“Ralph? Can you hear me up there?”
She didn’t know what to do.
“Ralph?”
She banged on the glass. Zack nodded.
“We’re going to grab dinner. Come on down.”
“He can eat with me,” Serge said. “Keep me company.”
Zack looked up again. “You mind waiting? Bang on the glass if you’ll wait to eat with Serge.”
Zoey banged on the glass.
“Good. Hey, Serge, think you can find something to keep yourself busy?”
Serge smiled, shrugged. “I’ll think of something.”
Zack pointed at Jessica. “Do me a favor and check her once in a while. See how the blood flow is coming along. I want to start sawing when we get back.”
The women had been deserted in awkward, painful positions, limbs stretched and contorted, genitalia burned or whipped beyond recognition. Head slumped forward, blood and pus oozing from grisly wounds, Tamara moaned nonstop.
Zoey hefted the pistol and reached across the panel to grab her prisoner’s gun.
Chapter 15
Huddled at the head of the stairs, gun aimed at dead air, Zoey waited. Ralph’s gun was on the floor beside her, not even a waistband to tuck it into, only the T-shirt on her back. Ralph’s pants might have fit, but she wasn’t about to untie him to remove his clothes.
The door downstairs was open a bit, which she’d done a minute earlier, hoping to avoid suspicion. Bursts of laughter and conversation flew up from the corridor. Zoey swallowed, and raised the gun in shivering hands. Death would be certain if they were to come up now, but she planned to take as many with her as she could.
But the voices faded, trailed until they became nothing. She cried out in relief, wiped the back of her hand across her forehead.
Ralph moved, grunted into his gag. Looked into her blue eyes, pleaded with his own. Babbling into the gag as she approached him, bobbing his head, groaning. The words were unintelligible but she knew what he wanted.
“Not a chance in hell, buddy,” she whispered as she cracked the butt of the pistol on his head. Out cold again, blood gushing from his newest wound. Through the two-way glass, she watched Serge stroking himself, standing in the center of the room. Looking from woman to woman as if sampling a buffet, deciding what he wanted to try first.
In the corner, a severely beaten James was either sleeping or dead. The guards beside him were tightly bound and gagged, but they didn’t look badly hurt. No missing limbs, no major blood loss.
Not much time to act. With Serge distracted, she might have a chance.
Guns in both hands, Zoey crept down the steps and reached the door. Chewed her lip, slowly peered outside the room. The door opened out, into the corridor, and she peeked behind it to make sure no one was there.
Beside her, the door to Room Two. She turned the knob, stole inside as quietly as possible, hoping Serge was still distracted. His attention was focused on Marie, chained to the back wall.
The door snicked shut, and she searched for a weapon to use other than the guns. Something quiet, something that wouldn’t make an explosive noise.
Strewn about the room, assortments of belts, whips, bats, clubs, paddles, wooden sticks like mop handles. In order to use the quieter weapon, she would have to get rid of one of the guns. Both, if she wanted to wield it effectively. She wrinkled her nose. The air was steamy with the stench of blood and shit and vomit. She had gotten used to her own pissy smell.
No option left but to drop the guns. She laid them on the floor, grabbed a bat.
The glassy-eyed women who had noticed her now had hope in their eyes, mouths ringed in expressions of pain and wonder. Zoey held her finger up to her lips.
Serge was raping Marie, her screams muffled by his large hand, his pig grunts and laughter chilling Zoey’s bones.
She charged across the floor, bat raised high overhead, and smashed him across his back. He slumped forward, crushing Marie to the wall.
The bat nearly slipped from her slick fingers as she bashed him again and again, the last time splitting his skull. She struck him several more times. Crimson spray covered her face, her shirt, Marie, the wall. For a moment he seemed suspended in mid-air and then slowly slid down the length of Marie’s body, crashed to the floor, his dead face frozen in shock.
Marie started to laugh and cry, her chest rapidly rising and falling, tongue jutting between clenched teeth. Zoey unclamped her wrists and released her from the wall.
“Hurry!” Zoey’s voice was a loud, strained whisper. “Get everyone untied. We don’t have much time.” She retrieved one of the guns.
She and Marie rushed around the room, releasing the women. Moans of relief were deafening, and Zoey kept trying to get them to quiet down. With Marie’s help, she lifted Jessica and released her ankles, gently lowering the unconscious woman to the floor.
“Jesus,” Marie muttered. “What smells so bad?”
“That would be me,” Zoey said. She glanced at the guards, tied up a few feet away. “What do you think? How about them?”
“I think they’d help.” Their heads bobbed in frantic agreement.
Zoey frowned, scratched her head. “I think we need all the help we can get. We have to get Tamara down from that goddamned cross. What about James?”
Marie started to untie the guards. “They can help us with Tamara. James is a mess. Probably won’t matter either way. He won’t be much use.”
James’s eyes were swollen shut, and he was slumped on his side. His hands were blue from the lack of circulation from excessively tight bonds. Zoey untied him, checked his pulse. Still alive.
Claudia, who had been rescued from a bondage mask, arms chained behind her, nipple clamps holding her still, had retrieved a gun and now controlled it as if she’d held one before. Powerfully muscled legs shoulder-width apart. Face streaked with gore, fresh burns on her stomach, blood oozing from her damaged nipples, the five-foot-ten woman looked ready for battle. Or as if she had already survived one.
“What’s the plan?” Claudia asked, moving beside Zoey, never taking her eyes off the door.
“No plan. Just winging it.” Zoey looked up from her spot kneeling beside James. “Look like you’ve done this before. Know how to handle that thing?”
“Hell yeah! New York state trooper.”
Zoey grinned. “Good!”
T-shirts were being distributed, wounded prisoners being triaged, tended to as best as possible using the small first-aid kit.
Claudia laid her gun on the floor to pull the shirt over her head. The door suddenly opened and a man wandered in, distracted, sucking his teeth. “Hey, Serge? Zack wants to know if—holy shit!”
Before anyone could react, he pulled the gun out of his waistband. “Nobody fucking move! Freeze!” He looked at Zoey, at the gun in her hand. “Put it on the floor.”
He stepped into the room. His hands were shaking, but he looked excited. “You must be that cunt Zoey.” He grinned. “We’re going to enjoy peeling the skin off your body, you stupid bitch.”
She never had a chance to raise her gun. Slowly she stood, her heart hammering, body slick with sweat. “Listen, this is all my fault, not theirs.”
“Shut the fuck up. Give me that goddamned gun. Slide it over here. And where’s Serge?”
Oh god… words just wouldn’t come, no matter how much she tried to force them. Her tongue was a slab of dead meat on the bottom of her mouth. She could only hope her death would be painless but began to see less and less of a chance of that happening. For a moment she tried to imagine someone peeling the skin off her body, and she shuddered, her stomach churning acid.
“Answer me!”
“We locked him in the bathroom,” Zoey stammered.