Endurance - Jack Kilborn [72]
“I’ll kill you if you so much as touch my daughter…”
The giant laughed. “Touch your daughter? Little lady, I’m gonna use up both you and your daughter ‘till there ain’t nothin’ left. Ol’ Millard is gonna show you things you never done dreamed of. And you both gonna be mommas to some a’ my babies.”
With his free hand, the man scooped up dirt and forced it between Letti’s lips.
“I own y’all now,” he said. “‘N I can do whatever I want with that which is my property. Now keep yer trap shut. I gotta go deal with somethin’.”
Millard got off her neck and walked out, so confident in his superiority he showed Letti his back. He locked the door when he left.
Letti sat up, spitting out dirt, clenching and unclenching her fists.
“One more chance, asshole,” she said to the empty cell. “Give me one more chance. You won’t knock me down again.”
When Maria opened her eyes, she was hugging the German Shepherd, burying her face in his muzzle. For the first time in a year, she had a sliver of hope.
However, the hope was fading fast. The door was the same as the one in her cell; solid metal with a heavy lock. Even if she had all day and a sledgehammer, she wouldn’t be able to get through it. Eleanor had once mentioned these underground rooms were once the slave quarters for a tobacco farm.
“Not a single slave ever escaped in the decades it operated. Those that tried were beaten, or punished with strappado.”
No, rather than focus on escaping, Maria needed to prepare herself when they came back for her. And they had to come back, eventually. They needed the transfusion machine to survive.
The machine.
Without it, they’ll die.
Maria let go of JD and stood up, staring at the infernal device. She unplugged it from the extension cord snaking under the door, then squatted down and grabbed the bottom. With a quick lift, she upended the device, grinning as the casing split open.
But she wasn’t finished. She pulled off the case and tore into its innards, pulling out parts and wires. Picking up a piece of the housing, she used it as a club, smashing and smashing until every single part was broken. Then she turned her fury on the chair, the one they strapped her and countless others onto in order to bleed them. Maria broke that into bits as well, half-crying and half-laughing and entirely hysterical.
When she finished, and it lay in ruins around her, she collapsed, hugging her knees, grinning even as the tears streamed down her face.
JD came over, offered his paw.
She held him again, the act of petting an animal allowing her to calm down, to come back to reality.
Then she heard the door lock snick open.
JD pulled from her arms, launching himself at the man as the door opened. Maria crab-walked backwards, looking for the cattle prod, hoping that the person at the door wasn’t—
Millard.
He was the biggest, and meanest, of all Eleanor’s children. At least seven feet tall, with broad shoulders and thick wrists. His hair was white, shoulder length, scraggly. And like the others, his eyes were bloodshot all the time, a symptom of one of his many conditions.
Millard went far beyond the casual sadism of George, Dwight, and Teddy, or the simple-minded brutishness of Harry, Grover, and Calvin. Millard was a psychotic animal. He enjoyed hurting things. He lived for it. So much so, that his brothers were all afraid of him. Maria had heard that Millard hunted deer with a knife, and then cut off their legs, one at a time, to see how far they could run. He was the only son Eleanor wouldn’t sleep with.
Maria had scars from Millard. She’d only given him three transfusions, and each time he’d come up with new ways to inflict pain during the procedure. Thumbtacks and witch hazel. Matches. A cheese grater and a salt shaker. Nothing that would harm her seriously, but would hurt worse than anything in the world.
As Millard stomped into the room, JD threw himself at the gigantic man, aiming for the cattle prod clenched in Millard’s hand. But Millard seemed fatter than usual, and Maria quickly spotted why.
He’s wearing the Ronald suit.
The Ronald