His mouth filled with blood. He'd bitten his tongue off. Oh God he had, he'd bitten it clean off. And then there was the smell, burnt flesh. His flesh.
Greaves dropped back into the chair. Had it stopped? He couldn't tell. The leads weren't connected any more. It must have stopped but it didn't feel like it had. His whole body quivered. His muscles were in knots. He wanted to scream. He wanted to vomit. He wanted his mother to put her arms around him and kiss it all better. Oh God mother, look what they've done. Look what they've done to me.
'You ready to talk now friend?' said Chico in a soft voice. He put his arm around Greaves. 'It's the only way to make 'em stop.'
Greaves nodded his head. Blood spilled out of his mouth. He tried to find his breath. What about his tongue? If he'd bitten it off he couldn't talk. If he couldn't talk they'd do it again. Oh God please not again! He'd have to tell them about his tongue. But how could he tell them without a tongue. Oh God no, oh please!
Turns out he hadn't bitten it off, just bitten a chunk out of it. It hurt like hell. Every bit of him hurt like hell. Even his eyelashes and his toenails throbbed and ached. He drew a breath and it came out like a sob. Every time he breathed out he cried harder.
'I'm sorry,' he said as the snot dripped off his nose and the blood ran down his chin. 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.'
'That's okay,' said Chico gently rubbing his back. 'You take your time. Now, what were you and your UTN buddies doing down in them offices?'
'I was… I was…' Greaves swallowed and wished he hadn't. His throat was on fire. He couldn't talk. It hurt too much. He had to talk or they'd hurt him more. 'I was l-l-look… ing… at… pl-plans.'
'Plans for what? Some building you want to blow up?'
Greaves shook his head. 'Plans… for a… lab-lab-laboratory.'
'A laboratory?' said Billy Joe. 'What the fuck would you know about a laboratory?'
'I'm – I'm a… scientist. I used to work with… with the men in this laboratory, back before… back before The Cull.'
'And why were you looking at these plans?' said Chico. 'What's in this laboratory?'
'A virus. A special Doomsday Virus.'
'And what's so special about it?'
'There's no other virus like it. You can programme it, like a computer. You can programme it so that it only kills the people you want it to kill. It's the ultimate biological weapon.'
'And where is this laboratory?' said Chico. 'Is it here in Torrington?'
'No. It's in Montana. Near the Little Bighorn. What used to be the river, before it dried up.'
'Little Bighorn,' said Billy Joe. 'Ain't that where Custer killed all them redskins?'
'No,' said Chico. 'They killed him and all his men. It was another massacre.'
'That figures,' said Billy Joe. 'That's why them fucking Injuns would hide it there.'
'It isn't the Native Americans who've hidden it,' said Greaves. He felt like a schoolboy, desperate to please his teachers with the right answers. 'It's a powerful, secret organisation. They existed before The Cull and they're still around.'
'And you planned to steal the virus from them,' said Chico. 'Is that right?'
Greaves nodded his head, then hung it in shame.
'You wanted to wipe out every white man didn't you?' said Jed. The veins were throbbing in his temples. 'You wanted to kill every decent Christian man, woman and child so you could have the whole country to your stinking heathen selves. Isn't that right? Isn't it! Why you sick fucks. You make me want to puke.'
Jed flew at Greaves. He swung his right arm in a powerful upper cut. It smacked into Greaves' face and he felt the chair actually leave the ground with the force of the punch. Two teeth flew out of his mouth and he landed on his back. Tiny gold stars reverberated inside his head and he lost consciousness again.
Greaves was not in a good shape when they brought him back. His face was covered in blood. His trousers were around his ankles and his loins were blackened and burned. This was not the work of men who knew what they were doing, it was the work of amateurs.
Cortez thought them beneath contempt.
'You next big guy,' said the one whose face was covered in blemishes. The man with the moustache tied Greaves to bars of the cell where Linda and Anna were also bound.
There were two other men with them. They both wore white robes with the red circle that marked them out as Neo-Clergy soldiers. They carried pump-action shotguns that they stuck in Cortez's face as the blemished one untied his hands from the bars but left them bound together.
'You need a hand there Billy Joe?' said the moustached one.
'Got it covered thanks Jed. Now big feller, up on your feet, and don't try nothing stupid. These boys here got awful itchy trigger fingers.'
Cortez stood slowly. His legs tingled after sitting down for so long.
'This way,' said Billy Joe and led him into the offices.
There were three other men waiting there. Billy Joe and Jed greeted one of them as Chico. Cortez assessed the situation. There was a chair in the centre of the room. That's where they had worked Greaves over and in the corner was the electrical machine they had used.
'Now sit yourself down real slow in that chair there,' said Billy Joe. 'Jed here's going to untie your hands and tie them behind you. If you even look as though you're going to resist, you got six armed men here who will put bullets in you.'
Just as Cortez had thought, amateurs. Rank amateurs.
Cortez held his bound hands up close to his chest so Jed had to lean in to untie him. He was flanked on both sides by Neo-Clergy soldiers aiming their weapons at his head. Cortez pressed his wrists together to make them more difficult to untie and to appear more securely fastened than they actually were. His hands were free before Jed realised it. Cortez jumped on this split-second advantage.
He took hold of Jed's shirt and pulled him off balance. Then he grabbed both shotgun barrels and pulled them hard. He aimed one at the soldier on his right and one at Jed's head.
Both weapons went off as the soldier's fingers pulled against their triggers. The right shotgun unloaded both barrels into Jed's skull. The cartridges took off most of his face before tearing into the gut of the soldier on Cortez's left. That soldier's shotgun unloaded only one barrel into the chest of the soldier on Cortez's right. He was sent spinning backwards, robes on fire and a big hole in his chest.
Jed fell forward and dropped half his brains into Cortez's lap. The soldier on his left doubled over in pain clutching the back of the chair. Cortez slipped Jed's knife out of its sheath with his left hand and kicked him off. Then he stood and took hold of the gut-shot soldier's shotgun with his right hand, catching hold of the soldier from behind and putting the man between him and the other four armed men as he backed towards the door.
Finally they reacted. Most of their shots went wide as Cortez backed out of the room, Two shots thudded into the soldier he was using as a shield. The man screamed as they did, cursing his comrades.
As he got to the door Cortez fired the shotgun, winging another robed soldier. The man fell to ground screaming. Cortez jammed Jed's knife into the throat of the soldier he was holding then sliced outwards cutting through tendons, flesh and arteries. Blood spattered Chico, Billy Joe and the other soldier and they leaped backwards. This gave Cortez time to get into the corridor.
He stepped out and pressed himself flat against the wall. Billy Joe poked his head out of the room, looked up and down the passage, and Cortez drove Jed's knife right into his left eyeball. Billie Joe's face registered surprise and horror, then he fell back through the door and died from the six inches of sharpened steel that had punctured his brain. That would make the other three guys in the room think twice before leaving.
Cortez edged along the wall with the shotgun trained on the doorway. He was heading back to the cells. He kicked open a door with a broken safety glass window and stopped for a second to pick a shard of glass out of the broken wire.
Arriving back at the cells Cortez used the glass to cut through the rope that held Linda to the bars.
'I expected you sooner,' she said. 'You run into trouble?'
'Nothing too bad. It's strictly amateur night back there.'
'You bring any weapons?'
Cortez held up the shotgun and the shard of glass. 'Just these.'
