Killman Creek

by Rachel Caine

I don't know where I can go. I don't think there's anywhere to run.

  But I'm not stopping.

  I tense up as the footsteps come nearer.

  It's not the junkie girl I see first. It's Melvin, and the sight of his broken smile shakes me once more. "Look who's awake," he says. "Annie. Get her up. We need to start on time."

  Start on time, like this is some Broadway production, and he's the stage manager.

  I come up with all the power I have and slash the handcuff at his face, but I fall short. I'm off balance, and he easily dodges it. He grabs me by the forearms and shoves me at Annie, who takes my left hand and squeezes so hard my knees give way. I don't scream. Not quite.

  "Do what I tell you," she says. "Walk."

  She shoves me into a stumble, and she keeps her iron grip on my injury, reminding me she can inflict pain anytime she wants. Outside the room, I realize that we're on the second level, and there's a wooden railing on the right overlooking the room below. Everything smells of neglect and rot, and the floor creaks and groans with every step. There's a large, gaping hole ahead, and above it, the ceiling's fallen in. Water drips from the sagging, blackened edges to patter on broken boards. I can see a cloudy night sky up there, and when I tilt my head back, the drugs threaten to lift me up into the faint, glittering stars.

  Annie leads me around the hole and close to the banister. The railing isn't in any better shape than the floor. If she was on the side closest to it, I'd push her over. It would probably break loose and send her crashing down to the atrium below.

  But I'm on the railing side. Go over, I tell myself. It's better than what he has planned.

  But I know the fall won't kill me, and I'm afraid I'll break a leg and lose any chance to run, or fight.

  I stumble over the torn carpeting and fall forward so suddenly that Annie lets go. I catch myself on my hands. The left one gives a searing stab of agony, and I cry out and lurch over to my right . . . and my fingers catch on a loose piece of floorboard. It's splintered at the end, and I feel the sharp edge. I don't hesitate. I dig my fingers in and pull on the break, and a piece splits off. I grab it as Melvin jerks me upright by my hair. I don't use it yet--not yet. I press it flat against my right wrist, out of sight.

  Wait until you can be sure. You won't get another chance. I know what's coming for me will be slow, and brutal, and horrific, and the worst part, the worst part, is that I don't think it will do any good to hold out. I don't think anybody can help me now. I have to help myself. As long as he's focused on me, he isn't going after the kids.

  The kids.

  I remember what Melvin said now. Brady called me. We have Lily. I feel a wave of pure horror, like cold honey over my skin. No. No. No.

  We're approaching a closed door, and I slow down. Annie's hand grabs my left wrist and twists hard, but it doesn't affect me as much now, because there's a greater pain. A greater horror. I can't let this happen. I can't let him have my children.

  Melvin steps ahead and swings the door open. A gentleman's gesture from a monster.

  It's his torture chamber. I don't even need a glance to see that; it comes at me as one thing, as inevitable as winter. I don't look at the details.

  I'm looking at the girl. The girl who stands on that oval, bloodstained rug, with the wire noose around her neck. The girl with dyed black hair, coarse and clumped with sweat, which hangs over her features.

  For that one, horrible, irrational second, I think that it's Lanny.

  I scream. It bursts out of me in a shocking rush, all of the agony and grief and horror so real and present that I feel everything in me has been cut to the bone and flayed open, spilling out like blood. I swallow the cry a second later, but I know what it reveals to him.

  The girl isn't Lanny. She's not my daughter. But she's someone's daughter.

  She's standing on the balls of her feet, straining to keep her balance, because if she relaxes at all, the noose bites into her neck. It's deliberate and cruel and finely calculated, just like the tools hung on pegboard, arrayed in order on the walls. On the wooden workbench, toolboxes stand open to display wrenches, screwdrivers, pliers . . . all color-coded, aligned in precise rows in the drawers.

  Precise in his barbarity.

  There are two other people in the room. One man adjusts lighting, ignoring the girl and her horrible struggle. Another one adjusts the focus on a video camera on a tripod. Both look completely normal, and it's horrifying to see that this is just work to them. Just another day.

  "Shit," the video guy says. "I wasn't rolling. I wish I'd gotten that scream. That was something."

  "Are we close?" Melvin asks.

