Remedy Z: Solo (20 page)

The whole room felt Penfould cover them with an awful blanket of negativity. Everyone in the room had lost a friend in that squad, except Penfould. Like before the Great Change, he had nobody, by his own making. Price had a relationship of sorts with the skinny waitress. He felt bad about her loss and missed what little comfort they found together. The Rock’s best mechanic was amongst the missing squad; he and Price were mates. Even Maeve felt something. She had had the occasional “encounter” with that mechanic; warmed her bed and, while momentarily, filled the deep void in her soul. Sirocco’s best Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) student at the Rock, Tommy, was a fallen brother to him.

Penfould enjoyed looking into their faces and seeing the hurt: he fed off it. Sam shivered and he felt it. His fat clumsy hand rubbed her back clumsily, knowing it would make her feel worse, violated and provoked. He wanted a reaction and none of them gave in to him, least of all Sam. Sam looked saddened at the loss of her friend but dared not cry. She looked at the ground for a moment as Penfould waited for a reaction with a smirk on his face. 

Sirocco noticed her catch his eye; a quavering lip told him to look away or else expose her to more of the Doc’s unwanted attention. He could have made her cry but he didn’t want that, none of them were as sick as Penfould. But somehow, they all marched to the beat of the Doc’s drum. 

Just as he smirked, still looking at their faces, in that pregnant pause. His face dropped, with just one thought of regret. He wished he could smell the hair of the pretty “one that got away” and make her do his bidding, dirty stuff that he would make her do. “Yes,” he thought to himself. His face returned to a smirk for a moment before snapping back to reality.

“Yes, they can rot and die like the rest,” he laughed, self-assuredly. He had no idea of the squad’s true fate and gave up; the search and running them into the ground. Not finding their trail, the lack of attention and care, would have a profound effect on his little empire in Cooleman. Another awkward moment ensued. 

Price lifted everyone’s spirits, except Penfould. “We have indeed found someone though,” The entire room looked to Price with full attention, breaking through the negative malaise the Doc had created. “The survivor we thought was up there? You what? Was it the zone where Squad 1 was searching under my orders?” Price’s nod meant this was indeed an interesting development. Penfould sat up from his lazy, slumped position and paid attention. “This could change everything,” he thought. 

Women had no place in Penfould’s business, men’s business. He pushed Sam off his lap and gestured, more shooing, for Maeve and his slave to get out. “Out, out- now!” Penfould raged at them. There was an awkward, pregnant pause as the two women got out of there as quick as they could, to leave the men to their business. The Doc was great at creating these moments which embarrassed, dehumanised and made people feel worthless. He continued his approach on those remaining.

“Shut the door will you?” Penfould sounded angry rather than happy as perhaps he should have been. “Yes, we found someone up-“, Price continued, his ruddy complexion now going red with stress and more than a little anger. “Were you raised in a barn?” Penfould asked rudely. “For god’s sake, close the door properly and sit down“.

Price moved first, shutting the door and crossing in front of Sirocco who leant up against a book-case with his arms folded. Pulling his army flight-suit up at the thighs, he landed heavily in one of Penfould’s sitting chairs with a characteristic “argh…” of a man that had bad knees and too much weight to carry. “If you are wasting my time like the last few times, I will-I will-“, Kian himself was cut-off, this time it was Sirocco. “You will what?” Sirocco flicked his head upward in a challenge. The tension in the room was murderous. “Might I remind you that you need me and you will do my work, when I ask and as I ask if you ever want to be cured.” Dr Penfould looked intimidated and a little scared of a man who commanded a physical presence few men have. His hand began to reach to a drawer next to him where he had a pistol, just in case. “Whatever, dog.” Sirocco restrained himself and things cooled. Sirocco needed this; he was hanging onto survival and an uncertain future. Prior to the Great Change, Siro had been at the clinic in Cooleman, rehabilitating a blown-out knee prior to the Great Change. He had been hiding out from his fans and competitors and doing some altitude training in the Australian Alps and had been healed. He had been in the medical centre when he was cured and saw the Rock as a place of healing and renewal. He needed the Doc and the Rock to deliver again; a cure. Price was also reminded why he needed to get back in his proverbial box and he had, sitting down. That movement of sitting at the doctor’s table was a gesture of acknowledgement and compliance. Penfould’s fat lips pursed with satisfaction and he waited for the same compliance from Sirocco. They locked eyes and then Sirocco also moved to sit. The strong, hardened fighter crossed the room like a Jaguar and sat carefully, never taking his cold eyes off Penfould. “Right, now we have cleared things up,” the well-dressed Eurasian sipped from his teacup pompously. “Who is it you have found, why aren’t they here and under what circumstances did you find them in?” he sat back in his chair, pursed lips and looking for any hole in their discovery to get one up on them. All was to change and Penfould knew it and nor could he control it. That’s what scared him; he had been enjoying his little game and it looked as though it would end or have its rules changed.

