The Basement

by Tom Clarke

  With the lights in the kitchen turned out, and nothing to back-light us, Nico and I moved into the hallway. We moved in a slow methodical manner making sure to stay a good inch or two away from the walls, but also careful not to walk right down the middle of the hallway.

  As we moved through the darkness of the hallway towards the dim light of the main bar area the chanting was becoming more and more pronounced.

  I stopped and motioned for Nico to come over to me. “Is that Egyptian?” I asked Nico in a hushed, almost whisper of a tone.

  “I think so” he replied. We then heard a booming, echoing voice speaking in what we assumed was Egyptian. Everything else went silent, Nico and I both knelt one knee to the ground and pointed in with our handguns towards the end of the hallway.

  The voice was not human, it had an almost white-noise quality to it and echoed through the building.

  Underneath the booming voice we could also hear what sounded like people crying out in pain. Then another voice started coming through. It was in a different language and sounded almost confrontational. It just didn’t sound as massive as the first.

  “That’s Croatian” Nico said.

  “Do you understand it?” I asked. Nico squinted his eyes and bent his head to one side, “It’s hard to understand, it is a dialect that I’m not familiar with, it sounds….old.”

  Nico looked up at me and then said, “It’s saying something like you have been here long enough, not enough progress, I’m his favorite.”

  Nico’s eyes got wide and he exclaimed, “My God, these are the two, they are both here, they are arguing about who should be in charge.”

  Suddenly the first voice bellowed again with such vigor the sound was almost painful. The voice speaking in Croatian stopped, along with the chanting. It was replaced with what I can only describe as a snarling sound that developed into a long hiss. Carried at the end of this hiss was a single word….food.

  The chanting started again, all in Egyptian. We could then hear in the background what sounded like a female struggling, calling for help. Nico and I both came back to our feet, I motioned for him to fall in behind and follow me to the end of the hallway. He nodded and we started moving again.

  As we reached the end of the hallway we were careful to stay in darkness and not step into the light of the bar. From the shadows, I looked into the bar and could see the stage where, not but a few days ago, I had witnessed a stripper fall off the pole.

  As I looked closer at the stage I could see objects arranged on the floor in a spiral pattern, the light was dim and I couldn’t make out what they were. Then there was a flood of light as someone opened the front door and I could see the objects displayed on the floor in the spiral pattern, they were heads….human heads.

  The brief influx of light allowed me to see not just the display of heads on the stage, but also the rest of the situation there in the bar. From my position in the darkness of the hallway I could see numerous people in the bar, some wearing motorcycle vests with Lone Wolf patches on them, some who looked like they had just crawled out of a dumpster looking for their next fix.

  Intermixed within this group there were normal, everyday looking folks, the kind of people you would see at the coffee shop or grocery store. They were all sitting on one side of the stage, facing towards two figures seated on the other.

  The door had been opened by King, I watched as he walked across the bar and sat on the floor in between the two figures, much like a dog sits at its master’s feet. As the door shut the light faded, but for that moment I had been able to take a look around and see what it was we were facing. I could see approximately 20 people in the bar, including the two figures seated in front of the crowd.

  I turned to Nico and asked, “How much ammunition do you have?”

  “Not enough” he replied. I shook my head in agreement. I started to think maybe Nico was right, maybe we should double back, exit out the back door, and go get some help. At the very least lock the doors and burn this shithole to the ground with these freaky bastards inside. Then I heard a female struggling off to my right.

  I tapped Nico on the shoulder and pointed to a group of four women, all of them had their hands and feet bound, and tape over their mouths.

  One of the women was being lead to the stage by two members of the LW’s. Nico and I watched as the two bikers threw the woman onto the stage and tore her clothes off, “Dance bitch!” they started yelling at her.

  As my eyes focused through the darkness I could see that she was not very old, early 20’s at the most. She was sobbing through the tape over her mouth and trying to cover her naked body with her now freed hands. One of the bikers yelled for her to dance again, then punched her in the side of her head, knocking her to the ground. He then kicked her in the stomach and pulled her back to her feet.

  I could see it, the young woman was terrified, and that was exactly what they wanted. I remembered what Cowley had said, they feed on fear, and that was what they were doing….feeding. The movements of the crowed reminded me of a family enjoying a holiday meal.

  As I looked at the naked woman on the stage, pleading for her life through the tape over her mouth, any thoughts I had of leaving out the back door slipped away.

  I turned to Nico and whispered, “We need to end this now!” Nico looked at me, I could see the anger at what he was seeing manifesting itself on his face. He didn’t’ say a word, he just nodded in agreement.

  I looked back over to the other three women all bound in the back of the bar. There were two men standing guard next to them, but their attention, just like everyone else in the bar was fully focused on the woman on the stage.

  “I’m going to kill those two fucks guarding those girls, you grab them and hustle them out the back” I said.

