JACK KILBORN ~ ENDURANCE (28 page)

Florence immediately helped the girl up.

“
Are you hurt? Who got into your room, dear?”

“
We’ve got to get out of here. We’ve got to—”

The knock at the door cut Deb off. Both women stared at it.

Florence asked, “Who is it?”

“
This is Sheriff Dwight, of the Monk Creek Police Department. Can you open up for a moment, ma’am?”

“
Sher—”

Florence clamped her hand over Deb’s mouth, cutting her off. This didn’t feel right.

“
Just a second,” Florence called. Then she whispered to Deb, “I’ve got a weird feeling. Go hide under the bed.”

Deb shook her head.
“No way in hell.”

“
The bathroom then.”

“
He’s the Sheriff.”

“
There’s something in his voice I don’t like. Please hide while I talk to him.”

Deb chewed her lower lip. Then she nodded and walked to the bathroom, bouncing on her curved prosthetics.

“
Mrs. Pillsbury?” The Sheriff said, knocking again. “Please open the door. It’s about your granddaughter.”

When Florence
saw Deb was locked in the bathroom, she went to answer her door.

The Sheriff was a tall man, plump, pasty, wearing an ill-fitting police uniform. His hat was askew on his head. There was also something funny about his eyes. The edges were bright red.

They’re bloodshot. He’s wearing contact lenses to hide it.

“
What about my granddaughter, Sheriff?” Florence only opened the door a few inches, and kept her foot planted behind it, like a doorstop.

“
You need to come with us.”

Us? But he’s alone. Unless...

Florence craned her neck back, trying to see around the Sheriff. She caught a glimpse of a man behind him. A tall man, in overalls. He had a large jaw, and a rounded forehead that came to a point. Having done missionary work around the world and seen countless impoverished and disabled people, Florence recognized the man’s condition as microcephaly. He was what circus sideshows called a
pinhead
.

Not a person normally associated with law enforcement.

Floren
ce’s uneasy feeling about this inn quadrupled when Deb showed up in her closet, but now it was off the charts. She realized her whole family was in danger.

Okay, now that I know the threat, I can deal with it.

Florence took a deep breath, centered herself, then stepped away from the door.

The men burst in. The microcephalac clapped his hands together and giggled, and the Sheriff offered a mean grin, showing that dental hygiene wasn’t one of his top priorities.

“
Granny, that was a big mistake.”

He hitched up his belt and rested his hand on the butt of his gun, striking a rehearsed pose that was probably meant to intimidate.

Florence wasn’t intimidated. With her right hand, she struck the Sheriff’s jaw, driving his head upward. With her left, she shoved his wrist away from his holster and snagged his gun.

“
Don’t move,” she said, backing away. “Don’t either of you—”

“
Get her, Grover!” the Sheriff yelled.

Grover either always followed orders, or he was mentally impaired and didn’t recognize the threat of a gun. It didn’t matter either way to Florence. The microcephalac was twice her weight, and if he grabbed her it was over.

She shot him twice in the chest, and he fell like a redwood, crashing into the floor with a
thump
almost as loud as the gunfire.

Then she turned the revolver on the Sheriff.

“
Where’s my family?”

The Sheriff’s eyes got wide, revealing more of their red-rimmed edges.

“
Granny, put down the gun.”

“
My family. Or I shoot you like I shot him.”

The Sheriff cast a quick glance at his fallen partner.

“
We got ‘em. Ain’t no way you gettin’ ‘em back.”

“
How many people are holding them?”

He stayed silent. She pulled back the hammer on the revolver.

“
How many?”

“
A lot more than the four bullets you got left, Granny. You got no idea what’s goin’ on.”

From the bathroom, Deb screamed.

Then Grover grabbed Florence’s ankle.

# # #

Felix stared, slack-jawed, at the figure slinking out of the cave. Its golden eyes caught the moonlight and glinted.

Ronald isn’t a man. He’s a mountain lion.

A surge of adrenaline temporarily ove
rrode the pain in Felix’s tortured fingers, and he pawed at his pocket, trying to get at the handcuff keys. He slipped his shattered index finger into his jeans, pushed down, and screamed when it bent the wrong way.

He withdrew the finger, his whole body shaking in raw agony.

Ronald cocked his head to the side and padded closer, in no obvious hurry. Felix knew he needed to focus on the keys, but he was transfixed by the cat as it approached. The musk smell got stronger, and Ronald’s tail—broken in several places and shaped like a jagged lightning bolt—swished back and forth. It was strangely beautiful, almost hypnotic.

Then the cougar
hissed, revealing three inch fangs, snapping Felix back into reality.

Handcuffs. Focus on my handcuffs.

Felix tried his unbroken pinky. Wincing, he slid it into his pocket, but couldn’t get down deep enough to grab the keys. He could just barely touch the metal ring with his fingertip, but couldn’t hook his pinky around them.

Ronald stalked closer to Felix, head down, eyes shining. The beast was huge, easily over two hundred pounds. Each paw was bigger than Felix’s face.

Ignore the pain. Get the keys.

Grunting, Felix forced his pinky in deeper, bending his ring finger back, the broken phalange bone
s grinding against one another, his previous knife wound splitting open.

Almost… almost…

Too much. The pain overtook him
, and the world swirled away. Felix’s vision dimmed at the edges, the darkness forming a tunnel that got smaller and smaller until he blacked out.

Felix
awoke on his knees, hugging the pole, his face warm. He opened his eyes—

—
and saw Ronald only inches away, his hot, feline breath blowing onto Felix’s face.

