Widow Town

by Joe Hart

  For the first time, Barder seemed surprised. He cocked his head at Gray, appraising him again.

  “Astute, Sheriff, astute is the word for you. Yes, I was able to persuade Ken that evening to set up the charges specifically to create a cave-in. He complied, but what would you expect a man to do when the other scenario was me shooting him and then returning to his house to kill his wife and unborn child.” Barder smiled again. “And I did fancy his cologne.”

  “You’re a fucking monster.”

  Barder shrugged. “I am, that is all. That’s all any of us are, Sheriff.”

  “You should do yourself a favor and put a bullet through your brain now so it saves me the trouble of killing you myself.”

  The doctor laughed, a hearty sound that rang throughout the room.

  “I really like you, Sheriff, I do. You’re something of a renaissance man; part detective, philosopher, historian, but you need to get in touch with your own id, I have a feeling you’re a lot darker on the inside that you think. Most people are.”

  Gray clenched his fists and then released them. His temples pounded like drums but the strength was slowly returning to his arms and legs.

  “Are they dead? Joslyn, Rachel, Siri, their children?”

  “Weren’t you listening, Sheriff? My whole purpose was to bring back what the world had lost, the ones like me. So what better place to start than a development full of women without husbands, children without fathers. I may take another woman from Widow Town, but for now Joslyn, Rachel, and Siri will all be our Queens so to speak. My sons will impregnate them whenever they’re eligible to carry another child, I’ll deliver the babies and then begin their training when they’re of age. Joslyn’s son as well as Rachel’s will be the first of the next generation of my experiment and I expect it to go well. I’m preparing them just as I did my own children. They will experience all the wonders I have to offer them and when the time comes, their first victims will be their own mothers.”

  The door banged open and Darrin followed by Adam came into the room wheeling a tall, rectangular frame of steel with casters bolted onto the bottom of its supports. It was almost eight feet tall and twice as long as the medical bed against the wall. From its center, Joslyn and Rachel dangled upside down from their ankles, their heads inches from the floor. They wore scrubs that matched Barder’s, and their hands were bound similarly to Gray’s. Lengths of rubber hose gagged their mouths. They swung and swayed like turkeys on a slaughterhouse conveyor line. Joslyn made a soft whimpering sound in the back of her throat but Rachel was stoic, taking in the sterilized room along with Gray seated in the chair.

  The two men brought the apparatus holding the women over the large drain and stopped it there, locking its wheels. Without a word they exited the room and returned moments later. Darrin pushed a cart that carried two little boys, their eyes wide and staring. One of them Gray recognized as Ken, Rachel’s son, but the other was a bit larger and unfamiliar to him. Both kids were silent and watched their mothers dangling before them. Adam entered the room and Gray’s heart stuttered. The huge man had Lynn by the shoulders, guiding her like a child. When she saw Gray a look of relief and then horror flooded her features.

  “Mac!”

  “It’s okay, honey, it’s okay.”

  Adam half walked, half carried her to the medical bed and amidst her protests, strapped her to it with wide, Nylon bands.

  “Thank you, boys. Have either of you checked on the fire?” Barder said, his eyes floating over his new audience.

  “The wind shifted and slowed it down, it’s about a mile from here. The planes and helicopters are still flying but there’s no visibility over a hundred feet with the smoke,” Darrin answered, looking at Gray with what bordered on hunger.

  “Good. I want you both to go to the house and gather up the rest of the food. I had it partially packed in the trunk of the car when the good sheriff interrupted me. Bring some of it down here and some to the root cellar. If a rescue crew decides to take a peek in our shelter it will look like that’s exactly where we survived the fire.”

  Darrin nodded and motioned Adam toward the door but stopped beside Gray’s chair on the way.

  “I don’t know how you managed to get out of that house but it didn’t do you much good did it, Sheriff?”

  “We’ll have our dance once I get out of this chair, junior.”

  Darrin shifted his gaze from one of Gray’s eyes to the other and then snorted, walking away from him and out of the room.

