Out For Blood 48

Before reaching the bottom of the steps leading from the garage Gregg trod on something that crushed underfoot. He shone his flashlight over it to discover he had stepped on and broken what must have been Sheldons’ flashlight. He then moved on. At the bottom of the steps he turned left and walked into the tunnel that would bring him out underneath the cinema. Like the other tunnels this also looked to be in a state of disrepair, some of the beams holding up the roof were buckled, and others were snapped in two.

Gregg reached the bottom of the cinema steps to find the hatch above was already open, indication that Sheldon had in fact come from here. He waited there listening for anything or anyone, thankfully his ears were met with silence. He cautiously ascended them to find the cinema was as dark as the tunnels themselves. Climbing from the shaft he shone his flashlight around all four corners of the auditorium, then flicking the widening beam of light across the silver screen he saw it hung in tatters.

Gregg then walkled up the centre aisle to the double doors at the top, he brushed aside a hefty curtain and pushed the doors open, he was now in the much brighter foyer of the cinema. Looking out through the external doors and across Main Street, he could see that slightly to his left was the windowless wooden building labelled, “Chambers”, the room where the corpses of the six young girls were hung from the beams.

Thinking again of those poor souls swinging from their meat-hooks brought back a gruesome memory from his early days as a cop, a memory he had supressed when he had first seen the girls not more than a couple of hours ago, but with no other form of distraction, it was now at the forefront of his mind …

“Gregg was a Rookie, two weeks into his baptism of fire and three hours into his day. He and his assigned experienced partner of thirty-five years officer James Sanderson, Sandy to his few friends, were about to take their first break of the day when a call came through for them to attend a domestic disturbance just a couple of blocks from their location. Sanderson was your average everyday overweight cop, fifty-eight-years old, five-feet-eight in height with a girth around his waste that almost had its own weather system. His face was bright pink and his cheeks were blood-shot due to his blood-pressure, he had a purple bulbous nose from all the Scotch he had consumed and there was always a box of cream or jam filled sugary doughnuts somewhere in the patrol car. Others at the precinct nicknamed him 'W.C. Fields'.

When they arrived on the street they were greeted by a woman in a pair of pink shorts and a white sleeveless T-shirt. Her hair was bleached blond with at least two inches of black roots visible, she was in her mid to late twenties, had a fresh looking black-eye and looked like she needed a good meal. A cigarette was in one hand and she was vigorously biting the nails of the other. Her name was Anne Newcomb, a known prostitute. Her neighbour Angela Eastman, an overweight black woman in her forties was stood with Anne and she explained to Gregg and Sanderson what had taken place.

Apparently the ex-partner/ex-Pimp of Anne Newcomb had just been released on parole after serving two years for drug offences, during which time she had moved house in the hope that he would never find her or their children again, but somehow he had, and now he wanted to take the children from her. He had entered into the house and when he refused to leave without the children she signalled to her neighbour to call the police, a signal they had already put in place should he ever show up. He was now concealed inside the house with the two children; the oldest being five and the younger one being three.

Sanderson had been in a number of similar situations and he instructed Gregg to call for back-up and a trained negotiator. He then disappeared around the back of the house claiming he was going to assess the layout. After the call had gone through Gregg had Anne Newcomb sat in the rear of the patrol car where he asked her questions about her ex-partner, just so he could understand the situation a little better. Gregg noticed the under part of her arms were badly needle scarred, and also some wrist scars that looked like she may have attempted suicide in years gone by. He then thought about the children in the house, and what sort of life must they have had so far.

Gregg looked at the front upstairs windows, one of which was open. He could see the face of a child and below the Childs’ chin he could just make out the darker flesh of a large forearm. Then a glint of sunlight reflected off something silver beside the right side of the childs’ head. Gregg didn’t know if it was a knife, or a gun, or some jewellery the man may have been wearing, but he wasn’t about to take that chance.

Gregg instructed the woman to stay in the patrol car and he went to find Sanderson. He made his way to the rear of the house expecting to see him looking around but he wasn’t, and the back door lay open. Gregg drew his gun and moved cautiously inside and through the kitchen of the house; he wanted to call out for Sanderson but knew he couldn’t. Moving further in he caught sight of Sandersons’ shadow on the wall of the stairs as he disappeared up them. Gregg followed wondering why he wasn’t waiting for back-up, then he realised, Sanderson was doing this for the glory. He was due to retire within a year and had been overlooked time after time for promotion; he obviously wanted to go out with a bang.

