Milly deflated like a balloon.
“Don’t fret. It won’t be that bad. I got good food, safe place to sleep, and you can play with your pets. You might like it.”
“If I don’t?” Milly said.
“They die,” he said. Milly stiffened and didn’t bend. “They die in a horrible way with you watching.” He nodded toward the infected. “You get my meaning? Ever watch a wolf cub tear into meat for the first time? In case you don’t get the analogy, you’re the meat.”
They walked for hours and long into the night. Milly’s feet ached but Axe refused to rest or stop. His slaves fanned out around them in the undergrowth and constantly communicated via whistles and shouts. Before dawn, a tall brick wall rose out of the underbrush and Axe turned right and followed its base. They came to a large metal door set in concrete, above which a sign read Pass Christian Armory Service Entrance. Axe produced a large ring full of keys and made a show of twirling it on his finger. He unlocked the door, and they passed inside. A warren of hallways lay beyond.
“Say your goodbyes,” Axe said. He opened a side door and motioned for Milly to go in. “You’ll see your friends in the morning. Don’t worry.”
Milly stepped into the dark room and the door closed behind her with a clang.
“Sweetie I want you to pay close attention now. What I’m telling you will determine how happy your life can be, and how long that life will last,” Axe said. “Put this on.” He tossed her a sack and Milly put it over her head. She felt him near her, then the cold steel of handcuffs on her wrists.
They left her cell and Axe guided her through several turns, and they went outside. She felt a cool breeze, and her hood lightened from black to blue as sunlight hit it. The clang of a large door lock opening, followed by the creak of a metal hinge. The door closed with a rush of air, and Axe pulled her hood off, but left her cuffed.
He held three keys before her. “This is an old school armory. One key is for the door we just came through. Come on,” he said.
He led her down a long brick hallway with abandoned lighting fixtures running down the center of the ceiling. They reached a fork in the passageway. Axe said, “Your friends are to the left. The unclean ones are kept to the right. I gave your friends full access to the courtyard.” He turned left and stopped when he came to another door. This one was made of wood and set into the concrete wall. He lifted the second of the three keys and unlocked the door. He had to push hard on it to open it a crack and they slipped through, and he closed it behind them.
Axe lit a torch, and they made their way through a maze of rooms before coming to another door at the end of a long hallway. He raised the third and final key. “This one opens this door. Your friends are beyond it. You get three hours each day. Bring them that food there,” he said. A crate of supplies rested next to the door. “I gathered it for you today, but starting tomorrow, it will be your job.”
Milly nodded.
“The second of two keys for your handcuffs hangs on a hook just inside this door. See that up there? The cut in the stone?”
She nodded.
“When your three hours are up, you leave the handcuff key with your friends, put on the cuffs, and come back through this door. Lock it behind you and walk up the hall. I’ll be watching to make sure you’re alone and the cuffs are on.”
She nodded again.
“When not with your friends, you’re free within the boundaries of the compound. While you’re free, the three door keys will be hidden in separate places. If you kill me, or otherwise hurt me, you won’t be able to get food and water to your pets and they’ll die. Do you understand?”
She nodded.
“And you understand this place is an armory, and there’s no way you can break your friends out?”
She nodded.
“And that if your friends were to escape, I’d be forced to do something I don’t want to do,” he said.
Milly was still Milly, and she said in her best baby voice, “What’s that, daddy?”
He looked at the floor, then said, “Hurt you.”
Axe unlocked the door, opened it, and tossed her the third key. Milly picked up the supplies and passed through the door, closing and locking it behind her.
She found Tye, Robin, Jerome, Ingo, and Tester waiting.
“We’re screwed,” Milly said.
Chapter Nineteen
Year 2072, Respite
Hazel pressed against the bulkhead, tugging on a piece of fabric that was caught in a hatch that had been dogged down for longer than she’d been alive. Dust and rat droppings clung to her arms and hands as she struggled to free the material. It looked to be enough to make a new dress, and that made the blue and green fabric valuable. Four years prior a cyclone had churned the sea, turning and shifting the pieces of the Oceanic Eco, revealing new sections of the destroyed cruise ship that had never been scavenged.
The material started to rip and Hazel cursed, and Randy laughed. It had been his idea to crawl into the bowels of the wreckage, but somehow she’d ended up in the lead. “I can’t get it without ripping it. The bulkhead hatch is sealed.”
“Let me help,” Randy said. He squeezed next to her and for an uncomfortable minute the two of