Meanwhile, Samantha was being frog-marched back to the “Pen” by Maeve. “Ya think yer good, don’t ya bitch?” Maeve spat into Samantha’s hair as they walked through the medical centre that had been turned into a prison of sorts. She closed her eyes and shivered with an involuntary fear, hunching momentarily but still walking in the high-heels the doctor had made her wear. In fact, her entire outfit had been picked out for her. The violence Maeve had put on her was limited but terrifying. Maeve would get seriously hurt if she left marks on Samantha so she found other ways of hurting her or getting at her. Sam knew little about her tormentor other than that she had learned all she knew from someone and couldn’t have grown up in a happy place.  Sam marched on, with resolve and resilience. 

The foot-falls on the floor, the clicking of heels, usually meant a coffee before work, in the legal chambers or a night out with the girls. This sound was now her passage from captivity to torment and back again, daily. It was always walked in the hope that she could pass by unnoticed, untouched and get by. That was rare. Samantha had learnt the unenviable lesson of the world that when people are down, others kick them to keep them there. She knew her walk past a part of the medical centre meant for a proverbial kick. She passed Barlow’s Den; a windowless room that served as Barlow’s bedroom, their jail and armoury with all the scavenged guns, ammunition and melee weapons that had been acquired by this group headed up by Doctor Penfould. The room was stacked with military cases, boxes, gun racks, lockers and bondage and discipline posters, calendars and tattoo and counter-culture artworks. Just the sort of company Dr Penfould liked; reptiles without a conscience who had fetishes that could be appeased in return for service. Barlow was a gross, portly man with red hair and a goatee who had been an armourer in the army. He continued his line of work for a crime gang in the 2020s until he was imprisoned in the Cooleman Jail facility where Dr Penfould had sourced many of his troops. Barlow loved guns, leather, tattoos and earrings and acting like a pig. He did not disappoint today either; flicking Sam a “pussy-fingers” and a dirty chuckle. “Fat pig bastard,” Sam thought to herself. Barlow was scum but he hadn’t raped her or any of the other girls. He sometimes had a session with whips and ropes that left them mentally scarred if not physically welted. But in the main he liked to watch people and make disgusting advances. He was another peculiar animal in the menagerie of Doctor Penfould. Sam kept walking with Maeve, the jailer right on her heels. “A day at a time, a day at a time…” she reminded herself as she stepped one foot in front of the other. She held onto hope for better things. She had reconciled that the horrors outside were marginally worse than the horrors inside so she kept herself together with thoughts of rescue. But she was infected, she had no choice. Doctor Penfould had a preventative medicine that kept her and everyone else at the Rock from descending into a zombie state. So she went on; survival. 

It was unnerving for Sam, having someone so nasty behind her, someone that hated her with a passion. Many of the people with power, in the Doc’s warped community, had once been the dysfunctional miscreants, addicts, low-lifes and cast-offs from society had suddenly become powerful. Sam could not understand their world, what made them the monsters that they were but understood perhaps how they had felt before the world had collapsed into the Great Change. Maeve was indeed one of those people; a cast-off, used person who had never been valued. Maeve had been used and abused in her life; never adored. Her drunkard father and addict mother had never helped her understand an appropriate relationship and how a man and a woman could complement one-another. Maeve had also learned that her father, high-up in the police and in the fire service only showed her affection in the wrong way, when he wanted, when no-one was looking. While Sam didn’t know these details she suspected as such and, in reality, such a combination of things was bound to create the nasty, toxic individual that was Maeve O’Grady. Sam was in her thirties and was one of Cooleman’s lawyers before the Great Change. Her husband ran a successful business and she kept herself going with the memories of the good times, the old times. All of the protections, physical and societal were gone and in the anarchy, violence and suffering that followed the Great Change, Sam’s world of freedom of choice, being opinionated and, essentially a powerful woman in her community were long gone. The world and Sam had suffered a great cataclysm; the world destroyed.

