Authors: J.A. Konrath,Jack Kilborn
Tags: #General Fiction
He gave Sara his good arm. She held his hand.
A whip cracked again, much nearer.
Sara squinted at Frank’s wrist, saw a blue vein, and slid the needle in on an angle. She pressed the plunger, giving him ten milligrams. Then she pulled the needle out, expectant.
“Well?” Sara asked.
The pain creases in Frank’s face slowly relaxed, and the corner of his mouth turned up in a tiny smirk.
“You are so pretty,” he said.
“Is it working?”
“Your breasts look like two big, beautiful scoops of ice cream in a bra.”
Sara grinned. “Yeah. I think it’s working.”
She helped Frank up, and he put his good arm around her shoulders.
“Your lips are like a little red bowtie,” Frank said.
“We need to move, Frank.”
“Yeah. Move in with me. You and Jack. I have some money put away. We can get a good lawyer, get him back.”
Another whip crack, so close it made Sara jump.
“Let’s go!”
Sara began by helping Frank along, but then he let go of her and ran ahead. He turned down a corridor, and then began to jog backward while smiling at her.
“I feel great! Why don’t they make heroin legal?”
“Frank! Watch—”
He ran backward into a wall, falling onto his face. When he got up, his makeshift tourniquet had come off.
“I’m okay,” he said. “Doesn’t hurt at all.”
Frank shook his broken arm and it wiggled like a gummy worm, bending in all sorts of places it wasn’t supposed to.
Then a pair of bloody arms wrapped around Frank from behind, grabbing him in a bear hug. Jebediah Butler. Sara ran to him, but was jerked off her feet as Blackjack Reedy’s whip snaked around her neck, choking her until she passed out.
As soon as Deb realized Sara and Frank weren’t behind her anymore, she stopped running.
“Deb!”
Sara’s voice, echoing through the tunnels. But Deb couldn’t pinpoint where it was coming from. She’d made two or three turns, and the faint echo seemed to be both in front of her and behind her at the same time.
“Sara!”
But even putting her lungs into it, Deb’s voice didn’t get any louder than speaking normally. Deb didn’t know if it was something Franklin had done to her voice, or if it was psychosomatic because she’d been terrified out of her mind in that exam room. Whatever the case, she couldn’t call for help.
She looked around. These underground tunnels seemed to go on forever. Deb could imagine herself, wandering around for hours, going in circles. A lesson from Girl Scouts came back to her. When lost, stay put. Let the rescuers come to you.
A wise idea. But while Sara and Frank might be looking for her, so were a legion of creepy mother fuckers.
Besides, she needed to find the stairs for when Mal came back.
Mal.
As crazy frightened as Deb was—and she was one scare away from curling up into a ball and sucking her thumb—the thought of her husband gave her strength. When he kissed her before he left, she saw the man she remembered. The one she hadn’t seen in such a long time. Brave. Strong. Determined.
Deb swore she would be just as brave. She would fight and fight and fight until she saw him again. And when she did, there would be no more sleepless nights. No more bad dreams. No more constant paranoia.
Because together, they could conquer anything.
Deb ached to remind him of that. And it ate at her that she hadn’t understood it before now.
She bent over, butt against a wooden support, and rubbed her thighs. As could be expected, her stumps ached. The prosthetics she wore weren’t suited to running on dirt, and the constant balance adjustments she had to make were taking a toll on her muscles. It had been a long time since Deb had lost her legs, but she remembered with crystal clarity what it had been like. Obviously walking and running were sorely missed. But there were other, little things as well. Dipping her feet in a cool lake. Wiggling her toes. Feeling sand on the beach beneath her—
Deb sensed someone. Nearby.
She tried to peer into the darkness around her, but her eyes couldn’t pierce it. The low watt bulbs strung up on the ceiling were few and far between, and the glow light Tom had given her was fading fast.
“Hello?” she croaked.
“Hello, Deb.”
It wasn’t Mal. Or Tom. Or Sara or Frank.
Deb knew that voice. From the examination room.
“It’s so good to see ya again,” Franklin said, walking out of the darkness. He still wore the plastic gloves he’d put on when he tried to take her blood earlier. But this time, he was holding a long, white stick that ended in forked prongs.
A cattle prod.
