by P. N. Elrod
I was yanked fast across the rough floor, then my legs bobbed straight up, carrying the rest of me helplessly along. My lungs rushed into my throat, trying to come out. Lifted clear from the floor, I swung dizzily, twisting, arms dangling. He pummeled my gut a few times like a boxer testing a new bag, then grabbed my hands, tying them behind me. With a knife he cut my coat and shirt off. My pale skin puckered against the freezing air.
Bristow’s upside-down face came into view. Bleak eyes, small teeth, the lower ones yellowed and so level they looked filed. “Still with us? That’s good. Jeez, what with his mouth? You ever see anything like that?”
Dugan, still manacled, stood off to the side. “What are you going to do to him?”
“The same thing I’ll do to you if you don’t make good on that five grand you promised.”
“Let me go, and I’ll fetch it. Send one of your men along with me.” He gestured at Lissky, who hobbled away, clutching his arm. He made it through the metal refrigeration door to join Reef sitting in the outer room.
“It can wait ’til I’m done. You watch an’ learn something.”
“You won’t be able to kill him. Not the way you think.”
Bristow grinned. “Good.” He took off his topcoat and tight-fitting jacket, giving them to Tib.
“You’re wasting him! He’s more useful alive!”
“Not to me.” He rolled up his shirtsleeves and held his hand out. Tib put the knife into it.
“You can’t do that! I have to—”
Tib backhanded Dugan, who emitted a yelp and staggered away, fingers to his suddenly bruised face. He looked dumbfounded.
“Bristow.”
He turned. “Huh?”
I struggled to take in a breath. “Bristow . . .” It came out uneven, barely audible, but brought him over.
“What d’ya want, fancy boy?”
“Nuh . . . you. You want. Gordy?”
Bristow chuckled. “Now ain’t that how it always works. Show ’em a little tough, and they’ll sell their gran’ma the first chance. What about Gordy?”
“I can. Give him . . . to you.”
“Oh, yeah? Where is he?”
“Cut me down. Just leave. I’ll tell you.”
“That’s no kind of deal.”
“You get Chicago. I want nothing. Just walk away.”
“An’ leave you alive?”
“I won’t live through this.”
Another laugh. “Bet your ass you won’t.”
“You want Gordy?”
His eyes glinted. “I already got him, fancy boy. Don’t need your help at all.”
The knife blade flashed bright under the high, dim lights.
Oh, God, no . . .
He started in.
I’m not brave. Screams ruptured out of me same as for any tortured animal. They didn’t sound remotely human. I shrieked and bucked until empty of air, then continued to jerk and twitch with each new slice. Blood ran down my flanks, my face, into my eyes, my mouth. I tried to swallow it back again. I prayed for Escott to find me. I prayed for death to end it. What blood was left in me billowed into my skull, keeping me conscious. The only respite was when Bristow paused to drink from a flask. His shirt got splattered with gore. He didn’t seem to notice. His eyes were vacant. No way to tell if he could see anything, but he had to as he carved me like a turkey.
Off in a corner, Dugan reached his limit and vomited his guts out.
Bristow noticed that much and laughed at him.
Tib took advantage of the pause. “Boss, we gotta look after Reef and Lissky pretty soon.”
“We will.”
“But that shit smashed ’em hard.”
“An’ I’m givin’ him payback for it. So they gotta little hurt, have ’em call their mamas if it’s so bad. We can’t leave yet, and they know it.”
“When will he get here?” This from Lissky, calling from the next room, his voice tight.
“When you see him. What’s your hurry? You got a show to watch.”
He started on me again.
I couldn’t stand it, thrashed like a fish. Screamed without breath, begged for it to stop. Begged in silence, mouth working, nothing coming out.
Then by chance Bristow got too close to my face. He may have been trying to cut off one of my ears. I was crazy by then, reacting, not thinking, unable to think. I bit into the thick flesh of his bared forearm and held on, teeth grinding into the tough meat.
