Chapter 14

 

Being outside without my weapons made me feel naked and the fact that I was surrounded by soldiers with guns didn’t even make me feel better. I knew if it got right down to it they would give me to the zombies and run for it. Working for zombie leaders may mean they were better protected than the average person, but it didn’t guarantee that none of the creatures would attack them. The only weapon I did have was a penknife in my bra and that would be next to no use for anything other than cutting the rope from my wrists.

The place wasn’t too far away from the hotel so we reached it just as the sun was going down on the horizon. It looked exactly the same as the last time I had seen it, it was a prison. I don’t mean that it looked like a prison either, it was actually what used to be a prison. Huge stone building, barred windows, metal fences surrounding the perimeter, watch towers with guards on and all.

The guards had practically ignored me throughout the whole walk, but the moment we arrived they seemed to be getting kicks out of just shoving me randomly as if I wasn’t walking fast enough when I wasn’t walking any slower than them. When I asked where we were going I got a smack in the face so I decided not to ask questions.

The whole time we were walking though I was taking note of the way out and I was assessing how many guards there were. To my relief the place didn’t actually seem to have many men in. My main problem would be taking down the men in the watch towers, after that we could make an easy escape. My whole plan to grab Cora and escape though was destroyed completely the moment we entered the area with cells in.

They were jam packed with women and I knew the second I saw them scared and dirty cowering in corners that I wasn’t going to leave a single one of them behind. Escaping was still on the agenda, but I just had a few more women to get out, I’d say at least forty had just been added to the escape party. The only plus side was that they were all in one big cell meaning that I would only have to pick one lock. Well, maybe two considering we had just stopped outside a smaller empty cell next to the huge one containing the rest of the women.

One of the soldiers opened the gate, another shoved me in so forcefully that I stumbled over my own feet and fell over, another slammed the gate closed and locked it behind me and they all laughed at me when I glared at them.

“Not so tough in here are you little girl?” Tristan said.

I smirked. “You won’t be so tough when you’re begging for mercy as I cut your fingers off one by one.”

He cackled. “You’ll be the one begging later baby, begging for me not to stop as I fuck you.”

He high fived one of the others and they all laughed as I scowled back at him. I levelled my gaze on him until they walked out a door at the other end of the corridor and slammed a heavy wooden door closed behind them.

When I was sure they weren’t coming back I looked towards the cell next to me separated by bars and looked for Cora. It didn’t take me long since within seconds she yelled.

“Taylor, is that you?”

I tried to locate her until she ran over to the bars and looked in at me. She looked fine to my relief with the exception of being a little dirty.

I smiled at her. “Hello sweetie, you ready to get out of here?”

She grinned and clapped her hands. “I knew you’d come, I told everyone you would come, but they didn’t believe me.”

“Well, I’m here and we are all getting out.” I said as I lifted my still tied hands to fish the penknife out of my bra before opening it up and cutting at the ropes on my wrists.

“How did you get that in here?” She asked with a gasp.

I grinned and winked. “With a little help from a certain leader of a certain hotel.”

She grinned back and then gasped. “Are they coming here?”

I shook my head and walked over to the cell door with the pen knife. “No, they’d kill us all before they could reach us, we’re leaving now.”

I had never picked a lock before, but it couldn’t be that hard right? Shoving the end of the knife into the lock I start wiggling it around, I didn’t have much of a chance to find out if it was really that hard or not because one of the women hissed.

“Someone’s coming.”

I must have been too engrossed in my task because I didn’t hear anything or maybe they just got more used to listening out for the signs of approaching people. Closing the pen knife up I shoved it back into my bra, quickly hid the cut ropes under the hay in the corner and sat down as if I hadn’t been doing anything.

It seemed that I was right in listening to the woman when the wooden door reopened and non other than Eric Turner walked through with an ugly leer on his face.

“Well, well, well.” He said happily walking over to my cell. “What do we have here?”

“What you have here is one pissed off ex girlfriend who is going to make you pay.”

He cackled. “Not in the right situation to be making threats babe.”

I glared at him silently and he wordlessly opened the cell door before walking in. The moment he closed in I stood up quickly getting in a better defensive position, before I could do anything though he punched me around the face so hard that I saw stars and fell over. Cora was screaming my name, but I had trouble focusing.

When everything finally stopped spinning though Eric had my hands handcuffed behind my back and was shoving me out of the cell.

“You’re coming with me Missy, we have more special quarters for you to stay in for a few hours. Don’t worry though, you’ll be back with your little friend in a few hours.”

