Riser (Teen Horror/Science Fiction) (Book #1 in The Riser Saga) ((Volume 1)) (28 page)

Saturday September 25, 2320

“My little bug girl.” I awoke to the excited whisper of my kidnapper. “All the roaches fell to the floor when I hit you over the head.” He was beside himself with glee.

Fantastic. Now he knew my gift. At least a part of it anyway.

I tried to move, but I was strapped to what felt like a metal slab. I couldn’t see my captor. He was behind me and I could hear his heavy breathing as if he were about to burst out in laughter. I wanted to cry in terror, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. I was stuck here with this man and he had me tied up. Again.

The room I was in was metal, no windows, one ventilation grate and no furniture except the table I was on. Florescent lights on the ceiling made the whole room a greenish hue. I barely recognized the faint outline of a door as it blended with the wall so perfectly.

I wasn’t drugged. That was an improvement at least, but the bonds that kept me strapped to the table weren’t budging. I searched the area quickly for anything dead. Only one cockroach and from its location I knew that my kidnapper was holding it.

“I didn’t want you at first. He made me take you, but now you’ll be my biggest prize of all.” He was practically heaving with joy.

My eyes welled up before I could stop it. I had never been so scared in my life. I see dead things every day. I thought it would make me tougher than this. I didn’t want to let him observe me in this state. Somehow I knew that it would only make him more excited. I tried to focus. If I was going to get out of this I needed as much information as I could from this man.

“Who made you take me?” I asked.

The man finally stepped into the light and I saw my captor for the first time. I was shocked to see how normal he looked. He was average height and weight, blond wavy hair, cut short, aquiline features, wearing a dress shirt and slacks. I would have thought he was a teacher or a businessman if it weren’t for his eyes.

They were burning with an intensity that made my heart stop. There was no doubt in my mind.

This man was insane.

Which wasn’t much of a leap considering my experience with him so far, but still, knowing I was dealing with
Cuckoo
might help me formulate a plan of escape.

“You know who.” He smiled manically. “He lets me do my work without interference and I help him take out the filth of this world.”

I tried not to show my fear.

Serial killer. The words played in my head like a broken record. Impossible. There hadn’t been a serial killer in over a hundred years, or at least none that the public knew about. No one wanted to risk the death sentence or life imprisonment without Age-pro. There were medical facilities for people with these tendencies to go and get help.
He lets me do my work without interference…

Another form of population control sanctioned by good ‘ol Gramps.

Serial killers? How many were out there? How many innocent lives were taken by the man I’m related to? Hundreds? Thousands? More like millions. I now knew of two methods he was using, extermination with gasses and turning a blind eye to murderers. In how many other ways was he taking out the human race while the world went on thinking everyone was going to live forever? How did he keep these deaths so secret? If people knew how easy it was to die on this planet, religion would still be practiced!

A horrible thought hit me.

No one ever sees Christian Coalition towns. They keep themselves segregated from the rest of the world. Turner could have wiped them all out and no one would have ever known. Were there any left? Had he killed all the people that no one would ask about and now had to move on to the general population? Was over-population really that bad? Or was he like the man who held me prisoner, a murderer who enjoyed killing. Probably a bit of both.

The man placed the dead cockroach in my face. “Your little pet, my pet.” His creepy grin wouldn’t budge. “Bring it back to life.”

“Did Turner tell you
why
he wanted you to take me?” I ignored his request to get more information.

This made the man’s smile fade a little as if he were contemplating the matter. “Bring it back to life.” He changed the subject back to the roach.

“I’ll bring it back if you answer my question.” If I remembered my studies about serial killers, most of the battle would be about who was in charge. I already knew he was
forced
to take me as opposed to a victim he would normally choose on his own.

“BRING IT BACK!” his voice was booming and angry.

I shuddered involuntarily.

Okay. He definitely needed to be in charge, and I was too frightened to fight it.

I made the roach crawl gently up his arm and back down again into his hand. His eyes never left mine.

He smiled, “Your eyes dilate when you do that. Did you know that?”

“No,” I said truthfully.

“I didn’t want to take you,” he said flatly, and I couldn’t sense any emotion from him, good or bad.

“Then let me go.” I tried the honest approach.

“No. I don’t think I’ll do that. He’d take it all away from me if I did that.” The killer didn’t sound as if he was opposed to the idea of letting me go, only of the fact that he wouldn’t be allowed to continue his murdering spree if he did. “Besides. You’re too precious a gift to let go. It’s in your eyes. They dilate when you bring the bugs to life.”

“Yes, you told me that.” I stayed as calm as I could, hoping to talk him down.

“Is it just insects you can bring back?” he wondered curiously.

“Yes.” I lied. The less he knew the better.

“I wasn’t sure what to do with you at first, that’s why I kept you in the basement. I only take filthy girls. You didn’t seem filthy to me, but you
are
. You’re the filthiest of them all, I think.” His eyes widened with a thrilled kind of look. “He must have known that. That’s why he wanted me to take you.” He was talking to himself at this point, as if rationalizing in his head why Turner would want me dead.