  “What about you?” Nico replied.

  “I’m going to create a diversion, grab that one on the stage and then we’ll be right behind you.”

  Nico looked at me and said, “Jim, she is already as good as dead, we cannot help her.”

  I shook my head and looked back at Nico, “Brother that’s someone’s daughter up there. I’m a Police Officer and I am not leaving her here to die like this!”

  Nico nodded his head and got ready to move.

  Right before we moved I grabbed Nico’s arm and held my hand up, indicating for him to stop. Through the darkness I slowly moved to a phone that was mounted on the wall next to where we were standing. I lifted the receiver to make sure that there was a dial tone, unplugged the hand set from the cord attaching it to the phone, and then dialed 911.

  Nico looked at me, confused. “Calling for backup” I said knowing that dispatch was now receiving an open-ended 911 call from this location.

  After placing the call, I turned my attention back to the two men standing watch over the three women in the corner. The chanting in the room had started up again, people were now clapping and yelling along with the chants.

  One of the women looked up at me as Nico and I emerged from the darkness. I held my finger up to my mouth motioning for her to be quite. She looked at me with a look of disbelief in her eyes, I looked back, gave a slight crooked smile, a quick wink, and then grabbed my target.

  I reached around and covered the mouth and nose of the man with my left hand, gripping into his face I forced his head back and up to the left. I then took the knife I had taken off the bikers in the cell downstairs and thrust it at an upward angle, just below his right ear, striking into the base of his skull.

  The man squirmed for a second and then went limp, I looked over at Nico and he had just as quietly dispatched the second guard.

  As Nico slowly lowered the body of his victim to the floor I said, “Free their feet and hands, leave the tape on their mouths….rally point one, GO!” Nico quickly cut the hands and feet of the three women free, he looked at me, nodded, and then started moving them towards the hallway, into the kitchen, out the back door and over to the hotel across the street.

  I d
rew the 9mm handgun that I had and covered Nico as he moved with the three women out of my sight. Once they were clear I quickly moved back to the bodies of the two guards we had ended. I checked them both, hoping to find something with a little more juice to it, like a machine gun, or a bag of hand grenades. No such luck.

  I took a last look around the room, then at the handgun I was holding. I saw the blood on my hands and down the front of my shirt. I could feel the pain in my head from the car crash and the bruising on my wrists.

  I thought about Danny, and Syl, and then Shelly. I looked back at the hallway leading to the backdoor and just for a second I had the flash of sitting in my living room with my wife having a cup of coffee and laughing about the events of the day.

  Then I looked back at the stage and at the naked women being beaten for the enjoyment of the monsters looking on, and cheering. I stood smiled to myself, and started walking towards the back of the crowd. I suddenly felt like I was 17 again, peering back into the darkness and smiling at my demon.

  All eyes were on the woman on the stage, who was now on her knees, the tears were streaming down her face as she just knelt there looking at the severed heads on the stage with her. With the handgun lowered at my side I started making my way towards the stage, gently walking through the crowd of chanting and yelling fanatics. The closer I got the more my anger and rage grew.

  As I approached the stage the seated figure that had been speaking Croatian yelled and then stood. The crowd quieted as he stepped forward into what little light there was and for the first time I could see who it was….it was Stevie.

  As I stood there one row back from the stage I watched Stevie bend down and pick up a severed head that was on the ground at his feet. He threw it at the woman on the stage, who was now balled up in a fetal position.

  Stevie was yelling at her in Croatian, his voice booming, then he went silent. Stevie turned to King, said something I couldn’t hear and then motioned to the girl on the stage. I watched King stand up and retrieve a large knife that he pulled from something I assumed was a dead body on the floor, and start walking towards the stage. King was almost jubilant! It was as though Daddy had just asked him to carve the dinner and he didn’t want to disappoint.

  I knew exactly where this was going. It was just like Cowley had said, they get as much from you as they can, then they execute you by chopping your head off in some sort of a ceremonial manner. I looked around, took a deep breath and closed my eyes as I exhaled.

  I pictured my wife in my mind’s eye. I thought about our dogs, and the two of us sitting on our back porch watching them chase the birds in the back yard. I hoped that she was going to be able to forgive me as I completed my exhale. My thoughts switched back to anger and rage as I heard the voice of my defensive tactics instructor from the academy, all those years ago. “It’s only pain Richards, it’s only pain!”

  I looked up, and as King, armed with that large knife, started to step onto the stage with the woman I reached forward and grabbed the person standing in front of me. I shoved him as hard as I could to my left, knocking him and the people standing next to him to the ground.

  I stepped forward into a shooting stance, gripping the handgun with both hands I pushed the muzzle forward from my body towards King. I put the front post on King’s chest and squeezed the trigger two times sending two 9mm handgun rounds crashing into King’s chest. Thankfully the ammunition loaded into the gun was hollow point and not the full jacketed type.

