Free Subject Seven by James A. Moore Page B

blackness swallowed him. He had just enough time to realize that the nameless monster had found him again before the drugs took over and dragged him into the darkness.
    Hunter came out of his stupor in a different place. It was nighttime, and the darkness was cut by blue and red strobes. He heard the screech of tires even over the sound of wailing sirens and knew that it had happened again. His life, his world, snatched away from him.
    His hands were cuffed behind his back and there were two cops in the front seat of the squad car. The one on the passenger’s side was looking at him and scowling. He had a fat lip and a bruise on his face that looked like it would be growing darker very soon. At a guess, the cop wouldn’t have minded pulling out a pistol and shooting him.
    â€œDon’t know what got into him,” the cop was saying. “I’m just glad he’s unconscious.” The cop shook his head. “No, wait. Looks like bright boy’s waking up.”
    â€œIs he restrained this time? I don’t want him getting loose again.” That came from the driver. All Hunter could see of his face was the eyes looking back at him in the rearview mirror.
    His vision grew darker, the sun setting at high speed, and his heartbeat thundered in his ears. How the hell could the man have found him in the back of a moving cop car?
    â€œDon’t—” He started to speak but had no idea what he was going to say. His head hurt so badly he thought maybe someone had broken his skull when he wasn’t looking.
    â€œDon’t what?” The passenger cop was scowling even more and reaching for something. “How about don’t make me hit you with the Taser again, boy?”
    Taser? He used a Taser on me?
    â€œI—don’t—”
    â€œShut your face. We’ll have you in a cell soon enough.”
    He closed his eyes and heard a distant roar, a sound like a giant waking up in a bad mood. When he opened them again—
    â€”Everything was different. He was in the same car. But there was blood all over the place and the windshield was gone, shattered into a billion shining pieces on the dashboard and across the seats. Even across the hood. A billion shining pieces, all of them soaked in red and glistening.
    At least the car wasn’t moving anymore.
    He saw red marks across both of his wrists, deep and angry marks that didn’t look like they’d be healing anytime soon.
    He tried to climb out of the car, but the doors were locked. No, wait, not locked. Blocked. There were trees crushing into the car from both sides. Hunter stared at them for a moment, unsettled, and then looked around them to the pasture up ahead.
    There was no sign of the cops that had been yelling at him before, just the blood all over the place.
    â€œWhat the hell is going on around here?” The policemen were gone and he found himself wondering if somehow his parents had found him. Maybe that was why the cops had shown up. Maybe that was why they’d been driving him in the car—
    No. They’d hit him with a Taser. That was serious stuff, one step down from putting a bullet in his head. And they had been beaten, both of them.
    He shook his head. None of it made sense and his skull still felt too small for his brain.
    The radio in the front of the squad car was ruined, smashed into broken plastic and glass. There was a smell like gunpowder in the air, though he couldn’t remember when he’d have ever smelled the scent before.
    Hunter climbed over the headrests between him and the front of the car and then slid out of the broken windshield and onto the hood of the car. The metal under his butt was still warm as he scooted across it. Too warm for the early morning sunlight to have heated it up. The engine beneath him had been running recently and running hard by the looks of the damage to the car. Broken glass and blood scraped at the paint. How the vehicle got wedged between two