Dead Lines [911]

by Grace Hamilton

A dog barked and a jolt of fear-adrenaline kicked her body into motion almost without conscious thought. They were below her, and therefore she fled upward. It didn’t make the most sense, but she was running blind, like an animal on pure instinct.

  From the stairwell behind her, she heard men shouting and sensed the bouncing beams of flashlights. The dog began barking loudly again and the noise boomed up the stairs. Her breathing was loud in her ears and her armpits ran damp with sweat. Still, she ran towards the other end of the hall, past rows of doors leading to abandoned offices and conference rooms. A second set of fire stairs was located at the far end, and hopefully her pursuers hadn’t already cut her off there.

  She felt Doctor Marr would be merciful once she was captured, but she knew the men, the faithful who were chasing her, would be rough and quick to seek violence at even the slightest provocation. They were zealots dealing with a heretic, and would therefore feel justified in taking any action to protect their religion.

  Her feet slapped the floor hard as she raced, her heart pounding painfully in her chest, breath already ragged from exertion. Behind her, the pursuers burst through the door—three angry men with beards and ballcaps dressed in street clothes, but one of them had a chase dog... one of the big Alsatians that patrolled the perimeter of Marr’s compound, and the beast was enraged. Hot ropes of saliva broke free of its snarling muzzle and splashed the worn, dirty carpet of the hallway.

  The man she feared the most, Marr’s most ardent disciple, Gruber, was one of the three men. Looking back, she glanced down the hall and locked eyes with Gruber. The man appeared furious, his face red and his veins exposed and bulging. He pointed at her, eyes aflame with hate, and screamed at the dog handler to let the animal go.

  The snarling dog lunged forward and began sprinting down the hall after Ava. She reached the landing door to the fire stairs and flung it open. The animal hurtled down the hallway after her, but in the next moment she was through the door and on the landing. Below her, several flashlight beams cut through the dark and she heard a second group of men running up the stairwell.

  Without thinking, she turned and raced upward, following the cement steps to the third floor. The narrow staircase stank of dust and age and mildew, choking her as she breathed in, panting from the intense exertion. Turning a corner in the steps, she finally came to the top landing.

  On one side stood a heavy metal fire door leading into the third story of the decrepit factory, and on the other a chain link gate blocked the roof access.

  Desperate, Casey’s limp and lifeless body burned into her mind’s eye, Ava threw herself against the chain link gate but bounced backward as it refused to open, the lock holding tight, its two-piece U-shaped latches caught by a massive Master lock padlock. She half sobbed and half snarled in frustration and shook the wire fencing with impotent rage.

  Below her, there was more shouting, and her blood ran cold as the dog began barking inside of the stairwell. It was following her scent right up the steps. She had moments, maybe less. Spinning, she threw herself at the door to the third floor of the building and hauled it open. Looking over her shoulder as she leapt through, she saw the animal scrambling up the last few stairs. Its nails clicked on the cement as it frantically raced after her.

  Snatching the edge of the door as she went through, she spun and threw her shoulder against it, shoving hard. On the other side, the eighty pound animal hit the door like a missile, and it shuddered under the impact. Terror gave her strength and she continued pushing it closed. The snarling muzzle and terrible eyes of the beast appeared around the edge of the door and began snapping at her.

  Ava screamed, and gave the door a last desperate shove, knocking the dog’s head against the doorjamb until it yelped in surprise and pain, and jerked its head back. The door closed with a heavy rattle and she was safe from the animal for the next few moments.

  She rested her back against the door for the briefest of instants, trying to get some sort of bearings on where to run next. The dog hit the door again then, rattling it hard in its frame once more, and she let out a strangled gasp.

  She could run, but she clearly couldn’t hide.

  She began running down the hall, her eyes fighting to make sense of her surroundings in the shadowed gloom. The problem, she realized, was Gruber. And that fucking dog.

  Gruber wouldn’t kill her, Ava knew—not outright. Casey’s death had been a necessary evil to Dr. Marr, but the religious leader hadn’t liked it or condoned it lightly. Marr would imprison her when she was found, Ava knew, but she wasn’t a sadist. The real terror remained in how vicious Gruber’s thugs would be in taking her down.

