The Long Dark by B.J. Farmer (reading women .TXT) 📕

I shook my head. Everything was so fucking crazy. I stifled a laugh before saying fuck it and laughing loudly. “That was you in the messages?”

“I’m assuming.”

“You – this Order shit. Every fucking thing. I’m tired, beat the fuck up, and ready for this shit to be over. If you can save my friends, I will do whatever the hell you ask of me. I don’t even care. Tell me what to do.”

“I will make it quick for you.”

Again, I laughed.

Before I knew it, she was out of her seat, and the brightness of the room seemed to alter like I was high on psychedelics. She had hit me so many times that I had lost count. She finally stopped, and calmly said, “They will need to think I had to beat information out of you. You will say you’re CIA, and that you sabotaged the agent. Do that, and I will do what I can to keep your friends alive. If you don’t,” she shook her head, punctuating the fact that she meant what she was about to say, “I will make sure your friends, especially Avery, die a terrible death.”

Blood and spit dripped from my swollen lips. I tried to say something, but I was so dizzy I felt like I’d throw up if I opened my mouth. Finally, and I’m not sure why I chose to ask what I did, other than morbid curiosity. After the dizziness faded, I asked, “Why did the Order kill your parents?”

“Because they did sabotage the agent. They knew the Grays were not a weapon for us, but instead a weapon to be used against everyone, including us.”

“I save their honor… fucking great.”

A dark smiled crept over her lips. “And you cement my leadership here.”

I hacked a reply. “So glad I can help.”

“It does not feel good to be on the other side of this conversation, does it?”

“You didn’t die. There’s hope for me.”

“None of us have enough hope about the future to do anything as irrational as what your friends did. You were right, William. You should’ve killed me.”

“I still might,” I said, wiping my bloodied face.

“If that is my fate, I welcome it,” she said, as she opened the door, “but your fate is sealed.”

She was gone. I cried out in pain as one of the guards, by accident or not, kneed me in my injured leg, as they rushed in to subdue me. I say subdue, but I never offered a fight. Neither fact mattered much to them as they pushed and prodded me down a dark corridor and ultimately through a door and into an empty courtyard.

***

The one thing about the Order you could count on: they didn’t waste much time. They had me and two other men, who I had never seen, strapped to poles that had, by the mound of freshly dug dirt, been recently put into the ground. There were only three of us and ten poles. This wasn’t their first rodeo.

One of the men cried. The other one was more on the angry side of the fence, yelling out in Korean whatever the hell he was saying, to anyone in the slowly growing throng of angry-faced bastards, who surrounded us.

Shots rang in spits and sputters. Nothing like what I had heard earlier. The slow punctuated gunshots made me think of my eventual fate. What would it feel like to be shot? I’d like to lie and say I stood death in its face and laughed. The reality of it was much different. I was so scared I had pissed my pants without knowing it until my pants had frozen. Every second seemed to last a minute, and every minute magnified the horrid nature of it all. How absolutely senseless it all was. It cleaved every ounce of dignity from you and left you a nothing but a sub-human bag of meat and bones.

I was freezing. My feet, still uncovered, probably was on the verge of frostbite. If they didn’t hurry, I’d probably die of hypothermia. That would’ve taken the zing out of Janna’s party, I thought. I imagined several people hanging on the poles afterward. It would make things easier for me.

I heard murmuring and shuffling from somewhere behind me. After several seconds, I saw Janna and two guards walking towards us and coming to a stop near the angry man. She pulled a chrome revolver – my chrome revolver – out of a holster – not mine —put the gun barrel against his head and waited.  He spat in her face. I thought that would be the end of him, but she didn’t pull the trigger. The voice that came from her mouth didn’t sound anything like the woman who had talked to me just minutes earlier. Her timbre had lowered to a growl as she spoke to the man. There were roars from the crowd. They liked what she was saying.

Recognizing their rising zeal, she smacked him with the pistol. This seemed to have the opposite effect. He began yelling over her. Trying to get him back under control, she hit him repeatedly. He somehow kept at it, even after he had been walloped several times. He was stealing her energy, and she didn’t appreciate it. Not one bit. Worse for her, whatever he was saying seemed to have some resonance with those gathered. As a result, she hit him harder and harder, and he yelled louder and louder.

She pulled the hammer back and shot him in what I thought was his leg. He cried out in pain, but within a few seconds, he was back at it. She must’ve hit an artery. With every beat of the man’s heart, he lost more blood, but that didn’t cause her to ease up her assault. She hit him in the face again. His nose was practically torn off with the force of the impact. I was sure I heard