And instantly she was moving and a smile forced itself across her face as he whispered S M I L E roughly to her through fierce, gritted teeth, guiding her by the arms with just the proprietary helpfulness you'd expect of a friend, nothing to arouse suspicions from a casual onlooker, and suddenly she was in with Lee and being forced down to the floor and feeling a rope biting into her flesh, and a filthy gag going into her mouth and hearing the engine come to life beside her and feeling them pull away from the safety of her world.
"Jack," she cried, and sobbed out a sentence to him and he couldn't make out a single word of it. "Jack, Jack . . ." She was crying and for a few seconds he let her cry, the thing that was holding her beside a phone somewhere and then he did something to her to make her scream out in pain and he heard her fighting to regain control of herself and she sobbed out "I—oh, I, uh, Jack . . . Oh God . . . Ah—ahhhhhhh—he haaaaaa—he has Lee, ahhhhh, I had to . . . AHHHHHH help me I . . . Oh, Jack help me PLLLEEEEEEASE I'm sorry oh, I'm sorry"—and then losing it again and hearing her being pulled away and struck and the phone crashing down and a sharp, metallic noise and her sobbing again, and then a quiet, and the thing speaks to Eichord.
"You there?"
"Yes," he replied to the surprisingly deep voice. "I can hear you," he added inanely, his mind freezing from the shock of the moment.
"Listen. Don't bring more police. You come alone or they die, and I let your whore suck me while I eat the rat's heart." That's what Jack thought he'd said for a second then realized he had called Lee Anne a brat. He would eat the brat's heart. Is that what he said? Why would he want to do that? He was fighting to get his brain working. He felt paralyzed. Drunk. He felt as if he was absolutely paralyzed with booze. He couldn't think, move. He strained against the phone, crushing the receiver to his ear before he realized he was holding a two-way radio mike in his hand as the call sizzled on the speaker of the police radio.
"What?"
"You heard me. Don't bother tracing this. And don't be stupid. If I see others, these bitches die bad." The horror gave a location and Jack laid the mike on the seat and started the car, grinding into the ignition having forgotten it was already running, slamming the gear shift down as he screeched out into the traffic, telling himself to breathe deeply and take in some oxygen and get that brain going. Brain dead. That was the only phrase that occurred to him. The patient is brain dead.
The genius cop, Jack Eichord, the crime crusher of all time. Bulldog fucking Drummond and nothing was working up there. Total zero. A cipher between the ears. Come on, for Christ's sake. He was staring at the windshield wipers whipping ridiculously across the windshield, mesmerized by the blades, and then shaking it off like water as he became aware he'd somehow managed to turn on the wipers and headlights and correcting that as he sped through the traffic without his redball on. He could hear the voice all deep and bloodchilling, an accentless rumble of words that still resonated in his head as he drove.
"Mommy . . ." he heard somehow, on a wavelength man has yet to discover, imagining he could hear Lee saying to her mother, "It's wet here," and the horror of it was beyond him and miraculously it all just passed over him and he had shrugged off the paralysis and personal fear and just stood on the brakes, a Charger slamming into him and a potential whiplash case trying to see his license to report him to the police even as he Brodie'd and swung into a hard U-turn against the honking, furious traffic, the wildly angry Chicago motorists—as he started back toward where he should have headed all along to get what he needed to make the horror do as he would wish.
The thoughts he had in the interminable six or seven minutes before he finally got to the place where the monster was waiting for him were all business thoughts. He had his main weapon now and it was loaded in a box with a handle that sat on the seat beside him. And in the backseat was a crudely hacksawed riot gun which he was debating about shoving down into his belt. And in the seat he had a box of twelve-gauge 00 buck "maggies" open and he had his speedloaders out and even as he was pulling the car over to the curb he was putting a speedloader in each pocket and pulling the shotgun over to him and getting out.
And he took the shotgun, which wasn't even a Remington, just some old pawnshop Winchester Defender that he'd taken a hacksaw to, and pulled his belt as tight as it would go and shoved it down in back, pointing down. It was nothing more than the grip, trigger assembly, and the hot loads. Two ugly mags in between his fingers like cigars, five of the hot twelve-pellet loads inside, and he racked it back, fingering the safety off and dropping both the extras he had in his left hand in the street in his nervousness. Easing the piece out of his nice leather holster and letting it slide in gently as it could, wondering if the S.W.A.T. boys and a tac unit would be coming up smoking and ruining everything any second as he removed the carrying case from the front seat. It was heavier than he had expected and the movement inside made it even harder to carry the weight.
"Hey!" the deep voice shouted to him. "Get over here." And it was all happening in broad daylight and it wasn't a monster at all, but a regular human being he had just seen, and the head disappeared back down into the manhole. How the hell had he crammed his bulk through that tiny hole? Eichord wondered. And he sat his box down by the side of the open manhole and gently eased the shotgun out, knowing now that it would be useless, and he placed it beside the box. Then the man called up to him from the darkness below, the voice like a peal of thunder, a deep, strong, metallic clapping boom.
"I don't know what you have in them but don't touch it again. Climb down the ladder unless you want me to twist the head off this skinny cunt," he shouted up savagely to Jack.
"I can't see, please! Wait!" Jack shone a flashlight down into the hole, shouting, "You want me to climb down there?"
"Get that light out of my eyes and get down here!" the man bellowed at him. But he'd already spotted the woman was behind him and still alive. "Don't mess with me or I'll kill her—NOW!" he warned, and he did something to Edie and she screamed and Jack reached into the box and grabbed the first soft thing he touched and flung it into the hole.
"See that. I've got a whole box of them. Do you understand me, you big, fat tub of shit—a whole box of them." He was shaking now and reached down into the box and grabbed another one of the little, furry things and flung it, wiggling down into the hole. He was gambling with lives now and it had to be just right. Just believable enough so that the man would buy it and come for him. The second one was enough and he heard a bull roar of anger.
"I'll KILL these bitches if you throw another one of them down here!"
"Listen, you mountain of blubber, for every fucking second you keep them down there I'll break a paw on one of these mutts and send it down to you do you hear me? Every second you sonofabitch I'm counting to ten now and if I don't see the little girl and the woman up here I start breaking paws. You want proof? Listen."
He reached in and did something and one of the little puppies in the box screamed in pain and Chaingang bellowed:
"ALL RIGHT GODDAMN YOU COCKSUCK DON'T HURT THE DOGS HERE THEY COME UP NOW DON'T HURT"—and his head was in the opening and his chain boloing out at Eichord like a silver lightning bolt him coming up that ladder faster than any living person had ever seen him move before, churning and charging upward on those great tree trunks of legs, the links of the chain catching on the lip of the manhole as he tried to fling it out and Jack shooting him three times as fast as he could pull the trigger, hitting him in the face with the first shot and two more times and Jack making himself move now as the man fell back down into the darkness with a loud, resounding splash and first trying to climb down the ladder facing forward and not being able to and half turning, going down with his flashlight beaming down into the stench and seeing Lee bound and gagged and the woman all right then, and saying to them: