There’s No Place Like Home - Michael Robertson Page 0,55

him stare over at Ben. “But he’s sought retribution for that already.”

He dazzled Michael with the beam again. “So I’ve been sent to see how you’re recovering. Julius is desperate to see you, but he wants you unspoiled.”

The mention of Julius made Michael’s buttocks clench, and bile rose in his throat.

The man brought the smell of alcohol forward with him when he stepped closer. “But the problem is you don’t look much better.”

Shaking where he stood, shivering from a mixture of cold, tiredness, and fear, Michael clamped his jaw tight and still didn’t respond. Nothing would improve his situation.

The man leaned closer still, so close Michael felt his body heat and coughed because of the man’s fetid musk.

“Julius is going to freak if he has to wait too long. He’s got a real hard on for you. A real fucking hard on, and he’s an impatient man. We can’t have you looking like the fucking elephant boy when you go to see him; now can we?”

The man grabbed Michael’s shoulder, spun him around, and pushed him toward the huge, steel door. “We’re going to have to do something about that fucking getup too. Julius ain’t into pink.”

Michael made eye contact with Tim as he passed him. If the group were going to act, it needed to be now, although there was no reason for them to do anything. The plan was to watch and learn what the guards did. There was no ‘Plan B.’

If Michael called out for the boys to fight at that point, he’d be ruining their chance of a more organized escape attempt later.

Snot ran from Michael’s cold nose, and he sniffed hard as he walked. He then looked away from his new friends and focused on the dark mouth that was the exit from the warehouse—the path to Julius’ room.

The loud slam of the door ran straight through Michael. There was another guard waiting outside.

In the few seconds that he stood there, one guard with his grip on the back of Michael’s neck, and the other one holding an ankle of each dead brother, Michael heard Ben on the other side of the door.

“There goes your inspiration, boys. Now what do you say we forget all the silliness and go back to how things were, yeah?”

Before he could hear the response, one of the guards shoved Michael away from the door.

Baton

Michael curled into a fetal position and shivered as he lay on his new bed. The bare concrete walls in his latest prison gave off a chill like a refrigerator, and within minutes, Michael's cold nose had started to run again.

The walls of the cell kept him contained, but didn't stop the cold draft from entering his room—or the sounds of suffering. The screams and shouts of the others in the building rang both louder and clearer than before. It wouldn’t be long before his screams added to the chaos.

The single bed had been positioned in the middle of a small room. There was just enough space to walk all the way around it. At first glance, it seemed like a better option than the dirty floor of the warehouse… then he lay down on it.

The springs in the lumpy mattress prodded his skinny body no matter how he positioned himself. And the smell… a heady mix of damp, piss, shit, rotting meat, and sweat. The toxicity of it made his head spin and for the first twenty minutes or so, it took all of Michael’s effort to stop himself vomiting. A large brown stain covered over seventy-five percent of the mattress. Not brown like mud or sweat, it was brown like old blood.

As Michael tried to get comfortable, he looked at the back of the door. Like all of the doors in the warehouse, it creaked and groaned whenever someone moved it. It served as an early warning system and prevented anyone getting the jump on him but did nothing to mute the cries of the people in other parts of the warehouse.

Above all of the suffering outside, Michael heard the children most clearly. Their sobs haunted the hallways. Pulling his knees to his chest, he clamped his hands over his ears and rocked where he lay. The children were young; much younger than him.

As he rolled onto his other side, the springs speared him at random points on his skinny body. Once he’d stopped moving, he pressed his fingertips into his ears again. All he wanted was to be out of there; just to