Chapter 18 The Hallway Of Horrors #2
"Brys?" His voice is faint. "Hey. Heyyyy. Hi. You're here too? Fancy that."
I follow his voice, patting the floor—grit, dust, filth, hard-shelled creepy-crawlies wriggling under my hand. I shudder in revulsion but keep patting and searching until my hands find the lip of the pedestal.
I hear commotion—a beam of light sweeps the space, several of them.
"No!" A voice snaps. "You'll hit Nic!"
No one can do anything.
I hear a soft grunt of pain, then a loud yelp.
A beam of light shows Pugli on top of Nico, whose head is half on the pedestal.
Pugli is throttling Nico with both hands; Nico has a knife in his side, hanging and waggling as he thrashes, trying to dislodge Pugli, who, despite being older and far less fit, is nonetheless big and strong enough to give the wounded warrior a real fight.
Pugli is bleeding from several places, the severity of which I can’t determine.
I can tell the others are trying to find a shot, but Pugli and Nico are thrashing and writhing too much for a clear shot.
The cylinder above grinds lower and lower, the top now inches from Jakob's head—he's slumped over as far as his bonds will allow, buying time.
I scramble onto the pedestal but quickly realize I have no way of cutting the zip ties, and there's no time to find anything.
"PUSH HIM!" someone shouts.
Jakob groans again, low and weak—the press is touching his head, bending him slowly in half.
I'm out of time. I grab the nearest part of the chair and throw myself backward. The chair's feet scrape on metal, and I hear Jakob growl a pained sound, and then the weight of the man and the chair topple off the pedestal—not far, perhaps eighteen inches or two feet. Metal clangs on concrete.
I catch another split-second glimpse: Nico has dislodged Pugli, but they’re both rolling around on the press platform, tangled up and impossible to figure out who is who.
I see Nico's hand flash, yanking the knife out of his side, flash again—Pugli shouts, a tense gurgle of agony, and then Nico is rolling away as the press lowers and lowers, now less than a foot above the platform.
Pugli isn't so fast.
I hear something crunch, and a scream, but my view is blocked by the press. I hear a gun go off, an automatic rattling, a short burst—ping-ping-ping. "GET HIM!" Nico screams. "FUCKING KILL HIM!"
I lose track of what’s happening as I scramble across the floor, still on my hands and knees, toward where I saw Jakob fall.
I find flesh—cool, clammy. "Jakob?"
"B-Br…"
"It's me. Hi, hey. You're okay."
"Deh…debatable."
"Are you…Are you joking?"
"Ow." He mutters something, but it's not English.
"Jakob?"
"Chair. I don't like the chair anymore." His voice is so faint, so muzzy and pained—delirious.
"Help!" I shout. "I need a knife!"
A massive hand appears, wielding a huge folding knife that looks like a toy in the giant paw. The blade flicks through the plastic zip ties like butter, and Jakob's hands flop to the sides.
"Oh, nice," he mumbles. "I like my hands."
"He's delirious," I mutter to Chance.
"Lost a lot of blood. We gotta move him. He needs a transfusion." The mammoth man scoops Jakob's limp bulk in his arms as if he weighs nothing.
"P-Poo?" Jakob mumbles. "Pool?"
"I dunno, Boss. You're safe, that's what matters. We’ll getcha fixed up."
"Nicolae."
A grunt of pain. "Here, Boss. I'm alive."
"Pugli?"
"Got away. He is badly…" a pause, a grunt. "Badly wounded. I stabbed him several times, and something was crushed by the press."
"How…get away?"
The beams of lights swipe and sweep in disorienting, coruscating patterns, but I can't see anything.
A hand grabs my elbow. "It's Silas," a quiet voice says, close by. "This way."
"Not the tunnel of terror," I whisper. "Please. I can't do that again."
Something bangs loudly, off to my left—a tiny square of light appears. A door?
"There he goes, the slippery bastard," someone growls.
"Nico, no."
"Let go—Pugli—I have to—"
"You've been fucking stabbed four goddamn times, Nic. You need medical attention. We'll get him. And you got him good, Nic. He's bleeding worse than you are."
"Missed…organs. May bleed out, but…" he trails off. "Fuck!" It's quiet but viciously intense.
"I can go after him," another voice says—I do not know these people well enough to ID them by voice.
"No, Sax. Nic is fucked up, the Boss is fucked up, and the women are home with only Fonz and Toro to keep watch. I don't trust Pugli not to send more of his fucking army after them while we're out here. We have to regroup and try again."
"Fucking goddammit."
We form a bizarre parade, then, trooping across another vast, echoing space, with only the light from half a dozen gun barrels to illuminate our way. We reach the farthest end after a ridiculously long walk.
“Heavy goddamn doors," someone—Rev?—says.
"Here, lemme set Boss down," comes Chance's gravelly rumble.
Jakob groans, and I shake Silas’ hand off my elbow and shuffle toward the sound of his voice. I find a foot, follow it up, and kneel beside him.
"Jakob?"
His hand finds my thigh. "Brys. Thought about you a lot."
"Oh yeah? Care to share with the class?"
"No." A grunt of pain, a sigh. "Why are you inside me?"
I can't help but giggle. "That's my line."
His hand tightens. "No, no. Serious."
"Jakob, what are you asking?"
There's a chorus of snarling male voices shouting in exertion, and then the giant doors slowly grind open, inch by inch.
"Okay, break," Solomon pants. "Fuckers are rusted shut."
"And also weigh a goddamn ton," Saxon says. "That don't fuckin' help."
Hey, I'm picking up who's who.
The fading light of day reveals Jakob's eyes, fixed on me, searching. "Beautiful."
This is ridiculous. Why is my heart squeezing like this at the tender sound of his voice? No, no, no, heart. Harden. Don't let him in. Not any further. Bad, bad, bad. Warning, danger. This man is dangerous.
Not to my life, not to my body—in the murdery sense, at least. He’s dangerous to my heart. He won't let me in. There's too much scar tissue around his heart.
His hand finds mine. "Brys."
"I'm here, Jakob. You're going to be fine."
"Hurts."
"I know. I'm sorry."
His head lolls side to side. "No, no. Not that." His eyes are intense, the squeeze of his hand on mine stronger than it should be. "Needing you. It hurts."
The men have the doors open wide enough to let everyone out, and Chance scoops up Jakob again. "C'mon, Boss-man. Let's get you to a doctor."
Jakob groans again as he's lifted; he still has my hand in a death-grip, so I shoot awkwardly to my feet and follow him out the door and into daylight.
It's weird that it's still daytime, after what feels like an eternity in that foul darkness.
I blink into the dying light as we cross the field—again, carefully treading single-file along the safe paths through the minefield.
Jakob refuses to let go of my hand for anything, even as we bundle into the absurdly sleek, minimalist, monochromatic interior of the one-of-one stealth jet with the weirdly quiet engines; I’m too worried, freaked out, and traumatized to enjoy the experience.
Who am I to deny a wounded man comfort?
All I can think about, after that, are his last words before the delirium turned to quasi-consciousness and incoherence.
Needing you, it hurts.
Why are you inside me?
Oh, Jakob.
I try to chalk it up to delirium, but a tiny voice in the pit of my soul whispers that sometimes that's when the deepest, rawest truths emerge.