by E. C. Bell
“What the hell—” he started, then pulled himself back as quickly as he could. Not quickly enough, of course, because James had the gun. He snapped off a shot without even seeming to aim and caught the man in the shoulder. The man disappeared, and the door slammed shut, but we could all hear him screaming.
“Watch that one,” James said to the room at large and strode to the closed door. Bea picked up a length of two-by-four lying on the floor and planted herself by the now-unconscious R. She waved the board menacingly, as if daring the man to try anything. Anything at all.
James threw the door open and caught the man within still flailing in pain and trying, without any luck, to disengage his gun from his outsized pants.
“That gangster look is so last year,” I muttered as James quickly disarmed the man.
“Get her down,” James said, pointing to Honoria in the corner of the dirty, musty room.
She was hanging from a link of chain that was hammered into the exposed ceiling beams, her toes barely touching the floor. She looked so much like her sketch that it stopped me in my tracks. Even the car batteries, sitting beside her, just like the picture she’d drawn.
“Jesus,” I muttered. Then I tottered up to her and did my best to free her.
My best was not good, but luckily Eddie’s mother, Naomi, came into the room and helped me. Meaning she did most of the freeing while I flailed around like I had a concussion or something. Which I did.
Soon Honoria was sitting on the floor, still mostly unconscious, with Naomi’s arm around her protectively. “You poor dear,” she said, over and over. “You poor poor dear.”
Honoria groaned.
“Is she going to be all right?” It was Eddie’s voice in my head. He materialized by his mother, as clear as glass. So ready to move on, it seemed that a small breeze would push him through to the next phase of existence.
“Yes,” I said and smiled at him, even though his mother thought I was speaking to her. “I hope so.”
“Good,” he said. “Even though she still freaks me the hell out.”
Me too, Eddie. Me too.
WE MOVED BACK out into the main area of the basement and James checked R. Still unconscious, with Bea still standing over him with her length of two-by-four at the ready.
“He’s not going anywhere,” she said. “Not while I still have breath in my body.”
“Let’s just tie him up,” James said. He pulled a length of wire from somewhere and quickly hogtied the huge man, who groaned once and then fell silent and still.
“That’s a good boy,” James muttered and patted R’s unconscious face. Then he stood and looked around the room. “We need to get out of here,” he said. “Any ideas?”
The rest of the women looked at the walls with three small, high, wood-covered windows. One of them, the wailer I thought, ran up to one of the windows and attempted to pull down the wood. No luck, and she turned back to James and shrugged.
“Maybe you can get it down?”
I didn’t pay any more attention to the women or the windows. I looked at Eddie.
“Maybe you can use the tunnel,” he said.
“Tunnel?” I asked, thinking I had probably heard him wrong. A bad knock on the head could do that to you.
“Tunnel?” James said, and I shut my eyes briefly. Internal had gone external again, and he was staring at me as though I was some kind of a freak. “What tunnel?”
Screw it. I was too tired and hurt to cover up anymore. I turned to Eddie. “What tunnel?”
“It’s over there, somewhere.” Eddie pointed to the wall opposite the stairs, covered with shelves and junk. He sighed. “Crank told me somebody told him about it.”
“There’s a tunnel,” I said, pointing at the shelves and junk. “Behind that.”
One of the women, Naomi I thought, said, “How does she know that?” and I could tell they all had that frightened look on their faces I’d lived with most of my life.
“Just check,” I said. I didn’t look at James. I couldn’t stand seeing that look on his face too.
“Yeah, check.” Honoria’s voice sounded small and hurt, like she’d been tortured. Which she had. “I really want to get out of here.”
James walked up to the shelves and stared, without touching them. Then he smiled and pointed at the floor, where we all could now see scrape marks on the cement. Those shelves had been pulled away from the wall, and more than once.
“I told you so,” Eddie said.
James grabbed the far edge of the shelves and gave a pull. The wood squealed and shuddered across the cement floor and all of us stared up at the ceiling, afraid that somehow Ambrose Welch would hear and come downstairs to investigate.
“Maybe he’s gone,” someone, probably Bea, said.
“We don’t have that kind of luck.” That was me. I recognized my voice and wondered why the hell I couldn’t stop speaking out loud.
“It’s probably the concussion,” Bea replied, and I groaned. This was getting ridiculous.
James pulled the shelves back as far as he could and then we all stared at the black rough-cut hole jackhammered into the wall. “Looks like a tunnel to me,” James finally said. “Let’s check it out.”
Then he glanced over at me. “Any idea where this goes?”
“To the garage at the back of the property,” Eddie said. “That’s what Crank said, anyhow.”
“There’s a garage. At the back of the property.” I couldn’t keep eye contact with James and looked down at my hands. “We should be able to get out from there.”
A boom echoed through the house, and we all looked up.
“Was that a gunshot?” Bea asked.
Another boom, and cracking. Like wood cracking. Like the wood of a doorjamb cracking.
“It’s the cops,” I muttered. “We called them.” I pointed at James. “He called them.”
“I’ll go see what’s up,” Eddie said and disappeared in his usual poof of blue and silver.
“So we’re saved,” one of the women said.
