JACK KILBORN ~ ENDURANCE (36 page)

Don’t attack them, and they won’t bite.

It seemed like an eternity, but the rats eventually climbed off, continuing on their way. Except for the one tangled in her hair. Letti bit her lower lip and grabbed it behind the head. Then she gently pulled it free and tossed it into the darkness.

The cell phone
light came back on, and Mal knelt next to her.

“
Oh, shit.”

“
I’ve got something in my foot,” Letti said.

He shined
the phone’s screen at her legs, and Letti saw what she’d stepped on.

A skeletal hand.
One of the finger bones is sticking through my arch.

“
I got it,” Deb said. Without warning, she yanked the old bone free.

Letti bled like wine being poured.

“
Can you make it
?” Deb asked.

“
Do I have a choice?”

“
Bring the light over here, Mal.”

Mal came over, pointing his
phone at the wall of suitcases.

But they weren’t suitcases anymore.

They were corpses. Stacked up everywhere. A wall of decaying human beings.

Letti flexed her toes, and winced. It felt like there was something still stuck in there. The thought that a fingernail, or part of a bone, was still in her foot was worse than being trampled by rats.

How strange
the rodents just ran past like that. Almost as if something were chasing them...

Deb found an older body—a man dressed in a moldering suit—and began to untie the laces on his shoes.
When she tried to pull off the shoe, the foot came with it.

Letti appreciated her efforts, but,
yuck
.

Deb managed to empty out the shoe and she threw it, and a holey, smelly sock, at Letti’s feet. Letti tied the sock around her wound. The old leather shoe was big enough to fit over the makeshift bandage, but when she tied it the laces broke off. She managed to make a good knot, and then Deb tossed her its partner.

“
Come on,” Deb said.

She and Mal helped Letti up. When she took her first step, she felt like crying. It hurt worse than childbirth. Letti thought about telling them to go on ahead of her, but then remembered Kelly and willingly bore the pain.

“
There’s a gate,” Mal said. “Right up ahead.”

Letti limped forward. A gate meant Kelly got out. Maybe she was nearby. Maybe she was—

“
Oh, shit.”

That’
s apparently Mal’s catch phrase.

“
What is—?”

“
Shh!” Mal hissed. “We need to go back. Fast.”

Letti shook her head. She wasn’t going back in that house, ever. She was going to find her daughter. Pushing past Mal, she shoved the wrought iron gate, welcoming the cool night air.

That’s when she saw it.

A mountain lion.

It was big, and in the moonlight Deb could see the blood on its face.

That must be what the rats were running from.

Letti backed up, but the lion had already noticed her. It dropped low to the ground, stalking forward, taking its time. Letti tried to close the gate, but it had no latch. The cat was going to get in an
d slaughter them all.

“
Hold this” Mal said, handing Letti the cell and pushing her aside. Then he reached for something on his belt.

The plastic bag with his
severed hand in it.

“
Here, kitty kitty kitty,” Mal said. “I’ve got a treat for you.”

Then he threw the bag into the woods.

Incredibly, the cat bounded after it, vanishing into the underbrush.

“
Well,” Mal said. “I guess that came in handy.”

Then the trio ran like crazy in the opposite direction, blending into the forest, dodging trees and rocks and bushes. Each step was agony for Letti. Pain, compounded by uncertainty for Kelly.

The cougar had blood on its face. Had it gotten my little girl?

They ran until Deb tripped, falling onto her suitcase. Letti helped her up.

“
Can you make it?’ Letti asked.

“
Do I have a choice?”

They trekked onward. Letti knew that she might be getting close to Kelly, or might be getting farther away from her. She had to know which.

“
Hold up,” she told Mal and Deb. “I have to call for my daughter.”

“
We’ll help,” Mal said.

Even though Letti was exhausted, frazzled, and in pain, the gesture touched her.

“
If you do, it will give away our position.”

“
Then we fight,” Deb said. “Your mother gave us a chance. The least we can do is help you.”

Letti nodded her thanks. Then she cupped her hands to the side of her mouth and yelled, “Kelly!”

Mal and Deb joined in. They yelled and yelled and yelled into the woods until their voices were raw.

The woods didn’t answer.

# # #

Maria woke up when her cell door opened. She’d spent the last few hours lying on the dirt floor, drifting in and out of troubled sleep. Because she anticipated what was coming, she’d been weighing the pros and cons of suicide. But even if she had a way to end her own life, Maria ultimately knew she wouldn’t take it.

I’m a fighter. I’m going to fight to the very end.

Maria looked up as Harry and Eleanor entered. Harry had a
cattle prod. Eleanor had a shotgun.

“
It’s punishment time,” Eleanor said. She was wearing another one of her ridiculous Jackie O style outfits, wi
th a matching pink hat, and appeared positively jubilant. “You’ve caused quite a bit of trouble, little missy. It’s gonna take years for us to recover. But us Roosevelts are survivors. We’ll make do. Unlike this fella.”

Eleanor tossed something at her. Something brown and squarish.

A wallet.

If it were possible for Maria’s heart to sink even lower, it did. She reached for it, hands shaking, and flipped it open, seeing Felix’s driver’s licence picture staring back at her.

“
Ronald et’ him up. That was all he left.”

The tears came, fast and hard.

“
Millard’s gone out after your brother. Should be bringin’ him back soon. You know those fellas spent a whole year lookin’ for you? Year of their lives, just to find your sorry soul. What a waste.”

