by Jack Kilborn
Mal saw she was serious, and he nodded. Eleanor let her eyes, and her hand, trail down his naked body.
“I see that you keep in shape,” she said, drawing a circle around his belly button with her finger. “That’s good.” Then her hand brushed over his penis, which was almost as awful as being stabbed with the scalpel.
Mal swallowed, biting back fear. “If you want money...”
“We have all the money we need, Mr. Deiter. But thank you for offering.”
“Applying styptic to control bleeding,” Jimmy said. Mal watched him take a pinch of white powder and press it into his thigh wounds.
He uttered, “Son of a...” but managed to stop himself before bitch came out.
“Self-control,” Eleanor said, tying a medical face mask across her mouth and nose. “I admire that in a man.”
“What do you want?” Mal said through gritted teeth.
“What I want, Mr. Deiter, is the same thing I’ve wanted for forty years, from the first time I felt my eldest child George kick inside my womb.” She leaned in closer. “I want one of my sons to become President of the United States.”
Mal realized this wasn’t some sort of kidnapping scheme, or an attempt to frighten him. Eleanor wasn’t just eccentric. She was truly out of her goddamn mind.
“All forty-three of our Presidents carry the royal bloodline.” Eleanor said. “My family has the very same bloodline, Mr. Deiter. We’re Roosevelts. And one day, another Roosevelt will sit in the Oval Office.”
Mal pulled at his straps, hard as he could. They didn’t give an inch.
“Did you know the term blue blood was applied to nobility because those of royal descent tended to have fairer skin, which allowed blue veins to show through?” Eleanor asked. “While having royal blood makes someone like me genetically superior to someone like you, such purity does come with its particular challenges. Anemia and hemophilia are two of them. Phocomelia. Amelia. Porphyria. Achromia. Scoliosis. Alopecia. Thrombocytopenia.”
Insanity, Mal mentally added.
“These have plagued royal families for generations. My sons bear these burdens heroically, as nobility should. But they require regular transfusions in order to remain healthy. Y’all can’t buy blood at the corner market, Mr. Deiter. Especially not the rare type we need. When one of my boys becomes President, we’ll no doubt have unlimited access to the nation’s blood banks. In the meantime, the only way for me to get a regular supply of fresh blood is to acquire it myself.”
“You want my blood,” Mal stated.
“Goodness no, Mr. Deiter. Your lady friend, Deborah, has the type we require. Yours is no good to us. But you can still be useful. My son Jimmy doesn’t have any political aspirations, unfortunately. But he does hope to one day become a doctor. That’s a noble calling in itself. And for that, he needs a lot of practice.”
Jimmy stuck his face next to Mal’s. The whites of his eyes were bloodshot.
“Today I’m going to be practicing amputation. I’m gonna start with your left hand.”
For the first time in his adult life, Mal felt like whimpering. He managed to get out, “Please, don’t.”
“You’re a strong man, Mr. Deiter,” Eleanor said. “Jimmy’s patients don’t normally last for more than four or five operations. The record is nine. I bet a healthy young specimen such as you can beat that record.”
Jimmy picked up the bone saw from the cart of instruments. “I’m sorry, but we don’t have any anesthetic.”
Jimmy pulled the face mask up over his nose. Then he put something in his ears. Eleanor did the same.
Ear plugs. To block out my screaming.
“Please,” Mal said, even though he wasn’t heard. “Please don’t.”
“Don’t forget your gloves, Jimmy!” Eleanor yelled. “We don’t want you accidentally cutting yourself!”
Jimmy nodded, putting on a pair of blood-stained oven mitts. Then he picked up a scalpel, barely able to grip it. Eleanor held the camcorder.
“Please...”
The blade touched Mal’s arm.
“Knock me out,” Mal said. “For god’s sake, knock me—”
Then the cutting began, and Mal didn’t say anything else coherent.
# # #
When Letti opened her eyes, she heard a man screaming.
What’s going on?
