Compound Fracture

by Franklin Horton

  “Dammit!” Robert growled, sailing the useless weapon off into the dark.

  He was angry, but realized he’d wasted all the time he had to waste. Sonyea and Jeff could still be moving away from him or they could be holed up for the night. Either way, he wasn’t catching them standing still. He leaned forward and began painstakingly working his way up the steep bank on all fours. It was grueling work that required he use injured and damaged parts of himself that no longer wanted to cooperate.

  What would have taken him less than a minute yesterday took him several today. When he finally crested the shoulder of the road and stood upright he was coated in a clammy sweat and his pulse was racing. He remembered that he carried some Vitamin I—ibuprofen—in his plate carrier. He tore open two paper pouches and took four of them. He washed them down with a mouthful of coppery-tasting water and started walking.

  The movement began to feel good after a while, loosening up tight muscles and introducing a stream of endorphins into his system. He walked with the headlamp for a while, then realized he should probably transition over to the night vision to avoid walking into an ambush like the one he’d driven into earlier. He’d removed it from his weapon once he’d gotten back in the Razer, afraid it would get damaged bouncing around in the vehicle. It was a good thing he had. If it had still been attached to the shotgun, it would have been as crushed and useless as the shotgun itself.

  He couldn’t remember putting the PVS14 in its padded pouch but there it was. He raised it to his eye and turned the switch, praying that it still worked despite what it had been through. When the green glow swelled to life it was another moment that made Robert want to cheer. The joy passed quickly, leaving a void that was immediately filled with negativity. He experienced doubt that he was up for whatever lay ahead of him; guilt for not being with his family; fear for them and what they might be experiencing.

  A gnawing depression, a gaping blackness, was opening up inside him. There were people in this world who loved him but they were so far away he might never see them again. Here he was, injured and alone, hundreds of miles from those people. His friend Sonyea, as far as he knew, had no one to depend on but him. He was glad he wasn’t in her shoes because he felt like a pretty poor resource at the moment. To have her life hanging in his hands surely meant nothing but disappointment and certain death.

  “Pull yourself out of this, asshole,” Robert said aloud as he walked. “You going to whine all the way home? You going to give up? Is this the kind of father you’re going to be? Is this how you want your kids, your friends, to remember you?”

  He knew he had to pull it together. If he let the dark thoughts take control, it would be like spiraling down a funnel of blackness. Nothing good could come of that.

  “If you have time to think, you’re not pushing yourself hard enough,” Robert told himself. He started walking faster, taking longer strides. It jarred his spine in a way that made his back muscles spasm. There was stabbing pain that took his breath. The good news was that the pain filled him in a way that left no room for other thoughts. No room for the blackness. As the saying went, the pain was indeed weakness leaving the body.

  36

  Sonyea and Jeff walked the forest service road until the light faded, moving stiffly and zombie-like. Sonyea was handcuffed and trailing a rope behind her, while Jeff brought up the rear, his damaged leg protesting every attempt to use the muscles Sonyea had severed. Around them, the forest road lost its color as the world slid into the gray of late evening. The ambient sounds changed from the chattering of squirrels and songbirds to the more aloof melodies of mysterious night birds. Cicadas chanted behind it, their sound like that of hooded monks chanting by torchlight in medieval chambers.

  They were within a few miles of the compound now and Sonyea saw no escape. Despite the fact he did not hold her leash, she was too broken to run, and could not lope away without anticipating his bullet in her back.

  She had resigned herself to ending up in the congressman's greedy little hands. She dreaded that above all else. He was a shrewd manipulator, so much more experienced than his sheltered son. She would not be able to toy with his thoughts and emotions the way she had with Jeff’s. The odds would go from one-on-one, as it was now, to her being at the mercy of a whole team of armed guards. She was certain nothing good awaited her there, yet the result was as certain as the coming of night around her.