His turn to bellow, to try breaking free. I clamped hard, mindless with pain and hunger, sucking greedily at his blood while it was there to be had. He’d reduced me to this.
He went crazy, too, yelling and beating at me, finally stabbing with his knife. I felt the blade like vague body blows. Any one of them fatal to a normal man, just more agony for me. No ending to it.
Bristow finally wrenched away, his deep voice gone hysterically high as he clutched his wounded arm. He’d stripped off some of my skin, I ripped out a piece of his in turn. It tasted strangely sweet as I sucked the last of his blood from it like an orange slice. When nothing more remained, I spat out the meat. It hit the wet floor, making a little splattering plop in the blood already there.
Someone was using me, giving me a soft voice, making me laugh, a long, thin, insane sound. It didn’t last. I held still, trying to ease the sickening to-and-fro swing of my body.
Dugan cautiously came up, eyes wide, and steadied me. Green-faced, he glanced at Bristow and Tib. Bristow streamed curses while a grimly silent Tib wrapped my shredded shirt around his boss’s arm.
“Why don’t you vanish?” Dugan asked, sounding desperate. Felt that laughter again. It didn’t make it out. Too weak. Too hungry.
“Why?”
I sucked blood-tainted air and breathed a soft word. “Pick.”
He was confused. “Pick what?”
“Getitout. Back.”
“You mean that ice pick?”
“Ssssh. Yesss . . .”
He couldn’t find it, though. Not under all that damage, not now. He blanched and looked helpless.
Bristow shook away from Tib. “That sick bastard! I’ll kill him!”
Seeing what was coming, Dugan ducked clear and ran.
I didn’t see but felt it, the streams of fire like comets plowing through me, my body twitching for each bullet that struck. The gun thundered in the cavernous building four times, then clicked on empty chambers as Bristow kept pulling the trigger.
“You got him, Boss,” said Tib when the echoes died.
Bristow didn’t want to believe. He approached, prodded me with the gun muzzle. It was hot. I didn’t notice. I was past that; my red life poured out front and back, leaving a drained husk. Couldn’t even blink.
He struck again, using the knife, digging viciously into my shoulder.
Nothing. Some part of my brain cried anguish, but the message never got out.
“Too quick,” Bristow muttered.
“Yeah, Boss,” agreed Tib. “You wanna let’s go take care of that arm?”
“You see me whining? We wait ’til he gets here.”
“Yeah, Boss.”
“Where’d that gunsel go? Did he leave?”
“No, Boss.” This from Reef. “He went off into the building. Ain’t no exits there.”
“You sure?”
“All the doors is locked inside ’n’ out. Keeps the workers from lifting the beef after hours. C’mon, Boss, let’s leave ’em. We can meet this other guy tomorrow.”
“And have Gordy up and looking for me by then? No.”
“Kroun said he croaked.”
“I don’t believe that. Not ’til I see him hanging in here I don’t. We meet up and go finish things for sure.”
“What if he don’t show?”
Before Bristow could reply, someone banged on the outer entry door. “Open that,” he ordered Tib, the only man still undamaged.
Tib pushed on the horizontal opening bar. “It’s about damn time.”
Strome walked in, unglove
d hands hanging loose, his overcoat open, same as the jacket beneath so he could easily get to his gun. He took two steps in, giving Reef and Lissky a critical eye. “What happened to you?”
“In here,” said Bristow.
With a nod to Tib, Strome came into the locker, squinting in the low light, stopping when he saw me.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he said. “What the hell you been doing here?”
“Little party. You’re late.”
“Had to take care of stuff at the club. Derner wanted to keep me there.”
“You’re not welching on us.” A warning tone.
“No, I’m not w—”
“You were falling down drunk tonight—”
“I wasn’t drunk! Just got tired is all. I was sleeping. What is this? Who’s that guy?” He came close. Drew a sharp breath. “Shit! You know who that is?”
“Dead meat.” Bristow sounded satisfied.
“But it’s Fleming. He and Gordy are that tight.”
