Chapter 18 The Hallway Of Horrors
THE HALLWAY OF HORRORS
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Nico leaps to his feet, as does Silas. "Report!" Nico shouts. "What is happening?"
He listens, head ducked, eyes unfocused, and then snarls, yanking the earpiece out. "Comms are down. They cannot penetrate the facility.” He’s in motion, scrambling over the ridge
Silas grabs Nico's arm and pulls him back. "We're overwatch, Nico."
The glare Nico gives Silas could strip paint. "He is in there. Right now. Jakob is in there. Our people are in there. We do not know the situation within—the six I saw could have been a decoy to a much larger party."
"We'd hear gunfire, though.” Silas looks at the huge building, squatting in the distance like a beetle's carcass.
"Silas….” Nico shoulders his rifle with a sigh and a shake of his head, then tosses it to the ground and draws his pistol. "Stay if you wish and provide overwatch for no one. Pugli dies this day."
Before Silas can answer, Nico is jogging up the incline. By the time I reach the crest, he's flat out running down the hill toward the facility.
Silas sighs. "Fuck." He glances at me. "I don't like this."
"Who does?" I ask. "I'm not waiting around up here. I'll go nuts."
Silas and I follow Nico down the hill and through the grass—carefully following the trails left behind by the passage of the others through the minefield.
We reach the two-story sliding doors and enter: three bodies lie motionless in spreading pools of already-cooling blood. Silas flicks a switch on the barrel of his gun, and a beam of light engages from under the barrel. "Stay behind me."
"Yes, sir," I answer. "I am one hundred percent a-okay with you taking the lead."
He sweeps the massive space—roughly the dimensions of a football field, with a roof soaring at least three stories overhead. I can't even begin to guess what this place used to be.
"There." His beam fixes on a door, propped open by a chunk of concrete stuck through with a length of rusted rebar.
We reach the door, and what I see illuminated by Silas's beam of light will haunt my dreams for all eternity. Brain matter has nothing on that fucking hallway. Freddy Krueger himself would have nightmares about that hallway.
"Fuck. Fuck no." I shuffle backward. "Rats and spiders? No, no, no."
Silas whirls. "We don't have time for that shit, woman. C'mon. For Jakob, right?" He grabs my wrist and slaps it onto his shoulder. "Don't move that hand. You move when I move. Got it?"
"Got it." My voice is small and shaky. "Don't let the rats eat me. Please."
"Just hold onto my shoulder and don't look anywhere but your feet."
I manage this for a few minutes, but then I hear a chittering behind me and can't help but crane my head around. "They're following us, Silas," I breathe. "The rats."
Silas swings around, and his beam illuminates a brief but horrifying tableau: a swarming huddle of rats—dozens of them, maybe even hundreds—crawling all over each other, following in our wake. As the light hits them, they scatter with a chorus of squeaking protests.
A shudder of revulsion shivers down my spine. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."
We won't discuss the spiders.
Not the ones I see over Silas's shoulder, scuttling through the beam—if the rats are the size of dogs, then the spiders are the size of rats. I swear to god, I saw one that could moonlight as a Shelob impersonator.
We won't talk about the spiders that I feel crawling down my back, or the tick-tick-ticking of legs on my pant legs as they crawl up me.
I keep one hand clawed into Silas's thick, hard shoulder, and with the other I brush constantly at my hair, my neck, my arms, my chest, my butt, my legs…
I make contact multiple times, and I have to stifle a scream each time.
"It's for Jakob," I tell myself in a whisper. "It's for Jakob."
Why, though? I should have stayed up on that hill. Shit, I should have…I don't know. Done anything other than follow Nico into this horror movie labyrinth. Even for Jakob, this is…
Even for Jakob?
What does that mean?
I let my thoughts distract me as Silas creeps down the endless nightmare hallway.
Even Jakob?
He matters to me, I realize.
His eyes are sad. Lonely. It's only now, being apart from him with fresh memories riffling through my mind, that I understand. That I see the truth.
The control is armor. A weapon to keep the enemy at bay—and the enemy is…everyone. The whole world.
His mother died unexpectedly, and his father killed himself.
That will leave life-long scars and trauma in its wake all on its own.
But the last thing he said to me before he entered that house rings in my skull like a multiplying echo.
I was a victim of sex trafficking and forced into prostitution as a teenager.
I can't imagine Jakob as a child, or even a teenage boy. I try to picture him gangly and lean and awkward, with his legs a little too long, skinny calves and wrists, and floppy black hair always in his eyes.
