Wolver's Rescue (2 page)

“
Job’s done and I need the
money,” Bull told him.

Because it was work few others would do, his
assignments paid well. So well, in fact, he was almost ready to
retire. One more and he’d leave both Begley’s pack and his employ
to live out his life as the lone wolf he started out to be; needing
no company but the memory of his sins.

Eugene Begley handed him the folder and Bull
glanced at the white label in the corner. The label read: Thomas
Mortimer Bane with the generous fee written beneath.

Bull scanned the printed page, took in the
pertinent details, and flipped it over. The back was blank.

“
Where’s the rest of it?” He
nodded at the empty folder which usually held ten to twelve closely
written pages.

“
Why? You never read it. I
figured I might as well do my part in savin’ a tree.”

He was right. Bull had no interest in reading
the sad tales of the wolvers he hunted. Everybody had a sad tale to
tell. It didn’t mean you got to declare open season on folks who
had nothing to do with it.

“
Could have saved a lot more
if you’d learned the lesson sooner. What do you want
done?”

“
Learnin’ takes some of us
longer than others.” Begley sounded regretful, as he always did
when he handed Bull his assignments. “You make the call, son, same
as always.”

And William Bulworth nodded in understanding
as he always did when Begley handed him an assignment. It was his
job. It was why they paid him the big bucks.

He was Judge, Jury, and sometime Executioner.
It wasn't his job to correct a problem. His job was to eliminate
it.

“
I’ll be back in a couple of
weeks,” he said.

Above the smell of raw and rotting meat and
her own filth, the aroma of fried hamburger and melted cheese
brought her up on all fours. Her eager eyes went to the fast food
bag before they looked at the man carrying it. She couldn’t take
her eyes from it. She immediately thought of how it would taste and
how it would feel to chew the mixture of meat and cheese and bread.
There were French fries in the bag, too. She liked French fries
almost as much as chocolate, but rarely allowed herself either of
the treats. She’d been riding the high protein diet wave and carbs
weren’t part of the plan.

Now, if he threw her the bag, she would stuff
her mouth with them. She’d eat them by the handful and she didn’t
care if she was punished for using her hands. She began to salivate
and as humiliating as it was, the reaction brought her some
comfort. She was hungry, but she was not an animal.

The meat, still attached to the bone and
sitting in the metal food bowl, didn’t have the same effect on her
senses. Yes, it was tempting, but only because it had been three
days since her last meal, meager as it was. Her refusal to eat raw
meat was her last rebellion and the doctor was determined to put
this mutiny down as he had the others.

“
No more food until it eats
what’s in its bowl,” he’d told her keepers.

He no longer said her name. She was no longer
‘she’ or ‘her’. She was ‘it’; one more step on the road to removing
her humanity.

The hand held the bag out to her and wiggled
it enticingly, much like her neighbor, Mrs. Gladstone, did with the
treats she fed her little poodle, Tinkles. It wasn’t until he spoke
that her eyes left the bag.

“
You want it, little doggie,
don’t you?” he said in much the same way Mrs. Gladstone spoke to
Tinkles.

Her elderly neighbor spoke to her little pet
with love. There was no love or kindness in Buster’s voice. But
there was something else in it, something that made her more
cautious of him than she usually was.

She knew from overheard conversations that
he’d once been a patient in this place and now worked as Doctor
Gantnor‘s assistant. She didn’t know what that meant outside these
walls, but here in her prison, it meant he was her main tormentor
and she knew he enjoyed it.

Buster was mean. He found his amusement in
cruelty. He enjoyed following the doctor’s instructions to taunt
and hurt her, but even the doctor had never allowed him to be alone
with her before.

“
Doc said not to feed her,”
the man with him protested.

He was an older man with a friendly face. His
name was Stu and he smiled at her and sometimes winked when he
removed the bucket from the corner of her cage or filled her food
bowl. She might have fallen for his small shows of kindness if she
hadn’t heard him talk about the three young women he’d bludgeoned
to death and the ‘fun’ he’d had before he killed them.

