James Axler - Pilgrimage to Hell

Strasser glanced down at him, smiling with his mouth but not his eyes, and tipped the glass up some more. It was now almost horizontal. The beetle began to scurry along the smooth curved path until it had about reached its goal. It stopped, antennae quivering. Then it scurried on remorselessly, at last reaching flesh, a portion of buttock fringed by coarse red hair, short and curly, just glimpsed. The antennae extended toward the white skin as though testing the air. Presumably satisfied with the intelligence it had gathered, the insect began to move slowly, inexorably, out of Ryan's sight.

Squealing, frantically nodding his head, adrenaline flooding through him like liquid fire, Ryan managed to inch himself forward, heaving those guards atop along by the sheer strength of his frenzy.

Strasser looked down at him again, regarded him thoughtfully, coolly, gauging his surrender — then rammed the glass hard into the girl's rear, at the same time flipping its mouth slightly upward, the sudden movement catching the beetle, the lip of the glass tossing it into the air. It curved high, legs scrabbling at nothing, and for a split second seemed to hang, weightless, at the peak of its parabola. Then gravity took over and it dropped. Strasser neatly caught it in the glass and beamed in triumph, as though he had just performed a particularly knotty conjuring trick. He gave the glass and the box to Kelber.

He said, "Excellent. Take him out to one of the trucks. The girl, too. Dress her. These..." He waved an arm at J.B. and the others, then frowned in thought. "I was going to say, kill them. But no. Take them downstairs. One of the cells. I'll deal with them personally when we return."

Ryan felt himself gripped under the armpits and dragged to his feet. He needed that. Right now he felt incapable of supporting himself on his own. Strasser caught up with them. The gaunt man with the skull face reached out and grasped at the gag in his mouth and tore it out. Ryan gasped, swallowed, grunted, spat out bits of rag that still clung to his teeth and his tongue and his lips. He gazed up at Strasser, his chest heaving, his eyes blurred.

He cracked, "You're dead, Strasser... dead..."

"No, no, no," said Strasser, leaning forward and tapping him lightly on the chest with a bony finger, his tone mildly amused as though he were speaking to a fractious child, " you're dead ."

The heavy steel door thudded into place. The face of the man Krysty Wroth had booted, still blood-smeared around the mouth, appeared in the barred opening, another of the guards behind him.

"Think I'll have me the slinky black bitch, Ferd," said the man with the bloody mouth. "Ain't had black meat in awhile."

"Y'know," said Hunaker to Samantha, "I bet that dick's prick when it's hard is about as big as my pinkie. I betcha."

The gloating expression vanished from the sec man's face as though wiped off with a rag.

He screamed, "You'll find out how big it is, bitch! Get the fuckin' prod! Time I'm finished with ya, yer cunt'll be green as well as yer hair!"

"Cute," said Hunaker. She said to Sam, "Hey, you think he knows where a girl's whoopee actually is?"

J.B. muttered out of the corner of his mouth, "Shut it."

Hunaker shut it, and shrugged. She turned away from the door with an exaggerated yawn. The man, his face suffused with rage, disappeared from the opening, clattering off up the passageway with the other guard.

"Too mouthy," said J.B.

"Fuck it. The wimp got up my nose."

"You just pray he doesn't stick the prod up your nose," advised Koll.

Hunaker snorted with laughter. She was irrepressible. She started gurgling and shaking and had to lean up against Koll to keep her balance. J.B. shot her a stony look.

"Aw, come on, J.B. Ain't the end of the world. We'll get outta this one."

"If we're lucky. Doesn't help when you feel the spike of that guy. You're gonna have to make up to him, or one of them."

"Oh, crap," said Hunaker. "Does that mean I have to promise 'em all they can manage? Like that?"

"I want at least two in the corridor."

"Why does it have to be me?"

"Preferably both of you."

"Well, okay, but it's bad theater, J.B.," said Hunaker. "I mean, I like ol' Kollinsen here, but I don't fancy him. Something about that mustache of his. You won't get a performance from the heart, know what I mean?"

"Thanks for nothing," muttered Koll.

J.B. said, "I didn't mean Koll."

"Oh, yeah? Me and Sam?" She turned on the black girl, nudged her in the ribs. "Hey-y-y! How did you know, J.B.? Been trying for a date for a hog's age."

"Jesus." Samantha the Panther's voice was a husky plaint. "Look, J.B., I got no intention of showing off my box to those bastards."

J.B. stared at her through his steel-rimmed spectacles, his face expressionless.

"Sure. Let's hope the situation doesn't arise."

His voice was as toneless as his face.

The room went quiet. Into both young women's an image of the bloodstained block slid like a poisonous snake.

J.B. sat down on the concrete floor and began to unlace his right combat boot.

"Just put on a show is all. Ain't worth shit. You know it, I know it."

"Fuck it," complained Hunaker. "Just 'cause we got tits and all. I mean, why don't you guys stand there, wave your dongs around?"

"Ain't gonna do much to these guys," J.B. pointed out.

Koll said, "You speak for yourself, buster," in hurt tones.

Hunaker said, her voice low-key, harsher in tone, "You really think... the train? Gone?"

J.B. tugged his boot, pulled it off.

"You were there. You heard what Cohn said, what the other guy said."

He put a hand inside his boot and began working at the inner sole with his fingers.

"You think we got a chance?"

J.B. stopped working at his boot, sat back and frowned slightly.

He said, "Maybe sixty-forty."

"Yeah?" Hunaker's eyes widened. The odds were better than she'd imagined.

"To them," J.B. said.

"Fireblasted nukeshit!"

A bleak smile flickered across J.B.'s sallow face.

"Just wave those tits around. I'll give you better odds."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Fifty-five-forty-five. Still to them."

"Thanks a bunch, big boy," said Hunaker. She suddenly spat out, her voice squeezed tight with fury, "Just as long as some of 'em die nasty."

Sam was now beside the door, peering out through the bars at the empty corridor. Koll had joined J.B. on the floor and was pulling his own boots off. Hunaker unfastened the belt she was wearing and began to rip out the false bottoms of all her empty ammo pouches. She unhooked her water bottle, uncapped it, wiped it with her sleeve and took a swig. Then she eased the webbing around it, slid the flask out, began peeling off wafer-thin strips of a grayish and doughy-looking substance wound around it.

Plastique . Some things just never change.

She said, "How we gonna do it?"

J.B. nodded at the door.

"Blow it. Door doesn't quite fit. Opens outward, too. Makes it easier."

"Old Eagle-eye," said Hunaker to Koll.

J.B. smiled faintly. He did not mind being teased by people he trusted, and he trusted these people and knew that they trusted him and relied on him. That was all that mattered.

He stopped what he was doing — which was peeling back the inner sole of her boot to reveal a hollow cavity, long and narrow, carved out of the specially built-up thick-soled footwear — and gazed around the room.

As he understood it, this lower level of the bank building had once contained the main vault and safe-deposit rooms. In their stead, thick-walled cells had been erected, all with steel doors containing glassless but steel-barred viewing windows. The doors were not as thick as the walls but were solid enough, although the whole construction had been done by builders who had clearly skimped and saved, probably in a hurry, probably with Jordan Teague's goons cracking the whip over them.