Trapped

again, and Tyrone wheezed in air like a vacuum. He tried to raise his arms, to defend himself against whoever had thrown him, and then he heard Cindy yell, “Sara!”

“Tyrone?”

It was Sara sitting on him. She was the one who flipped him. Maybe there was more to that judo shit than Tyrone had thought.

“You beat on all yo kids like this, Sara?” he whispered.

She immediately got off him, and Tyrone felt her hand grab his, pulling to help him up. He flinched away, her touch on his raw palm making him swear.

“Are you okay, Tyrone?” Sara asked. She sounded pretty frazzled.

“Hands are messed up, ‘n my pride just took a beatin’, but I’m okay.”

Sara tried again to help him stand, this time lifting by the elbow. When he was vertical, he had to endure a hug. Then Cindy came by and also hugged him, which Tyrone found much easier to endure.

“Girl, I know this ain’t the time, but, damn, if you don’t look good in nothin’ but that bra.”

“Thanks,” Cindy said. “Look, Tyrone, about—”

“Not your fault.” He rubbed his fingertips along the small of her back. “I couldn’t do it neither. That’s why I gave you the gun.”

“You found the gun?” Sara asked.

“I dropped it.”

Tyrone pulled Cindy closer, “It’s not her fault.”

“Where are the others? Are they okay?”

Tyrone and Cindy spent the next few minutes filling Sara in on everything that had happened, eventually asking her where Jack was. Sara, in turn, told them about all she’d been through.

“Mountains of bones?” Tyrone still had his left hand on Cindy’s back. It hurt, but he could deal with it. “How many damn cannibals are on this island?”

“These bones were old. Real old. I think Martin’s legend about there being a civil war prison here may have been right. There were thousands of soldiers missing after the war, soldiers that have never been accounted for. Thirteen thousand men died at the Confederate prison, Andersonville. Six thousand at its Union counterpart, Camp Douglas. It’s possible the Union army also had another, secret prison. A place they’d kept hidden, off the record books, in case the South won the war.”

Tyrone didn’t get it. “Those cannibals move damn fast for bein’ over a hundred years old.”

Sara shook her head. “Those people, the ones after us, they aren’t from the prison. They’re something else.”

“What are they?”

“Martin called this Plincer’s Island, and the name has been nagging at me.” Sara paused, then said, “But I think I finally remembered who he is.”

Laneesha tried to think about Brianna, tried to cling to sanity by picturing her daughter’s sweet little face. But she couldn’t concentrate over the sounds of her own agonized screams.

Georgia couldn’t move. She thought she might be strapped down, but she didn’t feel any straps. In fact, she felt naked. Naked and lying on a cold table.

Lester’s play table? Isn’t that what the crazy doctor called it?

No. That had shackles, and was wooden. This table felt like metal.

She tried to open her eyes and, amazingly, she couldn’t. Nor could she turn her head, clench her fist, or so much as moan. Nothing seemed to work at all.

Georgia remembered Lester holding her tight, then the doctor sticking her with some kind of needle. Must have knocked her out. But she wasn’t knocked out any more. She was awake, and aware, and could feel. But she couldn’t move any of her muscles.

Then, abruptly, light.

It took a moment to focus, and then Georgia found herself staring up at Lester, who was leaning over her. She realized he’d opened her eyelids with his fingers.

“Don’t worry, Georgia girl. It only hurts for a little while.”

She stared hard at Lester, imploring him to stop this, to help her get away. He smiled at her, then brought something in front of her eyes.

His camera.

The flash made Georgia’s pupils painfully constrict. Then Lester stepped back, and Doctor Plincer’s face came into view.

“I can’t express, my dear, how excited I am by the opportunity to try my procedure out on you. I’ve experimented on dozens of people over the last decade. Not nearly enough, considering the importance of my work. Only about ten a year, average. I’m limited, you see. Not many people visit the island. And those that do, well, I usually don’t have the opportunity to work with them. My, failures, I suppose you can call them, are quite hostile toward strangers. And quite hungry too, I’m afraid. I’m an old man, on a fixed income. I really can’t afford to feed so many.”

She felt the doctor’s hand touch her neck, then smooth her hair behind her ear. From deep within the bowels of the prison, Georgia heard screaming.

“Pardon the bluntness,” Dr. Plincer said, “but you really aren’t much to look at. You do have something about you, however. Something extraordinary. You see, most of the people I’ve had the pleasure to experiment on, they’re normal people. I’ve only had one success with a normal person. True, I’ve only had two successes with sadistic personality types, but the overall percentage is much greater.”

Doctor Plincer kept his hand on Georgia’s ear. Then he began to squeeze the lobe. Hard. Digging his nails in. Georgia’s eyes teared up, but she couldn’t flinch away from the pain, not even a millimeter.

“The drug used to paralyze you is called succinocholine. It renders you completely immobile. This is necessary, as I’m working with a very precise area of the brain. If you moved, even slightly, you could end up being lobotomized, or having your language center damaged, or your neuron clusters regressed. That would be a waste. Unfortunately, for you, I have to keep you awake for the procedure. The brain is an amazing organ, and it has many different states of consciousness. For this experiment to be successful, you need to be in a beta wave state. Fully awake.”

He moved in closer, smiling. Georgia could smell his sour body odor.

“I’m using a serum. A special serum. It contains, among other things, pluriopotent stem cells. You’ve heard of stem cell research, I’m sure. The bans. The controversy. The ethical dilemma.”

The doctor scratched his chin, and a bit of dried skin flaked off. Georgia felt the crumb land on her lower lip.

“The reason stem cells are so important in research is that they are, in layman’s terms, blank. A stem cell can develop into any sort of cell at all, if properly coerced. Skin cells. Bone cells. Nerve cells. Brain cells.” Plincer shrugged. “Alas, the only continuous and plentiful source for stem cells is unborn babies. Hence the banning and the controversy. But I have an arrangement with a doctor on the mainland, one who specializes in terminating pregnancies. He supplies me with all the stem cells I require.”

Georgia willed herself to move. She had to get away from the maniac. But no matter how hard she tried, how much she concentrated, her muscles refused to obey her commands.

“Lester is right. This is going to hurt. The only way I can inject my experimental serum to the correct area of your brain is through your tear ducts. My colleagues, the fools, didn’t think it could be done. But it can. I’m going to enhance certain portions of your brain. Make them grow larger. With a little bit of luck, you may soon join my other successes.”

Doctor Plincer held something in front of Georgia’s line of vision. A syringe. A big fucking syringe, with the longest needle Georgia had ever seen.

He can’t plunge that into my eye. Dear god sweet jesus oh no he can’t…

“From what I’ve been told, the first injection is the worst.” The doctor smacked his lips. “The five after that