Tortures of the Damned

by Hunter Shea

  “Let’s get the fuck outta here!” someone shouted.

  One of the thugs tried to get back to his feet. Max jumped over another body and swatted him in the chest with his bat.

  Rey’s blood turned to ice when he heard his mother cry out, “No! No! No!”

  One of the gang members had taken hold of Miguel, wrapping his forearm around his neck. Miguel sobbed uncontrollably.

  “I’ll break his fucking neck!”

  His mother reached out for him and was kicked in the face.

  The gang member screeched, “Put your fucking guns down now! You want him to die? I don’t give a shit. I’ll kill him right now!”

  “Max, don’t,” Rey said, seeing his brother creep alongside him.

  Max stopped.

  “Drop the bat, asshole,” the kid said.

  It clattered to the ground.

  There were only a half-dozen Nine Judges left, but they had Miguel. Everyone laid their weapons down.

  Getting back on their bikes, one of them said, “Come on, you know what all that noise just woke up.”

  Miguel struggled against his captor but it did no good.

  “Don’t even think of taking a shot at us,” he said. “Or I’ll cap his fucking skull.”

  Rey’s mother shouted incoherently in her desperation. Alexiana and Gabby held on to her as if the laws of gravity had been suspended and they had vowed to keep her earthbound.

  The remaining gang members turned back to the way they’d come, with Miguel held tight, unable to break free. His face was a frozen mask of unmitigated terror. Miguel’s mouth was open wide in a silent scream, just like he’d sometimes cry out when he was upset as a baby.

  “Miguel,” Rey sobbed as he watched them ride out of sight.

  85

  The moment they took Miguel, Gabby’s tears stopped. The pain, the fear was so great, it was as if her entire system had gone into suspended animation. She saw her mother shouting but couldn’t hear her. She knew she was holding on to her mother’s shirt but she couldn’t feel it in her hands.

  Her ears couldn’t stop ringing. Each gunshot had felt like a punch to the center of her head.

  Buck was standing over her father, saying something to him. Her father was facedown in the street, not moving.

  She looked over at the cart with Dakota.

  Her stomach should have lurched. She should have cried out.

  Again, there was nothing.

  It was hard to see Dakota through the thick layer of blood. She was dead. She had to be. If she wasn’t, she would be soon. Rey was in the other cart, tears streaming down his face.

  Max stormed over to her. He asked her something, but she couldn’t decipher the words. Reading his lips did little to help her. He held out his hand and she took it. She watched her mother melt into Alexiana’s arms.

  Those men had taken her brother.

  Why? What had Miguel done to them?

  She understood, as horrible as it was, why they’d shot Dakota. She had fired first, at least Gabby was sure she had.

  Her father was still on the ground. Buck was on his knees, shaking his shoulder.

  Gabby pulled away from Max, took two faltering steps, and threw up.

  86

  “Dan. Dan. Jesus, Dan, can you hear me?”

  Buck sounded as if he were miles away, calling for him across a violent ocean. Or maybe it just felt like an ocean. Daniel could swear that he was floating on the waves, but where? Were they at the beach? He couldn’t remember going to one. And where was everyone else? And most of all, why was Buck here? He liked his neighbor, but he never considered him “family time at the beach” material.

  He was afraid to open his eyes. There was a chance the sun was directly overhead. Staring right into it would hurt like heck.

  If he turned to the side, faced the direction he thought Buck was calling from, he’d break the floating spell and dip under the water.

  Why don’t I feel wet? Or cool?

  In a flash, he was afraid. Worst of all, he wasn’t even sure what he was afraid of.

  “Dan.”

  He opened his eyes. His fear ratcheted up a notch.

  There was no brilliant flash of sunlight. Only darkness. It was a darkness so oppressive, he could literally feel its phantom pressure against his face.

  He tried to speak. Someone groaned beside him.

  Was that me?

  His body started to rise. Something wrapped itself around his chest. He tried to keep his eyes open, but his eyelids fluttered like a bird’s wings.

