After Shock

by C. J. Lyons

  The blow rocked through her as the zip ties broke. Free now to explore her prison, she began by walking the perimeter.

  The walls and floor were all poured concrete. The ceiling was high overhead, beyond her reach. From the way sound echoed, she guessed it was concrete as well. She was against a short wall, only about four feet long. If she stood in the center and stretched her arms, she could touch both sides. The corner was a tightly formed ninety degrees, no sign of light or any crack or seam.

  She explored the wall with her hands. Above her, as far as she could reach, her fingertips brushed the edge of a pipe. Not metal. PVC. Maybe three or four inches in diameter, judging from the curve. Too small to escape through if she could climb her way up there.

  The pipe frightened her more than the darkness. She couldn’t hear any sounds coming through it, couldn’t see any light edging its way inside.

  Was she buried underground? She shook away the panic that came with the thought and kept following her hands as she blindly felt her way along the walls of her prison.

  The long wall was only eight feet—nothing on it that she could feel. Another short wall. Another PVC pipe, again above her head, midway along the wall, same as the first.

  An almost-forgotten memory sucker-punched her as she imagined how her prison appeared in daylight. Four by eight by at least seven or eight feet high. Poured concrete. Pipes on two sides.

  A small cry eluded her control, and she slumped against the final, featureless wall. The echo of her tiny sound of terror pummeled her, and she put her fist into her mouth, biting off any further sounds.

  It was her childhood nightmare come to life.

  Every neighborhood had its haunted house—the place kids told horror stories about, trying to spook each other with dares to trespass, test their courage. Growing up, Lucy’s neighborhood had been no different, only the tragedy that echoed into her and her friends’ lives was all too real: a toddler had wandered into a septic tank with an open lid and drowned.

  For weeks, Lucy had had night terrors: swimming and smothering in raw sewage like quicksand, pulling her down, down…

  Panic drove her pulse into a gallop so strong she felt it in her fingertips. Her breathing quickened as well, then she clamped her throat shut, holding it in. Feeling the burn of her lungs fighting for release.

  Was that how it would feel? How much air did she have? Even if she found the overhead hatch, could somehow reach it, even if she got the hatch open, would she find anything except a wall of dirt or more concrete trapping her inside?

  Surrendering to the need to inhale, she smashed her palm against the nearest wall. A septic tank. Where better to bury someone alive?

  Lucy’s childhood nightmare. How could he have known?

  He didn’t, she told herself, pushing away from the walls to explore the floor between them. He couldn’t have. A buried septic tank was simply the perfect place to stash someone you don’t want anyone to see or hear.

  And what better way to dispose of a body?

  The man had promised she would die. He just hadn’t said how long it would take.

  Now

  5:24 p.m.

  The barn stank of diesel and dried grass. And now death. A simple metal Quonset hut, designed to house tractors and equipment and combine attachments like the one with the wickedly sharp blades. The one with the man’s body facedown, impaled against its blades.

  Using the rake as a makeshift crutch and bracing herself against the galvanized-steel exterior wall, Lucy hobbled toward the front door. As she made her slow, ungainly progress, she passed the open door she’d entered through, taking one last look outside, across the snow, at the place where she should have died.

  The glare of the light above the door made her trail of blood appear black against the white. Empty field—no help there. In fact the only tracks were her bloody footsteps, the man’s boot prints, and the tracks of a large dog.

  Christ, the dog. Where was the dog?

  Terror gripped her, and she stopped, the rake shaking in her hand. She didn’t—she couldn’t—face the dog. Not again. Her stomach rebelled, and if she’d had anything to vomit, it would have come up. Ignoring the pain, she forced her body to keep moving.

  But that didn’t stop her from holding her breath, listening hard for the soft thud of the dog’s footfalls, the gleeful wheeze of its breathing when it caught sight of its prey, the whoosh of its rush through the air as it prepared to pounce.

  She turned her back on the field and the pit beneath it. She needed to get to her family. Now. Before time ran out.

  Seven o’clock. He’d said she had until seven. What time was it now?

  Her foot brushed against a stray piece of equipment, and she gasped, the pain so swift and overwhelming she almost dropped the rake.

  “No time,” she muttered, the thought of Nick and Megan a lifeline leading her from the pain. She resumed her circuit of the barn.

  Her grip on the rake was weakening, fingers past burning to numb. Only good thing about the cold was that her feet were also numb, as long as she kept weight off her mangled left foot. The threat of the dog was a constant worry, but she’d seen no sign of it while she was dealing with its owner.

  Dealing with. She made a choking noise, swallowing blood and finding a loose tooth with the tip of her tongue. Be honest, Lucy. Killing its owner.

  She’d killed before—been forced to during the Zapata cartel’s attack on Pittsburgh last month. But that was at a distance, through the scope of a long gun. Nothing like what she’d done tonight.

  The man’s final shriek tore through her memory, jarring her. She froze, imagining he wasn’t dead, had somehow pushed himself free of the combine blades and now followed her, intent on finishing what he’d started. Killing her. And her family.

