BlueK Dynasty: The 1st Seven Days (10 page)

“
Who
knew we taste so good,” said VIN, who had crawled off into a
corner.
  

Kosner and Santino looked
at one another and laughed, low at first, then more loudly and
nervously.
  

“
Hey,
hey, hey, this guy is moving.” Kosner stood up from the table and
backed away from the man.
  

Santino stood up and went
close. He could hear a groggy, deep voice and tried to make out
what the man was trying to say.
  

“
My
mouth, my head… It hurts so badly.”
  

“
Get him
on his feet,” VIN said. “That should wake him right
up.”
 

Santino and Kosner hoisted
the new guy up. “What’s your name?” asked Kosner. He slapped the
man’s face lightly. “Can you hear me?”
  

The guy’s head slouched
forward and backward, like a newborn babies. “Leon. My name is
Leon.”
  

“
Leon,
there we go. His name is Leon,” proclaimed Kosner with a goofy
smile on his face.
  

Santino rolled his eyes.
Kosner wasn’t the brightest of the bunch. “VIN, bring me a piece of
meat.”
  

VIN rolled over, big and
bulky, and pulled the woman’s leg from its socket, then brought it
to Santino.
  

Santino handled the meat
with care as he put it under Leon’s nose, waving it back and
forth.
  

“
Good
idea,” said Kosner.
  

Leon came too shortly,
sniffing and breathing in the smell. His eyes opened, and his neck
stiffened, steadying his head. He pushed Santino and Kosner away
and stumbled a bit on his own.
  

Santino watched Leon as he
stood up. Every time he saw one of his creations in the beginning
stages, he felt so proud, like a father who had taught his son how
to ride without training wheels.
  

Leon’s mouth hung open,
and drool clung to his chin. He had a crazed look about him; his
blond hair had fallen off in patches, and the veins in his face
were bulged. He took in his old office. He smelled blood in the
air, blood and sweat and tears. He felt bone-shivering cold, like
when he was a child growing up on Lake Michigan. He hated it. He
saw the desk lamp, the only light in the room. His eyes adjusted,
and he saw three men. Where was Mona? He tried to back away from
the trio, but his body bumped into something. He put his hands up
in defense and saw they were grotesque and
swollen.
  

“
It’s
okay. Just breathe deep, and slow down your thoughts,” Leon heard a
voice say.
  

His hands were claws. They
were white and long and thick, with razor-sharp nails. Black veins
ran up his arms as if his blood was made of tar.
  

“
What am
I?” he asked.
  

“
You’re
a Phantom,” replied Santino.
  

“
So
that’s what you’re going to call us?” Kosner
asked.
  

“
Do you
have a better idea?” Santino replied.
  

VIN and Kosner looked at
one another as they racked their brains for a cleverer name.
Neither one responded.
  

“
Exactly
what I thought,” Santino said. He turned back to Leon, who seemed
to be in shock. “You must be hungry. You should eat
something.”
  

Leon didn’t feel hungry.
He felt confused and lost. The last thing he remembered was making
out with Mona, the lead clerk at Goodwill. Mona, busty Mona with
her sweet smile. Leon couldn’t say where she was right now. He
could only hope she had left before these thugs showed
up.
  

“
Who are
you guys?” he asked.
  

“
I think
it’s time to go,” VIN said as if he hadn’t heard
Leon.
  

“
Yeah,
I’m gonna go downstairs and clean up,” said
Kosner.
  

“
So you
all are just gonna leave me with the new guy like that?” Santino
couldn’t believe it. Kosner and VIN left the room looking like a
crime scene, and closed the door behind them. Santino knew Leon
would ask a million and one questions about how and why and what
was going on. He had some answers, but not all. He turned around
and saw Leon staring at him, patiently waiting for an explanation.
At least he wasn’t freaking out like Kosner
had.
  

“
Look,”
Santino started, “I know you have a lot of questions for
me.”
  

“
Not
just you, for all of you. Like how did you get in here? Where is
Mona?” Leon took in the room again, and all he saw was red…red
blood, liquid and bright, in puddles with chunks of bones and meat.
His eyes widened in horror.
  

Santino couldn’t handle
this. If only they hadn’t eaten this guy’s girlfriend, he might
have been able to explain things better.
  

“
Is that
Mona?” Leon uttered. Then he began to scream. “You killed her!
Mona!” He dropped to his knees and crawled toward the puddle of
blood.
  

Santino had had enough. First he had
an adrenaline junkie, then a scary cat, now a crybaby. What was in
this stuff that had all these grown men becoming so extreme in the
beginning stages? Santino bet Leon didn’t even like Mona that much,
that she was just a work fling. Yet here he was going on and crying
like he’d lost his first love. You don’t sneak your first love into
your office after hours.

Santino bent down and
dragged Leon away from the gory mess. He pulled Leon onto his feet
and tried to direct him toward the door. He had to clean up, and if
Leon wasn’t going to eat anything, then staying in the room with
human remains would just upset him even more.
  

“
Let’s
go, buddy,” Santino said.
  

Leon sniffled and let
Santino push him from the room. “What happened?”
  

