Chapter 25
Gritting my teeth to handle the pain, I ran forward and smacked the back of the Major’s head with the gun. He cried out and spun around, giving me the opportunity to do the same thing to his face. I heard something crack as the metal hit his nose, but rather than go down as any normal human being should, he stood up straight and lunged at me. My only defense was to throw the gun right at him. It made contact with his mouth, and he lost his balance and stumbled right past me, into the damp, rocky wall.
“Trent!” Josh had the leather whip in his hand. He motioned to throw it to me, but I waved my hand away as I leaned against the wall, just feet away from the Major. Even my fifth wind wasn’t enough for me now.
“Do it, Josh,” I said, my voice wavering. I shifted my body over and stared the Major right in the eye. “Beat his fucking ass.”
That was all it took to get him going. Josh narrowed his eyes, raised the whips above his head and then went at the Major with the rage of a cornered animal. The first lash hit the older man’s arm. Then his other arm. As the Major tried unsuccessfully to block each one, Josh hit him again in a different spot.
And then the lashes got faster, and harder, until I could barely see the leather belts moving in the air. As he continued his beat down on his tormentor, Josh released a guttural cry, followed by a string of slurred, incoherent words. Christ, he was going insane. Suddenly my concern was no longer for myself or Josh, but for the Major.
“That’s enough Josh,” I said. He didn’t stop. “That’s enough!”
He froze, lashes in midair, a few droplets of blood falling from them. The Major groaned and slumped to the ground, his clothing ripped in a dozen places and blood seeping from numerous cuts along his arms, chest, and face. “It’s not enough,” Josh said. “He deserves to die.”
“No—” I tried to stand up a bit straighter. “No, he doesn’t.”
“He put me in here! He was going to… do things… He tried to kill you!”
“Doesn’t change the fact that we can’t kill him. I don’t want either of us to have murder on our consciences when we go back to school.”
He took a step back and looked at me incredulously. “Back to school. Wow. You really think that’s possible now?” He snickered and spun around. “My parents expect me to be here for months. Months, Trent. Months of having to deal with his abuse. Months of being in this hell. Months of feeling like I’m nothing. That I’m worse than nothing because I'm a fucking faggot.” I leaned my head back. At least he was back in reality. “No. I won't allow it. You said it yourself—he’s ruined hundreds of lives. We can’t let him do that any longer.”
“He won’t. We’ll…” I paused. What would we do? Go to the cops? When there was some sort of agreement between them and the camp that had allowed Camp Freedom to get away with so much for so long? When a Senator may be a part of the whole thing? That was a no-go. Maybe Josh was right. Maybe the only way he’d pay is by taking his life.
Or his camp.
“Wait,” I said. Having regained a bit of strength, I pushed myself off the wall and very carefully walked over to him. “There’s a better way. You kill him now, his suffering ends. You take what is most precious to him…”
Josh looked at me, and I once again saw that mischievous twinkle in his eye. “Then he suffers every day for the rest of his life. As he should.”
“It will also be a lot more fun.” I took another step, but my leg couldn’t hold, and I stumbled forward. Josh caught me, his arms coming in under mine, and for a moment we stared at each other, eye to eye, just inches apart. Then he brought his mouth up to mine, and I once again felt his warm lips—albeit dry, cracked and lightly coated in dust—against my own.
I’ve never kissed someone as hard, and with as much passion, as I did at that moment. My tongue was inside his mouth in seconds, and I rubbed my hands down his back. It was like he’d never disappeared. All the pain and aches in my body evaporated as I pulled his body as tight to mine as I could. “God, it is good to see you again.”
He started breathing harder. I felt a tear against the top of my lip. “I thought I’d be here forever,” he said softly. “I was mad at you, but I just wanted to see you. I tried to escape nearly every night. I dreamed that you’d come for me, but never actually thought… just, holy shit, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
I pulled back and kissed his forehead. “You can thank me when we get home. Or wherever the hell we go from here. Let’s blow this place up and then we can focus on other things.”
He smiled. “Works for me.” Josh looked back down at the Major, still lying in a bloody heap, and slowly put his foot on the man's right hand. The Major moaned but otherwise didn't move. “Let's go.”
With him supporting me, we walked down the hallway and up the stairs, passing the still immobile soldier at landing. When we reached the top and stepped back out into the first-floor hall, I turned my walkie talkie back on. “Come in Cameron, this is Trent. I have the target. I repeat, I have Josh.”
“Trent!” Cameron’s crackly voice sounded frantic. “Where are you now?”
“I’m in the Admin Building. Just got Josh from his solitary confinement and managed to take out the Major in the process. All in all, a pretty successful day.”
“That’s great, but you’re not out of the woods yet. The Major's stationed a soldier at each of the main entrances to the building. They all have guns. You guys walk out of there and it’s over.”
“Then we’ll find another way. Over and out.” I motioned for Josh to help me into the small office I’d been in earlier. He locked the door behind us as I pulled the curtains over the windows. I fell into the chair and began to rifle through the drawers once again. I’d seen a bottle of painkillers in my earlier search, and damn did I need those right now.
I found the bottle, pried it open and dumped four into my hand. They were in the back of my throat and into my stomach a few seconds later. I leaned back in the chair and waited for them to kick in.
Josh had grabbed a water bottle off the coffee table and finished it in all of five seconds. He tossed it aside. “So how did you find me?” he asked. His eyes alternated between the locked door and the window.
I sighed. “It's a really long story. I'll tell you when we're free of here, but to give you a few teases, it involves sneaking into your house in the middle of the night, pretending to be a construction student to interview your dad, and beating the ever-loving shit out of your brother to extract the information I needed.”
“Oh God.” A smile creeped up on his face. “Good. You may need to do that again when we get back there. They're not going to be happy with this.”
“We'll figure that out.” I leaned back in my chair and took my first relaxed breath in hours. Then I looked back at Josh. “So, it was my text that gave you away, huh?”
“Heh, yeah.” He walked over to me and put his hands on my shoulders. “I'm sorry for what I said earlier. I honestly wasn't even sure if you were real, and my mind just went everywhere at once. It was Hell down there. I can't… I can't wait to get some food. And a long shower.”
“You’re telling me.” I put my hand on top of his, looked up and smiled.
The radio came to life again. “Hey Trent? The guys outside are getting restless. Been around twenty minutes since the Major went in. If I were them, I'd be getting mighty suspicious right now… And he just went in! Where are you?”
“We’re in a safe spot. Tell me where the outside staff are now.”
“You've got one guarding the main entrance and one on the left side entrance. The guy on the right just went in.”
“Good. We can make this work.” I sat up from the chair, noticing a significantly duller pain throughout my body. I looked over at my boyfriend. “How strong do you feel? There's going to be a lot of running if you follow me out the window. Maybe you should just take cover here and wait for me.”
“Like hell I will,” he said. “I may not be some hockey player, but I can keep up. And I don't want to spend another minute in this place.”
“You and me both.” I opened the window. “Let's go. If you're coming with me, I hope you're ready to be bait.”