Cora was still yelling my name, I was scared out of my mind, but I put on a brave face for her and said.

“I’ll be back Cora, I promise. I’d never leave you here, remember that.”

I saw a few tears slide down her cheeks, but she nodded silently as she and the other women watched Eric shove me through the door and down more hallways. I hoped I wouldn’t have to remember the way here because I wasn’t sure I could get back to the cell on my own. The journey from the cell to the exit was still clear in my mind, but I didn’t think I could memorise this one too.

When we finally did stop outside a black door he opened it and pushed me inside into a bare stone room with chains hanging from the centre of the room and a table with all kinds of instruments on. It looked like a……shit, I was in a fucking torture chamber! My whole body trembled in fear and I fought against him as he pushed me towards the centre of the room.

“Aww, what’s wrong Taylor, don’t you like your accommodations.”

“Let me out of here!” I screamed and tried to dodge him, but he easily grabbed me, pulled my hands above my head and locked my wrists in the manacles hanging from chains.

“Let me go!” I screamed as I uselessly tugged on them.

I had not expected this at all, this hadn’t even crossed my mind once. Rape, I had expected, but torture had not even been on my long list of things to expect.

He smirked. “A few hours in here and you’ll finally realise I’m not letting you go and give up.”

“You’re a sick bastard!” I hissed. “I never thought you would sink this low.”

He started to reply, but why I had the chance I kicked him between the legs.

He groaned and pummelled his fist into my ribs making me wince before walking off to the side and turning a little wheel that connected to the chains holding my arms up. He turned it until my toes were barely touching the ground, my shoulders screamed in their sockets and my gun shot wound in my shoulder from weeks ago felt like it had been cut wide open.

Knowing that the pain from that was nothing to what I was about to receive I tried to shut off my feelings from everything. He pulled off my boots and jogging bottoms and then cut off my vest top. I was hanging there in my underwear and that was when the torture began.

The start was somewhat bearable, but it got worse and worse, I wasn’t sure of the amount of different weapons he used, but I knew I had a large variety of marks on my body and I knew that some of them would never heal completely. I refused to scream, I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of hearing how much it hurt. My whole body was in so much agony that I almost wished he would just kill me and get it over with.

When I thought that it couldn’t possibly get any worse he introduced me to a red hot fire poker. As if the pain from that wouldn’t be enough on it’s own he used it against the raw marks on my body, that was when I couldn’t contain the pain any longer. I let out a blood curdling scream so loud that it actually hurt my own ears. My vision blurred and I knew I was on the verge of passing out from the pain despite my attempts to block it out.

Eric must have seen that I was struggling to stay conscious because I heard him let out a loud sigh before sighing. “I guess we are done for the day, it’s not nearly as fun doing it if you’re not awake for it.”

I was so weak that when he lowered the chains and took off the manacles and the handcuffs leaving my hands free that I didn’t even have the strength to attempt an escape. He threw my jogging bottoms and boots at me before throwing me a clean t-shirt that was too big and I had no idea where it had come from. I silently pulled the clothing on unable to contain my winces with every movement and every brush of material over my wounds meaning I was flinching almost constantly. It wasn’t right that getting dressed should be this painful and difficult, but I knew I had to pull myself together because I still had a rescue mission to accomplish and if I wanted to make it out of here it would have to happen before tomorrow when Eric would do this to me again. I didn’t know if I could survive another torture session like that, I had barely made it through this time.

When we arrived back at the cells he pushed me inside with barely any force, but it was enough to send me to the floor. I didn’t sit up, I just couldn’t find the strength even when I heard the door close behind Eric and Cora started talking to me.

“Taylor, Taylor, you have to get up!” She cried.

After a few minutes of it I slowly lifted my head and looked over at her. “Wake me up in a couple of hours Cora and we’ll leave, but I’m not strong enough right now ok? I just need a little sleep.”

She was crying, but I couldn’t find any words to comfort her as she gave a slow nod. With that I let my head drop back to the ground and I was asleep before my head even hit the floor.

 

“Taylor, wake up!” Cora shouted waking me up faster than I would have thought possible with how I was still feeling.

I sat up quickly, at least I could sit up, that was a good sign.

“What is it?” I asked.

“They took Bethany, they came in and said they were going to torture every one of us, but Bethany was first.”

I nodded, pulled my pen knife out and headed to my door for my second attempt at picking locks.

“Ok, I’ll get you guys out of here.”

“We can’t leave Bethany behind!” One of the girls said.

