Shackled

by Ray Garton

  "Truh-troublemakers're on this level. The new kids and the ones who muh-make trouble. He's buh-been making trouble, tha's why he's still here. The others ... the ones who cuh-cooperate, they move up. The b-bad ones stay here." The man gulped hard when he was finished.

  "Where?"

  "The ruh-rooms aren't numbered, they aren't — "

  "I don't give a fuck if the doors are color-coordinated, asshole, you just tell me where to find him and do it now. We leave this elevator, do we go right or left?"

  "Left."

  "Then what? Right or left?"

  "Left."

  "How many doors down and on what side?"

  Suddenly the other man spoke up: "Whuh-the fuck you think you're doing, tellin' these people this stuff?"

  Doc pressed the barrel of the machine pistol against the man's cheekbone and he spoke, his voice ragged and low. "He's doin' it because he knows you're both gonna die if he don't. So shut your fuckin' hole and let him talk."

  The man lying beneath Ed said, "Three doors ... no, no, it's four. Four doors down. On the right."

  The sounds of the guns came again. Periodically. Systematically. One after another. Crack ... crack ... crack-crack ... crack ... crack ... crack-crack ...

  Not a single child screamed or cried out, or even made a muted sound of fear or pain.

  "Four doors down on the right?" Ed asked.

  The man nodded.

  "Okay, you'd better be right."

  "I am. Four doors down. On the right."

  "What about Bentley Noble, the reporter? Stephen Colloway, the writer? They down here?"

  "One level below."

  "There's another — b-but I thought you said this was the bottom — oh, fuck it. How do we get there?"

  "Stairs."

  "Where?"

  "After ... after y'get the boy ... keep goin' down the corridor. Thuh-the stairs are at the e-eh-end. But ... the duh-door's locked."

  "No problem. We gonna be able to find 'em down there?"

  "I dunno. We ... don't go d-down there. I swear to god, I don't know any-anything about that level. None of us do. Only those with cluh-clearance. You'll juh-just hafta ... look around."

  After staring down at the man for a long time, looking straight into the eyes that peered fearfully through the almond-shaped holes in the leather mask, Ed turned to Doc, made another vague gesture with his hand, then slashed his forefinger quickly across his throat.

  They both reached into their coats.

  "No, please don't," Ethan muttered.

  They removed their Walthers and put a bullet in each man's head with the bitter snap of the silencers.

  "My god, why did you have to do that?" Ethan shouted with a hand clutching each side of his head, elbows sticking out beside him.

  Ed and Doc stood and put their pistols back in their holsters. Ed turned to Ethan and said rapidly, "Padre, we don't have time to talk ethics or morals right now. We'll do that later. Come Judgment Day, I'll have a lot to answer to. But right now, all I'm thinkin' about is gettin' your boy. So let's go. Now."

  "Aren't you gonna put on their costumes?" Lacey asked him. "For disguises? In case somebody sees us?"

  "Honey, that works in movies, but what's goin' on here is some very perverted shit, and those costumes're part of it. I've done some bad stuff in my life, but puttin' on their uniforms is not gonna be one of 'em. Now, everybody just be quiet. Doc? These guns're on single shot, we've gotta switch to auto. You take up the rear, got me?"

  Doc nodded as he and Ed nipped the switch on the guns with their thumbs.

  The cracking of guns continued to sound from either side of them as they hurried from the elevator with Ed in the lead and Doc following protectively.

  They followed the directions of the leather-masked man who now lay dead in the elevator.

  They turned left, then left again down a corridor lined with doors.

  At the other end of the corridor, a man came out of a room, not bothering to close the door behind him. Behind him, other doors stood open ... doors to rooms that he, or someone else, had already visited. He looked like the two men Ed and Doc had just killed: naked, wearing a leather mask and carrying a machine pistol.

  It took a moment for him to notice them. He was on his way across the corridor to another door. The instant he spotted them, he dropped to one knee and raised the gun.

