Equilibrium (2 page)

“Kellan, please. Cut them off,” I cried hysterically.

“Baby, hold on. It will get a bit less intense soon,” he whispered, as he pulled my head back and kissed me. I shook him away and then collapsed back on him giving in to all my senses, unable to concentrate, desperately trying to keep it together. All I wanted to do was die. My legs turned cold and I started shivering. Kellan brought his legs over mine, rubbing them, trying to warm them up. He took his shirt off and blanketed me with it.  I lost consciousness.

“Shrimp, wake up.”

I could feel drops of liquid on my lips as I struggled to open my eyes. My head was still pounding and my body hurt. Not the sharp stabbing pains any more, but a dull, steady ache.

“Kellan, I’m sorry,” I mumbled.

“Sorry?” he muttered.

“You must be in the same pain as me.”

“I’m okay,” he lied. “Shrimp, I found some water. At least, I think it’s water. It tastes funny, muddy. But, I drank some and it seems okay. I think you should have some too. You’re dehydrated.”

Dehydrated? That was the least of our problems. I was not going to argue, though, so I parted my lips and let him sprinkle some more water into my mouth. It tasted awful, like dirt.

“Can you feel your legs and arms fully, Arizona? Can you wriggle your toes?”

I tried to wriggle them; it hurt. I guess I should be thankful that I could feel them at all.

“I can feel them, Kellan. It still hurts a lot. How about you? Don’t say that you’re okay, I know you’re not.”

He sighed, “Okay then, I hurt too.  Not as much as before, though. I need to get up and feel around for a bit, try to figure out where we are.”

“Okay, but don’t go far, Kellan. It’s too dark; I don’t want to lose you. Keep talking to me. I’m going to stay here. I don’t feel ready to get up just yet.”

“I’m going to lay you down gently and then try to get up,” he said.

I was not the least bit happy about that but relented. Kellan gently put me down on the floor next to him. It was cold, hard and smelled disgusting. I could hear him trying to get up, groaning as he did so. He was obviously in a lot of pain. He shuffled around me, and I could hear him picking up some stuff and knocking others down.

“Anything interesting?” I asked.

“Define interesting,” he muttered.

I shrugged, though he wouldn’t be able to see that in the pitch dark.

“What is this place?” I wondered aloud. I struggled to sit up and brought my knees to my chin. It was excruciating. I felt around for support and put my hands on what appeared to be a stool–or chair, perhaps a table, I don’t really know and didn’t care–and pulled myself up slowly. I stood and tried to balance; I felt dizzy but kept standing.

“Shrimp, where are you?”

“Over here, Kellan,” I said, waving my arms around trying to feel for him. He found my hands and pulled me over to him. I stumbled into his arms and clung on.

“I found some glass bottles. I’ve no idea what’s in them or how old they are. We’ll keep them for an emergency.

I broke out in nervous giggles. An emergency? That was almost funny. I bit down on my lip to prevent myself from giving in to full-blown hysteria.

“Arizona, let’s walk around and see if we can find a door or something.” He took me by the hand and we slowly made our way around the darkness. We found the wall and followed it around. There were a number of knob-like things on the walls and possible doors. We tried pulling on
them, pushing at them, to no avail. I was exhausted and my body was giving in. I needed to sit again. I let my legs buckle under me and I fell to the floor before Kellan could pull me up. Sheesh, that hurt!

“Shrimp, you ok?” Kellan asked in a concerned tone, as he sat down beside me, moving his hands over me, checking me for injuries.

“I’m okay, Kellan. I just couldn’t stand up any more. I need a short rest.”

“Of course, I didn’t mean to rush you.”

“You’re not. I’m a mess, though. What happened? Where are we?

“I’ve no idea.”

“None at all?” I pleaded.

“No.”

I lay back and tried to remember what happened. The last I thing I remembered was Kellan lying on top of me under the stars at the lake. I vaguely remember his head hitting mine.

