Matthew Costello - Vacation

Her eyes moved slightly to the side. Jack sensed movement, then realized that she wasn’t alone in the room.

A stupid mistake on his part.

He released her arm, ready to grab the gun from his ankle holster, when a needle jabbed into the back of his neck.

“What?”

He spun around. A guard backing away, lowering his gun.

But already the syringe started to work.

Jack’s hand went to the back of his head, feeling the needle still sticking in there like a dart.

Looking forward, Shana turned blurry. No longer smiling. Her mouth open.

No, he thought. Christ, no.

His last thought as he fell to the floor, and everything went black.

Voices.

“Fuck it. We can eat, then come back and get to him. If Lowe lets us.”

Jack remembered the smell. He knew where he was. The charnel house, the cookery.

He wanted to open his eyes, but then those voices around him would know that he was conscious.

So he kept his head down, locked in the same position, his brain throbbing from whatever cocktail they had stuck into him.

One voice—the cook’s.

“C’mon, just leave that shit for now.”

Another voice, closer. “Think we can do it when we get back? Lowe won’t—”

Dunphy laughed. “Best not fucking guess what Lowe will or won’t do. Best you just shut up and cut when I say cut. Capiche ?”

“Yeah. I… er… whatever you say.”

Another booming laugh from the cook.

Two of them. Leaving from the sound of it.

Jack tried to get a sense of what his situation was without any discernible movement.

On a hard back chair.

Hands tied tightly to the back. Another rope wrapped tightly around his chest. His feet pulled tight, each one tied to a chair leg.

Tied up, trussed, and ready to go.

He knew that the freezer was nearby.

He thought of Christie. The kids.

No, he begged.

No. They can’t be in there.

If they were… if they were —he’d slaughter every person, every human animal that lived here.

They have to be alive.

Otherwise, he’d be dead already.

They want me to stay here, to help them.

Lowe wouldn’t kill his only bargaining chip.

That’s what he told himself. The logic of it clear. But then other thoughts, a voice that said, does logic work here? Does logic and reason and empathy—does any of that human shit work in this hell?

“C’mon, asshole,” Dunphy barked one last time.

The sound of a door. A bit of air, then the air cut off. The door closing.

Jack sat there, head down. And waited.

Counting. To one thousand, so he would force himself not to rush. 998… 999… 1000.

Slowly, Jack opened his eyes, keeping his head in the same position.

The cookery came into view, his eyelids a slowly raising curtain.

Seeing it made the smells seem more intense.

Now to raise his head.

He did that slowly as well.

Until he had his head up and could look around at the place, turn his head and see the tables, now with fresh carcasses on them.

Please, he begged. Please.

The angle bad. But one table had a larger body, an adult. The other, someone smaller.

Almost crying with the pitiful thought now. Please.

He kept staring at the inert, partially dismembered bodies.

The adult. A woman. The shape round. Someone not too big, someone round.

Not Christie.

He thanked whatever had granted him his pleading wish.

Only then did he look over to the other table. A small body. Impossible to tell anything more than that.

Impossible from this chair.

I have to get out of this chair.

For the next few seconds, his entire being focused on that one task, one that he refused to admit was impossible.

The chair stood near the table that had been his hiding place the night before.

A time that seemed weeks, months, a lifetime away.

He faced out, toward the main area of the cookery, facing the freezer.

He couldn’t turn and see behind him.

But he remembered crouching near here, and seeing the butcher’s knife on the floor.

Somehow a knife had slipped off the table and no one had seen it. Not in their alcohol haze, not with so many blades and saws arrayed on the walls of the room.

What’s one knife on the floor?

Would it still be there? No way to tell. Impossible for him to see.

He tried to think if he had other possibilities.

He had been tugging and wrenching at the ropes around his wrists. But they were tight; whoever had tied him up was competent. And the same went for the lashing of his feet to the chair legs.

Some kind of strong elastic band went around his midsection, knotted behind him.

How long would Dunphy be gone to the lodge, to check on the food being served, grab a plate himself?

Something nice and meaty tonight.

How fucking long?

He came back to the only possibility. That knife, if it was still there. That was the chance. No other possibility at all.

Jack started rocking his body back and forth.

The chair would rise a bit at the front, steady, then lift up from the back. Jack had no control other than to make his body move, to get enough momentum so that the chair would tip and eventually fall to the ground.

But how would it tip? Could it leave him pinned in a weird way, unable to move, a pointless maneuver?

My only chance, he thought, ignoring all the mental pictures that had him trapped, an upside-down horseshoe crab, waiting for the fat cook to return, and maybe start to work on him right there.

Back and forth, the movements so small. But he found a rhythm; he could build some momentum. The lifts of the front, then the back legs. Higher each time.

Until he knew he was close.

More rocking, using the scant movement all the ropes and lashings gave him.

And then he felt it.

The chair starting to fall over, not to the front or the back, but a strange sideways slip. All he could do was let it happen as the chair banged against the table, his head smacking hard against the edge, then slipping down to the cookery’s floor.

He looked left. Fresh blood spatters. He realized after a moment that they were his own.

The chair had landed on its side. Jack looked around to the right, trying to see a side wall of the building.

Please be there, he thought.

Straining as much as possible, he saw it. The beautiful shining silver of the blade, the dull black of the handle.

His right leg on the floor, his weight on it.

The foot was nearly immobilized, but there was some room for movement in the leg. Again, only inches.

He heard voices.

Outside.

Dunphy back?

But the voices moved on.

He couldn’t have much time.

The leg kicked. More pathetic miniscule movements.

Kick. Kick. Kick

Over and over. Gaining mere inches. But he kept doing it, barely aware that this was his fucked-up leg. Barely aware of anything but this need to contract, relax, using this pathetic kicking movement to move the chair inches closer to the knife, the chair that seemed to weigh a ton.

He paid no attention to the progress he made. As though the only thing in the universe that could bring him pleasure was each small kick, giddy with ecstasy every time he came closer to the knife.

His sole obsession: to kick, to move.

He saw the blade near his head. That made him only kick more. He had to get past the blade, yes… get it closer to his hands.

Taking so long. Too long. No way he’d make it.

Fuck that idea , he thought.

I’ll make it.

He couldn’t get his head in position to see if he was close enough. It would be a guess, an estimate of how far he had come.