10. Audrey
AUDREY
I tried to scramble away from the men in web masks as the man with the spider stepped toward me, but there was nothing to hold onto on the dirt floor of the tunnel.
He hauled me to my feet, studying me like a laboratory specimen while the insect perched on his shoulder, and I saw that his mask was made out of some kind of black steel, polished to glassy shine.
Madison leapt to her feet and turned toward the tunnels, but the other two men didn’t seem fazed.
“They’re always faster when they’re scared,” one of them — a huge man wearing black leather gloves — said.
“The fear is the point.” The third man wore a black chain that seemed to be made out of the same material as the masks.
Madison was on the move in a heartbeat, but the gloved man caught up with her in three long strides and calmly extended his leg.
Madison stumbled over his foot and hit the tunnel floor, and he grabbed her ankle and pulled her toward him.
She let out a piercing scream, kicking and thrashing as he dragged her to her feet.
“Two moths for one,” Black Chain said.
My fight or flight response had been overloaded by the action: the man still holding me in a vise-like grip, the spider on his shoulder staring at me with interest, Madison’s attempted escape.
It was Madison’s scream that shook me from my fugue state.
It was primal, the kind of scream I’d heard in the ER.
She was so young. Too young to end up in the hands of these maniacs.
I glanced around, looking for something, anything, I could use to help her get free.
But there was nothing, just the long stretch of tunnel in one direction and the shirtless men who’d captured us and the squeeze chutes that five minutes ago had been the biggest threat to our freedom.
Except… wait.
Now I saw that there was something: a big red button on the squeeze chute. I had no idea what it did, but I knew from the hospital that big red buttons did something.
The man with the spider grabbed me as I lunged for the button.
I fought against him, struggling against his steely grip locked around my waist, as Madison did the same with the other two men.
The red button on the chute was so close. Not close enough to reach it with my hands, but just a few inches from my feet when I kicked against the inked man trying to subdue me.
His pet spider was a distant fear. Worrying about it was a luxury I didn’t have.
“Fighting only makes it more fun for me.” The man’s mouth was warm against my ear, his voice almost guttural. “And for Edith.”
I had no idea who Edith was but the red button was closer now, just an inch away from the toe of my sneaker when I kicked away from the man trying to restrain me.
“We can’t keep them both,” Black Gloves said.
“No, but we can play with them both.” Black Chain was still trying to control Madison. “They’re not marked.”
The words streamed off my brain like rain off Ella’s little unicorn umbrella. I couldn’t grasp them before they slid away.
“Fuck you!” Madison screamed. “Let me go!”
We’d known this was a possibility, but knowing in the abstract was different than having it happen. Different from feeling the sweat-slicked skin of the big men trying to capture us.
Trying to “play” with us, whatever that meant.
I didn’t waste my breath. All my focus was on the red button, and I leaned forward with all my suspended weight, forcing the man holding me to take a step to keep me in his arms.
My foot grazed the red button.
The chutes roared to life, the hydraulics wheezing and clanging as they worked to maneuver the metal chute. Open or close, I didn’t know and it didn’t matter.
The sound froze the two men who were holding Madison, trying to strip off her shirt, and she stomped on Black Chain’s foot.
He grunted, loosening his hold on her upper arms just enough that she managed to wriggle free.
She took two steps toward the tunnel, then glanced back at me.
“Run!” I yelled.
She hesitated for a split second before breaking into a sprint.
The two men who’d grabbed her looked between us, clearly trying to decide whether to chase Madison or help the man dragging me backwards, away from the cattle chute, still clanging.
I fought harder, trying to draw the men toward me, away from Madison.
The guy with the spider was struggling to keep his arms around my waist as I thrashed.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, Edith and I could use some help over here,” he said.
The other two guys turned away from the tunnel and started toward us.
“Damn,” Black Gloves said. “From two moths to one.”
Black Chain grinned. “One is enough to go around. For us and for Edith.”
My skin crawled at the thought of the spider (was its name really Edith?), and I wondered where it had gone, if it was still attached to the man trying to subdue me or if it had switched hosts.
If it was crawling on me now.
In my hair. On my skin.
Black gloves grabbed the waistband of my jeans. The contact of his warm hand against my lower stomach shocked me enough to still my movements.
This was really happening.
“Let’s get her pants off,” he said. “Then we’ll put her on the wall and mark her.”
“The Bulls said— ” It was as far as Black Chain got before Black Gloves interrupted him.
“Do you see anyone else here?”
“You know what they get up to on that ranch,” Black Chain said. “You really want to fuck with them?”
“We caught her.” The man with the spider tightened his grip on my waist, pulling me against him hard enough that I felt the hard shaft of his dick against my ass. “She’s tangled in our web now.”
Black Gloves unsnapped my jeans and worked my zipper, then tried to tug my pants down around my hips.
That got me moving again.
I delivered a kick to his crotch, one that didn’t seem to phase him a bit.
“We’ll get her naked and let Edith check her out,” he said.
The thought of the spider checking me out made me fight harder, but it felt pointless. The man who’d captured me tightened his grip on my arms while Black Gloves kept tugging at my jeans.
And then, out of nowhere, the ceilings seemed to open like the heavens.
Freezing water soaked us from above, obscuring the men around me like ships in a common storm.
All at once, the man with the spider relinquished his grip on my waist.
“What the fuck?”
It took me a second to realize I was free, that this was my chance to escape.
I took off at a run.