Defender Read online

  He was facing a door. From a quick scan, it was the only door in or out of the room. No windows, either. Basement room. A kerosene camping lantern sat on the floor in a corner. It gave off a dull glow but it still left an imprint on his vision after he had looked at it for a brief second. There was a second chair facing his, currently unoccupied. It matched the one he was tethered to. And it was wooden. Possibly beech.

  There was little else in the room. A half-full plastic water bottle. A discarded T-shirt. A single black sock. More wire, wound tight in its reel. A scrunched old newspaper, the front page half visible: ‘Climate Change as Threatening as Nuclear War, Scientists Warn: Irreversible Damag—’ The rest of the headline was cut off. And on top of the newspaper a pair of clippers, the kind you would use to cut through barbed wire or metal links.

  Pilgrim zeroed in on them. They had red plastic handles, and short, very sharp scissor-blades dotted with rust.

  He could still hear those distant voices. They didn’t appear to be moving any closer. Gripping the edges of the chair arms, his knuckles turning white, he experimented, pressing the balls of his feet down into the floor while lifting the chair with his hands. His thigh muscles flexed hard, as did his biceps. The chair creaked. Its front legs rose off the floor by an inch or two. At that point, the stainless-steel wire nipped sharply into his ankles, despite the protection of his boots. He let the chair settle gently on all four legs again.

  Eyeing the clippers, he cursed under his breath. They were too far away. The only way to get to them would be to shuffle inch by measly inch, shucking the chair closer in tiny hops. It could be done. But it would be noisy. Noise, he could deal with, but only if he would have time to cut himself free and be ready when the owners of those voices came barrelling into the room to find out what all the racket was about. And he figured it would take at least ten hops to get over there. He would need at least twenty seconds.

  The voices increased in volume as they moved nearer.

  The door handle turned and Nikki walked in, followed by a bigger, male version of herself. The brother, Pilgrim surmised.

  ‘Wakey wakey!’ Nikki said, her grin showing too many teeth.

  Pilgrim didn’t reply. He ran his eyes over the stocky man. He was a few years older than Nikki, and had the same colouring: pale eyes and a smattering of freckles dotting his untanned skin. His eyes were unflinching. The guy would make a good poker player.

  Or serial killer, Voice said faintly.

  He held Pilgrim’s gun in one meaty fist.

  ‘I hope you like the room,’ Nikki continued. ‘It’s one of the finest we have. We’re all about customer care and comfort here.’ She laughed. It sounded like a horse’s braying, too loud and affected.

  Nikki moved the empty chair a little to one side and angled it so that it no longer sat straight in front of Pilgrim. She dropped down into it, a huge exhalation of breath indicating what an exhausting day she’d suffered through so far.

  The brother remained standing, body centred in front of Pilgrim.

  Pilgrim found their stances interesting.

  He kept his eyes on the brother, matching him stare for stare, wondering if the man would be equally as impassive if Pilgrim weren’t currently fastened to a chair.

  I would say so. He looks nuts. Voice was stronger, closer.

  ‘You’re finally up to talking, then,’ Pilgrim said to him.

  You knew it wouldn’t shut me up for long.

  ‘Oh, we have a lot to talk about,’ Nikki said.

  ‘No kidding,’ Pilgrim said.

  She barked a laugh, sounding like a dog this time, and looked up at her brother. ‘See? I told you he’d be a hard-ass.’

  The brother didn’t flick Nikki a glance, merely kept staring at Pilgrim. Like he wanted to look inside his head, crack it open with his gaze and riffle through what lurked in there: thoughts, intentions, plans. Just stick his thick fingers in and paw his way through it all. His gaze was fucking relentless.

  Pilgrim raised his brow, challenging him to speak up.

  The corners of the brother’s eyes tightened.

  Nikki was looking back and forth between Pilgrim and her brother, a confused crease bisecting her brow.

  I don’t like him. At all.

  Pilgrim grunted in agreement.

  You should try and get control of the situation.

  ‘How the hell am I supposed to do that?’

  ‘Do what?’ Nikki said.

  Ask them what they want.

  ‘I know what they want.’

  ‘Who’re you talking to?’ she asked, a sharp edge of suspicion in her tone.

  OK, what do they want?

