Bill Pronzini - Hellbox

KERRY

Sometime during the morning or afternoon, she managed to free her hands.

She no longer had any sense of time. At intervals it seemed compressed, sluggish, and then it would expand in jumps like a defective clock. The light that filtered in through chinks in the wall boarding, at the edges of the shutter over the single window, was no help: there wasn’t enough of it to do more than put a faint sheen on the murkiness. Objects in the shed, the low ceiling, were shrouded in shadow. The gathering heat was the only indicator that the day was moving forward at all. Smotheringly hot in this prison, but it didn’t bring an ooze of sweat from her pores the way it had yesterday. So dried out now, she could no longer produce enough saliva to ease the burning in her mouth and throat. Her thirst was almost unbearable.

But none of that kept her from sawing at the duct tape binding her wrists. She’d squirmed her body painfully from one end of the long bench to the other, in the hope that the other support leg would have a rougher edge. If it did, she couldn’t tell; she had almost no feeling left in her hands or arms. The sensors in her back told her when she had herself positioned, then she’d begun the long, arduous process. Rock forward and back, slowly, scraping the tape against the wood until she could no longer stand the strain; rest for a while and then start in again.

The task seemed impossible. More than once, she came close to abandoning it. But what else could she do, trapped in here, helpless? Wait passively for her captor to return and try to talk him out of killing her? No. She wasn’t made that way. All her life she’d been a doer, a fighter: never give in, never give up. The more difficult the task, the more determined she became. That wasn’t going to change now. Her outrage was greater than her frustration; so was her will to survive.

Now and then she prayed. She’d never been particularly religious, but she did believe in God; and if others believed in the power of prayer, then maybe there was something to it. She’d led a reasonably moral life, a more Christian life than so many of the self-important, hate-preaching hypocrites on the Far Right; maybe God, if He was merciful after all, would take pity on her.

The rest of the time she focused her mind on freeing herself. Her thoughts had grown sluggish anyway, and thinking only led to anxiety, a return of fear, and the crimping edges of panic.

The heavy rasp of her breathing kept her from hearing the duct tape finally rip and split. She didn’t realize she was free, or almost free, until she leaned forward to rest again, flexing her back muscles forward to ease the strain, and her arms bowed outward slightly and she had just enough feeling left in her wrists for an awareness of the tape’s pull on her skin.

A kind of dull elation moved through her. She didn’t have enough strength to tear loose the rest of the tape, and her fingers were useless. All she could do was keep flexing her back muscles, try to work enough feeling down through her arms so she could widen the spread of hands and wrists. It took a long time… bunches of minutes broken up by rest periods, an hour or more for all she knew. Slowly, slowly, the tape pulled and scraped, and there was another ripping sound and a faint stinging sensation on the back of her left hand. And both hands dropped apart and she was free.

Kerry wiggled away from the support, then over onto her side, and then her stomach with arms now splayed out on either side of her body. Still no feeling in either of them or in her hands except a residue of the stinging. She lay there breathing in the stifling air, willing her blood to circulate. More passing minutes strung together like links in an extended chain. Then the pain came, tiny prickles of it at first, gradually increasing until it began to radiate up and down both arms and in her fingers.

The pain brought on an impulse to weep, but her tear ducts were as dry as her mouth and throat. She rolled over onto her back, attempted to lift her arms. Not enough strength yet. She lay still, looking up at the shadowed ceiling where a huge cobweb hung from one of the beams, working now to flex her fingers. One twitched and moved and ached, then another and another, until she could feel them all, clumsy things as useless as sausages.

When the tingling and throbbing began to modulate from sharp pain to dull ache, she was able to raise her arms off the canvas and onto her bare thighs. She struggled into a sitting position, sat staring at her hands. God. They looked, as well as felt, swollen. Torn strips of duct tape still clung to both; blood streaks dried and fresh marked cuts, scrapes, welts all along her wrists and forearms. Again she felt the impulse to cry, but it lasted no more than a few seconds.

She made an effort to strip off the tape binding her ankles. No good. Fingers still too sore, too tender to grasp and pull. She lay flat again to ease the cramped hurt in her back. Flexed the fingers, chafed her wrists as circulation gradually improved Thrumming noise from outside: the link on the pit bull’s lead sliding along the ground cable as the animal broke into a sudden run away from the shed. A couple of seconds later, the dog began a furious barking.

Balfour, coming back?

Oh, God, no! Not yet, not while her hands were still useless, her feet still bound.

She sat up again, managed to catch hold of a corner of the canvas, hang on and pull it up over her legs. Lost the grip, regained it, dragged the canvas to her waist.

The dog’s barking tapered off into sporadic yips and whines. Kerry sat motionless, straining to hear. The animal wasn’t running anymore, either.

She clutched at the heavy canvas, her weight on one hip and her eyes on the door. If Balfour had returned, she’d hear him in time to roll herself into the canvas before he unlocked the door and came inside. And then pray he wouldn’t uncover her the way he had this morning.

Quiet outside now. She held her breath.

Silence.

Not Balfour, not yet. Something had spooked the dog, that was all-a wild animal or stray cat, a phantom sound or movement. It didn’t take much to set off a beast like that.

Kerry twisted free of the canvas. The tingling in her fingers was pins and needles now, a good sign. They still felt big and clumsy when she set to picking at the tape around her ankles; it took patience, concentration to scratch an edge loose, pinch it between thumb and forefinger. She didn’t have enough strength yet to tear it, but she found she could unwind it in little jerks-an agonizingly slow process that left her weak and a little dizzy when she finally stripped the last of it off.

Her hands were better by then; she sat rubbing the numbness out of her ankles, her swollen feet. Another long, slow process before returning circulation brought shoots of pain, then the tingling and the pins-and-needles prickling.

She had no idea how long she worked before she was ready to try standing. Stop time, lost time. Awareness of nothing but the task of restoring her body to a functional state, and the occasional sound from outside that froze her until she was sure it had no meaning.

Onto her knees first. Crawl over next to the bench. One hand on a storage door padlock, the other stretched up to the edge of the bench. Raise up, lift up onto her feet. The first time her legs refused to support her weight, even with her body braced against the bench, and she slid down hard to her knees. The jolts of pain increased her determination. She stayed upright the second time, held herself in place while she rested.

All right. Now walk.

Shuffling baby steps, both hands clutching the bench, trying to keep her weight braced and evenly distributed. Good. Another baby step. Another. Buckling knee that time; too much weight on the sliding foot. Rest. Go slow. Another step. Another. Turn at the end of the bench, walk back along it at the same slow pace to the far end. Turn again, come back. Four times, five times, until she could walk with minimal support. Every step had its measure of agony, but it was the kind of endurable, satisfying hurt you felt after a long run.