The Borrowed World (Book 3): Legion of Despair

by Franklin Horton

  On the walk back to the house, Gary could not help but dwell on what Will had said.

  “Will,” he said. “Just so you know, I don’t give second chances. I won’t hesitate to kill them if they come back.”

  Chapter 8

  Bluefield, Virginia

  After killing Boyd, Alice experienced a bout of sheer panic like nothing she’d ever felt before. Despite what she’d been through, despite killing her kidnapper, she paced the kitchen frantically, her heart racing and her mind an unstoppable whirlwind. It was a potent cocktail of the aftereffects of adrenaline and the beginning of realizing that she needed to figure out what to do next. When she finally began to rein herself in and calm down, she knew that she first needed to make sure that there was no one else in the house. While she suspected his mother was dead, she could leave nothing to chance. Boyd may have even had a brother or friend that stayed with him. She had to check.

  With the gun still in her shaking hand and pale rays of dying light illuminating her path, Alice walked to the living room, the gun pointed ahead of her. Her breath raced and her heart pounded in her ear like a train bearing down on her. She fought to calm herself. She’d never felt like this. The floor creaked beneath her feet, each step amplified and increasing her tension.

  She found the living room empty. An old sofa, its outdated colors still vivid beneath the protection of a fitted plastic cover, sat in front of a coffee table covered in lace doilies. Alice couldn’t imagine how that sofa could be comfortable with that crinkly cover on it. There was a crocheted afghan draped over an old blue recliner. A white Bible sat on the side table. There were pictures covering all the walls, but none of Boyd.

  Alice crept toward a hallway where all of the doors were closed. At the first door, she reached for a clear glass knob and turned it, pushing the paneled door open. As soon as she saw the pink tub she pushed the door the rest of the way open. The floor was covered in a pink rug that matched the pink rug around the toilet and the pink furry cover on the toilet lid. Alice shook her head. Her mother was fond of the same fuzzy bathroom accessories. Maybe it was an old lady thing.

  With her back to the door, Alice was hit by another wave of sheer panic and spun around, her gun waving wildly. She ran back to the kitchen, confirmed that Boyd was indeed still dead and still where she left him, and then came back to the hallway. The other two rooms were bedrooms. One was obviously the old lady’s, the other clearly Boyd’s. She even made a quick check of the closets, but there was no one else in the house.

  Realizing that it was becoming harder to see, she knew she needed to find a flashlight. She could not handle being trapped in the dark with Boyd’s dead body. Neither was leaving immediately an option. She was still wearing the ill-fitting clothing that Boyd had given her and she had no gear for the road. The last thing she remembered from before her kidnapping was that she was in Bluefield, which was roughly an hour from her office if you were driving a car, but she had no way of knowing if she was still in Bluefield or not. There were dozens of nearby towns where he could have taken her. She couldn’t worry about that now, though. She had to focus on one thing at a time.

  Going back to the kitchen, she found a tablecloth and covered Boyd’s body with it. She had seen enough of him to last a lifetime. As an afterthought, she checked his pockets and found a lighter, a ring of keys, and a pocket knife with a locking blade. She set the items on the table, after discovering that the ratty dress she was wearing had no pockets. She scanned the countertops and found a flashlight sitting there. She took it, confirmed that it worked, and tried to get a plan together.

  She needed clothes first of all. Then she needed something to carry her gear in. She hoped Boyd still had one of the packs they had stolen from the FEMA camp. That would be perfect.

  With the flashlight in hand, she went to the old lady’s closet and quickly realized that there was nothing in there that she wanted to wear. There was nothing in there even purchased in the last thirty years. Even if they would fit, they were not the kind of clothes you could walk in for days. She couldn’t imagined herself hiking home in a polyester pantsuit, a silky blouse, and a scarf tied around her head. She went instead to Boyd’s room.

  Her earlier visit had simply been a cursory glance to make sure that room was empty. Now she tried to figure out what this room told her about the man. The walls were covered with the kind of posters that you might expect on a teen boy’s wall – fast cars with bikini-clad women reclined across them, heavy metal bands, and video games. There was a rack on the wall displaying a collection of cheap samurai swords and martial arts weaponry. That was not a comforting thought to Alice, imagining that Boyd had access to those kind of weapons while she’d been tied in the basement. She thought she was lucky to not end up with a Chinese throwing star sticking out of her forehead.

  Shining the light around the room, she hit on one of the black 72-hour backpacks from the FEMA camp.

  “Yes!” she said, celebrating any victory at this point.

  It was a start. It was a Get Home Bag. The bag was empty but that didn’t concern her at this point. She shined the light around the room and realized that, as a man without a job, Boyd had been a creature of comfort and his primary wardrobe was sweat pants, ragged t-shirts, and hoodies. She was pretty certain that despite the difference in their sizes, she could make that work. With drawstring waists and elastic cuffs, sweatpants were not exactly fitted garments and could fit people of all sizes. She shed the dress and pulled on what she hoped was a clean set of black sweatpants that were spilling from a half-open dresser drawer. She put them on with a Black Sabbath shirt she also found in the closet, along with a matching hoodie. The fit wasn’t ideal but it was an improvement. Even better, it was a genderless outfit that would blend in easily on the road, both day and night.