  ‘They want the girl. And my bike. Any provisions I’ve got. And they want me to know they’ve got all those things before they have their fun.’

  Control. He felt Voice’s equivalent of a nod. You’re probably right.

  ‘Oh, I’m right,’ Pilgrim said.

  ‘Like, seriously, you’re one of them, aren’t you?’ Nikki half rose from her seat, eyeing him warily.

  The smile Pilgrim gave her barely touched his lips, and yet the woman blanched, blinking nervously, her throat moving as she swallowed. She looked at her brother.

  Pilgrim’s voice snapped like a whip. ‘Don’t look at him, you piece of shit. He won’t help you, not when it comes right down to it. He’ll leave you bleeding like a stuck pig on the floor.’

  ‘Shhhhh.’

  The brother held an index finger to his pursed lips. ‘Shhh,’ he whispered, and with his other hand gently pushed his sister back down into her seat. ‘You’re going to wake the girl. She’s asleep right now. In the honeymoon suite.’

  Pilgrim kept his voice even. ‘I don’t know her – not even her name. I only met her today. She’s no one to me.’

  Voice grew quiet. He didn’t know where this was going. He couldn’t always read Pilgrim’s intentions, the same as Pilgrim couldn’t always read his.

  ‘In fact, if you turn me loose,’ Pilgrim continued, ‘I’ll give you a hand holding her down. She seems the scrappy sort. I bet she bites.’

  What are you doing?

  ‘She’ll need at least two to handle her,’ Pilgrim said, ‘and I don’t think your prissy-assed sister is up to it.’

  ‘Hey!’ Nikki blurted. ‘Screw you!’

  Pilgrim gave a small shrug, all that it was comfortable to do while wire lashed his forearms to the chair’s arms. ‘This is a harsh world we live in. And a harsh world calls for harsh measures. I’m willing to do whatever it takes to survive.’

  Voice had gone silent again. Out of disgust with Pilgrim’s suggestions, or simply confused by them, Pilgrim wasn’t sure.

  ‘Fuck you, man!’ Nikki stood abruptly and turned to her brother. ‘I can help you just fine with that bitch, Russ. Don’t listen to this prick. He’s one of them. He hears stuff. We should be slitting his throat, not letting him talk.’

  Russ considered his little sister. He blinked slowly, as if his mental processes were taking up all the power in his body, grinding everything else down to a crawl. He looked at Pilgrim, and even his words came slowly, drawling out as if he were suddenly very sleepy. ‘She’s trussed up as good as you are there, partner. Don’t need no one to hold her down.’

  Pilgrim felt a slight easing of tension in the man, a bending towards his suggestion – his gut told him so – and he pushed that final bit more, easing his way in, chipping away with a few more well-placed words. ‘Yeah, but you don’t want her completely tied down, do you?’ he said, his voice lower, deeper, slicker, wanting the words to suggest themselves into the man’s thoughts and not rest only in his ears. ‘You want her to wriggle, fight back a little. Enough to make it fun.’

  Russ blinked that slow blink again and trundled a thoughtful nod.

  ‘No fair, Russ,’ Nikki whined, her words breaking in. ‘You promised it’d be my turn!’

  And that was all it took to cut off any power Pilgrim had held over him.

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nbsp; ‘Oh, calm the fuck down,’ Russ said to her, dragging his attention away from Pilgrim. ‘You think I’m dumb? I’m not about to untie him.’

  ‘Then what—’

  ‘Leave the door open so he can hear,’ Russ said, twitching a nasty glance Pilgrim’s way. ‘He’ll enjoy listening to us while you do the holding down and I do the fun-making.’

  Nikki laughed. It was a relieved whoosh of air, like the air expelled from a whale’s blowhole. She threw her own mean look at Pilgrim, accompanied with a triumphant little smirk, but she couldn’t hide the wary eye flicker she sent his fastened wrists, checking he was fully trussed up before backing out of the room.

  She left the door wide open.

  Pilgrim listened closely to their retreating footsteps. They went only thirteen steps and then he heard another door unlatch. The brother spoke to the room’s occupant – the girl (Lacey, Voice reminded him, although he hadn’t forgotten) – his words too low to make out. Pilgrim heard the girl’s response, though.