  “They’re still learning restraint and how to be careful,” Barder said, walking to the instrument tray. “Eventually they’ll understand tact.” He selected a shining tool with two handles and a round hole lined with dual blades in its center. It looked like a miniature tree pruner. “We’re going to do our own experiment today, my friends. It will be an experiment in empathy.”

  Gray watched him pick up the long saw again and pace to the stand holding Joslyn and Rachel.

  “Empathy interests me to no end, mostly I suppose since I seem to lack it completely myself. I tried, I really did, to experience it while I was working with my subjects. I tried to feel something for them or what I was doing to them. I tried to feel sorry then and after they were dead, but—” Barder shrugged. “Nothing.”

  Barder examined the woman’s bindings holding them upside down.

  “Are you familiar with ‘sawing’, Sheriff?”

  “I’m guessing not in the sense that you’re referring to, no.”

  “Sawing is an ancient method of torture and execution that came out of Rome and Persia over fifteen hundred years ago. What it entails is the condemned is hung upside down like our two ladies here and then sawed in half lengthwise from the groin to the throat. Now the key, Sheriff, is how the person is positioned. Being upside down keeps the blood in the brain and makes it more difficult to pass out from the pain. In our case, so will the adrenaline shots I’ve given both of them.”

  Joslyn began to cry in earnest, tears dripping up over her eyebrows and onto her forehead before falling to the drain beneath her. Rachel’s nostrils flared but her eyes never left her son’s face.

  “Don’t you touch them,” Gray said just above a whisper.

  “Now here’s where the empathy experiment begins, my friends, or I suppose we can call it a game,” Barder continued. “You and your lovely ex-wife are going to be the contestants. You’ll be calling the shots, Sheriff, you’ll be controlling fate. To start off I’m going to remove one of Lynn’s fingers with this,” he said, squeezing the shears in his hand. The hole containing the blades spread apart and then snapped together with a shushing sound.

  “Take my finger, do it to me,” Gray said, offering out his hands.

  “Ah, that’s where the empathy portion comes in, Sheriff. I know you’re the hero type and would endure a massive amount of pain, I mean look at what you’ve been through already. But there’s no fun in that, no interesting results. I want to see what you’ll choose. Now after I remove Lynn’s finger you have a choice to either let me take another one from her hand, or if you can’t stand to see your beloved in agony, I’ll saw one of the other women in half and Lynn will live.”

  “She’ll live to be imprisoned here, raped by your two psychos, and eventually murdered by her own child,” Gray said through gritted teeth.

  “Well, Sheriff, I never said the options were perfect, but at least she’ll be alive. And besides, you don’t even know these other women, they’re nothing to you when compared with how you feel about Lynn, I’m sure. I’m making quite a trade here, my friend. I’m giving up having the pleasure of watching one of my small protégés here eventually execute their own mother. Can you imagine it? The feat of changing someone from a typical path of dreary sameness to something wholly unique? It speaks volumes about what I’m trying to understand about empathy if I’m willing to give that up. In fact, I’ll make you a deal right now. Say the word and I won’t even touch Lynn, I’ll just saw Joslyn or Rachel, whichever
you choose. No one outside of this room will ever know, Sheriff.”

  “I’ll know.”

  Barder straightened. “Ah yes, the inimitable conscience, the enemy of the id. Last chance, Sheriff. You can save Lynn right this moment and as an added bonus I won’t put you through hours of torture, I’ll have Darrin shoot you and be done with it. One decision and you can spare yourself and Lynn untold amounts of pain.”

  Gray sat silent, eventually bringing his gaze to Lynn’s. Her jaw trembled as she watched him but finally her mouth formed a solid line and she nodded, once imperceptibly. Gray brought his eyes to his own feet and sat still.

  “All right, it appears you’ve made your decision. At any point you can tell me to stop, Sheriff, and I will bandage Lynn’s wounds and shift my attention to one of the other women. If you say nothing, I’ll keep cutting until she’s dead.”