  She dug around in the dresser and found a pair of socks, taking a spare set for the bag. She pieced together a spare sweat suit and put that in her bag. She found a set of Boyd’s tennis shoes and tried them out but they were hopelessly large. She would have to wear her ragged pair from the basement and hope they’d hold up long enough for her to get home, even though one sole was beginning to flap when she walked. If she was lucky there would be a roll of duct tape somewhere she could fix it with.

  She pulled out the top drawer of Boyd’s dresser and looked for anything useful. It was not what she’d hoped. She found another lighter but that was it. Most of the drawer was filled with empty prescription bottles he’d saved for some reason. She returned to his closet and scanned it for potentially useful items and was again disappointed. There was a boat paddle, a large stick, a pile of shoes, and a few scattered items of clothes.

  Before she left, she caught sight of the rack of swords and weapons again. She needed a good knife. Boyd had the sharp hunting knife on his belt, but she wasn’t interested in moving his body around to remove the sheath. She examined the rack and spied a Gerber boot knife with a belt clip. That would be perfect. She could clip it inside the sweatpants and wear it without it being visible.

  She went back to the living room and looked for another closet. Finding a coat closet, she located a rain coat that must have been one of Boyd’s old ones. It was too big for her but it was better than nothing. She crammed it in the bag too. In the old lady’s room, Alice found a box of ammunition for the pistol. Several rounds were missing and Alice assumed those missing rounds were the very ones now in the gun. As a mother, Alice couldn’t imagine going to a gun store and having to buy a gun and ammunition for the purpose of protecting herself from her own son. That was a hell of a thing to have to deal with in your life.

  Alice found no holster for the gun, which made sense if the woman merely carried it around the house and slept with it under her pillow. Alice would just have to carry it in the pocket of her hoodie. It would be easy to get to there. Perhaps the visible weight of it in her pocket would serve as a deterrent and encourage people to keep away from her. She hoped this was the case. On her wa
y out of the room she saw a bottle of ibuprofen sitting on the nightstand and swiped it. Remembering the pain of her previous days on the road, she would appreciate having this when the aching started. However, after her imprisonment in Boyd’s basement, she would not complain about resuming her walk home even if her body hurt.

  She returned to the kitchen and stared at the tablecloth-covered body once again, making sure that it did not move beneath the cover. In her head, she kept seeing Boyd rise beneath the cover and come after her like some killer in a slasher movie. She would not have been surprised at all. Once she was satisfied that he was still dead, she went through the kitchen looking for anything that might be of use to her. There were still some cans of foods, some stale crackers, and part of a jar of mixed nuts. There was an old jar of applesauce, two cans of deviled ham, and a jar of home canned pickles. Alice threw all of it in the pack, along with a can opener. She took the roll of paper towels from the dispenser and shoved it in her pack, along with a set of utensils.

  She opened drawers until she found the junk drawer that every kitchen has. She found more batteries for her flashlight and another cigarette lighter. She even found the roll of duct tape that she’d wondered about earlier. The presence of a small votive candle in the drawer made her think of using candles for light at night if she was holed up in a safe place. She went back to the living room and, sure enough, there was a set on the mantle. She pulled them from the porcelain holders and dropped them into the pack.

  She took another glance at Boyd’s body and confirmed he hadn’t moved.

  “Think, think, think,” she whispered out loud. “What else do you need?”

  Then it came to her. “Water bottle.” She started opening cabinets. She found a few small bottles of tonic water under the counter. It wasn’t to her liking, but it was better than ditch water. Her stomach had been starting to bother her and she was afraid that the ditch water she’d had was making her sick. That was all she needed.

  Despite not wanting to return to the basement, she needed her shoes since she couldn’t find any others that fit her. With her flashlight in one hand and the pistol in the other, she descended the stairs to her former cell. By her pile of disgusting clothes, she sat and put her shoes on. When she sat the flashlight down, it rolled slightly and the beam came to rest, shining on the water heater. It gave her an idea. With her shoes on, she crawled to it and tapped it with her knuckles. It sounded full.

  She opened the drain valve at the bottom. There was a whistling sound and water started to seep from the valve. Alice quickly turned it off. She remembered seeing some empty Gatorade bottles in the kitchen. She ran up the steps to retrieve them, then returned to the water heater. Carefully tilting each bottle up to the valve, she filled three bottles with the water. After she was done she held the flashlight up to a bottle and examined the contents. The water was clean but had flecks of limestone sediment floating in it. She knew that would settle out over time, and wouldn’t harm her if she drank it.

  Heading back upstairs, she packed the bottles into her bag and quickly scanned the kitchen, trying to think if there was anything else she needed. She didn’t come up with anything. Realizing that the quicker she got on the road, the quicker she’d be home, she shouldered the pack. She checked her pockets and made sure that the gun and flashlight were accessible. Her plan was to walk by moonlight as far as she could so that she wouldn’t draw attention, using the light only when absolutely necessary.

