Jack Kilborn - Endurance

“My family. Or I shoot you like I shot him.”

The Sheriff cast a quick glance at his fallen partner.

“We got ‘em. Ain’t no way you gettin’ ‘em back.”

“How many people are holding them?”

He stayed silent. She pulled back the hammer on the revolver.

“How many?”

“A lot more than the four bullets you got left, Granny. You got no idea what’s goin’ on.”

From the bathroom, Deb screamed.

Then Grover grabbed Florence’s ankle.

# # #

Felix stared, slack-jawed, at the figure slinking out of the cave. Its golden eyes caught the moonlight and glinted.

Ronald isn’t a man. He’s a mountain lion.

A surge of adrenaline temporarily overrode the pain in Felix’s tortured fingers, and he pawed at his pocket, trying to get at the handcuff keys. He slipped his shattered index finger into his jeans, pushed down, and screamed when it bent the wrong way.

He withdrew the finger, his whole body shaking in raw agony.

Ronald cocked his head to the side and padded closer, in no obvious hurry. Felix knew he needed to focus on the keys, but he was transfixed by the cat as it approached. The musk smell got stronger, and Ronald’s tail—broken in several places and shaped like a jagged lightning bolt—swished back and forth. It was strangely beautiful, almost hypnotic.

Then the cougar hissed, revealing three inch fangs, snapping Felix back into reality.

Handcuffs. Focus on my handcuffs.

Felix tried his unbroken pinky. Wincing, he slid it into his pocket, but couldn’t get down deep enough to grab the keys. He could just barely touch the metal ring with his fingertip, but couldn’t hook his pinky around them.

Ronald stalked closer to Felix, head down, eyes shining. The beast was huge, easily over two hundred pounds. Each paw was bigger than Felix’s face.

Ignore the pain. Get the keys.

Grunting, Felix forced his pinky in deeper, bending his ring finger back, the broken phalange bones grinding against one another, his previous knife wound splitting open.

Almost… almost…

Too much. The pain overtook him, and the world swirled away. Felix’s vision dimmed at the edges, the darkness forming a tunnel that got smaller and smaller until he blacked out.

Felix awoke on his knees, hugging the pole, his face warm. He opened his eyes—

—and saw Ronald only inches away, his hot, feline breath blowing onto Felix’s face.

Felix felt the scream welling up, and then the cat’s massive paw shot out, catching his pelvis, spinning Felix around the pole by his cuffed wrists.

This seemed to amuse the cougar, because he batted Felix in the other direction, like a tetherball. Felix felt the rents in his hips, where the claws hooked flesh through the denim.

My hips?

Oh, no... my pocket...

He chanced a look down at his bloody, ripped jeans.

Are the keys still in there?

Felix patted the material, feeling warm blood and torn fabric. The pain was twofold, both his ruined fingers and the gouges in his hip seemed to be in a contest for which hurt more. But there, under the heel of his hand—

The keys. And they’re poking through the denim.

Using his pinky and his thumb, he pinched the protruding handcuff key—

—and Ronald bit into Felix’s foot.

The bite wasn’t full force, the cat’s teeth not even penetrating the shoe. But the pressure caused a muscle cramp.

He’s playing with me.

The cougar tugged Felix, pulling him across the ground, forcing his hand away from his pocket as his body extended.

Did I get the keys?

I can’t tell! I can’t see!

And then Felix was fully stretched out, his cuffs around the pole, his body pulled taught by Ronald’s grip.

Do I have the goddamn keys?!?!

He squinted into the darkness, saw the key ring wrapped around his thumb.

Ronald continued to pull. The cuffs cut into Felix’s wrists. The pressure on his foot got worse, twisting Felix’s ankle. His spine screamed, joints reaching their limits, sockets beginning to separate, cartilage threatening to tear.

He’s pulling me in half.

I’m so sorry, Maria. I tried. I love you so very much.

And then the cat released him.

Not stopping to celebrate his luck, Felix scrambled back to the pole, getting it between him and the mountain lion. Then, using his teeth and his lips and his two unbroken fingers, he managed to fit the key into handcuff lock—

—just as Ronald swiped at him again with his huge paw.

Felix’s world spun, and he rolled and rolled and came to rest on his back, staring up at the orange hunter’s moon. He wiped his sleeve across his face, clearing some blood from his eyes.

The cuffs. They’re off.

I’m free!

Felix didn’t bother to look for Ronald. He got to his feet, fighting ten different kinds of pain, and scrambled into the woods. When he left the clearing, the tree canopy covered the moon, making it impossible to see. Felix ran blind, his mangled fingers bumping off of trees, continuing forge ahead until he saw a light in the distance, a light coming up exceedingly fast.

It’s a tow truck.

That was Felix’s last thought before the truck plowed into him.

# # #

Mal stared at his hand. Jimmy was dangling it up over Mal’s face.

“The operation has been a success,” Jimmy said. “The patient has survived.”

Mal turned his head to see the stump of his wrist, one of the pointy bones still sticking out through the flesh. It wasn’t bleeding anymore—a quick dip in the white powder clotted the wound within seconds. But the pain was still there.

The pain went deeper than just Mal’s nerve endings firing off signals. The pain was also mental. The memory of what this monster had done to him—cutting the skin, snipping the muscles with scissors, using a hammer and chisel to get through the bone—that would haunt him for as long as he survived. Mal’s begging and pleading had devolved to incoherent bawling. Staring at the monster who had done this to him, the monster who gleefully held up his severed hand like a prize fish he’d just caught, was almost more agonizing than the physical hurt.

“Excellent work, my boy,” Eleanor said, setting down the camcorder. “Momma has to go check on the guests upstairs. But you might want to give your patient another examination.” Eleanor looked at Mal and smiled. “I think he may have some cancer in his feet.”

Eleanor patted Mal on the cheek, then waddled off, leaving through one of the operating room’s two doors.

“Foot cancer?” Jimmy said, his expression grim. “That’s a very serious condition. We’ll have to begin treatment immediately.”

Jimmy went to the instrument table, gripping a hacksaw in his oven mitt.

Mal cringed away, starting to babble again, knowing it wouldn’t do any good.

And then his arm, bloody and missing a hand, slipped out of the leather strap binding his wrist.

Without thinking, Mal thrust his traumatized arm at Jimmy as he inspected his saw, jabbing his protruding unla bone into the hunchback’s neck.

The pain was otherworldly. But the bone—sharp as a splinter from the chisel—cut deep into Jimmy’s flesh.

Jimmy grunted, stumbling backward, pressing both mitts to his wound. The blood gushed right through them.

“Laceration... to the... internal jugular vein... Need... QuikClot... to stop the bleeding...”

Jimmy reached for the bowl of powder on the instrument cart. Mal, his vision red with agony, thrust out and knocked the bowl away, upending it onto the floor. A plume of white dust hung in the air, then settled.