Surge (80 page)

“Hold on, what the fuck was he burning you for to begin with?”

“Because I bit him,” she replies with a smug smile of her own.

“You bit him, so he burned you...” I count the scars on her stomach, “Six times?”

“It was more than that, but if you knew where I bit him, you’d understand,” Olivia says. I think it’s self-explanatory where she bit him, and the fact that some dude’s cock was in her mouth when she didn’t put it there, makes me want to punch something. “Besides, it wasn’t all in one day, they were for two different offenses since the stupid fuck didn’t learn his lesson the first time.”

“I hope you disfigured him.”

“I’m pretty sure that he was no longer able to have children,” she tells me. “Oh well, that was no loss to the world.” I nod my agreement as she points to a circular scar on her stomach. “This one was from another guard named Dog. No, Dog wasn’t his name, but he sure as hell looked like one. One of those ugly rat things with no hair.”

“Chinese Crested,” I answer and she looks at me curiously. “I liked Animal Planet.”

“But you don’t like Morris,” she remarks dryly.

“No,
he
doesn’t like
me
,” I correct her. “He’s the one that hisses when I haven’t even done anything to the prick.”

“We’ll work on it later,” she promises. “Back to Dog. That bastard liked his cigars.” Olivia points to one of the numerous circular scars on her toned stomach. “He enjoyed inflicting pain because he couldn’t enjoy the perks the other guards could with his ED.”

“So, Cole wasn’t the only one who...” Olivia shakes her head rapidly.

“They’d hose me down after and tell Cole that I misbehaved, like I was a fucking dog and they had to punish me,” she spits out and I hear her voice break. She clenches her fists as she takes a few breaths. “You see, Cole didn’t like when other people played with his toys. As Jorge, Paul and Donald all learned when he shot them execution style for touching me.”

“But your scars,” I point out. “Obviously they were touching you to put them there.” Olivia barks out a humorless laugh.

“That wasn’t the way he minded,” she revises. “Donald was caught literally with his pants down, Paul while fondling my chest and Jorge for jerking off on me.” I may vomit from the way she can just say this like it was an everyday occurrence to have a guy rape, molest or spider web you, but to her, it probably did. I swallow back the bile threatening to come up.

“So, because Cole caught them, he killed them,” I say for confirmation and Olivia nods her head.

“Yup,” she says with a pop on the
‘p.’
“So, the other guards learned that Cole wouldn’t be a
‘cuckold,’
and took more caution
.”
Olivia makes quotes around the word. “While I got punished for being a slut.”

“How the fuck does being raped make you a slut?”

“He thought I was his,” Olivia replies as she shrugs. Removing her jacket, she turns and pulls the shirt up to expose her back. “I’d get whipped for every guy he caught me with.” I run my finger over one of the many long scars on her back. She tenses a little, but doesn’t pull away.

“He used something different here,” I say and tap my finger on one of the thicker scars that have a shape at the end.

“A belt with a metal buckle since he didn’t have his whip with him that time.” I bite my tongue on a curse and run my finger along the irregular scar on her shoulder blade.

“What about this one?” I ask.

“That one was a microchip,” she says and sits up. After adjusting her shirt she turns around. “I cut it out myself when I escaped for the last time. I didn’t want him to see me coming, or for him to find me when I wasn’t ready.”

“I’ll ask about the microchip in a second,” I tell her. “But what do you mean
‘for the last time’
?”

“I escaped five times,” she explains. “The last one permanently because I went at a time when no one expected me to.” Olivia points at her throat. “Vicky had cut me up, and they all thought I would be dead within a few hours. But that would probably be because the doctor was more interested in performing a pelvic exam on me with his penis, than on checking how my trach tube was coming along.” Well, that explains her aversion to doctors. No wonder she didn’t want Akio touching her. “They didn’t even cuff me up, so after Doctor Dipshit zipped himself up, I slit his throat with his own scalpel.” She points to her ring.

“I couldn’t leave without it. I know that it may sound silly, but it felt like I was leaving Travis behind, and I couldn’t do it. Eddy took it from me as a punishment and used to wear it on his pinky,” Olivia continues. “Guess who lost a few fingers?” She wiggles the rock at me. “Asshole was still bleeding out when I heard a noise upstairs. After living underneath them for eight months, I was pretty good at recognizing treads, so I knew that it was Dog’s steps.” Another solved mystery as to her ninja skills. “That fucker was huge and I didn’t wanna face him without something a little more significant than a scalpel, so I went searching around the basement.” Olivia smiles as she looks at the corner where her machete is stowed near her backpack. “Machie and me went to town on that mother fucker, so Dog was nothing more than a stump when I was done with him.”

“Weren’t you afraid that they would catch you and chain you back up?”

“Hell no,” Olivia retorts. “If I was gonna go down, I was gonna go out my way.” She motions at her arms. “My backup plan was to slit my wrists with the scalpel if they tried to pin me down.” Each time she references suicide is like a physical blow that knocks the air from my lungs, and she says it so casually like she’s perfectly okay with the thought of taking her own life.

“Anyway, I didn’t get caught or else I wouldn’t be here right now. Cole only left Dog, Eddy, and Doctor Derange there with me, so I had plenty of time to cut out the microchip, burn the bed I spent more than half a year in, and climb out the tiny window Vicky used to come and curse me from. So really, I should have thanked Red before I left her for dead, because without her, I’d probably still be there.”

I disregard Olivia’s gratitude to the pumpkin carver because Red’s torture techniques were never intended to set her free to begin with, that was just a consequence that worked in Olivia’s favor.

“And the microchip?”

“Because I kept running away, and he wanted to be able to find his pet.”

“You’re telling me, that he put a freaking tracking device in you?”

