Outlive (The Baggers Trilogy, #1) (28 page)

             
He turned from the mirror and stared ahead at Shade, who was already putting a good deal of distance between them. The back wall was lined with thirty metal boxes in a row. Baggs had been instructed to bunny-hop on and off each of them. Shade was already leaping onto the fifth one by the time Baggs reached the boxes.

             
This is my last lap of circuit. I’m going to catch him,
he thought.

             
With sweat running off his skin and onto the floor, he leapt onto the first one. The first box was as high as his knees. He leapt down, and leapt onto the second one, which was as high as his hips. The boxes went on like that, sometimes as tall as his knees and sometimes up to his hips. By the fifth box, his legs were burning. By the twentieth, they were screaming.

             
They finished the plyometric boxes, and then, in order to complete the circuit, they had to run up the stairs, get on the indoor track and run one lap, which was four hundred meters. Baggs saw Shade running up the stairs just as he had finished the boxes.

             
I want to kiss Maggie’s head again. I want to hold Olive. I want to finish reading the Harry Potter series to them. I want to give them cake and ice cream until I can no longer see the bones of their skinny chests.

             
Baggs actually hollered in agony as the lactic acid seeped into his sore muscles and he bounded up the stairs two at a time. He closed a little of the gap between himself and Shade. When they got to the top, Shade looked back to see that Baggs was catching him.
He’s tired,
Baggs thought, looking at Shade’s exhausted expression. His mouth was open, his cheeks were relaxed, and his eyebrows were pulled together in pain.
And I’m going to catch him.

             
Shade took off at a fast pace and Baggs followed him at a sprint. He put everything he could into the last quarter-mile of the workout.
Let’s go!
He thought.
I want to see them again. I want to lie beside Tessa and kiss her shoulder, her neck.

             
“Ugghh,” he grunted as he sprinted over the track. His breath was rushing in and out of his mouth and his feet were pounding on the ground.
Faster,
he thought, but his feet couldn’t pick up the pace. He was developing an odd, mucus-like paste in the back of his mouth; he found that this came only when he had exerted himself near the point of syncope. Half way around the track, his vision tunneled down and his peripheries were clouded with hazy-black.

             
I will catch him,
he thought.
I will catch him, and then I am going to live to see my girls again.

             
With one hundred yards to go, he was running right beside Shade, even with him. Shade looked over, his face contorted in a mixture of agony and surprise that his trainee had caught him.

             
He didn’t think that I could catch him. I can beat him.

             
The two of them both quickened their pace and continued on for one final sprint towards the end of the track. Both of the men were slick with sweat on every inch of their bodies as they tried to beat each one. In the end, Shade won by a margin of five yards, but Baggs was pleased. He had truly almost beaten Shade in a race, which would have been impossible just one week ago. 

13

             
An hour after Baggs and Shade had raced down the final stretch of the track, he lay in his twin-sized bed, staring at the dormitory ceiling. It was a little past two in the morning and all the lights were out. Every muscle in his body ached, and he only had four hours to sleep until their next and final workout.

             
But Baggs didn’t feel like sleeping.

             
Around him, the six other Boxers were all sleeping soundly. After exercising, all seven of the Boxers showered and ate a big meal. Only six of them took the blue sleeping pill, though. Baggs put his under his tongue, carried it to the bathroom, and flushed it down the toilet.

             
I need to think, and I can’t think when I’m sleeping. I need to figure out how I’m going to avoid being killed by Byron Turner if I live through Outlive.

             
He knew that he would regret not opting for the drug-induced sleep in the morning, when he would have to endure another strenuous workout without sleep.
But this is worth it. I need some time to figure things out.

An hour passed. It was three in the morning.

              His eyes flickered across the ceiling, as though some kind of idea could be found in the shapes the swirls in the wood made. He readjusted the pillow beneath him; it was much nicer than the one that Tessa would be sleeping on in the apartment.

             
I bet that she hasn’t slept much since I left,
he thought. She never slept much when she was stressed. After he broke his arm and they began to understand the reality of their financial situation, he often awoke to find her reading in the bathroom in the middle of the night. She moved her pillows and a blanket into the bathtub and read a book from the library while she drank tea. She kept the door shut so that the light didn’t wake the girls.

             
I bet she just reads in the bedroom now. There is no husband in the bed beside her to wake with the light.

             
He longed for her. He wanted to caress Tessa, and he wanted to be caressed by her. He felt like a man facing a potentially lethal surgery the next day.
Only I won’t be sedated,
he thought.
If a blade or some animal’s teeth do tear me apart, I’m going to be wide-awake so that I feel every bit of the sensation.

             
He shivered.

             
This was the first time he had refused the blue sleeping pill that was provided with dinner. He thought about how quickly the others had gone to sleep, and how odd their faces looked as they marched from the cafeteria to the dormitory. They looked like glass-addicts; he had never taken the drug himself, but had seen a lot of the addicts while working for the Shepherds. They were always hanging around Mr. Snow’s house, and many of them worked for him. He recalled seeing his first glass addicts when he was fifteen. At the time, their appearance frightened him because he didn’t know what was wrong with them. They had blisters covering their gaunt frames, and vacant expressions like their souls had left their bodies. He remembered riding in the limo with them on his way to Mr. Snow’s house for the first time.