But then the image of gangly, teenage Jakob shifts, and I see him on a thin cot, waiting as someone enters. I see fear and resignation in his eyes as the shadow looms closer.
I know my imagination cannot come close to the horrors of his reality, but that alone is nauseating.
I can see how ultimate control over every aspect of his life would become paramount. Especially during sex.
I wonder what else he has endured that he hasn't told me about. I know he has more secrets—many of them. Dark ones.
If you were to know the truth of what manner of man I am, you would take your chances with the killers in there.
What does that mean? What could he have done that was so awful?
My mind flips from one horrible act to another, but I can't see him doing any of them. Despite the hardness in his eyes, despite the control, there is a core of goodness to him. Perhaps buried deep, but I’ve seen it. He has shown it to me.
He has shown it to these men and women.
Ironically, that's when Silas slows, and my attention is drawn forward past Silas—the whole crew is clustered together on this side of another door.
"Pugli is just ahead," I hear someone say.
"You know what's behind us?" I whisper. "A fuck-ton of rats so big I could ride them into battle."
"And yet," a woman's voice says—Inez/Sophia, "the largest rat of them all is on the other side of that door."
"Do we have a plan?" Nicolae says. "Or just go through and hope for the best? Either way, I am not waiting. I have not been this close to him since…" he trails off, growling a sigh.
"We have no idea what's on the other side of that door," Big Voice says—Chance. "Could be just Pugli and Boss, could be a whole fucking army, could be nothing at all."
Nico shoves through the crowd. "Enough delay."
Solomon grabs his hand before he can open the door. "No. Not like that. Be smart."
Nicolae growls, but stands aside. Solomon gestures at Saxon and Rev, who move up with him.
Rev grabs the handle, standing so he can open it without standing in the opening.
Saxon shifts his grip on his rifle, tucking the butt tighter against his shoulder, and nods at his brother.
The two stand shoulder to shoulder for a beat, and then nod at Rev in unison.
Rev twists the knob silently and then slowly eases the door open; a dim orange-yellow glow fills the widening gap.
Solomon peers through the opening from opposite Rev, seems satisfied he won't be filled with holes, and ghosts through the opening with Saxon on his heels; Rev follows Saxon and shifts to the side as soon as he's through.
Rev gestures for the rest of us to come through—Solomon kicks the door wide while flicking on the flashlight under his barrel. "Roberto Pugli! Hands up!"
I've always wondered why cops shout at criminals to stop when they clearly have no intention of doing so. Why waste your breath? Stop, stop! Right. Because that's ever worked.
And here, too—Solomon tells Pugli to put his hands up. But obviously, Pugli isn't going to do that. So why bother?
My brain fumbles off the tangent when I assess the situation in front of me.
Jakob is zip-tied to a folding chair, on a thick iron pedestal barely wide enough for the chair to fit on; above, a matching metal cylinder…which is descending. It's dim in here, but even in this low light, I can see that he's wan and pale, eyes heavy-lidded and heavy, forehead wrinkled in pain.
Pugli is standing behind Jakob with a gun pressed to the back of his skull as the cylinder above slowly grinds downward toward Jakob.
"Ah-ah-ah," Pugli says, "Not another step. Not another word." He gestures upward. "You have moments at most."
We all freeze.
"Lash." Pugli’s voice is cold and ugly with hate. "Gun on the ground, walk to me. Hands on your head."
Nico sets his pistol on the ground and puts his hands on his head, stepping slowly through the cluster of killers.
Jakob groans.
Nico moves toward Pugli, and when he's within reach, Pugli snags him by the arm and shoves his gun against the back of his head while backing away.
"Finally I have you," Pugli purrs. "Finally, you die."
Fuck this.
I couldn't begin to tell you what comes over me. I just…I have to do something.
I feel my body moving, but I have no control over my limbs—over my arms as they raise my pistol. I put the iron sights on the naked light bulb.
No one is paying attention to little ol’ me.
I squeeze the trigger.
The gun barks, making my ears ring, and it jerks in my hands.
Chaos ensues as we're all plunged into darkness.
I hear shouting, wrestling. A grunt.
Bang! A gun goes off, a dull orange flash illuminates a vignette—Nico on the floor, wrestling with Pugli; Jakob lolled to one side, peering up at the descending cylinder, now less than a foot from his head.
There's a distant ping of the bullet ricocheting off something overhead.
Bang!
I hear the chair slam. I drop to my knees and crawl forward toward Jakob. I hear Pugli and Nico grunting as they wrestle on the floor, but my focus is on Jakob.
"Jakob?" I whisper.