Teeth!
Chapter Seventeen
“So tell me, smart ass,” Maggot mocked him. “Have you got anything to say now?”
Hickok’s body slowly turned, first one direction, then another, as the rope securing him to the beam twisted. Rat was lying on the beam, spinning the rope, deriving satisfaction from trying to make Hickok dizzy.
“The accommodations leave a little to be desired, fatso,” Hickok taunted his captor.
Maggot, standing on the rim of the pit with his four bodyguards and Bear, frowned. “We’ll see if you’re so flippant after the rats come for their meal. You’ll be a long time dying.”
“Not as long as you would take, blubber breath.” Hickok grinned. “The rats could feast on your carcass for a year or more!”
Maggot started to raise the Henry, then thought better of it. “No,” he said. “I want you to go slow. I want you to feel them eating your flesh from the feet up. I want to come back here later and see the fear in your eyes!”
Hickok deliberately yawned.
“Very funny,” Maggot snapped.
“I have a question,” Hickok stated.
“Oh?”
“Yeah,” Hickok said, his wrists beginning to ache from the strain of supporting his entire weight. “If you kill me, how the blazes do you think you’ll get the answers you want?”
“Do I look stupid?” Maggot angrily demanded.
“Does a bear shit in the woods?”
“Keep it up,” Maggot said. “When I get back, you’ll beg me to cut you loose. You’ll tell me everything I want to know, and I won’t need to lift a finger.”
“Just so it’s not your arm.”
Maggot, about to leave, was taken off stride by the remark. “What do you mean by that?”
“Ever heard of something called personal hygiene?”
Hickok noticed that Bear looked away from Maggot and grinned.
Maggot didn’t find the joke funny. “So long, you lousy son of a bitch!”
He strode off.
“Your mother!” was all Hickok could think of. Brilliant repartee, he told himself.
The bodyguards and Bear followed Maggot.
“Come on!” Maggot ordered Rat.
“Just a minute.” Rat carefully stood on the beam. The wood was six inches across and he maintained his balance easily. He reached for some buttons at his crotch.
What in the world? Hickok asked himself.
He got his answer.
Perched on the beam, laughing inanely, Rat emptied his urinary bladder on Hickok.
As the first drops struck his hair and shoulders, Hickok lowered his face and held his breath. The bastard! The crummy bastard! He’d get him, if it was the last thing he ever did!
The downpour ceased.
“Hey, Hickok?” Rat called down to him. “Ever hear of personal hygiene?”
Hickok could hear the others laughing as Rat joined them. This was followed by the loud slamming of a door.
Well, he mentally congratulated himself, this was yet another superb mess he’d fallen into! So what was next?
Hickok studied his predicament.
Maggot had suspended him in a circular, earthen pit twelve feet in diameter and ten feet deep. At the bottom of the pit, illuminated by two torches imbedded in the ground at the top of the pit, were three black holes. Tunnels. To where? It really didn’t matter. The important point was that rats would be coming out of those tunnels to devour him, a particularly unsavory prospect if ever there was one! The pit was located in a barren room in the basement of the building the Porns used as their headquarters. He hadn’t seen much of it when they hauled him down flights of stairs to his room, still reeling from Maggot’s blow to his gut.
They’d passed other Porns, who scurried out of the way and fearfully minded their own business. Maggot’s rule was predicated on intimidation, a fact Hickok intended to use to his advantage when he escaped from the pit.
When?
Who was he kidding?
If.
Hickok wondered where, exactly, he was being held. How far was it from the SEAL? What had happened to Bertha and the others? Were any of them still alive?
A high-pitched squeak came from below.
Hickok glanced down.
A rat was directly below him, staring up, its whiskers and nose twitching.
“Beat it, hair ball!” Hickok shouted.
The rat scurried into one of the tunnels.
Hickok smiled. Score one for the idiot! Thank the Spirit, he still had his guns! They’d dragged him to the pit, holding him under his armpits, his feet bumping down each and every step as they descended to the basement. Brother, did they smart! Fortunately, the Porns had missed his concealed guns. When they bound his wrists, one of the bodyguards had held him fast at the elbows and another had tied the rope at the edge of his wrists, at the point where they joined the hands. They’d walked him onto the beam and wrapped the other end of the rope around the wood, knotting it securely. Then, Maggot chuckling, they had shoved him from the beam. His shoulders had lanced with agony when he reached the end of the rope, causing him to grit his teeth to suppress a scream. He hadn’t been about to give them the satisfaction! Instead, he had smiled up at Maggot, and detected a dawning reflection of fear in Maggot’s eyes.
More squeals came from underneath his dangling feet.
Hickok looked down again.
Now there were two rats.
“Brought your wife, did you?” Hickok said to the rodents. “Why don’t you go home and get the kids? Make a family night out of it, for crying out loud.”
Two more rats emerged from one of the black holes.
Uh-oh!
Time for Mama Hickok’s little darling to get the hell out of here!
Hickok watched the gathering rodents. Now there were seven. His feet were about two feet above the floor of the pit, within their reach if they jumped high enough. He glanced up at the beam. There were two feet of rope between his hands and the bottom of the beam. Not much to work with, but it would have to do.
One of the rats, hungrier than the rest, leaped, smacking against his right foot and dropping to the ground.
“You can do better than that, gruesome,” he told the rodent.
The same rat tried again, missing.
Determined little fart!
Hickok concentrated, his muscles throbbing, and gripped the rope with his hands. Good. Step one completed.
A rat struck his left foot, clinging for an instant, then falling.
Hickok began moving his legs back and forth in an increasingly wider pendulum motion, his momentum building. He kept at it until his long legs were almost parallel with the beam. Perfect! Tightening his stomach muscles, he swept his legs as high as he could force them, wrapping his calves around the beam and in one fluid motion swinging up and onto the beam, desperately clamping his elbows and thighs against the wood, fearful for an instant he would lose his hold.
He didn’t!
Hickok smiled at his success. Step two completed. He was out of the pit and precariously poised on the wooden beam. So now what? He was still tied to the beam, bound at the wrists. How did he expect to get loose? He gazed down at the gathering rats, an idea occurring. Maybe he could chew through the rope and free his hands. He examined the rope, dismayed. It was at least a half-inch thick and constructed from a sturdy synthetic. Fat chance he could bite through it. Besides, he reflected, there was another reason he wasn’t about to touch his mouth to the rope. Rat’s… watering…
had covered his hands and the knot. He wasn’t about to let his lips come in contact with something Rat had pissed on.
So what to do?
First things first. If Maggot or one of the other Porns suddenly returned, he would be powerless to resist, too exposed on the beam. He needed an edge, but could he do it and still keep his balance? Only one way to find out.