Part 24 (1/2)

I ducked. He fired. The drywall lost. When he racked another cartridge in I managed to find another door and even though I fully expected him to be behind this one as well I tugged it open and slammed it shut behind me.

The room was pitch black, and I was breathing like a locomotive, but I swear I heard feminine giggling.

”Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Hee hee! Ow!” I said, as the ladies clawed and bit into my arms, legs, torso, and an extremely ticklish spot under my right knee.

”Zesty, tangy blood...”

You wouldn't expect chained-up elderly women to be so freakin' strong. For the first few moments I wasn't fighting back as hard as I could, simply because it still felt like I was engaged in combat with my grandma, but once the biting and clawing started to really hurt I punched and kicked with no regard to brittle bones or fragile dentures.

I couldn't get away. I kept straining to get out of chain-range so I could at least cower in a corner, but there was simply no escape from these women. They'd been slurping steroid-laden blood or something.

They were in no hurry to kill me. Though I tried to protect my throat, it was unnecessary-they obviously planned to eat me alive, one tiny bite at a time.

I was definitely bleeding in several different places.

”Foamy, frothy blood...”

Was my blood really foamy and frothy? Or had they just run out of good adjectives?

I couldn't believe that I was going to die from being slowly eaten alive by chained-up elderly ladies who thought they were vampires. I'd always kind of figured that I would go peacefully in my sleep, after my wife dropped an anvil on my head.

One of the ladies bit my arm hard. This one actually took some flesh with it. I screamed. (Not that I hadn't been screaming before, but I screamed a little louder at that one.) They both stopped biting me at the sound of the shotgun.

The three of us listened.

Chaos outside.

Hopefully it was good chaos. Maybe the cops had burst in to save the day. They'd blow away Vlad and his goons, and-oops, sorry, we bad-accidentally shoot down McGlade in the crossfire. He'd lay on the floor, blood seeping from the hundred and seventy-eight bullet holes in his chest, wondering why he'd been such a loathsome p.r.i.c.k.

I could imagine his eulogy: ”f.u.c.ker's dead. Throw some dirt on him. Let's go play some poker.”

More shotgun blasts. More chaos.

It occurred to me that I should be trying to use the distraction as a tool for escape, rather than fantasizing about Harry McGlade's tragic demise.

I fantasized about it a little bit more, just because it was so pleasant, and then sprung to my feet.

Since my legs were all bitten-up, I promptly dropped back down to the floor. Falling on my legs hurt about as much as getting them bit in the first place.

One of the ladies dove at me. I threw an instinctive punch. It was not a mighty punch, but the momentum of her face moving toward my fist, combined with the momentum of my fist moving toward her face, combined with the fact that I got her right in the middle of the nose, made for one splattery smack. I couldn't quite see the results, but I could feel them on my knuckles.

She let out a howl and began to flail around on the floor. Positive descriptions of my blood's flavor and consistency were replaced by barely coherent, profanity-laden cries of rage and pain.

I couldn't quite tell what the other woman was doing, but I hoped that her partner's wails were keeping her attention. I scurried away from there, yelping as a clawed hand grab my ankle. I slammed my other foot into the hand. The crack sounded like it hurt.

I scrambled to the other end of the room, hoping I was out of chain-range. In theory, if the Vlad's administrative a.s.sistants had thrown me into the ”Pit” with the intention of letting these women devour me, it wouldn't make a h.e.l.l of a lot of sense for their chains not to give them total access to anywhere in the room.

After pausing to pluck part of a fingernail out of my ankle, I stood up and pressed myself into the corner. Okay, there had to be a way out of this little pickle. If I ran across the room at top speed (ably avoiding the women with my astounding dexterity) and bashed into the door, I'd either break open the door or the left half of my body. Or maybe both, in which case I could at least drag my mangled frame to safety.

I kind of wished that the woman would stop wailing. It was distracting me from figuring out whether the potential mangling was worth it.

The woman stopped wailing.

Much better.

Then she started giggling, which was less noisy but a lot more unnerving. The other woman giggled with her. I, myself, did not giggle.

I decided that the risk of shattering eighty-three bones was probably worth it.

Another shotgun blast. Much closer than the others.

The door flew open and I got a refres.h.i.+ng glimpse of light as Harry burst into the Pit. He slammed the door behind him, casting us back into darkness.

”Okay, who's doing the giggling?” he asked.

”Harry, I'm in here with you,” I said.

”That you, Maypole?”

I was in the mood to be around pretty much any human being in the world but Harry McGlade at this point. ”Are you trying to be funny when you screw up my name, or are you just an idiot?”

”Oh, I was talking to some other guy named Maypole. I guess he's not here anymore.”

”Idiot.”

”Are we in the pit?”

”Yeah.”

”Pretty shallow pit.”

”I know. How bad are things out there?”

”Oh, things suck out there. Suck bad.”

”They suck in here, too.”

”Figures. At least we-c.r.a.p, something's got my leg!”

I could hear a struggle, and then a nice loud thump that sounded an awful lot like an incompetent private investigator being pulled to the floor by a chained-up carnivorous old lady.

”Get off me, you toothy b.i.t.c.h!”

I rushed forward to help him. If Harry ”Obnoxious p.r.i.c.k” McGlade was going to die, I at least wanted it to be in a room with enough light that I could watch.

The door opened again, and Vlad stepped inside, holding a shotgun. The ladies immediately released Harry and ran to opposite sides of the room, hiding their faces and cowering.

It's easy to be intimidated by a very large man with a shotgun. It's a bit harder when the large man is naked and possesses male equipment that, immature as it may be, can only be described as a wee-wee.

Harry stood up. ”You can kill me if you want,” he told Vlad, ”but then I'll take the secret combination with me.”