It was a difficult task.
When he propped himself up on his elbows, he felt a pang of pain flash through his side.
It sent a tingle down his spine.
He winced.
The man and girl laughed.
“Yeah,” the girl said, “haven’t we
all
been there before?”
Mitts looked to the muscled man with the handgun. He continued to hold it down at his thigh, pointing it at the floor. He thought about Heinmein’s gun.
He scolded himself for not having thought to bring it with him.
But, most likely, he would’ve had the gun taken off him when he’d been found.
Realising he couldn’t so much as move a muscle without giving himself more pain, he decided it better to lie still.
He glared at the pair on the other side of the bars, now feeling the fury within his chest being stoked.
Who were
they
to laugh at him?
Why should he deserve it?
He had just lost everything he had ever known . . . his home . . . his family . . .
everything
.
The blond girl took a couple of steps forward. She wrapped her fingers around the bars.
She peered through the gap.
Mitts wondered if her wiry frame might allow her to slip all the way through.
“It’s okay,” she said, “we’ve got meds—
painkillers
.” She paused. “We want to hear some answers from you first, though.” She unpeeled the fingers of one hand from the bars and gestured about her. “Had to bring you here, lock you up, don’t know if we can trust you yet, do we?”
Not thinking straight, Mitts tried to haul himself up again.
And failed.
Another pair of laughs on the other side of the bars.
Mitts felt his fury building.
The blond girl’s smile faded. She fixed her glare onto Mitts, then said, in a cool, calm voice, “So, kid, tell us what happened.”
* * *
At first Mitts couldn’t speak at all. He supposed the two of them might take his silence as a sign of disobedience, as if he refused to cooperate with them until they turned him free.
But that wasn’t the case at all.
The simple fact of the matter was that he had no idea where to start.
So he went through it all.
From beginning to end.
To what he
thought
had been his death.
As Mitts reeled through his story, he was aware of the sunlight—once beaming in through the letterbox-sized window in the wall—turning to a clear night sky.
Fluorescent lights in the corridor outside his cell blinked to life.
Reminding him of being back in the Compound.
Back in the Restricted Area.
Almost like being home.
Mitts even told the two of them about how he had killed Heinmein. How he had tripped him up. Sent him flying backward. How he had broken his neck.
Mitts said nothing about the creatures.
He left that part out completely.
He didn’t see much reason in letting them know about
that
. . .
After Mitts had killed Heinmein, he had worked on some sort of autopilot, but he had the recollection of pushing the drawer in the Autopsy room back into place, locking it with Heinmein’s keys, and then tossing the keys off somewhere in the dirt which surrounded the Compound.
There was no evidence.
Nothing for these two to find.
So he was better off just staying quiet about the creatures.
For now.
When Mitts first began his story, he observed the slightly smug expressions on the faces of his captors. But, as he went on, he noticed the blond girl losing her smirk.
She took on a far more serious expression.
The muscled man’s features, too, softened.
When he reached the end of the story, Mitts felt as though he had lived through those seven years all over again.
He wished it hadn’t happened at all.
That Heinmein had never come for him or his family.
There was a long period of silence.
Mitts pressed his lips tight together, awaiting his captors’ response.
All he could hear was the buzzing of the lights above.
In the distance, he could hear laughter, the clanking of pots. He could smell soup cooking.
. . .
Chicken soup?
Even if it was all in his mind, his mouth salivated with the thought of the rich, fleshy taste. His stomach emitted a tiny
groan
.
There was nothing he could do to prevent his imagination getting carried away.
The girl leaned up against the cement wall opposite Mitts’s cell.
She held her arms crossed over her chest.
With a subtle sidelong glance from the girl, the muscled man holstered his handgun in the waistband of his jeans. He turned his back to them then bashed his fist twice against the door.
It opened wide.
He left the two of them alone.
The girl pushed herself away from the wall. She took a few steps toward Mitts’s cell.
She laid her palm across one of the bars.
Mitts made out the contours of her hands.
Lots of callouses.
More than a fair share of bruises.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry that all that happened to you.”
Mitts’s throat felt tight. He had an uncomfortable—
too warm
—feeling in his side.
He tried again to rise up from where he lay in bed. But he hadn’t the energy to support the pain.
The girl stared at Mitts’s side; at the place where he’d been shot. “Just a flesh wound. No fragments I could find—you should be fine once you’ve had some rest.”
She turned her attention up to his eyes.
Mitts felt a faint buzz through his chest.
“You lost an awful lot of blood.”
* * *
The next time Mitts awoke, the muscled man had returned to his cell. He bore a packet of pills. They were all translucent, orange.
He brought water, too, in a plastic cup.
He passed both through the bars then watched on as Mitts took them.
Once he was done, the muscled man swiftly asked for the packet of pills and the plastic cup back. As if Mitts could commit some lasting damage if left with either item any longer than was absolutely necessary.
Appearing from out of nowhere, the girl unlocked the cell door.
She and the muscled man helped Mitts out of his bunk.
Onto his feet.
They guided Mitts along hallways.
In a bleary sort of way, he was aware of staring faces.
Nothing more than eyeballs, gaping mouths—
ghosts
—almost.
They climbed stairs.
Mitts tripped a couple of times.
But the girl and the muscled man held him firmly upright.
Finally, they lay him down in a comfortable bed.
With a firm, well-sprung mattress.
So different from the bland camp bed.
Mitts’s room was simple, though it was certainly an upgrade on the cell.
A pinewood door which remained firmly shut.
A large window, left open just a touch.
Thick bars on the outside.
He assumed someone stood guard on the other side of the door, too.
In the distance, he could make out rolling, green hills. Bathed in sunshine.
On the horizon, he could see clumped-up clouds. With dark bottoms.
