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I remained transfixed, barely blinking as Abby’s tongue was pulled out, and the man in the LED began to slice into it. Her cries... Maverick let me go, and I grabbed Ciaran’s forearm, curling my fingers into his skin.
There was so much blood, I could smell it, see the rivulets beginning to form puddles on the platform and drip down. Something squelched and popped… her tongue being removed.
The masked man stood and held it up, ensuring he had our attention as he partially lifted his mask and put it in his damn mouth.
I could deal with a lot, but this was disgusting on a whole new level. I gagged and looked away when he began to chew.
“Dude, why?” Mel rasped, burying her face in my back.
“Can we go now?” Gracelyn asked when his companions started cheering him on.
I peeked up just as she tried to walk towards the unopened gate.
Kyrous was quick to stop her, wrapping an arm around her middle.
“Don’t just take off.”
“It’s right there.” She jabbed a finger in the gate’s direction.
I turned my head back towards the platform, watching two of the masked men reach down and lift Abby up.
With a careless toss, she was thrown back down into our enclosure. Her body hit the ground with a thud, but it didn’t seem like anything else broke. She was very much alive, jaw shoved too far to the right, her tongue gone. Copious amounts of blood continued to leak from her face, staining the grass and her chin. The sound coming from her reminded me of a pig being butchered.
“What do we do?” Margo questioned, hesitating to go to her side.
“Kill her,” I said simply.
“What?” Leonard shrilled. “We can’t—”
“Look at her,” I demanded, turning towards him. “Do you know of any hospitals we can take her to? A local ER?”
“She isn’t an animal, we can’t just put her out of her misery,” he snapped.
“She can’t even talk,” Gracelyn mumbled.
Abby began to stand up, showing she had more strength than I gave her credit for.
Though passing out would have been more beneficial to her than trying to come towards us. She took two steps before the side of her head imploded by a well-aimed blast from the guy with the shotgun, the sound echoing loudly.
Something wet hit my cheek as blood and brain matter expelled into the air, scattering over the grass along with tiny fragments of her skull. Her body jerked to the right and landed at our feet, face down with a gaping hole exposing the top portion of her innards.
Leonard turned and began to vomit, his hands going to his knees. Above us, the masked figures began to disperse. When the clown girl finally took her leave, she did so with a wave and a promise to see us soon.
The gate ahead swung open, granting us access to our next destination.
CHAPTER NINE
We walked for hours.
I only knew it had been that long because the moon lowered, and the sky began to change from the first signs of sunrise.
My feet were killing me, I felt gross and sticky, and I was in desperate need of a shower.
Abby’s dried blood or something had hardened to my cheek, only adding to how grimy I felt.
Ciaran hadn’t left my side, but we’d barely spoken a word each other since leaving the enclosure. Did I thank him for saving my life yet again, even if it was at another person’s expense? Or did I demand to know who the hell he was and why he kept doing so?
Both?
Neither?
Conversation flowed easily enough with everyone else. No one brought up Abby. I don’t think we needed a rundown of what we’d just witnessed.
I didn’t think her death had been as bad as Susan’s simply because one suffered more than the other, but it’d been brutal. It had me wondering who the people beneath the masks were.
Specifically, the one with the half-white face and the guy who boldly ate a raw and bloody tongue. Even the clown…
I should have never let these thoughts fester so intensely. It went against everything I was so determined not to become. I hadn’t even tried to save Abby, I’d requested she be put down like the animal Leonard had argued she wasn’t, like the pig she reminded me of as her face was dismantled.
I sincerely thought that killing her would have been more humane than toting her around the city without a tongue and with a broken jaw.
Was that wrong?
I tried to see it from his perspective and couldn’t. I don’t know, maybe this was the old me talking. Until now, I’d done quite well making a liar of myself, pretending I could ever be anything other than filthy and tragically flawed from the life I lived outside of here.
This was officially a vacation from hell. Ciaran wasn’t helping matters. He was what I could be, serving as a reminder of exactly what I kept trying to deny. He made being bad seem like such an easy thing to do. Beautiful and twisted to the core, he unapologetically owned who he was.