  ‘Fuck off and die!’

  Pilgrim smiled. She would need to keep her nerve; the next few minutes weren’t going to be pleasant ones for her.

  He cocked his head towards the open door, the dull beat of his pulse counting off the seconds. He flexed his fingers a couple times, his knuckles cracking. The wood of the chair’s arms creaked when he gripped it, the cords of muscles in his forearms tautening like ropes. He barely noticed the pinch of the wire digging into his wrists.

  There was a scuffle from the other room, and the girl yelped. There were a few grunts and some shouted instructions from Russ, the words lost in the girl’s sudden yelling.

  It was all the noise Pilgrim needed. He yanked up on the arms of the chair and shoved down hard with his feet, tugging at the chair, feeling it shift a few inches over. He did it again, grunting in effort as he made the chair baby-hop closer to those clippers. He was two thirds of the way to his goal when a loud tearing sound ripped through the air. He didn’t need to hear the girl’s shriek to understand what was being torn away from her.

  Someone whooped – most likely Nikki – and broke into gleeful laughter.

  Over their exuberant sounds, Pilgrim strained harder than he dared, a jagged seam of pain crackling down the back of his skull. Pressure thumped a hard, sluggish tattoo in his temples, veins throbbing thickly under the thin tissue of skin. His arms bulged and his thighs quivered, lactic acid searing through his bunched muscles. Blood slicked his wrists, dripping down the wood and staining the grain red. He yanked himself up and sideways, his body leaning too far to the right, the chair teetering on two legs. He continued tilting, unbalanced, forcing the chair over, and crashed down, his shoulder and arm and hip taking the full brunt of the fall. His jaw clenched down on a sharp cry of pain as all his bones clacked together, the shock of impact ringing through his body, hurts flaring up in every overstressed joint. But that last push, that last rush of effort, did its job. As he landed, he scudded along on his shoulder like a ship cutting through mud to dock, his hand coming to rest mere inches from the clippers, and all it took was a few extra full-body shuffles from where he lay – his head jerking back and forth and his hips humping up from the chair’s seat – first for his stretching little finger to brush the edge of the newspaper, and then for his bloodied fingers to grip on to it, crumpling it into his fist and dragging the clipper’s handles close enough to claw into his hold.

  Two seconds later he had twisted the clippers round and jammed the open blades between his wrist and the arm rest, slicing through the wire as easily as if it were string.

  Five seconds after that he was finishing cutting loose ankle number two.

  And five seconds after that, he had sprinted down the corridor and was bursting into the room.

  A second kerosene lantern threw light on to the sobbing girl as she struggled on the bed underneath Russ. His pants were unfastened and halfway down his thighs. His ass was very white, with a fine fuzz of pale hair.

  Nikki was at the head of the bed, her weight pressing down on the girl’s arms, preventing her from fighting back, although Lacey continued to buck and twist and yell in between her sobs.

  That was all Pilgrim had time to see. It was all he needed to see, because by then he was leaping on to the bed behind Russ and grabbing the guy’s greasy hair in one fist, yanking his head back and jabbing the clippers into his exposed throat. The blades were open as they sank into Russ’s neck, and Pilgrim clamped them shut, severing the windpipe, the oesophagus.

  A geyser of blood erupted. More than Pilgrim was expecting. He must have jabbed deep enough to cut the carotid.

  The girl turned her head away, eyes screwing shut, blood splashing over her cheek and ear. Nikki was too slow and slack-jawed with shock when she got a mouthful of her brother’s blood. She scrabbled away from Pilgrim, choking and gagging, falling off the side of the bed. Her hands tore at her face in a frenzy to clear the blood away.

  Pilgrim lifted Russ away from the girl, hauling him up by his hair and the waist of his loose pants, heaving him at his sister. Russ wasn’t light, but he wasn’t a dead weight just yet, either. He body-slammed Nikki and crushed her flat to the floor – covering her in much the same way he had covered the girl a second before – his body convulsing and shaking, his foot jack-booting against the floor, going rat-a-tat-tat as he tap-danced his way to hell. Nikki was mostly lost underneath Russ’s bulk, only her head showing above the guy’s shoulder. Her eyes were startlingly white in her blood-smeared face, her mouth flapping open and closed like a slack-jawed puppet’s as she babbled a bunch of unintelligible words.