Would it rain later?
It had been a long time since he had seen rain.
The room smelled strongly of iodine.
Mitts supposed the blond girl had attended to him in the middle of the night, while he was sleeping. When he examined the bandage, he saw it was fresh.
No sign of the copper-coloured marks from before.
Only when Mitts glanced about, did he notice the large armchair.
And that the blond girl, supporting her head on her fist, was breathing heavily.
Eyes closed.
Asleep.
He felt strangely intrusive, staring at her while she slept. But since she was the only animate object in the room, he couldn’t help himself.
As if she noticed him looking, she took a final, large breath, fluttered her eyelids, and then blinked away her sleep.
With a yawn, she glanced at him.
She rocked herself onto her feet.
She was wearing the same clothing as the night before.
The dark-green tank top.
The black jeans slashed at the kneecaps.
Dark circles clung to the bottoms of her eyes.
“Well,” she said, with a slight smile, turning her back to him and treading over to the window, “did you sleep well?”
Mitts swallowed, still feeling that dry, plasticky taste of the pill he had swallowed the night before. “Were you here all night, in that chair?”
The girl kept her back to him.
She looked out the window, to the rolling hills beyond. “Nice view from here, isn’t it?” She squared her shoulders, gave another yawn, then turned to look at him. “This room has just about the best room in the whole Station.”
“The ‘Station’?” Mitts said.
“Yeah,” she replied, looking back out the window. “An abandoned police station. This is our HQ, the centre of this little development we’ve got going here. Not much more than a hamlet at the moment, I’m afraid, but we’re getting there. Certain
factors
make expansion somewhat tricky.”
Mitts didn’t think it his place to ask her what she meant by ‘factors’.
For another thing, he was ravenous.
As if anticipating Mitts, the girl glanced to him, smirked, then said, “I’ll go see what I can do about breakfast.” She nodded to the wardrobe which Mitts only then noticed. “See what you can do about getting dressed.”
* * *
Mitts hauled himself out of bed, away from the thick, incredibly comfortable duvet.
Within the wardrobe, he found limited options.
In actual fact, there was only one option:
A fairly new, dark-green tank top.
A pair of ragged, clearly well-used, black jeans.
He ditched his soiled jeans and t-shirt.
He pulled on the tank top.
Yanked on the ragged, black jeans.
By the time he had got himself dressed, the blond girl slipped in through the door, with a plastic tray in her hands. There was a cup of smoking coffee on top.
Some scrambled eggs smeared onto the top of a bread roll.
A bowl of cereal with a cup of milk.
Although he had never liked cereal, he couldn’t prevent the squirming, groaning sensation in the pit of his stomach.
He was
starving
.
The girl popped out a fold-away table which had stood concealed at the side of the bed.
When she had laid the breakfast tray down on top of it, positioned the table in such a way that Mitts could use the edge of the bed as a makeshift seat, she took up her place in the armchair.
Mitts got through his breakfast in record time.
He even drank down the coffee.
Found that he actually
enjoyed
it.
The liquid seemed to send energising waves through his blood stream. It brought him back from the dour state of mind he had slipped into since finding out about his parents’ death.
When he had finished breakfast, he expected the girl to be short with him.
For her to sweep up the breakfast tray.
Carry it out of the room.
To leave him alone again.
But, instead, she remained in her armchair.
Knees pinned together, hands clasped in her lap.
Mitts supposed he was meant to say something, so he mumbled, “Thanks.”
The girl gave him a weak smile. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “You’ll have time to make up for all this hospitality—all this
medical
treatment.”
Mitts didn’t really want to think about
how
he might be expected to make things up.
“What’s your name?” the girl said.
“Mitts.”
She wrinkled up her nose, tilted her head to one side. “What sort of a name is that?”
“My parents were hippies.” A lump formed in his throat. He swallowed it back. “I don’t like to talk about it.”
The girl shrugged. She didn’t give Mitts her name. “So, listen,
Mitts
, we’re thinking about heading up to the Research Centre.”
“The ‘Research Centre’?” Mitts echoed.
“The place where you were hiding out—with your parents, with that
doctor
of yours.”
Mitts felt his chest tighten.
He didn’t want to return.
Ever again.
“Don’t worry,” she said, “nobody’s going to ask you to come along with us. You’re still recovering. But—”
There was a thudding knock at the door.
Both Mitts and the girl turned their attention toward it.
The door opened a crack. Another girl glanced in. She had cropped sable hair which hung just below her earlobes.
Like the blond girl, and the muscled man, she wore a dark-green tank top.
Battered black jeans.
Well-worn, ankle-high boots.
“Sorry for interrupting,” she said, looking over Mitts briefly before turning her gaze onto the blond girl. “It’s about loading up the trucks—you sure you want to take all four of them up there?”
“Why,” the blond girl replied, “is that a problem?”
The black-haired girl flushed. “Just that Dag says he doesn’t think it wise to use up that amount of fuel.”
“Well,” the blond girl said, “if
Dag
has trouble with me making the decisions then maybe he should think about how he’ll win the next election, huh?”
The way that she added a venomous twist to
Dag’s
name sent a trill through Mitts’s stomach.
The black-haired girl occupied the doorway for another few seconds, glanced at Mitts one more time, smiled lightly, and then disappeared, bringing the door shut behind her.
The blond girl turned back to Mitts, shaking her head. She sighed gently. “Sorry about that,” she said, “gets like a mad house here when we bring in fresh meat.”
“ ‘Fresh meat’? ” Mitts replied, somewhat alarmed.
“Yeah, when we bring in people we’ve salvaged everybody about the place wants to get a look at them.” She focused her crystal-clear blue eyes on Mitts for a long few moments, and then added, “They all want to get a look at
you
.”