Blood Bought: Book Four in The Locker Nine Series

by Franklin Horton

  Nothing had climbed in with her, nothing had attacked her in the night, and she had survived. Even the worst beasts her imagination could throw at her—werewolves, shape shifters, zombies, evil spirits—had not materialized. Nothing had sucked her blood, possessed her body, gnawed on her bones, nor otherwise attempted to terrify her to death.

  She actually experienced a moment of accomplishment, a sensation that she was not especially familiar with. She had been brave. She had overcome her fears. She couldn't recall the last time she felt proud of herself. It had been a long, long time. Certainly not in her adult life. Maybe as far back as early childhood.

  She was in some physical discomfort, her bladder screaming at her to get out of the sleeping bag and deal with it. She also discovered upon moving her legs that her feet felt raw and stiff, as if they might crackle and break off her body if she flexed them, the encrustations of pus and blood tearing. She dug in her pocket and came out with an Altoids tin containing an assortment of loose pills and several tiny packets of crystal meth.

  When her mother, that Irish man, and the Hardwick girl had freed her from the outbuilding where she’d been imprisoned, they’d taken off and abandoned her there. She had nothing. No clothes, no food, nothing for starting a fire, not even a pack for carrying any of those things if she found them along the way. She went through her friend’s trailer looking for anything she might be able to use but there was very little.

  The group there had a pretty basic lifestyle, not significantly above poverty-level. The focus of each day was finding a way to stay high. Sometimes that meant stealing or selling themselves. While Paul was at the Hardwick house, Debbie had gone to her friend’s place trying to get drugs. She’d run her big mouth and her stories had interested those folks a little too much.

  Before she could leave, they locked her up in an outbuilding. Some of them took weapons and launched an assault on the Hardwick farm, convinced they were going to take it as their own. Her mom told her that this attempt had been unsuccessful. Debbie’s first reaction upon hearing that news was concern over where she’d find drugs. Weapons and food were only of mild interest to her. The thing she had to have was drugs.

  It had been a long time since she’d spent a sober day. The last time was when she pulled thirty days in jail. Eventually she learned that you could still get high in jail if you were willing to pay the price and willing to do what was required. She was.

  She chose a pill from the Altoids tin and studied it. She would've preferred to snort the pill but had no clean surface upon which to crush it to a fine powder and no straw with which to snort it. She tried to dry swallow the chalky pill. When it hung in her throat she took the metal cup from her new backpack and filled it directly from Whitetop Laurel Creek. She emptied the cup, washing the pill down with the unfiltered creek water. She enjoyed it so much she had a second cup, settling back onto a rock and enjoying this one at a more leisurely sipping pace.

  The water sloshing around in her empty stomach made her think of food. She had some in the pack but some of those packages required cooking in boiling water. That required effort and a basic knowledge of how to operate the backpacking stove, neither of which she was certain she could muster. She dug around and found a bent Slim Jim, tearing the package open with her teeth. She couldn't recall that she'd ever had a Slim Jim before but it was okay, like a combination of beef jerky and pepperoni. She’d certainly eaten a lot worse things in her life.

  The crooked Slim Jim dangling from her teeth like a cigar, she packed her campsite, shaking the sleeping bag off and cramming it into the pack. She did the same with the raincoat, brushing the forest litter from it, then cramming it on top of the sleeping bag. She sat down on a rock to put on her shoes with excruciating effort. The shoes were so stained and blood encrusted as to look like they were made of damaged flesh. It was disgusting.

  When she did manage to get the shoes on she discovered that standing increased the pain significantly. She assumed at some point the pain pill would kick in and alleviate some of her misery.

  “You just need to shut up and do this,” she told herself.

  She took a single step toward her pack and cried out as the stiff canvas abraded the raw flesh on the back of her heels. She couldn’t do this. There was no way she could walk like that. Every step felt as if someone was trying to saw through her heel with a cheese grater.

