The Method

by Ralston, Duncan

  16 — End of the Line

  The cabin had been silent for so long Frank hadn’t realized he’d drifted off until the sound of the truck woke him. The last light of day was fading. Both his legs prickled with pins and needles.

  Linda watched him with a concerned look. When he caught her eye, she forced a smile.

  Colby stared at the door, waiting.

  The driver door slammed. Boots trudged toward the cabin.

  Colby raised the shotgun.

  Frank and Linda both shied away. But he was aiming between them, at the door.

  Gitmo had promised to hurt him if he tortured them further. The evidence was on tape, and Colby clearly intended for Gitmo never to see it.

  “Blaze of glory,” Colby muttered under his breath.

  As much as Frank didn’t want to get shot warning Gitmo, he knew that if Colby shot the man, the two of them were next.

  Frank wondered if Colby had intended to kill Gitmo the minute the man had left with the tape, or if they had driven him to it with their suggestion of mutiny.

  Both Frank and Linda thought, What now?

  The door creaked open behind them.

  “What the—?”

  Colby fired, silencing Gitmo’s query. Behind them, the tall man grunted and fell against something solid.

  Colby broke the shotgun between his knees. The shell exited with a hollow thoomp and clattered on the floor while Colby reached into a pocket for another. He got to his feet and inserted a fresh shell, snapped the lever closed over his knee, and strode toward Frank and Linda as the injured man behind them groaned.

  Flesh slapped against tile.

  “Heh heh heh,” Gitmo said. He spat.

  Frank and Linda wanted so badly to watch the men kill each other, but fear the next shot might be for them kept them from turning. They stood facing each other as another shotgun blast rattled the cans on the shelves. They said “I love you” as the red light on the video camera began to flash, the tape running out with a steady beeeeep beeeeep beeeeep!

  The light winked out.

  Feet shuffled behind them, squeaking on the tiles. Something heavy and metallic—the shotgun maybe—clattered to the floor. Then more footfalls, both men grunting.

  Someone slammed into Frank, knocking him off his feet. Rotating on the hook as he swung outward, Frank saw Gitmo had his hands around Colby’s neck, and Colby had his hunting knife thrust to the hilt between Gitmo’s ribs.

  The wound dripped, splashing gore at their feet.

  The torturers staggered away. Colby fell against the counter, knocking the video camera to the floor. Linda saw the plastic cover smash, and Colby pulled out the knife, arcing a spray of blood across the floor. Gitmo held the man’s head against the counter, squeezing the life out of him.

  Colby jabbed him again. Blood rained down over their boots He stabbed Gitmo a third time, less forceful than the last, his face turning purple, cords standing out on his neck.

  “Fuck . . . you,” Gitmo grunted.

  “Don’t . . .” The word came out as a gasp. “ . . . cuss.”

  Gitmo slumped over him. Both men slipped away from the counter and landed on the floor beside the broken camera.

  “Are they dead?” Frank asked.

  “I think so.” The pool of blood grew under the two men, staining the floorboards. “I don’t think they’re breathing.”

  “How are we gonna get out of here?”

  “I’ve got an idea. Can you hold my weight?”

  “Christ . . . I mean normally, but now . . .” He nodded. “I can try.”

  “Okay. I’m gonna swing over and grab onto you with my legs.”

  “Hello,” he said, forcing a grin.

  She chuckled weakly. “When we get out of here, there’ll be all the time in the world for that. Just tell me to let go if it hurts too much.”

  “Whenever you’re ready.”

  She stepped as far back from him as the chain would reach, pulling it taut. Then she lifted her legs and swung. Her toes scraped across the floor, slowing her momentum.

  “Shit.”

  “Try again.”

  “I don’t know how much longer I can hold myself up.”

  “Take your time.”

  The crotch of her shorts had long since dried, but her underwear was still damp, and her inner thighs itched like mad as she backed up for another try. Not that Frank had faired any better. His t-shirt still looked damp, and it wasn’t even his own piss.

