Jack Kilborn - Endurance

Sue shook her head. “No. No no no.”

“Please... kill... me.”

“We can get you help,” Sue implored. “We can get out of here, and get you help. Get you doctors.” Sue patted her belly. “This is your baby, Larry. Yours. They think it’s theirs, but I was pregnant when we came here.”

“I... want... to... die. Please...”

Sue clenched her fists and beat them against her thighs, moaning.

Cam knelt next to Sue. “You love your husband.”

Sue could barely speak through her sobbing. “More... more than anything.”

“Then you have to let him go.”

“No. God, no.”

Letti put her arm around Sue’s shoulders. Cam stared down at the man. “You want to die?”

Larry nodded.

Maria’s stomach bottomed out. She didn’t like the direction this was heading.

She said, “Cam...?”

Cam touched Larry’s cheek, gave it a gentle caress. And then, with a quick, violent motion, Cam grabbed the man’s head and twisted it around 180 degrees.

The crack was so loud Maria could taste it.

Sue let out a wretched sound, somewhere between a scream and a sob. Kelly buried her face in Letti’s shoulder. JD hunkered down, his muzzle hair standing on edge, baring his teeth at Cam.

Maria was awestruck.

She thought about Cam’s past, his ordeal years ago when he and his friend were abducted by a pedophile. Cam hadn’t been the most stable child in the world before then, but afterwards he’d become withdrawn, and quite literally a danger to himself and others. He was committed into a psychiatric institution, given therapy and various drugs, but his condition never seemed to improve. While locked up, he was even accused of doing something unspeakable to another patient, even though it was never proven.

Could Cam—my dear, sweet, little brother Cam—be more disturbed than I ever imagined?

Or was he just being merciful when he snapped that poor man’s neck?

“We have to find Felix,” Cam said, standing up. “Sis, do you know how to get out of here?”

Maria simply stared at him, unable to reconcile his actions.

“Sis? We need to move before they come for us.”

“How many of them are there?” Letti asked.

Maria spoke in a monotone, keeping her eyes on Cam. “A lot. Eleanor, she names each one after a President.”

Kelly said, “There have been forty-three presidents, Mom.”

Letti put her hands on her hips. “Are you saying that crazy old bitch has forty-three crazy mutant children running around here?”

Maria thought of that old nursery rhyme, the one Eleanor was fond of repeating.

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.

She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do.

“I think she’s only had around twenty,” Maria said. “But she brings women in here. Gets them pregnant. Some of the babies don’t survive. Birth defects. And she kills the baby girls. Says no girl will ever be president.”

Letti gripped Maria’s arms. “How many are we talking here, Maria?”

“Including the children?” Maria said.

“Yes. Including the children.”

Maria closed her eyes, doing a mental count. “From what I’ve seen, there are more than fifty.”

# # #

Florence stared at the woman sitting on the floor of her closet—the women she’d just hit in the face—and instantly recognized who it was.

“You’re Deborah Novacek.”

Florence knew her because she was perhaps the most famous athlete competing in Iron Woman .

Deb looked like hell, filthy and frazzled, and now bleeding from her nose. She stared up at Florence, and then kicked out one of her prosthetic legs.

Florence side-stepped the kick and spread out her palms.

“Easy. Take it easy. I didn’t mean to hit you, but I didn’t expect you to be in my closet. My name is Florence Pillsbury. I’m a triathlete, too. Are you in trouble?”

Florence watched as Deb processed this. The poor girl was shaking all over. “Trap doors. Secret passages. Someone got into my room. A freak, with red eyes. He’s chasing me.”

Florence immediately helped the girl up.

“Are you hurt? Who got into your room, dear?”

“We’ve got to get out of here. We’ve got to—”

The knock at the door cut Deb off. Both women stared at it.

Florence asked, “Who is it?”

“This is Sheriff Dwight, of the Monk Creek Police Department. Can you open up for a moment, ma’am?”

“Sher—”

Florence clamped her hand over Deb’s mouth, cutting her off. This didn’t feel right.

“Just a second,” Florence called. Then she whispered to Deb, “I’ve got a weird feeling. Go hide under the bed.”

Deb shook her head. “No way in hell.”

“The bathroom then.”

“He’s the Sheriff.”

“There’s something in his voice I don’t like. Please hide while I talk to him.”

Deb chewed her lower lip. Then she nodded and walked to the bathroom, bouncing on her curved prosthetics.

“Mrs. Pillsbury?” The Sheriff said, knocking again. “Please open the door. It’s about your granddaughter.”

When Florence saw Deb was locked in the bathroom, she went to answer her door.

The Sheriff was a tall man, plump, pasty, wearing an ill-fitting police uniform. His hat was askew on his head. There was also something funny about his eyes. The edges were bright red.

They’re bloodshot. He’s wearing contact lenses to hide it.

“What about my granddaughter, Sheriff?” Florence only opened the door a few inches, and kept her foot planted behind it, like a doorstop.

“You need to come with us.”

Us? But he’s alone. Unless...

Florence craned her neck back, trying to see around the Sheriff. She caught a glimpse of a man behind him. A tall man, in overalls. He had a large jaw, and a rounded forehead that came to a point. Having done missionary work around the world and seen countless impoverished and disabled people, Florence recognized the man’s condition as microcephaly. He was what circus sideshows called a pinhead .

Not a person normally associated with law enforcement.

Florence’s uneasy feeling about this inn quadrupled when Deb showed up in her closet, but now it was off the charts. She realized her whole family was in danger.

Okay, now that I know the threat, I can deal with it.

Florence took a deep breath, centered herself, then stepped away from the door.

The men burst in. The microcephalac clapped his hands together and giggled, and the Sheriff offered a mean grin, showing that dental hygiene wasn’t one of his top priorities.

“Granny, that was a big mistake.”

He hitched up his belt and rested his hand on the butt of his gun, striking a rehearsed pose that was probably meant to intimidate.

Florence wasn’t intimidated. With her right hand, she struck the Sheriff’s jaw, driving his head upward. With her left, she shoved his wrist away from his holster and snagged his gun.

“Don’t move,” she said, backing away. “Don’t either of you—”

“Get her, Grover!” the Sheriff yelled.

Grover either always followed orders, or he was mentally impaired and didn’t recognize the threat of a gun. It didn’t matter either way to Florence. The microcephalac was twice her weight, and if he grabbed her it was over.

She shot him twice in the chest, and he fell like a redwood, crashing into the floor with a thump almost as loud as the gunfire.

Then she turned the revolver on the Sheriff.

“Where’s my family?”

The Sheriff’s eyes got wide, revealing more of their red-rimmed edges.

“Granny, put down the gun.”