Suffer The Flesh

by Monica J. O'Rourke

  Claudia nodded. She opened the cell phone, punched in 911. She shrugged—nothing.

  “No signal this far below ground, Zoey,” James muttered. He shifted, propped against the wall. “We’re a couple hundred feet down. I had this place built years ago. We’re in the middle of nowhere, deep in the mountains. Miles from civilization. Even if you manage to somehow escape, you’ll never survive the elements.” He laughed and then groaned, took a deep breath.

  “Shut up already,” Zoey muttered

  “I’ll show you the way out,” James said.

  She jerked her head back in his direction, eyed him suspiciously. “You will? Why?”

  “Because you need my help. Because you’ll never make it out without me. And because I can use this as a bargaining tool.”

  “Bargain? You’re insane.”

  He licked his swollen lips. “You know I’m insane. But what’s this worth to you? Is my immunity worth the price of your freedom?”

  “No, James. No way. You’re going down.”

  “Suit yourself, Zoey. But trust me, you won’t escape. If you get past Zack, and even if you find the exit, you won’t get past it. It’s barricaded with a heavy oak door, with a combination keypad. Even my guards don’t know the combo.”

  “You’re lying,” Zoey whispered.

  “Am I?” He grimaced, clutched his stomach. “Why wouldn’t I have installed an additional safety measure? You’ll never get through it. Better hope I don’t die, Zoey, or you’re all fucked.”

  His guards glanced at him.

  “Oh, fuck this,” Kevin said. “I know the combination.”

  “Do you?” James sneered. “Because I change it once a week. I changed it yesterday, in fact.”

  Zoey looked at Claudia. “Know any way to get this information?”

  “Because I’m a cop? We don’t beat confessions out of people. Anymore.” She smiled. “Besides, I doubt it would have much of an impact on him at this point.”

  “Zack knows the combination,” James said coolly. “Why don’t you go ask him?”

  “Somebody shut him up,” Zoey said.

  “Know where we are, Zoey?” James asked. “The Adirondack Mountains. You have any idea how big the Adirondacks are? How cold it gets at night, even in summer? And here we are, in the dead of winter …”

  Zoey looked away. Stared at her gun, considered bashing him in the head with it.

  “You need my help. That’s the bottom line.”

  She wondered why Zack hadn’t made a move. He was outnumbered at this point, but everyone in the room was a target.

  She took Claudia aside and whispered in her ear. “The cell phone may work once we get to the surface. Maybe we’ll find the way out, and there’s bound to be cars. They had to have gotten in and out of here somehow.”

  “What about Zack and his guys? How can we get past them?” Claudia asked.

  “You really think they’re still out there? We outnumber them ten to one. We have more guns. There are three of them left. They haven’t made a move, and I’d bet they didn’t have a plan in mind in case something like this should happen.”

  Claudia nodded, scratched her nose. “What do you want to do?”

  “We have to check it out. Two of us with guns need to do a search.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  Zoey nodded. She and Claudia approached the other women and quietly shared their plan. Out of view of the glass, she hoped Zack, if he was still upstairs, hadn’t heard anything.

  “Get him up,” Claudia said, and the gut-shot man was pulled to his feet. She cracked the door, using him as a shield. She tossed him into the hallway as a diversion and he crashed into the opposite wall headfirst.

  “Let’s go,” she said, gun poised, and stepped into the corridor.

  Checked left, right. No sign of movement as Zoey followed her out. They walked back to back. No sign of life other than the wounded man moaning, writhing against the wall.

  They reached the door to the Observation room. “I need to check it out.”

  Zoey nodded, shuddered, goose bumps creeping up her arms.

  “Guard the door. I’m going up.” Claudia drew a deep breath, scoped out the flight of stairs, and ducked into the bottom landing.

  Zoey waited out the eternal minutes. The adrenaline still pumped through her veins like a drug, but she felt strangely calm. Empowered. Ready to face her own death, if need be. There was no going back now.

