Least Likely To Survive (27 page)

Shutting the door, I went back to mine and walked in on Jack stripped down to his boxers and in the middle of pushing the sofa against the two chairs I had slept in, thus creating one, giant bed.  He stopped and grinned wickedly at me, winked and went back to what he was doing.  I had to stare for a minute and appreciate the view.  Here he was standing before me, arguably the sexiest man on the planet, (before everyone had been eaten) and he was half naked, and making a bed for the both of us to sleep in.  Although it did make me wonder what exactly he was planning on occurring in said bed, as much as that sounded like fun, now was certainly not the time.  For all we knew these dirty bastards had cameras in here.

Darting my eyes away from such a glorious sight seemed a shame, but necessary before I started to drool openly.  I hurriedly grabbed my toothbrush and paste and scurried back out the door to the restrooms.  Safely locked away, I took a moment to catch my breath and let my hormones stop their incessant whining at being denied. 

After I was nice and calm again, I brushed my teeth and cleaned up for bed.  I didn’t bother with pajamas, and decided to just sleep in what I was wearing.  It was clean, after all.  Returning to the suite, I opened the door to our room, and caught sight of Jack all nice and snuggled up in the middle of our makeshift bed.  I sighed in resignation.  Apparently I was going to have to fight for space. 

Walking up to the bed, I looked it over, trying to decide the best way to go about this.  I crawled in, making sure to jab him in the ribs with my elbow a few times until he scooted over far enough for me to lie down comfortably.  I did concede a little bit, snuggling up into his side, laying my head on his chest and wrapping my arm over him.  I felt his arm snake around me, and settle over my waist.  I felt him stroke my side and kiss the top of my head.

“Night Angie.”

“Night Jack.”

Chapter 17: Taken.

I really did ‘awoke with a start’.  I had no idea why I was awake, but my eyes popped open and I bolted upright with an intensely horrible feeling.  That and I had to pee.  I stared around the darkened room, and took note of the way the light filtering through the giant window taking up the far wall cast suspicious shadows along the furniture.

I turned and studied Jack, jealous of his serenity, and after hearing his snoring could understand partly why I was awake at the very moment. He really was beautiful when he slept, and I couldn’t stop myself from pushing a strand of dark blond hair off his forehead, while running my fingers along the crease between his eyes.  My heart contracted and I felt tears building as I thought about the life he and I would never have together.  No one knew if any of us would live or die, and I knew that trying to build a life with someone at this point was hopeless.  I wished we’d have met under different circumstances, but then again, we probably wouldn’t have fallen for each other if it hadn’t been for the whole ‘life or death’ scenario we’d been thrust into.

I heaved a sigh, and took one last look around as I pushed the covers off my legs and moved to stand up.  Pulling myself off our bed, I took another moment to watch Jack. 
“Must be fucking nice…”
I muttered to myself as he snored again so loudly I was pretty sure the windows rattled.

Pulling my attention away from him, I scrambled around in the dark until I found my shoes and quickly stuffed my feet into them.  I didn’t have to bother with clothes since I had worn them to bed and decided I wouldn’t need my glasses for a quick bathroom trip.

I started for the door, pulling it open as quietly as I could, and tip-toed across the living area towards the main door.  I paused just before my hand hit the handle, as a wave of foreboding washed over me again.  I couldn’t really put my finger on it, but as I stood there, I just had the insistent feeling that something was terribly wrong, and all Hell was about to break loose. I wasn’t high anymore, but the paranoia was real.  I didn’t think I was psychic or anything, but there was just something about this feeling that wouldn’t be ignored.

Exercising some extra caution, I managed to get the door open with only a slight creak, and made my way down the unnecessarily dark hallway.  Turning the corner that fed out into the main thoroughfare, I thought it odd that the guard that was usually stationed at the entrance was nowhere to be seen.  I stopped and looked around, checking to see if maybe he was just patrolling, but there was not a soul to be found anywhere that I could tell. 

“Well, that’s odd…” I thought out loud as I continued on my trek to the restroom.  I thought about looking around a bit more for the missing guard, but my bladder just wasn’t having any of that shit at the moment.

I hurried into the restroom, shuddering slightly at the echo cast around the room as the door closed behind me.  I didn’t usually scare easily at big empty rooms, but there was just something off about tonight, and I was definitely in a hurry to get back to bed, where at least I knew I could wake Jack up to have my back.

Finishing my task, I hastily washed up, and started back for the door.  I was no sooner out of the doorway when I felt hands encase my waist, and wrap around my face.

“AHHHH What the fuck??!!!”  My screams were muffled by a rag they were holding over my mouth, and I felt bruises forming where the person’s arms were forcing my legs and arms down so I couldn’t reach back and kick them with the feet that were now flailing helplessly.  It was after I inhaled deeply to scream again that the strong noxious odor of chemicals filled my nose and mouth, and the last thought I had was the urge to vomit as I lost consciousness.

Banging.  There was banging off in the distance, and I felt it rather than heard it as the fog in my brain receded.  I tried to open my eyes, but soon realized the banging was actually coming from
within
my head, and quickly decided that trying to sit up, or open my eyes was a really bad idea.  My stomach out voted the rest of me, as I rolled over and spilled its contents to the tile floor below the ledge I had been laying on.  As the last of the heaves subsided, I lay there half on the ledge, and panted, watching the stream of drool drop slowly to the floor.  “Ugh, what the fuck
happened
?”  I groaned while trying to catch my breath.  The waves of nausea and the banging of axes in my skull were easing up, and I was able to open my eyes fully and take stock of where the Hell I was.

