Tye worried most about Milly, who had checked out. She came most days, but they had stopped conspiring over a year ago. She said Axe never touched her, and didn’t make her do anything she didn’t want to, but it appeared she was being drugged.
Over the years the fellowship made several attempts at escape, none of which even approached success. He’d climbed the wall three times and got shot the last time. Tester dug a tunnel and almost drowned. Then they focused on the way Milly entered their prison. They tried sending someone else back instead of Milly. Milly pretended to lock the third door as they stormed the passageway as she made her way to the second door. She’d tried to attack Axe when he had all three keys. They’d been defeated every time, and Tye had given up trying to figure it out. He waited, trying to stay alert so that when a crack formed, he could take advantage of it. A crack always formed. Time saw to that.
There was a knock on the door and Tye inched over on his butt out of the way. Milly came through and closed the door behind her. She didn’t say hello, or good morning. Nothing. She walked to the center of the courtyard where a table sat under a decayed and half collapsed cupola and placed the supply crate on the table and sat down. She found the handcuff key on the table, released herself, and placed the handcuffs before her and waited.
When she spoke, Tye was startled. Milly hadn’t used her voice in so long it cracked and gave out on her. “The fu… cke… er is sick. He’s gonna die.”
Tester stopped mid-sentence, and he and Ingo stared at her. Even Robin looked away from her nothingness and turned to Milly. Tye smiled. They’re in there, hiding beneath years of callus, but his friends weren’t all gone yet.
Tye sat next to Milly and was soon surrounded by the rest. “Take seats guys. Eat.” Tye said, then he whispered, “Act normal. Keep your voices low.”
“He th…rew up blo… ood last night. I saw it. He’s cou… ghing all the time,” she said.
“We don’t know how old the fart is, but perhaps it’s his time. That would be a stroke of luck,” Robin said.
“Would it? I don’t know where the keys are,” Milly said.
Tye sighed. He’d known early on that Milly killing Axe with her bare hands was the only way they were getting out, but Milly couldn’t do it. She wasn’t a killer, and the two times she’d tried to incapacitate Axe she’d been beaten badly. “You need to take him down when you leave,” Tye said.
“With this,” Tester said. His eyes shifted to Tye, and he nodded. With the deft handedness of a card shark of old, Tester slid her a garrote made from wire he and Tye had foraged from a basement wall. They’d worked in the pitch-black for two weeks, feeling around the crumbling walls looking for a way out.
“How did he look when he brought you here?” Tester asked.
“Fine. He still went through the entire routine. Still hoods me even though he knows I know the entire place like the back of my hand. It’s like he’s caught in a loop and isn’t aware of it.”
“Like us,” Robin said.
“Except we know we’re on a hamster wheel,” Tye said.
“What?” Milly said.
“Nothing.” It still amazed Tye that memories from the gone world still came to him regularly. Old sayings, things nobody under forty would understand.
“Some of the virals are just wandering off and he hasn’t done anything. We should wait. When he knows he’s going to die, he’ll tell me where the keys are and give me the shock-box,” Milly said.
“Yeah, sure,” Tye said. “We’ve been here over six years, Milly. Six years of my life spent in a cell because this nut-ball misses his dead daughter.”
“We talk sometimes,” Milly said.
“About?” Tye said.
“The gone world. He talks about his memories as though I was with him. Like the time we went to Disney World. He remembers it vividly, what I said, did.”
“You mean what his daughter did,” Robin said.
“Yes, see, he even has me doing it.”
“We’ve heard all this crap before,” Tester said.
Tye took an apple from the crate, and the others followed his lead and dug in. They ate in silence for a short time, everyone waiting for him to lay out the plan. Tester ceded control to Tye, as he was skin and bones and looked three weeks dead.
“You have feelings for him?” Tye said.
“In a way. He wasn’t a bad man before The Day, Tye. You have to remember that,” Milly said.
“Yes, but it’s not before The Day.”
“He told me my future, warned me of how I’ll die,” Milly said.
When nobody spoke, she continued. “Adaline was eighteen. A track star, whatever the shit that is. Blonde hair, blue eyes. He showed me pictures. Way prettier than me, but there is a slight resemblance. The gone world hung on a little longer in these parts, and Axe retreated to the armory where he worked as a janitor. It was a museum of sorts and was scheduled to be demolished. His wife, Loretta and his two sons, Braydon and Curt, were killed by the diseased as XK119 ravaged the land.”
They’d all heard that part, but judging by the tears rolling down Milly’s face they were about to get something new.
“They took Adaline from his arms. Made him watch as…” Milly cried, and Tye put an arm around her shoulders. “When they were done using her, they tore her apart while he watched. His white-hot rage freed him. He killed twenty-three virals. Their skulls are still mounted on sticks around his house.”
“We didn’t
