But it would if I wasn’t strong enough.
Nora’s heel tapped up and down against the top, showing she was ready. Nor more time for gloomy thoughts; now I had to do my part.
I reached into the vent, grabbed Nora and locked my arms around her legs. Keeping my feet well apart, I stood tight against the wall so that I could use the strength in my thighs to move backwards.
‘Take the strain’ – isn’t that the tug-of-war command? I pulled as hard as I could, arched my back and adjusted my legs to lever myself away from the wall. My hands slipped off Nora’s pants and I lost my grip. I circled my arms higher above her knees and tried again, hoping the tighter grip wouldn’t hurt her. If it did, too bad. With luck, she wouldn’t have to endure it for long.
Still nothing happened. I heaved until my biceps felt ready to tear. There was no movement in front of me, no sliding of bodies.
Then a little movement; not my imagination, but real.
It took forever – really just a couple of minutes – before Nora’s feet and legs emerged from the hole. I adjusted my grip again, this time circling her waist. More mighty pulls and protesting muscle groups and she was out all the way to her chest. I got my feet up on the wall and made a last, crucial effort.
Like a cork escaping a bottle, Nora popped out.
I stumbled under the sudden weight and fell backwards onto the ground. The back of my head thunked against the log pile and I almost screamed. Nora clattered down on top of me, like ten sacks of potatoes all at once, knocking the breath out of me. Stunned and winded, I moaned and gasped for air. Nora rolled off me and I could breathe again. I opened my eyes and saw Toby’s head and shoulders sticking out of the vent above me.
Nora quickly got up and helped me back on my feet. Together we yanked Toby’s arms all the way out and hauled him to the ground. He lay trembling in front of us, his shirt soaked with sweat and chest heaving. There were dark lines under his eyes and his voice shook when he spoke.
“I knew you wouldn’t leave me in there.”
“Are you okay?” Nora asked.
“I will be soon, don’t worry. Just need a breather. Leave me here a while. Go help Wheeler. I could hear him right behind me.”
I turned and shone the flashlight into the vent. A face stared back at me. Not Wheeler’s. It was someone else that Toby had heard so close behind him.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Wheeler watched as Toby’s feet disappeared into the vent and nearly burst out laughing. That overweight little shit would never make it. He’d probably get stuck after two minutes of shifting his fat ass around. So be it. No big loss.
It was a lot quieter in here with the others gone. Now he could do some thinking. He pulled out the bottle of Croatian brandy he’d stuffed into his pocket earlier and unscrewed the top. The sixty per cent alcohol hit the back of his throat like an express train. He swallowed it down hungrily, willing it into his bloodstream.
Energised by the hard liquor, he stood up and looked around. In half an hour he was supposed to open the safe room door and let Sanders’ mob inside. He’d be ready for them.
He picked up his rifle and checked it thoroughly. It was his personal favourite, the .308 calibre Thompson/Center Encore, easily powerful enough to stop a bull moose in full charge. Soon it would be stopping those mindless morons out there, once and for all. Sanders and Peterman, and Mackie too, had shown they were plenty stupid enough to come at him. Only Toby and the whinging teens had stopped Wheeler from firing. He’d got rid of them into the vent, and from now on, there’d be no one around to prevent him from using the stopping power he held in his hands. Maybe he’d even use the hunting knife he’d strapped to his leg. That would be fun.
Until then, there was nothing to do but wait. He sat on the bed with his back propped against the wall and swallowed the liquor down two or three mouthfuls at a time. Soon the bottle was empty. He tossed it aside and got up, staggering a little. The alcohol had made him unsteady on his feet. He plonked himself at the small desk beneath the monitor and squinted at the screen.
Hah! He cackled loudly at the sight before him. Sanders and the rest of them were still trying to get in, taking turns battering the door. Were these numbnuts ever going to realise they were wasting their time? Even hours of robotic persistency wasn’t going to get them through Kevlar-coated steel plating. He shook his head in mocking disbelief. They’d never give up, of course.