“
It, not her,” Buster
corrected, “And the doc’s not here. Won’t be back for a couple
days. He’s on another one of his hunting trips.”

“
He’s already got three.
Why’s he lookin’ for another?”

“
Probably for the same
reason you are. He’s just found a better way to hide it.” Buster
laughed, high pitched and girlish for a man of his size. It
reminded her of the TV shows she’d seen of hyena’s attacking their
prey. “If he’s done with this one, maybe he’ll give it to you to
play with.”

“
You know she ain’t my
type.” Stu sounded affronted by the suggestion. “I like mine blonde
with a bit more up front.”

“
Well I ain’t so picky. Open
the fucking door,” Buster ordered. He took the yellow wrapped
burger from the bag and held it out.

“
Good doggie. Come on out.
Old Buster wants to play.”

It was the second time he called her that and
the second time something inside her churned at the sound of it.
Being called bitch didn’t bother her nearly as much as being called
dog. She licked her lips, swallowed hard, and shrank against the
back wall of her cage. She knew what he meant by play. Even if she
couldn’t smell it on him, the bulge in his pants gave it away.

Stu knew it, too. “Don’t be a fool. Do you
want to end up back on the wards? He said to wait until he came
back. She’s got to eat the meat first. If she doesn’t crack,
fucking her would be the next step.”

“
Look at her, asshole. She’s
ready to crack and how’s he gonna know what did it. It’s not like
she can tell him. He zaps her with the rod every time she opens her
mouth. Like this.”

Buster picked up the electric prod from the
counter and pressed the button on the prod’s grip. He laughed when
she twitched at the sound it made.

Every time she made a human sound, she was
zapped with an electric charge. At first, she fought it, but the
doctor only increased the charge until it was strong enough to make
her wet herself.

“
Get the hose, and we’ll get
her out.”

She was truly frightened now. They’d wet her
down. The prod would hurt more against her wet skin. They’d use the
capture poles to snap a loop around her neck and drag her from the
cage like some animal.

She wasn’t an animal. No matter what she
dreamed or what the doctor said. She wasn’t an animal. She
wasn’t.

But like the animal she wasn’t, she bared her
teeth and snarled. And like the human she no longer was, she whined
with fear when the water and electric shock hit her at the same
time.

~*~

The alarm sounded and blue lights flashed in
the hallway.

“
Ward C. Ward C.” The
loudspeaker overhead announced the location of the problem. “All
patients are required to return to their rooms
immediately.”

The announcement triggered an immediate
response in Ward B where Bull was working the evening shift. Like
an electric shock, he felt the current of excitement run through
the patients. Whatever was happening in Ward C was about to carry
over into B.

Two of the men in grey smocks with big red
‘B’s painted on the front nervously shuffled to their doors and
closed themselves in. Four more looked up at the speaker box on the
wall and went back to their card game. A young nurse, who’d had the
misfortune to unlock the ward door just as the alarm sounded, was
suddenly confronted by the other thirty men using the rec room who
charged en masse for the now opened door that led to the other
wards. The nurse’s white shirt disappeared in a sea of grey.

Bull didn’t bother to shout an order or a
warning over the din created by the men. He waded in, tossing
bodies out of his way, yanking shirt collars and avoiding the
punches being thrown at him. He threw his body against the door.
Two inmates screamed as their hands were caught between door and
jamb. Bull opened the door just enough for the hands to slide free
and slammed it again.

He grabbed the nurse’s arm and hauled her to
her feet. Sheltering her with his body, he moved to the station
where two other nurses and another orderly had locked themselves
behind the wire and glass windows and heavy security door. He was
greeted by three horrified faces and three pointing fingers. Using
the key that hung from the set at his waist, Bull opened the door
wide enough to shove the rescued nurse inside before slamming it
shut and turning back to the over excited crowd.

