Blood Games (56 page)

    But he didn’t.

    She got both knees on the edge and scrabbled away from the pool. She thrust herself up. She ran. The smack of her rubber soles resounded through the silence, horribly loud, but not so loud that she didn’t hear a swush of disturbed water behind her or the wheezy gasp of Jim sucking air into lungs that must need it badly.

    Abilene knew she had to be very close to the stairway. She slowed to a walk, rolling her feet to quiet the sound of her footsteps, bending forward and sweeping her arms in search of the banister.

    She heard Jim panting, but no new splashy sounds. He’s still in the pool, she thought. Standing in the water, listening for me.

    Her right hand hit wood.

    And she had a sudden urge to rush up the stairs. She didn’t want to go into the shower room, to be in there in the blackness with Helen’s savaged corpse. If she could get back up to the lobby, maybe she could find the shotgun. Maybe Cora already had it. Or Vivian or Finley might’ve regained consciousness by now and maybe one of them had the shotgun.

    They could blow the bastard away.

    
I’d be leading him straight back up to them
, Abilene thought.

    They’re safe up there. For now. As long as he’s down here after me.

    
If I can nail him, they’ll be safe perm…

    Water swished and flopped.

    Here he comes!

    Abilene turned away from the banister. Following a mental picture of where the door marked Gents should be, she crept through the darkness with her arms outstretched. She found the wall. As she felt her way along it, she heard water dripping onto the granite floor. And footsteps. Slow, quiet pats.

    
He can’t see me
, she told herself.
Doesn’t know where I am
.

    She touched the doorframe. Two more sideways steps, and she knew she must be in front of the door.

    She pushed.

    The hinges squawked.

    Rushing footfalls slapped the floor.

    Abilene lunged forward, whirled and threw the door shut. It slammed with a crash.

    She backed away from it fast, angling to her left and hoping she wouldn’t trip over the bench. Its edge brushed the side of her knee, so she knew she’d cleared it. Knew that she should miss the bank of lockers, too.

    The door hinges groaned.

    Reaching out, Abilene touched cool metal.

    I’m at the end of the lockers.

    She couldn’t remember if there was a bench on the other side of them.

    But the shower room was there.

    She could smell it.

    That’s Helen.

    
Christ!

    Imagining the diagonal path she would need to take, she spun around and ran.

    She flung her arms out, swept them ahead of her as she charged through the blackness. The stench was like a foul, putrid rag rubbing her face. She tried to hold her breath. Something hammered her right foot out from under her.

    As she plunged, arms out to break her fall, she realized it must’ve been the raised threshold of the shower room that had tripped her.

    The floor smacked her palms, her knees. It knocked them out from under her. It hammered the breath from her lungs but she managed to keep her head up as she skidded.

    Wheezing for air that clogged her nostrils and throat with its-heavy reek of corruption, she belly-crawled until her hands slipped on gooey muck.

    ‘Gonna end up same as yer fatso friend,’ Jim said from somewhere behind her.

    She thrust herself up to her knees and scurried forward. Her hands swept across the mat of congealing blood, but didn’t find Helen.

    ‘How’d ya like yer skin peeled off? I’ll do that for ya.’

    Did he move her? Abilene wondered. Where the hell is she?

    Then her right hand jammed beneath something tight against the floor. Whatever it might be, it was too heavy for an arm. She must’ve pushed her hand under Helen’s side or leg. With her other hand, she reached out higher. She touched something sticky and yielding that made her want to pull back. She resisted the urge and felt along the mushy bulges.

    She flinched, cried out, as her left foot was stomped.

    The pain jolted her body. Her left hand rammed down into glop. Her right hand wedged deeper into the crease between Helen’s body and the floor, fingertips poking something that clinked.

    Keys?

    ‘Guess I gotcha, huh?’

    The weight lifted from her foot. Fingers clutched her ankle and pulled. As her knee began sliding backward, she jerked her right hand out from under Helen and hurled herself forward. She dropped across the body, flung her arm out and grabbed hold. Her fingers hooked into cool flesh. Helen’s side? Her rump?

