B (4:42)
I was halfway down Highway 9 when dispatch came through on the radio. Unit 4, possible 207 in progress. Female caller reports being held against her will. Unknown location. State she's unable to exit and may be actively pursued. Nuclear intel on suspect or exact address? Approximate location only, but the being was near the end of Country Road 47. There's only one house on a dead end. Your closest backup is at least an hour out. Please use caution. Copy Born Room, I said and activated my lights and sirens. Asphalt turns to gravel and the shoulders disappear into scrub oak and pine. Service gets patchy out there on the best days. I killed the siren. Didn't seem smart to announce a mile away that I was coming and just ran the light bar blue strobing over trunks and fence posts. The only sound was the steady rattle of equipment in the rack and the soft knock of gravel against the undercarriage. County 47 narrowed after the second switchback and pinched to one lane. I eased up on the gas, let the car idle forward, and took the last stretch. Trees pressed in from both sides, branches scraping the cruiser, creating a dark tunnel that drew me forward to some sort of inevitability. It appeared all at once, a two story surrounded by trees with a steep roofline and severely fading, damaged siding. The porch sagged at the center. No vehicles out front, no movement of any kind. If you'd shown me a photograph, I would have told you the place was condemned. But the front door was sitting slightly ajar and the dirt and turnaround showed a recent tire arc, one set only, like someone had back then. Spun and left. I keyed my radio. Dispatch unit four is 1023 at the house of 47. Single structure appears unoccupied. I'll be making approach. Start me a second car when available. Static came back with a half syllable of a reply and then nothing. I tried again, but this time I received only static. My cell displayed only a circle with a horizontal line through it. Great, I thought, hoping this was some high schooler's idea of a break. I put on my gloves, thumbed the hood, snap on the holster, took the mag light from the bracket, and stepped out. It was colder here than in the valley, a damp that came up from the ground and settled heavy in your lungs. Leaves were slick underfoot on the porch steps. I stayed left of the door and knocked with the base of the flashlight, causing it to open wider. Sheriff's office. Come out with your hands up. Red and blue lit the porch and the small sliver of the house through the cracked door. I waited. Nothing. I took the toe of my boot and eased the door open on its creaking hinges, leaning to sight the immediate corners with the light, the pistol resting along my forearm. Stale air pushed out, sweet and chemical at once. Bleach. Metal. The tale of decay. You can file that smell under a lot of names. None of them are good. Sheriff's department. I stepped inside, cleared left, then right, then the center of the room. What used to be a living room had been stripped of anything that made the name fit. A couch set against the far wall with its cushions ripped apart. A rectangle of slightly cleaner floor was the only sign a coffee table had ever been there. The walls consisted of torn and water damaged wallpaper with holes exposing the horizontal strips of wood. Everything was broken or damaged from years of neglect and moisture. Angling my flashlight down, I noticed footprints, recent and at least one long mark where something human size had been dragged away. I followed the edge of it with the light. It crossed the living room and vanished into a hallway on the right. I thumbed the mic without taking my eyes off the dark. Unit four, I'm in the home. Someone was definitely here, seeing signs of a struggle. What's the ETA on backup? The radio gave me a crackle and a pop, then fell quiet. It wasn't abnormal for the Hollow to refuse communications with town, but when you're alone out here it feels anything but normal. The hallway ran straight to the back of the house with doors left and right. I started with the first on the left, kept the wall at my shoulder, opened with my foot and cast the beam in wide figure eights. Bathroom. Shattered mirror over a vanity that was little more than pieces clinging to the wall. The bathtub and walls were in pretty much the same shape, with the pieces of it all covering the floor. Directly across was a bedroom stripped to the mattress. It sat on the floor and was covered in stains I shuddered to even guess at. The closet door was torn off and folded into a broken pile in the corner. Every inch of the carpet was stained in different shades and colors. I moved on. The hall opened into a kitchen where black