Endurance

by Jack Kilborn

  Mal and Deb joined in. They yelled and yelled and yelled into the woods until their voices were raw.

  The woods didn’t answer.

  # # #

  Maria woke up when her cell door opened. She’d spent the last few hours lying on the dirt floor, drifting in and out of troubled sleep. Because she anticipated what was coming, she’d been weighing the pros and cons of suicide. But even if she had a way to end her own life, Maria ultimately knew she wouldn’t take it.

  I’m a fighter. I’m going to fight to the very end.

  Maria looked up as Harry and Eleanor entered. Harry had a cattle prod. Eleanor had a shotgun.

  “It’s punishment time,” Eleanor said. She was wearing another one of her ridiculous Jackie O style outfits, with a matching pink hat, and appeared positively jubilant. “You’ve caused quite a bit of trouble, little missy. It’s gonna take years for us to recover. But us Roosevelts are survivors. We’ll make do. Unlike this fella.”

  Eleanor tossed something at her. Something brown and squarish.

  A wallet.

  If it were possible for Maria’s heart to sink even lower, it did. She reached for it, hands shaking, and flipped it open, seeing Felix’s driver’s licence picture staring back at her.

  “Ronald et’ him up. That was all he left.”

  The tears came, fast and hard.

  “Millard’s gone out after your brother. Should be bringin’ him back soon. You know those fellas spent a whole year lookin’ for you? Year of their lives, just to find your sorry soul. What a waste.”

  Harry bent down to grab her, giggling wetly. Slobber and snot ran out the triangular hole in his face. Maria backed away, and got the cattle prod jammed into her ribs for her resistence. She doubled over, falling to her knees.

  “Now y’all are gonna walk nice and quiet like a proper lady, or Harry is gonna break your knees and carry you.”

  Do I want to be complicit in this? Maybe I should let him break my knees.

  No. What’s coming is horrible enough.

  Maria stood up. She walked, stoically, out of her cell, through the hall. The room with the thalidomide boxes was littered with the bodies of Eleanor’s children. It smelled like blood, offal, and shit. Swarms of buzzing flies hung in the air like a black cloud. Maria stared at the faces of the dead, recognizing each of her tormentors, but found no joy or peace in their destruction.

  They got what they deserved. But it won’t bring Felix back, and it won’t save me.

  At the thought of Felix, she began to cry again.

  They led Maria up the ladder, and through the house, where even more of the dead were strewn about. She marched up the stairs slowly, as if she were on her way to the gallows.

  But this is even worse than a hangman’s noose.

  Maria was frightened. More frightened than she’d been any time in the last year. Of all the horrible things they’d done to her, this would be the worst. But she refused to show Eleanor any fear. She wouldn’t beg. She wouldn’t bargain or plead. When the time came, she’d spit right in that bitch’s face.

  Finally, they reached the third floor. Maria saw the long chains, with the cuffs, attached to the metal banister.

  Strappado.

  They were going to attach the chains to her arms, then drop her twenty feet. It would dislocate her shoulders, arms, and wrists, tearing muscles, ripping tendons. Maria remembered when they did this to poor Larry, Sue’s husband. He screamed for weeks afterward.

  “I’m thinking of a number from one to ten,” Eleanor said, her bug eyes glinting. “Guess what it is?”

  Maria said nothing, refusing to play Eleanor’s sick game.

  “It’s ten,” Eleanor said. “That’s how many times we’re going to drop you. You’re a thin girl, so it shouldn’t be fatal. But I bet dollars to donuts that after the second drop, y’all will wish it was.”

  Maria cleared her throat, and hocked a good one right into Eleanor’s eyes.

  Eleanor pawed at her face, wiping the spit away. “Let’s make it eleven,” she said. “Harry, put the chains on her.”

  The harelip stuck his tongue through his nostril hole and nodded. Maria made a fist and punched Eleanor in the nose, grabbing onto the shotgun’s barrel. Before she could wrestle it away, Harry was behind her, grasping Maria in a suffocating bear hug.