  Ed opened fire. His machine pistol made a loud, piercing, ripping sound and the naked man's chest and stomach sent bursts of red into the air as he jittered backward. Ed stopped firing when the man was spread out on the floor and his gun spun over to the wall and bumped against it. He did not move and his blood began to spread around him.

  "Lieutenant Shockley," Ed said, "unless you have some kinda special attachment to that shotgun, I suggest you go pick that machine pistol up right now. We'll cover you."

  Shockley dropped the shotgun and ran. He swept the pistol off the floor, switched it to automatic, then rejoined them as they headed for that one particular door. The fourth door on the right ...

  37

  Just a moment after Samuel noticed him, the man standing at the end of the bed began to act funny. His head jerked toward the door and he lowered the gun.

  Samuel heard the ripping machine-gun fire outside the room. Then there were voices, quiet, cautious.

  This was not only new and unusual, Samuel had the feeling that it was not supposed to be happening. He raised his pounding head and with great effort propped himself up on his elbows, his skin sticking to the soiled, stiff sheets. He watched as the man with the gun backed away from the bed and pressed himself against the wall beside the door, so he would be behind it when it was pushed open. Holding the gun between both hands, he raised it until the barrel was pointing upward an inch from his right cheek.

  Then, for the first time, Samuel heard another sound from outside the room. Muffled pops. Like firecrackers going off. Again and again and again.

  Suddenly Samuel was more alert than he had been in a long time and, although he had thought it impossible by now, more terrified ...

  38

  Ethan waited patiently, walking along with the others, although inside, he was on fire. They were near his son. Samuel was in one of these rooms ... behind the fourth door on the right.

  Ed walked ahead of them with his gun, and Doc followed them with his. In the middle, Lieutenant Shockley walked a bit ahead of Ethan, armed with his newly acquired machine pistol.

  Ethan hated them, the guns ... he despised them and the horrible things they did. He could not, however, bring himself to deny the fact that they had brought him this close to his son.

  The fourth door on the right was already open a few inches. Just like the doors behind the man Ed had just killed.

  Did that mean one of the assassins had already gotten to Samuel?

  Ethan felt sick all of a sudden. His legs quivered like jelly and he began to walk like a cripple, staggering back and forth as they neared the partially open door of his son's room.

  Ed looked over his shoulder at the rest of them and whispered cautiously, "Heads up."

  He nudged the door with his right arm and the barrel of the gun clicked against it quietly.

  The door swung open slowly and silently.

  Beyond it was a tiny, red-lit room with bare walls ... and a bed.

  Ethan shot forward, pushing the others aside. He even slammed an elbow into Ed's ribs to knock him out of the way.

  "Samuel? Sammy? You here? My Sammy?" Tears clogged his throat and made his voice sound thick.

  Ethan froze in the bad light, unsure of what he was seeing. He knew the room was small; he could feel it in his bones, as if he were enclosed in a box. The smell of body odor and urine wrapped around him like moist wool.

  The shape in front of him looked like a bed ... but the dim, red light was so distorting that he couldn't be sure. Until he heard the voice.

  "Daddy?"

  It was faint and weak and hoarse, but it came fro
m that bedlike shape, and it was definitely Samuel.

  Ethan threw himself at the bed, crying, "Samuel? Sammy? Sammy boy? My son?"

  The others followed him into the room as he embraced Samuel and lifted him from the bed into his arms, holding him close.

  "Daddy," Samuel whispered as he struggled to raise an arm, "the ... the m-man ...” His arm lifted halfway and a trembling finger pointed over Ethan's shoulder.

  Ethan turned his head to look at the same moment that the man stepped from behind the door and raised his gun.

  Ed and Doc spun around.

  Ed aimed his gun at the man as Doc threw himself forward, tackling him to the floor.

  The man's gun fired as Doc brought his fist down on the man's face like a hammer twice, very fast. The man did not make a sound. Doc took the gun from the man's right hand and stood, but with difficulty. He turned with a slight stagger and handed the gun over to Ed.

  "You all right, Doc?" Ed whispered.