             
What were there names? Pillow and Pink? Pinker and Point? No. It was Pointer and Pinky. Yeah, that’s it. The names were what you would call two fingers on your hand.

             
Stop it!
he thought, and he shifted in bed. 
You can’t keep getting distracted; you have to think of a way to survive Turner if you win Outlive.

             
He lay there for a moment, watching Larry’s chest rise and fall as he slept.

             
Did he poison Higgins in his food? Maybe if I live, I could trade his plate for mine without him knowing. Then he’d eat the poison and have the heart attack.

             
Baggs considered for a moment.

             
No, that wouldn’t work. They would think that I placed the poison there. His wife would get the best lawyer money could buy and they’d nail me.

             
He turned over the other way and watched Tonya Wolf sleeping for a moment. Her facial piercings glistened in the pale moonlight that shone in from the windows in another room.

             
Then, his ears pricked up as a noise came into the room. It was quiet, but he recognized the melodious sound instantly.

             
He stilled, listening hard to see if he could hear it again.

             
There it is! Someone is playing a piano.

             
The sound was too soft to be consistently heard in the dormitory, but Baggs was sure that he had heard it at least. He lay there, ears pricked, trying to hear more, but he couldn’t.

             
He felt stir crazy. For the past week he had only been in the dormitory, the eating hall, and the workout facilities. He hadn’t chosen where he wanted to go for an entire week. He felt an urge to explore, to go see who was playing piano.

             
Byron Turner? It’s three in the morning, why would he still be awake? Perhaps a trainer? They do have to keep odd hours; maybe one of them is having trouble sleeping.

             
He lay back and sighed, staring at the ceiling some more.

             
In one swift motion of decision, he pushed back his blankets and swung his legs over to the side of his bed.
No one said that we weren’t allowed to walk around the house,
he thought. Although, in truth he suspected that this rule went without saying. But he didn’t care. He was restless.

             
He bent down, laced up his shoes, and stood up in his exercise shorts and Boxers shirt. There were three K9 robot dogs laying on the floor beside the threshold that led to the exercise facility. They had been in sleep mode, but now all of them were awake, their leathery heads raised. Their glistening eyeballs were fixed upon Baggs.

             
He looked at the K9s for a moment and his hand instinctually went to his shoulder where the K9 at Thurman’s house had ripped open his skin with titanium teeth. The spot still hadn’t completely healed.

             
Are they going to stop me from leaving the room?
Baggs wondered.

             
He walked a few steps away from the bed, towards the door opposite the one that led to the exercise facility. He had never been through this door before, unless they had taken him through it while he was unconscious when he arrived. It seemed as though the music was coming from that end of the house.

             
The K9s looked at each other, as though conferring about what to do. Then, the white one stood up, stretched out its robotic back, and padded sleepily towards Baggs. It looked up at him with blood-red eyes. This K9 was smaller than the one that had bitten him; it was a lean sixty pounds. However, Baggs did not have any doubt that the robot could easily subdue him.

             
Is it going to stop me from leaving?
Baggs wondered again.

             
He took a step towards the doorway. The K9 padded forward a step beside him. Baggs took another step, and so did the K9.
The thing doesn’t seem to be aggressive yet.
Baggs continued the trial and error approach until he was ten steps outside of the door and into the next room. The K9 looked up at him placidly.

             
Maybe it just wants to follow me,
Baggs thought.
It may not subdue me unless I try to steal something or hurt someone.

             
Out in the hallway, the sound of the piano was louder. Baggs walked along a long passage, and the K9 padded beside him. The robot’s titanium nails clicked on the marble floor. The robot slinked with an unnerving amount of grace. Baggs guessed that in an altercation, the sixty-pound K9 would prove to be as fast as a cheetah with the biting power of a grizzly bear.

             
It felt good to be taking the night into his own hands, to be walking on his own accord, instead of simply following an order. The hallway (
although I’m not quite sure that this is a hallway. I’ve never seen a room like this
) was as wide as a basketball court, but appeared to stretch on for a mile. The room was decorated with thick rugs and carpets, and sitting areas where decorative chairs surrounded coffee tables. The left wall had other hallways leading off of it, and wooden bars and bookshelves were built into the wall. The right wall was broken up with great windows that looked out onto green, rolling lawns. Baggs looked out and remembered something that Tessa had taught him. She said that in the times when the genes of modern day homo sapiens were carved out, our ancestors found that they survived better in savannahs than they did any other habitat. He could hear her voice in his head. She had a unique way of enunciating her words, and often times changed volume to give emphasis to the important parts of what she said. “That’s why all the rich people make savannahs for themselves; we are engineered by natural selection to be attracted to rolling green hills, short grass and occasional trees. For our ancestors, the savannahs gave them a place where they could hide around a nook in the land, and then see for a far distance if some predator or friend was approaching.” Baggs thought it was an interesting idea, but wouldn’t have bet anything on whether or not it was true.

             
Baggs was taken out of his contemplation of the lawn when he noticed that the next hallway he was approaching was glowing with the flickering light of burning candles. His heartbeat quickened and he walked closer to the wall. The K9’s ears pricked up and it followed closely behind Baggs, glaring up at him with its red eyes.