He watched them for a while then switched on the intercom. He’d have some fun while they sweated and worked.
“Stupid, brainless idiots! Morons!”
They gave no sign that they’d heard him. He added whatever insults popped into his head, almost spitting them into the microphone.
“Hey Sanders, getting too weak to swing that axe? You big pussy!”
Suddenly Sanders dropped the axe. All six of them turned away from the door and began inspecting walls and ceiling. What were they looking for? Their eyes locked on the light fixture on the ceiling. Sanders stepped closer and looked right into the video screen.
Wheeler jerked his head back involuntarily. The bastards had somehow located the camera and speaker hidden in the fixture. Sanders stood eerily still, as if frozen in place, staring unblinkingly into the monitor. Wheeler felt Sanders looking straight at him – right into his eyes, right into his soul.
It was Peterman who spoke. “Mr. Wheeler, please let us in.”
“Kiss my ass, you decrepit little shit!” Wheeler snatched at the switch and flicked the audio off. “Spare me the crap,” he said to the mouths still moving on screen.
He laughed again to relieve his tension. They were trying to reason with him, to make it sound like they remained rational. “Come out and join us, it’s so lovely being brain dead,” he mimicked. Yeah, right. He’d give them what they wanted soon enough, but when he opened the door it wouldn’t be to join their number. He fancied lessening it right there and then.
One by one the six of them approached the camera and said something. Wheeler enlarged the picture and studied each one closely. Marie was hobbling so badly she was barely able to walk and had to keep her hands on the walls for support. Her damaged leg was definitely broken. God, the pain she must be going through! If she lunged for him, putting a big, fat cartridge through her heart would be a mercy killing.
He was damned annoyed at losing her and Peterman after all these years. They knew exactly how he liked this place run and were discreet when he brought certain young women up here. In fact, they knew all his dirty little secrets. It might not be a bad idea after all to get rid of them both, and start fresh with a younger, more compliant couple. Maybe even a couple of young female lookers. This time, the non-disclosure agreements would be tighter than a clam’s ass.
Now Ned Mackie mouthed something at him. Wheeler couldn’t believe how quickly this man had cracked under the strain of losing Abby. He’d always been a preachy misery guts but had become a sulking wreck before jumping to the other side. An absolute traitor – all because that mousey little slut of his had gone chasing after meathead Brett Sanders. She’d buzzed around Sanders like a fly on shit and paid the price. Sanders himself was the biggest disappointment. For all the muscles, he’d been a total pussy when he’d gone up against whatever it was inside that rock.
Wheeler looked away from the screen. Bringing this bunch of nobodies up here to that damned meteorite had turned out to be a mistake. They’d all, every one of them, let him down. Now he’d have to get rid of these guinea pigs and start over.
That included fat Toby and the two annoying teen twins.
First though, he’d fix the pack of whacked-out zombies outside the door. He picked up the rifle and his finger itched to pull the trigger and solve the ‘problems’ out there, one by one. Sure, cops would ask a lot of meddling questions afterwards. That’s exactly what lawyers were for, and he had the best.
They say time heals all wounds. It sure clears up all messes. All publicity is good publicity; he’d get his g
hostwriter to produce a bestselling book with that exact title.
He checked his watch and decided he’d waited long enough for the other three to get out of the vent. As soon as they came back inside the house, they’d provide the perfect distraction for the zombie fuckers to go chasing. Or maybe they’d got stuck in the vent, squealing like rats in a sewer pipe.
His head was still fuzzy from the hard liquor and he wanted something to eat. He opened the storage cabinets, looking for an energy bar, but could only find self-heating soup packs and freeze-dried meals. Disgusted, he slammed a metal door so hard it bounced back and hit him in the face. He jerked backwards, making his head swim, lost his balance and fell on the floor in a heap.
Shouldn’t have had all that liquor.
He scrambled to his feet and stuck his head into the vent. Dust and stink filled his nostrils. No way was he ever getting in there. Much better to grab the rifle, open the safe room door, and assert his authority in his own house. He took a last look at the monitor to see what the six morons outside were at now.
