painting sandwiched between them. He brought the terrible knife up to her face.
I can see my reflection in the blade.
“I’m going to cut your fucking tongue out and lock you in that fucking trunk for a week,” Martin screamed, spittle flecking out of his mouth.
But Sara wasn’t afraid anymore. She was done being afraid. Sara grabbed the knife blade as it came up, feeling it slice into her fingers, all the way to the bone. But she wouldn’t let go. She wouldn’t back down. Never. Again.
As Martin’s face creased with astonishment, Sara used the momentum of her grab and the leverage of her grip to force the tip of the blade ninety degrees, driving it right into the son of a bitch’s eye.
Martin flinched backward, dropping the knife, pressing both hands to his face, and then Sara saw Tyrone standing over them, once again holding the metal suitcase.
He swung like Sammy Sosa, cracking Martin square in the nose, knocking him off Sara and onto the ground.
“That tough enough for ya, asshole?” Tyrone said, staring down at him.
Martin was clearly disoriented, but he managed to get onto all fours. He shook his head like a wet dog, spraying blood everywhere.
Tyrone raised the suitcase again.
“No,” Sara ordered.
Tyrone looked at her. So did Martin.
That’s when Sara held up the gun Martin had dropped and blew the top of her husband’s head off.
Dr. Plincer watched the ferals tear Subject 33 apart, crying with relief that they would no doubt attack him next. Plincer wanted to die more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life. The pain was too unbearable.
Kill me. Kill me quickly. My life’s work will remain. Someone will find my notes, my serum. I can die, because my work will live on.
In a brief flash of lucidity, Plincer reflected on his legacy, and came to a startling, ironic conclusion. The doctor thought he’d created four Level 6s; Lester, Subject 33, Martin, and Georgia. This high level of evil didn’t appear in nature. It had to be enhanced.
But Plincer realized, with a jolt, that a Level 6 could, and did, exist without enhancement.
Anyone who wanted to create a level of pure evil had to, by extension, be pure evil himself.
I’m a Level 6. I’m the worst one of all.
Plincer lamented not being able to study his own brain before the ferals killed him.
But the ferals didn’t approach Plincer. They looked at him closely, gave each other brief nods, and then left him there in the box, helpless and agonized and alone and wondering how long car batteries lasted before they ran out of juice.
Seven hours, it turned out. But Plincer succumbed to a heart attack after enduring only six.