Slowly We Rot (14 page)

          Noah could tell the old
man wasn’t putting his full strength into the blows.  He based this on his own
knowledge of how hard he could hit.  Upon seeing the hammer, his initial
assumption was the old man had come to finish her off so he could focus on his
new catch, but it seemed he’d been wrong about that.  The bastard was pulling
his punches and was clearly still committed to drawing out the woman’s
suffering as long as possible.

         
I’m in Hell
, Noah
thought. 
This basement is Hell and this man is the devil.

          After a seeming
eternity, the old man stopped battering the woman with the hammer and
approached Noah, whose gaze again went to the floor.  Noah flinched when he
felt the top of the hammer press against the underside of his chin, forcing him
to lift his head.

          The old man grinned. 
“Don’t think I’ve forgotten about you, boy.  I’ve got something special in mind
to break you in proper.  What I just did to that gal?  You’re gonna wish you
were getting something like that instead.  You just think on that some.  See
you in a bit.”

          He gave Noah a hard tap
on the chin with the hammer, chortling at the pained yip this elicited.  After
that, the old man moved away from him and climbed the staircase in his usual
unhurried way.  This time when he disappeared through the doorway at the top of
the stairs he left it open.

          Noah heard him clomping
around in the kitchen for a while, whistling and sounding like a man without a
care in the world.  Noah’s breathing quickened as he tried to imagine what the
old man was doing up there.  It probably involved preparations for some unique
form of torture.

          As always, there was no
give when Noah yanked at the chain.  The effort resulted in a loud clanking
sound, which he was sure the old man could hear up in the kitchen.  But Noah
yanked at it again anyway, putting all his strength into it, because what the
hell, he didn’t have anything to lose.  No matter what he did, the old man was
definitely going to torture him, possibly even mutilate him.  If by some
miracle he succeeded in tearing the pipe down from the ceiling, he at least might
be able to put up some kind of fight.

          He yanked on the chain several
more times.  Every time he did it, the pipe remained as sturdy and unyielding
as ever.  The old man seemed unconcerned by the constant clanking sounds coming
from the basement.  Noah heard him chuckling occasionally.  He was on the verge
of despair when the old man abruptly stopped whistling and went dead silent for
several moments.

          Then came a sound Noah
needed a few moments to recognize as the old man’s boots moving with seeming
stealth across the kitchen’s hardwood floor, with a much lighter tread than
normal.  This was followed by a long pause that made Noah frown.  Maybe this
was another of the old man’s ways of fucking with the minds of his captives. 
After all, they could only hear him and imagine what he was doing up there.  It
was possible he was exploiting this limitation in a subtle and quite deliberate
way.

          But then the
near-silence ended with a shattering of glass and a yelp of fright from the old
man.  This was followed by the sound of the side door being kicked in by
someone of considerable strength.  Next came a flurry of noises typical of an
explosion of sudden, brutal violence—snarling grunts and crashing sounds
accompanied by frequent shrieks of pain.  The pained noises all seemed to be
coming from the old man.  This all happened in the space of a few seconds.  Before
he could even begin to guess at what was happening, a voice Noah knew cut
through the jumble of confused, half-formed thoughts swirling in his head.

         
“Noah!  Where are
you!?”

          His mouth dropped open.

         
Aubrey.  Holy shit.

          Hearing his sister’s
voice astounded him so completely he was rendered momentarily speechless.  He
snapped out of it when the woman next to him made some frantic squealing
noises.  When his sister’s voice rang out again, he tried calling out to her,
but it came out as a choked, nearly inaudible rasp.  He cleared his throat and
tried again.

          “Aubrey!  Help!”

          This time she heard him
and came through the doorway to stand on the landing at the top of the staircase. 
Strong emotion swelled in Noah at the sight of his sister.  He’d been sure he
would never see her again, yet here she was, still in that same tattered black
dress.  They had parted in the bitterest way imaginable, but that meant nothing
now.  He’d never been so happy to see anyone.

          She stood up there a
moment peering into the semi-darkness.  Then she pelted down the stairs and
came to an abrupt halt a few feet from where Noah was hanging from the pipe. 
Her eyes opened wide in shock and her mouth moved soundlessly, words apparently
escaping her.  The horror in her expression made Noah realize she hadn’t become
as hardened emotionally as he had feared.

          She let out a breath. 
“I’ll get Nick.”

          And with that, she
turned away from him and sprinted back up the stairs.

22
.

Noah and the woman were freed
from their bonds and gingerly led up the stairs by their rescuers.  The woman could
barely move without assistance.  They were urged to step with caution as they
passed through the doorway.  There were shards of glass everywhere from the
shattered door window.

          Noah’s clothes were on
the kitchen table.  He would later learn their presence there was the last in a
chain of clues leading up to the rescue.  Others included the backpack he’d
dropped outside this house and the weapons he’d abandoned at the spot of his
abduction.  These items remained where they’d fallen because the old man
apparently believed there was no urgent reason to get rid of them.  After all,
hardly anyone passed through here anymore.  If not for the old man’s complacency,
Noah almost certainly would have remained hanging in the basement for a long
time to come.

          He shrugged free of Aubrey’s
grip and glared at the old man as he began to pull on his clothes.  His former
jailer was lashed to a chair at the table.  He was in rough shape.  Blood was
leaking from countless gashes and his face was a swollen, purple mess.  Despite
all this, his mouth curled into another of those cruel grins when he made eye
contact with Noah.

          “You gonna tell them
about how I made you my bitch, boy?”