  It made her wonder again why the hell anyone would come out here and do this for fun. There was nothing fun in anything she’d done since she started walking toward town. She’d only experienced suffering and misery. She backed up as carefully as she could, like a woman wading through a puddle, and re-took her seat on the rock. She loosened the laces of her shoes and pulled them off as delicately as possible, hoping to not injure her feet any worse than she already had.

  Then something occurred to her. Barefoot. That's what she would have to do. She would have to walk barefoot.

  She tied the disgusting shoes to the back of her pack, noting that they looked like someone had been murdered in them. Well, her feet had. She took a few tentative test steps and found her situation much improved. Her feet still stung, ached, and crackled from the scabs. There was also a blister the size of a silver dollar beneath the ball of one foot but it had not popped yet.

  Although she was several miles out of town it was possible she could make it there today. If she did, perhaps she could lie her way into the group the hikers. Surely someone had a first aid kit and could help her take care of her feet. Then she’d slip off to her mom’s house and lay low for a couple of days while they healed.

  She carefully walked from her wooded campsite back onto the main Creeper Trail. The trail was a popular bike destination so it was wide and the surface relatively smooth, harkening back to its days as a railroad bed. The ground felt cool and gritty beneath her feet but was not painful like walking on gravel. It was much more like walking on cool, coarse sand along a riverbank.

  For nearly an hour she walked, losing herself in the rhythm of her steps and the sound of the creek. She didn’t notice the onset of the high from the pain pill but it eventually overtook her, making her feel warm, fuzzy, and content. Her limbs were relaxed, her steps loose, and she experienced a sensation that she equated with happiness. In this state, Debbie experienced a euphoria on the trail that gave her the first taste of what a hiker must experience when they overcome the inevitable pain.

  The worry and concern that plagued her thoughts floated away like balloons. She dwelt with greater concentration on the warmth of the sun, the sound of the birds, and the fact that she was the only person out here experiencing this beautiful day. She knew that sense of solitude would end eventually since she was headed into town and decided to put off the hiker camp for another day. She could stay at her mother's tonight and then wander into the heart of town tomorrow. Her feet didn’t hurt at all now, though they did feel a little odd, as if she was trying out a new set and they felt different from her regular old feet.

  At some point in her walk the odd sensation from her feet became more pronounced. It almost felt like her sock had slipped and was balling up beneath the arch of her foot. Several times she looked down to see if that was the case only to be reminded that she wasn’t wearing socks. She ignored the sensation until she came to one of the occasional benches that dotted the trail. The benches were sponsored, placed there as memorials. They usually had a plaque on them stating to whose memory they were dedicated.

  Debbie shrugged her pack off, letting it slide to the ground, then slumped just as heavily upon the bench. It felt good to sit down. She was immediately aware that her muscles were all thanking her for this break, practically singing a chorus of appreciation. The pill she took may have masked the pain but the muscles were still experiencing wear and tear from her efforts.

  When she finally found the motivation to lift her leg, she crossed them and examined the bottom of her foot. The silver dollar-sized blister on the ball of her foot had been opened
by walking barefoot. The flap of skin had folded back beneath her foot and was creating that odd sensation of walking on something. The raw, oozing flesh beneath the blister was now packed with grit and dirt from the trail. She was surprised it didn't hurt any more than it did. It was a dull throb which was somehow lost in the confusion of signals coming from all directions in her body.

  She was so used to taking pain medication recreationally that she sometimes forgot it actually had a medical purpose. Beyond that, she only vaguely understood that the pain sensation—that very sensation she was masking—had a physiological purpose. It was supposed to warn you when you were doing something potentially damaging to your body. That was evident as she stared at her foot, noticing the generally poor condition of the entire appendage. The raised heel was puffy and irritated from where her shoes had ground the flesh away yesterday. She looked down and saw that her other heel was the same way. There was seeping blood and a crust of ooze with red, irritated skin surrounding it.