“Turner is my grandfather,” I said just loud enough to interrupt his thoughts.

It worked. He turned to me a slight raise of his eyebrow. “Sometimes it’s hard to rid the world of filth, especially when it’s family. I understand now. He wanted it done special. It’s your eyes, you know. I take the filthy parts away from the girls so they can be pure again. Don’t you worry, I’ll make you clean.”

And the way he said it made my stomach drop.

He was going to gouge my eyes out.

And who knows what other body parts he took from girls like me.

“In time,” he said and walked over to the door. He waved his hand over a seemingly blank surface, it lit up green and the door swung outward. Walking through the doorway, he didn’t look back at me. He was planning to
cleanse
me forever.

The door clanked shut and I was alone once more. Well, me and the cockroach. I guess he wanted me to have company. I connected briefly to the roach and realized my captor had snapped off its’ mandible. He didn’t want a repeat of my escape from the basement. I released the roach and ran scenarios through my head. He had stripped me of any help I could rely on. Sad that whenever I was in a dangerous situation (which happened a lot these days) my only way out of them was the use of dead things. How pleasant. Well, you work with what you have, right? And right now all I had was Larry. (I decided to name my mutant roach Larry after my first pet goldfish.) Anything to keep my mind straight. If I gave into the terror I was feeling I’d be frozen and useless. I needed to do
something
and Larry was the only one who could help.

I tapped into Larry’s swirling core, made him skitter off the table and up the wall into the ventilation grate. That was where it became tricky. I needed to see through Larry’s eyes like I did with Bruce and the corpses at the Virtual Bar. I just hoped bugs weren’t any different than humans. I focused all my energy on Larry and his tiny little eyes and…

…I could see. And surprisingly, I could see very well. And whoa! It felt like I had a billion points of view. When I stared straight ahead I could also see behind me, beside me, above me, below me, all at once. Cockroaches have ridiculous eye-sight, who knew? Viewing my surroundings in Larry’s body I realized there was a light ahead of him at the end of the ventilation shaft. I made him run to the end of the shaft and peer through the second grating.

My captor was there, sitting at a round dining table eating a bowl of cereal. The room was small, sparse and very orderly. No one would ever know that this was a house of a serial killer. From Larry’s angle I had to make him climb out of the grate to get a better view of the door that led to where I was. It looked like an ordinary wooden door from the killer’s side. Nothing special about it, one would think it was to a closet or to a bedroom, not to a sealed off sterilized metal prison. There wasn’t a phone in sight. I made Larry hurry back to the shaft for fear of the killer noticing him. He seemed very concentrated on his cereal, he chewed each bite over thirty times. Meticulous and methodical, there had to be some kind of advantage I could gather from that.

And then I felt it.

It was strange having to rely on another creature’s senses so I wasn’t sure I was actually feeling what I was feeling. But through little Larry I swore I could feel at least seven swirling black chasms coming from the killer’s back yard. And these were human. Something about these metal walls prevented me from sensing them myself. I tried to probe the bodies as much as I could through Larry, but I could barely pick up their essence as it was. If there were really corpses back there I’d just need to get through the doorway to access them.

It struck me as funny that I could be so analytical about using dead bodies as weapons. The thought would have never occurred to me before until people actually started trying to kill me. Ironic. If my grandpa hadn’t gone after me, I never would have discovered everything I had learned about my gift.

I kept Larry stationed at the grate to be my eyes on the killer’s movement. I disconnected from him temporarily so I could clear my head and focus on how I was going to convince my kidnapper to let me into that room. Or at least into the doorway.

Four straps pinned me on the metal table: around the chest, abdomen/wrists, knees and ankles. Wiggle room in the head, elbows and stomach. Question was: how heavy was this table? I just needed to tip it over. It would hurt like no one’s business, but it might loosen me up enough to scooch to the doorway.

It was a gamble I was willing to take. At this point my options were try something or die.

Like a swing I used my body to lean back and forth. The grating sound of metal was loud and I knew my captor would come through the door any minute to check on me.

I connected to Larry’s eyes. Bad guy was still eating his Wheaties.

I swung harder and faster.

KA-KLUMP! KA-KLUMP!

So loud! Why couldn’t metal be quieter?

My kidnapper heard that last one. He stood up with an expression of pure hatred and anger etched on his face.

Not much time.

KA-KLUMP!

BAM!

The table fell on its side and it jolted the chest strap loose.

Oh man!

The door opened.

I freed my hands.

Like an enraged animal, the killer swooped down and grabbed my arms to re-secure them. He was so much stronger!

I just needed to get to the doorway.

It was open! So close!

I smashed my head against his in the most painful head butt imaginable. I couldn’t tell if it hurt me more than him, but it did manage to make him loosen his grip. I punched his face as hard as I could, he reeled back from the shock of it.

I quickly untied the rest of my bonds and tried to make a crawl for the door.

But this guy was pumped full of adrenaline and he tackled me from behind.