  Eleanor touched her nose, saw blood on her fingers. She quickly removed a packet of QuikClot from her pocket and shoved some of the powder up her nostrils. When the bleeding had stopped, she got in Maria’s face.

  “For that, your last drop will be from your ankles.”

  Then Eleanor reached down for the chains.

  # # #

  Kelly woke up and saw the sun peeking through the trees. She was cold and damp and in the forest, and her ankle and finger hurt like crazy, but her first thought was a positive one.

  I’m still alive.

  That brief moment of elation was wiped away by panic when she saw Cam was missing. Kelly looked around the woods, but he wasn’t anywhere around.

  “Cam!” she yelled.

  She stood up, her vertebra crackling, and did a slow three hundred and sixty degree turn.

  Maybe he went to find water. Kelly couldn’t remember ever being so thirsty.

  Or maybe...

  Maybe they got him.

  That thought made her skin crawl. She didn’t want to be out here, all alone.

  “Cam! Where are you!”

  “Hey, Kelly.”

  Startled, Kelly spun around toward the voice. It was Cam. He had a weird look on his face, one that made him seem like a completely different person.

  “I was scared,” she said, walking toward him.

  “Me, too.”

  And then his shoulders drooped and he began to cry. Kelly went to him, giving him a hug, feeling his whole body shake with his sobs.

  “We’re going to get out of this,” she said, patting his back. “We’ll find my family, we’ll find your sister, and we’ll get to a road. It’s all going to be okay.”

  Cam put his arms around her. “I keep hearing the screaming.”

  Kelly wasn’t sure what he meant, but there had been a lot of screaming lately.

  “It’s over now.”

  Cam shoved her away. “No it’s not! I still hear it!”

  Kelly was a bit shocked by how hard he pushed her. He almost knocked her over.

  “Take it easy, Cam. There’s no one screaming right now.”

  He put his face in his hands. “Yes there is.”

  Kelly listened. She heard normal forest sounds, but no screaming.

  “Cam, there’s really nobody screaming.”

  Cam squatted, hugging his knees. He began to rock back and forth.

  “I hear it,” he said. “I know it’s not real, but I hear it anyway. I just want to make it stop.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Cam got a far-away look in his eyes.

  “We were fourteen,” he said. “Me and my friend. When we went into that abandoned house. The autopsy report stated he was stabbed more than a hundred and thirty times. None of them were fatal. My best friend died of blood loss. I... I can hear his screams sometimes. Not just in my dreams. But when I’m awake. Like now. Sometimes I hear him. Screaming. Begging to be let go.”

  He’s losing it. The poor guy is losing it.

  She walked up to Cam, softly put her hand on his shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault. You were locked in the closet.”

  His face drained of color. He appeared terrified. “Do you know what it’s like to hear screaming all the time, Kelly?”

  “You can’t blame yourself, Cam.” She rubbed his back.

  “Sure I can. I could have done something. I could have stopped it.”

  Kelly squatted down next to him. “You were just a kid. What were you supposed to do?”

  “I can hear the screaming right now.” Cam cast a frantic glance into the woods. “I can hear him, like he’s right next to me. Beggin
g to live. And then, after a while, begging to die.” He put his knuckle in his mouth. “It took him such a long time to die.”

  Kelly wasn’t sure what to do. He was supposed to be the adult, not her. Lost in the woods, being chased by freaks and a mountain lion, wasn’t a good time to have a nervous breakdown.

  “That’s over, Cam. Now you’re here with me. You need to be strong. And we need to go find help.”

  Cam looked at Kelly like he hadn’t realized she’d been there. “There’s no help. Not for him.” A darkness came over his face. “And not for you.”

  “Stop it, Cam. You’re scaring me.”

  “That’s what my best friend said.” Cam said. “After I tied him up.”

  Kelly felt the world start to spin. She thought Cam was just stressed, freaking out because of everything that had happened. Maybe having some kind of flashback.

  But now she knew different.

  “You killed him,” she whispered.