  "That looks nasty."

  It was a male voice and startled Debbie. Her instinct was to cut and run but she was sitting on a bench with her pack on the ground. In her impaired state, she’d likely lose her balance and trip. Still undetermined as to her course of action, she looked up and saw that there were two men less than six feet away from her. They’d be on her before she even got her butt off the bench.

  Somehow, she hadn’t even noticed their approach, had not heard them or detected their movement within the range of her vision. If they had bad intentions, there was no stopping them. She was here for the duration of whatever those intentions might be. Accepting that she could not get away, she studied the men. She wasn't good with ages but she would guess they were both somewhere around forty, give or take five years to either side. She was wrong about that but was right in suspecting they were cops.

  That suspicion came from an instinct honed from years of being on the other side of the law. She was constantly on the lookout for cops when she was with Paul. He was always up to something. She wasn't sure if it was the haircut, their bearing, or just some innate badge detector she’d developed over the years but she had no doubt.

  She cocked an eyebrow at them without saying a word, still lost in her own processing, which was taking its own sweet time. She felt her brain trying to rise from quicksand but every thought she had only left her stuck worse. Her body was faring no better. She’d have been perfectly content to sit unmoving on that bench for the next couple of days, letting mice nest in her hair and birds crap on her shoulders. That was exactly what she liked about pain pills. You didn’t worry about little things. Nothing mattered.

  When the fact that these men were cops finally came back around in the circle of her thoughts, she received no comfort in that realization. Being cops didn’t mean they wouldn’t attack her and do what they wanted. It didn't mean they might not shake her down for the items in her pack, search her for drugs, or even arrest her. She couldn’t stop them. They could do what they wanted, but would they?

  "You need to do something about that foot," one of the men said.

  He wore aviator sunglasses and had a stubble of beard. He wore some kind of khaki shirt that looked like a cop shirt with lots of pockets for carrying cop stuff. He wore a pack like she did and had all kinds of gear she didn’t recognize hanging from his belt. She figured he had a gun, although she didn’t see it. It was probably concealed in some fancy holster. All she’d have to do was make the wrong move and he’d draw it in a flash. Despite all her feelings about cops, his voice was kind, his expression of concern for her injured foot genuine.

  "Are you okay?" he asked when she failed to respond to any of his comments.

  She opened her mouth, collecting her thoughts to reply, but was interrupted by the other cop.

  "She's a tweaker. Can't you see that? It's written all over her. Let’s keep going. We don’t have time for this skeezer."

  "Jerk," she mumbled.

  "She speaks," Asbury said. "She may be alive but she still looks sketchy to me."

  "Tweaker or not, she somebody’s daughter. If you had kids, if this was your kid out here in this mess, wouldn’t you want somebody to help her out if they could?"

  Asbury gestured at Debbie. "Be my guest but make it quick. We don’t have all damn day to screw around out here."

  The nicer cop propped his rifle against the bench, just out of Debbie's reach she noticed, and dropped his pack to the ground. “My name is Muncie. Do you mind?” He gestured at her foot.

  “Mind what?" she asked.

  "Jesus Christ, I think she's actually high!” Asbury bellowed. “The whole world's falling apart and scumbags still only care about one thing."

  Muncie shot Asbury a warning look. Asbury wandered off, shaking his head. He sat on a rock and shook a cigarette from a pack. He pinched it in his lips and lit it with a disposable lighter.

  “You got another one of those?” Debbie asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Can I have one?” she asked.

  “No way in hell.”

  Debbie frowned at him, wishing she could blow him up with her brain. Muncie touched her foot and she flinched reflexively.

  "I'm sorry. Did that hurt?" he asked.

  "No, just startled me."

  "I'm going to pour some water on it. We need to get it cleaned off and then I’ll bandage it. Is that okay?"

