End Game

by John Gilstrap

  “I just hope they cleaned it up before they abandoned it,” Jonathan said. “After a few years in a freezer without electricity, I bet that can get pretty ripe.”

  “They have electricity,” LeBron said.

  Jonathan’s and Boxers’ heads turned in unison. “Excuse me?” they said.

  The unison chorus made LeBron laugh. “Yeah, they’ve had it for a while.”

  Jonathan keyed his mike and passed that detail along to Venice.

  “That doesn’t sound right,” she said. “Stand by one.”

  Jonathan turned to LeBron. “How long have they had electricity back?”

  The kid turned to his wife and brother. “What, three months?”

  “About that,” Georgie said.

  “Less,” Dawn said. “About ten weeks.”

  Ten weeks it was. It didn’t matter all that much, and Jonathan was not going to challenge Dawn. Truth be told, he was a little afraid of some women, too.

  “Scorpion, Mother Hen,” Venice’s voice said. “I’m sorry. I checked the electric bill by the company name, not by the address. They’re right. The electricity is on at the facility. It has been for about the last ten weeks.”

  Jonathan smiled and winked at Dawn. She had no idea what it was for, but it made her smile anyway.

  Jonathan checked his watch. It was time to shift from general plans to specific plans. “Mother Hen, I have a mission for you. Please find the locations of the external electrical shutoffs and download them to my GPS. I’ll also need you to monitor local police and fire frequencies and keep us from getting in deeper than we can handle.”

  “I’ve already sent the electrical shutoffs,” Venice said. “I’m also downloading the locations of the nearest public trauma center and the nearest clandestine facility. Just so you know, if it comes to that, I’d shoot for the clandestine shop. Their record is better and they’re only three miles farther away.”

  Jonathan didn’t acknowledge that transmission because it was inappropriate traffic to begin with, and he didn’t want the surrounding civilians to know that there’d been more conversation.

  He looked up at Boxers. “Do you have anything more for Mother Hen?”

  Big Guy shook his head. “Not for now,” he said.

  Jonathan keyed the mike. “You’re off the hook for a while, Mother Hen. We’ll let you know when we’re ready to go hot.”

  Jonathan closed the laptop and stood. “Okay, Big Guy,” he said. “Time to play with our new toy.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  As the water cooled, Graham stood in the tub and climbed out. Teddy and his posse had been gone for a while. Until a few minutes ago, Graham had been in a blind panic. They were going to kill him, one way or another. That’s what Teddy had said—not in so many words, but that was what the words he did say actually meant. The question he had to deal with was a Faustian deal of the highest order. (Yes, he’d read Faust.) He could declare defeat and give them what they wanted, and the reward would be to die immediately, or he could hold out longer and preserve his life.

  That wasn’t really a choice at all, now that his heart had calmed a little and he could think clearly. More time on the planet was better than less time. Plus, deep in his heart, he didn’t believe the part about breaking bones and crushing his balls. If it came to that, then he would fight until he had nothing left to fight with.

  When it was all done, if he’d lost the fight and the breaking and the crushing got to be too much, he could always break then.

  Graham was shocked that his panic had subsided. He was still frightened and sad, but he felt as if those emotions had somehow made him stronger—not physically, but mentally. Thirty-six hours ago, more or less, his life had been normal—pretending to study for a math test he could have done with his eyes closed, hoping against hope that Avery Hessington and the rest of the high school royalty would let him walk the halls unmolested.

  Thirty-six hours ago, it mattered what names people called him—freak, geek, gay, pussy, queer (he’d lived with them all for as long as he could remember). It mattered who would dare to sit with him in the cafeteria, and it mattered that he lived in fear of being called on because he always knew the right answer.

  That all seemed so distant now, so irrelevant—though as the memories rejuvenated in his head, they triggered vivid resentment. Who the hell was Avery Hessington to put him through that kind of hell? And how could Graham have taken it so seriously? If he ever got out of this, he was going to tell Avery what an asshole he was.