“That would be nice,” I muttered.
“Not yet,” Honoria said, and I heard her struggling to get up from the floor. “We gotta go. Now.”
That’s when we all heard the footsteps clattering across the floor above our heads.
“They’re here to save us!” one of the women cried, and headed for the stairs leading to the main floor.
“We gotta go,” Honoria said urgently. She tottered up to James, who was still standing by the tunnel entrance, glaring into the inky blackness like he could light it with his anger or something. “Let’s go.”
“All right,” James said. “Everybody into the tunnel. Now.”
I grabbed the woman who had run to the stairs. It was the wailer, I was pretty sure of that. She flinched away from me, as though I had suddenly become more dangerous in her eyes than the crazy men who had kidnapped us.
Typical. Try to save someone and they look at you like you’re crazy.
Whatever.
“Let’s go.” I yanked her away from the steps and toward the tunnel. “Now.”
Then I heard Eddie’s voice, in my head and upstairs, all at the same time.
“Run!” his voice screamed. “He’s coming! Oh my God, he’s coming!”
And so I ran, dragging the wailer with me.
“We gotta get out of here now!” I cried.
But I was too late. Of course.
Eddie:
I Tried to Warn You. I Really Did.
AMBROSE WELCH HADN’T gone anywhere. He’d been sitting in a back bedroom, playing Grand Theft Auto as he waited for R to finish getting rid of all the problems in his crappy little life. He jumped when he heard the cops hit his fortified front door with their battering ram and put his controller down on the unmade bed. Then he picked up the big gun R had given him, clicked off the safety, and ran to the front room.
The door held, even as the battering ram hit it again. He smiled and ran into the kitchen, headi
ng for the stairs to the basement.
So I ran down the stairs myself. I don’t know what I thought I was going to do, maybe scare the son of a bitch to death, but I ran through him to Marie.
Running through Ambrose Welch was like running through a racing horse. His heart rate was so high, it felt like a high-pitched thrum. Then I ran into Marie. Her heart was beating a mile a minute too, and the fear ran through her like quicksilver. Not as bad as Ambrose, but bad enough.
“Get out!” she cried and shuddered. Full body shake. But all I could do was burst through her and blunder into the rest of the book club. Jesus, this was like a nightmare. And then I was running through Honoria, who gasped and grabbed her chest as though she was having a heart attack.
“He’s here,” she said. “I feel him. He’s here.”
“Who?” That was James, who had disappeared up the tunnel.
“Brown Eddie!” Honoria wailed.
I flailed out of her and stepped into James as he ran back to the basement. He had taken out R—no small feat—and was now going to take care of Ambrose Welch. His heart rate? I bet if I’d had the time to check it, it would have been no more than 70. It was like the guy was sitting watching TV or something. Who the hell was this guy, anyhow?
I stepped away from him and watched as he maneuvered between the women and finally burst out of the tunnel. Just in time to see Ambrose Welch grab Marie and hold the huge gun just under her chin.
I’m thinking James’s heart rate spiked right then. Through the roof.
“Back off,” Ambrose said. He scanned the room frantically, and his eyes widened when he saw R trussed up and unconscious on the floor. “I’m leaving, and I’m taking her with me.”
Another boom and more wood cracking. Why the hell couldn’t those idiots get through the front door?
Marie needed to be saved. Right now.
Marie:
I’d Never Been in an Escalade Before
AMBROSE CAME UP behind me and grabbed me before I could do anything more than grunt my surprise. He rammed the business end of the barrel of his amazingly big gun under my chin so hard my teeth clashed together and I bit my lip.
“Please don’t hurt me,” I said, tasting blood. “Please.”
He ignored me and glared at James, who was walking toward us, the gun he was holding at the ready. “Let me through or I kill her,” Ambrose said. “I shit you not.”
“I can’t let you do that,” James said.
Ambrose laughed, roughly, and pulled me tighter to his chest. The barrel of his gun ground against the tender skin under my chin, and I groaned. “Looks like you’re expendable.”
I looked over at James, who still held the gun out, pointing at Ambrose and me. I saw something in his eyes. He had a plan. Another one. All I had to do was somehow get out of the way and he’d stop this madman in his tracks.
I smiled at James to let him know that I understood, and then I flew into action. Well, really, what I tried to do was drop to my knees in an effort to break Ambrose’s grip on me, but it didn’t work quite the way I saw it in my poor concussed head. He had me too tight, see, and so when I unlocked my knees and tried to drop to the floor, he simply gripped me even tighter.
Luckily, my head flipped back when I tried my move. Even more luckily, the barrel of the gun momentarily pointed at the ceiling, and not my chin, because Ambrose’s stupid finger was on the stupid trigger and bullets burped into the ceiling, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake.
“Stop!” James cried. At least I think that’s what he said. The stupid gun had gone off right beside my ear, and all I could hear was a high-pitched squeal, but I was pretty sure he said, “Stop.” And then he put his gun down and pointed at the tunnel. “Just don’t hurt her,” I thought he said. Hoped he said.
