JACK KILBORN ~ ENDURANCE (19 page)

“
All done,” Eleanor says. She’s lifting her dress up over her head. “Let’s line up, children. It’s time to make babies.”

George pulls
the transfusion needles from his arms, quickly sealing his wounds with a white powder. He turns to Maria and says, “Me first.”

Maria forces down the gorge rising in her throat; vomiting while wearing a ball gag could cause her to choke to death.

George presses the cattle prod to her stomach, then unstraps her feet and hands.

She closes her eyes and thinks of Felix. She imagines him bursting in right now, killing all of the monsters, and taking her away from here.

Will he still want me, after all I’ve been through?

Of course he will.

It’s been a year since she’s seen him. Felt his touch. Heard his voice. A long, agonizing, nightmarish year.

George frees her hands, then paws at her pants.

She imagines being with Felix. They’re sitting on a porch, drinking lemonade, holding hands. The sun is out. The breeze smells like cut grass.

And since it’s a fantasy, she also imagines the child they can’t have. A toddler, roaming the lawn, chasing a butterfly, or a dog.

She can even imagine the
dog barking.

Maria hears it again, and opens her eyes.

“
elp
Dog! There’s a dog!”

Maria watches as Calvin bursts into the room. He’s the one with the unibrow and the flipper hands, one of which is being nipped at by a German Shepherd. Maria is overjoyed to see the animal. She’s even more elated when the dog snarls and barks at Eleanor and her monstrous brood, forcing them to back away.

The freaks are terrified. And they should be. A single bite could kill them. And this dog is big and looks eager to bite.

George, his broad face a mask of fear, pokes at the animal with the cattle prod. The dog takes a quick zap in the muzzle, then darts away. Its lips curl back, exposing long, sharp teeth, and it attacks in a frenzy, biting George’s hand five or six times in the blink of an eye.

George screams, dropping the prod. The new blood he’s just received bursts out of his hand in all directions, like a 4th of July firework. He turns, running for Eleanor, dropping to his knees.

“
The styptic, Ma! The styptic!”

The dog lunges again, biting at the back of George’s thigh, clamping down tight and shaking its head back and forth.

The freaks are in a panic, a wall of misshapen bodies climbing all over each other in an effort to get away. They’re flooding out the exit. Some of them are being trampled. Eleanor looks at George, then at Maria, radiating hate.

“
Get the girl!” she yells at her brood.

Maria knows she’s terribly outnumbered, and there’s a mad dog loose, but she decides then and there to die before she lets them take her back to her cell. She reaches for the dropped cattle prod.

Most of the monsters ignore Eleanor, but a few form a circle around her. Maria swings the prod, keeping them at bay, turning this way and that way so none can sneak up behind her. With her free hand she unbuckles the ball gag, lets it fall to the floor. She’s light-headed, and the nausea is starting to take hold. Normally, after an ordeal in the Room, she sleeps for a long time. Maria fights the feeling, keeping on the balls of her feet, determined to stay alert.

Someone grabs at her, and she sticks him with the cattle prod. The burst of light and the accompanying sizzle and scream give her strength. She whirls around, stabbing the prod into a creature’s bloated face. Then an avalanche of sour flesh rams into her, forcing her to the floor, pinning her under its weight. She twists the prod around, zaps whoever is on top of her. There’s a cry, but she’s still trapped. There are too many freaks on top of her. She can’t move.

She can’t even breathe.

Maria grunts, pushing with all of her strength. She’s not going to smother. Not now. Not this close to escape. But the fetid, shifting mass of flesh atop her is too heavy to move. Her hair is yanked. A filthy, malformed baby’s arm with seven fingers tugs at the corner of her mouth as her face is pressed into the dirt floor.

She tries to suck in some air, but the weight is too much.

I’m sorry, Felix
. I tried.

And then, miraculously, the mass shifts. One monster rolls off, screaming. Then another. Maria pushes herself onto her side, gasping for oxygen. She watches as the dog—the beautiful, terrifying dog—tears into another freak, pulling him off of her.

They’re all scrambling for the door now, dragging their wounded, of which there are many. The dog is on top of the last freak, one with a blockish, Frankenstein head and hands that look like pincers. It’s tearing at the monster’s throat. Maria looks at the door, trades a hateful glance with Eleanor as she abandons her child and closes it shut.

Maria sits up, clutching the prod in both hands. The dog bites the freak until it stops moving, until a good portion of its neck is hanging limp from the dog’s jaws.

The dog shakes its head, releasing its prize. Then it looks at Maria and snarls.

“
Good boy,” Maria manages to say. Her voice is raspy. She can’t remember the last time she’s spoken.

The dog hunkers down, the hair on its back standing up. It growls, low and deep, its lips raised and bearing teeth.

“
Sit,” Maria orders.

The dog stalks forward. It’s not looking at Maria. It’s looking at the cattle prod.

Maria sets it down. “Sit!” she says again.

Incredibly, the dog sits. Its tongue lolls out of its mouth.

“
Good dog! Come.”

The dog bounds forward, and Maria almost screams when it pounces on her.

But it’s a happy pounce, tail wagging. The dog’s bloody tongue is warm on Maria’s cheek. She grabs its muzzle and hugs it tight. The feeling is so good, so pure, she can’t stop the tears from coming.

“
Good dog. Can you shake?”

The dog offers its paw. Maria shakes it gladly.