  Barder turned on his heel and strode to where Lynn lay. She tried to struggle again, to hide her hands beneath her but the doctor brought her left arm out, grasping it by her slender wrist. She balled her hand into a fist but slowly Barder worked it open, splaying her fingers with his own.

  “What do you think, Sheriff? The ring finger has some symbolic significance I would say.”

  Barder slipped the shears over Lynn’s third finger and squeezed the handles.

  There was a sharp clack and blood flew in a crimson ribbon down the length of the medical bed. Gray made a strangled grunt as he lunged forward again, the chains at his ankles and wrists snapping tight. Lynn held onto her scream for a heartbeat and then let it peal out, the room ringing with misery.

  “You bastard,” Gray growled, settling back into the chair. There was a singeing sound like an egg hitting a hot pan and Lynn cried out again, her back arching against the restraints. Barder turned and strode to Gray’s chair, holding something in his hand.

  “Don’t worry, Sheriff, I cauterized the stump so she won’t bleed out but I thought you might want to hold this.” He tossed Lynn’s severed ring finger into Gray’s lap. Her nail polish was the same color as the blood leaking from its opposite end.

  Gray looked up at the doctor, the smugness of the other man’s face a solid mask.

  “Doc?”

  “Yes?”

  “Fuck you.”

  Gray clapped his boots together and the knife blade shot through the bottom of his sole.

  He pistoned his legs out, kicking Barder’s knee. The knife sliced beneath and then through the other man’s kneecap, cutting the flesh, cartilage, and tendons like they weren’t there. Barder’s eyebrows went up as he looked down and saw the four inches of steel protruding from his leg.

  Gray twisted his feet.

  The knife turned and tore out of the doctor’s leg, gouting a cupful of blood onto the pristine floor. Barder tried to take one step and then toppled, a howl crawling up out of his throat as he hit the floor.

  Both of the little boys began to cry in their cart, their small arms waving as tears rolled down their cheeks. Lynn’s eyelids fluttered and she turned her head, looking in Gray’s direction. Gray put both feet on the ground and pushed. The handle of the knife slowly rose from the top of his boot and he sat forward, straining to reach it. The pain in his stomach built to a crescendo and hot blood leaked down his side and into his lap. He reached farther and snagged the handle, pulling it free of his boot, the whole time keeping his eyes on Barder.

  The doctor gasped as he cradled his knee, fleshy white lumps of sinew poking between his fingers. He blinked, first looking at the ceiling and then bringing his vision down to where Gray sat with the knife in one hand. Barder’s mouth was a spittle-slick O that trembled like a fish pleading for water. He let go of his knee and began to slide himself toward the instrument tray.

  Gray guided the knife beneath the strap at his waist and slit it free, then bent forward again, retracting the blade into the handle. He placed the butt of the weapon on the floor and threaded the chain binding his ankles together over the blade slot and triggered the knife again.

  The chain link nearly exploded.

  The wide blade shot through the chain’s steel like cardboard, expanding the link out into a diamond shape before breaking it in a brief flicker of sparks. Gray paused to glance at Barder who had bypassed the instrument tray along with Rachel and Joslyn’s hanger, and was scooting toward the dual doors of what could only be an elevator. Blood spewed from his ruined kneecap and spread out behind him like a rusty comet tail.

  Rachel gurgled something unintelligible from behind her gag and Gray realized she was urging him on. Retracting the knife blade again, he positioned it under the chain that bound his wrists together and wrapped it as tight as possible before pressing the button. The alloyed weapon had the same effect as it had on the lower chain. A cracking and the smell of burned metal and then Gray’s hands were free.

  There was a rushing sound above the constant crying of the toddlers and the air in the room changed. The doors to the elevator opened and Barder half crawled, half slid himself inside. Gray rose from the chair, a bout of dizziness nearly bringing him down before he moved forward, the broken chains clinking about his feet. Barder saw him coming and dragged his feet inside the small compartment.

  “Level one,” the doctor wheezed and an electronic voice repeated his command before the doors began to slide shut.