  "Ten minutes out. You can start with the daughter standin, but keep it short. They're paying for the main event, not the opening act." He's just so . . . normal. He's wearing a Hawaiian shirt with hula girls on it, and cargo shorts, and slip-on sandals. But nothing about this is normal. Not one of these people has a soul. There's something missing in all of them.

  I turn my head. Melvin's stopped next to me. He's staring at that poor girl with horrible, fixed intention, but he tears himself away to transfer that look to me. It's the worst thing I've ever seen. The pupils of his eyes have dilated, and in the light from that room they look almost . . . red. Monster's eyes. "She looks a lot like her, doesn't she? Our Lily."

  I can't breathe. I can't move. There's something so dangerous in front of me that it paralyzes even my voice. I knew he was evil. I never knew he was this. There's . . . nothing in there. Nothing I can identify as the least bit human.

  "Yes." It comes out in a shaking whisper not out of fear but rage. "But this girl isn't Lily. There's no point in hurting her. It won't have the same impact."

  "Won't it?" He considers me, like a bird considering a bug. "I'll let you choose."

  The video operator has quietly turned the camera on. I'm blinded as lights suddenly flare hot against my face. But I don't blink. I can't. If I show any weakness at all, he'll have me.

  "Choose what?" The small shard of wood's pressed hard against my skin, and I can feel the gouge it makes. I shift, put my weight on my left foot. I make sure he can't see my right arm.

  "I'll let this girl go if you ask to take her place. But you have to want it, Gina. You have to ask. Beg me for her. If you do, I'll turn her loose and let her leave. It'll take her hours to get to a road. Lots of time before she can find anybody to listen to her. She's a junkie whore. Maybe nobody will ever believe her." His lips twitch, and a slow smile overtakes them. "But she'll be alive. I know how much you want to save people."

  Breath turns to poison in my lungs. He has me. He knows what I'm going to do. But before I do it, I say, "You're never going to have Connor."

  "Oh, Connor's all yours," he says. "But I'm going to have Brady. Count on that. What's your answer? Because either way, you're going to die tonight. This one doesn't have to. Clock's ticking, Gina. Choose."

  I don't want to look at those dreadful eyes anymore. I let my lids drift shut, and I say. "Please, Mel. Please let her go. I beg you."

  It burns in my mouth to do that. Worse, I've just called him Mel. It's the first time since the day our lives shattered apart. I wonder if he even notices.

  "Good girl," he says. I feel sudden heat against my skin. He's put his hand on my cheek. "All right. She gets her life. I always knew you'd give in, if I found the right motivation."

  He bends close to me. His breath flutters against my skin. His fingers are gentle as they trace the line of my chin, my lips. I keep my eyes closed. God, I can't look. I can't. I'm trembling. The drugs make me dizzy, and unsteady. I wish Annie would twist my broken hand again, just to clear my mind.

  "Let the girl down," he says. He's not talking to me, but his lips are so close to my cheek they brush my skin. "Get her out of here. Put her on the road and tell her to run."

  The spell breaks, but it isn't me who breaks it. It's the sound of the winch control activating with a whine, and the choked gasp of the girl. She's crying.
"Oh God, thank you, thank you--"

  "Out," Melvin says. "Or I kill you."

  I hear the rush of running feet. She's leaving.

  Now, I think. Now. I can't miss. He's right here.

  I open my eyes and adjust my grip on the wooden dagger.

  Someone laughs.

  It shocks me. It shocks Melvin, too, and we both look toward the doorway. Annie's leaning there, high as a kite from the look of her, and she's giggling as she watches the other girl run for her life. "Son of a bitch," she says. "I thought you were some fuckin' badass, man. Here you are letting people go, making deals. Don't you already own this sorry bitch?"

  "You're talking about my wife, Annie," he says. His tone is mild, and calm, but the eyes . . . he's deep in whatever fantasy he's cultivated. "Don't disrespect my wife."

  "Her?" Annie's lip curls. "She's nothing."

  "No. She's mine."

  When he moves, it's like the strike of a snake, too fast to be seen. He smashes her head into the door frame, again and again and again, a flurry of moves so shockingly violent that I can't even think to act, to attack him, to try to save her life. He's a tiger, pure bloody rage, and I'm terrified. Everybody's frozen, even the film crew, who must have seen horrors I can't imagine.

