Hideout by Jack Heath (iphone ebook reader txt) 📕

myself. It’s not a flattering reflection. He might not see it as food, but he sure doesn’t see it as a person. Kyle resembles me in other ways, too. His bowed head, his shuffling gait, his life-is-crap attitude.

I tell myself it’s impossible. He’s the right age, but so are millions of other people. He looks like me, but that’s not rare either. And the odds against me meeting my son like this have to be astronomical.

And yet …

Kyle glances up at the ceiling through sunken eyes that look eerily like my own.

He stares. ‘What the fuck happened to the cameras?’

CHAPTER 17

I have eyes, and a mouth, and a nose, but I’m not a face. What am I?

‘How do you know they were sabotaged?’ Fred keeps his voice low. ‘They could just not be working.’

Kyle blushes. ‘I’m not an idiot. All the cables are cut. Like, chopped in half.’

Me, Zara, Fred and Kyle are huddled around outside the back door of the house, like smokers sheltering a cigarette from the wind.

‘How about the feed on the Pedo?’ Fred asks.

‘I checked. Still working fine.’

I didn’t see the Pedo among the other prisoners, but it sounds like he’s not dead. Maybe there’s a second prison somewhere else—but who is operating it?

‘It has to be the hiker,’ I say.

‘What about Samson?’ Kyle suggests. ‘He could have damaged the cameras before he offed himself.’

Fred dismisses the idea. ‘Samson wouldn’t have done that. He was proud of what we’re accomplishing here.’

‘Did you check the chains?’ Zara asks.

Kyle opens his mouth, then closes it again.

‘You’re thinking one of the prisoners got loose and sabotaged the cameras?’ Fred chews his lip. ‘Why would they do that?’

‘No point hurting them if we can’t stream it.’ Zara’s dark, watchful eyes turn to me. ‘And they know that.’

She’s wrong about the perpetrator but right about the reason, and that makes me nervous.

‘They all looked secure to me,’ I say.

Kyle looks baffled. ‘Why wouldn’t they just escape?’

‘If only one of them got loose, they might not have been able to free the others right away,’ Zara says. ‘We’re miles from anywhere, so they couldn’t have gone to get help.’

‘Well, there’s one way to find out.’

Donnie comes back from the armoury. He’s carrying a pistol that I didn’t realise was in the house—a Taurus PT132. Maybe he didn’t want to touch the gun that killed Samson.

‘Where’s Cedric?’ Fred asks.

‘Who gives a fuck?’ Donnie is already walking towards the slaughterhouse. Fred falls into step behind him.

Kyle follows like a puppy. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Getting some answers.’

Zara and I hurry after them. ‘Freddie,’ she says, ‘this is a bad idea.’

‘Yeah, well, we’ll see.’ Fred hands out some masks. I get the vampire again. Kyle is the witch, Zara is the mummy, Donnie is a clown.

My heart is racing. I sabotaged the cameras to stop the Guards from hurting the prisoners. It looks like my plan is about to backfire.

Fred pulls on the Frankenstein mask and hauls open the slaughterhouse door. Donnie walks in first, brandishing the pistol.

‘Hello, piglets,’ he says. ‘Who feels like squealing?’

The prisoners stare at him in silent terror.

Fred examines the shredded cables overhead, then looks around at the prisoners. He doesn’t speak, just nods to Donnie.

‘I want to know what happened to my cameras,’ Donnie says.

He didn’t say our cameras. Maybe he gets possessive when he’s angry.

Hailey, the KKK Queen, speaks up. ‘We didn’t see anything.’

‘Wrong answer!’ Donnie takes aim with the pistol, then thinks better of it. He picks up a brick instead and hurls it at her.

Hailey ducks, and the brick crashes through the fake wall behind her. She tries to scramble behind the bed, but her chain goes taut.

Zara and Kyle exchange worried glances. Donnie could easily have killed her.

‘The votes aren’t in yet,’ Zara says.

Ignoring her, Donnie picks up another brick. ‘Somebody knows something. How many bones do I have to break to find out what it is?’

I grab Donnie’s arm. ‘Hey! It’s dark enough in here during the day. Even darker at night. She’s probably not lying.’

Donnie glares at me for a second, his eyes burning behind the clown mask. ‘Okay.’ He tosses the brick from one hand to the other. ‘I can be nice. How about this? The first person to tell me what happened gets a vacation. One week. No shows.’

Silence.

‘No cutting, no beating. Real food,’ Donnie continues. ‘Aspirin. Toilet paper. Sounds pretty good, right? All you have to do is tell the truth.’

Silence.

‘A vacation for one person only. And if you’re thinking that I won’t hurt the rest of you because the cameras are off, then you’ve underestimated how much I enjoy it.’ He glances at his watch. ‘This offer expires in thirty seconds.’

There’s a pause. And then:

‘We’ll tell you.’ The voice comes from the middle-aged man—Gerald. The Rapist. He’s chained to a water pipe in a fake pharmacy. ‘If we all get a vacation.’

‘Oh, really?’ Donnie says.

Gerald’s voice wavers. ‘Two weeks. All of us. No beatings.’

Donnie hurls the brick at him.

‘No!’ I shout.

Gerald doesn’t duck in time. The brick caves in half his skull and splits the pipe behind him, showering the set with water. The man slackens immediately, ending up as flat on the floor as a chalk outline. His blood turns the water pink.

There were six prisoners when I first arrived. Now only four are left.

I step between Donnie and the others. I keep my voice low. ‘You’re hurting, I get it. But these people are our livelihood. You have to stop this.’

Three sentences. One appealing to his emotional side, one to his greed and one to his instinct to follow orders.

None of it works. He pushes me