“
Just
take a walk, and I’ll tell you whatever you need to hear. Watch the
steps.” Santino directed Leon down the stairs to join the rest of
the guys. He saw Kosner had picked out a new outfit, all black and
trendy with a huge scarf that covered half his face and leather
combat boots. VIN had chosen a dark black and blue ensemble. He had
on an oversized trench coat with a cardigan underneath, and a black
fitted cap on his head.
  

“
Look at
you two. What are you guys now, fashion models?” asked Santino.
“Why didn’t you find anything for the new
guy?”
  

“
I did.
Nothing too fancy, though.” Kosner tossed clothes at Leon’s
feet.
  

Leon stood there with a
blank expression on his face. Santino was still holding on to him.
He felt light, like he could fly away at any given time. Santino
didn’t know if he was in shock or just very
nonchalant.
  

Leon bent to pick up the
clothes. He peered at them and said, “I don’t look good in
camouflage.”
  

VIN burst out in laughter.
“We have a fruitcake onboard, boys!”
  

“
Enough,” said Santino. “Put those on. We’re taking a walk,”
he told Leon as he went to find himself some clothes. His were
covered in dirt and blood, and were ripping at the seams. He picked
out a leather jacket and a black hoodie. He looked at the glasses
display case and found some black
aviators.
  

“
Just
leave everything as it is,” he said. “We’re going out the
back.”
  

Leon asked, “Where are we
going?”
  

“
Someplace where we won’t be bothered,” Santino
responded.
  

“
Can’t
we just stay here? This place is empty.”
  

“
Not for
long it won’t be,” answered VIN. “As soon as it opens up tomorrow
morning, someone’s going to find your pretty little Mona. That was
her name, right?
  

Leon looked as if he was
about to cry all over again.
  

“
Leave
him alone,” said Santino.
  

VIN huffed. “Stop trying
to be Mr. Save-a-Captain, alright?”
  

Santino ignored VIN and
his childish ways, and walked back toward the break room. Kosner
followed, leaving VIN with Leon.
  

“
Well,
are you coming?”
  

Leon jumped at VIN’s
voice. He didn’t want to go anywhere, not with these guys. He
didn’t know what was going on. All he wanted to do was go home, but
his parents probably would be there watching his nieces and
nephews. He didn’t want to bring this drama back to his house,
especially since it involved the death of his
coworker.
  

Leon shuffled his feet for
a moment and followed the two guys. The big one came behind him,
and he truly felt his life was in danger. What if these guys were
kidnappers and were trying to hold him for ransom in trade for his
parents’ four-bedroom house? All around the big cities, especially
Alexandria, kidnapping and ransom cases were becoming the norm. The
schemes went like this: kidnap someone with a huge house, and have
them sign it over in trade for the loved one.
  

Leon didn’t know what was
going on. There were a million and one questions going through his
head. It seemed as if the tall one was the leader. Still, nothing
could explain why they looked hideous, like monsters out of a book.
Though they dressed themselves up, they couldn’t fool the naked
eye. They weren’t anything like average citizens for
sure.
  

Out on the empty
backstreet, Leon saw things he had never seen before. A slight
drizzle had begun, and it seemed to distort everything. The dim
streetlights glowed bright. He noticed the cracks in the
pavement—all of them, even the tiny fractures. He noticed the
graffiti on the buildings, how colorful and intricate the patterns
were. Even the night wasn’t black, more like a grayish coal color.
The stars, though still blocked out by the city’s murky smog,
seemed to twinkle a bit. Leon’s vision had doubled, even
tripled.
  

“
What’s
happened to me?” he whispered to himself. Then he felt a hard shove
from behind.
  

“
Keep it
moving.” VIN said.
  

Santino looked back at
Leon and VIN. For some reason VIN had taken a liking to the new
guy, and not in a good way. “Hey, Leon, let me talk to you
quickly.”
  

Leon was glad he had a
reason to get away from this bully. He made his way up to the
front, and came in between the smaller one and the taller one on
his right. “What’s your name?” he asked the tall
one.
  

“
Santino.”
  

Leon pointed at Kosner and
asked him the same thing.
  

“
Call me
Kosner. The guy behind us is called VIN.”
  

“
As in
the vehicle number of a car?” asked Leon. He couldn’t believe his
luck. Here he was being kidnapped by three thugs. His mother would
have a fit.
  

Santino looked over Leon’s
head. Kosner looked back at him with a ‘yeah, he went there’
look.
  

“
No, his
real name is Vincin,” said Santino. This new guy turned him off. He
felt Leon had a judgmental vibe and wondered how he would affect
the group’s camaraderie.
  

Santino directed the
others toward the AirTrains. The Trinidad Gym was in the middle of
the city, and they needed to get there as quickly as possible.
Walking any farther was out of the question since there were too
many of them. No way could they go unnoticed.
  

The four followed the
walking traffic into the AirTrains tunnel that led up to the
platform.
  

“
Keep
your head down and don’t talk to anyone,” Santino instructed the
group.
  

“
VIN,
try not to mess with anyone, including babies and pets,” joked
Kosner.
  

The men huddled together
as they made their way through the tunnel with its polished, gray
walls. The group was dark and silent, and tried their best to blend
in without anyone noticing them. Hundreds of people crowded the
tunnel carrying backpacks and suitcases; most of them looking at
the ground as they walked, minding their own business. Santino
couldn’t have been happier.