  As soon as the rounds hit King in the chest they expanded and did what they had been designed to do, create a large wound cavity as they travelled through his body. King lurched forward a few steps and then dropped the knife he was holding. He looked up at me as I was moving forward, onto the stage and towards the woman. He started to speak but instead was hit with two more rounds to the chest. King fell forward and did not get up.

  The people in the bar started screaming and running in all different directions. As I ran to the woman, who was still laying on the stage, one of the bikers jumped up and grabbed me by the back of my shirt.

  I spun back with my left elbow hitting him in the face, I then turned and fired one round into his forehead dropping him right there. I knelt down, grabbed the woman and pulled her to her feet. I yelled at her “Police, let’s go!”

  As she stood I looked over and saw Stevie standing there yelling at me in Croatian. All of the veins in his head were protruding and the air around him looked almost like a heat-induced mirage on the street.

  I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my side, I looked down and saw that I had been stabbed, I looked up again and Stevie was standing right in front of me…smiling. I grabbed the woman tight and with every ounce of power I could muster threw my right knee forward into Stevie’s groin, he doubled over and stepped back. With the woman in tow I started moving as fast as I could for the front door.

  As I was moving forward I could see the door, I was yelling at the woman, “Keep moving, get outside run for the hotel across the street.”

  Just as we got to the front door I felt a strong blow to the side of my head, everything seemed to slow down and I started hearing this ringing. My ability focus stuttered for a second, I turned and there was Jeff, he had just hit me with a pool-Q.

  I saw that he was yelling but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Jeff pulled the pool-Q back to hit me again. I dropped the woman who fell to her knees, I stepped to the side and squared myself with Jeff. As Jeff raised the pool-Q, I raised the handgun and before he could put another swing into action I fired one round into his forehead, Jeff dropped the pool-Q and fell to the ground.

  As Jeff fell I turned and looked at the woman who was trying to get herself up from the ground. Just then another one of the bikers hit me with a flying tackle, knocking me into the front door and causing me to drop the handgun. I looked up and was face to face with the biker who had just knocked me into the door, he grabbed me by the front of my shirt and was screaming something.

  I still could not hear anything past the ringing in my head from being hit with the pool-Q. With both of my hands cupped I reached up and slapped my attacker in both ears at the same time as hard as I could. This caused him to loosen his grip. As he did, I struck, with a closed fist, upwards between his two arms and along the centerline of his body towards his chin.

  My strike to his chin caused my attacker to stumble back a step, and then forward as he mindlessly tried to press his attack against me. As he moved forward towards me I then grabbed him by his head and with every ounce of energy I had slammed it into the metal front door of Rocket’s….the biker fell to the floor.

  I reached down and grabbed the naked woman I had rescued from the stage and pulled her to her feet. I pulled the door, which opened inward, and again yelled at the women to run as I shoved her out into the parking lot.

  I watched, a slight smile spreading across my face, as the women ran for all she was worth across the parking lot of Rocket’s. I felt the sun on my face, warming me for that brief second as I watched, my smile getting bigger as the sense of accomplishment set in.

  My turn I thought as I mustered all my strength to start running out the door. Before I could follow her two more of the bikers hit the door, slamming it shut. The sunlight that had been warming my face was suddenly replaced with darkness, and the smell of death.

  I suddenly found myself pinned against the door being punched and kicked by multiple people. I lashed out! Striking and blocking the best that I could. I grabbed one of my attackers and spun him around slamming him against the door in an effort to get distance and no longer be pinned in that one spot.

  As soon as I did that two more hit and shoved me back against the door, pinning me once again with a force that knocked the wind out of me.

  As I was covering my head and looking down I saw a kick coming in my way. I reached down with my right hand and blocked the kick, then reached under the person’s leg and lifted up, dropping them to the ground. When I did this, I lost
my balance and went to the ground as well landing on top of them.

  I looked directly in front of me and saw the handgun I had dropped, I drove my elbow into the throat of the person I had landed on top of and lunged forward, landing on top of the handgun. I grabbed the gun, rolled to my back and started firing. The crowed that had swarmed me by the door dispersed, a few of them dropping where they stood, dead from high velocity 9mm rounds striking them in the appropriate spots.

  With the crowed at bay I tried, in vain, to stand. The pain was coursing through my body, my head was ringing, and my ability to focus was leaving me. Unable to get back to my feet I scooted across the floor until my back was against the wall. There I sat, on the floor of Rocket’s with my back against the wall, bleeding from my face and head, unable to see out of my right eye, what felt like broken ribs, a knife wound to my side, and a ringing in my ears so intense that I could feel it in my teeth.

  As I sat there in some serious pain I went into autopilot, dropping the magazine from the handgun and checking how many rounds I left. Two rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber, three rounds.