  The first step was to climb out of the tub. He stepped over the lip and onto the concrete floor.

  Graham’s fingers and toes had turned pruny and white from the water. As he explored this massive room, the water draining from his matted clothes left a slick on the floor. He walked to the far wall, where windows lined its entire width. Through the thick layer of grime, he could see the wire reinforcement in the glass. He felt a flutter of hope in his belly. Could escape really be so easy? As he approached, he had to climb over all kinds of abandoned . . . stuff. Much of it was shiny, and while much of it was heavy, nothing he saw was either pointy or sharp. Nothing that would make a good weapon.

  But maybe something would make a good glass breaker.

  He lifted a heavy T-shaped object, maybe ten inches long, that looked like it might have been a mallet in a parallel universe. He tested the weight of it in his hand and then looked up at the window. Tall and narrow, the windows opened by rocking in, like the windows in his old school, but the lock and the handle were eight or nine feet off the ground, way too high for him to reach. The bottom sill of the window started at chest level and rose from there nearly all the way to the ceiling.

  He needed to work quickly. Teddy said he’d be back soon. Graham lifted the hammer to crash it through the glass, but paused. Remembering that nothing had gone his way since this ordeal had started, he decided to check first to see what was on the other side. He squeezed his soaked T-shirt to wet his hand, and then used the hand to swirl a viewport through the filthy windowpane. He saw nothing. Literally, nothing—just his own reflection staring back at him.

  Screw it. I’m out of here.

  He took a step back, closed his eyes, and delivered a full overhead blow to the left side of the pane. When he looked to check his damage, he saw that he’d left a wide, circular spiderweb fracture in the glass. It wasn’t a hole yet, but it was an indentation. And Jesus, was it loud! But at this point, loud didn’t matter. Getting caught didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting out of this hell house.

  He swung the hammer again, aiming for the same spot. And again and again. Again. Each hammer blow to the glass reverberated through his arms and his shoulders. Bam! Bam! Bam!

  Liquid spattered the glass and the concrete walls, whether from his soaked clothes or from his own sweat he didn’t know and he didn’t care. Finally, the head of his makeshift hammer broke all the way through. He had a hole!

  It wasn’t yet big enough to climb through, but it was a goddamn hole!

  He picked a new spot on the window adjacent to the first and he started pounding there. After God only knew how many strokes, there was another hole, and by pounding the spot, the two holes joined into one big one, but together they were only twelve or thirteen inches in diameter.

  Pausing to throw a glance over his shoulder to see if they were coming for him yet, he turned and hammered some more. His arms were growing heavier with every additional blow, but what difference did that make? He had to keep going. He had to. To stop now was to guarantee his death. Teddy was not going to be happy when he found out that Graham had beaten up his torture chamber.

  The word torture brought back a stab of the panic as it passed through his head. It meant everything that was awful, everything that hurt. It meant the end of hope.

  Now that he could see the faint outlines of hope on the horizon, he realized that that was all he had left. He’d get out on his own or he would die at the hands of others. If he co
uld just make a hole big enough—

  A third hole appeared, and with a final blow, that one joined with the other two to form a kind of three-circle Venn diagram where the intersection of the subsets formed a hole.

  One more and he should be good to go. For this one, he swung lower than the others so that it would be easier for him to access the opening when he was done. How stupid would he be—how worthy of the Darwin Award—if he made his escape hatch too high off the ground to reach?

  Graham had no idea how many times he smashed away at the glass. Fifty? A hundred?

  I won’t stop. Not till I’m outside and free.

  The fourth collection of spiderwebs became a fourth hole, and with five more swings—the heaviest thing he’d ever wielded, as his shoulder and his neck screamed for relief—the connecting web broke through, and the resulting hole was worth trying. It reached nearly down to the sill. He finished it off by pounding out the space at the very bottom, where he’d be dragging his body as he made his way outside.

