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She stared at her hands, fastened with handcuffs. One was attached directly to the heavy metal scaffolding, the other was cuffed to a long, heavy chain which Nick then buckled to the next metal pillar.
She gaped at him in terrified astonishment.
CHAPTER29
Something cool and wet kept stroking his face, but Josh didn’t want to drag himself up to consciousness. Something bad waited for him there. But that wet thing petting his face was making him curious. Groggily, he let his eyelids flutter open. Regretted it as light sliced into his brain like a hot knife.
Oh, God. All pain. He was nothing but pain, his head a throbbing, sickening knot of it. Every heartbeat a hammer blow.
Josh tried to reach up to feel his head and discovered another source of pain. His shoulders were wrenched behind his back. Wrists on fire from tourniquet-tight bonds, his fingers numb and cold. His face felt crusty. His back hurt, his balls hurt, his stomach rolled. He tasted blood. Felt loose teeth. He knotted his gut to rock-hardness, and tried peering out one slitted eye.
Eyes. That was all he saw. Big, hazel eyes. Long-lashed, shadowy eyes, gazing at him thoughtfully. It seemed to hurt a fraction less, so he opened his one eye a little more to take in the whole face.
A girl’s face. Heart-shaped, hollow-cheeked. Delicate and beautiful. He would have taken her for an angel coming to carry him away if she hadn’t looked so damn sad.
There was an old bruise under one of her eyes. She was scary thin. Someone said something, in a questioning tone. A small child’s voice. He couldn’t make out the muffled, garbled words. The girl looked down, and replied gently in a language he could not place.
He opened both eyes. Curiosity was getting the better of him, but he had to close them and wait through several violent explosions of pain before he could gather the courage to do it again, and take in the entire scene.
Holy shit. It took a while for it all to sink in. So many kids. This raggedy girl, dressed in a shrunken T-shirt and baggy sweatpants, was in front. The shirt didn’t hide her shape. Pretty. No, beautiful, despite her thinness.
He averted his eyes and was punished by a searing bolt of pain from his optic nerve. Served him right, though. This chick was way too young for him to be noticing anything below the collarbone.
She was surrounded by other children. Lots of children. Skinny, dirty looking. Most of them were sucking on their thumbs.
They were in a white room, flooded with light. Big, nasty, buzzing fluorescent bar lamps hung over them, blazing cold, head-splitting light that washed out all the details like an overexposed photo. He was reminded of a pop psych quiz someone had given him once.So, like, you wake up in this completely white room. How do you feel?
His answer was supposed to have revealed his true feelings about death. That kind of drivel annoyed the shit out of him. He didn’t need a quiz to know how he felt about death. Death sucked. He wasn’t looking forward to it, not for himself or anyone he cared about. End of story.
But no one had ever asked him how he would feel if he woke up in a white room with a bunch of starved-looking kids in rags. He wondered what deep psychological truths that question would reveal about a person.
The kids huddled around him in a semicircle, staring as if he were an alien fallen from space. Like they might start worshipping him as a god. The girl leaned forward with her bloody rag and dabbed his forehead again. She said something. Said it again, louder. It wasn’t until the third repetition that he realized she was trying to say something in English. “Hurts?” she said again. It had sounded more like “huts.”
“Yeah,” he croaked. Speaking made him cough, which provoked instant, skull-crushing agony with every jolt of his chest. Once he started, he couldn’t stop. Bam, crash, pound,fuck.
It was starting to come back, in broken, jagged pieces. He remembered feelings—horror, betrayal, fear, shame—but the memories and sequences that had provoked them were broken to shards.
Image by image, he fit them together. Nadia, in the bedroom, naked. Hands clamped over her mouth, eyes streaming tears, watching silently as three big guys tied him up and kicked the shit out of him.
And the fat guy. He remembered him, too. Looming over him at some bizarre sideways angle, smiling. The bags of his puffy, bloated face swelling as he gloated. Crazy, blank gray eyes. He’d nudged Josh’s face with the toe of his expensive loafers, and taunted him about something…something that scared him out of his mind, even before the memory slid back into place.Carrie. Becca.
“Carrie?” he said loudly. He looked around at the other kids. “Becca? Are my sisters here? Have you seen my sisters?”
The oldest girl frowned. “Sister?” she repeated slowly.
“My sisters! Have you seen them?”
The girl looked around at the others. The kids shuffled back. His vista opened up. Cinder-block walls, painted white. Concrete floor. Very cold. He was lying on it. There was a series of small mattresses. Each had a dirty blanket.
Holy shit. These kids lived here, in this freaky white limbo.
Carrie lay on the mattress nearest him. Her eyes were closed. She wore only underwear. Her hair was draped over her face.
Josh jerked up, tried to move, but he was trussed like a bird for the oven. “Carrie,” he yelled. “Carrie? You OK?”
The girl tapped him on the cheek, a brisk pat-pat. Then she held up a white plastic knife, leaned behind him, and began to saw.
It took a long time, but finally his hands came loose. They burned as blood flowed back into them. He reached up, prodded his head. Found a big, blood-encrusted lump on his temple. Then the rag, knotted around his neck. The corners of his mouth were chafed and sore.