  She wasn’t going to escape the dog, but maybe, just maybe, she could escape to Marr and give herself up to the Reverend. Tears stung her eyes and she cast desperately around her. She could only hope the 911 operator had captured her signal well enough for police to find her before the phone had gone dead.

  “Please, please, please,” she told herself as she opened a door at random and slammed it behind her.

  She was in another barren, denuded room, this one with wood flooring. Exposed pipes and ducts ran in hard, geometrical lines along the upper wall to a huge metal fixture next to big dirty windows. Behind her in the hallway, the dog let out a howl of savage eagerness as the men chasing her let him in through the door.

  She could run, at least.

  She ran to the window. The panes were dusty and streaked, the sash lock’s latch grimy under her touch as she jerked it to one side. Immediately, night air spilled in, cooler three stories up than it had been down on the ground. Behind her, the sounds of heavy feet trampled the old floors of the building. Gruber yelled something, men shouted in response and obedience, and the dog went on barking.

  She looked and saw a four-inch ledge of brick perched outside the window. Next to it was a huge HVAC compressor used to vent airflow out from the furnaces set up down on the factory floor. At the door to her room, the Alsatian barked out an ugly staccato of threats and growls.

  She looked back over her shoulder and saw the twin bars of moonlight gleaming behind her on the floor, her shadow in the soft illumination, and her footprints like artifacts in the dust. She shook with her fear.

  The door exploded open and the dog, no more than a black streak, rushed into the room. Ava screamed and, without thinking, pushed her way out onto the narrow ledge of brick. Once through the window frame, she stepped to the side and immediately leaned back, pressing her body against the outer wall as a rush of vertigo came over her.

  The Alsatian’s head popped out from the window and turned towards her, and the painful, sonic assault of its bark filled her ears. She moved sideways several inches to avoid the flashing teeth and steaming saliva.

  Her toes hung over the lip of the ledge, though, and empty space stretched away below her. Three stories, she thought, people live from falls that high, right? Sometimes, maybe. Her stomach twisted in an overpowering urge to retch.

  She wasn’t given to hysterics. She was not a moral coward—she’d survived the chaos and the abuse of drug-addicted parents, and all with a sense of right and wrong to match her sense of humor. She thought things through, weighed options, and made decisions based on rational outcomes in a sort of antithesis to the way her narcotic-addled parents had approached the veritable train wreck of their lives.

  But all of this was too much; it was simply too much to take in all at once. Learning about the impending attack and realizing Dr. Marr had no intention of doing anything about it, but for feeling vindicated in her doomsday prophecies, had shaken Ava to her core.

  Discovering how Casey had fled, and then finding the girl’s body and realizing Gruber had done that with Marr’s acquiescence.... Then the chase, the dog, and now finding herself trapped on a narrow ledge thirty-some feet above an old asphalt parking lot. It was all too much to process.

  Tears streaked her face and she flinched away from the dog, moving farther down the ledge and pushing herself
up against the compressor housing. The dog, still barking furiously, scratched at the brick ledge with its nails. A big male hand shot out the window then and jerked the animal back by its collar. The creature yelped in response, and she heard Gruber curse it quiet.

  Her knees wobbled and her right hand found the upper edge of the metal housing. Chuckling without mirth, Gruber leaned out the window, his dark eyes bright as polished mirrors and a fierce, almost feral grin painted across his face, exposing square yellow teeth.

  “Gotcha,” he said.

  His voice was rough and deep, raspy as a big cat’s purr and filled with the self-satisfied gloating of a predator who’d run its prey to ground. Ava hated him so purely in that moment that, if she’d had a gun, she’d have pumped bullets into his grinning face—or slashed it with a knife, hacked at it with broken glass, or anything, anything at all to wipe away that evil smirk and everything it promised.

  He held onto the window jamb with one hand and reached for her, still grinning. “Don’t make me come out there,” he warned.

  “You’re a fat clumsy prick,” Ava told him. “You’d fall in a second,” she snapped. “Come ahead and see.”

