Alex felt his senses snap into place. Ellis was alive; they were still in danger. He tried to sit up again. This time it was a little easier.
“Where…Ana?” He broke into another fit of coughing.
“She didn’t make it,” Ellis said calmly.
The words hit Alex before the meaning could sink in. Didn’t make it. What did that mean? Didn’t make what?
“Ana…?”
“She’s gone, doofus. Which just leaves the three of us. You, me, and Jade.” Ellis watched him as he spoke, his expression cold.
Alex shook his head, trying to wake himself up, trying to make sense of the words. Gone. Ana didn’t make it. Ana was gone.She was gone.
It was as though a bucket of ice-cold water had been thrown over him, cutting through the mess in his head, smacking him hard between the eyes.
A sensation crept over him—a familiar one, something he’d hoped he would never, ever feel again. Not after the first time, last year, in that hospital corridor when the doctor told them that Danny had died. What was it? Fear? Grief? There wasn’t one word that summed it up. It was as though the pit of your stomach was being ripped out of you and there was no hope, no light left. No breath.
Ana hadn’t made it. Danny. Raya. All gone.
They had lost. Ellis had won. The game was over.
Alex closed his eyes, sinking back to the ground. The fight left him. The horrors of the last day melted into an emptiness that he willingly accepted. The raw burning in his throat could take him. He could just stop breathing, just let his struggling lungs give up and die.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, stop feeling sorry for yourself,” Ellis barked, kicking him with the toe of his shoe. “You may get a reprieve for now. I’m honestly not sure I can stand another hour with Jade. She’s gone completely mental.”
Alex felt tears well in his eyes, stinging as they mixed with ash. He wanted to hide his face—not give Ellis the satisfaction of seeing him cry, but he couldn’t move or turn away. He had nothing left in him.
A sharp laugh, and something grabbed him roughly by his shirt, pulling him up.
“Snap out of it.” Ellis shook him. “Don’t get me wrong, I like men who cry. Shows strength of character to wear your heart on your sleeve. But we haven’t got all day. I’ve got a game to win, then I’m going home. So,get the fuck up. We need to find Motel Barbie and end this.”
Alex was no match for the point guard’s powerful basketball-trained physique. He was manhandled to his feet and dragged, half-stumbling after Ellis, the lamp swinging wildly off the cord, bashing into his legs.
No need to guess where they were headed.
Ellis’s handcrafted place of execution.
As they rounded the corner of the pool fence, they got their first unobstructed view of the death machine, instantly stopping them in their tracks.
Jade was standing near the rusty old tractor, her feet inches from the line, muttering to herself. Her platinum-blonde hair was standing up in a bird’s nest on the back of her head. Carefully constructed make-up streaked her face in morbidly fleshy colors. She shifted from side to side, a grimace of a smile plastered on her face.
“Like I said,” Ellis half-whispered. “Completely fucking mental.”
Alex instinctively nodded in agreement.
They walked forward. Ellis waved at Jade with his free hand.
“Oh my god—is that Alex?” Jade’s words sounded strange, disjointed, almost childlike. “We thought you were dead.” She was pulling at the bird’s nest with one hand, taking great handfuls at a time. It must have hurt.
“Not dead yet, but don’t get too attached,” Ellis said.
“Oh…no, no. We don’t like that. Don’t like that at all.” Jade turned back to face the desert and started muttering to herself again in a baby voice. She kept staring at Jax’s phone. The small rectangle lay where he’d dropped it, where he’d died, about ten feet beyond her.
When they got close to the death machine, Ellis pushed Alex to the ground and sighed.
“What do you think, Jade? Shall we let Alex cross the line next, or stick with tradition and go with ladies first?”
Jade seemed flustered. She kept moving around, uncomfortably close to the line. One hand was firmly knotted into her hair; the other swatted the air in Ellis’s direction, as though she could magic him away.
