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  Then back to him.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  She bent her head over his so they were trapped in her hair, their faces hidden from the room. She went down to kiss him, then didn’t, and he laughed, enjoyed being teased, it turned him on, so she leant down again, but this time bit his lip.

  She leant up, looking down at him, all smiles and happiness.

  “You warm enough yet?”

  “Hell, yeah,” he exclaimed, that same grin, that same fucking grin.

  She mounted him, grabbing hold. She tried placing him inside of her, but couldn’t figure out how, so he did it, with a look of smugness she wanted to claw at. He began thrusting, slowly and tamely, until she sped up and took over – at which point, he simply lay there adorned with a smile of pleasant surprise. She was dry and it felt rough, but he didn’t care, which meant she didn’t care; so long as he was enjoying himself it didn’t matter.

  And he needed to enjoy himself.

  He had to reach heaven while he was with her.

  She rode him, grinding back and forth, moving her hips and nothing else, circling him, looking down at his face, showing him nothing but mutual pleasure.

  She painted her face with playful naughtiness. She painted it with brushes of ecstasy, a pastel of sexual lust, a canvas of pure joy. He saw it and he believed it, and she let him.

  He shifted, went to move, went to put himself on top, but she wasn’t having it. She grabbed his wrists and pinned his arms down and he loved it, he took it, he relished it. She felt him quiver, and he joined in with the heavy thrusting, and it went in far, and it hurt her, scraped her insides, thrusted her around, and she wanted to cry out in pain but she played it as pleasure, her cries of despair the same as her cries of climax.

  It’s what he needed to believe.

  “You ready yet?” she asked him.

  “Already?”

  “Yeah!” she said, letting her tongue out of her mouth, sticking it out, licking her lips.

  She ran her hands down her body, down the outside of her tiny, perky breasts, down her hips, and felt disgusting for how much she was getting into it, how much she was letting him think she was getting into it. But she was playing the part. Like the school play when she was Wendy, and she had to pretend to like Peter Pan, and she had to kiss him on the cheek after he lost his shadow and pretend like it wasn’t disgusting.

  It was like that, but worse.

  And he was just a child.

  A child who had no idea of what the outside world was like.

  A child who had no idea of what the outside world did to people like her.

  A child who had no idea of what she was willing to do to get back to Boy. To get back to Harriet and find out where she heard that poem, so she could find him, the one person she would do this for. He’d never know, but if he was still alive, it wouldn’t matter.

  That was all that mattered.

  She felt him throb. His screams became less coherent. His hands grabbed the sides of the bedsheets.

  She dropped her head down again, trapping them both in her hair once more, obscuring his vision, putting their faces in a prison of their own.

  She punched her lips against his, did it so hard it hurt, and his body pulsated.

  His face was hidden.

  His eyes were closed.

  His body busy.

  All giving the perfect opportunity for her to reach her hand out to the table, to the ice bucket, to the ice pick, and take it in her hand, wrap her fingers around it, it was so cold, so cold, but it didn’t matter.

  He screamed.

  She lifted her body up, raising the ice pick in both her hands, hoping he didn’t open his eyes.

  He did. But it was too late.

  She brought the ice pick down to his throat and stuck it in before his hands could get to her wrists.

  She covered his mouth.

  She retracted the ice pick and shoved it into his throat again, and again; he was too disorientated to fight, having to finish his orgasm and fight death simultaneously.

  She lifted the ice pick back and stuck it in his neck once more, this time wobbling it in the hole she’d made and dragging it, sticking it further in as she did.

  She kept his mouth covered with her hand. Couldn’t let the guardsmen hear him shout. She didn’t need to hear screams to gauge his reaction; she could see everything she needed to in his eyes. Wide, scared, angry, every emotion she expected him to feel. The predictable, scummy, perverted piece of shit.

  He flopped inside of her as she grabbed the pillow and placed it over his face. She pushed down with all her body. She moved off of him, finally, wanting to gag at the thought of it, but not, not doing anything but putting her whole body on top of that pillow, pushing down with her knee, her elbows, her hands, her chest, every part of her naked, used, violated body putting weight upon that damn pillow.

  The gagging from the neck wound, the suffocation from the pillow, it didn’t take long to affect his body. He spasmed, he seized, his body thrashing just like it was before, but different – this time his thrashing was bigger, more satisfying.

  Then his whole body flopped. Every piece of it.

  She took the pillow away. His eyes still stared back up at her, his mouth open with shock for what she’d done, but there was nothing left.

  He’d known nothing of this world.

  Just a child. A good-looking child who hadn’t a clue about the monsters, both outside of that door and inside of it.

  In his eyes she found a reminder of a dream from days ago – it felt so long since she’d had it, but then again, it hadn’t been long at all. In this dream, the face of a girl. Young, carefree, innocent – taking the hand of a man she loved. Blond, white, free. Privileged. Wandering down an open road with the security of safety. She had no idea why she saw that girl’s eyes in his – but it was only for a moment, then the recollection was gone. Left to fester in her subconscious with the rest of her memories.