  This time, she lifted her whole body while raising her legs off the floor. Her arm muscles strained beyond exertion, but she focused on the goal. On the upward arc, she kicked her legs out wide and upward like a little girl on a swing set, only with no urge to shout Wheeee!

  Her inner thighs struck Frank’s chest, and he reared back on his bad—worse—leg, but she locked her legs around his waist before he could fall, and she clung to him. The hook hung from her cuffs with enough slack that she thought she might be able to slip it off.

  “Ready?”

  Frank stabilized himself. The wounds on both legs wept blood. His face was a bloody, bruised mess, but determination looked good on him. “Ready.”

  “This is gonna hurt.” She raised her arms. The hook pulled with the cuffs, chains rattling. She tried again, faster. The hook pulled along with them.

  “Do it slowly,” Frank grunted. His face had gone red. Veins and tendons stood out on his neck.

  With her leg muscles overstrained, she couldn’t hold on much longer. But Frank was right. Ever so slowly, she raised her hands. She heard the metal clink and grind together.

  The cuffs slipped off the hook, and she found herself in free fall.

  Instinct kept her legs taut around Frank’s straining torso, but she let go as her spine bent backward, and she slammed down hard on her shoulder blades. The breath expunged from her lungs, and for a moment, she thought she might black out.

  “You okay?”

  She rolled over onto her side. “I’ll survive. You?”

  “I’ve definitely been better.”

  Linda got to her knees and crawled to the dead men on the floor. Her palms pressed down in Gitmo’s sticky blood, and when she reached for the key ring on Colby’s belt, her palms reminded her of when she was a kid and the teacher had made her dip her hands in red paint to make turkeys.

  She tore the keys off his belt, opened the padlock linking her chains, and shrugged out of them. She used the other small key on both sets of cuffs.

  Stretching out her limbs and twisting her wrists, she returned to Frank. She helped him raise his arms first and removed his cuffs from the hook. He stumbled forward, drained of energy. She hugged him to her, his head slumped in the crook of her neck.

  “Let’s get you out of those chains.”

  “I saw Neville,” Frank said as Linda freed his hands. “He was standing outside the window dressed in a white gown.”

  “A gown? He’s dead, Frank. I saw them kill him.”

  “I know.” The shackles fell from his shoulders and he shook his head, neck joints popping. He rubbed his raw, bleeding wrists. “I guess I was seeing things.”

  She took his hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “I wish we could burn this fucking place to the ground,” Frank said as they reached the door. He hopped out on his less injured leg.

  Linda followed behind him. “When this is all over,” she told him, “we’ll come back with bulldozers.”

  In the last of the sunlight, she hurried around the front of the truck. The keys hung from the ignition, and she was relieved not to have to return to the cabin and root through a dead man’s pockets. “I’ll drive.”

  Frank climbed in after her, pulling himself up to the cab with a pained groan. The engine started on the first try, and the radio came on full blast, Willie Nelson singing about always hurting the one you love.

  He flicked it off.

  She turned to him as she threw the transmission into reverse. “Good call.”
>
  The receding sun rippled on the surface of the pond in the rearview, all peach and pink above the slate-gray mountain peaks. There wasn’t much gas left in the tank, but she was pretty sure it would be enough to get them at least as far as the main road. She put the truck into forward and headed away from the sunset.

  They had almost reached the woods when headlights swished through the trees up ahead.

  “What now?” she said.

  Frank gripped the armrest as Linda slammed her foot on the brake, tearing up grass. “Too small to be truck lights. Could be the four-wheelers.”

  “With guns.” She looked over her shoulder. “We have to go back.”

  Frank stared at her a moment, mouth agape. “We don’t know if there’s any road past the cabin, Lin. Even if there is, it could lead us straight into the mountains.”

  The headlights swung their way, beams narrowing the closer they got to the outer edge of the woods.

  “If we keep going this way, we’re dead for sure,” Linda said frantically.

  “Not if it’s the police.”