  If her captor had lied, if he’d been working alone, then she could relax. After all, he was dead, which meant no one left to threaten her loved ones.

  If he was working alone. He’d made a big show out of sending texts and talking about others taking orders from him, talked about coordinating everyone to get everything done by seven o’clock, but she’d seen in him a hubris that matched that of the child predators she hunted. Men ensconced in worlds of their own creation, worlds where they held all the power, didn’t easily delegate to others. Wouldn’t risk losing control over any aspect of their lives.

  Her instincts said he was working alone. But she couldn’t risk her family on a gut feeling. She needed to know they were safe.

  She reached the front wall of the barn, tugged the door open, and was rewarded with the sight of a Jeep Grand Cherokee. She would have shouted for joy if she could’ve still felt her lips. Victory, though, quickly turned to ash.

  The dog, a large rottweiler, trained to kill, was in the Jeep’s rear compartment, kenneled inside a crate. It saw her—or smelled her blood, tasted a second chance to finish what its master had started—and began to bark and lunge against the steel walls that trapped it beyond the reach of its prey.

  She hated the dog, but she couldn’t waste time dealing with it, as long as it was locked up, safely out of her way. She had to overcome a bigger obstacle: the dead man didn’t have car keys on him.

  She limped to the SUV and opened the door. Climbing inside brought new waves of pain—pulling her weight up onto the seat, twisting to raise her left foot inside, setting it down again as gently as possible. By the time she finished, her jaw was clenched so tight it felt like hot needles driving into her eardrums. Didn’t help that the dog, which outweighed Lucy, was throwing its weight back and forth, rocking the Jeep as it howled for release.

  The Jeep was an older model. No nav system, no OnStar, no phone. At least not within eyesight.

  But—thank you, Lord!—the man had left his keys dangling from the ignition. Guess he didn’t think killing her would take him more than a few minutes. For some reason, the thought made her want to howl in concert with the damn dog.

  Her fingers trembling, she tu
rned the key, holding her breath, expecting this to be some kind of trick, a trap.

  The dash lit up with bright lights, the radio startling her as it belted Christian death metal, joining with the dog’s howls to create a bone-jarring cacophony. But all of her attention was on the dashboard clock.

  5:37 it read in blood-red digits.

  Lucy added her own whoop of joy to the noise filling the Jeep. Time. She still had time.

  If her captor was a man of his word.

  She rammed the vehicle into drive, and sped down the dirt lane. Leaving behind the barn and the man she’d killed, she pushed the accelerator, skidding out onto the paved road the farm lane intersected, without even checking for oncoming traffic.

  The dog protested from the rear, where its crate shifted and tilted, then thumped back down. She stabbed the radio off, needing all her energy to block out the pain and figure out where the hell she was.

  There was no traffic. The road was two lanes, blacktop, twisting and winding with trees on one side and barren fields on the other. No lights, no signs of civilization.

  Then she spotted a road sign. Route 51. So close to home. She could have died—body never to be found—and she would have been just a few miles from home. She forced the thought aside. She had to get home, to save Nick and Megan…

  No. She shook her head, her brain foggy with pain and adrenaline. No. She didn’t know for sure where Nick or Megan were, much less who her captor had targeted.

  A phone. She needed to reach a phone.

  The January night was clear, stars cascading across the sky. They’d bought their Christmas tree from a farm not far from here, she remembered. Nick dunked homemade doughnuts into hot cider at the farmer’s stand while she and Megan slurped hot cocoa topped with dabs of marshmallow whip.

  She stomped her good foot onto the accelerator, the wind shaking the Jeep. Up ahead a familiar red-and-yellow sign lit up the night, obscuring the stars. Sheetz. A roadside mecca for weary travelers throughout Pennsylvania, promising hot coffee and clean restrooms, but most importantly to Lucy, a phone. She could get help to Nick and Megan.

  An eighteen-wheeler coming from the other direction suddenly cut her off, turning left into the Sheetz parking lot ahead of her.

  Didn’t the idiot driver see her? There was no room to maneuver around the tractor-trailer. She slammed on the brakes, kicking her useless left foot and sending pain howling through her body.

  The dog’s barking grew frantic, competing with the screech of the tires. The Jeep wobbled and lurched as she yanked the wheel, spotting a narrow opening between the truck’s front bumper and the guardrail leading into the convenience store’s parking lot. The trucker finally spotted her, hitting his brakes and twisting the wheel until he almost jackknifed.

  The Jeep’s center of gravity was too high. It finally surrendered, toppling over the guardrail.

  Lucy wrenched the wheel. The seat belt and air bags did their job—her body hurled in first one direction, then slapped back against her seat. No, no, no, her voice screamed inside her head. This couldn’t be happening. She didn’t have time…

  The Jeep skidded to a stop, resting on its passenger side. Lucy hung from the seat belt, her body trying to fall into the other seat and against the door that was now the floor of the vehicle.

  Other than a slap from the air bag deploying and more muscles wrenched in unnatural directions, Lucy wasn’t hurt. She clawed the remnants of the air bag away. The dog whimpered.

