The Infected: An H1-2M1 Chronicle

Chapter 12

THEN

I sat in the middle of my concrete slab of a bed and stared at my side. I had five stitches. I remembered getting stabbed. I remembered bleeding for two days. I could not remember getting stitches. I picked at them. The cut was almost healed. I looked up as the man they called Boss came down the stairs and stared at him. I was feeling pretty proud of myself. The cage was open; there was really no reason to lock it other than redundancy. The chain around my waist kept me in there. I couldn't reach the door if I tried. In the time it took me to wrap my chain around the man on the floor and Boss to come to the cage I had tried many times to get out.

Boss stood at the door of the cage with his arms crossed. He had a tattoo of a black rattle snake with red eyes crudely scratched into his arm. The snake wrapped around his forearm and the words "Betty" stood out in blue. He stared at the body on the floor. "How did this happen?" he asked.

I shrugged my shoulders. "How he landed," I said.

"He's been strangled," Kid said as he loaded rounds into a shotgun. They weren't bullets. They looked more like tiny syringes. I didn't know what they were. They couldn't be syringes. I knew enough about guns to know the syringe would shatter. Whatever they were I didn't like them. I also knew there was nothing I could do about it.

"Now how do you suppose that happened?" Boss said looking at me.

"His neck got wrapped in my chain," I said trying not to smile. "Oops."

"I've been hearing you've been giving them some trouble. I thought we were done with this. Trouble is bad for business, Girl. And now you killed one of them. I have half a mind to just kill you, but the Kid's found another use for you. She's all yours Kid."

"For the record," Kid said after Boss left the room. "When I mentioned this I was joking."

"What are you going to do?" I said softly. I told myself I would never cry again, but I could feel my throat tightening. "You're not like them. Why are you doing this?" I looked up at him as he aimed the gun. Kid had never once entered my cage. He barely looked at me. He acted as if he was there on orders and nothing more, but I knew that wasn't true. The sight of me bothered him. He knew what was happening was wrong. I could tell by the way he refused to look at me. "I believe that you were a good person. That you still ARE a good person. We do things we don't want to in order to survive. Just let me go. We can make it look like I fought you. We can make it look like I got away on my own" Another thought dawned on me. If he truly was doing things just to stay alive, maybe he didn't want to be there either. "You can come with me. We can protect each other."

"Like you protected your brother?" Kid said as he pulled the trigger. 

I flinched as the gun made a soft clicking noise, the sound it makes when the chamber is empty. I closed my eyes thinking the gun didn't go off. I felt a pinch on my neck and winced. I brought my hand up quickly to smack the bug that had bitten me. I pulled a small yellow dart from my neck and looked at it. I looked over at Kid as he set the gun down and leaned against the cell door. 

"There are no more good people, Girl. Remember that if you survive the transport."  

I tried to get up but my legs no longer worked.

"I gave you enough tranqs to put a horse to sleep. You've been building a tolerance. To be honest the dose might kill you, but I'm not taking any chances of you waking up. That wouldn't be good for you. And if you do die before we get there...you're welcome."