  Claudia reappeared. “It’s secure,” she whispered. “One guy up there. Bound, gagged, throat slashed. Your handiwork I presume.”

  Zoey shook her head in surprise. “I didn’t kill him.”

  “They apparently don’t want witnesses. They’d rather kill their own guy.”

  Zoey slumped against the wall. “What if they’re hiding in one of the rooms? How are we supposed to check more than a dozen dark rooms?”

  “I’ll be right back.” Claudia disappeared up the stairs again. Less than a minute later she was back. “Master light switches. Power generator.”

  “How’d you know?”

  “I’ve been in this place a long time. Heard them talking, and I’ve noticed the generators and emergency lights. Makes sense, this far underground. Can’t rely on electricity.”

  “At least the rooms are lit now. Let’s get started.”

  With agonizing slowness they checked each room, Zoey standing guard at the door while Claudia searched. Every room they inspected, including the bathrooms was empty, except Room Six, where they had left Pete dead and Kurt tied down to the rack.

  Now Kurt was dead as well, but with the amount of blood on his body, Zoey didn’t know if she was responsible for his death or if he had been executed.

  Room Four. Punishment. The room she had luckily never had to face, the one where hysterical women were threatened with, dragged into.

  The door was closed, unlike the others. She licked her lips and reached out with tentative fingers … unable to imagine the horror of what James would consider punishment … what other deviation could he have concocted that would be worse than what they had already survived?

  She turned the knob … the door creaked open.

  Inside, leaning against one corner, a mop and broom. Small sink on the opposite side of the tiny room.

  Zoey expelled a sigh of disbelief.

  “A goddamned utility closet,” Claudia muttered.

  James had terrified them with a utility closet.

  They reached the cafeteria. Claudia checked it, as well as the kitchen and pantry. Came out a few minutes later. “Empty.”

  “I hope this means they’re gone. Where the hell is the exit? Have you ever seen a way out? Or how they come in?”

  Claudia shook her head. “We were released from the cells after everyone was already here. There’s that freak Sullivan’s office. Maybe it’s there. We need to check the cells too, even though that would be a stupid place for them to hide.”

  One door down the short hall, near the cafeteria, led to the cells. The door beside it led to Sullivan’s office. She hadn’t seen him since the coup, but he only showed up a couple times a week anyway.

  Zoey opened the cell door, Claudia flanking her, gun held two-fisted and chin high. No movement inside. Claudia entered, searched. It would have been easy to spot anyone hiding, even beneath the cots.

  The sight of the cells made Zoey’s knees weak. For some reason, seeing them disturbed her more than seeing the torture rooms. Especially strong, now that she had a renewed taste of freedom, the cells represented everything about this underground torture chamber, the confinement, the despair, the utter hopelessness.

  They reached the one door they had not yet checked.

  “Ready?” Claudia whispered.

  No, she wasn’t ready. Her palms were slick, fingers sticky, the gun trying to slip from one hand, the phone from the other. She licked her lips and took a few shallow breaths. “Let’s go.”

  Claudia peered up the short stairway and as
cended with Zoey close behind. The landing outside the office was small, and solid.

  No exit there.

  They skirted the office door. Claudia turned the knob, pushed the door open, and it slammed against the wall.

  Empty.

  They searched, checking beneath the desk, behind the high-back chair, inside the rather large bathroom. No sign of the men, but no sign of an exit either.

  Claudia tried the phone on the desk, checked the outlet for the connection. “Dammit. Phone’s dead.”

  Zoey slumped in a leather chair. “This is nuts. Maybe we should bargain with James …”

  “No, Zoey. There has to be an exit. There has to be a way in and out of this godforsaken place. We’ll just have to start our search again. Maybe it’s behind a hidden panel or something. Or in the vent system?” Claudia searched the desk drawers.

  Zoey got up and headed toward the bathroom. “I’ll be right out.” She’d put her injuries out of her mind until now, ignoring the pain, ignoring the wounds that reopened and spilled drops of blood every so often. Using the toilet wasn’t going to be a pleasant experience. She winced against the inevitable pain and released her bladder. It hurt like hell but was somehow tolerable. A gentle, cool breeze refreshed her flushed skin.