They were gone.
“What the hell?”
He sat at the desk and tapped the keyboard until the screen split into multiple images from concealed cameras in various rooms. The images were too small to discern much so he enlarged each one in turn, looking for signs of Sanders’ group. First the office, then the kitchen, dining room, downstairs hallway, and living room. That bag of broken bones Marie was doing something irrelevant in the kitchen. Abby and Georgia were in the front hall, trying to break into the gun cabinet using their bare hands.
“Good luck with those steel bolts, you bitches!”
Sanders, Ned Mackie and Peterman were in the living room, milling around the big, raised fireplace. In the summer months it was kept screened and unlit but now Sanders and Mackie stood at either side, feeding wood into a raging fire. Ignoring all the broken fencing lying around, Sanders used his axe to chop up one of the antique chairs. As soon as he was done, he got to work on another. Peterman manipulated the long fire tongs to stoke the flames higher.
Raw anger welled up in Wheeler as he watched the wanton vandalism. His jaw clenched when Peterman gathered up an armful of books from the floor and tossed them into the fire. Mackie followed suit and soon there was a large mound of burning books in the fireplace. Sanders smashed an oil painting over his knee and added the pieces to the flames. They were making a massive fire out of his priceless collections. What the hell was going on?
The answer came to him through the liquor fog in his head. They knew they were being watched from the safe room and were giving Wheeler the choice between seeing his property go up in smoke or coming out and doing something about it. Given enough time they might even set the whole house on fire and, out here in the wilderness, he had no automatic sprinklers in the rooms. In which case his choice would then be; get buried alive under a small mountain of collapsed lumber or emerge from the safe room while there was still time.
He had to give the bastards credit. It was pretty ruthless. Peterman had probably come up with the idea, though Georgia also knew how much value Wheeler put on his possessions. They all did.
He zoomed in the image and watched as Peterman picked up another armful of books from the floor. Wheeler knew these particular books by sight; a set of hundred and thirty year-old volumes he’d had rebound in green morocco leather by a top British binder. There were only a few other complete sets in existence. Peterman threw them in the fire then picked up another rare book and ripped out a handful of pages. He scrunched them up and added them to the flames. This went on until there were no pages left, just the empty binding which he threw in last. Sanders came over with another smashed painting. Soon it was smoking on top of the red, fiery mound.
Wheeler bowed his head, weak and drained. They’d found a way to actually hurt him. The antiques and paintings they were destroying were irreplaceable, and they weren’t going to stop. He was being violated, raped. They had no right to do this to him!
He wiped sweat-soaked palms on his shirt front. His breathing quickened and the stale air in the safe room suddenly seemed oxygen-less. A tight ball of fury hardened and swelled in his chest. He wiped his moist face and blinked hard, tried to clear his fuzzy head, and came to an intractable, unalterable conclusion.
I won’t let them do this to me. I’ll kill the bastards first.
He couldn’t watch anymore. Molten, volcanic rage surged up in him, rising to choke his throat, and he smashed the butt of the rifle into the monitor screen. The glass shattered into fragments and instantly the screen went blank.
Whether they came at him or stayed back no longer made any difference. He hoped they’d attack him and then he wouldn’t have to lie about being forced to shoot to defend himself. It would be sheer joy to put slugs in each of these fuckers. The cops could go to hell. His personal lawyers would fix it later in court.
He shouldered the rifle and jabbed his finger into the keypad on the wall, punching the number sequence in quick succession. Four familiar beeps sounded and the door slowly, almost gracefully, slid open.
* * *
The hallway was empty, just like the monitor had shown. Sanders had completely destroyed the bookcase that had concealed the safe room door. Broken shelves, shattered porcelain and shards of glass were strewn across the polished floor. A family photograph lay in the mess, showing Wheeler’s parents sitting proudly on either side of their blonde, curly-haired only child. A dirty boot print now obscured his mother’s face. Wheeler’s bloodless knuckles tightened around the rifle. He could feel his heart ready to explode in his chest.