  She stood.

  Panting.

  Catching her breath.

  She looked at what she’d done.

  She gagged. She tried to get to the toilet, but she couldn’t. She hurled the contents of her stomach onto the pristine satin sheets. It was mostly blood and acid, and she realised how hungry she’d been, but it didn’t matter now.

  She fell to her knees. She was sweating, bringing up more vomit, spewing everything she had over the bed.

  She allowed herself to cry, but only for a second. Only whilst the last lurch came. After that, she stood. She wanted to clean herself. She wanted to use the shower to get him off of her, every part of him, his death, his life, she wanted every piece of him gone – but every second that went by was another second Boy could not be alive.

  And if she didn’t get to him, then this despicable, revolting, vile, abhorrent, infesting experience was for nothing.

  She put her shorts back on. And her top. She wasn’t going to bother with her shoes, but she knew they’d help her run faster if she made it outside.

  When she made it outside.

  When she was ready, she looked to the door.

  Two strong guardsmen with loaded guns on the other side. They weren’t children. They wouldn’t be fooled.

  And she had to get past them first.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The guardsmen had had stranger jobs. Before all of this started, one of them was a ‘sandwich artist’ – which is another way of saying he worked in Subway. The other guardsman had worked in a gym, where he was able to use the facilities for free after he’d finished cleaning the toilets.

  Neither of them had ever had a job that required them to stand outside a door, holding large guns, whilst listening to the screams of an eighteen-year-old douchebag having more sex than they ever had. There seemed to have been an element of selectiveness on who was asked to be a Breeder, and they bemoaned the unfairness of some little squirt having such fun due to youthful good looks whilst their ugly faces were made to
stand guard, looking grim, trying to focus their thoughts on something other than the manic screeches of an adolescent’s orgasm.

  But then there was the cause.

  Now that they did believe in.

  Troy had been monumental. Revolutionary. A future thinker, someone with his mind not in the now, but in the someday; not in meaningless ethics, but in survival. They all truly believed that he was their best hope for defeating the creatures, and, after biding their time, they would have a large army of soldiers, ready to fight, ready to stand strong against the monsters they heard shouting at night.

  So they waited. Reminding themselves of the cause. Reminding themselves of why they did this, why they would take a life if they had to, why they would bring a young woman to a room and give her no choice. Because it was the only way. They couldn’t think about feelings, about what it may do to a person, about what it was they were doing – because it had to be done.

  Without it, people would die, and with them the history and their memories of the entire human race. Buildings would stand and fall with no one around to say why they stood in the first place. Books would be burnt without any context to the words that were set aflame. If there was no woman to breed for their species, then there was no future for the accumulated knowledge of many, many thousands of years. It would die with them, and that just could not happen.

  And so they wouldn’t let it.

  They realised – it had been quiet in that room for a while now. They had evidently finished; unless he was going again, and that was generally discouraged. Your sperm is far less fertile the second time, and there is no function to releasing it again in such a short time frame.

  As if answering them, a gentle knock came from the other side of the door, followed by a small voice.

  “He’s finished. Take me back now.”

  They unbolted the door, unlocked it, and opened it. Before it could open wide, the girl caught the door and slithered through the small gap and out again, closing the door behind her – something that perturbed them. It was not her job to close the door.

  One of them went to open the door again, but she placed a light hand on his chest, and as pathetic as he knew it was, the guardsman couldn’t help but feel a slight tingle from the touch of a woman.

  “He’s in the bathroom. He doesn’t wish to be disturbed.”

  The guardsmen looked at each other. This was irregular. The Bearer would not normally come out of their own accord; it would be their job to go in and get her. Usually, the Bearer would be laid on the bed either crying, staring into the abyss, or having some kind of meltdown. For her to stroll nonchalantly out of the room and say her Breeder didn’t wish to be bothered was strange, and something about it felt off.

  As if sensing their hesitance, watching them glance at each other, she spoke up once more.

  “Honestly, it’s done, he’s finished. I just want to go back to the cell.”

  “You don’t go back to the cell,” one of the guardsmen said. Bloody newbies who don’t know the routine – he’d almost forgotten how irritating that is.

  “Oh?”

  “You can’t be filthy for tomorrow,” the guardsman said, as if she was stupid. “We need to go hose you down.”

  He saw a flicker in her face, like she was momentarily on the verge of crying. This gave him a surge of anger. Does she not know what an honour she has? To be part of the activists? Part of those bringing the world back to what it once was?

  No. She was an insolent fool with no idea of the world she was in. How she’d survived this long, they didn’t know. She’d far rather revolt in a dank cell than sit with the other Bearers on comfortable beds, simply because the cause was lost on her.

  “Please, can I just go back to the cell?” she repeated. She looked anxious. The cells were disgusting. Why would she be so keen to go back?

  The guardsmen looked at each other. This wasn’t right.