    Clinging to it as Jim tugged at her leg, she pulled her left hand out of the clinging slop and groped along Helen and found the knife.

    Her swollen forefinger wouldn’t close, but she wrapped her other fingers and thumb around the upright handle.

    Clutching it hard, she released her grip on Helen.

    She yanked the blade out as Jim dragged her backward.

    She didn’t resist him.

    She slid off Helen’s body. The floor pounded her chest. As she skidded along, she raised both arms overhead. She passed the knife from her left hand to her right.

    Does he know I’ve got it?

    He must know he left it here.

    But maybe he isn’t thinking about that. Not yet. Maybe.

    ‘I’ll do whatever you want,’ Abilene gasped. ‘Just don’t hurt me. Please.’

    ‘Please please please,’ he mocked her. ‘That’s what she kept sayin’. Gal sure didn’t wanta come in here.’ He stopped dragging Abilene. He twisted her foot. She yelped and rolled over quickly onto her back.

    ‘I really like you, Jim.’

    ‘Ya won’t much when I start ya’ squealin’.’

    Her legs were nudged apart. She felt the knife blade scrape along the inner side of her thigh. It eased higher. She sucked in her breath and shuddered.

    Dear God.

    Get him now!

    A swing and a miss and you’re out.

    But the blade went away. A sharp tug at her skirt lifted her buttocks off the floor for a moment before the fabric split. The point pushed under her waistband, then tugged again.

    ‘Ain’t very sharp,’ he muttered. ‘Gonna hurt like hellfire, skinnin’ ya with it all dull.’

    ‘You don’t want to do that,’ she said.

    ‘Sure do. But I gotta pork ya first. I don’t pork dead folks.’

    He moved forward, his knees nudging her thighs farther apart.

    She felt both his hands on her belly.

    Where’s the knife?

    Between his teeth, maybe.

    He ripped open the front of her blouse.

    She heard buttons skitter across the floor.

    His hands slid up her body. They clutched her breasts, squeezed.

    A swing and a miss and you’re out.

    She swung.

    She swung her right arm up from her side as hard as she could and the knife lurched in her grip as its blade struck something in the dark beyond her chest and kept on going.

    Jim squealed.

    His hands leaped from her breasts.

    She felt a bump against her belly. His knife. He’d had it in his mouth, all right.

    ‘My eye!’ he shrieked.

    Abilene clamped her legs tight against him and sat up fast. She felt his knife slide down her belly to her groin. She grabbed its handle. Her three-fingered grip wasn’t much, but it was good enough.

    She drove the blade forward. It punched into him and he bellowed and blood washed over her knuckles. It was still buried in him to the hilt when she slashed the darkness with the knife in her good right hand. The knife jerked when it hit him. His bellow changed to a gurgle. A hot stream hosed Abilene’s right breast.

    The body viced between her legs twitched and writhed.

    She pulled out the other knife.

    She rammed both into him at once and the impact threw him backward. As he fell away, the blades came out of him.

    She scurried clear, then crawled back to him. A thrashing foot kicked her face, but she didn’t mind. She straddled him, sat down across his hips. His twitching body thrust up against her. She heard him choke and gurgle. She heard his limbs smacking the floor.

    She pounded her knives down.

    She jerked them out and hit him again. And again. And again.

    Soon, he was only moving because of the blades jolting him.

    Sometimes, they got stuck in bone. But Abilene always managed to yank them free.

    Finally, a blade broke.

    

    

    ‘Hickok!’

    She was gasping for breath. Instead of trying to speak, she tossed the handle of the broken knife. It clacked against the floor.

    ‘You in here?’

    ‘Yeah!' she blurted.

    Quick footfalls.

    ‘Where’s Jim?’

    ‘Here.’

    A beam of light criss-crossed the darkness beyond the shower room entrance.

    ‘Don’t do anything to her, Jim,’ Vivian pleaded. ‘We won’t hurt you.’

    ‘Not if she’s okay,’ Finley added.

    Abilene squeezed her eyes shut when the brilliant glare hit her face.