She looked around, saw she was in some sort of cell. Bare, concrete walls, like a basement. Dirt floor. Completely empty, except for a water pump and a filthy plastic bucket.
Letti sat up. “Kelly! Florence! Are you there!”
“Mom!”
“Kelly!”
Letti rushed to the metal door. Locked.
“Kelly! Are you okay?”
“Mom, we have to be quiet.”
“Kelly, what’s—”
“Please, Mom! Don’t talk anymore! They hurt you if you talk!”
Her daughter sounded terrified. And rightfully so, if she was locked up like Letti was.
The man’s screaming rose in pitch, until it became a single high note that Letti felt in her molars.
What are they doing to him?
“Kelly, hang in there, baby. I’m coming.”
Letti took a step back from the door. It looked formidable, but it also looked old. Letti could squat lift over five hundred pounds, and she had no doubt she could squat double that with her daughter in danger. She reared back, letting the urgency of the situation take her, and drove her bare foot into the door.
It clanged, and she felt the reverberation all the way to her coccyx.
Letti kicked it again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
The door wasn’t giving up, but neither was she. Letti took a few steps back, giving her leg a rest, getting ready to charge it with her shoulder.
Then the door swung open.
Standing there, in some kind of padded armor, was the biggest man Letti had ever seen. He was more than a foot taller than she was. Strands of long gray hair hung around his shoulders, and poked through the grill of the football helmet he wore.
Letti lowered her shoulder and charged him, aiming at the giant’s waist, grunting in satisfaction when she pushed him back several steps.
Just a bit more, and I’ll be out of the cell. Then—
Letti felt a knife stick her between the shoulder blades.
She dropped onto her face, crying out in agony. Then the pain stopped, and she realized it wasn’t a knife at all. The giant was pinning her down with something.
Letti craned her neck around. Saw the stick he held, blue electric sparks crackling at the tip.
A cattle prod.
“Youse a fighter,” the man said. He had a voice like steak sizzling on a hot pan. “I likes fighters.”
He juiced her again, and Letti clenched her teeth, refusing to cry out, refusing to let Kelly hear her pain.
Finally, mercifully, the current stopped. Letti could feel the burn mark on her spine. The giant bent down, resting his knee on her neck, forcing her face into the dirt.
“Now y’all better be quiet,” he said, “else I’ll stick this prod someplace you won’t like.”
Letti was hurt, but more angry than scared.
“I’ll kill you if you so much as touch my daughter...”
The giant laughed. “Touch your daughter? Little lady, I’m gonna use up both you and your daughter ‘till there ain’t nothin’ left. Ol’ Millard is gonna show you things you never done dreamed of. And you both gonna be mommas to some a’ my babies.”
With his free hand, the man scooped up dirt and forced it between Letti’s lips.
“I own y’all now,” he said. “’N I can do whatever I want with that which is my property. Now keep yer trap shut. I gotta go deal with somethin’.”
Millard got off her neck and walked out, so confident in his superiority he showed Letti his back. He locked the door when he left.
Letti sat up, spitting out dirt, clenching and unclenching her fists.
“One more chance, asshole,” she said to the empty cell. “Give me one more chance. You won’t knock me down again.”
# # #
When Maria opened her eyes, she was hugging the German Shepherd, burying her face in his muzzle. For the first time in a year, she had a sliver of hope.
However, the hope was fading fast. The door was the same as the one in her cell; solid metal with a heavy lock. Even if she had all day and a sledgehammer, she wouldn’t be able to get through it. Eleanor had once mentioned these underground rooms were once the slave quarters for a tobacco farm.
“Not a single slave ever escaped in the decades it operated. Those that tried were beaten, or punished with strappado.”
No, rather than focus on escaping, Maria needed to prepare herself when they came back for her. And they had to come back, eventually. They needed the transfusion machine to survive.
The machine.
Without it, they’ll die.