  This close to the compound, she was sure they’d push through, but they didn’t. It wasn’t the night that stopped them. Jeff still had Sonyea's night vision and could've continued into the night, leading her behind him like a whipped dog. Instead it was Jeff himself who gave out, his body and will failing in tandem. In the waning light he stopped several times to lean against roadside trees, visibly struggling with whether he had what it took to push through. With each previous break, he’d found some inner reserve to tap and fuel his progress. This time he could not. There was nothing left. He was empty.

  "I can't go…any further," Jeff said, his voice cracking with the desperation. "My leg is killing me. Every step feels like you plunging that knife into me over and over again. Why didn’t you just go ahead and kill me? It would have been much more humane."

  "I intended to,” Sonyea said matter-of-factly. "But you got away.”

  Jeff’s face was pressed against the coarse bark of a tree. It appeared to be all that held him vertical. He screwed a single eyeball around to glare at her. “Do you still want to kill me?" he asked. "Because the way I feel now, I would just about let you. Just to be done with this whole bad dream that my life has become."

  "I never wanted to kill you at all, Jeff. I just want you to let me go. If you’re willing to do that, I’ll walk away now and you’ll never see me again.”

  Jeff turned his face back to the tree. "Don’t be ridiculous. You know I can't do that."

  “It’s no more ridiculous than you wanting to die just because you can’t hack it anymore. Toughen up, buttercup.”

  Jeff raised a middle finger at Sonyea, a sign of both his frustration and his inability to respond to her coherently in his exhaustion. Perhaps that meant it was time for her to continue pushing, to try to wear him down. Sometimes tired people agreed to things just to shut you up and secure a little peace.

  Sonyea sat down, awkward with her hands cuffed, and crossed her legs. “So, are you going to turn me over to your father?"

  Jeff nodded, his head bobbing up and away from the tree each time he pushed it forward. It had to hurt, the bark grinding and scraping at his forehead like that.

  "After all the trouble you went through, I'm not sure why you want to do it that way," Sonyea said. "Your dad, as usual, will get all the credit for the move. He’ll get the appreciation and adoration of all the people he moves into the compound. Nobody will ever remember that you delivered me there. No one will ever remember your sacrifice, your suffering. You will simply be a small, insignificant footnote in this story. Small. Insignificant.”

  Jeff didn't respond, not taking the bait. Too weary to do anything—to sit down, to lie down, even to push himself away from the very tree which supported him.

  Sonyea was picking up steam, strategizing on the fly. Her weary and dehydrated mind freed up and began to spin with more fluidity. Ideas began to coalesce. This was her opening; she needed to pick at it with her fingernails, worry it until it broke loose. She had to do everything she could to keep from being turned over to Congressman Honaker.

  "If you’re the one who started this, you might as well be the one to take it to the end zone, Jeff. Deliver me to the compound gate yourself and state your demands. There will be no doubt then as to who secured the compound for your people. Everyone will see it. No matter how your dad tries to spin it, all of his men will witness it and they’ll carry the story to the rest of your group. This will become your victory and not his. With your success, you get the additional satisfaction of that extra little twist of the knife. You’ll be rubbing it in his face that you di
d this. You! Not him.”

  Jeff summoned the energy to resurrect himself away from the tree. He fished half-heartedly in his grubby jeans pocket and retrieved the handcuff key. He dragged Sonyea to a sapling as big around as his thigh, unlocked a cuff, and had her wrap her arms around the tree. He checked the cuff to confirm she’d actually locked it back. She started to protest but Jeff quashed it before she began, with a blood-encrusted finger raised to his parched lips.

  "Shhhhhh. I don't care if you're comfortable, I don't care if you're warm, I don’t care if you sleep a wink. All I care is that you're here when I wake up."

  Jeff limped away to a plush carpet of thick moss and half sat, half fell onto its green gloriousness. He hesitantly peeled up his pants leg and probed tenderly at his injured leg. Each touch brought searing, teeth-clenching agony. Each burst of pain reinvigorated his fury, his anger at Sonyea. She bore the full responsibility for his suffering.