  There was that odd, stilted groaning again.

  All motion stopped. He was no longer floating on water or being pulled into the air like a leaf.

  Daniel concentrated as hard as he could to keep his eyes open and focused.

  Buck’s wide face peered down at him.

  “Thank God,” his neighbor said, exhaling a warm, tangy breeze over his face.

  “Buck? What’s going on?”

  The muscles of the big man’s jaws tensed, tight knots pulsing. “You’ve been shot.”

  Daniel gave a short, pained laugh. “Come on, really. Why are you hovering over me?”

  “Can you feel your left arm?” Buck asked.

  Someone was crying close by. It sounded like a funeral. How did he get from a beach to a funeral? Buck said he was shot. Was he dead?

  “I . . . I think I can.” He tried to move his arm, but the limb wouldn’t listen to his brain.

  “I’m just gonna lay you back down, Danny. Give me a sec to get you some water and the first aid kit.”

  Daniel’s stomach dropped as if he were in a rapidly descending elevator. Buck set him down.

  As clarity trickled into his consciousness, a sharp, burning pain radiated down one side of his body. He scraped his tongue over his teeth to dispel the taste of pennies that threatened to make him gag.

  Who was crying?

  “Dad.”

  Daniel tilted his head as far as he could.

  Max!

  And there was Rey, his eldest son, being held up by his middle son. Why did Max have blood on him?

  “Are you hurt?” he asked, his voice alien, unnatural.

  Max shook his head. There were tears in Rey’s eyes. Rey never cried, even as a little kid. He’d take a digger on the sidewalk, get back up, and trundle along as if nothing had happened.

  But he wasn’t the one sobbing. No, there was someone else.

  “Where’s Mom?” he croaked.

  Both boys turned their heads to the right. Daniel couldn’t contort his body to see where they were looking.

  “They took Miguel,” Rey said.

  The words were like a punch in the gut. His lungs clamped shut and in a painful flash, everything came rushing back.

  The gang.

  Dakota . . . she shot one of them. Then all hell broke loose.

  A sting, or better yet, a searing hot poker pressed into his flesh. Then nothing.

  They took Miguel.

  No!

  87

  “Liz, I need your help,” Buck said.

  The woman was understandably distraught. There was nothing Alexiana could say to soothe her.

  Her husband was seriously hurt and she was the nurse. He hoped to God she would be able to set aside her grief for the time it took to make sure he was okay.

  Buck knelt close to her. Elizabeth’s eyes were bloodred. “Dan’s been shot. He’s awake. I think they might have gotten him in the arm, but there’s a lot of blood. He needs you.”

  She stifled back a sob and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. Without a word, she took the first aid kit from him, stood up quickly, nearly swooned, and rushed over to Daniel. He was surrounded by Rey and Max and now Gabby.

  “How bad is he?” Alexiana said.

  Buck’s heart was still doing a mad march. Within the shock of all the chaos that had erupted was a warm flood of relief that Alexiana somehow made it through unhurt. He cast a quick glance at the cart,
blood dripping from the multiple holes in Dakota’s body, collecting into large, crimson puddles.

  “I don’t know,” he said, helping her to her feet. They embraced, Buck burying his face in her hair, savoring the smell of her, the life still within her. If they thought they had been in Hell before, they were dead wrong. Maybe Dante was right. There were multiple levels to Hades. The question now was how many they’d have to traverse to find Miguel.

  Elizabeth had cut off Daniel’s sleeve and poured alcohol on his upper arm. Daniel didn’t even wince. His kids watched over him, Gabby clutching Rey’s hand.

  “We should see if she needs any help,” Buck said.

  Alexiana didn’t want to part from him any more than he wanted to leave her. They walked arm in arm.

  “What can I do?” Alexiana asked.

  Elizabeth dabbed an angry-looking red entry wound with some gauze. “The bullet went right through,” she said. “Can you thread that needle?” Alexiana dug into the first aid kit for the sutures.

