Volumes of the Vemreaux Complete Collection: A Dystopian Adventure Trilogy Page 3

  When Blue switched jobs, she should not have been surprised that Marxus was asked to put in for a similar job trade. Though he was no Baird, and he did not know their secret, Marxus looked so forbidding and had the reputation of being Baird’s dirty work enforcer, that there was no chance the girls would have a hard time in the mostly-male housing bricks job site.

  The fight Marxus had been in that morning churned in the rumor mill like a hurricane. He’d apparently taken down three older boys single-handedly for trying to get him kicked off his lead position in the furnace room. The gossip was that they hadn’t been able to land a single blow, and that Marxus’ injuries had come from punching a wall. That was how it went with rumors in The Way, though. In another day, the sprained wrist would be omitted, and there would be twelve guys he obliterated.

  Blue heard Grent approaching with Marxus’ replacement, and immediately set down the forty bricks she’d been moving. She rolled her eyes and pretended to struggle as she lifted two bricks, ignoring Elle’s quiet laughter at the theatrics. There were additional sets of footsteps now, and Blue warned Elle with a look to keep alert.

  The mask was effortless. Blue’s perfect posture slumped, shoulders inverted, and feet shuffled at the first hint of eavesdroppers. She lowered her chin so that her auburn hair tilted forward to obscure most of her face.

  “Hey, Elle,” Grent called as he strolled into the hot room. He had four older guys with him, each of whom looked like they were approaching the age limit for Building Three. Grent looked her up and down more overtly than his usual stolen glances. “You’re looking good today.”

  Elle gave him an appreciative half-smile. “You think I look good now? Wait till I’m not stuck in this hot box.” She nodded to acknowledge the four guys brought in to replace one Marxus. “Why all the extra help? Hey, Evan. Perry.” She could not recall the other two men’s names.

  “This one looks like she could use a break,” suggested Evan as he motioned to Blue. He held the door open for her to exit. “Go on, kid. Supervisor’s tied up on the yard right now, but you could probably use a water stop.”

  Haulers and refiners went through a lot of water, true, but the menace in Evan’s tone made the hairs on the back of Blue’s neck stand on end. Grent was usually quiet with the occasional covert flirt for Elle, but his confidence had not been as obvious with Marxus around to keep watch. She did not like the bravado, or the fact that there were five guys when a Vemreaux Supervisor would only have sent two for the task.

  Elle had the same thought. “Now that you mention it, I could use some water, too. Come on, Blue.”

  Grent moved to block her way out. “I already told you that you look good. It’s not water you need, and you know it.”

  The two men Elle did not know closed in behind her. She held her ground and acted as if she was not in the middle of an impending attack. “What’s this about, guys?” Elle tried to keep her voice steady. Bored, even.

  “It’s about you.”

  Perry’s brown eyes glinted with mischief and malice as he stepped in front of Elle. “You’re Baird’s girl, right?”

  “Why? You hoping to be Baird’s girl?” she joked boldly, unwilling to cower beneath the threat of their combined height, weight and strength. In truth, she and Baird never made anything official. It was simply understood that the two were together. For years, stories circulated about their various wild sex adventures, when in reality, Baird had never even kissed her. Elle squared her shoulders to Perry’s, ignoring the two men behind her whose breath she could feel through her hair.

  Perry cracked his knuckles as he looked her up and down. “Baird needs to know that he’s not in charge around here anymore. Marxus got our message this morning, but there’re too many supervisors in the yard to get close to Baird. You, on the other hand. Well, he left you wide open.”

  One of the men behind Elle surprised her by gripping her arm hard with his calloused and dirty fingers. She looked up, scowling, but her bravery did not deter his strength. Her eyes met Blue’s across the room, and she shook her head almost imperceptibly.

  Blue caught Elle’s silent warning to let her handle this, but did not even consider obeying. Evan’s heavy hand pressed down on Blue’s shoulder, causing her to stiffen. “Out you go, now,” he ordered.

  Blue froze as black wisps crept in at the edges of her vision. “Don’t touch me,” she warned in a quiet voice.