“This is quite a house, ain’t it?” Franklin said. He pressed a button on the stick and the electrodes crackled, throwing a bright spark. “Reminds me of home. A home that you took away from me, Deb.”
Deb backed away, but backing up in fake legs was even harder than navigating stairs. What she needed to do was turn around and sprint away. But she couldn’t stop staring at him. Especially since, like Pang, Franklin’s eyes had turned completely black.
“I owe you for that, lil’ girl. Owe you lots.”
He lashed out with the prod, and Deb dodged it but fell backward, arms pinwheeling, landing on her butt. She tried to crab away on all fours, but her prosthetics couldn’t gain any purchase on the dirt ground.
“You look so a’scared right now.” Franklin grinned. His teeth were also black. “Gettin’ me all kinds of excited.”
He zapped one of her artificial legs with the prod. Deb yelped at the sound.
“This here’s a special kinda prod, called a
picana
. Make ‘em down in South America. Those dictators love to interrogate rebels. Twenty thousand volts, low amps, so it won’t kill. Supposed to be gawd-awful painful. Especially when applied to sensitive regions.”
Deb backed against the wall, feeling like she was about to have a heart attack.
The feeling got worse when Franklin touched the prod to her thigh.
It was like being hit with a pick axe. A glowing hot pick axe. Her entire world was reduced to one infinite pinpoint of absolute agony.
“Yes indeedy,” Franklin purred. “You ‘n Mr. Picana are gonna get to know each other real intimately, lil’ girl.”
Dr. Emil Forenzi was extremely agitated, and more than a little frightened.
This was bad. Really bad. Once an experiment of this magnitude began to spiral out of control, it was time to pull the plug.
But he didn’t know if he could stop this, even if he wanted to. So many unexpected variables had been introduced that stopping now could be catastrophic.
He sped through the steel doors of the clinic and peered into Gunter’s habitat. But the monkey wasn’t in his usual spot, hanging upside down from the tree. Forenzi moved closer to see if Gunter was hiding in the fake bushes.
He wasn’t. The primate had either turned invisible, or someone let him out of his cage.
Or…
Forenzi checked the habitat’s door latch, saw something thin and blood-stained sticking in the spring mechanism.
A bone. Probably from one of Gunter’s unfortunate cellmates.
The Panamanian Night Monkey had learned to open his own lock.
Forenzi took a quick look around the lab, suddenly paranoid. While small, Gunter was a strong little animal, and he had a well-documented history of violence. He could also apparently utilize tools. If he got hold of a scalpel, it could become a very dangerous situation.
Trying to act nonchalant in case he was being watched, and he went to the closet where he kept the elbow-length Kevlar gloves, which would protect him from animal bites. He didn’t like to handle Gunter without them, especially when the animal wasn’t sedated. He was just about to put them on when the phone rang, making Forenzi jump.
“What is it?” he demanded, checking the ceiling to make sure Gunter wasn’t hanging there, ready to drop on him.
“We have a problem. He figured it out.”
Forenzi digested the words. It was, indeed, a problem. And the problems were piling up. How many set-backs could this project absorb before it imploded?
“Seal the perimeter,” he said, setting the animal gloves down on a countertop. “I’ll be right there.”
Forenzi was halfway to the door when he stopped, turned, and went back for them.
Just in case Gunter was prowling the tunnels and in a bad mood.
The sharp stench of ammonia woke Sara up.
She was sitting down, immobile, legs, arms, neck, and chest all strapped down tight. The device was known as a restraint chair, and during her years working with troubled teens she’d seen them while visiting prisons and mental institutions. Supposedly a humane way to immobilize dangerous or violent inmates who posed a threat to themselves or others, Sara knew how often it was used for cruel and unusual punishment.
Sara looked around, saw she was in some sort of laboratory. White walls, bright lights, shiny tile floors, counters topped with medical equipment; beakers, Bunsen burners, glass bottles, scales, microscopes, storage racks. A far cry from the poorly lit, filthy underground tunnels she’d been chased through.
She also noticed that she had IVs in each arm, the tubes red with her blood and connected to a machine.
Could this be a hospital? Had she somehow been rescued, and they’d restrained her to make sure she was okay?
Another whiff of ammonia, and Sara gagged. Her forehead was strapped to a headboard, but she lowered her eyes and saw a male hand holding some smelling salts.