He marched down the hall to the living room. Flame light flickered across the varnished, open door. He raised his rifle to a firing position and strode inside.
Ned Mackie and Peterman stood at the fireplace. Between them, the mound of burning books and paintings was flaring brightly. When Wheeler came in they turned their attention to him in an eerie, simultaneous slow motion.
“Take your filthy hands off my property,” Wheeler screamed.
Neither man flinched. They stepped toward him and Wheeler pointed the rifle at Peterman first. “Okay, if that’s how you want it.” These shit-for-brains were giving him the excuse he needed. No one could blame him for self defence. He aimed at Peterman’s chest and tightened his finger on the trigger. At the last second, something moved at the corner of his eye and he swung around.
Sanders ran at him, the axe raised and ready to strike. Where had he been hiding? It didn’t matter now. He’d be the first to die. Wheeler peered down the muzzle and took careful aim at Sanders’ heart. No mistakes this time. With Sanders’ chest in the crosshairs, Wheeler fired.
Except, his finger wouldn’t move. He couldn’t pull the trigger. Instead, he watched himself lower the rifle and point the barrel at the floor. His hands lost most of their grip and he almost dropped the weapon completely. He tried to raise it again, but his arms wouldn’t obey him, wouldn’t make the movement.
Through the fog in Wheeler’s head came a lightning bolt of fear. His legs were still responsive and he stepped back until he was standing in front of the fireplace, the heat of the blazing bonfire on his back. Unable to retreat further, he tried to dodge right or left, but now his feet were leaden too and refused to move.
A terrible realisation hit home; this had been a trap all along. He was their primary target and they’d baited him perfectly by doing the one thing that would get him to charge out of the safe room, straight into the middle of them.
Peterman and Mackie approached in his peripheral vision but he couldn’t stop looking at Sanders.
The big man’s voice spoke in Wheeler’s head. “Give me the rifle.”
Wheeler pushed the voice away with a surge of anger. In seconds it returned.
“Give it to me or I will take it.”
Sanders stood right in front of him and raised the axe higher in his two hands, Wheeler’s eyes transfixed on the gleaming blade. He made a despera
te attempt to escape but he couldn’t move; by now the weird paralysis had crept up his legs to his waist. The voice in his head spoke again.
“Drop the rifle or I will kill you.”
Wheeler found he could still speak. “Okay. Here, take it.”
He muttered the words through stiff lips and tried to manipulate the weapon into a firing position, but his hands were clumsy clubs and there was no way he could pull the trigger. They’d made him powerless to strike back. A tidal wave of frustration surged through him like magma rising to erupt.
“No,” he screamed aloud, “You won’t get it. I decide what happens around here.”
With a supreme effort, he turned his body around, pushed his arms straight out as hard as he could, and watched the rifle clatter into the roaring flames at the back of the fireplace. They wouldn’t get it there.
The action released something inside his head that had been locked up tight, and he could move freely again. Sanders swung the axe through the air. With a split second to spare, Wheeler twisted to his left and evaded the blade.
He ran back across the room to the doorway and dived through it, slamming the door after him. On the other side, the heavy thud of the axe shook the thick wood panelling. Sanders must have thrown it.
Wheeler looked around, expecting Abby Mackie and Georgia to be standing in the shadows, ready to plunge a knife into his belly. There was no one there. The front door was wide open but that was where the two women had been and he suspected another trap. As soon as Sanders prised the axe out of the door he’d come out, so staying in the hallway was not an option. The back exit was his best bet. Wheeler ran to the kitchen, flung open the door and stopped dead in his tracks.
His eyes took in a totally unexpected scene. Marie and Abby sat at the table, food spread out in front of them, or at least an assortment of basic items they’d taken from cupboards and fridge. Loaves of bread, a slab of butter, block of cheese, even a packet of uncooked sausages. All of it sat on the bare tabletop – they hadn’t bothered with cutlery or plates but were eating with their fingers, straight off the table.
Uninvited Page 22