  Doc nodded as he swayed a bit, back and forth, ever so slightly.

  Ed turned to Ethan. "This is your son?"

  Ethan held Samuel even closer, burying his face in the boy's neck. "Yes, oh, yes, yes, thank god in heaven, yes, this is my son," he said, his voice muffled as he began to cry, sobs jerking his shoulders.

  Ed turned to Lacey, who stood in the rectangular shaft of light that fell through the open door, then stepped toward her and offered the gun.

  "You wanted a gun?" he asked. "Well, this is it. I think I've known you long enough now. You've been through too much shit with us to be pullin' our legs. But before you take it, you listen to me, and listen carefully."

  With wide eyes, Lacey nodded.

  "This gun is set on single shot, and that's all you need. Don't touch any levers, don't touch anything but the grip and the trigger. One shot at a time, you understand?"

  "Yes," she said quietly.

  "When you're not using it, you keep it aimed at the ceiling or the floor, understand? This thing is only for killin' people, so unless you wanna kill somebody, you do what I say. Any questions? Am I clear?"

  "You're clear."

  She took the MP-5 in her right hand and immediately aimed it upward at the ceiling. "This okay?"

  "Perfect. Now let's go find those damned stairs."

  It wasn't until they were in the corridor that they realized Doc had been shot ...

  39

  "We'll leave everything behind," Dr. Corbus said. "Nothing is important enough to slow us down."

  "Wait, wait, just wait! Deanna snapped, standing and following him to the door. "I have files in here, things that could be traced back to me! They don't have my real name on them, but they could still be ... I mean, it's not like I've been living in obscurity before I came here! People know who I am! They know my handwriting, they know my work!"

  Dr. Corbus turned to her, his right hand at his side, wrapped around the pager on his belt. "My dear, you have not been listening. I told you to trust me. None of us will be caught. None of us will be discovered. We will not be found out! Now, if we do not go immediately, we will be endangering ourselves unnecessarily."

  She stared at him. "I've already told you, Doctor. I have things here that could very possibly be connected to me. Things that could incriminate me."

  "There will be nothing here to incriminate you, my dear. No one will be connected to anything here except for Rex Calisto. And he is dead. We, however, are not. I suggest we keep it that way. Come with me now, my dear. I assure you that you will never be found."

  While he spoke, he continued to fondle the small, black pager on his belt ...

  40

  The bullet had gone in just beneath Doc's right clavicle and blood was spreading over his suitcoat.

  "You've been shot, buddy," Ed said, gripping Doc's left arm.

  "Fine," Doc rasped. "I'm fine."

  "What the hell you mean, you're fine!" Ed asked, staring at Doc with his mouth hanging open.

  "Nothin' bad was hit. No arteries, no organs. We'll fix it later. Let's get goin'. I don't feel too welcome here."

  Ed closed his mouth and nodded. "Okay, then. You take up the rear like before."

  Doc nodded, his face expressionless, as if he did not have so much as a mosquito bite.

  They hurried down the corridor, following Ed, until they got to the door at the end. They could hear movement all around them, movement and gunfire as children were murdered one at a time.

  Still holding Samuel as tightly as he could, Ethan said very quietly, "Isn't there ... something we can do for the others? The children?"

  "Look, Padre, the longer we hang around here, the better our chances of getting nailed, and I'm not about to let that happen, understand? This is bad, yeah, and I feel horrible about what's happening here, but if we wanna get outta here, we don't have time to stick around and help. Hate to say it, Padre, but if I have to choose between asses to save — those kids, and us — it's gonna be us! So we're outta here, okay?" Ed didn't even bother to try the door. He reached beneath his coat, pulled out his SIG 226, and shot the lock twice as if it were attacking him. The shots were loud and the door began to ease open slowly, then Ed kicked it the rest of the way. He looked over his shoulder and gestured with his gun for the rest of them to follow him.

  Although most of them had come to ignore it, Ethan was unable to put aside the sounds of cracking guns that still sounded around them. They were muffled with distance, but they were taking place ... gunshots ... killing children.

