Blood Victory

Rage keeps the panic at bay. Rage for all the other women, and maybe some men, who endured these cold instructions and the terror of finding themselves trapped in this instrument of transparent torture.

“Your anger doesn’t make you strong, Hailey Brinkmann. You don’t know what bravery is. Not yet. But you’ll learn tonight. So long as you look deep within yourself and find whatever it takes to stay very quiet and very still.”

An accordion room divider cuts off this section of the cargo bay from the rest of the truck. Other than the gurney and the terrible contraption she’s attached to, there’s not much else here. When he turns his back to her, for the first time she sees three wooden crates stacked against the wall a few feet away. They’re lined with air holes along the tops of the sides facing her.

Mattingly removes the lid from the Lucite container, sticks a rubber plug in the tube’s opening, then unties the top of the cable attached to her right wrist from where it’s secured to the divider. He lays the lax cable across her lap so he can slide one half of the divider free from the cube. If she were an ordinary victim, this would be the time to fight back, even at the risk of choking herself on the tube. But for her, it’s not time to fight back. Not yet. Not until they’ve reached their destination. If she takes him down now, he’s just a kidnapper with a fetish for Lucite. When they reach his kill site, she’ll have the chance to overpower him, leaving him half-alive and surrounded by the evidence of his other murders before law enforcement arrives.

Mattingly turns to the stack of ventilated crates and picks up the top one by its handle. He tilts one end down into the Lucite container, then pulls up on a vertical gate. The crate’s inhabitants stream down into the Lucite container in such a frenzied rush, it’s hard to tell what they are. They’re gray and they’re panicked—that’s all she can see at first. He sets the crate aside, then slides the divider back into the container so both halves are firmly enclosing the tube’s shaft again, trapping the wriggling creatures in the bottom half. Then he reties the cable around her right wrist to the divider. He removes the plug from the tube’s mouth in the top half, snaps the container’s lid back into place, and gives her time to stare up at the writhing mass of rats, some of which might come crawling down the tube and into her mouth if she panics or makes the wrong move or does anything to disrupt the construction of his hideous invention.

He looks at her only briefly. He’s not savoring the sight of her terror. Not in this particular moment, at least. He’s a sadist, for sure. But for now, this seems like just another procedure in his workday.

Because it’s preparatory, she realizes. Awful as it is, this isn’t the main event.

Then she sees the tiny black camera affixed to the truck’s wall. Maybe he’ll savor the sight of her fear in private. Or maybe he just wants to keep an eye on her while he drives.

He steps behind the accordion divider and pulls it closed, separating the scene of her degradation from whatever else is inside this box truck. Leaving her alone with her racing heartbeat, alone with the lyrics of “Angel of the Morning,” alone with the rats writhing in the center of her vision. The creatures have settled into something that looks like a contained, gently swelling sea. While somewhat less frenzied, it still pulses with a collective desire to break free.

She closes her eyes and sucks the deepest breath she can through her nostrils.

Then the truck starts moving beneath her, and she realizes they’re finally on their way.

10

Lebanon, Kansas

Eighteen hours. That’s how long Mattingly kept Charlotte in that damned storm cellar.

Everything following her placement in the truck has been a horror show, for sure. But the long wait for some beam of light to pierce the endless dark coming through Charley’s TruGlass was its own special agony, and as crazy as it would sound to someone who hasn’t seen the things he has these past few years, Cole’s relieved they’re finally moving on to the next phase of this nightmare.

When the surveillance cameras showed the bastard actually going to bed, Cole tried to do the same. That’s when he had Scott Durham break the news to Noah that he was to be placed under armed guard in his bedroom whenever Cole tried to get some rest. And, no, it didn’t matter if he wasn’t tired. The not-so-good doctor accepted the arrangement with an eye roll, but that was it. Meanwhile in the bunker below them, the techs rotated monitoring shifts, which gave Luke the chance to catch as much shut-eye as he could inside the cozy confines of his armored Cadillac.

Then, right at the moment when Mattingly started his truck and descended into the storm cellar for the first time since he’d left Charlotte there, Durham called everyone at Kansas Command back on deck and sent word to The Consortium.

When Cole looks over his shoulder now, he sees Noah’s sitting forward in his chair, staring at the screen, a slight dimple in his chin, the muscles flexing in his jaw, eyes bright and unblinking—it’s the expression he’d get after another early test subject tore themselves to pieces. It’s what he looks like when his battle against real fear is partially successful.

And that makes sense, doesn’t it? Charley’s mother, Noah’s mother; they’re different women, but they both died in the same dark cellar at the hands of Daniel and Abigail Banning. It has to be getting to him. Still, Noah’s never experienced a disturbing emotion he couldn’t swiftly exorcise by way of a diabolical conspiracy. But there’s something in the man’s expression Cole can’t quite read. A muffled form of pain, he’s sure of it.

“Too much?” Cole tries for parental sympathy, but the question sounds condescending nonetheless.

“I’m sorry?” Noah asks, looking straight at him now, his nostrils flaring.

“Watching this part. Is it too much for you . . . Your mother?”

“You knew all this was in the truck?” he asks.

No insult or smart remark, Cole notes. That’s as good as an admission.

“I did, and she didn’t want to know. She wanted to experience the truck organically. Those were her exact words.”

“I can’t decide if all this means the ride is more important than the destination or vice versa.”

“Focus on Charlotte, not Mattingly.”

“As long as she’s in that truck, it’s the same thing. That . . . thing is designed to break her, and since we’ve got no idea how long she’ll be in it, I’m afraid he might succeed.”

“Nobody can break Charlotte Rowe.”

“I’m talking about her mind, Cole.”

“Rats weren’t one of the phobias she listed during her intake.”

“Forget the rats. The device isn’t working in isolation. He prepped her with fourteen hours in that storm cellar. In that . . . darkness. You asked me for my analysis of her, so take it. If there’s one thing that haunts her every waking moment, it’s the amount of time her mother spent in that root cellar on the Bannings’ farm.”

“So, she triggers before they reach their destination,” Cole responds. “Then she and Luke take the guy down roadside and we collect the pieces. Not optimal, but we’ll manage.”

“That isn’t the worst that could happen.”