  Perry turned to acknowledge the open door. “That’s Baird’s sister, right?”

  Grent looked uneasy, but nodded. “She’s young, though. She’s a Jane.” He indicated her middle name. Every Wayward girl born in Blue’s year was given the middle name Jane. Elle was a year older, so she was a Louise. The guys surrounding them were older than Baird. Franklins, at least.

  “Yeah, yeah. The quiet one. I don’t know, Grent. A two-fer sounds good. What do you say, Perry?” Dureck suggested.

  “She’s just a kid, Dureck. Let her go. You want to take down Baird, go for his girlfriend,” said Grent. Elle walked around like a beacon all other women should aspire to, and every man should fantasize about. She practically screamed sex. But Blue? Grent could not justify manhandling the quiet girl who’d barely ever opened her mouth in his presence.

  Evan’s hand shoved Blue forward. “You want the sister, Dureck? Take her. I had dibs on Elle.”

  Dureck released his grip on Elle’s arm and moved toward the timid-looking girl with purpose. “Don’t be afraid. I’m doing you a favor. Word gets around that you gave it up to me, you’ll be set. Envy of all the Janes.”

  Blue shook her head, afraid not of what he’d do to her, but of what she might do to him. She couldn’t let that happen again. Baird had warned her about staying in control, dealing with problems without losing her head. She fought to stay in the moment, to handle Dureck without blacking out. The wisps were mutating into a fog that clouded her clarity. “You should leave,” she whispered to him. “Please. I’m begging you. Just go.”

  Desperation gripped Elle as she watched Blue struggle to remain timorous. Panic pinched Elle’s voice as she pleaded frantically. “No, Dureck! Take me instead! Leave her alone! Do what you want with me. You know you want to. I’m the one you came for. All of you. Just let her go.” Perry grabbed her roughly, mashed his face to hers and kissed her without mercy. Elle jerked away. “Run, Blue! Get out of here!”

  Dureck stood in front of her, but Blue saw only Elle. The edges of her vision were completely dark, cutting off her periphery. Elle’s fearful scream narrowed the focus until the alarm on her best friend’s face was all Blue could see. Blue could not run. She could not call out for help. In the fog of the fray, she vaguely heard Dureck unsnapping his jumpsuit.

  She felt the air move when his hands approached her, as if in slow motion. The black narrowed so she could see only a tunnel in front of her, gray bleeding in like vapors of smoke at the edges. Her breath caught as Dureck made contact with her orange jumpsuit.

  Without pause, she clamped her small hands around Dureck’s fingers and squeezed, not stopping until she felt several bones snap beneath his howls of pain and surprise.

  Her vision tapered yet further, and she did not hesitate as she grabbed a handful of his black hair and bashed his head down against a pile of bricks. Over and over she thrust him down, not stopping even when the fight and life went out of him.

  Shouts of surprise echoed around her, but she registered none of it. Turning on the remaining men, her sight faded to darkness as she stepped forward to pay them the justice they deserved.

  She was no longer a girl, but death incarnate.

  Bones shattered beneath her capable hands, but she registered no victory. The men cried for help while Elle shrieked, but she did not slow. Blood spread out over her, dripping from her hands and pooling at her feet, but she felt none of it. An abyss of nothing flooded her, blinding her brilliant blue eyes from the torment she inflicted. Her body continued while her mind retreated to a place in her subconscious where the
violence couldn’t reach her.

  Seconds. Minutes. Hours? She could not remember her own name as she repeatedly slammed Grent’s head into the concrete floor while humming a dismal melody. His skull had long since caved in, face unrecognizable, but Blue was stuck on autopilot. Having wreaked all the carnage she could, her muscles would not stop, even at absolute death. She was encased in the black that would not lift, despite the glow of the furnace and fluorescent bulb dangling overhead.

  It was not Elle’s sobs and vomiting that roused her, but her brother’s voice that finally found her in the fog. “Blue!” he cried, his shock only just breaking through her daze as she continued to bash Grent’s head on the floor while humming the Wayward Anthem eerily. “Blue, stop! You’re done now.”