“Then they can play pinochle in hell together for all I care. He’s dead now, and Gordy’s on his way out—if you hold to what you said.”
“I’ll hold if you do, but jeez . . . Fleming. What’d you do to him? I heard the guy was indestructible.”
“Only ’cause he never met me.”
“Never saw it hit anyone that way before. Jeez. He looks a week gone already.” Strome stared a moment more, then shrugged. “Let’s get going.”
Bristow needed help with his suit coat. Tib assisted. They got Bristow’s good arm in its sleeve, draping the rest over his shoulder. Strome, ignoring me now, watched their struggles, his hand slipping inside his own coat.
In the outer room I heard the street door softly open.
Lissky said, “Hey . . . !”
The rest was drowned by sudden gunfire.
Bristow and Tib came alert, but too late. Strome had his .45 out and caught them both from behind. Almost in unison they dropped to their knees and heeled over, strings cut. I gently swung and sensed blood that was not my own flooding the air, longing for it.
“You got ’em?” Strome called out in the silence.
“Yeah. You?”
He experimentally kicked each body. “They’re gone.”
Derner stepped in, frowning, eyes first for Bristow and Tib on the floor, then wide on me. “Jeez, who’s . . . ?”
“Fleming. Can you believe it? Lookit how they did him.”
“Gordy ain’t gonna like that.”
“He can throw him a big funeral to make up for it.”
Derner shook his head. “That kid had something, but he was too cocky.”
“Hurry an’ let’s get these bums inside. You put the fix in with the manager?”
“Yeah, everyone has the weekend off. We got plenty of time to clean up later. No one’s coming here.”
They holstered their guns and proceeded to drag Lissky and Reef into the meat locker, lining them up next to their boss on the floor.
I gently swung, helpless, struggling to make a noise, to move, anything to attract their attention. With all my effort behind it I managed to blink. They missed it. I had no strength left for another try.
They shut the light, slammed the door, locked it.
Pitch-black. Not the vaguest glimmer of outside glow.
They shut and locked the outside door. Distant noise of a car starting, driving off.
Silence.
I gently swung, suspended in the darkness, and prayed for death.
HOURS seemed to go by before I heard a sound. A stealthy sigh of working lungs. A chain clinking. The soft pad of a footfall.
Then Dugan blundered into one of the sides of beef and made a lot more noise disentangling himself.
His teeth were chattering. Heart racing as he fought to control his breath, keep it quiet. He made his way slowly toward the front. Not an easy task in the dark. Must have used the straight rows of hanging meat as a guide.
He reached their end, though, and had to strike out over the open floor. I could imagine him, arms extended, frozen feet cautiously questing, in a panic that the gangsters would return or that cold would get to him before he could escape.
A gasp as he encountered a wall. His hands lightly scrabbled, searching for the door, the light switch. He found the door first, pushed on the latch bar. It clunked uncooperatively. Locked. He fought with it, rattling hard, not caring about noise, now. It remained stubbornly in place.
More scrabbling, then the lights sprang suddenly on.
Dim as they were, he winced against them. Still in stocking feet, coatless, he’d wrapped his chains up around each arm to keep them out of the way and quiet. They came unwrapped when he saw the bodies and staggered back from them. He stared down, as though not believing them, stared for a long minute, before pouncing on Tib. He took the dead man’s shoes off, hopping as he fitted them on his own feet. He began struggling for the topcoat, then spotted Bristow’s where it lay discarded on a bench. Dugan wrapped his chains around again and hauled it on over them, buttoning every button. He searched the pockets, didn’t seem to find what he wanted, and went on to the other men. He turned out wallets and guns and keys—which were useless, since the door locked on the outside.
He studied one of the guns carefully before picking it up as though it were a rattlesnake. A semiauto, he didn’t seem to like the look of it. One of the others in his little kidnap gang must have been the trigger man for that old couple killed in Indiana.
Dugan rose, turned, and aimed shakily at the metal door. He worked up to it, eventually pulling the trigger. Nothing happened. He didn’t understand the safety was on. When he looked for it, pulling and pushing at things, he managed to eject the magazine. He put the weapon down in disgust and tried the door again, this time throwing himself against it.
