Page 93 of Tell Me Why
“There was a net,” Tina remembered. “But it started with a dart.”
“Mmm,” Tell said, finding his way up and over his knees so that he could sit. “The quiet stuff. You would have been one of the first, then.”
“There weretrucks?” Tina asked, and he nodded.
“Easy way to stop a vampire from doing something unexpected is to park a truck on him,” he said.
“Why?” Tina asked. “What happened?”
“Probably should have seen it coming,” Tell said, coughing pitifully for a moment, then shaking himself again. “I destabilized things. Triggered an attack. Last I knew, Daryll didn’t know who it was.”
“How long were you there after they took me?” Tina asked.
“This is the third night of the siege,” Tell said. “I was there until the middle of last night. Then they brought me here.”
“Where are we?” Tina asked.
“Don’t know,” Tell said. “Flew here, I know that much, but I lost some time in the middle. Not sure how long we were in the air or what our max altitude was.”
Tina hugged her arms.
“Why are we here?” she asked.
“For processing,” Tell said simply. “When you’ve got a meat factory and you happen upon a herd of cattle you don’t have any intention of keeping, you turn them into food.”
“You…” Tina started, then put her head back against the wall. “They’re trying to get me to drink some stuff.”
Tell looked over his shoulder.
“Looks like you said no,” he answered.
“I did,” Tina said and he smiled.
“Is it over?” Tina asked. “Is it just… Is it all over, now?”
He shook his head.
“No,” he said. “It’s grim, but it isn’t over. We fight, we look for an opportunity, and if it comes, we take it.”
She nodded.
“Can you pull these out?” she asked of the bolts.
“Very unlikely,” he said. “Under the best of circumstances. They beat me to make sure I didn’t have the reserves to attempt it.”
Tina sighed.
“I’ve pulled at them, but they don’t give to suggest that they’d loosen,” Tina said. “With time, I could probably fatigue them.”
“There have been a hundred vampires attached to them,” Tell said. “Maybe your persistence and optimism will succeed past them, but I wouldn’t count on it.”
“So what else do we do?” Tina asked.
“Fight them,” Tell said. “They’ll leave us in stocks as much as they can, but they have to move us for various pieces of it, and every one of those is an opportunity.”
Tina nodded, feeling like Tell was quietly telling her that they were likely going to die.
It made her feel shaky and afraid in a way she hadn’t been, before. Even for the three days on her own, with nothing to do but sit with her thoughts, she hadn’t been anything but angry and defiant.
