Porter (6 page)

Allie was pulled u
p a few steps, then
heard
the creak of a door,
felt
a puff of cool air and
then
felt
Goatee’s hand on her elbow urging
her up over a sill into a dim room. The
blindfold was
removed and she saw a man tied to a chair. Her
d
ad!
F
ace swollen,
and
nose
crooked
but
it was
definitely him. Allie ran to him, dropping to her knees and throwing her arms around him. “Daddy,” she whispered.

“
Allie!”
a happy to see you emotion bloomed in his eyes, then
a pause, “
Sorry kiddo,
seems I really screwed up.
” he mumbled
through swollen lips
.

Then Goa
tee hauled her back by the
belt
and tossed her against the wall. Effortlessly, it seemed.

Allie lay stunned
,
hearing her mother screaming
hysterically
. She looked up
blurrily
to see Stephen charge over to tackle Goatee
but Goatee clubbed him aside with
his gun
,
using
a vicious stroke that left
the teenager
apparently unconscious against the
other
wall. Scruffy pulled out some cable ties a
nd tossed some to Goatee. T
hey started methodically tying
up
Allie’s mother
,
apparently unfazed by her struggles
and shrieks
. Goatee simply held her
arms
still while Scruffy fastened her
wrists
to the chair arms
with the cable ties. Then they did the same with her
ankles.
Allie saw that
Stephen was still breathing. Though he still appeared unconscious, they bound
his ankles and wrists together
.
But not
Allie,
which seemed ominous.
Then they turned back to Mrs. Dans who was still yelling
at the top of her lungs
. Goatee slapped her hard and when this stopped her yelling for a moment said, “Shut up unless you want to be gagged. People sometimes choke to death on gags you know.”

Allie
heard a new and raspy voice, “P
urd
y thing, ain’t she?
”
Raspy, Allie saw, had white hair and old acne scars. He held a gun casually pointed halfway between her and her dad. He took a long drag from a cigarette and blew a stream of smoke towards her. From the lazy casual way he held the gun she had a sinking feeling that he’d killed
people
with it before.

“
Now,
Doctor
Dans, I sure would hate to see
your daughter
hurt just ‘cause you want to keep your little secret all to yourself.”

Dad has secrets?
Allie thought with some startlement. What kind of secret would he have that would involve people like this? They’d always been
comfortably
well off, though not rich – could he be involved in some kind of crime? Wouldn’t she have had some kind of hint before now?
He was a
physicist
! She thought?
Physicists
didn’t have secrets! Did they?
She shuffled herself into a sitting position against the wall.

Muzzily, she pondered their situation. It seemed grim with everyone tied but her. Even
if her dad parted with his secrets, she didn’t think the
family would
be leaving here alive.
Every
member of the family
had
see
n the
men’s
faces
,
so it seemed unlikely that
the men intended to let them
go to the police
afterward
.

Raspy,
lazily
pointed the gun her way, there was a flash, a loud bang and Allie
let out a brief shriek and
scrunched in on herself as bits of sheetrock dribbled down the wall onto her
head
.
She stared at the gun
like it was a snake.
Raspy’d been talking she realized, “Don’t worry little lady, you can scream
all you want. N
o one’ll hear you out here. Go ahead and
holler
to your heart’s content. Maybe it’ll motivate your old man here. You need to get him talking before I have to actually start shooting
parts of you. Parts is parts ya know?
” He chuckled as if he’d said something really funny.

“What do you need to know? My dad doesn’t have any secrets.”

Raspy barked a short laugh. “
Oh,
Doc
,
even
your kids don’t
know? Well Honey, it seems Daddy has developed a
wormhole
device, but he doesn’t want to share
it with the world
.”

Startled, Allie looked at her dad questioningly. He shook his head minutely. After the beating he’d apparently taken, he still hadn’t told them about her!

Allie’s dad croaked, “
I’ve
told
them the ports are too small to be useful!
”

Raspy casually backhanded her dad with the pistol, knocking
him and
the chair
he was tied to
over
onto their sides
. The gunsight cut the side of his head leaving a
long
bleeding gash over his ear. “Dans, I really am tired of hearing you talk
,
without
telling us what
we
need to know, so shut up! We’re gonna have some fun with your little girl here but it’ll stop anytime you want to start talking about things we
want
to know. Understand?”