  Cam didn’t say anything.

  “Did you kill your friend, Cam?”

  “I blamed it on a stranger. Said I was locked in the closet. I think the police suspected me, but no one could prove anything. I wore gloves. Brought along an extra set of clothes.”

  “Why?” Kelly asked, backing away. She really didn’t want to know. She just wanted some time to get some distance between them.

  “To see if I could get away with it. And I did. But even after he died, I could still hear his screams. They were so loud, I couldn’t sleep. I tried to kill myself, but the screaming still wouldn’t go away. So I did it again, with someone else. In the institution. I thought maybe if I killed another person, my friend would have some company, and finally shut the fuck up. But that didn’t work either. So now I’m thinking something else.”

  He’s a psycho. e’sHwI need to run.

  But Kelly was too frightened to move.

  “What are you thinking, Cam?” Kelly asked, her voice cracking.

  Cam pulled a scalpel from his back pocket. “I’m thinking third time is a charm.”

  He lunged at her, grabbing Kelly’s arm, poking her in the shoulder with the blade.

  Kelly screamed like she’d never screamed before in her life.

  “That’s how he screamed,” Cam said.

  Then he poked her again.

  # # #

  Deb, who’d been in a dozen triathlons and three marathons, had never been so tired. They’d spent the entire night calling for Letti’s daughter, and she was practically hoarse. Each step she took was agonizing. Without the gel socks, her prosthetics chafed at her skin. It felt like everything below her pelvis was one giant blister, getting rubbed with sand.

  Mal looked equally dishevelled. She knew how traumatic losing a limb was, both physically and emotionally. That he’d managed to keep going, and even retain a sense of humor, showed Deb what a hell of a guy he really was.

  He’d noticed her grimacing earlier, and had offered to shoulder her suitcase with her extra legs in it.

  “I don’t need you to give me a hand,” Deb had told him.

  Mal had laughed at that, and when Deb realized what she said, she was mortified.

  “It’s okay. It makes up for my gotten off on the wrong foot comment when we met.”

  And he took her bag. Just lost a limb, and he took her bag.

  If we get out of this alive, I may have to rethink my no dating rule

  Letti was the one who appeared most distraught of all. She continued pushing forward, even with a drastic limp, stopping every minute to shout her daughter’s name.

  Deb knew it was counterproductive at this point. Kelly wasn’t answering. And undoubtedly both that cougar, and the remainder of Eleanor’s wacko family, could locate them without much difficulty. But neither she nor Mal told Letti to stop.

  If it was my kid, I wouldn’t stop either.

  Deb had no idea how far they’d travelled, because the woods all looked the same. It became a little easier as the sun came up, but after so many trees and rocks it all just blended together.

  “At least it’s a pretty view,” Mal said, coming up beside Deb. “Check out those mountains.”

  Deb rolled her eyes. “If you’ve seen one mountain, you’ve seen... oh my God.”

  “What?”

  “I have seen this mountain. I’ve seen this mountain, from this very spot.”

  Deb stopped, looking around. She knew, as long as she lived, she’d always remember this spot.

  This is where the mountain lion attacked me. I crawled through this area, with two broken legs.

  “What are you saying, Deb?”

  “Up ahead, just around that bend. The cliff.”

  “The one you...?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So there’s a road around here. Right?”

  Deb shook her head. “I had a Jeep. I’d taken it down a trail. The trail is two miles away, but the main road is five more miles.”

  “Seven miles? That’s a long hike. Do you think you can still find the trail?”

  “I don’t have to. After my accident, the county built a lookout platform on top of the mountain I fell from. There might be someone there right now. If not, they for sure have a radio. Direct line to the ranger station.”

  Mal was nodding enthusiastically. “We could contact them, they’d pick us up.”

  They’d tried using Mal’s phone to call for help, but had led nowhere. Even though they found a cell signal and managed to contact the authorities, no one knew where the Rushmore Inn was. Apparently, triangulating a cell phone signal only worked when there were multiple cell towers. Out here, there was only one, and no way to pinpoint their location.