  He held Samuel tightly as he spoke in his best pulpit voice, a sort of thunder that formed words.

  "No! I will not turn my back on these children!"

  The others froze and turned to him slowly. Even Ed and Doc seemed rather humbled by the voice.

  "We came here for my son," Ethan said, "and we have my son. But we will not leave until we have at least tried to save some of these children!"

  None of them moved for a moment. Then Ed stepped forward and moved very close to Ethan.

  "I may burn in hell for saying this, Padre," he whispered, "but you are one big righteous pain in the ass." He turned to the others. "Okay, the ones in this corridor. If the door is closed, they haven't been shot. At least, that's what I've gathered from what we've seen. So let's hit every one of the closed doors. We'll tell the kids what's goin' on. But we can't take 'em with us! Got that?"

  They did as he said.

  They opened the doors and entered the smelly rooms, telling the children to hide, to protect themselves.

  But the children were unable to move. Some were tied to their beds.

  Others were gaunt and delirious, with wide, watery, and confused eyes.

  Nothing any of them said did any good. The children were just as afraid of them as they would have been of any of the naked, leather-masked men.

  Then there was gunfire.

  They stuck their heads out the doors of the rooms to see one of the men at the far end of the corridor. He was firing single shots toward Ed and Doc, who immediately opened fire. The sound was deafening, but Ed shouted at them, "The stairs! Now!"

  They rushed out of the rooms and down the corridor to the stairway entrance as first one, then two naked men danced a bloody dance and fell to the floor, dead.

  They hurried down the stairs, each one of them knowing that someone, somewhere on that floor, had heard the gunfire.

  When they went through the door at the bottom of the stairs, they froze.

  It was cold. Very cold. And there was a smell in the air like old garbage that should have been taken out long ago ... like meat that had been left out for too long ... like urine and shit and the filthy, diseased people who spent their homeless nights huddled in big-city alleys.

  The corridor was lit from above by very dim lights. The floor was concrete.

  As they moved down the corridor, they passed a door here and there, staggered between one another ... one on the left, one on the right, another on the left, another on the right.
/>   Ed held up a hand and they all stopped.

  He turned to them and whispered, "Our guys are down here someplace, probably in one of these rooms. We're gonna have to try 'em all."

  Doc moved away from them and went to one of the doors they had passed. He opened it and found an empty room. Turning to Ed briefly, he shook his head, then crossed the corridor and tried another door, only to find the same again.

  Ed began to do the same, trying door after door, shining his flashlight into each room.

  The rooms were empty, or they were linen closets or utility closets; one closet was filled with bullwhips and handcuffs and chains, leather costumes, small, serrated metal clamps with weights of various sizes attached to them.

  While Ed and Doc were doing that, Lacey and Ethan stood against the wall, Ethan murmuring into the ear of his whimpering son, while Shockley moved slowly back and forth in front of them, eyes darting around, watching for the slightest sign of movement, of danger.

  Ed opened a door and found a man lying in a bed in a room that had only red light coming from a small lamp in the corner, just like Samuel's. He was a very pale, unhealthy-looking man.

  Before saying a word, he kicked the door the rest of the way open, hard. It slammed against a wall as Ed spun around, pointing his gun toward that wall ... just in case another one of those mask-wearing goons was waiting for him, like in Samuel's room. When he saw no one, he turned and faced the man lying on the bed beneath a stained sheet.

  "Bentley Noble?" he asked, his voice low but firm.

  The man in the bed moved around a bit and groaned back at him, his mouth trying hard to form a word, to at least make a sound. He couldn't. He was too weak.

  He looked like he was dying.

  Ed looked over his shoulder at the others and whispered, "Found one," and gestured for them to follow him into the room. The other four hurried into the room behind Ed, and Doc closed the door behind them.

  "Oh, dear god," Ethan groaned through a sob as he looked at Bent sprawled beneath the filthy, bloody sheet. "Dear god, what have they done to him?"