  While Elizabeth sealed the entry and exit wounds, Daniel stared down Yonkers Avenue, back to where they’d first seen the gang.

  “Hurry,” he said. “We have to go.”

  Buck said, “Dan, maybe we should rest up a moment. You were just shot.”

  He shook his head. Buck was taken aback by the cold, hard look in his once-passive neighbor’s eyes. “No. The longer we wait, the smaller our chances of finding him become. I don’t want my son to be with those animals one second longer than he has to.”

  There was no arguing with him. Besides, he was right. They had to get a move on.

  He looked to Alexiana. “Honey, I have to do something with Dakota. I can’t just leave her out here like that.”

  There was no time to bury her, even though there were a couple of good places to do so right in front of them. A grassy embankment that led to an old watering hole was just across the street. They didn’t even have a shovel, which was ironic considering she was lying lifeless in a shopping cart pilfered to hold shovels and all the things they’d need to make a decent final resting place for her.

  “What about the cars?” Alexiana said. “At least it’ll keep the animals away from her.”

  He kissed the top of her head.

  The driver’s side door to a Dodge minivan was wide open. He reached back and slid the side door open.

  Wrapping Dakota in a sheet and blanket, he carried her to the minivan.

  He said the handful of prayers he knew in his head as he laid her in the middle row of seats.

  You didn’t deserve this. But you died protecting a family you’d never met until two weeks ago. I hope I have half your courage. Rest now, Dakota. Rest.

  When he closed the door, Daniel was on his feet. Alexiana gasped. Buck looked down.

  Dakota’s blood was all over him, from his chest down to his thighs.

  88

  No one wanted to continue using the shopping cart where Dakota had been killed, so they loaded all of their supplies in the remaining cart. Max and Rey pushed it, Max doing most of the work, Rey using it to stay upright.

  “Buck, do you know what part of the city the Nine Judges are in?” his father said. He had the hand of his bad arm tucked in his jeans pocket. He’d traded in the bulky shotgun for one of the pistols.

  “I just know it was South Yonkers,” Buck said.

  They passed a seedy motel on their left, heading to the access points to the Saw Mill River Parkway. Their pace had quickened considerably. Rey was finding it hard to keep his legs moving fast enough, but he’d be damned if he’d complain. They had to find his brother.

  His mother had given his father some painkillers and he was already acting like nothing had happened to him. The bullet came from a small-caliber gun and missed any vital parts in his arm. Still, Rey was amazed by his father’s resilience.

  “They’re down in Getty Square,” Rey said. “You see them a lot around Chicken Island.”

  Chicken Island was a very old nickname for the central business district of South Yonkers. Rey assumed that back in the day, they must have sold live chickens in the area. Nowadays, it wasn’t exactly pretty, but it was always bustling with people and deals, legitimate or not.

  His mother tuned to him. “How do you know that?”

  “A couple of them went to my school, at least until they were expelled. I’ve seen them down there a few times. They always have black bandannas.”

  His father said, “That’s where they took my boy. Gangs are territorial. If they had a safe place to ride things out, it would be there. Probably the sub-basement of one of the old apartment buildings. Some of them are built to withstand a nuclear blast.”

  “That’s still a lot of territory to cover,” Buck said.

  “Not if there aren’t many people around. We just need to find one of them and follow them to their . . . nest.”

  Rey’s lungs hitched, and he went into another coughing fit. Thankfully, Max slowed down so he could catch his breath. Something big and wet and burning like acid rocketed up his throat. He tilted his head down and spat as hard as he could, desperate to get it out of him.

  A gelatinous wad of blood and phlegm splattered between his feet.

  Please, no.

  He pushed the cart forward before his brother could see. The taste in his mouth was vile. He’d tasted blood before, especially when he played basketball and had been smacked or elbowed in the mouth.

  This was different. It wasn’t just blood. This was the vile flavor of disease, of something dying within him.

  “You all right?” Max asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “I can ask Mom for another one of those pills.”