Maria let go of JD and stood up, staring at the infernal device. She unplugged it from the extension cord snaking under the door, then squatted down and grabbed the bottom. With a quick lift, she upended the device, grinning as the casing split open.
But she wasn’t finished. She pulled off the case and tore into its innards, pulling out parts and wires. Picking up a piece of the housing, she used it as a club, smashing and smashing until every single part was broken. Then she turned her fury on the chair, the one they strapped her and countless others onto in order to bleed them. Maria broke that into bits as well, half-crying and half-laughing and entirely hysterical.
When she finished, and it lay in ruins around her, she collapsed, hugging her knees, grinning even as the tears streamed down her face.
JD came over, offered his paw.
She held him again, the act of petting an animal allowing her to calm down, to come back to reality.
Then she heard the door lock snick open.
JD pulled from her arms, launching himself at the man as the door opened. Maria crab-walked backwards, looking for the cattle prod, hoping that the person at the door wasn’t—
Millard.
He was the biggest, and meanest, of all Eleanor’s children. At least seven feet tall, with broad shoulders and thick wrists. His hair was white, shoulder length, scraggly. And like the others, his eyes were bloodshot all the time, a symptom of one of his many conditions.
Millard went far beyond the casual sadism of George, Dwight, and Teddy, or the simple-minded brutishness of Harry, Grover, and Calvin. Millard was a psychotic animal. He enjoyed hurting things. He lived for it. So much so, that his brothers were all afraid of him. Maria had heard that Millard hunted deer with a knife, and then cut off their legs, one at a time, to see how far they could run. He was the only son Eleanor wouldn’t sleep with.
Maria had scars from Millard. She’d only given him three transfusions, and each time he’d come up with new ways to inflict pain during the procedure. Thumbtacks and witch hazel. Matches. A cheese grater and a salt shaker. Nothing that would harm her seriously, but would hurt worse than anything in the world.
As Millard stomped into the room, JD threw himself at the gigantic man, aiming for the cattle prod clenched in Millard’s hand. But Millard seemed fatter than usual, and Maria quickly spotted why.
He’s wearing the Ronald suit.
The Ronald suit was made of thick bands of foam. It was used when Millard was dealing with Ronald—no one else had the guts to. There was no way JD would be able to bite through the padding. Even Millard’s head was protected, in a black football helmet with a metal grid faceplate, crude white skulls painted on each side.
Maria glanced at her cattle prod, knowing it would be ineffective.
I can’t fight him. I have to run.
Millard lifted up his arm, and a hundred and twenty pounds of dog hung from his padded wrist, refusing to let go. The giant punched the Shepherd in the ribs, once, and again. But JD hung on like a champion.
Maria ran at them, holding the cattle prod in front of her like a fencing sword. She thrust it up high, connecting with Millard’s faceplate.
Sparks flew. Millard yanked the prod from her but stumbled to the side, allowing an open path to the doorway.
“JD! Come!”
On command JD released the giant’s arm. He shot through the door just as she was slamming it on Millard. Incredibly, the key was on a key ring and still in the lock—Millard must not have had any pockets in the Ronald suit. Maria turned the key, locking him in, and then backed away from the door.
It shook, but didn’t open. Millard was trapped.
“Nice job, JD. JD?”
Maria looked around. The dog had taken off.
“JD!” she called. “Come!”
Frantic thoughts invaded her mind.
Did I leave him in there with Millard?
No. He got out. I know he got out.
So where is he?
“JD!”
Maria had never seen the hallways down here; they always put a hood on her when she was out of her cell. The corridor walls were stone and concrete, crumbling with age. The floors were dirt. Light came from bare bulbs, hanging from the ceiling by extension cords. The hallway itself was actually more like a tunnel, curving left and right with no logical direction.
“JD!” Maria yelled again. She knew she was due for a complete mental breakdown. A physical one as well—having that freak blood in her always made her woozy afterward. But she had to stay strong, had to keep going. Had to capitalize on the opportunity.