Peering around the room, my first thought was ‘jail cell’, as there were no windows, the whole thing was done in a lovely shade of grey cement, and there was a stainless steel toilet and sink up against one wall.  The whole room couldn’t be more than 20 square feet, and there was a small window on the door.  I rolled over and tried to sit up, but that just made the evil elves with their pickaxes work harder at my brain tissue.  I abandoned that goal, and just rolled further onto my side.  I was lying on some sort of cot that was built into the wall, with a thin mattress pad, and no pillow or blanket.

The only sound I could make out was my own frantic breathing as I racked my brain for an answer as to where the fuck I was, and why I was there.  Full on panic set in as I thought back to the day before and the conversations I had overheard. 

“Testing on humans…”
  Son of a bitch.  Well, looks like my acting skills sucked worse than I thought, and Ian had figured out what I knew.  Either that or he really just hated me; it could go either way.

Tears welled up in my eyes, and spilled down my overheated cheeks as I ran my fingers over the rough concrete wall next to me.  They had fucking stolen me, locked me up, and were probably going to feed me to their pet zombies.  And I had left my glasses next to the bed to make matters worse, so my ultimate demise would be blurry.

My ribs started to ache from the silent sobs now shaking my entire body.  I had pretty much had enough of this whole fucking nightmare and just wanted to go home.  If my mom hadn’t been dead, I would probably be wishing she’d been there as well.  And maybe a stuffed animal too.  I had completely and officially lost it, and now I was alone, trapped and my future hung in the balance.  To top it all off, I had put off telling Jack how I felt, and now would never get the chance.

“Jack!”  I said his name out loud as I sat straight up, despite the protest from the workers in my head.  He would wake up, see I was gone, but my glasses and guns were still there, know something had happened and surely would come find me.  Of course on the other hand, they could have been taken too, and could be in matching cells at this very moment.

Now filled with fear of no possible rescue, I started to cry harder.  Gut wrenching sobs worse than the previous day were now rumbling through my entire body as I rocked. It occurred to me briefly I’d cried in the last 24 hours more than I had in years, but didn’t stop to consider the implications of that.  It didn’t take long before the mildew scented pad beneath me was soaked below my face.  There was no clock, so I had no idea how long I laid there, just crying, but it felt like an eternity.  There were still no sounds, and I half wondered if maybe I was being left there to rot.  I doubted that though, as there must be some other malevolent purpose for capturing me in the middle of the night.  At least I knew that my awful feeling had been right.  Too bad I had all but ignored it.

Eventually the crying subsided and I started to think a little more clearly.  That and I was pretty sure I had just run out of tears for the rest of my life.  As my mental focus sharpened, I sat up and threw my legs over the side of my cot and stood up.  Every muscle and bone in my body screamed at me to sit the fuck back down, but I ignored them.  “Ugh,” I moaned in answer to my body.  What Goddamned chemical had they taken me down with anyway?  It didn’t feel like a Ruffie, so I deduced it must have been Chloroform.  Awesome.  Every girl just
loves
to be drugged and kidnapped in the middle of the night by evil scientists in the midst of a zombie apocalypse.  Especially while sleeping next to People Magazine’s Sexiest Man of the Year.

I giggled to myself as I thought about the rant that had just run through my mind.  This whole thing really did sound like the plot of an Ed Wood production, except instead of the token sexpot blonde as the heroine; there was just plain old me.  That actually made it an even worse movie.

Shaking thoughts of B horror films, I walked over to the door, and standing up on my toes, tried to look through the tempered glass.  It was reflective, so I couldn’t really see anything, and got the feeling it was a two way mirror, so was relatively certain whoever was on the other side could see me.

Just as I was about to give up on the window, I heard a crackling on my left, and looked over, noticing for the first time there was a little intercom on the wall.  “Good morning, Angela.  I trust you slept well?”  It didn’t take a genius to make out Ian’s smug voice coming from the tiny speaker.

“Oh yes, it was lovely.  My compliments to management,” I snapped back sarcastically, as I felt the loathing for this man actually drip from my tongue.  “Where the fuck am I, and why am I here?”  I didn’t feel the need to waste any time with witty retorts, and got down the real questions I needed answered.

“Yes, that would be the question, wouldn’t it?”  He was fucking with me.  His sing-song voice sounded very much like a kid with a big secret who wanted to tell, but first wanted you to beg for it.

“Cut the crap, Ian.  What the fuck am I doing here?!”  I yelled the last part out of frustration while banging both hands against the door so hard the bones in my arms rattled, but the door just laughed at me.

“Tsk, tsk, Angela.  Violence will not get you anywhere, and you’ll know what I want you to know when I’m ready for you to know it.”  I looked directly at the speaker as his words filtered through the static and my heart sank.  I was in deep shit, and was likely about to have a very slow and painful end.  “I hope you enjoyed your little eavesdropping session yesterday because very soon, dear Angela, you will sorely regret it.”  He said the last part so lightly; I could hear the smile in his voice.  This was one sadistic bastard who had just gotten a new toy to torture. 
“Yay, lucky me.”
  I thought bitterly as I pulled away from the door and started back to my cot.

The crackling of the speaker had stopped, and I knew he was done with me for the moment.  How long, I didn’t know, and it was only a matter of time before the crazy shit started.

As I reached the cot, I changed my mind and headed to the sink instead.  It was really just a couple of pipes coming in from the wall, ending in small dented basin with one knob and a faucet.  I turned the knob and the slow trickle of icy water greeted my hands cupped beneath the faucet.  I filled my hands and splashed the water over my face and neck, relishing the feeling of the cool water on my still hot cheeks and washing away the tracks from the tears.  The water was gross, and I could feel the grit from minerals swishing around my cheeks as I spit it back out.  Obviously someone on filtration duty was slacking off.  I turned the water off, and face still dripping, started looking for something to wipe off with.  The only thing I saw was a lonely beat up roll of toilet paper propped on the back of the john, and just used my shirt to dry my face off instead.