I open my mouth to try to talk again, when—
A shrieking siren pierces through the room. I scream, my voice hoarse.
Dale jerks but doesn’t utter a sound.
“Dale!” I try to nudge at him as well as I can with my hands and feet tied. “Dale! What is that? Is it the police? Are they coming to rescue us?”
Dale shakes his head slowly, tears pooling in his eyes. “No one’s coming, Donny. Not ever.”
I don’t talk again. Just listen to the siren until it becomes the new normal. Then—
The door to the room bursts open, and three men stand there, all tall, all dressed in black, all wearing those masks.
“Hold it together, Tal,” a man yells. “Please! We’ll get them out of here!”
Another man runs to me and grabs me. My heart is racing.
“No!” I yell. “No! Please! No more!”
“We won’t hurt you!” the first man yells.
The siren stops, but I pound against the man with my bound fists, shrieking. “No! No! No! Please don’t hurt us anymore!”
“Hey, hey,” the man holding me says. “You need to be quiet if you don’t want the bad people to come. We’re not going to hurt you. I promise.” Then he sets me down for a moment and works the knot binding my hands and then my feet.
I look to Dale, silently asking him what to do. He’s crying. Which is weird. Dale doesn’t cry. Sure, he gulps back a sob every now and then, but he’s crying now. Not screaming crying but quiet crying.
“Can he walk?” the second man asks.
The man helping me rubs my wrists lightly. “Of course he can’t walk. Look at him. Look at both of them. They’ll stumble. They’re starved and malnourished. They’ll need our help.”
“Tal,” the second man says. “Get a grip. We need them to be strong if we’re going to help them. You walked out, remember?”
“I had help.”
“You had Larry, who let you out, but you didn’t have anyone to help you walk. They do. They have us. They’ll be okay.”
Who is Larry? Who are these men? My little heart is racing, and my brother… My strong brother is… I don’t know what he is. Dale, I plead silently. Tell me what to do. What do we do?
“Listen, mon,” the third guy says. “We can’t take them right now. We don’t know what we’re walking into. The siren has stopped. Things will settle down and get back to normal. We need to find who’s in charge here and get him taken care of. They’ll slow us down.”
“We are not leaving them here,” the first man says through gritted teeth. “I’m paying your bills, goddamnit, and you’re going to help me get these boys out of here.”
“Talon’s right,” the second man says. “We’re not leaving them here.”
I scream. I scream like there’s no tomorrow. I don’t know these men. They look just like the ones who hurt us, with their black masks. Like ski masks.
The second man clamps his hand over my mouth. “Hey, I know you’re scared. But we’re going to help you. We need you to be quiet. If you scream, someone will find us and we won’t be able to help you. Do you understand?”
My tummy is doing weird things. I think I might puke, and the hand on my mouth makes me feel like I can’t breathe. But I nod. I nod because I want his hand gone. When he moves it, I scream.
I scream and scream and scream until it hurts my throat.
“He doesn’t trust you, Ryan,” the man who untied me says. “He doesn’t trust any of us. He can’t. He’s been through hell.”
The second man looks to the third man. “Raj, you still have the tape?”
“We will not tape his mouth!” the first man yells. “Damn it, Ryan. We can’t put them through more shit.”