Ambrose walked me up to the gun James had dropped. “Pick it up.” He was on my good side, so I could hear him just fine. I picked up the gun by the barrel and handed it to him, wishing I was braver, wishing I had the guts to try another move, but not wanting to die.
He dragged me to the tunnel and into the screaming blackness within.
The screaming was the book club and Honoria. Ambrose pushed his way through, using me as a battering ram. Soon they were behind us, and we were alone.
“Please don’t kill me,” I whimpered. “Just go. I can’t stop you. No one can.”
He continued to ignore me, which was starting to tick me off. He whirled us both around and used me as a shield as he backed both of us the rest of the way through the tunnel.
“Up,” he said when we finally stopped.
“Where?” I could see nothing in the thick darkness and felt for a moment like I was drowning.
“Up,” he said again and pushed me against a rough wooden ladder.
So I looked up and finally could see something. Sunlight, or something like it, leaking around the small door that covered an opening into what I assumed was the garage.
I quickly climbed the ladder, hoping against hope he’d have to loosen his grip on me, so I could kick him or something. But his grip never loosened, even for a second.
I pushed the door, hoping it was locked, but it popped open easily and in a moment, he and I were both through it and standing in the small, musty garage. Taking most of the space was a huge SUV. An Escalade, black. Looked like it had just been polished to within an inch of its life. He kicked the door closed and pointed to a large tool chest.
“Pull that over the door,” he said. “Now.”
I grabbed it and pulled, hard. I’d been expecting real resistance, but the thing was on wheels, and I nearly pulled it on top of me. Ambrose pushed me back to upright when I fell against him, then grabbed me by the hair.
“Let’s go.”
He pulled me to the Escalade, to the driver’s side.
“I can’t drive,” I said, hoping he’d believe me.
“Do your best,” he said. “Because you’re getting me out of here.”
He clambered into the vehicle, keeping one hand on me and another on that big gun, and pulled me in after him.
“Now you get your first lesson,” he said and laughed. He sounded crazy, and I shuddered when he pressed that gun against my head, next to my ear. “You better be a quick study.”
Eddie:
I Never Thought I’d Be Happy to See Stewart.
I Was Right
JAMES DIDN’T EVEN try to follow Ambrose and Marie. He clambered up the stairs and to the front door of the house, which the cops were still trying to knock in.
“Stop!” he yelled. “I’ll let you in. Just stop!”
The banging stopped, and James quickly worked the locks. As he turned the last one, the door burst open, and there was some flailing around, mostly on James’s part, until Stewart came through the door.
“Where is he?” he asked, grabbing James and pulling him upright.
“Out the back,” James said. “There’s a tunnel to the garage. You can stop him if you hurry. But be careful. He has Marie.”
Stewart sneered. “Marie. Yeah, gotta make sure she stays safe.” He grabbed his walkie-talkie and spoke into it urgently, then signaled for the rest of the men to leave.
“No,” James said. “There are people still here. People that have to be saved.”
“Where?” Stewart barked.
James pointed at the hallway. “Through the kitchen and down the stairs. Don’t hurt them. They have nothing to do with any of this.” Then he shrugged. “Well, the ones who are tied up are involved. Just not anyone else down there.”
Stewart considered James for a long moment, then shrugged himself. “Take them all,” he said to one of his men. “But don’t hurt them.” He pointed at James. “Including him.”
“No,” James said and pulled away from them all. “Not a chance.”
He disappeared out the front door, and Stewart cursed.
“Should we go after him, sir?” one of his men said.
“No,” Stewart replied. “I�
�ll take care of him myself.”
He disappeared out the front door after James. And then all hell broke loose.
Marie:
The Driving Lesson Didn’t Go Quite as Planned
I MANAGED TO act really stupid about driving for approximately a microsecond, until Ambrose pressed that big gun even harder into my head and screamed, “R! You idiot! Put the little needle on R, not N!”
“Oh,” I said and put my shaking hand back on the gear shift. “I was sure you said N.”
I put the vehicle into reverse, but didn’t touch the gas. The Escalade crawled backward at about a single mile an hour and then stopped when it touched the big double doors at the back.
“What now?” I asked, my heart positively pounding itself silly and my mouth as dry as dust.
“Hit the gas!”
“This one?” I touched the brake with my foot, and I thought he was going to lose it right there.
“No one’s that stupid!” he screamed and rammed the gun against my head. I saw stars again and knew I could no longer play the fool. I’d run out of time. I was going to have to make a run for it with a maniac.
“Buckle up,” I muttered and hit the gas. Hard.
Eddie:
All I Can Say Is Wow
THE ESCALADE BURST out of the small garage into the back alley, into the Tactical van and an absolute crapload of police with guns.
Chunks of plywood garage door flew everywhere when they backed out of the garage. They rammed the police car blocking the other side of the alley, and it took Stewart no time at all to scream, “Fire!”
The Escalade lit up like a Christmas tree as all the bullets hit it, but it was soon apparent, the bullets were not penetrating.
Stewart cursed a blue streak and pointed to one of the black-garbed Tactical team members, who scurried to the van and pulled out the biggest baddest looking gun I’ve ever seen in my life.
“Stop!” James cried. “Marie’s in there!”
