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“Keys?” He was either confused or frightened by the question. It occurred to me that his captors might have played games with him, and he was afraid this might be one of them. But I didn’t have time to pat his head.
“I came to get you all out of here, but you’ve got to help. Harry’s sister sent me,” I tried.
“Lizzie?”
I might as well have said Jesus and the Virgin Mary for all his astonishment. “The keys, man!”
“One key for all, on a ring near the door,” he shot back.
I leaped for the door, found the simple key, and stabbed it into his door. I thought I might have to drag him out, but he came willingly enough. I shoved the key
at him. “Let the others out,” I started to say, but the key fell to the floor. I snatched it up, cursing his clumsiness. Then he held up his hands for me to look at.
His hands looked strange in the dim light, more like stubs. And in growing horror I saw that they were stubs. He had no fingers. No fingers at all.
“Regeneration experiment,” he said, in a voice so tight, it didn’t sound human.
My skin suddenly felt a size too small. I swallowed, and turned to open the next door.
There were eleven prisoners in that cellar. All of them were missing something. One woman had fingers about an inch long; God knows how many months she’d been down there. Another woman had a face that even in the near dark I could see was beautiful, but for her ruined eyes—
A thin man whose beard was either blond or gray shoved past me to embrace the blind woman, who jerked away and then cried “Bill!” and flung herself at him.
“Quiet!” I ordered, and to Bill I whispered, “Take her over to the door, we’ll all go up at once.”
I got the last two cages open, but one of the prisoners did not emerge. When I stepped in, I could see why.
I don’t know how long I stood there, torn between abandoning a person who was going to slow us down dangerously, and the impossibility of leaving anyone in this terrible place. But eventually I became aware of someone standing next to me. It was the first man I’d freed.
I said, “You’re Harry?”
“That’s right. You?”
“Mike Heller. Your sister hired me. Did you find your girl here? Eileen?”
“She died.”
“Ah. I’m sorry.”
“Before I got here. Do you want me to carry her?” he asked, gesturing at the girl on the cot.
“Can you?”
“I’ll sure as hell try.”
He’d been down here only a couple of weeks, which gave him a lot more reserves than some of the others. I helped lift her onto his back, and although he let out a sound when his hand brushed her knee, he clamped his arms against her legs and turned to the door.
Eleven of them—no: twelve, of us—gathered at the door. I lifted the gun, and whispered, “There’s stairs up and then a hallway. Go down it to the left about thirty feet, and the outside door’s at the end. Keep to one side in the hallway so I have a clear line of sight. If you head out the door at the angle of two o’clock you’ll be in the trees quickest. Up the hill and down, my car’s on the road with a key in a lockbox near the driver’s tire. If we’re discovered, I’ll keep these bastards in place and you move as fast as you can. Don’t worry about me, just go.
“And when you get closer to town, take my laptop out of the trunk and turn it on. The last e-mail it sends will give you a safe contact in the police department. Tell him to get someone here, fast. Now, ready?”
At least six of them started talking, with questions or protests, but Harry interrupted them. “There’s no time for this. We’ll do as he says.”
And they did. My gun leading the way, I crept up the steps, wincing at all the creaks and groans the crew behind me made. At the top, I had them all stand very still and got the door open, again sticking the gun out first, then my nose.
No one there.
I went into the hallway, and they came after me, limping and stumbling. I kept to the right, trying to look both ways at once, my heart in my throat. I mean, I’ve been in tight places before, even been shot at, but with eleven innocents on my back? That was a whole different ball game.
