Marie couldn’t believe that it was happening again. They were going back to that place. The evil place where Montgomery and his cronies would hurt them. He would cut them open and play sick twisted games with their bodies. It wasn’t something Marie believed she could withstand a second time.
The fact that she and Logan had been separated made it that much worse.
The last time she had seen Logan was when they had dragged them through Thomas’s house. It was obvious that the blonde man who had burst into the bedroom was in charge because all it too was one look from him and the men hovering over Thomas’s dead body were at his beck and call.
“Put them in the backs of the trust. I want armoured guards watching him at all times. Do not take him lightly. He is very dangerous,” the blonde man ordered as he yanked Marie out of the cabin.
Marie whimpered as he squeezed her arm exceptionally hard.
“Get your fucking hand off her!” Logan roared, struggling against the men restraining him.
With barely more than a flick of the wrist, the blonde man turned the gun he’d been aiming at Marie on Logan and fire four times in rapid succession.
“LOGAN!!” Marie screamed, her eyes widening in horror as she watched Logan slump between the men holding him up.
“Quit your squawking!” the blonde shouted, returning the gun to the side of her head. “Behave and I won’t be forced to hurt him more.”
Marie had long since lost track of when that had been. That made the situation even worse. If they were only taking her to the facility, they would have reached it in a matte rof minutes. There was no way that she and Logan had made it very far on foot. A few miles at most. There was no way that it would take so long to get to the facility.
Knowing that Logan was alone and bleeding didn’t make the trip any easier for her. She hated the fact that he was all alone while it was all going on. Marie didn’t have to be told that to know it. She could feel it in her heart and hear it in the pained whimpers of her inner-Logan.
“Let us go, ya fuckin’ bastards!” Marie screamed, pounding against the metal floor of the truck trailer she was in. “Y’ have no right t’ do this t’ us!”
As Marie had expected, no one responded to her angry shouts.
Marie....
Marie couldn’t help but whimper at Logan’s plaintive cry echoing in her mind. He sounded so completely broken and all that Marie wanted to do was hold onto him and make his pain go away. She didn’t want Logan to hurt. He had been hurt enough over the past few days. In the past two days, Logan had been shot a total of seven times and had nearly been drained to the point of death.
“Gawd, Logan....” Marie sobbed, curling herself into a ball and lying down on her side in the back of the trailer. “Ya shoulda just gone without me. Ya’d be safe right now an’ ya wouldn’t o’ got shot so much. Ah’m so sorry....”
An image of the expression on Logan’s face as the bullets slammed into his chest passed before her eyes. She wanted to scream, to hurt the man who had hut Logan. Do anything but feel the incredible pain that was building in the pit of her stomach.
Instead, all that she did was bawl her eyes out and call out Logan’s name.
The truck came to a very sudden stop and Marie was sent sliding forward towards the front of the trailer. She was just barely able to get her hands up in order to protect her head. Even though her head was protected, the rest of her body was left vulnerable to the large crates that filled the inside of the trailer.
A particularly large one slammed into her feet, pushing her body forward at a faster momentum towards the front of the trailer. Marie let out a strangled cry as she was squished between the front of the trailer and the crate.
“Help! Help me!” Marie cried, attempting to push the crate away. “Someone help me! Please!” The crate was too heavy, though, and Marie couldn’t move it an inch. Not even a millimeter. It simply refused to budge.
“Please help me!” Marie whimpered, pounding on the metal wall of the trailer. “It huuuuuurrtttsss!! Someone help me!”
Pained tears were streaming down Marie’s cheeks. Her leg was in a very awkward position that sent spikes of pain running up and down the limb. She sobbed Logan’s name, begging for him to help her. He was her hero. That meant he was supposed to come in and save her when she was in pain.
“Logan....” Marie moaned, squeezing her eyes shut and attempting to relax her body in hopes of lessening the pain.
