80
ANSON
“Anson? Wake up . . . wake—”
My body jerked. I went airborne for a brief second, then came down hard. My head cracked against cold metal. My eyes snapped open an instant before I bounced again. I caught a glimpse of the metal roof above me drawing closer, then I fell back and hit the metal again as a throaty engine roared.
It all came back to me at once.
The explosion at the Quick.
Hillburn.
His needle full of God knows what.
The bodies.
The semi.
The prick at my neck.
Libby.
The dream had felt so real, and I longed for her touch, her scent. As horrific as the dream was, I would endure it a million times just to be close to her again.
The roar of the semi’s engine.
Another bump in the road.
We were moving fast.
“Anson!”
Bare bulbs burned from above, offering just enough light to soften the gloom. I twisted my head to see Vincent on the ground next to me. His wrists were bloody from trying to break free of the zip ties. His lips, too, like he’d tried chewing through them and failed.
My hands and feet had been zip-tied too, and as I looked around, I saw dozens of kids from the Quick slowly waking, discovering they were also tied.
You can’t chew through police-issued zip ties, Champ. There’s a thin metal cable embedded under the plastic. Not their first rodeo.
And that’s what these were, right? Police-issued. Hillburn and his friends. Moss’s friends. All the same. All bad cops.
I considered telling Vincent, but it seemed pointless to take hope away from him.
Instead, I scooted my back against the wall of the truck and managed to get myself into a sitting position so I could get a better look around.
Paul was on the ground on the opposite side of Vincent, still unconscious.
It was dark, but I spotted Ruddy too. Pudge was like this giant mountain among hills about ten feet further up the truck toward the front.
He wasn’t quite awake yet, but his large frame was rolling slowly back and forth.
He was so large and heavy that when we hit another bump in the road, he was the only person who didn’t leave the floor.
At first, I didn’t see the Kid, and I thought maybe they left him behind or transported him in some other vehicle. Then I spotted him near the back doors of the trailer, still unconscious.
Every inch of my body ached, but especially my head. It felt like I was in a vice. I knew this was from whatever they injected me with, but understanding that did little good when it came to getting my thoughts to find their way through the pain. It was like running in molasses.
I licked my dry lips and turned back to Vincent. “Any idea where we are?”
“No, but I think they dosed us more than once.” He nodded at his watch. “We’ve been out for over eleven hours. Almost twelve now. We could be anywhere.”
“They’re taking us to Chicago,” a girl’s meek voice replied.
I looked to my right and spotted her about six feet down. Like me, she’d managed to get herself into a sitting position. I remembered her from the Quick. Her name was Mona. Fourteen. Raven black hair, always in a braid that fell halfway down her back.
“Chicago? How do you know?”
She didn’t look at me. Instead, she faced forward with her knees drawn to her chest, her arms wrapped around them, zip-tied like the rest. “Because that’s where the Guyon is.”
That single word cut through the muck and pain in my head. I exchanged a quick look with Vincent, then turned back to her. “You know what Guyon is?”
In the dim light, I watched a soft sigh escape her lips.
“It’s some old abandoned hotel. Every year, crime syndicates from all around the world gather there for two days.
They buy and sell people like us, then ship us .
. . wherever.” She looked around at all the unconscious bodies.
“The girls usually go into the sex trades overseas—escorts, clubs, strippers, whatever. Some of the boys too.” She glanced at me. “Especially the cute ones.”
“Overseas?”
She nodded. “Europe, mostly. Sometimes Asia or the Middle East. They ship Americans there and ship kids from those places here. Apparently, we’re all easier to control when we don’t speak the language, especially when they hold whatever passports and papers they have on us.
That stuff is all bogus, but if you’re in someplace like Moscow, don’t speak Russian, and have zero documentation—real or not—good luck getting home.
Some of us will be resold or traded in secondary markets.
Places like Saigon or Tehran. You don’t want to end up in Tehran.
Or South America.” She shivered. “You definitely don’t want to go to South America. ”
Pudge let out a loud groan and rocked again with a little more force behind it. The movement caught Mona’s eye.
“Boys like him go into labor. They’ll put him to work.
Grueling, nasty, back-breaking stuff. If that doesn’t kill him and he doesn’t fight back, if he cooperates, he might end up in enforcement.
Or they might just kill him. I heard a story once about some rich guy from Moldova who bought three boys just so he could hunt them in the woods with his friends.
I heard they used bows and arrows, no guns, because that wouldn’t be sporty.
” She did air quotes around that last word, spitting it out with a bit of sarcasm.
After a few moments of silence, her voice dropped lower.
“I thought about cutting my face,” she said softly.
“Back at the Quick, when I first heard they were taking us to Guyon. I figured if I wasn’t pretty, they might not want me, but some of those guys—the buyers—they don’t care about that.
Some of them like scars. They’re the worst of all.
You don’t want to end up with one of them. ”
Vincent shivered and shook his head. “Fuck this.” He yanked at the ties on his wrists again, but did nothing but worsen his cuts.
At his side, Paul mumbled something, and his eyes fluttered open. He stared up at the ceiling for several seconds, then seemed to realize where he was. “Mom, are we there yet?” he muttered, then closed his eyes again.
Pudge rolled to his side, and this time, he didn’t groan; he yelled.
This unintelligible slew of words left his lips and his eyes popped open, wide with panic.
He jerked his arms up, caught sight of the zip ties at his wrists, and yanked.
When they didn’t snap, he yanked harder with a gruff groan. A third time, harder.
“He’s going to hurt himself!” I shouted to no one in particular, hoping someone closer would stop him.
Another yank.
He screamed.
Somehow, he got to his feet, and realizing his ankles were zip-tied only frustrated him more.
He twisted hard to the right, lost his footing, and crashed back down to the floor.
His body writhed in a furious flurry of spastic twitches.
He rolled and cracked against the semi wall, then rolled back in the opposite direction as half-conscious kids shuffled to get out of his way.
With a horrible cry, the muscles in his arms went taut, he yanked hard in both directions, and the zip tie on his wrists snapped and shot across the truck.
He reached down to the one at his ankles and pulled it apart, unaware or uncaring when it left a deep cut in his palm.
He stood back up to his full height and looked like some kind of monster—his eyes were bulging from his head, veins throbbing in his neck and face.
He drew in air with a harsh gasp. His chest expanded and threatened to rip his shirt.
It was impossible not to think of the Incredible Hulk, and when Pudge began banging his meaty fists on the metal walls of the truck, I half expected him to punch through, just like the character from the comics.
He didn’t, though; all he managed to do was further bloody his hands.
While the rest of us were frozen, unable to do anything but watch, Mona inched closer to him. Still bound, she pressed her body against his legs. “It’s okay, Pudge. It’s going to be okay. Calm down. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
How she managed to sound so soothing, I’ll never understand, but somehow her words reached him.
He quit banging, his breathing steadied, and finally, he looked down at her, his eyes red and moist with tears.
When he saw the zip ties on her hands and feet, he reached down and yanked them apart.
He freed her. And when he did, she wrapped her arms around his waist and hugged him.
She held him like that for nearly a minute.
When he finally calmed, she took both his hands in hers and studied his wounds.
“You poor baby.” She kissed his fingertips, then kicked off her sneakers and took off her socks.
She carefully tied them around his hands, covering the cuts, then smiled up at him. “Better?”
Pudge nodded. “Yeah.”
Mona looked up and down the length of the dark trailer, then back to him. “Do you think you can free the others?”