  She nodded. Muncie dug in his pack and came out with a bottle of water. He twisted the cap off and carefully drizzled it over her foot. When he’d washed away all the loose dirt, he recapped the bottle and fished a sizable first aid kit from his pack. He poured more water on a gauze pad and used that to delicately pat at her foot, trying to scrub away the ground-in dirt without hurting her. When he was done he applied a greasy ointment to all of the injured areas of her foot, then used gauze and tape to bandage it.

  “You did a good job,” she said, genuinely impressed. “Just like a nurse.”

  Muncie smiled. "Do you still have more walking to do?"

  She nodded. "I'm going into town."

  "That's where we’re headed too. You been there before?”

  She hesitated. “No. I’m hiking the trail. It’s my first time here.”

  He looked her in the eye, gauging the truthfulness of her response, not wanting to believe she’d lie to him. “You're not too far away. I might need to bandage that foot more securely though. I don't think it's going to hold up to another mile or two of walking on that bandage. Don’t you have shoes?"

  She flung a loose hand in the direction of pack, a drunk’s awkward wave. "That's what did this to my feet. I took them off and tied them to my pack."

  "Let me see them.”

  She did as he asked, forcing her uncooperative fingers to untie the bloody shoes from her pack. He examined them for a moment, carefully looking them over, and shook his head. “You’ve hiked in these the whole time you’ve been on the trail?”

  “Yes.”

  “And they’re just now blistering your feet?” he asked, a note of disbelief in his voice. “They look to be in awfully good condition to have that many miles on them.”

  She was silent. He had a point. She didn’t know how far this stupid Appalachian Trail was but it didn’t make sense that she’d been hiking on it and suddenly got blisters. She couldn’t change her story now. He was being so nice and helpful. She didn’t want to admit her lie. “My boots wore out. These were my spare shoes. I didn’t have any trouble until I started wearing these.”

  If Muncie doubted her, he didn’t push it. "These won't do. When you get to town you need to find some better shoes."

  "I plan to."

  "I could cut the back out of these and turn them into something like slippers. Then you could still wear them to protect the bottom of your feet but they wouldn't be chafing your heels. Do you want to try that?"

  She nodded eagerly. "Please. That would be very helpful. Like I said, when I get to town I'll find new shoes and throw these stu
pid things in the garbage."

  Muncie unsheathed a fixed blade knife from his belt, a Blind Horse Woodsman Pro, and carefully performed some shoe surgery, ending up with something that looked like a slipper. When he was done he set the shoes before her and she eased her feet into them. She smiled, thinking of Cinderella. He helped her adjust the laces until the shoes fit snug enough to accommodate her bandages without flying off as she walked.

  "That better?" he asked.

  "Much better. Thank you."

  "Can we go now?" Asbury asked.

  "All right, all right. My work here is done." Muncie pushed up off the bench to stand, slipping the knife back in its sheath. He carefully repacked the contents of his first aid kid and put it away, then effortlessly slung his pack onto his back. "If you're good, we’ll be on our way."

  She got to her feet and slung her pack on too. “I’ll be fine. I'm just going to walk at my own pace and take it easy on these feet."

  "Good," Asbury mumbled. "I'm not interested in dragging my ass just because the hero there wants to socialize with a hard luck case."

  "You could quit being a jerk about it,” Muncie growled.

  "Eh, probably not," Asbury replied. “I enjoy it too much.” He got to his feet and shouldered his pack. He took one last drag off his cigarette, dropped it to the ground, and ground it beneath one desert tan boot.

  "You guys hikers too?" Debbie asked.

  "Please. Give me a break," Asbury growled. "Do I look like a backpacker?"

  "You have a backpack," Debbie pointed out.

  “I have big feet and a hairy ass but that don’t make me Sasquatch.”

  Debbie frowned at that, finding the image distasteful, and she’d seen some bad stuff in her day.

  "We’re headed to the courthouse," Muncie said. "We have business there. Do you know where the courthouse is?"