The Survival Game Read Free Page B

put it down to them preying on his easygoing nature and his annoying—but at the same time kinda sweet—easily-led character. He was just too damn nice to everyone. Instead of having the sense to tell the bad ones to bugger off, he felt he had to be best buddies with them. Besides, John had never been one to say no to something he hadn’t done before.
    Try everything once was how he lived…
    She caught Ahmed staring at her. He gave her an uneasy smile in return. She just ignored him, turning her attention back to her husband. He just lay there, breathing steadily. Looking helpless.
    She
felt helpless…
    She checked her watch. It was two in the morning, and she was getting tired. So was the baby. They both needed sleep. The very notion was a complete non starter right then; she couldn’t sleep even if she wanted to. Then, from nowhere, a sudden urge for the bathroom came upon her. The way that happened had become a regular occurrence as her pregnancy progressed. She didn’t want to leave John alone with the two tossers at the back of the room, but she really needed to go.
    ‘I’ll be back in a minute, babe,’ she told John and kissed him on the forehead. She stood up straight and stretched her back. Her bloated belly pushed forwards, putting a strain on her spine, which was already hurting from sitting on a hard NHS chair for too long.
    God, I so badly just wanna be at home with my husband so I can put my feet up and do nothing else,
she thought to herself with lament.
    She sighed, and then glanced once more at those two at the back of the room. Aziz was staring solemnly at her with his wear-lined face while the other one was staring at his shoes, his gelled hair pointing straight at her like a bed of nails.
    ‘I’ve got to go to the bathroom,’ she informed them.
    ‘Would you like an escort?’ Aziz asked her.
    ‘No, thank you,’ she replied in a courteous manner. ‘I’m fine by myself.’ She wanted as little
assistance
from them as possible.
    She walked past them, and out of the room, taking one final look back at John before she closed the door behind her.
    *****
    John’s eyes flicked open just as the door clicked shut.
    The white ceiling dominated his vision, contrasting the black night sky—the last image he saw before he was knocked sparko. Harsh spotlights burnt his eyeballs, forcing him to squint.
Where the hell am I?
he asked himself.
    There was a steady beep somewhere in the near distance like he was on board a submarine that had broken through the surface of a black sea. And bullet-like, a memory from the previous night flashed in his mind. He saw a tall slender woman wearing a gimp mask firing a pistol at him, and he instantly reached for his chest.
    Jesus Christ. Did that really happen?
    He lifted his head, and his eyes fell upon something he recognised all too well, or rather some
one
. Now confusion
and
fear were hitting him from all angles ’cos the last person in the world he wanted to see right then was standing at the back of the room like a bad trip.
    ‘John? Are you awake, John?
Yiannaki
?’ Aziz repeated in his now thin Turkish accent. His eyes were wide and bulging; he looked proper eager.
    John remembered very distinctly being on a job for the man standing ahead of him, but more importantly, more disturbingly, he’d managed to get his stuff half-inched while he was at it.
    Ah shit… Yeah, that was right wasn’t it? It wasn’t a dream after all…
    He removed the mask strapped to his face so he could to start blagging his way out of the mess he’d created. But he barely had time to start ’cos Aziz darted over to the side of his bed, a dark look carved into his mug. He was pissed, John could clearly see that, but he was also concerned about something. He touched John on his arm and as he did, a massive pain shot through his head, making him groan.
    ‘Listen to me, Johnny,’ Aziz said in a stern but hurried voice. ‘You’ve been in a coma for around five hours. I’ll