Endurance

Jimmy stuck his face next to Mal’s. The whites of his eyes were bloodshot.

“Today I’m going to be practicing amputation. I’m gonna start with your left hand.”

For the first time in his adult life, Mal felt like whimpering. He managed to get out, “Please, don’t.”

“You’re a strong man, Mr. Deiter,” Eleanor said. “Jimmy’s patients don’t normally last for more than four or five operations. The record is nine. I bet a healthy young specimen such as you can beat that record.”

Jimmy picked up the bone saw from the cart of instruments. “I’m sorry, but we don’t have any anesthetic.”

Jimmy pulled the face mask up over his nose. Then he put something in his ears. Eleanor did the same.

Ear plugs. To block out my screaming.

“Please,” Mal said, even though he wasn’t heard. “Please don’t.”

“Don’t forget your gloves, Jimmy!” Eleanor yelled. “We don’t want you accidentally cutting yourself!”

Jimmy nodded, putting on a pair of blood-stained oven mitts. Then he picked up a scalpel, barely able to grip it. Eleanor held the camcorder.

“Please...”

The blade touched Mal’s arm.

“Knock me out,” Mal said. “For god’s sake, knock me—”

Then the cutting began, and Mal didn’t say anything else coherent.

# # #

When Letti opened her eyes, she heard a man screaming.

What’s going on?

She looked around, saw she was in some sort of cell. Bare, concrete walls, like a basement. Dirt floor. Completely empty, except for a water pump and a filthy plastic bucket.

Letti sat up. “Kelly! Florence! Are you there!”

“Mom!”

“Kelly!”

Letti rushed to the metal door. Locked.

“Kelly! Are you okay?”

“Mom, we have to be quiet.”

“Kelly, what’s—”

“Please, Mom! Don’t talk anymore! They hurt you if you talk!”

Her daughter sounded terrified. And rightfully so, if she was locked up like Letti was.

The man’s screaming rose in pitch, until it became a single high note that Letti felt in her molars.

What are they doing to him?

“Kelly, hang in there, baby. I’m coming.”

Letti took a step back from the door. It looked formidable, but it also looked old. Letti could squat lift over five hundred pounds, and she had no doubt she could squat double that with her daughter in danger. She reared back, letting the urgency of the situation take her, and drove her bare foot into the door.

It clanged, and she felt the reverberation all the way to her coccyx.

Letti kicked it again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

The door wasn’t giving up, but neither was she. Letti took a few steps back, giving her leg a rest, getting ready to charge it with her shoulder.

Then the door swung open.

Standing there, in some kind of padded armor, was the biggest man Letti had ever seen. He was more than a foot taller than she was. Strands of long gray hair hung around his shoulders, and poked through the grill of the football helmet he wore.

Letti lowered her shoulder and charged him, aiming at the giant’s waist, grunting in satisfaction when she pushed him back several steps.

Just a bit more, and I’ll be out of the cell. Then—

Letti felt a knife stick her between the shoulder blades.

She dropped onto her face, crying out in agony. Then the pain stopped, and she realized it wasn’t a knife at all. The giant was pinning her down with something.

Letti craned her neck around. Saw the stick he held, blue electric sparks crackling at the tip.

A cattle prod.

“Youse a fighter,” the man said. He had a voice like steak sizzling on a hot pan. “I likes fighters.”

He juiced her again, and Letti clenched her teeth, refusing to cry out, refusing to let Kelly hear her pain.

Finally, mercifully, the current stopped. Letti could feel the burn mark on her spine. The giant bent down, resting his knee on her neck, forcing her face into the dirt.

“Now y’all better be quiet,” he said, “else I’ll stick this prod someplace you won’t like.”

Letti was hurt, but more angry than scared.

“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.