“Kellan, did you bang my head by accident at the lake. You know when we were lying down?”

“My head did hit yours but I have no idea how. I don’t think I just fainted on top of you. I think something hit the back of my head, but I can’t be sure.”

“You think someone hit you?” I asked surprised.

“Someone or something. I have a fairly bad dent in my skull.”

I felt the back of his head. He was right. There was definitely a dent. Weird. I was sure we’d been alone. Kellan needed to see a doctor.

“You don’t think a meteorite remnant hit you, do you?” I asked curiously. We’d been at the lake after all, which was our spot for watching meteor showers.

“Highly unlikely,” he mumbled. “Besides, that wouldn’t explain what we’re doing here, would it?”

“So, you think someone hit you and brought us here?” I asked more than a little perturbed.

“It seems the most likely explanation.”

“An axe murderer?” I shivered, my body now giving in to full-blown shakes.

“I don’t know, Shrimp. We need to prepare ourselves, and figure a way out of here.”

“No kidding,” I agreed. I really could do without the throbbing pain. I needed to be able to fully concentrate on dealing with this situation. I could barely think over the pain. Kellan and I were normally strong. The two of us should be able to deal with a lunatic axe murderer–no problem, I think. We sure did need to get ourselves ready.

“Kellan, let’s get organized.”

I felt around for my cell phone, on the vague possibility that whoever we were dealing with was just plain stupid. He or she wasn’t. My iPhone was missing from my pocket, as were my keys.

“Kellan, do you have your phone?”

“No, I checked, it’s been taken.”

“Why would an axe murderer take
us
?” I asked feeling exasperated.

“Shrimp, we don’t know if it’s a psycho killer, an escaped lunatic, or someone we know.”

“Well, no one we know would do this!” I was fairly certain of that.

Kellan disagreed. “I think we have to consider Justin and Simla.”

“Justin and Simla? No way, they don’t have the strength!”

“A sudden blow to my head wouldn’t require a lot of strength, just precision.”

“True, but they’d also have to been able to get us here–wherever we are. There is no way those two idiots could manage that unless they had help. Do you think that’s it? That they actually managed to get others involved in their stupid schemes?”

“You’re right, it seems too far fetched. Maybe we should work on the basis of the psycho killer angle instead.”

That was not the least bit comforting. I knew very little about murderers of any sort. I had read a few James Patterson books and occasionally watched
Law and Order
. If we were in for that kind of ugliness, I was fairly sure that I couldn’t
prepare
myself. I would just have to fight my hardest.

“Let’s look around for possible stuff we can use as weapons,” Kellan suggested.

Good idea. Weapons would certainly help. I stood back up and started feeling around. I wondered why we hadn’t been tied up? Perhaps whoever brought us here had expected our numbness to last longer.

“Kellan, do you think we were drugged? You know, the numbness?”

“Yeah, I do. We didn’t just go numb on our own,” he said.

“I guess that’s one more thing that points toward a psycho killer rather than Simla and Justin. They wouldn’t know how to drug us,” I said.

“True,” Kellan said uncomfortably. I guess he felt like me, that if it was someone we knew, we could take him or her, but neither of us were comfortable having to deal with a warped psycho.

My toes nudged against something and I bent–painfully–to pick it up. It felt like a stick, I ran my hand from one end of it to the other.

“Kellan, I found a hockey stick!”

“Ice-hockey stick?” he asked, as he came over and took it from my hand.

“Hmm, it does feel like a hockey stick,” he agreed. He took my hand and rubbed my fingers against it. I hadn’t a clue why.

“Do you feel that?” he asked.

“What? The scratch marks?”

“They aren’t just scratch marks. This is a U+ stick, you can feel that, right?”

In all honesty, I couldn’t. I’ve never been good at feel-and-tell games. All sticks feel the same to me. I could barely make out that this was an ice-hockey stick. So, I shook my head lamely, thankful that he couldn’t see me in the dark.

“Shrimp, you mark your sticks, don’t you?”