  When this did not produce the lucid results he’d been hoping for, Baird pulled back his arm and let it fly, slapping her so hard that her head bobbed to the side.

  The room came back to her in trickles and small details, the black giving way to the light. The bulb. The furnace. A pile of housing bricks. Elle biting her fist as she screamed into it in the corner. Pile of dismembered bodies scattered around her. Blood coating the floor, dripping from her fingers.

  Baird’s face. Control trumped the worry on his features as he moved in front of her and locked in on her unfocused gaze. “Blue,” he whispered. “That’s enough.”

  When Blue found that her hands would not relent in their punishment of Grent’s shattered skull, she whimpered. Her brother’s firm palms gripped her face, forcing her to see only him. “Br-aird?” Her voice sounded far away and foreign. Surely that scared girl couldn’t possibly be her.

  “I’m here now. I’ll take care of it.” He nodded until she mirrored the motion. “Now, let him go.”

  When her fingers finally granted Grent’s head permission to slump on the floor, Blue let out a single scream that Baird’s hand muffled. He shook his head. “You don’t get to freak out here. Do that on your own time. It’s done. I need you back in the room with me, not wherever you just went to in your head.”

  She tried to move her mouth, but only mushy ramblings spilled out.

  “Get it together, Elle,” he said of Elle’s quiet sobs. She was huddled in the corner, tears streaming down her face as she hugged herself. Baird shook his head at the mess. “This was sloppy,” he criticized. “These breaks…why here?” Baird lifted a leg to indicate the broken shin. “That’s not the place to incapacitate. All you’ll do is slow him down a little, which you don’t need, given how fast you are. That was wasted effort.” He scoffed at another odd fracture. “Well, at least you kept it quiet this time.”

  Blue watched in confusion as her brother continued his lecture on the importance of a clean, swift takedown. She tried to make sense of his words, to pick out the important ones and force them to mean something, but she couldn’t. The room tilted as Elle’s red face came into view. Her eyes were swollen from crying and her face splotchy with emotion. Elle clutched her knees to her chest as she wept.

  “Go ahead,” Baird urged, and it occurred to Blue that he had been instructing her to no avail.

  “What?” she mouthed, her voice adding no volume.

  “Snap out of it!” Baird clicked his fingers in front of her face. To test her awareness, he slapped her cheek, dismayed when she did not punch him back. “Blue.” He laid a dismembered leg across her lap. “The femur. Practice snapping the femur. It’s the strongest bone in the body, so it might compare to a Vemreaux’s arm or something.”

  Blue did not respond as the room tilted once more, shifting the order of everything like sand to one side and then back again. She felt him move her hands to either end of the thigh and heard one command: “Break it!”

  Blue finally obeyed. Without much hesitation, the strong bone splintered and cracked in half. She did not register Baird’s satisfaction, or the second leg he placed in her lap. Over and over he had her break femurs until each one was properly assaulted.

  Baird pulled her up, unsettled when her legs gave out beneath her. “Get yourself together, Blue. This isn’t finished. We’ve got to clean this mess up.” When he judged that she could stand without assistance, he opened the door to the furnace and thrust in what was left of Grent’s head, careful not to get blood on his jumpsuit.

  Blue followed his example, shoving pieces of her soul into the chute along with each body part she burned. The heat was unforgiving, but the fire inside proved a welcome distraction from the agony that threatened to show itself at any moment. The thought to climb into the conflagration and burn away her many sins seemed a viable option, but the saner part of her reasoned that Baird would probably not approve.

  Arm. Leg. Head. Torso. Arm. Leg. Head. Torso. Penis. Blue screamed at the foreign appendage and jumped back, earning a glare from her brother. “Finish it!” he commanded.

  Arm. Leg. Head. Torso. Blue could scarcely believe the destruction she’d caused, the utter obliteration of these men at her hands. There could be no absolution from this. Despite their intentions, she knew she would carry the weight of their deaths for years to come, as she did the others she’d destroyed in the black.

  So entranced was she that she did not hear the door open. She did not see the intruder enter the furnace room. Only when the beginnings of a shrill screech reached her ears did Blue turn around.