Harry bent down to grab her, giggling wetly. Slobber and snot ran out the triangular hole in his face. Maria backed away, and got the cattle prod jammed into her ribs for her resistence. She doubled over, falling to her knees.

“
Now y’all are gonna walk nice and quiet like a proper lady, or Harry is gonna break your knees and carry you.”

Do I want to be complicit in this? Maybe I should let him break my knees.

No. What’s coming is horrible enough.

Maria stood up. She walked, stoically, out of her cell, through the hall. The room with t
he thalidomide boxes was littered with the bodies of Eleanor’s children. It smelled like blood, offal, and shit. Swarms of buzzing flies hung in the air like a black cloud. Maria stared at the faces of the dead, recognizing each of her tormentors, but found no joy or peace in their destruction.

They got what they deserved. But it won’t bring Felix back, and it won’t save me.

At the thought of Felix, she began to cry again.

They led Maria up the ladder, and through the house, where even more of the dead were strewn about. She marched up the stairs slowly, as if she were on her way to the gallows.

But this is even worse
than a hangman’s noose.

Maria was frightened. More frightened than she’d been any time in the last year. Of all the horrible things they’d done to her, this would be the worst. But she refused to show Eleanor any fear. She wouldn’t beg.
She wouldn’t bargain or plead. When the time came, she’d spit right in that bitch’s face.

Finally, they reached the third floor. Maria saw the long chains, with the cuffs, attached to the metal banister.

Strappado.

They were going to attach the chains to her arms, then drop her twenty feet. It would dislocate her shoulders, arms, and wrists, tearing muscles, ripping tendons.
Maria remembered when they did this to poor Larry, Sue’s husband. He screamed for weeks afterward.

“
I’m thinking of a number from one to ten,” Eleanor said, her bug eyes glinting. “Guess what it is?”

Maria said nothing, refusing to play Eleanor’s sick game.

“
It’s ten,” Eleanor said. “That’s how many times we’re going to drop you. You’re a thin girl, so it shouldn’t be fatal. But I bet dollars to donuts that after the second drop, y’all will wish it was.”

Maria cleared her throat, and hocked a good one right into Eleanor’s eyes.

Eleanor pawed at her face, wiping the spit away. “Let’s make it eleven,” she said. “Harry, put the chains on her.”

The harelip stuck his tongue through his nostril hole and nodded. Maria made a fist and punched Eleanor in the nose, grabbing onto the shotgun’s barrel. Before she could wrestle it away, Harry was behind her, grasping Maria in a suffocating bear hug.

Eleanor touched her nose, saw blood on her fingers. She quickly removed a packet of QuikClot from her pocket and shoved some of the powder up her nostrils. When the bleeding had stopped, she got in Maria’s face.

“
For that, your last drop will be from your ankles.”

Then Eleanor reached down for the chains.

# # #

Kelly woke up and saw the sun peeking through the trees.
She was cold and damp and in the forest, and her ankle and finger hurt like crazy, but her first thought was a positive one.

I’m still alive.

That brief moment of elation was wiped away by
panic when she saw Cam was missing. Kelly looked around the woods, but he wasn’t anywhere around.

“
Cam!” she yelled.

S
he stood up, her vertebra crackling, and did a slow three hundred and sixty degree turn.

Maybe he went to find water. Kelly couldn’t remember ever being so thirsty.

Or maybe...

Maybe they got him.

That thought made her skin crawl. She didn’t want to be out here, all alone.

“
Cam! Where are you!”

“
Hey, Kelly.”

Startled, Kelly spun around toward the voice. It was Cam
. He had a weird look on his face, one that made him seem like a completely different person.

“
I was scared,” she said, walking toward him.

“
Me, too.”

And then his shoulders drooped and he began to cry. Kelly went to him, giving him a hug, feeling his whole body shake with his sobs.

“
We’re going to get out of this,” she said, patting his back. “We’ll find my family, we’ll find your sister, and we’ll get to a road. It’s all going to be okay.”

Cam put his arms around her. “I keep hearing the screaming.”

Kelly wasn’t sure what he meant, but there had been a lot of screaming lately.

“
It’s over now.”

Cam shov
ed her away. “No it’s not! I still hear it!”

Kelly was a bit shocked by how hard he pushed her. He almost knocked her over.

“
Take it easy, Cam. There’s no one screaming right now.”

He put his face in his hands. “Yes there is.”

Kelly listened. She heard normal forest sounds, but no screaming.

“
Cam, there’s really nobody screaming.”

Cam squatted, hugging his knees. He began to rock back and forth.

“
I hear it,” he said. “I know it’s not real, but I hear it anyway. I just want to make it stop.”
“What are you talking about?”

Cam got a far-away look in his eyes.

“
We were fourteen,”
he said. “Me and my friend. When we went into that abandoned house. The autopsy report stated he was stabbed more than a hundred and thirty times. None of them were fatal. My best friend died of blood loss. I... I can hear his screams sometimes. Not just in my dreams. But when I’m awake. Like now. Sometimes I hear him. Screaming. Begging to be let go.”

He’s losing it.
The poor guy is losing it.

She walked up to Cam
, softly put her hand on his shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault. You were locked in the closet.”

His face drained of color. He appeared terrified.
“Do you know what it’s like to hear screaming all the time, Kelly?”