  I don't want to see this, but I can't close my eyes. It's as inevitable as a nightmare.

  Annie collapses, gasping, eyes blind with blood. She crawls toward me.

  I back up. I can't help the instinct. Panic is howling inside me, a black tornado of despair because my thin piece of wood is nothing, nothing against this madness, it's a paper-thin lie I've told myself, and nothing can stop Melvin Royal.

  Melvin steps over Annie, grabs a screwdriver from the rack, and with one viciously powerful blow, he drives it through her skull.

  Then he loses control.

  My vision grays out. I can't see this. I can't know it. My mind is trying to run, trying to hide like a child in a maze, and I hear myself screaming because Annie can't, she doesn't make a sound, and all I want to do is run.

  But I can't make it past him. The second I move, I'm a victim.

  When Melvin stops, it's because he's tired, not because he's finished. I can see that in the way his chest heaves, and his hand shakes, and the butchered woman lying on the floor is barely recognizable as human from the neck up.

  The lighting and camera operators haven't made a sound or a move. They've frozen in place, too, as if they know they're in the presence of an animal who could eat them just as easily. When Melvin sits back on his haunches, he looks at the camera operator. He's dripping with Annie's blood. He still has the screwdriver.

  "Keep rolling," he says to the cameraman, and, oh Jesus, he sounds so normal, so like the man I married. The man who took vows to love and cherish and protect. "I'm just starting."

  I feel myself going away. It's not a faint; I know I can't make myself vulnerable that way. I feel my mind leave my body, drift up like a balloon only loosely tethered to this heavy, shaking sack of flesh. From this distance, looking down, I don't feel the horror or the sickness. I don't watch. Somewhere, I have to believe that my children are still alive. Safe. That somewhere, Sam is okay.

  Somewhere, people still live in the light.

  But here in the dark, I'm all that stands between Melvin and the people I love.

  And I have to keep standing.

  When I open my eyes, I'm still in that putrid, dying place, and Melvin Royal is turning toward me. His bloody face looks calm, and his smile looks hungry.

  "Gina," he says, "I'm sorry, but this is how it has to--"

  I lunge forward, and I jam the sharp piece of wood into his eye.

  It goes deep, rupturing the fragile surface, and I feel the warm fluid from within sluice over my fingers. It's all I have. All I can do. It's isn't enough, I know. Everything inside me goes silent.

  It's almost peaceful.

  The wood breaks in my hand off as he screams and twists away. He's alive. Blinded in one eye, in agony, but alive.

  Melvin pulls the wood out of his destroyed eye and screams in rage.

  The silence inside me snaps, and the fear roars back in, black and silver and cold as sleet, and I know I have seconds, seconds, to save myself.

  I'm already lunging forward. It feels like I'm moving in slow motion, every motion crystalline clear and too slow, and something inside me is screaming to hurry, hurry, God, run, go.

  I'm past him before he realizes I've moved, but he's only a step or two behind me, screaming my old name, my dead name, and I know if he gets his hands on me, there won't be any carefully curated torture streamed out to enrich Absalom; it'll be pure, bloody slaughter, just as it was with Annie. He'll rip me to pieces.

  I see the camera operator moving out of the room behind us; he's brought the video recorder with him, and he's filming me as I head for the stairs. I hear Melvin roaring. It sounds like hell is ripping open behind me.

  The screwdriver that Melvin used to kill Annie has rolled out into the hall, kicked there at some point, and I bend and pick it up without breaking stride. Someone's charging up the stairs, a new man, and he has a gun in his hand.

  I need that gun.

  I can't feel the pain of my wrist anymore, or anything else. I feel incandescent. I burst with power, and I close the distance faster than I thought possible. I bury the screwdriver in the guard's neck, and the gun falls to the floor as he staggers back and starts to tumble down the steps. I dive for the weapon, twist over on my back, and as I roll, I see Melvin taking a last step toward me. He has his right hand clamped over his bloody, mutilated eye, but he sees the gun just in time to throw himself to the side as I aim and fire. Adrenaline or not, the shock of recoil sends a brutal stab through my arm, and I yell in pain and fury. My first shot misses him by less than an inch. I try again.