  “I’ll take one later. Let’s keep walking.”

  The truth was, finding Miguel now kept him from grieving for Dakota. He’d never erase the sight of her as those animals shot her over and over.

  Maybe it was lucky that he wouldn’t have to live with that memory for long. He was going to die. Nothing in his body could tell him any different.

  But before he did, he had to know Miguel was safe. Of all of them, he was the only one who hadn’t been bitten by the rats. Poison could be coursing through all of their systems now.

  Miguel was the last hope for survival.

  “Isn’t that where we saw Grandpa?” Gabby asked their mother, pointing across the street.

  “Yes, it is. I’m surprised you remember. You were only six when he passed away.”

  A big white colonial building that had been converted to a funeral home many decades ago loomed ahead. Rey remembered every moment of his grandfather’s wake. It was the first and only time he’d ever seen his father cry. It scared him then. He didn’t know what to do or say, so he’d left his father to himself. Now that he was older, he realized his father could have used his company at that moment, more so than maybe ever.

  Instead, he’d gone out back with Max, exploring the two empty lots behind the funeral home. They were overgrown with weeds and garbage. He and Max had been especially fascinated by a moldy mattress with a woman’s bra and panties sitting in the center. Why would someone leave their underwear there?

  And then the cats came. Someone must have been feeding them, because they scooted into the lot the moment they saw him and Max, thinking they had food.

  War-torn strays and mewling litters surrounded them, rubbing against their legs, meowing and purring. They felt bad not having anything to give the cats.

  Max was thinking the same thing because he said, “Dude, remember all the cats? I asked Mom if I could take that orange one with the one eye home and she said no way. I wonder if it’s still there.”

  “I wanted the big black one with the green eyes. Only I was smart enough not to beg for a cat at a funeral.”

  Max stopped the cart.

  “Holy shit.”

  “What?” Rey said.

  “The friggin’ cats. What if they’re all still there?”

  Rey’s head
swam as he fought back another wave of coughing.

  He called out, “Mom, Dad, hold up!”

  89

  Elizabeth felt as if she were being pushed from behind by a hurricane wind. It took all of her restraint not to run, to leave everyone behind and see if she could catch the gang’s trail. Her baby was alone, kidnapped by people who had no problem shooting a sick woman, not to mention her own husband.

  Daniel had to hold her back when Rey asked them to stop.

  “We have to keep quiet,” Rey said.

  “How come?” Buck asked.

  Rey looked to her. “Gabby got me and Max thinking about Grandpa’s funeral. Remember where you found us?”

  She looked to the funeral home a block ahead of them. Try as she might, the whole wake came up a blank. It was as if she couldn’t remember anything past the moment Miguel was taken from her.

  “Remember when I asked you if I could bring a cat home?” Max said.

  “Vaguely,” she replied.

  “The whole area behind the funeral home was filled with stray cats. It was like a hundred,” Max said.

  “Or at least it seemed like a hundred to us at the time,” Rey added. “It’s a perfect place for them to stay. And if they’re still around . . .”

  There was no reason to believe the cats wouldn’t be affected just like every other animal had been.

  “We better not take our chances,” Daniel said. “Once we get to the corner, no talking. Walk as quietly as you can. We can take a breath when we get to the gas station the next block over.”

  Elizabeth kept her eyes on the double doors of the funeral home. Scanning the area to the left and right, she plotted potential safe zones. Unfortunately the pickings were slim. On one side were row houses, long abandoned and boarded up. On the other, small businesses—a barbershop, Peruvian deli, electronics repair shop—with metal bars pulled down over doors and windows. Crime was a serious problem in this neighborhood, and shop owners had to take every precaution.

  “Daniel, do you recall there being any bicycle shops around here?” she asked as quietly as possible.

  “I don’t think so, why?”

  “I’m beginning to think those gang members had the right idea. Staying on foot makes us vulnerable.” What she didn’t say was her weak hope that if they found one, they’d find the remaining members of the Nine Judges, and their son.