Goatee had
easily
picked up the chair
Allie’s
dad was strapped to
,
setting it
and him
back upright. He
r dad mumbled something.

“What?!”

Her dad said, “I said, ‘
J
ust
kill us
all. You’re going to anyway
.’”

Raspy snorted, “Well now, it might come to that.
B
ut first we’ll have some fun eh? Dean, you
evil
bastard, you wanna have some fun with the chica there?”

Dean, licked his lips and swaggered over to the girl
, expecting to
enjoy the apprehensive look on her face.
She looked pissed instead. Oh well. Then he tilted his
head and looked at her again. “Ah
ah!
I’ve been thinking
there was something kinda familiar about you.
It’s ‘cause
look like
a redheaded version of
Eva,
you know,
th
e
singer from Eve of Destruction?
”
He grabbed her
arm
and hauled her to her feet
,
groping
her
on the way up.
Damn
! She
’d
kneed him in the crotch!
He slapped her
brutally
and watched with
satisfaction
as she crumpled. He bent over
,
holding his knees and
grunted
, “Roger, looks like I’m gonna need a little help.”

“Sure thing buddy.” Roger said, picking
a stunned
Allie up by one arm and her belt and carrying her to the
heavy dining
table.

Dean
huffed
a couple of times
and walked over to the
can of cable ties.

Roger tossed Allie onto the heavy table and held her while Dean tied her ankles and wrists.

Allie raised up her
spinning
head and saw her father looking on in horror.
She heard her mother screaming but that choked off to muffled sobs as they gagged her after all.
She looked around the room
. Her brother still lay unmoving but breathing
.
Could she do something besides make them cough? W
ere there others? Or just
Raspy, Scruffy and Goatee
?
She didn’t want to
try making them cough themselves senseless
when someone might pop out of the other room with a gun.

Dean reached out and
grabbed her chin forcing her to look at him
, “Kick me now, bitch.”

Allie
twisted her face
away from his hand but it was futile.

Leering over her, he said, “I’m gonna pretend I’m
beating the crap out of
that rock star, Eva
. You look like her and she’s probably an uppity bitch like you are
.”

She focused and
could feel the blood
vessels in his groin.
With trepidation she focused on
the big artery there
and created a port
from
there
to
his pants
.
A
bl
oody spot appeared near his crotch
.

Roger guffawed
,
pointing at
Dean’s
crotch, “
Hey buddy
, ‘d
she rupture
something there when she
kicked ya
?

Dean looked down and began a panicked cursing.
Out of the corner of her eye Alli
e saw Raspy getting up to look. After a moment
Raspy told Dean to change his pants
,
wash up and figure out what
was bleeding
.
Dean
went into the bathroom
to
desperately examine
himself
for the source of bleeding
,
swearing all the while
. Roger and Raspy chuckled at Dean’s condition, though they
were
obviously a little spooked.

Allie looked up apprehensively as Roger stepped up beside her. He grinned but the expression looked evil on him. “I guess it’s just you and me Cutie.” He said, reaching out,
“I like to choke
cute
girls like you,” he said, raising his eyebrows as if she were supposed to
be amazed by
this revelation.
He grasped her neck and started squeezing.

Allie,
gasped for breath as his grip slowly tightened.
Her mother was screaming into her gag and Allie heard a crash as her Dad’s chair fell over.
She thrashed to try to get free without success,
Roger
was far to
o
strong. H
is face was flushed, the veins standing out
. He was excited
and dangerous, she concluded
,
and she was going to be unconscious soon. She
couldn’t wait any longer to be sure whether there were other accomplices
or to think of some
better
strategy
.
Reaching out with her
odd
sense she felt the pulsating arteries in his neck and the flow of air in his windpipe. Allie created a port from his carotid artery
into
to his trachea and Roger
suddenly
let go of her
neck
as he began
spasmodically coughing up blood
just
like the big guy behind the bar had
done
. Raspy hove into view desperately waving his gun in all directions, shouting, “What the
hell
just happened Roger?!”

Through
a
bloody moustache and goatee
Roger gasped out, “
D
on’t
…
cough, cough..
.
know!” then resumed
hacking
.

Raspy pointed the gun at Allie’s leg, “Step into view
or I put a bullet in the girl
’s leg!” When
nothing happened, he said, “Now
!”