Tom Weaver - The Dead Tracks

He came around the door at her.

He was in pale blue medical scrubs, a cap and a face mask. She could see his eyes, flashing bright blue inside, and a wire, coming out from under the mask, down under the scrubs. In the split second it took her eyes to flick from the wires back to him, he clamped a hand on her throat and squeezed.

Static.

He forced her down towards the ground. She looked up at him. At his eyes. They were narrowed, focused on hurting her. He pushed her down to the floor, her legs giving way beneath her. He was showing her he was in charge. Forcing her to make short, sharp choking noises as her lungs tried to push air up through her throat. His thumb pressed against her windpipe harder. She was bordering on the edges of a blackout.

Survival instinct kicked in.

Nerves fired. Muscles tightened.

She gripped the scalpel as tightly as she could and jabbed it into the back of his right hand. He yelled out, his cry initially dulled by the mask, but drowned out a second later as it screamed from the speakers in a distorted, broken copy of his reaction. Both hands released her. The sound died down. A wail of agony replaced by feedback and static.

Sona scrambled to her feet, headed around him and out of the door. A long grey corridor. Concrete walls. Strip lights all the way down. She looked both ways. The corridor turned at a right-angle to her left. All she could see around the corner was darkness. To her right was a heavy iron door, huge rivets tracing its circumference.

She headed left.

'You fucking bitch !'

She could hear him but not see him as she ran, his voice coming through a speaker in front of her, high up on the wall. But then: footsteps.

She glanced over her shoulder. He emerged from the doorway, his eyes immediately fixed on her. Blood ran from his hand down the front of his medical scrubs and on to his trousers. But he didn't care now. Above her, static hissed out of the speaker, and then, whispering, his voice travelled down to her: There's nowhere to run.'

She turned and broke into a sprint again. As the corridor kinked left, it opened out into another, shorter one. A couple of crates leaned against one wall. No lights above her. There were three glass panels on her left and more concrete walling on the right. At the end was a door, about forty feet away, connecting the corridor she was in with a better-lit room beyond.

'Where you going, Sona?'

She passed under another speaker.

'You've got nowhere to run!'

She heard his footsteps behind her, but this time didn't look back. Just kept her eyes on the door at the end of the corridor. Never letting up. Never dropping the pace. Ignoring the pain that was starting to emerge in her cheeks and across her forehead. Ignoring the screaming voice inside her that said she was never going to get away from him.

Then, as she passed them, she realized the glass panels were windows.

The first window belonged to a room she recognized. White walls. White ceiling. She could see the table, and the cards perched on top, pointing to the water and the place where the medical gown had been. In the corner of the room were her clothes. Left there in a pile. Everything but her underwear.

She pounded on.

The next room was exactly the same, except empty.

Then she got to the third room.

A woman was sitting on the floor in the opposite corner, legs up to her chest, face buried in her knees. Her hair covered her shoulders and arms, disguising some of the bruises on her skin - but not all of them. Sona slowed a little: an automatic reaction.

There's more like me.

A noise from behind her. She looked back.

He'd closed on her.

In front of her, she could suddenly see a brightly lit room beyond an open iron door. The room was about thirty feet square, with a thick fire door on the far side. 'Help me!' she screamed as she ran into the room. 'Somebody help me!' Through two thin glass panels on the fire door, she could see steel cabinets and the outline of the hole he'd kept her in.

She ran back, grabbed the heavy iron door and started pushing it closed. It cranked and juddered as it swung inwards. He was getting closer. Twenty feet, maybe less. She pushed harder, pain suddenly flaring in her face. In her nose. Her lips. Her cheeks. Then the door stuck.

He was ten feet away.

Shut .

Eight feet.

Shut.

Six feet.

'Shut!' she screamed.

The door shifted and swung shut against the iron frame. She glanced around the room for something to jam against it. It looked like a submarine door — huge, bulky and intricate — but there was no revolving lock mechanism, which meant all he had to do to open it again was push from the other side. Halfway across the room was a metal pipe — like a piece of scaffolding - propped against the wall. She went to grab it.

Then the door started squealing.

He was pushing from the other side.

She grabbed the length of pipe, placed one end against a kink in the floor and then forced the other end into a space about halfway up the door. It would hold for a while. But not long.

'Sona?'

She froze to the spot. Turned slowly. There was no one else in the room. But on the far wall, above the fire door, she could make out another speaker. She frowned. Took a step towards it.

'Sona?' the voice said again.

She stepped closer to the speaker. Watched it for a moment. Through the glass panels in the door she could see more of the hole she'd been kept in. Plastic containers were piled up in the corner of the room, and a ladder was against the far wall, out of sight. That was how he'd got down into the hole in the first place.

'You need to stop running.'

She looked up at the speaker again. His voice sounded soft now, almost caring. Tears filled her eyes. 'Let me go,' she said quietly. 'Just… let me go.'

'I will,' came the reply.

'I mean it!'

'So do I.'

She glanced back at the door, then at the speaker. 'I don't believe you.'

No reply this time.

'I don't believe you!' she screamed, and tears started rolling down her face. She was scared, desperate. She wiped the tears away, trying to compose herself.

A scratching sound.

Crank.

She turned to face the door. He was still pushing at it. It shifted a little, the length of pipe bending against the floor. Then, from somewhere above her, she could hear rain.

She looked up.

Six feet above, a circular hole had been cut out of the ceiling. A manhole. Fixed to one side of the hole was a drop-down ladder. She looked around her. On a wall next to the glass-panelled door were three switches. Two were for lights, presumably the room she was in, and the room with the hole. The other was set apart on its own.

Sona moved to it. Flicked the switch.

With a clunk, the ladder started dropping down, whirring metallically. When one part of it had extended its full length, the second part continued downwards. It stopped in front of her, two feet off the floor of the room.

'Step on that ladder and I will kill you.'

She glanced at the speaker.

'I will hunt you down and I will cut you into pieces. I mean it. I will carve you open if you put one foot on that ladder.'

She put her foot on the ladder.

'You stupid bitch!' A crank. The pipe at the door wheezed as he pushed, bending some more. He smashed his fists against the other side, hammering at it like a drum. You are dead! You are fucking dead?

Halfway up the ladder, she paused briefly and looked down into the room. Above, the rain continued to fall. Below, the door edged inwards even more, and she glimpsed the pale blue of his medical scrubs.

'You will remember me,' he said from below her.

She pushed at the manhole cover above her. It moved away from the hole. Rain fell out of the sky and down past her, to the room below. She placed a foot on the next step. Then the next. Lifted her head up above the lip of the manhole.