  Melvin ducks into the room where he intended to kill me. He has weapons there. Maybe even a gun. I can't stop now, even if my wrist shatters off my arm, I have to hold the gun and shoot, and pain doesn't matter.

  I fire more bullets into the wall, walking the shots methodically across. I don't know where he is. My heart is racing so fast that it feels like a dying bird in my chest, but my brain feels slow. Calm. Almost peaceful. The gun in my hand is a semiautomatic, so it has a minimum of seven bullets. I've fired four.

  The video operator is still standing there filming me. Maybe he truly doesn't understand that he isn't just crew, that he's a guilty accomplice to horrors. Maybe he thinks his camera is a magic shield.

  I shoot him, and he goes down. Five.

  I scramble forward. My legs feel weak and loose, but somehow I stay up. I dodge drunkenly around the hole in the middle of the floor, step over the dead camera operator, and pray there's still at least one more bullet in the gun so I can put it in Melvin's head.

  I make it to the door of the torture room. There's a man curled up motionless on the oval rug: the lighting tech. I got him with the shots I put through the wall.

  Melvin isn't here. Melvin's gone.

  There's a door to the left. I missed it before; the camera tripod was blocking it. But the tripod's on its side, and a broken laptop is sparking and flickering next to it.

  I sense someone behind me. A shadow, moving fast.

  I whirl and pull the trigger.

  I realize just one second too late that it isn't Melvin.

  It's Sam.

  The gun clicks.

  Empty.

  Sam's breathing hard as he skids to a stop. He's staring at me with wild eyes, and he's standing in the spreading pool of Annie's blood. He's got a gun, too, and he's holding it on me as if I'm a dangerous creature he can't trust. Then he yells, "Put it down, Gwen! Put it down!"

  I drop the gun, and it hits my leg painfully enough to jolt me out of my momentary trance. Everything floods me at once, a storm of emotion that I can't even understand. It rips away the focus, sends me reeling, shaking. The pain is back. So is the fear.

  "He's still here!" I s
cream at Sam. "Melvin! He's still here!"

  Sam's staring down at the ruined body of Annie with an expression of pure, visceral horror. It takes him a second to tear his gaze away and fix it on me. "No. He's out in the hall. He's dead."

  "What?"

  "He took a bullet in the eye. It's okay. Gwen. He's down." He catches me when I fall against him. I feel such an immense sense of exhaustion I think I might die. My heart is hammering like an engine; my body is still intent on running, fighting, even when there's nothing left to fight. I feel tears shredding me, wild and desperately intense.

  "You got him," I whisper to Sam. "Thank you. God, thank you."

  He holds me so tight it feels like we're fusing together, and I want that, I want that. "No," he says. "I didn't shoot him. You did. Didn't you?"

  It takes me a long, icy second to understand what he's just said, and why it's important.

  I didn't shoot Melvin in the eye. I stabbed him. With the gore and blood, it would have looked like a death wound. A shot to the eye. All Melvin had to do was lie down and let Sam go past him.

  I grab Sam's gun and use his shoulder as a rest to aim, because there's the monster coming just behind him, there's the tiger, and death is in his eyes.

  Melvin is lunging for Sam's back with a knife.

  I stop him with three bullets through the forehead.

  He folds at the knees, and then he's down on his face. He's still breathing. I can see his back rising and falling, and I want to put another bullet in it, but Sam's turning now, taking the gun from me.

  It's good he does, because I likely would have shot Agent Lustig, who enters the doorway with his own gun drawn. Sam lowers the weapon, and Lustig takes one look at the two of us, then at the dying man stretched out on the floor. The dead man near the lights. The ruined body of Annie.

  "Christ," Lustig says, and lowers his weapon. "My good Christ, what the hell is this?"

  We stand there in silence. Lustig kneels next to Melvin, and we watch my ex-husband's back rise and fall for three more gasping breaths, and then there's a long, rattling exhalation that trails into silence.

  The devil's dead. He's dead. I want to feel . . . what? Good? But there's none of that. I'm just grateful. Maybe later I'll feel satisfaction, vengeance, the fulfillment of a long-burning rage.

  But right now I'm so grateful I am weeping. I can't stop.