Sam was naturally attractive, mature, classy, tall, well-educated and something Maeve would never be. Maeve perhaps wanted to be, and consequently hated, everything that Samantha was. But all of Sam’s traits made her a captive and all of Maeve’s an oppressor in the new world. Maeve believed that in the new world, after the Great Change, women like her could and would be more successful than women like Samantha. Of all the “cows”, “girls” or other condescending names given to the group of women huddled and cowering in the dormitory known as “the Pen” Maeve disliked-no, hated Sam, the most. It was there that they arrived; the Pen.

A key came out of Maeve’s pocket and opened a locked door into what was a waiting room and the partitioned areas of medical chambers converted into a dorm. Like an airlock, there was a mechanical breath into the room and a collective sigh of scared women could be felt and heard. The room was a tired, with linoleum floors and scuffed wall, with windows that were barred to stop escape but let light in. They had old hospital beds in a dorm-like arrangement but it got dim and dingy the further into the long dorm-like room you got. Generator power and a poor supply of emergency solar-backup power were available to the facility thanks to some handiwork by some of the legion of “junkies” that Dr Penfould had in his gang. The “girls” were considered working animals and got the least of everything and that included electricity. In summertime they were hot and in winter they were cold. Their food was always the poorest as, according to Maeve, they were all “fat bitches sitting on their arses” that didn’t need extra food. 

They were used for a range of services, a sort of barter system which included clothing repairs, haircuts, cleaning, washing, sewing, massages and, ultimately, sex. These prisoners were largely not forced but very much coerced and obliged to give up their bodies for the men that controlled them or those rewarded by a visit to them. While this was the case, they were more scared of Maeve, their Jailer, than they were of the men and few women from the squads who came in for market days of sorts. This was with the exception of one man, or animal, in the Rock. Xavier. Xavier was the least favourite of all the inhabitants of the Rock. As they looked up at Maeve and Sam, the women in the dorm saw their second-most hated individual had arrived with one of their favourites. 

“Alright you lazy fuckin’ cows, stand up!” The women got to their feet, a couple with babes in arms crying. “Shut those little shits up would ya!” Maeve shouted. She pointed angrily at the babies. The mothers nodded and quickly put the babies on their breasts for a feed. Stephanie was one of the young mothers and she looked at Maeve with a look that even Maeve chose to ignore; the indomitable look of a mother that would kill for her child if she had to. Maeve wasn’t interested in fighting Steph, she was more interested in control, power and self-preservation. According to Maeve, the cows in the Pen were working animals; all about the precious resource they held. Her view was short-term. The Doc had a plan far greater he never shared with anyone; breed these people and create a slave culture he and his lineage could exploit for generations to come. He had delusions of one day sort of retiring and handing the baton to a son that was yet to be conceived. He would be handsome, blond and ever-so slightly Eurasian. “A bit like a former Russian President,” Penfould had thought on occasion. But Penfould was far too old for fathering a son and being vibrant enough for a strong hand-shake and stern smile to signify the handover of the family business. Penfould’s fantasies were just that; dreams as fantastical as a children’s faery tale. In the meantime, until he had successfully bred the people of the Rock into submissiveness, he would lie and pretend he was keeping them there, safe and waiting for the promised cure. They were to be bred, controlled and exploited like working animals on a farm.

“Not too fuckin’ much; the Doc will need that!” Maeve warned, poised to back-hand one of the mothers feeding her baby. Old for a mother at 42, Maria was from a South American background and prayed to god as she closed her eyes and winced. The back-hand never came. Sam took charge to stop the innocent mother and her babe in arms from copping a beating; still brave and powerful, the Sam from the old days. “Please-“ was all she said, reaching forward to get in between Maeve and the potential victim. Maeve yanked on the leash for effect, making Sam, stumble backward and choke. A sick smile twisted on Maeve’s lips and she was satisfied that she had dealt some punishment and felt the according satisfaction. Silence. “You don’t do that!” Lakshmi, one of the ladies in captivity there said scoldingly. “You fuckin’ what?” Maeve glared at her with malicious intent. But it stopped, Maeve had already enjoyed humiliating someone, spitting in someone’s hair and now pulling the leash to dehumanise and hurt. Besides, Lakshmi was a good worker and producer of many things, including milk. Penfould would be displeased if Lakshmi was hurt in a senseless squabble over nothing. “You’ll keep, bitch.” Maeve said, clearly ignoring the challenge and turning her attention to the broader group.