  Linda hesitated, hovering her foot over the accelerator. Any minute now, whatever vehicles were out in those woods would come roaring out. She couldn’t chance it.

  “If it’s the police, we’ll be fine either way. If it’s them, we’re dead.”

  “You’re right.” Frank nodded. “Let’s go.”

  She threw the truck in reverse and backed up the low rise.

  Frank saw the two quads emerge from the darkening pines, headlamps flashing through the windshield and catching the two of them in the front seats like prison yard spotlights. The ATVs bounded up and over the rocky terrain, and their lights fell away from the windshield.

  Linda slammed the gearbox into forward, practically jumping on the gas.

  The ATVs had halved the distance by the time she swung the truck around the front of the cabin and began heading toward the sparse aspen forest where they’d encountered the dog.

  Frank tried to get a decent look in the side mirror, but the truck rocked so aggressively on its suspensions all he saw was a blur of dark green and brown. When the ground evened out, he glanced over his shoulder just as the first four-wheeler zipped out around the side of the cabin.

  The rider wore camo. “It’s them,” he said.

  Linda wheeled around a thick stump. The engine roared as she floored the gas, all eight cylinders firing. A spray of black muck flecked the white aspens.

  The road began to incline and she had to slow, unable to navigate as easily as the woods grew denser and larger stones littered their path. Soon it would be too dangerous for the truck to continue, and the four-wheelers would gain the upper hand.

  Frank turned with a concerned look. “We have to get out of the truck.”

  She glanced at him and spun the wheel, narrowly avoiding collision with a massive moss-covered rock. “Are you nuts?”

  “If we get stuck, they’re gonna catch us. We get out now and start running, we’ll at least have a head start on them.”

  “What? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “It makes sense. Trust me, Lin.”

  Linda saw the determination in his eyes, and even though she wanted more than anything to stay safely inside the truck and keep driving farther and farther from the men at their heels, she knew he was right. The trees ahead were so dense she doubted the four-wheelers could navigate them, the hill craggier and mud slicked.

  He was right. If they got stuck, they would be frustrated, angry, and careless. They wouldn’t be ready to run. They would make stupid mistakes.

  She slammed both feet on the brake.

  The truck swerved on its front wheels as it tore to a halt, launching both of them forward. Without hesitation, they threw open their doors and leaped down into the mud-slicked leaves.

  “Run!” Frank shouted, staggering ahead.

  Linda bolted, slipping in the muck but gaining traction the farther she ascended.

  Behind them, the ATVs buzzed, bounding over rocks and zipping around trees, maybe forty or fifty feet below, and gaining steadily.

  How much farther would they have gotten in the truck? The aspens she passed grew much closer together, and the earth was much rockier, with mudslides in places. The truck had been built to haul heavy equipment, not to drive all-terrain.

  She glanced over her shoulder.

  Frank wasn’t behind her.

  The four-wheelers had veered off, following him. When she’d turned to run, Frank had staggered through the bushes opposite the truck, leading them away. The men weren’t far behind, but he had the advantage of being easily able to avoid the trees and climb over rocky terrain that could easily tip their vehicles.

  “Dammit, Frank!”

  She charged down after them, desperate to catch up before the men caught Frank or to distract them after they had. Either way, she was certain she and Frank had reached the end of the line.

  She ran, leaping over roots and stones, grabbing tress and using them to slingshot herself forward. Her lungs burned. Every muscle ached. Her inner thighs chafed. She’d been hungry so long that her insides felt hollow.

  At least I don’t have to pee, she thought.

  She looked ahead to where Frank was leading them and felt the first real burst of hope since they’d landed themselves in this hellhole.

  Beyond the trees, a stretch of pavement twisted around the side of the mountain, about a hundred feet from where she ran, closing the distance. Just two lanes, not as wide or kept up as a highway. But she thought it could be a county road. Light traffic, with any stroke of luck.