  She took a last glance at Boyd’s body, wondering if she should offer some last dramatic words to the dead psycho who was now glued to the floor by his own congealing blood. She decided that she’d not waste another breath on him.

  She went to the back door and glanced through the curtain. She saw nothing out of the ordinary. She opened the door and stepped out on the porch. Looking around, she was hit by the reality of her situation.

  “I have no fucking idea where I am,” she whispered.

  *

  Alice cautiously moved from the backyard to the front, listening for any one of the million things that worried her. Once in front of the house, she could get a rough lay of the land in the moonlight. She was able to make an assumption based on her familiarity with Appalachian towns and guess that the main road would be downhill of where she now found herself.

  The street in front of the house extended in both directions and either could be the direction that led out of here. She chose right and began walking. With luck on her side for a change, she soon found that the street joined another. A left turn took her down the hill to an even wider street. Once there, she turned right and soon found herself at a stop sign beside a divided street. That was surely a sign she was moving in the right direction. She studied the street name and it meant nothing to her.

  There were houses along the street in both directions. Some had pale glowing lights inside them, probably lanterns or candles. She was deathly afraid of knocking on a door. She didn’t want to end up locked in another basement, or worse. She also didn’t want to get shot for knocking on a stranger’s door under the current circumstances. With her vision telling her nothing, she decided to just stand still and listen for a moment.

  After her brain separated and categorized the sounds of the night, she distinctly heard the murmur of conversation. Rather than immediately flipping out and running, which did indeed cross her mind, she continued to listen to the voices and see what she could tell about them. She could soon tell that it was both a man and a woman speaking and that they appeared to be sitting on a nearby porch, although she could not tell which house yet.

  She turned slowly, listening for a moment in each direction. She determined that three houses down, in the dark recesses of a front porch, an older couple sat enjoying the cool evening air. At least that’s what she assumed they were doing. After thinking it over for a moment, she began walking in their direction. She knew she was headed in the right direction when the conversation halted.

  “I got a gun up in here and I ain’t a bit afraid to use it,” came a cold voice.

  Alice froze, trying to figure out what to do next. Had she not been completely lost, she would have just turned and walked away as fast as she could. “My name is Alice,” she said. “I’m lost and need some directions.”

  There was no response, but there was also no movement. She didn’t know what she should do, and she had no other options. “Can you help me?”

  “Whereabouts you trying to go?” asked a woman’s voice.

  Alice swallowed hard, not wanting to get into the details of everything that had happened to her over the past few days. She’d be here all night if she tried to tell that story. “I’m just passing through town trying to get to Tazewell and I’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere.”

  Tazewell was a town close to her office. She thought it was strategic to choose a nearby town, giving the impression that she had people waiting on her who might come looking for her if she didn’t return home.

  “How did you get down in here?” the woman asked.

  “I was on the highway,” Alice said. “There were some bad people and I had to get off the road and hide. Somehow I got turned around and this is where I ended up. This is Bluefield, right?”

  “It’s Bluefield, all right, and there ain’t no shortage of bad people here,” the man said. “You need to be careful out there wandering around at night. A girl can end up dead. Or worse.”

  Alice laughed nervously. “Trust me,” she said, “I know all about that.” She could make out nothing about these people in the dark. They could be fifty or they could be twenty years older than that.

  “You get back on the road,” the woman said. “You go right. You walk that way about ten minutes and you’ll come to College Avenue. You go right there. That will lead you back to the highway and out of town.”

  “I can do that,” Alice said. “Thanks for your help.”

  “You be careful out there,” the woman said. “It’s a lot easier to talk it than to walk it
. You keep your eyes open.”

  “You got a gun?” the man asked.

  Alice was hesitant to answer, but decided to be honest. She didn’t want to be killed for her gun but she wasn’t getting the psycho-vibe from these folks. “Yeah, I do.”

  “Anyone mess with you,” the man said, “you shoot their fucking nuts off.”

  Alice smiled a smile that no one else could see in the darkness. These folks had no idea what she was capable of. “I’ll do that,” she said. “I can promise you that.”

  She turned in the deep grass of their yard and went back to the edge of the road. Once on the solid surface of the pavement, she turned right, just as instructed.

  Chapter 9

  The Valley

  Russell County, VA

  Buddy had been walking nearly two hours and, strangely, the world was coming back to life around him. Color was gradually returning to his vision. His senses had been completely pummeled by the trauma of his daughter’s death and the anger that consumed him. Although he assumed that he had been eating and drinking in the days since her death, he could not recall that he had. He felt lightheaded, and assumed that some of it may have been from not taking in enough food or water.

  The road from Macktown to his home traced the bottom of the long, narrow valley. The end closest to Macktown was more populated. At the far end, where his home lay, there were fewer houses. It was a fertile valley and the fields around him contained cattle, corn, and even tobacco patches. He imagined that the men who owned these fields must be working day and night to try to protect their crops and livestock from thieves. He saw men working at the door to a barn. He threw a hand up to wave at them but they didn’t wave back. He could not blame them. He felt almost exuberant, freed as he was from the yoke of his obligation. He did what the world required of him and now he could go on about his life and grieve without anger. He could see if he had a life beyond this experience.