  Ariel. Number 0-6396829527-8. Blue remembered the girl with frizzy red hair. She was three years younger than Blue, a Linda. There she stood in the doorway, eyes wide with Baird’s hand over her mouth. He checked the surrounding area to see if anyone had heard her noise, and then shut the door again, dragging her into the mess. “This,” he spat with anger at his sister, “this is what happens when you lose your mind. This is what happens when you lose your temper.” He shook the girl, his hand still stifling her screams. “This is what happens when you aren’t careful.” He looked into Ariel’s young eyes that were filled with terror. Bad enough to be this close to the infamous Baird. Even worse to walk in on mangled corpses and Blue covered in blood. Baird jostled her to evoke another cry for help that would go nowhere. “She won’t be able to keep your secret like Elle or Grettel. So now, because you lost your temper, she has to die.” He thrust the rag doll at his sister with disgust. “Finish her.”

  Blue was sure she’d misunderstood. She was positive he couldn’t mean she must kill this thirteen-year-old girl who recoiled from her in horror. “B-Baird! No! I can’t do that! She h-hasn’t d-done anything wrong.”

  “No, but you did.” Baird’s was tone icy. “Your mistakes have consequences, and she has to pay for it. Do it,” he commanded.

  “N-No!” Blue bent down to Ariel, who’d dropped to the floor, nose running as she bawled. “Shh. Quiet, Ariel! You can keep quiet, right?” When her words did not penetrate, she pleaded with the girl. “Please! Be q-quiet, Ariel! I don’t want to hurt you!”

  Elle crawled toward the girls to lend her support, but she had no words that could help. She simply offered her tears to the growing pile as she touched Ariel’s bony back.

  Baird knew his sister like the back of his hand, the hand that was dripping with the blood of her mistake. He looked down at Blue and knew she was not capable of killing on her own without blacking out. He shook his head, hoping to convey his utter disappointment in her. “You’re not ready,” he ruled.

  In one swift motion, Baird picked up the gangly girl. “Shh,” he cooed, almost tenderly. He smoothed her fiery tangles from her tear-stained face as she begged for help Baird could not give. Then, just as quick as her scream built up, it ended with a sharp twist of her head. Ariel slumped to the floor, every bit as dead as Grent and the others.

  Elle shoved her fist into her mouth and howled, muffling the sound and the horror as much as she could. She backed away from Baird, now only pretty sure he wouldn’t do the same to her. She’d kept quiet. She’d been helpful, even. Still, Baird possessed little mercy, and she didn’t want to use up the last of it. She tried to breathe as
he pushed Ariel into the furnace, but the air was too thick to pull in a proper gasp.

  After Baird tossed the last torn body part into the heat and shut the heavy door, he set about dealing with the rest of the mess. He ventured outside the building and turned on the hose. Without addressing either woman, he sprayed down the floor, chasing the blood and bile down the drain in the center of the room.

  Logistics he could deal with. Elle needing comfort as she sobbed? There never seemed a right way to handle that, so he settled on ignoring her for the time being. “Blue, I’ll run back to Laundry and get you a new jumpsuit, but you’ll have to hose off while I’m gone. Burn the uniform you’re wearing. Nothing can tie you to this, understand?”

  Blue’s mouth opened to scream, but Baird closed the distance between them in two of his long strides. He palmed her forehead and pushed her down on her knees roughly. “Ariel’s gone, and you don’t need to think about that right now.” He stiffened against her violent shaking. Baird was grateful his sister did not seem capable of crying. “I want you to picture her body and put it in a box. Can you do that?” His voice was unnaturally calm as he spoke to her. “Put Ariel in a box and shut the lid tight. Now dig a hole and stuff the box in.” When Blue did not confirm his words, his tone hardened. “I can’t hear you.”

  “Yes, Baird,” she whispered.

  “Good. Now shove the box in the ground and cover it up. Nice and deep, shove it down. Shove it down.” He pushed her forehead and squeezed his fingers tighter around her cranium. “Stuff it all down, Blue.” Baird watched her eyes slide out of focus. “Did you bury the bad things?”