Again, I get no points for being well organized here. “Kellan, no, it’s never occurred to me to label things since I was in first grade!”

He sighed. “Shrimp, feel the markings.”

I was annoyed. We didn’t have time for games. The scratches could be anything, cat marks?

“It says JW,” Kellan said triumphantly.

“JW?”

“Justin Weeks.”

“Justin Weeks,” I repeated with relief, now hopeful that we wouldn’t have to deal with a psycho-killing lunatic, although, Justin probably could be classified as one, sort of, the lunatic part anyway. At least we knew who we were dealing with.

What an idiot, leaving his stick here for us! He was obviously not alone; there was no way he could have gotten us here on his own. The drugging was a mystery. I wondered if he had more drugs; would he come back and drug us again? I couldn’t bear the thought. I tightened my grip around the stick. I would pound his brains in.

We continued our search
and found some more hockey sticks, unmarked ones. We found a metal bar– well, I did. I grabbed it firmly in my hands, and we gathered the rest of our potential weapons and sat down beside them. We took turns getting up and looking for potential escape doors, windows and hatches. It was too dark to see anything. I wondered again where we could possibly be. The ground beneath my bare feet felt cold and hard, like stone and the place stank. I imagined it being some kind of cave, but the walls were too smooth, with angular corners. We were most probably in a room of some kind, in a basement, perhaps a storage facility. Definitely underground, judging by the complete lack of any light. I stood up on my tiptoes, waving my hands about trying to feel for a ceiling, a lamp–anything. There had to be a way out. I pounded on all the walls with the metal rod hoping that one of them would give way. My arms hurt. I finally felt my way back to Kellan, following his voice.

 “Why do you think we are being held here? What’s the point?” I asked Kellan.

“I’ve been wondering that myself. I thought all that stuff from the parking lot was behind us. This is a bit over the top, even for Justin; the drugs, especially. I wonder if Simla’s involved? We don’t even know for sure that this has anything to do with Justin. Someone could have taken his stick. Dad mentioned that someone has been messing with the portal. I wonder if this has something to do with that?”

“If this has to do with the portal, why pick on
us
? We’ve got nothing to do with it!
Whoever
should have taken Mom, instead!” I said irritably.

“Shrimp, you don’t mean that. This is an awful situation to be in, especially since we don’t know what’s happening. What if your Mom
has
been taken and is being held somewhere else? Would that make it better?”

“Of course not!” I said angrily. “I was just saying!” I let go of him and marched to the furthest corner I could find.

Suddenly, we heard a scratching sound coming from the wall. I ran back into the security of Kellan’s arms and he held me close, as we listened. The scratching noise was followed by a tapping sound. We quickly and quietly gathered our collection of
weapons
, and made our way to the farthest wall away from the noise and crouched down. We didn’t move, being still as statues. I could barely breathe, I was so afraid. I gave myself a mental shake. This was ridiculous. It was probably just Justin. We needed to get ourselves ready and teach him a lesson. I pulled the metal rod close to me, clenching it firmly in my fist. I was ready. 

A clunking sound preceded a blinding beam of light that pierced the darkness of the room and then stopped as abruptly as it began. Someone suddenly grabbed hold of my arm and pulled me towards the light–away from Kellan.

“
T
hey should have been back hours ago,” Olivia said, with pangs of worry shooting through her. She looked over at Rupert. “It’s four in the morning. Kellan
always
brings her back on time. Neither Kellan nor Arizona is answering their cell phones. I called Larry. They’re not over at his place. He’s driving over. Do you have any idea where they could have gone?”

“Ollie, to be honest, I didn’t think of asking. Arizona looked so distraught that I was relieved when she left with Kellan. He’s probably the only one who can calm her down at the moment. We should get Harry up, he’ll probably know, if anyone.”

She nodded. “I hate waking him up in the middle of the night like this, but I guess we’d better. I’m really worried. I hope they didn’t do anything foolish.”