    ‘Holy shit,’ Finley muttered.

    Vivian said, ‘My God.’

    ‘I’m… okay.’

    He’s not. Holy shit.’

    The light on the other side of her eyelids dimmed slighdy, so she opened them. The bright beam was aimed down at Jim. She groaned at the sight of him. He glistened with blood. His left eye was a slashed, bleeding pit. The left side of his neck was split by a gash that crossed the front of his throat. All over his chest and stomach were raw-edged slots. From one in his ribcage jutted the handle of a knife. A wedge of broken blade showed, sticking out an inch from a wound below his right shoulder.

    Abilene started to get off him.

    Vivian gave the flashlight to Finley, then hurried toward her. She was barefoot, but no longer naked. She wore the white shorts and shirt that Jim had made her take off under the balcony.

    She grabbed Abilene’s arm and helped her up.

    ‘Man,’ Finley muttered.

    Abilene looked down at herself. Her blouse was no longer plaid. Below its short sleeves, her arms were sheathed in blood. The open front covered her left breast and felt glued there. Her right breast was bare and looked as if it had been dipped in a bucket of red paint. The rest of her chest and belly were splattered and dribbling, but she could see a few places that the blood had missed. Her skirt was gone. Her panties were sodden with crimson blotches, her thighs splashed and runny.

    ‘How much of that’s yours?’ Finley asked.

    ‘Not much. It’s my back…’ She turned around.

    A hiss of indrawn breath came from Vivian.

    ‘Nasty,’ Finley said.

    ‘You’ll need stitches in some of those.’

    ‘Did you get all that going through the window?’

    ‘Mostly. One’s from his knife.’

    ‘Well, you sure gave him payback,’ Finley said. ‘For all of us.’

    ‘How’d you know about the window?’

    ‘Cora told us.’

    Abilene faced her friends again. ‘You were both out of it.’

    ‘Don’t I know it,’ Finley said. ‘The shit played basketball with my head.’

    ‘I don’t know what hit me,’ Vivian said.

    ‘I did. Sorry about that.’

    ‘Cora was just telling us what’d happened,’ Finley explained, ‘when we heard a door slam. Sounded like it came from down here.’

    ‘Christ, what took you so long?’

    ‘I thought we made pretty good time. We had to find the shotgun. And Viv, of course, had to get dressed.’

    ‘If you’d kept your shirt on,’ Vivian said, ‘none of this would’ve happened.’

    Abilene saw that Finley hadn’t bothered to put it back on. Hardly surprising.

    ‘He had me fooled,’ Finley muttered. ‘Shit.’ She looked down at Jim’s body. ‘He really had me believing in that crazy fuckin’ brother of his.’

    ‘He had us all believing,’ Abilene said.

    ‘Yeah. Right. But I’m the only one who made out with the scumwad. If I hadn’t gone over and started messing around ‘It would’ve happened differently,’ Abilene told her. ‘That’s all. He was planning to get us. He would’ve made his try sooner or later. He knew Hank wasn’t gonna show up.’

    ‘Can we get out of here now?’ Vivian asked. ‘It’s… awful in here. And Cora’s gotta be wondering.’

    ‘She’ll be thinking we’re all dead,’ Finley said.

    ‘How is she?’ Abilene asked.

    ‘She won’t be walking out of here on either leg.’

    ‘Maybe she won’t have to.’ Abilene turned toward Helen’s body. Finley lit the way for her. ‘I think Helen found the keys before… he got to her.’ She stepped carefully over the mat of blood and crouched. ‘I touched something when…’

    ‘Did Jim bring you here?’ Vivian asked.

    ‘He came in after me. I was here for the knife.’ She shoved her right hand beneath Helen’s thigh.

    ‘The knife he used on Helen? Good thinking, Hickok.’

    ‘It wasn’t my idea. I had a little help from a friend.’

    She closed her hand around the key case and pulled it out.

    Finley and Vivian stood by the edge of the pool, watching over Abilene with the shotgun and flashlight. The water turned pink around her. When she finished washing, she climbed out and looked down at herself. Her skin looked ruddy and clean.