Free Outbreak: A Survival Thriller by Richard Denoncourt Page B

that?”
    “Please…”
    He hammers his fist against the
table with a loud bang, so close his knuckles brush my coverall. It’s then that
I notice they’ve removed my utility belt, but not my boots—bad news with
a little good news thrown in.
    “Enough with that nonsense,” he
says. “I can’t stand when you people plead for things. You’re just lucky none
of us are partial to boys. As for the girl, well, you can forget about her, Mr.
Knight-in-Shining-Caked-Blood. She’s meat.”
    I close my eyes and try to
control my panicked breathing. My stomach hurts, and I’m nauseated, probably
from hunger, though the gas fumes aren’t helping. How long have I been out?
It’s dark in the warehouse, which means the windows are either boarded up, or
the sun is warming up some other part of the globe.
    If it’s nighttime, I’m in serious
trouble.
    “I can get weapons,” I say. “Give
you wha -whatever you want.”
    The guy goes rigid suddenly,
puffing his chest and standing as erect as a butler. I expect him to curse or
spit at me, but instead he holds out his open palm to shake my hand.
    I glance at it. Then I study his
face to see if he’s joking.
    “Oh, that’s right,” he says. “You’re
tied to the table.” Retracting his hand, he clears his throat. “We haven’t been
formally introduced. The name is Sanders, like the fried chicken guy. Colonel
Sanders, get it? Everyone just calls me the Colonel now. Not without
well-earned respect.”
    Yeah, right. Well-earned
respect that comes from calling your friends names like “faggot” when you feel
insecure about something.
    The Colonel
points at Bandanna. “This gentleman over here is Olin; couldn’t think of
a nickname for him, though he always wears a bandanna so I call him ‘ faggy bandanna-wearing gentleman’”—Olin smiles at
this—“while this hirsute and debonair caballero over here”—he swings his finger at the man who had driven the Jeep—“is
Russell, but we call him Wheels because he loves to bitch and moan if we don’t
let him drive the Wrangler.”
    The Colonel
points at me. “And you, young squire, what is your name and family
crest?”
    I ignore his stupid mannerisms
and stutter out what I can.
    “K-Kip,” I say, unable to control
my shivering now. It’s only going to sap my strength. I need to compose myself,
but I’m in the grip of a panic attack, which hasn’t happened since I was a kid.
Thoughts of Melanie and my father and the antibiotics in my pack swirl
maddeningly in my head.
    The Colonel chuckles.
    “Kip,” he says, lowering his
face—and his stinking, pube -like
beard—over mine. “What kind of a wussy name is that?”
    “Short for—for Kevin,” I
say. “Melanie. Where is she? What did you do to her?”
    “Nothing yet. But I told you.
She’s meat.” Then, with a mocking squint and an equally mocking voice, he says,
“What is she, anyway, your girlfriend? How sweet.”
    As I lie there shivering, he struts
over to the other table, waves Bandanna aside, and picks out an instrument.
When he comes back, he holds it over me just right so the blade flashes in the lantern’s
glow as he twists it.
    I’ve never seen a scalpel up
close. Never knew they could be so sharp. It looks like it could cut through
diamond. But the blade isn’t what scares me. It’s the small size of it. A hunting
knife would have told a different, and more predictable, story. The scalpel,
however, is tiny in his bearish hand. This tells me the Colonel is going to
take his sweet time with whatever torture he has planned.
    “Here’s what’s going to happen,
Kipper. Mind if I call you that?”
    He actually waits for me to
answer. My mouth is clamped shut, and I’m breathing so hard I can feel my
nostrils stretching. I never look away from the scalpel as I gasp a reply.
    “Yes.”
    “Yes, you do mind?”
    “No.”
    “No, what?” he says.
    His bushy eyebrows shoot up in
amusement. This isn’t about finding my stash and surviving.