  Graham didn’t know he was bleeding until he placed his hammer on the floor. He’d already placed it gently on the concrete—his effort not to make noise—when he realized how ridiculous a notion that was. He just wasn’t thinking right. And while he wasn’t bleeding badly, he was bleeding from about a million places on his hands and arms, no doubt from the shattering glass that he’d never felt cutting his flesh.

  While that, too, didn’t matter, the cuts reminded him that he was surrounded by shards of glass and bits of wire, and that he was barefoot and that his clothes were so wet that everything would stick to them.

  Picking up his hammer again, he used it as a broom to sweep off the sill to remove the big pieces. After two passes, he decided that he’d spent enough time being neat and careful and now it was time to climb. Using his forearms as leverage against the sill, he hoisted himself up until he was high enough to support his weight with his knee.

  Headfirst or feetfirst?

  If only because of the height, he decided to back out of the space feetfirst. There were lots of things that could go wrong with that plan—not the least of which involved dropping out onto a lot of broken glass—but all of the scenarios he could think of were better applied to his feet than his head. He didn’t have time to second-guess.

  He took care when maneuvering on the narrow ledge not to overbalance and fall back into the room he was trying to leave. The angles here were tough. He maneuvered himself to a position where he was squatting in front of and with his back turned to his exit portal. His weight was evenly distributed between his fingertips and the balls of his feet, which were all aligned in the same plane.

  Balance was key. Keeping his back straight and as erect as possible, he shifted his weight to his palms as he moved first one foot and then the other through the vertical hole. When his legs were through up to his thighs and dangling on the other side, he rocked forward and let his lower body slide through the hole up to his waist. The last eight or nine inches were the worst as his doodads passed over the ledge. He rocked his hips to the side to protect them as best he could, but the wire-stab in his ass cheek kept him from rocking over too far.

  When his lower body was through, he pressed his belly against the flat sill and eased himself out.

  He took one final look at the door through which Teddy had exited—and no doubt the one through which he would reenter—praying that this would not be the moment of the torturer’s return. At this juncture, the only way to stop Graham from all the way across the room would be to shoot him in the face.

  He didn’t want to be shot in the face.

  So he needed to keep going. Inching backward along his belly, he reached the tipping point where the weight of his dangling legs overcame his ability to hang on, and he allowed himself to drop.

  The point of his chin clipped the far side of the sill as he tumbled a few feet to the floor. He landed hard on his heels—he felt the piece of glass that punctured his left foot in the middle of the arch—and his momentum carried him all the way over onto his back. When he came to rest, his feet were up in the air, and the back of his head was on concrete.

  Graham rolled to his side, cleared the shard of glass from his foot with a swipe of his hand, and stood. Something was wrong here. It didn’t feel like outside air. The floor was concrete. It took him two seconds to process the obvious—he wasn’t outside after all. He’d wasted all that time and all that effort crashing through an interior window.

  “Who the hell builds a window to the inside?” he whispered to no one. “Shit.”

  It didn’t matter. There had to be an outside somewhere. He just needed to find it.

  Beyond the wash of light through the windows from the room he’d just exited, the rest of the building was dark. As in cave dark, the absence of light. Graham was sure that sooner or later his eyes would adjust, but—

  In an instant, the darkness transformed to daylight, a blinding glare that dug at his eyes and made him feel unbalanced. By reflex, he covered his eyes with his bloody palms.

  He heard a noise that sounded like people clapping and he dropped to a crouch, making himself as small as possible.

  “That took you long enough,” said Teddy’s voice from somewhere beyond Graham’s covered eyes.

  Graham peeled his hands away, and as his eyes adjusted, he saw the torturer approaching him. His head told him to run, but his instincts told him to wait.

  “I wanted you to feel that adrenaline rush,” Teddy went on, “because for every rush there is a crash. I think the most important thing that someone in your position must remember is that hope is imaginary. By breaking through that window and coming out into this space, you did exactly what I expected you to. That’s why we’ve been waiting. Though I must tell you that we’ve been waiting for much longer than I thought we would. Sooner or later, you will give me what I want.”