  The mountain shot straight up from the side of the road, bare slate save a few small trees clinging to its side. They might have been able to climb it if Frank’s leg wasn’t so badly injured. The men might not be able to follow, but they could easily shoot the two of them down.

  Frank rushed out onto the road and started waving his hands.

  Hill’s men braked and climbed off the ATVs, grabbing shoulder-strapped rifles and pursuing.

  Linda felt her limbs begin to plod, and she willed herself onward, determined not to let Frank die without her by his side.

  As she neared the edge of the trees, she heard the men shouting. Frank shouted back, holding up his hands. The militiamen aimed their rifles, and Frank dropped to his knees, hands behind his head.

  Please don’t let this be the end.

  As if in answer to her plea, a bloodred light swept along the gray face of the cliff. Blue and red again. The first police cruiser took the corner, and its sirens blared around the mountainside.

  Linda might have fainted from relief if the adrenaline hadn’t kept her moving. She pushed her way through the bushes along the side of the road, a second cruiser hot on the tail of the first. Both vehicles skidded to a halt about twenty feet from where Frank knelt in the middle of the road. Hill’s men stood with their weapons raised.

  Frank turned from the police to his pursuers and back, torn between sheer terror and relief, caught in the headlights in the middle of an impending shootout.

  The driver doors of both cruisers opened, emblazoned with sheriff’s department logos, and the officer in the first vehicle dropped to one knee behind it, drawing his sidearm. The one behind him did the same, a woman wearing a brown campaign hat like a forest ranger.

  Frank flattened himself against the pavement.

  “Drop your weapons!” the officer in lead shouted. Linda recognized him by his mustache. It was the sheriff, the man who’d pulled them over what couldn’t possibly have only been a day ago, but clearly had been.

  “I do not recognize your authority!” one of the militiamen shouted.

  “Your fascist laws don’t got no jurisdiction on this sovereign land!” the other man bellowed, gesturing angrily with his rifle.

  Both cops fired through their open windows.

  The militiamen shot back as their bodies erupted with bullet wounds, jerking wildly. None of their shots hit a target.
Both men slumped down in the road dead or dying, rifles clattering away from their bodies.

  The sheriff rose from behind the driver door, holstering his Glock. “Sir, are you injured?”

  “I’m okay!” Frank called back, not daring to rise an inch from the asphalt.

  “You can get off the ground now, sir. Hurry on back and get behind my vehicle. Deputy Miller’ll take a look at those injuries.”

  Frank got up and hobbled toward the closest cruiser.

  “Frank!” Linda called out.

  “Linda?”

  Both officers reached for their sidearms, calming when they saw she was unarmed.

  “Ma’am, please stay where you are until we ascertain these individuals have been incapacitated,” the Deputy Miller said as she approached the men in the road.

  Linda stayed put. “Frank, you asshole! You nearly got yourself killed.”

  “We wouldn’t have made it together,” he said. “I had to give you a chance.”

  “You can’t just make that decision for us. We’re a team. We have to talk about these things, okay?”

  “Are we a team, Linda?”

  “After all we’ve been through, you still don’t know? I would’ve died for you today, Frank. I don’t want to lose you, not again. All of that other crap is in the past as far as I’m concerned.”

  “They’re dead,” the sheriff said, returning to his cruiser where Frank stood, holding the hood for support. “Ma’am, you can hug your husband now if you’d like.”

  Linda began to smile as she crossed the road. Frank returned the smile, limping to meet her. She worried it couldn’t be true. They were finally free, but it didn’t seem right. She looked both ways down the darkening stretch of road, looking for the truck that would run them down or the dogs charging out of the woods.

  Nothing came between them. They met halfway in an embrace.

  “I love you, Lin.”

  “I love you too, Frank.” Her breath on his neck made his spine tingle. “Please don’t ever do that again.”

  “I won’t, I promise.”

  “You’d better not.”

  She kissed his stubbly cheek, and he leaned back. They looked at each other’s faces, bruised, battered, and bloody, and saw the love in each other’s eyes.