Bad Company... , part 27

Unthinkingly sucking in a deep breath for one of those grim exclamations, Shea fell into a coughing fit which broke the rhythm of her frantic struggle and left her sagging in her bonds. Her head was swimming in the toxin-laced cloud which seemed to fill it from temple-to-temple. The mask was the problem, Shea reminded herself... While natural inclination drove her to pull the thing from her face, her bindings were going to make that impossible - and as her struggles had starkly demonstrated, there was no way she would escape them in time to save herself from the thing. The miserable, damnable dust-mask... There was something faintly ludicrous, and definitely maddening, about being killed by such a small thing as a few square inches of particle-foam...the irony that something intended to make air safe to breathe was now turning that same air into the vehicle of her demise...

Shea twisted and swiveled her head, bunching-up her neck muscles and growling softly as she tried to get the stiff, thick foam cup to slip...but the tight rubber straps kept it hugged too tightly in place. She snapped and tossed her head around, hair whipping wildly, as she tried to shake the sinister foam mask away. But the thing might as well have been welded onto her face, even her most violent of neck-snapping twists budging it not one iota. As she gave the effort another trio of hard, side-to-side shakes and a fierce backward-lunging whip, Shea resigned herself to the fact that it was a lost cause without something against which to brace or rub the thing...


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On to "Bad Company...", pt28