  Gruber scowled at her. She felt satisfaction herself for a moment, seeing the grin gone.

  He reached out with his free arm, fingers grasping. Ava realized he’d shove her off the ledge in a heartbeat, her death then having an easy explanation for Dr. Marr. She shrank away from his grasp and came up hard against the compressor housing.

  The metal was slick under her sweating hands, and the idea of pulling herself up seemed to promise she’d slip if she even attempted it. She half turned instead, pressing her body into the metal and reaching up with her other hand until both clung to the top edge of the HVAC unit.

  “Little bitch,” Gruber said. “Where in the hell do you think you’re going?” His voice had come out in a flat hard spat of sound.

  The vehemence of his distain made her flinch. She flexed her arms, trembling from fear and the strain. One foot skidded off the edge of the ledge and she almost went down, but, sobbing, she dug her fingers into the cold, unyielding and relentlessly slick surface of the compressor.

  Behind her, Gruber grunted as he stepped out of the window and up onto the window sill. “Coming to get you, little girl.”

  Cold, greasy shots of adrenaline squirted into her stomach as she heard the tread of his boots scuff across the brick ledge. She kicked off hard with her single grounded leg and pulled down with her arms.

  Her free foot scratched uselessly against the smooth metal wall of the housing and, her palms slick with perspiration, her grip slipped under her weight. For one wild, weightless moment, she felt suspended in air as if she were levitating, and she realized with a sort of helpless acceptance that she was falling.

  A strong, rough hand grabbed her by the back of her jeans and hauled her backward. She dropped away and screamed, sure beyond any doubt she was falling to her death, but then the waistband of her pants cut into the soft flesh of her lower belly and her breath escaped her lips in a gasp.

  Gruber grunted a hoarse, inarticulate sound and pulled her bodily back towards him.

  Her hands flew out to the sides and desperately grasped at the edges of the open window, stopping herself short. Immediately, a second hand came up and tangled itself into a fist in her hair, cruelly yanking her back. In the next instant, she felt the hard planes of Gruber’s body as he hugged her in close. The heavy male smell of him enveloped her and she felt his breath blow hot across her neck.

  His arms scissored around her in steel bands and utter panic gripped her. She began thrashing wildly, kicking with her legs until the two of them fell and rolled, struggling across the floor.

  “No, no, no!” she shouted.

  Her leg felt like it’d been struck by a car, and suddenly bright, vivid points of agony flowered to life along her calf as the dog sank its fangs into her. Screaming, she kicked wildly, almost insane from the raw hurt of it.

  One of the men managed to get hold of the dog and yank it off of her as Gruber rolled her over so that he lay on top of her. He was a big man and his weight pressed against her entire length, pushing her down hard into the floor.

  The position felt overtly intimate, a sickening violation of her space and person. She could feel the heat of his body emanating through her, and she struggled in his grasp. When he began chuckling, she realized her writhing was only pressing her body more tightly into his.

  She went still, though his awful weight was still crushing her. Squeezing her eyes tight shut against her anguish, she felt tear drops leaking out around the corners of her eyes to stream down her cheek. Gruber turned his big, square face, nuzzling in close to her so that his breath blew in her ear with the intimacy of a lover.

  “Hold still or I’ll turn that dog loose again,” he said. He pulled her head back painfully by her hair then. “Do you hear me?” he demanded.

  Shuddering with revulsion, she managed to nod. “Just get off,” she pleaded.

  Gruber chuckled again. “You say you want me to get off?”

  “You’re a pig!” Ava spat. “I want to see Lorraine!”

  Gruber stood and jerked her to her feet. “Don’t you get all high and mighty with me, little girl.” He shook her brutally until her head snapped back and forth. “I’ll turn you over to Doctor Marr when I’m good and ready.”

  As if to prove his point, he pressed her tight back against his body and easily lifted her off of her feet. She thrashed again, enraged at the easy disrespect with which he treated her. Clawing at the hands locked around her waist and kicking back with her heels, she tried to strike the man’s shins, or knees, or genitals, or anything that would hurt.

  It remained futile.