“JD!” she implored, begging the universe for the dog to respond.
“Who’s calling for my dog?”
It was a woman’s voice, coming from farther down the hall. Maria moved slowly, listening for noises and constantly checking behind her. When she rounded a bend, she saw JD, scratching away at a cell door.
“JD! Good boy!” She patted him on the head.
“Who’s there?”
“I’m Maria,” she told the woman in the cell. “Is JD your dog?”
“Yeah. Who are you?”
“I’m a prisoner here. Like you. Hold on, let me find the right key.”
Maria fussed with Millard’s key ring, finding the one for the cell on the third try. Upon opening the door, the dog rushed in, licking at the woman’s legs.
She was tall, muscular. A bit dirty, but not a long-time guest.
“I owe your dog several steaks. He saved my—”
“Are those keys?”
Maria nodded. The woman pulled them from Maria’s hands and rushed past.
“Hold on,” Maria said, hurrying after her. “We need to talk.”
“I need to find my daughter. She’s locked up in one of these rooms.”
“We’ll find her,” Maria said. “But you need to know what we’re dealing with here.”
“I know what we’re dealing with. Some real sicko freaks. Kelly! Can you hear me?”
“Mom!”
Kelly’s mother rushed to the next cell door, fussing with the lock.
“Which key is it? Which goddamn key?”
Maria put a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Lady, you need to calm down a bit.”
“Calm down? Do you know what these people have done to us?”
Maria rested her hand on the keys. “Look at me. I’ve been here a year. I know what these people can do. And if you don’t listen to me, we aren’t going to get out of here alive.”
The woman looked like she was about ready to throw a punch, and Maria wondered if she just should get the hell out of there, leave them behind.
But the punch didn’t come. Instead, the woman managed to calm herself down. “I’m Letti. Thank you for opening my door. Can you help me with this one?”
Maria nodded, finding the right key. When she unlocked it, there was an intense mother/daughter/dog reunion. Maria was touched. She hadn’t seen a normal pe
rson since she’d been abducted, and certainly hadn’t felt love like she was currently witnessing. But they needed to get going. There were other prisoners. And Eleanor had guns, and more psycho children.
A lot more.
“We need to go,” she said.
Letti seemed reluctant to break the embrace with her daughter, but she did so. “Kelly, this is Maria. She just saved out asses.”
“After JD saved mine,” Maria said.
Kelly offered Maria her hand. She looked a lot like her mother.
“There are others down here,” Kelly said. “A pregnant woman, and a boy named Cam. I think he’s your brother.”
Maria’s breath caught. “Did... did you say Cam?” Without waiting for an answer, Maria cupped her hands to her mouth and yelled, “Cam!”
“Maria!”
Sprinting across the hall, Maria unlocked the next cell door she came to. Seeing Cam—her brother Cam—standing there with a lopsided grin on his face, turned her tear ducts into faucets.
When she hugged him, it was so tight he yelped. Maria threatened to fall apart, the sensation was so overwhelming. For a moment this living nightmare faded away, replaced by happy, childhood memories of safety, security, and love.
“We found you,” Cam said. “Me and Felix. We’ve been looking all year.”
Maria held Cam at arm’s length, her eyes getting wide. “Felix? He’s here?”
“They took him to see a guy named Ronald.”
Ronald? Oh, no...
“Ronald’s not a guy,” Maria said. “He’s a—”
“Someone help me!”
The female voice came from one cell over. Maria reluctantly let go of Cam and hurried to the next door. The cell’s occupant was older, late thirties, dressed in a tattered house dress. Her hair was long, and just as matted as Maria guessed her own hair to be. The bump on her belly was large enough for her to be in her last trimester.
“Oh, thank God,” the woman said, falling to her knees and weeping. “I’ve been praying for so long to get rescued.”
But Maria wasn’t paying attention. She was thinking of Felix, with Ronald.
I need to get out of here. I need to help him.
“What’s your name?” Letti asked the woman.