Someone was behind her.
“Who’s there?”
The figure didn’t reply. But the hand brushed up against her neck, and a finger drew itself across Sara’s lips. Then it moved down her neck and squeezed her right breast.
This wasn’t a hospital.
She hadn’t been rescued.
Sara set her jaw, fighting not to cry out. She endured the groping, and then felt hot breath on her ear.
The horror she’d experienced on Rock Island had never gone away. Part of her had died that day, and she’d been coping with that loss ever since.
Meeting Frank, and daring to dream of a future that wasn’t haunted by the past, had given her a small measure of hope that things might change.
But now, being molested in a restraint chair, Sara knew that life had no happy endings. It was failure and misery and torture and nightmares and cruelty. And the only escape from it was death.
Her tormenter walked around the chair to face her. Blackjack Reedy, his eye patch as black as his uncovered eye. Ghost? Demon? Psycho? It didn’t matter, and Sara didn’t care. She was frightened, but more than that, she was sick of living. Jack had been taken away, Frank was no doubt in a similar situation to hers, and now she was once again evil’s plaything, suffering and dying for no reason at all.
She hocked up a good one and spat at the figure. “Do your worst, asshole.”
He walked over to the counter, where, among all of the medical devices, was a common kitchen toaster. Next to it was a loaf of bread, the kind that came in a colorful plastic bag. He removed two slices, placed them in the toaster, and depressed the plunger.
“Where’s Frank?” Sara said.
He didn’t answer. Sara tested the restraints on her arms, legs, chest, flexing and stretching to see if there was any way to escape.
The toaster dinged.
Blackjack Reedy took the slices of toast, and knelt next to Sara’s chair. He held them out to her. Sara began to wonder if he was mentally deficient. Like Lenny from
Of Mice and Men
.
“I don’t want your toast. Let me go.”
Blackjack held a piece out to her bound hand. Sara changed tactics. Forcing a smile, she said, “Thank you, I’d love some toast. Can you unstrap my hand so I can hold it?”
Blackjack pushed the toast under her palm. Quick as a mousetrap, he slapped the other piece on top of her fingers.
Then he smiled, and Sara saw that his teeth had been filed to points.
She screamed loud enough to wake the dead as Blackjack opened his terrible mouth and bent down to eat his sandwich.
Frank Belgium stared up at the ghost of Jebediah Butler, whose entire body was covered with blood, and said, “Need a Band-Aid?”
Belgium was strapped to a stainless steel gurney. It had gutters around the edges, which made Frank think it was a mortician’s table.
The implications didn’t bother Frank. At that moment, nothing at all bothered Frank. He decided, if he made it through the night, to pursue the glamorous and rewarding life of a heroin addict.
But living through the night was beginning to seem like a long shot.
Jebediah pushed a metal cart up to Frank, filled with all sorts of horrible-looking medical tools. Hammers and saws and blades and drills. Frank stared at a particularly rusty chisel and giggled.
“Can you sanitize those tools before you dissect me? I don’t don’t don’t want to get an infection.”
Jebediah loomed over Frank, squinting at him with his soulless black eyes.
“Aren’t… you… afraid?”
“Friend, as far as scary things I’ve seen, you aren’t even in the top five. Where’s that Ol’ Japser fellow? He’s certainly handy.” The pun delighted Frank, and he giggled again. “I also could have gone with
he’s well-armed
.”
Jebediah picked up some sort of crusty mallet and brought it down on Frank’s broken elbow. It stung, but the drug dulled most of the pain.
The ghost looked confused.
“You seem like a reasonable sort, Jebediah. So I’m going to offer you some advice. And I I I really think you should take it for what it’s worth. Are you ready?”
Jebediah Butler gaped.
“I’m not going to say it unless you want to hear it.”
“Tell… me…”
Dr. Frank Belgium looked the monster dead in the eyes and said, “Go fuck fuck fuck yourself.”
Tom wiggled his fingers to keep the circulation going, but his hands and arms were becoming very numb due to being hung by them. He felt he’d bought himself a little bit of time, but had no idea how to get out of this situation. His hopelessness spiked every time he looked at the corner of the room, to the branding iron heating up in the wood burning stove, which the blackened figure of Sturgis kept fussing with.