  “Let’s go have a look at the Breeder,” one guardsman decided. He wasn’t about to have this little girl screw him over.

  “Honestly, he just said he–”

  “Shut up.”

  The guardsman put a hand over her mouth and nodded to the other. They opened the door and looked inside the room.

  There was no noise from the bathroom.

  Everything looked perfectly out of place.

  Warily, they entered the room.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Cia’s body flooded with adrenaline, but she did what she could to hide it. She forced her shaking hands not to shake, willed her quivering knees not to buckle, pleaded to her desperate face not to falter or cry.

  She watched as the guardsmen entered the room, standing in the doorway, poised between running and attacking.

  What would she do if she were found out?

  One of the guardsmen walked over to the bed. Moments ago, she had folded half of the bedsheets under the other to conceal the blood, hoping that it just looked like post-coitus mess.

  Her only worry was herself, her façade; should she seem more traumatised? She was, but she was trying to be strong – would someone who had just experienced this be more hysterical? Maybe that’s what was making the guardsmen cautious – that she wasn’t crying or weeping or pleading or begging to be released. From the way she was dragged here beforehand, it would look strange for her to then be as willing as she may seem.

  It suddenly dawned on her that she’d played this whole situation wrong.

  One of the guardsmen walked up to the closed bathroom door.

  Please don’t open it.

  Please don’t open it.

  Please don’t open it.

  The guardsman glanced to Cia, and she knew she had just given the game away. Her face was masked with fear, obscured with vulnerability, in a way that could only show she was hiding guilt.

  The guardsman gently rattled his knuckles on the door.

  “Hello?” he called out.

  No answer.

  Please do not go behind that door.

  Cia glanced into the corridor. Could she run? Could she get far?

  But what then?

  She couldn’t escape. Not yet. She needed Harriet. She knew the poem, she must have met Boy. She must have.

  “Oi,” the other guardsman investigating the bed said, noticing her peering down the corridor. “Don’t even think about it.”

  He pointed his gun at her and walked closer. Still inside the room, but a few paces away from her, ready to shoot, poised, finger tracing the trigger.

  She looked again to the guardsman tapping on the door.

  She’d given it all away in her expression. She knew she had. There was no way out now.

  “Hello, is anyone in there?”

  Please do not open it, please, please just leave him.

  The guardsman wasn’t about to leave him.

  He placed his hand on the handle.

  “Hey, answer me, or I’m coming in.”

  She looked at the exit. The door had a keyhole, but for a key she didn’t have. But there was a bolt as well. A bolt on the outside of the door. If she needed to, she could bolt it. It wouldn’t hold them for long. The door was wooden and could easily be shot apart or shot down. Besides, they probably had a radio or some way to communicate outside the room.

  If she was going to make a move, whatever she was going to do, she was going to have to be quick.

  The guardsman pressed down on the door handle.

  “Okay, I’m coming in.”

  No… Please…

  The guardsman pushed down on the door handle and opened it, but only slightly.

  It nudged something, but only Cia knew what.

  “Hey, you there?” the guardsman asked.

  Cia looked to the bolt. Readied herself.

  This was it.

  Time to act.

  Quick as she could.

  The guardsman opened the door fully.

  And, in that brief moment of shock, of horror, where they both witnessed
the bloody remains of a young man’s body, she stepped backwards and went to shut the door; closing it against the image of the guardsman running toward it.

  Before she could shut it fully, one of them managed to wedge his fist through the gap, and she shut it on his arm.

  She pulled the door back and slammed it, back and slammed it, back and slammed it, punching his arm with its weight, doing all she could, but his arm would not go, it just would not go.

  She reached into the back of her trousers and took out the ice pick. Feeling grateful that she’d decided to keep it, she thrust it into the guardsman’s hand with all she had, then took it away, leaving a scrape of red. The guardsman instinctively withdrew his hand and allowed her to shut the door fully.

  She bolted it.

  It continued to pound, continued to shake, faltering under their strength.

  Gunshots were fired, and the door shook once more.

  Cia looked down another corridor. She could see people coming, people hearing a commotion.

  She ran. As fast as she could, she ran, almost falling around the corners of the corridor.

  She could leave. She could jump out of the nearby window and leave. Get away from this.

  But she had to get Harriet.

  Harriet was her only chance.

  So down the steep, narrow steps to the dungeon she went, knowing there was only one way in or out.

  Chapter Thirty

  Cia could hear the commotion above her, feet thudding back and forth, shrieks of hysteria, people gossiping in their rooms.

  They knew. Somehow, they all knew.

  Which meant that they would all be looking for her.

  But, surely – the dungeons were the last place they’d think she’d return to, right?

  She stopped at Harriet’s cell. Harriet was still curled up in a ball, away from her, in the corner.

  “Harriet!” Cia shouted.

  She was asleep.

  Cia glanced over her shoulder, not wanting to shout too loud, but needing to urgently wake her up.

  “Harriet!” she shouted again. Harriet groaned. “Harriet, come on!”