  Graham could see people gathered behind Teddy—many of the same faces he’d seen in the room with the tub—but they seemed to be hanging back. Graham stood and took a couple of steps back, maintaining his distance from Teddy.

  “I gave you an assignment last time we spoke,” Teddy said. “Have you had a chance to think about the options I gave you?”

  Graham knew that if he tried to bolt, they would hurt him, so he stayed put, unmoving.

  “I expect an answer, Graham,” Teddy said.

  This was the big moment. He could declare himself to be sniveling, or he could show some pride. Graham stood to his full five-foot, nine-inch height and faced Teddy head-on. “Yeah, I’ve thought about it,” he said. “I’ve decided you need to believe the truth—I don’t know anything you want to hear.”

  Teddy planted his hands on his hips, the posture of a man who was sorely disappointed. “That’s very sad,” he said. “It’s a decision that makes your life many times more difficult. In my opinion, too many people value bravery and defiance over common sense. We will do it the more difficult way, then.”

  His heart screaming for relief, Graham tensed and waited for the attack. He had no experience fighting, but he had plenty of experience running away from fights, and in this place, there was plenty of room to duck and dodge. That couldn’t go on forever—certainly not against people with guns—but every delay brought him a new opportunity for a miracle.

  Only, they didn’t rush him. Instead, they sneaked up on him from behind. He sensed them before he saw them, and before he could react, a noose dropped over his head and pulled tight around his neck. He brought his hands to his throat to protect his windpipe, and when he did, the noose pulled tighter, lifted higher. He had to stand on tiptoes to keep his head from being pulled off.

  “Hands to your side, Graham,” Teddy said. His voice kept a relaxed monotone that sounded so easygoing and businesslike. “Relax them. We’re not trying to kill you, we’re trying to control you.”

  Graham did as he was told. He lowered his hands, and the man who controlled the noose loosened it.

  “Good man,
” Teddy said. “And a good lesson in cause and effect. Now cross your wrists behind your back.”

  Graham hesitated. They were going to tie his hands, and once that was done, he’d be finished, his chance for survival over. The hesitation caused him to be lifted off his heels again and onto his toes. The rope—he couldn’t see it, but he was certain that it was a rope—chafed the flesh of his neck. He battled every instinct to claw at the noose, and instead did as he was told, and crossed his wrists behind his back.

  The pressure eased. He stood still and tried not to give into the tears that pressed behind his eyes as someone slipped a loop over his hands and pulled it tight. The plastic ratchet sound told him that they’d used the zip ties he’d seen on cop shows.

  “Your future is in your own hands now, young man,” Teddy said. “Failure to comply means pain. Doing the reasonable thing means less pain. It’s that simple.” Teddy started walking away, and Graham’s minder followed, lifting slightly on the noose to encourage his captive to follow.

  There was no doubt in Graham’s mind as he danced through the broken glass on the floor to the amusement of his handler that they’d deliberately chosen the most painful path. To stumble at this point would be to hang himself.

  When they were through the glass, Graham swiped the sole of each foot against the opposite calf to rub away any straggling shards, and then allowed himself to be led to wherever they were taking him. He knew he was in trouble the instant he saw the big freezer door. This was probably the very route they’d carried him into the building, but of course he hadn’t been able to see anything then. As soon as Teddy pulled on the door latch, his suspicions were confirmed.

  The first thing he saw was the hooks hanging from the ceiling, and then he took in the table that he’d tried to turn into his shelter. The room looked smaller from this angle, and somehow even more frightening. The meat hooks dangled from overhead like so many gleaming, blood-ravenous bats. The table mocked him as the slab on which to perform his autopsy. The floor still glistened with ice. Graham felt sick, but he was determined not to give his captors the satisfaction of seeing him puke.