  Each room flashed in her mind, but she couldn’t recall ever seeing anything that remotely resembled an exit. A hidden door, perhaps—there was bound to be one somewhere. But where?

  Slumped against the back of the toilet seat, her heart now filled with renewed frustration. They’d come too far to be stopped this way. There had to be a way to get the information out of James.

  She moistened a wad of toilet paper in the sink and tried to clean the blood and urine, winced against the febrile pain. Suddenly she looked up.

  A cool breeze?

  There was no air conditioning in the bathroom, no vents. She leaned against the sink and stood, walked toward the shower stall.

  “I think I found something,” Claudia said from the other side of the closed bathroom door. “On the desk, there was—”

  It wasn’t a shower after all. On the back wall, a door, obscured behind white tiles, the doorknob impossible to miss. “Claudia! Come here!”

  * * *

  Using their same cautious approach, they opened the door and entered another office.

  They searched it. A deep closet held dozens of outfits, including the clothes Zoey had been wearing the day she’d been kidnapped.

  She and Claudia quickly dressed. Zoey pulled on her too-large sweater and stroked the fabric, hugged herself, savoring the warmth and comfort. It smelled faintly of Chanel, the fragrance she had been wearing that dreadful day. She climbed into her pants and they slid down her hips. She yanked them up and cinched them with the cord from the dead phone. Once she slipped into her socks and boots she felt whole again.

  The next room over was quarters for the guards, and they discovered identification, personal items; beds lined the walls military style.

  They returned to the office. Several file cabinets housed hundreds of folders, each containing records and personal histories of the women downstairs, and presumably the women who had been here before them. Zoey’s file was missing. Claudia searched for her own, but it too wasn’t there.

  Another door. They opened it, peered up a staircase dozens of steps high. They ascended, and once at the top discovered the door that James had described: solid oak, heavy, highly polished veneer. The keypad was near the knob.

  “Fuck,” Zoey muttered, leaning against the wall. “What do we do? Start punching numbers?”

  Claudia smiled and held up a note pad. “Let’s start with these.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Maybe nothing, but I found it on the desk downstairs. There are several sets of numbers on here. Maybe James gave Sullivan the combination.”

  They punched the numbers at the bottom of the list into the keypad. Nothing. Several more attempts, and the lock clicked. Claudia turned the knob, and opened the door.

  Zoey’s stomach flip-flopped. Claudia peered out, gun raised.

  They entered yet another room, a small cabin. A tiny kitchenette in one corner, sofa near the fireplace. A deer head over the mantle sported a Yankees cap. The bathroom and closet were empty.

  “This is their front,” Claudia said, checking behind and beneath the sparse furniture. “A hunting cabin. Must have been their diversion.”

  The back of the oak door—the door to their personal hell—was disguised to look like part of the paneling.

  Outside, several cars were parked, covered in a layer of fresh snow. Patterns of fresh tire tracks indicated that several cars had recently taken off.

  Claudia tried the cell phone. This time there was a signal. Dialed 911 and didn’t know how to begin to explain.

  Gun raised, Zoey checked the perimeter of the cabin, which looked deceptively ordinary from a distance. No indication of the atrocities inside.

  The landscape left her awe-struck. Crystalline snow embellished the trees like shards of glass, shining beneath the brilliance of a commanding moon. Zoey sobbed, lowered her gun, arms trembling. Breath plumed before her like clouds.

  Claudia joined her. “They’re on the way. I gave them the address of then mailbox. I’m not sure they believed me at first.”

  Zoey nodded, unable to speak for the moment.

  Claudia wrapped her arms around Zoey’s neck and hugged, sobbed into her shoulders.

  “That’s it,” Zoey whispered, voice hitching, not wanting to let go. “This is finally over.”