Gregg quickly and quietly rushed up after Sanderson and as he reached the top he got his attention; he whispered for him return downstairs and let the trained hostage negotiator handle it when he arrived. Sanderson was stood just before the bedroom door that the man and the children were in, he refused Gregg saying that he’d done this kind of thing a dozen times before, and that the negotiator could take too long to get there, in which time the children could be dead. Gregg could hear the children crying in the bedroom and repeatedly calling for their mommy, then a loud bang rang out as a bullet pierced the thin wooden door just missing Sanderson.

Gregg looked on as Sanderson raised his gun, and as though in slow motion Gregg shouted the word “No”, which seemed to last for long seconds as Sanderson fired all six shots through the bedroom door, then there was total silence. Gregg ran along the landing and stopped to listen, but still there was silence. With his gun outstretched he kicked open the door and found the man on his back gasping his last few breaths, still held in his arms were his two young children, now dead. Sandersons’ shots had passed right through them, one of which suffered fatal head wounds and the other had been hit three times in the neck and upper body.

Gregg then heard a scream coming from outside in the street and instantaneously knew it was the childrens mother. She must have realised what had happened and the thought had made her hysterical. Sanderson stood in silence for a minute, he too could hear the screams and the weeping of the mother of the two children he had just killed, and then the sirens of the back-up could be heard arriving on the street. That’s when Sanderson started to babble about how it wasn’t his fault, how he had been shot at first and how he was acting in self-defence, and that if Gregg stood by him the internal investigation which was bound to follow would also see it that way.

Needless to say Gregg did testify, against Sanderson. However the department did their best to brush it under the carpet to the disgust of every other officer at the precinct. Sanderson was offered early retirement and on the advice of his superiors he took it. Six weeks later Gregg received an anonymous phone call, he was told to pay a visit to Sandersons’ place. When he and another cop arrived at Sandersons’ apartment, the door was locked and music could be heard seeping through it.

Gregg knocked a number of times but got no answer, they finally got the superintendent of the apartment block to open the door to Sandersons apartment, and that’s when they found him. He was naked and hanging upside-down from the underneath of a doorway by a large rusty meat hook which had been pushed into his anal passage and exited through the rear of his pelvis.

His hands and feet were bound with tape and a baseball had been rammed into his mouth and more tape wrapped around his head to ensure it stayed there. He had been stabbed using an ice pick 1,837 times in his legs, his buttocks and his arms; this was done so they didn’t puncture any vital organs that would allow him to die too quickly.

The soles and the tops of his feet had been used as an ashtray sustaining over 80 burns. The apartment and Sandersons’ flesh reeked of vinegar, scattered around the floor below his body were five large and empty bottles. It seems the pain sustained from the injuries alone were not enough to satisfy his attackers.

The coroner estimated it would have taken around three days for him to die in this way. No one knew who had done this to Sanderson, although the police did have a good idea. The man he had shot along with his two young children was a drug dealer with connections; it’s thought a couple of those connections carried out the torture, and eventually the brutal murder of Sanderson.”

Gregg then heard someone shouting outside the cinema which snapped him back to his senses, he looked again through the external doors but couldn’t see anyone. He heard it again and realised it was Jill shouting for Nick. How he’d managed to get lost over such a short distance was beyond Gregg. He hoped Jill wasn’t going to stand out there too long shouting, if any of them were about and armed she’d be an easy target, but no sooner had the shouting started than it had stopped again.

Gregg found a set of narrow stairs that led up to the projection room and ascended them, at the top he knelt before the door and using two fingers pushed it wide open, thankfully there were no shots fired at him this time. Shining his flashlight around the small room he realised everything in there was how it must have been after the last performance was screened. Whenever that was. The projector still had two reels fastened to it, one empty and the other full. The can the film had come from was lying open on a table close by, Gregg turned the two halves over and the label attached to one of them read.

“Night of the living dead”
Cert: R.

‘Yeah, that’s about fucking right!’ He said aloud.

Gregg left the projection room and headed back to the foyer, he stood by the glass doors and watched as the rain bounced off the ground. He wondered if Nick had turned up yet. He then rolled his tongue around the inside of his mouth, his thirst was now beginning to make itself known. Looking out at the dark clouds he hoped the storm was going to hold out long enough for them to get the girls out.

Gregg had no idea how much time he had spent standing there but the sound of three muffled gunshots snapped him back to life. He held onto his hat and ran back into the auditorium and down the centre aisle into the tunnel, he reached the garage hatch and managed to spring up the steps only touching two of them as he entered. He pushed the up button on the roller shutter and when it got to about five feet he stopped it, he then sat in front of the fan heater looking out; there he waited anxiously in the hope they would both return safe. No more than two more minutes had past when another two rapid shots rang out. Gregg desperately wanted to go and see what was happening but he couldn’t risk going out in the rain.