  When she'd cut him, she lost any chance of gaining his sympathy. He wasn't certain he could actually kill her unless it came down to him or her, but she would not have an easy ride. She deserved to suffer at least as much, if not more, as he did. When he woke up in a few hours they would get back on the road. He would get her to that gate if he had to drag her by the hair.

  As much as he hated to admit it, she even had a point about him delivering her to the compound gate himself. Maybe he would do it just as she suggested, not allowing his father to steal the glory of his work and accomplishment, the fruit of his suffering. That would piss his dad off so much. That alone was incentive for doing it. The lowly cook, the son Congressman Honaker didn't even trust with a gun, would save them all. The embarrassing spawn took the compound when the United States congressman could not.

  Despite his pain and weariness, the idea made him smile.

  Jeff awoke to the pleasant song of morning birds, so subtle and understated that it seeped into his sleep like a lullaby. He cracked his eyes to find splashes of golden daylight laying across his body, warming him one area at a time. When he laid down, he'd fully intended on napping for only a couple of hours before getting back on the trail, wanting to be at the gate when the sun came up. The sun was already up now and he was still several miles from where he wanted to be. He’d slept too long and too hard. He didn't quite feel right either. It felt like he had the flu or a really bad hangover. Disoriented.

  Feverish.

  That reminded him of his leg. The leg didn't want to bend like it had yesterday, swollen like something set upon by angry bees. He tried to get a closer look at it and found it difficult to raise his pants leg. Had his jeans shrunk tight around the wound? No, it wasn’t that. The leg had swollen to fill the jeans. That was bad. He gave up trying to raise the jeans when his attempts created a tearing sensation. What would seeing it accomplish at this point anyway? By the way the offending limb felt, he could imagine the sight of it, red and yellowed, streaked with infection, oozing a mixture of pus and blood. He could do nothing to address either of those circumstances. His only direction was forward, following this to the end.

  With the remembrance that he was not alone, Jeff craned his neck and found Sonyea knelt against the base of a tree, slouched awkwardly against it, hugging. She watched him with interest.

  "I hate to tell you this, but you’re probably going to lose that leg. The compound has a doctor. He’s got IV antibiotics that would save it but once you drive them out of the compound he'll leave with Arthur and his people. He’s certainly not going to stick around at that point to render aid to the enemy. On the other hand, if you surrender me at the gate, I can probably get you in."

  Jeff didn't respond to her resumption of tactics from the previous night. He understood she was just trying to trick him. She only wanted to be set free, she didn’t care about him at all.

  He tried to stand. Just getting to his feet was a complicated orchestration that produced several outbursts of pain and filled his eyes with tears. He walked tentatively in a circle, like he had a leg cramp, seeing if the wound would loosen up, but there was no indication of it. His leg felt like an odd and alien thing, the muscle grown rigid in the flesh, packed tight within its casing like a stuffed sausage.

  "Let me go," Sonyea said. "I can get you some help. There’s no use suffering like that. If you lose the leg, you won't even be able get a prosthetic under these circumstances. No one will be able to help you."

  "Shut. Up."

  Sonyea did as he demanded, sensing the potential for violence in the air like the whiff of ozone after an electrical short. He was likely weak from fever, although perhaps he wasn’t thinking clearly either. He might just shoot her out of frustration, desperate for the quickest route to silence.

  Jeff slung her pack across his shoulders and ambled, gasping and grimacing, toward her. He unlocked a single cuff, stepped back, and leveled a handgun at her while she stepped away from the tree and refastened the cuffs. He grabbed the chain and gave it a solid yank, testing that it was locked.

  “Ouch!”

  He scowled at her, his eyes red and glassy. “Don’t even talk to me about pain.”

  She bit her tongue, trying not to provoke him lest he want to share some of his pain with her. She was already hurting but knew there was room for more. It was an opening she did not want to fill.

