Free Justus by Madison Stevens Page B

who had
broken the frame said. “A whole sink of dishes.”
    The other man snorted.
    “I’m sure he’d be willing to
train her to do better,” the man said.
    Justus could feel his eyes
start to glow and the hot rage pulse through him. If he took them
out now, he wondered how long it would take before the rest of
those men knew what happened. He could snap their necks. He
wouldn’t even have to mess up her floors.
    He took deep breaths. It
didn’t matter what the Reverend wanted, he wasn’t getting
Paige.
    “Come on,” the one in charge
said. “Let’s get going before she comes back.”
     
    * * *
     
    Paige stood in line
listening to the Christmas music blasting from the speakers
overhead. She hadn’t even thought about the holiday until that
moment. So many things had happened in the past few months, there
just hadn’t been time to think about much else. Of course, it
wasn’t like the holidays ever really meant much to her. Ava was
rarely home during them, and it’d been years since she had a
special someone.
    She looked down at the items
in her cart. Her heart pounded at the thought of cooking for Justus
again. It wasn’t a present exactly, but the way he ate, it was like
he’d never seen a good meal in his life. And likely he hadn’t.
    Paige didn’t really think
things were bad at Luna Lodge, but being a prisoner would put a bad
taste in anyone’s mouth. There was no way his time with the
Horatius Group was better.
    She hadn’t heard the men talk
about their time in captivity, but from what she gathered, she
wasn’t really sure she wanted to know all the details. Just the
looks on their faces when they mentioned their former masters was
enough. It was amazing to her what a person could go through and
still come out sane.
    “Cooking a big meal?”
    She turned around, surprised
to find the old librarian from her high school standing behind her
with a few items in her basket.
    Paige smiled warmly at the
older woman.
    “Hello, Ms. Martin.”
    She’d always liked the older
woman and was sad to hear when the school let her go. Ms. Martin
had never married, and the school seemed to be her whole world.
    “Just making a nice roast for
one,” Paige said. She grinned and leaned in a little. “I kinda like
the idea of cooking a meal and being able to eat it.”
    The older woman smiled at
her. “I always knew I liked you.”
    The speakers squeaked loudly.
Harsh static pulsed through the air. She frowned as a woman walking
along stopped mid-step. Paige looked around. People had frozen all
around her. Not all, but there were a good number of them standing
as if they were waiting, listening for something.
    She looked at the pretty
frozen teen who was checking out the woman ahead of her. The
middle-aged woman sighed loudly and pulled out her phone as if this
was just another day at the store.
    “Haven’t seen you out
recently,” Ms. Martin whispered. “Wondered if it got to you as
well.”
    Paige looked back to the
older woman and frowned.
    “What got to me? What’s going
on?”
    She clucked her tongue. “I
saw it on a special. It’s the heroin. All these people get hooked
and it fries their brain.”
    A loud snort came from just
behind.
    “This ain’t heroin.”
    She leaned out a little to
see Mr. Cobb standing behind them. The old man had never been a
favorite of hers. He kept to himself and mostly spent his days
being mean and angry. Both of which he was good at.
    “Enlighten us, Lee,” Ms.
Martin snapped. “What is it then?”
    “It’s the waves,” he said and
pointed to the speakers overhead. “Somehow they are causing
this.”
    “Who?” Paige asked,
half-believing he might be right.
    Mr. Cobb scoffed again. “The
government. Not the first time they did this. They experiment with
their contrails with the mind control chemicals they got from the
Nazi scientists. Or that big mind-control thing they were running
in Alaska, claiming to study the weather.”
    Paige resisted the urge not
to