“We won’t.” I assured her as I pushed the blade into the keyhole. “I’ll get you lot out, you start back to the hotel. Then I’ll come back inside, rescue Bethany and we’ll be right behind you.”

“How do we get out of here, there is security everywhere?” Another girl asked.

I moved the knife in the hole hoping to hear some kind of click. “Leave it to me, there aren’t that many guards around, I’ll take out the ones on the ground. We need to find some stairs up to a watch tower, as soon as I can get up one I can dispose of the guards on every tower.” I said making it up as I went along.

“Oh, oh, I saw a door to a watch tower once, it was labelled on a doorway.” The girl who didn’t want to leave Bethany behind said.

“Good, can you lead the way there?”

She nodded enthusiastically just as the door made a satisfactory click and swung open.

“Bingo.” I murmured before running out and getting started on their door.

“Are you sure this is a good idea, I mean they have guns and we might get caught.” A nervous looking girl asked.

“As soon as we get to the watch tower we’ll be fine.” I said. “If we come in contact with any guards on the way leave them to me.”

I picked this lock quicker than the other one, I could have said that it was because I had figured out how to do it from the last one, but to be honest it was pure luck. The second the door was open they ran out, I was thankful to find that the big wooden door wasn’t locked, but I didn’t know if any guards would be walking past outside so I held my pen knife out ready before pushing it open gently. I was relieved to just find an empty corridor.

After glancing both ways again I ushered the girl who knew where the watch tower was to the front so she could lead the way. When I had made this plan in the few minutes I had, had to make it I hadn’t foreseen how difficult it might be to move a group of forty women through open corridors undetected. Before we walked around any corner I checked to make sure the coast was clear before we headed that way.

It seemed that luck was on our side because we made it to the watch tower with only two incidents. Once a guard was standing right around the corner I looked around and I managed to react faster than he did by stabbing my pen knife into his windpipe, killing him within seconds. It would have been sensible to hide our tracks, but when he had already bled all over the stone floor it made it a little difficult so I didn’t bother. I grabbed the machine gun he had been wielding and could have shot the next guy, but rather than draw attention to ourselves with the sound I used the same manoeuvre I had on the other guy, I got the jump on him since he hadn’t even hear us coming and he was dead faster than the previous guard had been.

“Stay down here, if anyone comes then whistle.” I whispered to them when we reached the door.

They all nodded and were already looking around like meerkats on the lookout for predators. I opened the door, leaving it open behind me so I could hear the whistle if it came and started up the stairs silently. Knowing the sound of a machine gun would echo around the whole prison yard if I shot someone on the watch tower I wielded my pen knife once again. There was one guard at the top and before he even noticed that I was ascending the stairs I grabbed his ankle and yanked as hard as I could sending him to the ground not willing to kill him with the chance that a watch tower guy was looking in this direction. I was glad that he didn’t yell out in any kind of way either before I could stab him in the throat. His reaction was too late though, instead of the shout all he could achieve was a gurgling sound before he choked on his last breath and died.

Just as I had hoped he had a sniper rifle so knowing every minute I wasted was a chance we could be caught I grabbed the gun and took aim at the closest tower. That one was closest to the front gate and held two men, within seconds both had been shot in the head silently with no one the wiser. One more tower with two men and two others containing one man all lost their guards in minutes leaving the whole yard unguarded since they hadn’t thought it necessary to post guards around the ground area.

I ran back down the stairs leaving the sniper behind. “Ok, coast is clear, do these doors lead outside?” I asked pointing to the double doors at the end of the corridor.

Watch tower girl nodded and I looked at Cora. “Can you remember the way back to the hotel?”

She nodded.

“Can you do me a favour and lead them there?”

She nodded. “Only if you promise to come back there.”

I smiled at her. “I promise, now get going. The faster you guys leave, the faster I can find Bethany and follow. I’ll keep on lookout from the tower until I can’t see you anymore.”

They all nodded in understanding.

I kissed Cora’s forehead. “Now run.”

And run they did, they ran out the front doors at the same time I bolted back up the stairs and watched them as they ran across the yard and out the gates undetected. I kept on guard ready to lift the sniper at a single sign of danger as their figures headed towards the rising sun until they disappeared around the corner of a building in the distance.

Mission rescue Cora was complete, Bethany was next. Hanging my newly acquired sniper rifle over my shoulder and equipping my machine gun I loaded it and turned towards the stairs. Now it was time to find her and dispose of as many of the bastards who ran this place as I could in the process, if I could just remember where the torture chamber was.