Georgia stayed quiet after that. They walked through the woods, Mandy leading the way, and Sadie taking up the rear. Sadie was under careful instructions to keep a watchful eye out for anything unusual.
But Max wasn’t sure she was up to the task.
It wasn’t like there were any other options, though.
It was going to be a long, difficult walk. Especially on nearly empty stomachs.
But they had to do it.
21
“You hear those screams?” said Cynthia, her voice rising in panic.
“Of course I hear them,” said John.
“Then why aren’t we doing anything about it?”
“I told you…”
“Yeah, yeah, we can’t risk ourselves for someone we don’t even know.”
“Someone who knew he was making a terrible decision,” said John. “We couldn’t help it. We did what we could.”
“Then why are we still here?” said Cynthia. Her tone was caustic. John knew she had a point. “You’re wondering if we should go in and try to save him. Aren’t you?”
“There’s no saving him,” muttered John. “The only question is whether we could put him out of his misery.”
“That’s nonsense. Maybe they’ve just cut off his ear or something.”
It was a very strange conversation to be having. Or, more accurately, it would have been a strange conversation to have before the EMP. But, now, this was the norm.
John had a brief and unexpected flashback. A memory came cropping up, a memory from his luxurious Center City apartment. He’d been on the couch, his date snuggling up to him. She’d been a well-known modern dancer, who John had had the luck of impressing one evening purely by accident by talking too loudly at a bar. They’d made arrangements at a restaurant, but had gone back to John’s place at the last minute instead, abandoning the fancy restaurant for delivered Chinese food.
“John?”
“Huh?”
“Are you OK?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Your eyes were kind of, I don’t know, glazed over or something.”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” said John. “Just tired, I guess.”
“Sure,” said Cynthia, sarcastically. “But you don’t fool me. I know that look.”
“What look?”
“The long lost love look,” said Cynthia. “You’ve never told me who she was, but I’d recognize that look anywhere.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” muttered John. “Plus, this isn’t the time to be…”
Another scream pierced the air.
It was blood-chilling. It completely stopped their conversation dead in its tracks.
John didn’t want to admit it, but Cynthia was right. He was wondering whether he should go in and try to do something. Maybe Tom the ranger was an idiot. Maybe he’d done something incredibly stupid. Maybe he deserved to die. In a way. But he certainly didn’t deserve to be tortured. By the sound of it, they were doing something horrible to him.
John had been, in a way, lying to himself. He’d told himself he’d transformed. That he was no longer the man he was when he’d left Philadelphia, the man who was used to living in the comfort and comparative luxury of modern civilization. And now that that very same civilization was crumbling, or gone, depending on how you looked at it, John figured he had toughed up to the point where things like this no longer bothered him.
He’d seen plenty of death. He’d fought. He’d killed. He’d done what had needed to be done. He would have thought that he could deal with a little screaming, that he could deal with a stranger being tortured to death while he himself escaped with his life intact.
Another scream. This one more horrible than the last.
But had he really changed?
Maybe he’d just adapted to his environment.
Too much thinking.
It was bad for him.
Bad for the situation.
Who cared if he’d changed? It simply didn’t matter.
He was coming to his senses.
Maybe.
John’s grip tightened around his gun.
Wordlessly, he crawled out of the structure and stood up.
“What are you doing?” hissed Cynthia. There was anxious worry in her tone.
She cared about him. John knew that.
John took a step forward, holding the gun up and ready.
Now that he was acting, Cynthia’s sarcasm fell away. She was scared. He heard it in her voice.
“John! What the hell are you doing? Are you really…?”
John turned to her and put a finger to his lips.
“Stay there,” he hissed.
Cynthia looked terrified.
John approached the building. The screams continued. He stood silently outside, pressing himself against the wall. His gun was ready. His finger was on the trigger.
He counted three separate voices. The fourth must already be dead. Good, Tom had gotten one of them at least. That explained the shotgun blast he’d heard.
They were laughing, telling crude jokes, and having a hell of a time. And they were torturing Tom to death. It sounded like they were taking their time, too.
“Please,” came Tom’s weak voice, garbled and high-pitched. “Please, just… kill… me…” It took him forever to get the words out. The words were drowning in his pain. Intense pain. It was unmistakable.
The three of them laughed.
“Don’t think for a second we’re going to stop.”
“Hell, I could do this for hours.”
“Hours? What about days?”
“Come on, be realistic. He won’t last days with the way you’ve been going at him.”
John glanced back to the little hideout. He couldn’t see Cynthia. Good, that meant she wasn’t coming, that she was safe inside.
A pang of guilt hit him. If he got himself killed, what would happen to Cynthia? Didn’t he have more loyalty to her than to some stranger?
John felt like he was being weak, that he was returning to the man he’d been.
Whatever.
He’d already made up his mind.
But that didn’t mean he was going to simply rush in without taking stock of the situation first.
He walked quietly, pacing his footsteps slowly on the cold ground. On the other side of the building, there was a small window.
He took the risk. He looked through, popping his head up for just a moment. Just enough to catch a glimpse of what was going on inside.
Tom was on a table, tied down.
The three men were peering down over him, clustered around him.
John popped his head up again.
Tom’s face was bloodied and distorted. His mouth was opened wide in a scream.
John looked again, risking a longer look this time.
The fourth man was dead, slumped over in the corner. Blood pooled up all around him.
The three men weren’t paying attention to anything but torturing Tom. They were clueless to what was around them. John felt like he could have stayed there with his head at the window for ten minutes without them noticing. Their guns, unfortunately, were nearby. But they’d been laid down. They weren’t in their hands. They had handguns, though, tucked away in holsters.
But maybe John had a chance.
Or maybe he didn’t.
Tom’s scream had become constant. Ceaseless.
John had to act.
He went around the building again, heading towards the door.
Someone was coming. He heard the footsteps before he saw her.
It was Cynthia.
“What the hell are you doing?” hissed John.
He was already endangering her by acting. He couldn’t let her actually put herself in harm’s way right here and right now.
“If you’re doing this, then so am I.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“Why not? That’s what you’re being.”
She had her gun out. There was determination on her face. John knew Cynthia well enough to know that she’d never back down.