When the pain continued, Marie decided on a new plan of action. She was going to get herself out. Marie was capable of saving herself. She had stopped Logan from bleeding to death, after all, so she could certainly free herself from the back of a tractor trailer.
Gathering all of her strength, Marie took a deep breath and began pushing with her feet and her hands, screaming loudly to motivate herself.
It must have worked because the crate moved a fraction of an inch.
That gave Marie all the encouragement she needed. She continued pushing, moving the crate further and further and giving herself more room. With one final shout, Marie pushed the crate far enough away for her to move freely.
“Ah did it!” Marie cried, scrambling to her feet. She tried to do a little happy dance but found that she couldn’t put too much pressure on her right leg. “Um, okay. Ow. That hurts. That really hurts. But Ah can avoid that. Just hop on one foot. Yeah, that’s workin’. Hop. Hop. Hop. Ow! Shit. Wrong hop.”
Marie carefully maneuvered herself towards the door of the trailer. She was going to get herself out. She was going to be strong and save herself. Hopefully she might be able to save Logan was well. Either way she was going to try. Logan had saved her life so it was time for her to save him.
“All right, inner-Logan. Time fer ya t’ help me out,” Marie murmured, staring at the large metal door. “If ya’ve got any pearls o’ wisdom or strength ya wanna lend me Ah’ll be more than willin’ t’ take it.”
All that Marie got from Logan were more pained whimpers.
“It’s all right, sugah, Ah’m comin’. Just hold tight,” Marie whispered, hoping that Logan could hear her.
Marie was quick to find out that pounding on the door did nothing except hurt her palms.
“All right, Marie. Uncle Mark was a trucker. He showed ya everythin’ there was t’ know about his truck. No remember how he told ya t’ get out o’ a truck,” Marie said to herself, running her fingers through her hair.
Marie stared at the door, not really seeing it. Her mind was going back several years to when she was a little girl and had worshipped her Uncle Mark because of all the places he had been to. He was the one who had first introduced the idea of going to Alaska to her by giving her a snow globe from one of his trips to the distant state.
“The latch!” Marie shouted, her eyes widening.
Stumbling towards some of the smaller crates, Marie pushed them to the door so that she could reach the latch at the top of the door. It was a safety mechanism. A way to get out in case you accidentally got locked in the back of the trailer.
Standing on top of two crates, Marie stretched and strained for the latch that she had been taught about when she was a little girl. Her fingers brushed against it and Marie let out a squeal of delight. Pushing herself up even higher, Marie was able to grasp it with the tip of her fingers and pull it down.
Suddenly the door on the right slid open.
Scrambling off the boxes, Marie sat down on the floor of the trailer and eased herself out of the door and onto the ground.
“.... We did our job and got them for you. Now give us our money,” big blonde man growled.
“You’ll get your money as soon as we see the merchandise.,” a new voice said. “We are playing top dollar for these mutants and I want to ensure that we get quality specimens.”
Big blonde man snorted. “I’d make sure that the clawed wonder doesn’t hear you say that or he’ll get a little pissed and do to you what he did to Spencer.”
“And what did he do to Spencer?”
“Let’s just say that Spencer got a first hand look at his insides.”
Marie blanched at that. Granted, she knew that Logan got vicious when he was cornered, but that didn’t mean that the image didn’t bother her. Marie had never been completely confident with violence, but she now understood the necessity of it. So long on her own had showed Marie the darker side of life. It was no longer something that she feared. It was now a part of her life.
Ignoring their conversation, Marie scanned the landscape for the other truck. She found it almost immediately, hidden in the bushes about twenty feet from where she was standing.
All of her senses on alert, Marie made sure that no one was around before rushing towards the truck that Logan was trapped in. Her limping slowed her down slightly, but Marie’s adrenaline was pumping so much that she barely noticed it. All of her attention was focused on Logan and getting him somewhere safe.
Marie was relieved when she got to the truck without any incident.
Now all she had to do was get inside and get Logan out.