“
What’s your name, boy?” She fumbles for his collar while he licks her. “JD. I swear to God, JD, if we get out of this, I’m buying you steak every day for the rest of your life.”

JD approves of this, wagging his tail even more.

Maria stands up. She knows Eleanor and her boys will be back, with weapons. Maybe even guns.

She goes to the door, tries the knob. Locked.

Maria slams her shoulder into it. The door is solid. It won’t budge.

I can’t give up. Not now. Not when I’m this close.

But as Maria looks around the room, she has no clue how they can escape.

# # #

Letti Pillsbury stood in the doorway of the Ulysses S. Grant room, looking at her mother crouch on the floor.

“
Do you normally check under the bed every place you sleep?” Letti asked.

“
Hmm? No, of course not.” Florence stood up, smoothing some imaginary wrinkles from her pants. She looked perturbed, which wasn’t something Letti could ever recall seeing.

“
Okay, then. You wanted to talk. Let’s talk.”

The older woman seemed confused, and for a moment Letti questioned her mother’s health. After all, her health was the reason she was moving in with her and Kelly.

“
I want you to understand, Letti.”

“
Understand what, Florence?” Letti crossed her arms, determined not to make it easy for her.

“
Why I didn’t come to your husband’s funeral.”

“
I know why you didn’t come, Florence. You were off in Bosnia or Ethiopia or one of your other
causes
.”

“
I was in Mumbai. Doing volunteer work, Letti, during the floods. We were saving lives. Peter, bless your husband’s heart, was already dead. There wasn’t anything I could do for him.”

She doesn’t get it. Maybe she never will.

“
Peter
didn’t need you, Florence.
I
did.”

Florence raised an eyebrow. “So you’re saying your grief is more important than building a dam that saved three hundred lives?”

Letti refused to let her eyes tear up. “I was devastated. I needed my mother.”

“
I raised you so you wouldn’t need me.”

“
You’re impossible,” Letti turned to leave. She felt Florence’s hand on her shoulder.

“
What do you want me to say, Letti? That I made the wrong choice? You’re strong. Always were. Peter’s death was a terrible tragedy, but I knew you could handle it. Mumbai needed me more.”

This is a waste of time. She’ll die before she apologizes.

But she’s right. I am strong. And I will not cry.

Letti spun around, feeling the scowl take over her face. “If Mumbai is so goddamn important, why didn’t you go running there when you were diagnosed with cancer?”

Florence flinched. Letti immediately felt bad for saying it, but she was on a roll.

“
You didn’t, though. You came to
me
, Florence. Me and Kelly. I thought it was because you wanted to mend fences. To get to know your granddaughter. But money is the real reason, isn’t it? You gave away all of yours, helping strangers. Now you need a place to die, and my house is a free hospice.”

Florence kept her face calm, but Letti saw something behind it crack. “Oh... Letti... is that what you think?”

Letti bit her lower lip. She felt the tears coming, but refused to blink. “We needed you, Florence. Kelly and I. And you weren’t there. But now you need us, and here we are. Maybe Mumbai built a big stature to Saint Florence for saving their village. But I never wanted to be raised by a saint. I wanted a Mom.”

“
And I wasn’t a mother to you.” Florence said it as a statement.

“
Mothers nurture.” Letti said. She felt the tear roll down her cheek. “Mothers support. Mothers show up at the goddamn funeral when their daughters lose their husbands.”

Florence said nothing. She just stood there, stoic as ever.

I might as well be talking to a statue.

“
It’s so important to me for you to understand why I did it, Letti.”

“
I know why you did it, Florence. But I’ll
never
understand it. And I’ll never forgive you for it.”

Florence opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

Point. Match. Game.

So why did it still feel like losing?

Letti walked out of the room, shutting the door behind her. She went down the hall to the Grover Cleveland room and let herself in. For a moment, she felt li
ke giving in to the tears, crying her eyes out. But she pushed the feeling down. The last time she cried was at Peter’s funeral. She’d lost two people that day. Her husband, and her mother.

Letti wouldn’t allow herself to cry over her mother again.

She took a deep breath through her nose, let it out slow through her mouth. Like she’d been taught. All during her youth, Florence had subjected Letti to countless instructors, coaches, and senseis, in countless sports, martial arts, and disciplines. Florence thought dropping Letti off at a dojo or a yoga class was a substitute for parenting. But none of her many teachers could fill the void Letti felt, and none could teach her how to deal with her resentment.

Letti took another slower, deeper breath, letting her heart rate slow down.
The room smelled strange, and the decorations were even more so.

Damn, this is one creepy place.

If Letti hadn’t known what Grover Cleveland looked like before coming to this room, she certainly did now. Everywhere she looked, there were pictures and drawings and photos of the chubby, moustached President. He was on the curtains, the walls, the bedspread, the doors, and even the lampshades.

That Eleanor Roosevelt has some issues. Hell, she has
a whole subscription.

Letti undressed down to her panties, letting her clothes stay where they fell. She was exhausted, bone weary, but her mind refused to shut off. Sleep would be elusive.

She considered taking a shower, but standing up for those few extra minutes seemed like a tremendous chore. And, for some strange reason, she didn’t feel comfortable being naked.

Letti crossed her arms across her breasts, considering the feeling. It wasn’t shame. Letti had toned her body to be all it could be, and was proud of her efforts.