Hell and Gone

11

[When he] heard the cell door banging shut, he’d been scared. Like a little kid he had wanted to shout: I take it back!

—Malcolm Braly, Felony Tank

FOUR PEOPLE IN dark brown uniforms stood in a half circle, clapping their hands, all eyes focused on him. Hardie froze in place. They kept applauding anyway, seemingly oblivious to his shock. A bearded guy gave him a thumbs-up and mouthed something like, Right on.

Oh fuck, Hardie thought. What was this?

Their uniforms had deep red piping and cargo pockets, and were paired with black leather belts, black leather wristbands, and even black leather boots. The four of them took a collective step back, as if to encourage Hardie to take another step forward, come on, now, that’s it, that’s a good boy. Welcoming him into their communal bosom, all smiles and cheers and even a few woo-hoos. Hearty cries of congratulations in languages he didn’t recognize—but the overall meaning was clear.

The bearded one broke ranks and nervously shuffled forward, still pounding his hands together. Smiling through his dark, neatly trimmed beard.

“Welcome, Warden,” he said in a broad Australian accent. “Boy, are we glad to finally have you here.”

Warden?

“Well, aren’t you going to say something?”

Hardie looked over the Aussie’s shoulder and saw cages, and two figures sitting inside those cages.

All at once Hardie realized what this was.

This was a secret prison; these were the guards.

And all this applause bullshit was the mockery before the crucifixion, and here were his tormenters. Fucking with Your Victim, New-Testament Style. Sure, yeah, now they were shouting and proclaiming him the King of the Jews and shit. Next they’d be dividing up his new suit in dice games and shoving a crown of sharp thorns down on his tender scalp.

Not if he could help it.

Hardie took a step forward, scanning the four guards quickly. Three men, one woman. All wearing the same uniform. Tools and gadgets hanging from their belts. Plastic restraints. Tasers. A few syringes topped with sturdy plastic caps. Still applauding and opening the circle up wider for Hardie.

No doubt getting ready to pounce his ass.

Hardie switched the cane into his other hand, using his weak arm to balance himself, hoping it would be enough to support his own body weight. Because the moment the bearded Aussie took another step, Hardie lunged out and grabbed up a fistful of the guy’s uniform and then pulled him in for a violent head butt.

Skull bone made contact with nose bone; bright lights flashed. Hardie’s head suddenly felt like it had been blown apart by a cherry bomb. But so what? His head already hurt like hell. What was pain on top of pain?

The Aussie guard’s eyes rolled back in their sockets. He was not expecting the forehead-to-nose action. Hardie tightened his grip and used the Aussie’s body to support himself as he spun around and whipped the wooden cane across the head of the next advancing guard—a blond, pale guy. The guy cried out as his head snapped to the side. Turning his attention back to the bearded guard, Hardie gave him a push in the direction of the other guards. The Aussie became a human bowling ball; his friends the pins. Then, as fast as he could, Hardie started to make a beeline for the door he’d just stepped through.

Hardie knew it was practically useless. It was four against one, and he was down two limbs. But Hardie also wasn’t about to stand around for mockery and whatever else they had in mind. He vowed to fight until he stopped breathing. At least then there was the illusion of control.

Who knows? Maybe he’d luck out, and they’d skip the torture and kill him quick.

Hardie found the handle, pulled open the door enough so that he could throw himself inside the metal cage. He half turned and yanked the door shut behind him—but two hands shoved through the space between the metal door and the frame.

Fine. Hardie let it open a few inches to give himself enough room…and then he really pulled the door shut.

The screams were otherworldly—strange profanity in a foreign tongue. Fingers wriggled like white worms in the crack between the door and the frame. Hardie pulled even tighter and relished the agonized screams. Oh, please. Here’s hoping it made these bastards so furious that they killed him immediately rather than drag it out.

“NO!” a female voice shouted.

“YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND, MATE!”

“DO NOT GO UP!”

“NO! NO NO NO!”

Hardie let the door open a fraction of an inch, giving the wriggling worms enough room to remove themselves from the situation. As soon as the last fingernail cleared the space, Hardie yanked the door shut a final time, then staggered backward until his back collided with the other end of the cage. No one was more surprised than Hardie. He’d made it this far. Could he actually make it out of here? Somehow?

Adrenaline had carried him this far, but he felt like he’d used up his last reserves.

No matter.

All he had to do now was push the up button, figure out his next move once he was back in that waiting room. Maybe he could find a way out. Maybe he could even catch up with Mann. Snap her neck and ask her if she’d still like to meet his wife and son.

A face appeared in the grille. Bearded Aussie guy.

“WARDEN!” he shouted. “DON’T DO THIS! PLEASE DON’T DO THIS. WE DON’T WANT TO HAVE TO—”

“Fuck you,” Hardie muttered, then stabbed the up button with an index finger. A second later the bearded guy sighed, unclipped something from his belt, jammed it against the outside of the metal cage, then squeezed it.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ-POP

And then:

white

hot

crazy

Nothing

A disjointed moment later, Hardie was being dragged out of the cage, drooling and twitching. Slowly he pieced together what had happened. A Taser. They must have jammed a Taser against the metal cage, pulled the trigger, and the electricity that sailed through the cage must have shocked him unconscious.

Now rough hands were dragging him along the cold concrete floor. Any minute now the beatings were likely to commence. Hardie knew it. He’d tried. Lost. Welcome to your new life sentence, dumb ass. You should have stayed upstairs. Starved yourself to death. Would have been the classy, stoic move. Better than being thrown into a secret prison cell for the rest of your life.

But instead of a punch—

The bearded Aussie cautiously touched his face. “Can you see me, mate? Are you okay?”

Hardie nodded. At least, he thought he nodded. All he knew, his head may have bobbled around as though it were attached to his body with a coiled spring.

“The hell were you trying to do?” Bearded Guy said. “Didn’t they tell you about the elevator? How it’s a one-way trip?

Hardie shook his head again, incoherently.

“Jesus…look, if you were to have gone back up and made your way outside, you would have triggered the death mechanism. They didn’t tell you about the death mechanism? Anyway, listen to me now. If you had gone up, you would have…well, you would killed everybody in here. Everybody. Including me.”

The other three guards glared down at him, a mixture of disappointment and checked fury on their faces. All like, How dare he almost trip the death mechanism?

Finally Hardie’s lips stopped trembling enough for him to attempt a few words in the English language. “Would have…tripped the…death what?”

“The death mechanism, mate. They didn’t tell you about it?”

Death mechanism. The words apparently carried some kind of meaning, but Hardie didn’t understand.

Utter exhaustion washed over him. Hardie could tell his body was trembling, but he didn’t actually feel it until a few moments later, as the guards stooped over to pick him up from the cement floor. His vision went woozy, and the muscles in his neck stiffened, as if to choke him into unconsciousness in a desperate attempt at self-preservation. No. He had to stay awake, soak up every detail.

What was this place?

Where was it?

Why was he here?

He had no idea.

The guards guided his stumbling ass through a confusing series of rooms. One looked like a cafeteria. The next was a laundry room furnished with—strangely—refrigerators. Then somebody’s spartan bedroom, followed by a room that looked like a primitive security-department control booth, then another bedroom, then a third bedroom, which was apparently his, because they eased him onto a creaky bed there and told him to rest a while. There was a lot of work ahead of them.

Hardie had no intention of sleeping. Just wanted to ease back for a few seconds, take a few deep, cleansing breaths, close his eyes, maybe, for a microsecond or two…