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He twisted round to look at the dark-haired girl, who was now working on his ankles. She mimed a gag in his mouth and nodded.
“You took it out,” he said. “Thanks.”
She gave him a cautious, fleeting smile. His legs came free, and he pulled himself up to his knees, wobbling like a baby who had never walked. Still wearing nothing but those stupid silk boxers.
He crawled to Carrie, brushed her hair away. Her face was white, with dark smudges under purplish eyelids. She didn’t respond when he shook her. Her pulse was faint and rapid. She felt clammy. She made a raspy sound with each shallow breath. He couldn’t stop shaking her, begging her to wake up. He realized after a while that he was sobbing.
He felt that pat-pat on his shoulder again, so he wiped his face and turned to look into the girl’s big somber eyes. She mimed the injection of a hypodermic in her arm, and gestured towards Carrie.
Drugged, then. Those pricks had drugged his little sister. He tried to comfort himself with the fact that she was breathing.
He snorted back the tears, wiped his nose. “What’s your name?”
She looked confused, so he pointed to himself. “I’m Josh.” He stroked Carrie’s hair. “This is my sister. Carrie.”
She gave him that fleeting, beautiful smile again. “Sveti.” She started in on the others, rattling off a list of foreign names, too fast for his battered brain to take in. She finished with the littlest one, a toddler who was clinging to her arm, ruffling the child’s snarled black curls tenderly. “Rachel,” she said.
Rachel held up her arms to be picked up. Two years old, maybe less. Scratchy little voice. The kid’s face was so thin, she looked like a wizened little monkey. Sveti picked her up and settled the child on her slender hip. Skinny arms wound around the girl’s neck; dirty little legs with black-soled feet wrapped around her waist like a strangling vine. The toddler wore a tunic made from an adult’s white T-shirt, artfully knotted so that it would stay on her tiny body.
Sveti cuddled Rachel and gazed at Josh. Her calm, steady regard made him feel nervous. He was scared shitless, but she looked like she’d been afraid and miserable for so long, she’d made some strange peace with it. Her eyes looked old. A hundred-year-old woman, in the body of a thirteen-year-old. Twelve, maybe. Hard to tell.
He looked around. A tide of dread rose inside him as the children stared at him hungrily. Jesus, how could people do this to little kids? No tables, chairs, books, toys, music, pictures. No windows, even. The place smelled of piss, dirty diapers, rotted food. Big, overflowing plastic bags of garbage bulged along the wall. This place was like a holding pen for animals, doomed to be put down whenever someone got around to it. “Where are you from?” he asked Sveti.
She considered the question carefully. “Ukraina,” she replied.
The Ukraine. It was coming together. Becca’s mobster was Ukrainian. Nadia had been Moldovan, or so she said. But what the fuck was a mobster doing with a cage full of sad, dirty little kids?
Christ. That was a question he was afraid to consider. Especially since being penned in with them might mean that he and Carrie were now slated to share their fate. And looking around himself, he couldn’t imagine it was anything but bad.
His own fault. Falling for a lying whore. Reeled in like a fish on a hook, and the hook was his own stupid dick.
It made him cringe. He’d been such a butthead. Becca had tried so hard to warn him, and he’d given her nothing but attitude.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
Sveti bit her lip, looked doubtful, and shook her head.
“Why? What the fuck is this place? What are they going to do to you?” He was shouting now, even though he knew it wasn’t fair.
She didn’t look offended. “First, Ukraina,” she said, in a low, halting voice. “Apartment. Many month. Then truck, boat, many days.” She made a face, a gagging gesture with her finger. “Bad, truck, bad, boat. Then, here.” She held up the hand that wasn’t supporting Rachel. Five fingers, a closed fist, four more fingers. “Days. Many days.”
“Nine days?” he said.
“Many,” she repeated. She sounded exhausted.
Josh pointed at the bruises on her face. “Who hit you?” God, how could anybody hit a face that looked that fragile?
Her face went blank and she turned away, putting the baby down. The kid started to whimper. He knew just how she felt. But it was time for him to man up. Do something. Anything.
He staggered towards the door, supporting himself against the wall. Seemed less energy consuming than asking complicated questions. The littler kids all followed him, in a straggling file. He was probably the first new thing they’d had to look at in months. He must be a hell of a spectacle, beat all to shit and streaked with blood. He tried the door. Locked, bolted. The one other door proved to be a bathroom. One filthy toilet, no toilet seat. A dirty sink. A cracked bar of yellow soap. An industrial-sized toilet paper dispenser. The stench of piss. That was all.
He crept slowly back, along the wall, to the spot next to Carrie, and sank down next to her. He felt queasy and terrified. He covered his eyes to block out the light and the penetrating gaze of all those thumb-sucking kids who were hunkered down to watch him.
A few moments later, he felt a tap on his knee. Sveti was holding out a little plastic tray, sort of like a meal on a plane. A shred of dry-looking meat, a dried, cracked glop of gluey mashed potatoes smeared with congealed gravy, gray vegetables, a half pint container of milk. A small bottle of filtered water.
It looked and smelled like a frozen meal that had been thawed and refrozen several times before the final insult of being micro-waved.
She patted her own belly. “Me, no eat. No hungry. You eat?”