That didn’t work, either. He lifted another gun, Bristow’s. A more simple revolver, but all the chambers were empty. He found that out when he tried to use it. He got two more off Tib and Lissky, and finally figured out how to shoot. He used up his bullets on the door, missing at point-blank range because he kept turning his face away each time he fired.
All that effort and he was still trapped. There were lots of holes in the metal framework, some of them even close to the latch, but none had broken the lock. He lay partly on his back, braced, and started methodically hammering the door with his feet until he got too tired.
Panting, he rested and looked around. What he needed was a crowbar. He could use it to pry apart the wooden walls that faced outside, which is what I’d have done instead of attacking the reinforced entry.
He scavenged noisily out of my view. I could follow his progress by his rattling chains. They’d slipped down his wide sleeves and now dragged musically on the concrete.
When he returned, he had other chains and hooks.
And very unexpectedly, he lowered me to the floor.
My head was cocked at an awkward angle. I couldn’t see what he was up to, but vaguely felt him working on my ankle bindings.
He wasn’t trying to help me. It was the hook from which I’d been dangling. He’d wanted that hook, which was closest.
The cold made him clumsy. It took him a while to link everything together, and he was hampered by his manacles. Eventually he ran a length of chain to the door, along with another hook, looping it around the horizontal push bar.
That didn’t work either. When he hauled on the chain and pulley that had dragged me up, all it did was snap the bar from the door. The broken pieces cracked in half, the chain whipping dangerously around in recoil.
Dugan sagged. Apparently that was his last brilliant idea. I had a couple but couldn’t express them. However, I was lying flat, which was much better, even if my arms were pinned and numb under my back. I could sense the remaining blood in me slowly settling, spreading out to where it was supposed to be.
Without having to struggle against gravity, I managed to bring in a small trickle of air . . . and blow it out again, wh
istling against my teeth.
In the heavy silence, the sound galvanized Dugan. He turned like he’d been struck and glared down at me.
Glaring back, I blinked. Twice.
He didn’t want to come closer, wary after what I’d done to Bristow, but he had to in order to hear.
“You’re alive?” he whispered.
I was dead. The rest of me just hadn’t caught up yet. I drew air, timing my words, choosing them. “Willhelpyou.”
It took him a bit to digest this. “Help me? Why?”
“Wannalive.”
He couldn’t seem to work out whether that was a reply or a question. “How can you help me?”
“Bloodfirst.”
“What? I’m not feeding you.” He looked disgusted.
“Theirs.”
He gaped. “I can’t!”
Breath. “Thenweboth.” Breath. “Freezetodeath.”
Dugan thought it over. Not for long. “What do I do?”
“Cutone. Getblood. Pan. There.”
He cast around, spotting a stack of wide flat pans against the wall. They were shallow, only inches deep but a couple of feet across. I didn’t know their precise use, but with Dugan’s help I could improvise a horrifying new one.
Fear made him a quick study. He fetched a pan. A few words at a time, I told him what to do. He got the ropes off my ankles and used them on one of the dead men, similarly trussing his feet. Tib. Dugan used the hook and pulley again, and lifted the body up until it hung upside down over the pan.
Then Dugan found the knife and, hands shaking, cut deeply across Tib’s throat.
Only he wasn’t quite dead, either.
Tib choked and gagged himself conscious. His flailing arms set him swinging, and he made a hell of a mess as his arterial blood shot across the floor. Some of it splattered me, but not near my mouth. Dugan actually screeched, completely unnerved, darting out of range of Tib’s clutching hands.
It seemed to take forever for him to die, swaying like a clock pendulum, but eventually his fighting weakened and slowed and stopped. The last of his blood trickled into the catch pan below. It steamed in the cold air.
I was still tied at the wrists. That didn’t stop me. The bloodsmell was crazy-making. I wriggled toward it, too weak to crawl, too desperate to wait.