  Mal had argued with various people, and managed to get the forest rangers to agree to send out a helicopter and look for them.

  They hadn’t seen any helicopter. And shortly after that conversation, Mal’s battery died.

  He attempted it once more, digging the phone out of his pocket. It wouldn’t even power on. Deb tried taking out the battery, rubbing some saliva on the contact points—a trick that often worked on flashlight batteries. It didn’t work on cell phones.

  “No problem,” Mal said. “We’ll just get to the lookout tower.”

  That’s when they heard the scream.

  It was so far away, it echoed. But Deb could tell it was from a girl.

  “It’s Kelly,” Letti said, limping up to them. “Kelly! Kelly, it’s Mom!”

  If that was Kelly, she didn’t respond.

  “KELLY!”

  “Letti,” Mal said, touching her arm. “We’re near a ranger lookout station. We can get help.”

  If Letti heard him, she didn’t show it. Instead, she went limping off into the woods.

  “Letti!” Mal yelled after her. “We can get help!”

  The forest swallowed her up.

  “Should we go after her?” Mal asked.

  Deb shook her head. “We know our location. There’s a ranger station nearby. The best way we can help her is to get to the authorities.”

  “How far is this station?”

  “Maybe a few hundred yards. But...”

  “But what?”

  “It’s about seventy feet up the mountain, Mal.”

  “It’s a lookout tower, right? Maybe if we get to the base of the mountain, they’ll see us.”

  Deb agreed it was their best shot. “Okay. Let’s go.”

  Having a plan reenergized Deb, and she was able to ignore the pain in her legs. But when they finally reached the mountain, she was hit by a wave of vertigo and had to sit down.

  It was massive. A giant shelf of solid, grayish-tan rock. There were some outcroppings, a few seams, a patch of dirt here and there where some bushes managed to take root. But it was steeper than she remembered, and bigger.

  The old memories came stomping back. She could see the sheer place she slipped off of. The spot where she landed. The mountain bent and tilted in her vision like it was falling on top of Deb, about to
bury her forever.

  “There’s the base,” Mal said, pointing at a tiny cabin perched on a shelf of the mountainside. “Hey! We’re down here!”

  He waved his arms, trying to get a response.

  No response came.

  Mal walked to the mountainside, where the rock met the soil. He placed a foot on the stone, tried for a handhold, and got up about eight inches before slipping back down.

  It was impossible to mountain climb in the leather dress shoes he wore. And it was doubly impossible to climb with only one hand.

  Mal came back over to her, his expression grim. She knew what he was thinking.

  “I know,” Deb said. “But I can’t.”

  “You’re superwoman, remember? You’ve even got your mountain climbing legs.”

  Mal patted the suitcase. Deb rubbed her face with her hands.

  “You don’t understand, Mal.”

  “Deb, it’s okay to be scared. But you can do this. I’ve seen how you can handle yourself.”

  “Mal...”

  “The other time, it was just a fluke. A freak accident. You can make it this time. You can—”

  “It wasn’t an accident!” Deb said, harsher than she meant to. “It was my fault!”

  Mal waited. Deb took a big breath, and sighed.

  Time to tell the truth.

  “I was cocky,” she began. “I knew I was a good climber. I knew I could climb this mountain with my eyes closed. So I thought I’d challenge myself. Remember I told you I was hammering in my first pinion when I started to slide?”

  Mal nodded.

  “Look up there.” She pointed at the mountain. “See that angled shelf? That’s where I fell from. I should have used two or three pinions just to get up to that point. But I was cocky.”

  “So when you tried to hammer in your first pinion the rock gave way...”

  “Don’t you get it, Mal? I didn’t use any pinions. No ropes. No harnesses. No helmet. I tried to free climb. And I did it without a partner, and without telling anyone where I was. I came here alone, with no gear. It was my own goddamn fault I fell. Not an accident. The rock didn’t give way. I just slipped. It was pure stupidity. I was a fucking fool.”