          “You didn’t do shit.”

          The old man laughed. 
“Don’t believe a word this bitch says.  He’s just trying to save his pride.  I
rode--”

          Noah spied a hammer on
the floor.  It was resting amidst those shards of glass by the kicked-in door. 
That it was the same one the old man had used to beat on the woman was not in
doubt.  Noah finished dressing.  Pointedly ignoring the old man, who was still
spewing bullshit, he got up and walked over to the door to retrieve the
hammer.  The old man trailed off when he saw what his former prisoner was
doing.  Now he finally looked scared.

         
Good.

          Noah glanced at Nick. 
“Cut him loose.”

          Nick frowned.  The
woman from the basement was in his arms, shivering and mewling softly.  “You
want to kill him?  Go ahead.  No need to cut him loose for that.”

          Noah shook his head. 
“I don’t want him tied up while I do this.  It’s important.  Please.”

          The old man laughed. 
“That’s what he said every time I gave him the meat.  Never was sure whether he
was begging me to stop or keep going.”

          Nick helped the woman
into a chair and then took a knife from his utility belt.  The old man looked
scared again as Nick sawed through the twine binding him to the chair.  And he
also looked like he was done vacillating between fear and amusement.  The look
on his face was all terror now.

          He rose shakily from
the chair as Noah came striding rapidly toward him with the hammer cocked back
to deliver a blow.  The chair scraped noisily on the floor as he tried backing
out of the way.  He raised a shaking hand in a feeble effort to ward off the oncoming
blow, but it was a useless gesture.  The head of the hammer hit the old man in
the temple, knocking him sideways against the table.

          Noah grabbed him by the
shirt collar and hauled him away from the table.  The old man’s feet got
tangled and he collapsed to his hands and knees.  An effort to get up failed
when the next hammer blow connected with the back of his skull.  He sagged
face-first to the floor.  When Noah rolled him over, he was blubbering and pleading
for mercy.

          Mercy, however, was in
no way part of Noah’s agenda.  The blows he’d delivered so far were measured
ones.  They weren’t intended to kill.  He wanted to allow the old man time to
appreciate the pain.  The next few blows were also delivered at about
half-force, but they elicited pained cries that were music to Noah’s ears. 
Just as pleasing was the audible splintering of bone as the hammer connected
with his jaw and collarbone.  The old man initially tried fighting back, but he
wasn’t able to mount much of an effort in his debilitated condition.

          As Noah’s rage intensified,
the measured blows gave way to more savage ones, his face twisting in fury as
the hammer came down harder and faster.  The old man wailed in agony.  At one
point, he raised a trembling hand to tug at Noah’s shirt sleeve, mumbling a barely
coherent plea for mercy.  Noah pinned the hand to the floor and went to work on
it with the hammer, demolishing knuckles and smashing fingers in a rapid
flurry.  The loud sound of the knuckles cracking made his rescuers gasp in
dismay.  Noah ignored this and resumed whacking away at the old man’s face.

          A hand settled lightly
against his shoulder.  “Just finish him, Noah.  You’ve punished him enough.”

          Noah shrugged his
sister’s hand away.  “Get away from me!”

          But then he was sobbing
and Aubrey’s hand settled on his shoulder again.

          Footsteps came his way
after a few more moments passed.

          Nick cleared his
throat.  “Step back, please.”

          An automatic pistol was
clutched in his right hand.  Noah met his gaze and held it a moment before
nodding wearily and moving away.

          Nick aimed the pistol
at the old man’s head and fired a single shot.  It was a big-caliber handgun. 
The one bullet was sufficient to blow the top of his head apart.

          Noah stared at his dead
former tormentor, feeling his rage drain away only to be replaced by other
feelings that were just as corrosive.  Memories of his utter inability to
defend himself against the old man prior to the rescue came roaring back.  In
that moment, he saw them as incontrovertible proof that he wasn’t strong enough
to survive out in the world on his own.

          He glanced at Aubrey. 
“Where’s my backpack?  Is it still outside?”

          She frowned.  “Yeah. 
Why?”

          Noah didn’t reply as he
headed for the kicked-in side door.  Aubrey said something else as he stepped
outside, her tone plaintive and concerned, but this Noah ignored, too.  Spying
his backpack, he sat on the stoop and pulled it close.  He tore at the straps
in a frenzy to remove it from the aluminum frame.

          Aubrey stepped out onto
the stoop with him.  “What’s in there, Noah?  What do you need so bad?”

          Noah had the backpack
open now.  He quickly rooted through its contents and extracted an unopened
bottle of Maker’s Mark.

          “Noah, no, that’s a bad
idea.”

          After peeling away the
bottle’s red wax seal, Noah unscrewed the cap and took a long first drink.  He
tilted his head back and upended the bottle, letting the equivalent of two
double-whiskey drinks pour down his throat before taking the bottle away from his
mouth.

          He got to his feet and
glared at Aubrey.  Her look of distress reminded him strongly of how she’d been
before the end of things, back when he was still going through the troubles
that had ensued in the wake of his breakup with Lisa.  Back then everyone had
been so worried about him, including his little sister.  He remembered making
her cry on more than one occasion.

          “What the fuck do you
care?  You hate me.”

          Aubrey flinched at the vitriol
in his voice.  “I don’t hate you, Noah.”

          His laugh was tinged
with bitterness.  “Yeah?  You could have fooled me, you fucking bitch.  You
told me to leave, remember?  Hell, you even threatened to kill me.  So, yeah,
I’ve got a real hard time buying this concerned sister act.”