Felix felt the scream welling up, and then the cat’s massive paw shot out, catching his pelvis, spinning Felix around the pole by his cuffed wrists.

This seemed to amuse the cougar, because he batted Felix in the other direction, like a tetherball. Felix felt the rents in his hips, where the claws hooked flesh through the denim.

My hips?

Oh, no... my pocket...

He chanced
a look down at his bloody, ripped jeans.

Are the keys still in there?

Felix patted
the material, feeling warm blood and torn fabric. The pain was twofold, both his ruined fingers and the gouges in his hip seemed to be in a contest for which hurt more. But there, under the heel of his hand—

The keys. And they’re poking through the denim.

Using his
pinky and his thumb, he pinched the protruding handcuff key—

—
and Ronald bit into
Felix’s foot.

The bite wa
sn’t full force, the cat’s teeth not even penetrating the shoe. But the pressure caused a muscle cramp.

He’s playing with me.

The couga
r tugged Felix, pulling him across the ground, forcing his hand away from his pocket as his body extended.

Did I get the keys?

I can’t tel
l! I can’t see!

And then Felix was fully stretched out
, his cuffs around the pole, his body pulled taught by Ronald’s grip.

Do I have the
goddamn keys?!?!

He squinted into the darkness, saw
the key ring wrapped around his thumb.

Ronald continued
to pull. The cuffs cut into Felix’s wrists. The pressure on his foot got worse, twisting Felix’s ankle. His spine screamed, joints reaching their limits, sockets beginning to separate, cartilage threatening to tear.

He’s pulling me in half.

I’m so sorry, Maria. I tried. I love you so very much.

And then the cat released
him.

Not stopping
to celebrate his luck, Felix scrambled back to the pole, getting it between him and the mountain lion. Then, using his teeth and his lips and his two unbroken fingers, he managed to fit the key into handcuff lock—

—
just as Ronald swiped at him again with his huge paw.

Felix’s world spun, and he rolled and rolled and came
to rest on his back, staring up at the orange hunter’s moon. He wiped his sleeve across his face, clearing some blood from his eyes.

The cuffs. They’re off.

I’m free!

Felix did
n’t bother to look for Ronald. He got to his feet, fighting ten different kinds of pain, and scrambled into the woods. When he left the clearing, the tree canopy covered the moon, making it impossible to see. Felix ran blind, his mangled fingers bumping off of trees, continuing forge ahead until he saw a light in the distance, a light coming up exceedingly fast.

It’s a tow truck.

That was Felix’s last thought before the truck plowed into him.

# # #

Mal stared at
his hand. Jimmy was dangling it up over Mal’s face.

“
The operation has been a success,” Jimmy said. “The patient has survived.”

Mal turned
his head to see the stump of his wrist, one of the pointy bones still sticking out through the flesh. It wasn’t bleeding anymore—a quick dip in the white powder clotted the wound within seconds. But the pain was still there.

The pain went deeper than just Mal’s nerve endings firing off signals. The pain was also mental. The memory of what this monster had done to him—cutting the skin, snipping the muscles with scissors, using a hammer and chisel to get through the bone—that would haunt him for as long as he survived. Mal’s begging and pleading had devolved to incoherent bawling. Staring at the monster who had done this to him, the monster who gleefully held up his severed hand like a prize fish he’d just caught, was almost more agonizing than the physical hurt.

“
Excellent work, my boy,” Eleanor said, setting down the camcorder.
“Momma has to go check on the guests upstairs. But you might want to give your patient another examination.” Eleanor looked at Mal and smiled. “I think he may have some cancer in his feet.”

Eleanor patted Mal on the cheek, then waddled off, leaving through one of the operating room’s two doors.

“
Foot cancer?” Jimmy said, his expression grim. “That’s a very serious condition. We’ll have to begin treatment immediately.”

Jimmy went to the instrument table, gripping a hacksaw in his oven mitt.

Mal cringed away, starting to babble again, knowing it wouldn’t do any good.

And then his arm, bloody and missing a hand, slipped out of the leather strap binding his wrist.

Without thinking, Mal thrust his traumatized arm at Jimmy as he inspected his saw, jabbing his protruding unla bone into the hunchback’s neck.

The pain was otherworldly. But the bone—sharp as a splinter from the chisel—cut deep into Jimmy’s flesh.

Jimmy grunted, stumbling backward, pressing both mitts to his wound. The blood gushed right through them.

“
Laceration... to the... internal jugular vein... Need... QuikClot... to stop the bleeding...”

Jimmy reached for the bowl of powder on the instrument cart. Mal, his vision red with agony, thrust out and knocked the bowl away, upending it onto the floor. A plume of white dust hung in the air, then settled.

“
Gone...” Jimmy’s red eyes grew wide. He stared at Mal. “You... knocked it over... The styptic…”

One of the hunchback’s hands stayed pressed to his pumping neck wound. The other picked up a scalpel.

Mal watched him stagger forward, the scalpel raised.

“
You’re a doctor!” Mal managed to say. “You can stitch yourself up!”

Jimmy halted his advance
. “Stitch...?”

“
You can do it! You can sew up your wound! There’s a needle on the cart!”

Jimmy looked at the scalpel again, and Mal was sure the crazy son of a bitch was going to plunge it right into his heart.

But Jimmy didn’t. He dropped the scalpel, shook off the oven mitts, and grabbed the large, curved, surgical suture. He lifted the needle up, the thread dangling down, and stared at it.