  Pilgrim’s mouth twisted in distaste. He stepped down off the mattress and planted his boot in the woman’s face. Her head snapped back and smacked off the floor with a sickening thud.

  Russ’s shoe gave one last floor-tapping jerk and lay still.

  A steadily expanding pool of blood grew under Nikki’s head like a black halo, dark and viscous.

  Pilgrim stood over them, not moving except for his chest, which rose and fell on each heavy breath. Blood dripped from his fingers, ticking on the floor faintly as if his body were trying to tick off time in the absence of anything else that could measure its passing. One-tick, two-tick, three-tick.

  On the tenth tick he turned his head towards the bed. He did it in small degrees because he didn’t want to see what had been done to the girl.

  She had moved only to cover her chest with her arms and twist her legs together. Her shirt had been ripped in half down the middle of her torso and hung in rags to either side. Her jeans and underwear had been removed. Her legs were long and slim and shocked him with their nakedness. He looked away from them and back to her face. She had her head turned away and, he assumed, her eyes were still screwed shut.

  He carefully lowered himself to sit with his back to her, the mattress sinking under his weight and tilting her towards him. He was loath to touch her – it was probably the last thing she wanted.

  ‘Hey . . .’

  Lacey, Voice whispered.

  ‘I know her goddamn name,’ he snapped.

  Sorry. But Voice said it in the sor-ree kind of way kids did when they weren’t sorry at all.

  ‘Did they—’ Hurt you, he was about to say, but he cut himself off because it was a stupid question. He lowered his head and contemplated the palms of his hands. The blood was coagulating – a mixture of his own and Russ’s – clotting along the grooves and lines and calluses of his skin.

  ‘Did he—’ He bit down on his tongue hard enough to make his eyes water, then forced his jaw to relax. ‘Did he manage to get inside you?’

  She was silent so long he was forced to look over at her. Her head had started to turn back towards him, but she couldn’t quite finish the movement. She had her fist pressed to her forehead, between her brows, her eyes were open and her lips downturned at the corners. A tear trickled out from the corner of one eye and trailed snail-like through the blood to her ear, where it was lost.
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  She made a guttural sound, deep in her throat, drew in a harsh breath and shook her head hard from side to side. ‘No. No, but God, he was trying to. I could feel it prodding at me. He almost—’ She sobbed and moved her hand from her brow to press it over her mouth. Her eyes, when she could bring herself to meet his gaze, brimmed with tears, and her words were almost unrecognisable, spoken against her hand. ‘You took long enough getting in here.’

  He scrubbed the back of his wrist over his mouth, quickly stopping when he realised he was probably smearing blood over himself. ‘You ever want to tie someone up, use wire. It’s very effective.’

  She made a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh. She swiped a rough hand across her eyes, angrily rubbing her tears away. ‘My grammy always said this would happen. Said it was dangerous out here and I was safest at the farmhouse. She was right.’

  ‘Maybe. But don’t think everyone’s like them.’ Pilgrim got tiredly to his feet and turned away from the bed, looking down at the bodies at his feet. ‘These two were a bad sort. They got left alone too long and went rotten on the inside.’

  He kicked Russ’s foot out of his way as he went past. He headed out of the room. The girl didn’t call him back, but he figured she would probably appreciate a little time to pull herself together.

  He walked down the hall to the room he had been held in and collected the bottle of water and discarded T-shirt from the floor. The shirt was a little dusty, but clean enough. It had a garishly coloured print of a blue voodoo-style skull on the front, and ‘Bob’s Tiki Bar & Restaurant’ in yellow print running along the underside of the skull’s jaw. He picked up the lantern, too. When he returned to the girl, she was sitting on the end of the bed, folded arms covering her chest, legs once again clad in her jeans. She watched him approach, then dropped her eyes.

  ‘Sorry,’ she muttered.

  ‘For what?’

  She nodded at the floor.

  There was a pool of vomit near her feet.

  He felt a softening towards her, a tingling heat opening up in the centre of his palm, curling his fingers inwards as if they wanted to reach out to her. He didn’t let them. The best thing would be for him to get her out of here. They’d already spent enough time in this place.