9. Gauge #2
“All right,” Deac said as he clapped his hands, “Dallas, you’re going to stay here. As Vice President, you have to stay protected since I’m going in.”
Dallas shook his head. “But, Deac, that’s?—”
I whipped around on my feet and pinned that man with a look. “No more fighting, only listening.”
Deac patted my back as I faced our President once more. “Like I said, Dallas, you’re staying put. Gauge, you’re with me.”
“What do you want us all doing?” Plug asked.
Deac drew in a deep breath before he started into the dark hallway. “You wait, Plug. You wait for your orders. Let’s go, Gauge.”
The second I stepped into that hallway, it was as if an entirely different world settled on my shoulders.
I breathed through my mouth, trying to mute the disgusting smell of Bait’s rotting corpse.
With each door we passed on either side of us, my hands balled up into tighter fists.
The door at the end of the hallway finally came into view.
One lone light flickered on, and the second I heard scrambling feet, I knew Plug was about to do something.
But Deac didn’t call him out, so I didn’t bother with it.
“Jesus Christ,” Deac whispered as he placed his leather jacketed arm over his nose.
One last step had us reaching our legs over the dented and warped door lying there on the floor in shambles.
The pitch-black entrance to Bait’s room lured us onward, even as dread filled my gut.
I held my breath. The crunching beneath my boots gave way to something wet as I breached the threshold of the room that bitch had trapped Bait in.
“Let there be light!” Plug exclaimed from somewhere.
And the instant the light in that room came on, I couldn’t help myself.
“Oh my fucking G?—”
My body forced me back out of the room. I slammed my shoulder into the very first door I found to my right, and it popped open like a fucking can of tuna. I braced myself against the wall, my body shivering with fury as my stomach gave out.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Deac said breathlessly.
I didn’t even know what the fuck it was, to be honest. I couldn’t remember what I had last eaten. Or when I last ate. All of us were running on fumes. All of us were in a mad dash scramble to set things right. To get our fucking lives back.
To get Char out of that goddamn holding cell.
And yet, I knew I’d never forget that image.
As I traipsed gingerly out of the room, I only stared at the wall in front of me while I studied the lower half of Bait’s body in my peripheral vision.
Somehow Deac had the courage to walk into that room, and I knew he’d eventually expect the same for me.
So after spitting one last nasty mouthful of spit at my feet, I grew a sack and turned to face our comrade.
His upper body was splattered against the walls of the room.
“My God,” I said breathlessly as I walked into the room.
There he sat, his rotting lower body still strapped to that fucking chair. I heard clicks and snaps all around me, and it wasn’t until a light shone toward my feet that I realized what was happening.
“Guess Plug found the breaker box,” Deac muttered.
I looked down at the floor, studying what I could as Deac held his own as if he wasn’t the least bit fucking taken aback by the carnage in front of us.
“Don’t look up,” Deac said.
I scoffed. “Ain’t gotta fucking tell me twice.”
I didn’t have to look up to know what was on the ceiling, though. As I looked down at the floor where my boot had first breached the room, I saw the wetness. I saw the blood. I saw the sand that curved around the spot on the floor that was forever altered by my bootprint.
And I noticed that the blood covered something gray.
“Nope,” I said with a shake of my head, “nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.”
“Go take a break,” Deac said mindlessly, “I got this.”
I stepped over the piece of Bait’s brain that my boot tarnished as another heave worked its way up the back of my throat.
I dashed back into that room, but instead of throwing up, I found that there was a light illuminating the space.
As Deac continued murmuring and talking to himself, I studied the empty gray walls around me.
The concrete floor was pristine, outside of the blood and brain matter I tracked in of my own regard.
But there was something dark in the corner.
Something that the light didn’t touch. And when I got closer, another motion-sensor light flickered on.
It didn’t work very well. It went in and out as it buzzed above my head. However, it lit up that dark corner only to reveal that it wasn’t a corner at all.
It was another fucking hallway.
“What the hell?” I muttered.
“Gauge! You good!?” Deac called out.
I tore down that hallway, watching the floor and canvassing the walls as it wrapped around. What it was wrapping around, I didn’t have a fucking clue.
That was until I came face to face with a window.
In the room where Deac and Bait’s body were.
“Gauge!” Deac called out.
Holy fuck, I was perched right beneath where that countdown clock was. I scrambled back down the hallway and turned a hard left before skidding back into the room where Deacon was. And as I stared at that clock, I slid my gaze down the wall.
Down the apparent cinderblock wall that sat in front of me.
“What the fuck?” I whispered to myself.
“Gauge?” Deac asked as he wrinkled his nose. “You good? You need to trade places with someone?”
“No,” I said as I whipped around and rushed back down the hidden hallway I found.
“What the fuck gives, Gauge!?”
I charged through that hallway. All the way back to the one-way window that somehow was made to look like another fucking wall.
“Seriously, Gauge,” Deac said as his voice grew closer, “if you need me to bring someone else in here?—”
“Shut the fuck up and get over here,” I snapped.
When Deac came up to my side, even I heard him gasp.
“That bitch was watching,” I snarled as I slowly turned to my brother. “She was fucking watching us the entire goddamn time.”
“So,” Deac said as he peeked over at me, “that only begs one question.”
And as we both turned around, we found ourselves face-to-face with the darkened outline of a doorframe.
“How the fuck did she get out?” Deac and I asked in unison.