Like the Red Sea, the crowd of shouting men
had parted for Moses. Comparable to Bull in size, though heftier
around the middle, the heavily tattooed patient had killed his
ex-girlfriend and two of her friends while they were celebrating
her engagement to another man. His mental stability was currently
being evaluated. He’d already thrown two other patients down a
flight of stairs and broken an orderly’s nose. He charged at Bull
and the chair he held over his head came crashing down.

Bull caught the descending chair in both
hands. For a moment, the two men seemed suspended in time, chair
balanced above them. Then, biceps bulging, Bull shoved, wresting
the chair from his attacker’s hands. Moses flew along the parted
sea, landing on his back. Bull didn’t stop. He brought the chair
down on the stunned man’s head and turned to the other’s.

“
Who’s next?” he snarled. He
spread his arms and curled his fingers in a come-on to the next
opponent.

His wolf was close to the surface, but the
men of Ward B wouldn’t see it as such. What they saw was the same
look they found staring back at them from the polished metal
mirrors in the bathrooms. They knew a crazed animal when they saw
one and backed off. Madness was an everyday occurrence here and
survival depended on recognizing who was crazier than you.

The Gantnor Clinic was a privately run
facility subcontracted by the State to house the criminally insane.
Two-thirds of its population was here on the taxpayer’s dime. The
rest had families wealthy enough to hide them away behind the
Clinic’s late nineteenth century facade. The employee turnover was
fairly high and Bull’s size and muscle mass made him an instant
hire as an orderly. It was his sixth day on the job and his seventh
mini-riot. He’d quickly learned that while the behavior he’d just
displayed might be reported, it wouldn’t be penalized. Someone had
to keep the inmates under control.

Six days and still no sign of Thomas Mortimer
Bane. The name wasn’t in the computer or in the paper files that
were kept in the rooms behind the reception desk. Of course, that
didn’t mean he wasn’t here. Bull had cross-checked several other
patients. One of them had missing paperwork, too.

More astounding was the lack of security.
Doctors and other clinicians worked out of a separate wing where
security was tight. If they ventured onto the wards, they were
always accompanied by two guards with Tasers ready. The rest of the
place was a disaster waiting to happen.

There were two guard shacks; one at the
ornate front gate where the facility’s few visitors entered, and
one at the rear drive where trucks made their deliveries and
employees parked. Inside, he’d counted only two dozen security
personnel keeping watch over four hundred inmates, most of whom had
violent histories. Sure, meds were issued three times a day, but no
one made sure they were taken and, as the mini-riots proved, they
didn’t always work.

The night he’d gone through the paper files,
he’d parked his truck on a road that ran beside the eight foot
stone wall that encircled the grounds, scaled the wall, and walked
across the park-like grounds. His only challenges were the six
Doberman Pinschers that patrolled the grounds at night and he’d
already established who the top canine was with them the night
before. He’d parked on the street ever since and no one ever
questioned how he came to work without signing in at the guard
shack.

Attacks on employees were fairly common and
he’d seen both guards and orderlies watch with arms folded as
inmates attacked each other.

Something was very wrong at the Gantnor
Clinic and because he’d never known Eugene Begley to make a mistake
about a target’s location, Bull decided to spend a few more days
looking around before calling it quits. That was how he ended up on
Ward B when the latest disturbance broke out. He’d offered to work
an extra shift to cover for absentees.

Pale and badly shaken, the nurse who was
almost trampled had a cut along her hairline that might need
stitching.

“
I’ll take her down,” Bull
volunteered, not because he particularly cared, but because it gave
him an opportunity to check out the infirmary which was on the
basement level.

When the elevator doors closed, the young
woman threw herself into his arms.

“
You saved my life.” She
sobbed into his chest, but it was a fake sob with little effort
behind it. When he didn’t immediately respond she looked up at him
with her sad, puppy dog eyes and batted her lashes. She pressed her
breasts against him in clear invitation.