mold colonized the ceiling and fractal patterns and rust colored water stains snapped continents down the walls. A faucet dripped steadily into a sink base, encrusted with something I hoped was once full food. Roaches scattered at the beam of my flashlight, disappearing into gaps in the pilling with nolium that curled away from the baseboards. Instead of a table, there was a metal slab on a welded frame bracketed by four still rings bolted to the corners. A refrigerator was against the wall, with three lines of duct tape crossing the door, holding it closed. The putrid odor was strong here. The pantry was empty except for several glass jars. Some held cloudy liquid with hair floating in it. Some held dark gelatinous clumps. A drawer near the sink was pulled out and on the counter inside, zip ties, a box of gloves, a handful of scalpel blades still in the paper sleeves, and a roll of cloth tape with the first two inches stained like someone with body fingers had recently used it. Dispatch, if you're hearing any part of this, I vent indicators of restraint and possible torture. Start me. Fire an EMS asap. I've got a bad feeling about this. Saying it out loud made my mouth go dry. No response on the radio. I couldn't be certain if my message got through or not. You learn pretty early on in law enforcement not to ignore those gut feelings you get. I pulled my sidearm from my holster and prepared to finish sweeping the house. Gun first. Something scraped under the floor. A long drag, then a pause, then a thud. It reverberated from under my feet, but the sound also traveled from down another hallway on the far side of the kitchen. I held still long enough for it to come again, following the same pattern. Someone was definitely here. I took the far hallway, clearing the corners before searching for the source of the noise. The door at the end of it had a new heavy duty hasp latch installed and an industrial padlock that was in it but unlocked. I listened with my ear against it before I removed the lock and slid the door open. The bare stench. A narrow stair fell away into dark well below what a foundation this size would have been dug out for. My mind raced through every possible scenario, through the fact that everything here was unknown and I was completely on my own at the moment. A few years earlier and I would have probably rushed down the stairs without thinking twice. But I have a wife now, a kid to go home to. I did the smart thing. I followed department procedure. I backed away from the stairs and returned through the kitchen toward the front. Still checking every dark corner with my sidearm and flashlight. I made my way back to the front door and put my hand on the doorknob, cold metal biting through thin gloves, and turned. It turned but the door didn't budge. I pulled it and shook. The whole frame seemed to rattle, but it wouldn't give. It was then that I noticed two thick metal bars that spanned the door and connected to the walls. Some mechanism had to be activated, causing them to extend and lock. A sense of panic was starting to rise. Something was very, very wrong. I checked the windows in quick sequence. Every one of them had metal bars preventing escape. Fuck. A scream came from somewhere deep down the still open basement door. A woman scream. The sound made my blood run cold. Alright. Down the desk. I took the stairs one step at a time. Light and firearms sweeping. The steps weren't original. New lumber had been cut to fit and looked far too recent to fit the house. The dark swallowed my light and the steps just kept going deeper. This wasn't a basement built under the house. This was a tunnel boring into the earth. After what seemed to be a hundred or more steps, the dirt tunnel opened to a landing and the hallway spark left and right. Concrete floor, unpainted block walls. It was pitch black down here and I said a silent prayer for the batteries in my flashlight. Almost immediately. On the left was a door with a window cut into it. Safety glass, yellow to the color of urine. I inched closer while checking down each stretching hallway and looked in. It wasn't a room. It was a cell with a stainless steel bed bolted to the slab and chains anchored at the mid wall. I expected to see cameras in the corner, but there weren't any. No wires or lights either. Shining my light down the right side, I didn't see any doors immediately. The call that came in said a woman was being held against her will, so I figured I'd follow the prison cells. I put one foot in front of the other, scanning the empty rooms briefly as I passed, my hand so tight on the grip of my Glock 22 that it hurt. I checked at least a dozen empty rooms before coming to another T