  Gruber uttered an ape-like grunt and lifted her up higher before slamming her down onto the ground. Ava hit the floor and the breath was bludgeoned out of her lungs in a rush. She lay, helpless and vulnerable, on the floor, gasping like a fish in the bottom of the boat.

  Gruber took the toe of his heavy leather work boot and drove it into her quadriceps, and Ava moaned through gritted teeth at the pain.

  “Had enough?” Gruber grinned. “Please say, no,” he urged.

  The faithful laughed.

  Blinking through her tears, Ava looked up and saw the loose circle of men standing around her. One held the big dog by its collar and the animal barked as the men continued laughing. She hated them, every one of them. She hated them all so badly that it physically hurt.

  In the beginning, everyone at the church had been so friendly, so helpful and welcoming. It hadn’t been until the de facto pseudo-paramilitary side of the organization had revealed itself to her that she’d realized the “facility security” team was no more than a group of strong-arming thugs willing to commit violence at a moment’s notice if instructed to do so.

  “I quit,” Ava said. “Please, I quit.” She didn’t want to admit to herself how much like a whimper her voice sounded.

  “What’s that?” Gruber mocked. “I didn’t hear you. Did you say you were going to fight us?”

  He reached down and hauled her to her knees by her hair. He leaned in and pressed his feral mask of a face up against hers then, and she felt the barbwire pricks of his stubble and winced away, but he yanked her hair painfully, pulling her closer.

  “I quit!” Ava half sobbed.

  “That. Is. Enough,” Marr said.

  Everyone froze momentarily at the woman’s voice. Even the canine went silent. A somewhat ironic feeling of relief swept over Ava as she looked towards the door to the room. She saw a familiar figure silhouetted in the doorway.

  Dr. Lorraine Marr stepped into the room, regal as a queen ascending her throne. Her cheeks burned with color and her thin slash of a mouth lay drawn back in a straight line as her eyes darted around the room, taking in the scene.

  “Is this how the faithful, how the very future of mankind itself, behaves?” she demanded. “Well? Is it?”
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  The men parted before her advance, looking down, none of them laughing now. Gruber released Ava’s hair and stepped back, leaving her on her knees before the approaching head of the Church of Humanity. Ava looked away and pushed a trembling hand across her running nose.

  “Ava,” Dr. Marr said, her voice soft. “Oh, Ava, why have you forsaken me in this most glorious of prophetic hours?”

  “You could have stopped this,” Ava accused.

  “I could not have,” Dr. Marr replied. “I had no means to stop the detonation.”

  “You knew it was going to happen!” Ava shot back. “You could have told someone—anyone! People died! My God, you saw that plane fall out of the sky!”

  Dr. Marr pursed her lips into a frown of distinct disapproval. She stepped back and regarded the quietly crying Ava with a cold stare. It was as if some internal switch had flipped and the mother figure who’d first enticed a lonely and lost Ava into her flock was gone, only to be replaced by a chill tribal matriarch of doomsday worshippers.

  “It was not His Will that the act be stopped,” she intoned. “The detonation was the catalyst to a better world. God our Father is a grim and terrible judge, Ava. You might want to remember that in case you think about running again.” She turned to Gruber. “Take her,” she ordered.

  Grinning, Gruber obeyed.

  7

  They came up the off-ramp, neither one of them feeling like talking, and entered another commercially zoned district. It was an area he knew fairly well from his days on patrol. Small crowds were in the street here, milling around, and they also saw people pushing grocery carts filled with obviously looted items across the glass-strewn parking lot of yet another strip mall.

  Several looters stood on the edge of a growing mob like outliers in an animal herd on the African Savanah. Should they see something and bolt first, the rest of the crowd would know it was time to run like a bunch of zebras from hunting cats.

  Parker pulled up short, eyeing the scene.

  Five blocks down, an empty police cruiser with its doors hanging open sat in the middle of the street, the officer nowhere in sight. Every window of the strip mall was broken. The 7-11, the liquor store, Abby’s SunTan World!, and even the H&R Block tax place. What the fuck are you going to loot from a H&R Block? he wondered. Computers, he could only guess, though this seemed like a small reward.