Less Than Human Read Online Free

“I... know you,” he said to Josh.
    “ Excuse me?” Josh said.
    “ You're Josh Emberson, right?”
    Josh looked at the man, shaking his head. “Look, man—” And then it hit him like a swift kick in the crotch. It was his eerily familiar face, one Josh wasn't particularly fond of. “Well, I'll be damned.”
    “It's me. John Vander. Olivia's father.”
    “ Yeah, I almost didn't recognize you without your glasses and those cuts and bruises.” Olivia flashed into his mind, as she seldom did those days. Her nearly-perfect naked body. Her sweet smile. The magic tricks she could do with her tongue. “Where's Olivia?” Josh asked, although deep down, he knew.  
    John Vander shook his head, his glassy eyes telling the whole story. “She didn't make it. We were driving back from June's mother's house when these psychos abducted us. They... I don't know what they did with Olivia and her mother. But... those bastards told me they didn't make it.”
    “Shit.” Josh took another moment to reflect on the good times he had with his ex-girlfriend. The drugs. The sex. The unfathomable sensation of mixing those two things together. “How long have you been in here?”
    “ A week.”
    “ I've been here four days,” a man sporting a trucker hat said. He was in the cage to Ben's right, alone. Ben noticed a burgundy stain on the concrete next to where the man sat. He assumed it wasn't spilled wine. The stain looked weeks old and the truck driver didn't appear to be wounded. “They took me at a truck stop in Voorhees.”
    “ They took us out of our homes,” a woman in her forties said. She was with her son, a twenty-something year old. “Three days ago.” She had an accent that wasn't quite southern, but not Jersey either.
    “ We need to get out of here,” Ben said. “And soon.” He recalled what he had been told right before the attack.
    “ Well, I tell you what—you let us know when you find a way out,” the black man said.
    “ What's your name?” Ben asked.
    “ Me? Name's Ross. This is my son. Landry.” He put his hand on Landry's neck and gave it an affectionate squeeze.
    “ Well, Ross. I'm Ben. Sitting across from me, in that cage over there, is Josh.” Ben nodded to the cage farthest from him, to the right of the staircase. “That's Victoria and her daughters Emily and Brittany.” He looked at the cage to his right. There was an old man sitting there with long silver hair and a cowboy hat. He reeked of smoked tobacco. Ben looked to the woman and her twenty-year old son. “I think we should go around the room and introduce ourselves.”
    “ What's the point, man?” a middle-aged man rudely inquired. He was in the same kennel as Ross and his son.
    “ Because. If we're going to get out of this thing, we are going to have to work together. And that means we have to trust to each other. The only—”
    “ There's no getting out of this,” the bespectacled man interrupted. “I've been here for almost two and a half weeks. Two and a half weeks. Do you know what they do to the people they bring here? They take them, in small groups, and they never return. It's been going on ever since I woke up here.”
    “ Two weeks ago?” Josh asked. “You mean... you don't know what it's like up there, do you?”
    “ I tried to tell Jason here about the zombies,” Ross said. “But he won't listen.”
    “ Can you believe this fucking guy?” Jason asked. “Keeps going on about fucking zombies.”
    “ It's true,” Ben said.
    “ I've seen them too,” the woman with the twenty-year old said. “I'm Tabby by the way. This is my son, Anthony. He's mute, so he won't be saying very much I'm afraid.” Anthony shot his mother a  disdainful look, rolling his eyes, clearly embarrassed. She shrugged her shoulders, continued running her fingers through his hair. Anthony tilted his head down, staring at the floor. “The zombies are real,” she added, then peered at Jason, who shook his head disbelievingly. 
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