shaped junction. I drew my light from left to right before the low sound of a growl echoed through the dippot, brought the light up, sights just above it, and tried to force my breath to flatten out so my hands would stop shaking. The beam cut of her block and created shadow. A hand reached from behind the junction, grabbing onto the corner, wrong angle at the wrists, nulls dark with Grimes getting leathery and gray. It explored the edge of the cinder block, inching towards me. Whatever I thought this call was when I turned off onto 47, it wasn't that anymore. I set my feet and indexed the front sight. The hand slipped around the corner and the rest of it followed in a crawl that wasn't a crawl, knees tucked up under the chest like a spider, folding elbows backward, feet dragging with the tops of the toes scraping the concrete, skin slick in wet gray patches. Staples climbed the shoulder in a zipper where the jaw should have been. A single plate of flat bone had been bolted across the front like a shield, leaving only a slit at the bottom for breath. Don't, I said, and I heard the fear in my own voice. My light had its eyes clouded, yellowed at the edges. It flinched and then rushed at me. I had time to put two rounds into mass. It started like I was shooting a bag of wet sand. It didn't slow. It crawled over the floor, clearing the distance in a heartbeat, and hit me above the knees. The cold, hard floor took my breath and gave nothing back. I kept the gun and tied against my ribs and tried to put a third round up to the head, but it was on me, all weight and angles, heat coming off it like it had come out of a furnace. The bone plate smashed my forearm and the pistol barked into a wall. The slide caught the casing and stove piped. I saw it and didn't have time to see it. Muscle memory took over. I slammed it against my knee, racked against my leg, and tried to bring it back in the fight. Except there was no space to bring my arm in. It drove a shoulder into my gut and made a sound like a wheezing screech. I arched my back, thrusting with hips while using my left arm to push and create distance. With just enough room, my right arm jammed the muzzle under the bone plate and pulled the trigger. The shot went, was angled weird and caught the roof of his mouth. I felt the recoil and the hot splash on my cheek. It thrashed, grinding, head butting down, trying to drive that blade into my face. I arched to get away from it, my boot found the cinder block wall and I shoved off, using my hips and the momentum to gain top position. It scrambled for purchase, for with nails that were black and thick, curved like little pry bars, it dug them into my duty belt and found skin trying to pull me inward. I pressed the muzzle where neck met shoulder and fired until the slide locked back. The round swore a gaping hole in its collar, but didn't turn it off. The breath coming through the slit under the plate went wet. It found my left wrist and bent it in a direction I've only seen once when arriving on scene to a serious car accident. I felt searing pain as the tendons popped. The pistol went and skittered into the dark, the sound of it hidden by my echoing screams. It tried to climb me. It tucked those elbows backwards and levered its weight, placing a knee across my thigh, and started to pull itself up my body. The seams across his abdomen were clear. Two long lines of sutures trailed triangles of skin missing where someone had needed to get in without cutting into the whole thing. I tried to hold it down with the forearm of my useless left hand while patting my duty belt with my right hand. Our desperate fight had turned it slightly, moving everything from where I knew it supposed to be, but the instant my hand felt the familiar handle of my fixed blade knife, I pulled it free and traced it up the thing's stomach. The stitched seams opened like a zipper. It curled defensively and let go of me, and I angled myself to the left, away from his arms, and stomped. My boot found its head and I stomped again three times. The third head cracked the bolt head on that bone plate and drove it to the side. The plate shifted. The slit widened into a mouth that wasn't a mouth at all. The real jaw underneath was gone, and the tongue was a gray stump slapping wildly in the cavity. It tried to scream and manage only a gurgling choke. I stopped again, and again its arms reached out at me but became weaker with every wet, bloody crunch. It wasn't until I was out of breath and retching at the puddle of gore clinging to my boot that I stopped heaving for breath. I backed away from the thing until I hit the cold brick wall. It still twitched and spasmed, but I definitely killed whatever the