  Claudia nodded against Zoey’s neck. “Let’s go tell everyone. I want to see the expression on James’s face.”

  Within an hour, the area was swarming with cops and paramedics.

  Epilogue

  A month had passed since the end of her ordeal, and Zoey was back in New York, trying to organize her life. Trying to make sense of it all.

  December now, close to Christmas. When not in therapy or visiting a myriad collection of doctors and specialists, she spent time at Rockefeller Center, gazing at the seventy-foot tree decorated with tens of thousands of tiny lights. It gave her comfort somehow; amid the crowds of Manhattan, she found peace and solitude. Felt safe surrounded by vast numbers, and felt safer still in open, unrestricted areas.

  Her cell phone rang. Detective Ambrose, the one who had headed the investigation. “James was indicted today.”

  “So I heard.”

  “Want to hear the list of charges?”

  “Not really.” She closed her eyes and leaned against the back of the bench. She wished James was out of her life once and for all, although she knew that would never happen. James and his staff of torturers were an indelible part of her past, and would be heady ghosts in her future. Kevin, however, was never arrested. Zoey had allowed him to escape.

  A wet, frigid breeze whipped her cheeks. She pulled the corners of her jacket closer together.

  “So far we’ve arrested two of the three men who fled. We have leads on the third, Zachary Williams. His associates are squealing like stuck pigs. We have reason to believe he’s in Chicago.”

  “That’s good work,” she said. There’d been a media circus when Zoey and the others had been rescued. Reporters dogged her around the clock, staking out her apartment, following her shopping or heading to appointments. A few of the other survivors gave interviews, and Jessica and Marie had even appeared on Dateline, but Zoey avoided it. Some were calling her a hero, a title she felt uncomfortable with.

  “Paul, did they ever find my file? Did James mention what he’d done with it?”

  James, it was revealed, was a filthy rich sociopath with little to do with his money. He’d been running his torture chamber for years, his employees either paid obscene amounts of money or blackmailed and threatened into compliance. Of the hundreds of women who had been kidnapped from up and down the eastern seaboard, and that he’d maintained files on, very few had ever resurfaced, dead or alive. Those few
who survived worked for him—Robin, Mel, and the woman who had called herself Dr. Chambers and introduced Zoey to the horrors through a quasi-medical exam.

  The underground complex he’d built five years earlier was nestled in the Adirondack Mountains, on a tract of land he owned, thirty miles from the nearest highway or dirt road. Densely adorned with trees, rocks, and wildflowers, the terrain didn’t attract skiers. Didn’t attract much of anyone, except for the occasional hiker.

  “He told us he never touched your file, or Claudia’s. There were four files missing, of all the women being held prisoner at the time.”

  “Four?” Ice skaters kept time with the organ music billowing from loudspeakers below the café. Dusk, Rockefeller Plaza. A light snow touched down, coating the city in a layer of baby powder.

  “Yours, and Claudia, Jessica, and Marie.”

  James must have had something nasty in store for them, to have singled them out that way. She’d wondered why she’d been sent to the Nursery when her experience with the visitors could have been so much less severe, especially since he had claimed to like her. He had to have moved the files before the visitors took over, because he’d been beaten and restrained after the coup. The missing files belonged to the four women who had attacked, who had fought back, the four who had saved the others. It could have been that James knew who his real adversaries were. But why remove the files? For what purpose?

  When she hung up with the detective she called Claudia, who was back home in Saratoga Springs, taking some time off before returning to the police force.

  “Hey, it’s Zoey. How are you holding up?”

  Claudia sighed, cleared her throat. “You know how it goes. Hanging in there. How about you? Zoey, what did your doctor say?”

  Her gynecologist had treated the extensive damage. It had taken two Xanax to get Zoey’s feet in the stirrups. “Punctured colon, severe lacerations. She thinks my uterus isn’t damaged. Not for the long term, anyway. They expect me to fully recover.”

  “That’s wonderful news. My burns are healing, and my docs have given me a clean bill of health too. Hey—did you see my interview in The News?