“Uh-huh, he had a solar powered, handheld GPS tracker that he used to pull out and follow me like I was the
‘X’
on a treasure map, every time that I escaped,” she says and points to her wrists. “These weren’t available at first, so I used to break out of the rope, the zip ties, and the cuffs he used. Cole eventually found the manacles to hold me down when he finally understood that I wouldn’t ever agree to his terms.”

“And his terms would have been?”

“To essentially be his slave, to be at his beck and call for whenever he wanted me, and do whatever it is he wanted. If he wanted water, I would have had to carry a tray on my back and bring it to him. If he wanted a blow job, I’d have to drop down and suck him off while calling him
‘master.’
I’m sure you get the picture.” I absolutely do, so I clench my fists as I nod when she points to her wrists. “As you can tell, I chose option number two.” Olivia gets a mischievous smile. “But I did cook for him and the others once or twice.”

“Why would you waste your skills on those deranged fucks?”

“Don’t worry,” she says with a wave. “They got an extra ingredient a time or two, that may, or may not have been rat poisoning.”

I laugh at that, which is what I think Olivia intended to do since she’s had enough of hashing out memories. It’s obvious in the way her eyes have dulled a little that she no longer wants to think about that shit, which is completely reasonable. She told me a hell of a lot more than I thought that she’d be able to. There’s also the fact that her voice is getting more and more strained as she talks.

“Alright my little culinary genius,” I say as I stand. “How about we try something new?” Taking my offered hand, I pull her up before she replies.

“What?”

“We’re going to channel some of that anger toward the apple,” I answer and lead her over to the table. I pull it away from the wall and set it up the way that we usually have it in for gun training. Reaching into my backpack, I pull out my 9mm and make sure it has ammo before I hand it to Olivia. She immediately checks the safety.

“Have I ever handed you an unlocked gun?” She looks startled since she was still obsessively checking the gun, but shakes her head.

“No,” she whispers to me. “It’s just that Travis was all about gun safety. Especially after...”

Olivia trails off and shakes her head, but I catch her hand rub across her stomach. That unconscious gesture burns me because she’s still mourning the loss of a lover and a child, and I can’t do anything about it. But what I can do is teach her something that will hopefully distract her from bad memories, at least for a little while.

“Let’s see it then,” I challenge. She blinks a few times but nods as she takes her place at the end of the table. “Okay, let’s think of those women you told me about. Six women broke into your house, one was Victoria. What happened to the other five after you were taken?”

“They laughed,” she says through clenched teeth. “I asked them to let me go, and they laughed
every single time
.” Fucking cunts.

“Why would they laugh?”

“They said that there was no helping the damned,” Olivia replies. “And that they didn’t interfere with the boss’s affairs.”

“Names.”

“Carly, Felicia, Heather, Mariella and Amanda.”

“Who did what?”

“Carly cut off some of Travis’s fingers,” she replies in a detached voice. “Felicia and Heather took turns kicking him while a few of the
‘unoccupied’
men held him down.” I’m taking it that the others were too busy raping her to deal with Travis even if she doesn’t say it. “Mariella broke his nose with her gun while Victoria knocked out his teeth with hers. And Amanda’s the one who screamed. That bitch is the one that brought them to us.” Olivia’s voice catches on the last bit and it isn’t from her speech difficulty.

“Cole finally came upstairs and I remember thinking,
‘maybe he’ll stop these animals before they kill Travis?’
” She laughs without humor as she swipes a hand under her eyes to catch a few escaped tears. “He didn’t even spare a glance at Travis. He walked directly over to me, looked at me with his black eyes and shot the guy on top of me without even blinking. That’s when it finally sunk in that we were dead.”

“But you aren’t dead,” I say and boy do I want to shake her, when she shakes her head at me.

“A huge part of me died that day,” she says. “Sure, I’m breathing, but what the fuck good is it when I don’t want to? When every smile feels like it’s wrong or forced? When every day is just more bull shit added to the pile without a shovel in sight start to digging myself out?”

“I’ll be your shovel,” I say with a shrug likes it’s no biggie to me. “Remember, you’re not alone anymore, so quit trying to carry the world on your shoulders.”

“You should talk,” she retorts. “Running around like a freaking chicken with its head chopped off to make sure everyone else is okay, do you ever stop and say
‘let me have a ME moment’
?”

“This is my
‘ME’
moment,” I say. “Now, show me that I’m not wasting my time training you, you lazy bum.” Olivia flips me off, before readying her stance, and pulling the trigger. I watch her body and see her still flinch slightly. It’s nowhere near where it was earlier, but it’s still there.

“That was good, we’ll try again tomorrow.”

“Sure,” she says and checks the safety three times before setting the gun down on the table. “But we’ll need to pack a few targets because I doubt they’ll have any apples at the next stop.”

“Go on then, you anti Johnny Appleseed.”

<~~~<~~~
~~~>~~~
>

“What’s the deal with the bullet?”

Olivia blinks a few times and looks up at me. We’ve been in the van for four hours, and every one of those hours has been spent rolling that single slug in her hand. We left early this morning, Tommy’s driving since Olivia demanded it, Cory’s shotgun and the rest of us are occupying the rows in the back. Since Olivia and I have open wounds, well they’re scabbed over but we’re still vulnerable, we got the closest row to the front where any remnants of the carnage never took place.

The guys did an excellent job cleaning it, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d think that it was a new car. Well, minus the bars on the windows, the bullet hole in the back and the crack in the windshield, that is. The insurance premiums would have been ridiculous. Hey, at least it doesn’t smell like rot and decay. Anyway, back to the bullet. Since Olivia’s been trapped in her own head or staring at the metal in her hand, she’s been silent the entire time.

“The bullet,” I repeat and jerk my chin at her hand. “Why is that particular one so special?” Olivia picks it up from her palm and holds it up.