hell that thing was. The burning pain in my wrist came rushing back in like a tide. As my adrenaline subsided, I inspected it more closely, delicately cradling it with my right hand. The good news was that it wasn't broken, at least not seriously. The bad news was that it was dislocated and I'd have to perform a self reduction. Waiting was only going to make this worse. I placed my left palm against the wall and placed my right hand over the top of it. The pain of this action in itself was enough to reconsider the whole plan, but after what just happened, I couldn't see myself surviving until backup came. With only one hand, I pushed against my hand and pulled the arm. An audible crack traveled down the hallways, punctuated by a sharp pain that started to dissipate. The relief was almost instant, but I could also tell that damage had been done. Silence took over with the tinnitus you get after gunfire in an enclosed space. I picked up my flashlight and looked around for my sidearm, finding it against the far wall of the T junction. I retrieved it, fishing a fresh mag from my belt and replacing it with the spent one before racking the slide. The action definitely caused my wrists pain, but the fact I could get it done was all that mattered right now. The woman's scream resonated through my mind with a far more sinister undertone. Now I had to find her and get out of here. At that junction, I chose to go left. Not for any reason other than a cop's primitive vision of game theory. Quick unpredictability. Don't loop the square, keep moving and don't dwell. The possibilities seemed equally bad. So you flip a coin and move, because freezing is fatal. My light found more doors with those yellowed plexiglass panes, more cells with beds bolted down. At the next intersection, the hall opened on a space the size of a two car garage. Overhead lights hung on cords at different heights against the far wall. Human sized cages, too empty, one occupied. I heard him before I saw him. I let the beam slide over to him slowly so it didn't mid brain panic at movement. Male, maybe 50, maybe older. He had a gag and a surgical bite block that fed a tube down his throat. His wrists were cuffed to the back panel. His eyes tracked the light and stayed on my hands. Sheriff's office, I said, voice low. I'm going to get you out of here. Just hold on. He shook his head in a small, violent negative and looked past me into the dark, then back at my belt. He didn't cry or try to make a sound around the block. Keys? I asked. He tried to shrug with his wrist pinned and then lifted his chin toward the back of the room. The back wall was cluttered. A pegboard held tools and outliness, saws, clamps, forceps scissors, needles in sizes that went from thread to rope. Beside the board clung laminated sheets and plastic sleeves. Diagrams, more careful than anything else here, Complicated maps of human anatomy. Below the sleeves, a row of keys on nails, each tag stamped with a number that didn't match any system I understood. I took them anyway and worked the cage latch. None fit. The man's throat made a sound like a bark behind the block and he stamped his hill twice. I looked down. Handwritten on the still frame near the latch. K3. The tags were letters with numbers, not numbers alone. I found K, ran to three and opened it on the second try. The door sprang a half inch and required me to pull it the rest of the way. Door cuffed? I asked. He nodded. I passed him the key ring to try his own wrists and cover the hallway while he worked. The cuffs came off with a soft, shocked sound. He pulled the tube with a gagging choke and spit the block onto the floor. I'm not fast, he said, already apologizing. Stay behind me and stay quiet. I handed him a flashlight from the pegboard. His hand shook but he nodded without another word. There was a door in the room I hadn't marked on the wall way in, a metal reinforced thing looking expensive and out of place. A keypad sat in the wall near his handle. Do you know the code? Asked the man quietly. His only response was his negative head shake. Upon closer inspection, the keypad had a smear of something on four numbers. 0147. I tried 1470, then 0147 and 4710. Nothing. The man behind me leaned so his breath touched my neck and said, sometimes they go through upside down. I didn't react to how much the cryptic statement disturbed me and keyed 0741. The light pinged from red to green and the lock disengaged with a heavy clunk. I held my hand over my light and peeked in the cracked door just an inch, listening for any sign of movement. After a few heart pounding moments of unanswered silence, I slowly opened the door all the way and brought my light up. Empty hallway.
