Free Population Zero by Wrath James White, Jerrod Balzer, Christie White Page A

reason but he had no choice. If he'd left it unchained the seven-year-olds would have absconded with it in seconds.
    The darker the night got the less safe Todd began to feel. The noises of violence increased with the lateness of the hour. Sounds of breaking glass, shouts, laughter, curses, and fistfights, echoed from behind closed doors. The good thing was that, even if Nicolene screamed when he grabbed her, he didn't think anyone would notice amid the already deafening cacophony of violence booming through the streets. Todd glanced up and down the block, nervously turning the stun gun in his pocket, fingering the trigger. He didn't have to wait as long as he'd thought.
    Nicolene came staggering down the street with her bloated belly sticking out from beneath a tight black baby-t with
    "Hustler" silkscreened on the front of it. Even from across the street Todd could see the white streaks on the front of the shirt that it didn't take a genius to figure out were from her last trick. Obviously Nicolene didn't swallow.
    She staggered down the street grinning stupidly, in a narcotic fugue. She didn't even notice Todd stalking her, slipping through the door behind her as she let herself into her apartment building. She was babbling to herself as she walked up the piss-stained steps to her apartment. She'd already unlocked her door when she finally noticed Todd behind her.
    She whirled around with a switchblade in her hand preparing to cut him when Todd hit her with the stun gun knocking her off her feet. She was out cold and she hadn't seen him. So far, everything was going as planned.
    Moving Nicolene's emaciated drug-ravaged body into her apartment was a hell of a lot easier than it had been moving Terrence's gigantic frame. He tossed her waifish body over his shoulder, stepped into the apartment, and kicked the door closed behind him. She was still unconscious. Todd pulled out the roll of duct tape and gagged her before he began binding her arms and legs. He rolled out the plastic on the kitchen floor and laid Nicolene down onto it bumping her head as he dropped her the last four or five inches rather than risk his back by trying to lower her all the way to the floor. Nicolene's eyelids fl uttered but remained closed. Then he reached into his messenger bag and removed the scalpel. This would be so much worse than what he'd done to Terrence, but it had to be done. She had to be stopped.
    Her baby could be the one to doom us all.
    Once again, Todd would be operating with no anesthesia. He grabbed the second roll of tape and went around her arms again, taping all the way up her shoulders to her neck. Then he went back down to her ankles and wrapped the tape up her legs to her hips. There was no way for her to move now. No way for her to struggle. He used one last piece of tape to blindfold her. She would have no idea what was happening to her or who was doing it. Todd awkwardly undressed and place his clothes on the kitchen counter. His clothes couldn't be soaked in blood when he saw Stephanie later.
    Nicolene's chest heaved and her body jerked with the first cut.
    Todd made a low transverse incision from one side of her belly to the other, as Nicolene arched her back, screaming and writhing in agony. He cut through the subcutaneous fibrous muscle tissue of her abdominal wall that held her organs and abdominal muscles in place, and bubbles of yellow fat bulged outward and blood flooded the wound.
    Nicolene thrashed and convulsed, but the tape held her tight and limited her movement. He had not put as much tape on her as he had used on Terrence because he needed access to her stomach. That meant she had much more freedom of movement. Todd had to try to hold her down with one arm while cutting with the other. His incision was jagged and crooked, unable to keep his hand steady through Nicolene's frantic undulations.
    Even through all the tape he'd wrapped around her mouth, her screams were terrible. Tears wept out from beneath the