  Struck with an idea, Jeff pawed at the pouches on the body armor he was wearing. It had been Sonyea’s and the pockets were packed with her gear. He flipped up Velcro flaps and probed canvas for whatever he was searching for. When he found it, he smiled, pulling several long zip ties from the pouch and dropping half of them. He fastened two together to make a longer one, then looped it around Sonyea’s neck.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  Jeff threaded one of the free ends of the zip tie through the flash hider on the AR pistol. He missed the opening several times, squinting his bleary and watering eyes to focus. Once he had it through the holes in the flash hider, he had to thread the loose ends of the zip tie together, which took additional effort. When he was done, he tightened the zip tie until it held the rifle barrel directly against her spine.

  “Not too tight!” she said, panicking. “I can’t breathe.”

  “You’ll be fine,” he said, a sadistic tone overtaking him. “But this way you can’t duck and dodge. You can’t get away. If they shoot me, I can still pull the trigger before I die. If I do, you’re a dead duck.”

  Sonyea couldn’t help but wonder at that comment, so childlike and inappropriate, like something stolen from a cartoon. “Just don’t pull too tight. I have this thing about stuff around my neck.”

  “I have this thing about being stabbed in the leg,” he retorted. “I guess life isn’t always about our own personal comfort, is it?”

  Sonyea raised a hand and slipped her fingers beneath the zip tie.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I need room to breathe. The weight of the barrel is pulling it tight. I’m not getting enough air.”

  “You’re wasting time. Let’s get on with it.”

  She lingered for a moment, considering her situation. The handgun he’d stolen from her was in his belt. Earlier, considering his dazed condition, there was a chance she could have fought him and taken it. Battered as she was, she was uncertain. If she lost again, what would he do? Probably just kill her. There was no way she could fight back now. He just had to pull the trigger, no aiming required.

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  “Then let’s get on with it.”

  She did as he asked, walking slowly, biding her time. Her sympathy for this boy ebbed and flowed. Sometimes she understood his simple psychological state and thought he’d be a decent guy under different circumstances. Other times, she felt he was already too damaged to be salvaged. Right now she cared nothing for him or his fate. She could slit his throat herself and watch the light fade from his eyes as he bled into dirt.

  If she had the chance, she wouldn’t hesitate.

  3
7

  “There’s your camp,” Sonyea said, approaching the final stretch of road leading to Arthur’s compound.

  “My tent,” Jeff said, pointing to the backpacking tent he’d stayed in. The slash in the side reminded him of his abduction, of Brandon hitting him with the Taser and carrying him off through the woods.

  She’d had her back to him a long time, but something in Jeff’s voice made Sonyea turn to look at him. He was sickly looking, his face shiny with an oily fever sweat. Broad blooms of dampness encircled his neck and beneath his arms. He winced with each loping step. His eyes were the worst—crazed with fever, delirious.

  “We keep going, right?” Sonyea asked. “You’re running with this. You’re taking it to the end.”

  “Shut talking,” Jeff mumbled, unaware of the way he jumbled the words. It didn’t matter. Everyone should know what he meant.

  They passed the dense wall of foliage that separated Jeff’s camp from the congressman’s main camp and Sonyea was surprised at first. This had to be the spot because she could see the compound gate in the distance. No one was there. They’d left.

  “Where are they?” Jeff moaned.

  “Up ahead,” Sonyea said. “We’re not there yet.”

  Jeff bought it for a moment, continuing to move forward, then he froze in his tracks. “No, this is it.” He looked around wildly.

  “I don’t think so,” Sonyea assured him. “The woods can be confusing.”

  “Dammit, don’t lie to me!” he bellowed.

  Sonyea went silent while Jeff scanned his surroundings, taking in what he saw. What he didn’t see.

  “They left,” he finally said.

  Despite what they’d been through, despite her anger toward this young man, Sonyea could not help but hurt for him. It seemed almost a ridiculous emotion, considering that this very moment he had the barrel of a gun strapped to her neck. She couldn’t help but wonder what it would feel like to be in his shoes at this moment. He had to be processing this on so many levels. For one, they’d apparently left without attempting to rescue him. They’d just gone on, leaving him behind like an unwanted puppy.