  Gray lurched around the apparatus the two women hung from and sped toward the door as fast as his body would allow. He drew back his arm, readying to throw the knife at the man through the closing gap but held up as the doors snicked closed. The last he saw was Barder’s pale face concentrated in a grimace, his eyes clearer and full of hate.

  “Mac,” Lynn said, her head raised off the bed.

  He hurried across the room to her, pausing only to look out the porthole in the door. There was short deserted corridor beyond but no visible lock on the door when he searched for one. He stopped at Lynn’s bedside and began to loosen the straps holding her flat.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I think so.” She sat up and examined her left hand. Her ring finger ended behind the second knuckle in a blackened stump. The end was flattened and shiny from the cauterization.

  “It hurts like hell though.”

  “Can you walk?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s get you out of here,” Gray said, helping her off the bed. Lynn made her way to the boys in the cart while Gray went to the instrument tray and found a small, indiscriminate key that fit the shackles on his wrists and ankles. In less than a minute he had freed Joslyn and Rachel from their bindings. Rachel pulled the gag from her mouth and fell against him when she stood, her arms holding him tight.

  “You came, oh God, thank you for coming.”

  “It’s fine, you’re okay. Let’s get moving,” Gray said, gently extracting himself from her. She turned and rushed to her son who held his arms out. Reaching. Tear tracks stained his small face and Rachel clutched him to her, burying her face against his neck. Joslyn held almost the same pose except she was kneeling on the ground, hugging her son tight.

  Gray walked to the door again and checked the hallway. It was still empty and no sounds met his ears over the soft crying of the reunited mothers and sons. Lynn’s hand gripped the inside of his arm and she pulled him close, her body shaking against him. He put an arm around her shoulder and then turned back to the rest of the group.

  “Okay, we have to move and move fast. The boys might be coming back down here right now. I’ll go first and take the brunt if one of them stops us. If they have a gun, run back here and pile everything you can against the door. Then hide in the elevator if they get past me.”

  “I’m going to fight if they’re out there,” Rachel said. “There’s no way they’re locking us up again.”

  Gray appraised her for a moment before Joslyn spoke.

  “Me too. You have no idea—” Her words broke off in a horse sob as she hugged her son tighter.

  “Okay. We fi
ght no matter what,” Gray said, shifting his gaze to each of the women. A deep resolve burned in each of their eyes.

  Rachel nodded and hitched her son up higher upon her hip while Joslyn nuzzled her child, whispering something that Gray couldn’t hear. Lynn walked to the instrument tray and returned holding a wickedly curved scalpel.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  They pushed through the door into the quiet hallway, only the sounds of their footsteps speaking back to them. Gray propped the door open with one of the empty shackles upon seeing the electronic locking mechanism on the outside of the doorframe. When he was sure it wouldn’t slide shut behind them, he and Lynn led the group away from the operating room, their shoulders brushing from time to time. The hallway turned after several yards and then stretched away with heavy doors interspersed on either side. They moved down it, Gray pausing by each cell to listen. Nothing. A small alcove held a rolling cart and on its surface was the Raging Bull along with the two Tin-Snippers. Gray snatched the gun up and spun the cylinder out, his heart falling when he saw it was empty. The bottom level of the cart was bare and when he rolled it away from the wall there was nothing but cobwebs and a ball of dust. He tucked the gun into a loop in his coveralls and slipped the Tin-Snippers into an opposite pocket. The knife he kept ready in his hand. As they neared the end of the corridor he noticed another camera mounted in the upper right corner. He gave it a look and then touched the door handle that sealed the hallway.

  The handle moved down and up, swinging free without opening the door.

  “They’re electronically locked,” Rachel said. “I got out before and none of them would open.”

  “Shit,” Gray said, half turning. “We need to go back and look for a—”

  His words were cut off as the door burst open, striking him hard on the shoulder. He fell, the knife clattering to the floor out of reach. His body exploded with a map of pain that marked each prior injury. The women screamed in a cacophony of sound that fluttered his eardrums. When he looked up he saw Adam step through the door but the younger man’s face was obscured by something.