  She twisted in her seat and tried to push her door open. It didn’t move. The sound of the dog’s claws skittering against glass echoed through the suddenly quiet vehicle. Had the kennel broken open? She strained to turn to see into the rear.

  Was the damn dog clawing its way over the seat even now, ready to finish the job it had started earlier, eager to tear her apart? This time it wouldn’t stop at her foot and ankle. It would go for the jugular.

  She rammed her weight against the door. Still nothing. Even if she did get it open, it was going to be almost impossible to climb out on her own.

  She didn’t care. She didn’t have time for impossible. Not if she was going to save her family.

  Then

  11:11 a.m.

  She was in a shitload of trouble, Lucy decided, as she paced the interior of her concrete prison. Literally.

  She hugged her arms around herself, cursing the fact that she’d dressed in a thin silk blouse for the meeting in Harrisburg rather than her usual layers of fleece. Maybe she’d freeze to death.

  Not a bad way to go. She forced the renegade thought aside. No one was dying. Not today. Not with her family in this guy’s sights.

  Besides, the concrete and dirt she was buried in made for decent insulation. Despite the snow and frigid temperatures outside, she was cold but not freezing.

  How much air did she have? She stopped, doing some quick calculations in the impenetrable black… No, air wouldn’t be a problem, not as long as the outlet pipes were open.

  Easy to seal them off, the pessimistic voice continued, cataloguing the number of ways Lucy’s kidnapper could kill her. Or hook them up to a vehicle’s exhaust pipe, pump carbon monoxide down here. Or fill the place with water—then it’d be a toss-up between drowning and hypothermia.

  Or just leave me here to starve.

  No, she’d die of thirst first. Didn’t matter.

  “Not. Going. To. Happen.” Lucy’s voice ricocheted from wall to wall, surrounding her with the affirmation, driving her doubts away. For now.

  He was probably listening. Maybe even watching if he had concealed a thermal-imaging camera in one of the pipes or on the ceiling.

  Lucy didn’t care. She wasn’t playing by his rules. Not with her family’s lives at stake.

  She continued her exploration of her dungeon. She walked the perimeter again, fingertips touching the outer concrete wall, feet sweeping the ground invisible to her in the dark, searching for anything hidden there. Halfway down the length of the tank, her toe brushed something hard and sharp.

  Lucy stopped. She abandoned the anchor of the wall and stooped to feel what her foot had struck. A cinder block. In the center of the floor.

  It was just an ordinary cinder block. No hidden compartments with a stash of weapons, a cell phone, or radio. Nothing that could help her. It was really too heavy to use as a weapon, but if she had to she would.

  She sat on it, face turned up, pondering the blackness above her. There was only one reason why her captor would have left it here.

  He’d needed a way to climb out.

  Lucy jumped up and balanced on the side of the block. Hard to do in the dark, with nothing to orient her. She wobbled and caught herself with one palm pressed against the wall, the other raised overhead.

  Nothing. Just more empty blackness.

  She stepped down, sat on the block again. At five foot five, she should have felt it if the ceiling were seven feet high… Yeah, sixty-five inches plus another sixteen or so of arm reach, plus the eight inches of the cinder block… She had to do the math twice to be sure, but seven feet was eighty-four inches, and she should have more than cleared that.

  Okay, maybe the septic tank was eight feet tall. Made more sense—if her guy was at least six feet tall, he could probably have made it out of a seven foot container without the block. But at eight feet, he’d need a few extra inches, give him leverage to boost the lid open.

  When she was a kid, she’d seen two kinds of lids on tanks like these. Big, thick concrete plugs—no way he’d use that, not until he was certain he was finished with her—and slimmer metal or resin hatches that resembled manhole covers. It’d have to be one of those, something he could open from either side.

  If he could do it, so could she. Only she’d need more than a few inches to reach it.

  She stood the cinder block on its short side, doubling its height. The floor was level enough that it didn’t wobble too much. But climbing onto the tiny platform wasn’t easy, even with the walls to brace
against. She balanced both feet on the eight-inch square and stretched…

  Twice she ended up falling on her ass; once she caught herself before falling but skinned her shin on the edge of the block, and finally, breathing slow, concentrating on her feet planted just so, raising her hands bit by bit over her head… she found the ceiling.

  The small victory thrilled through her. She had enough room to plant her palms flat with a bend in her elbow—good, she’d need the extra leverage once she found the hatch.

  It couldn’t be far. Even if the block had slid to the side after he pushed off it to climb out, the hatch had to be near the center of the tank. Her fingers swept through the darkness. She forced herself to look straight ahead—couldn’t see anything above her anyway, and tilting her face up was messing with her precarious balance.

  She found two breaks in the flawless concrete: large eyehooks screwed into the concrete about six inches from each other. Stretched her fingers a few inches more and caught the lip of a round structure.

  She’d found her escape route.

  Now

  5:57 p.m.

  Gravity always wins, Lucy’s father had told her when he’d taught her how to ride a bike. He’d said it with a smile as he helped her up off the pavement and back onto her two-wheeler. Dad didn’t believe in training wheels, he believed in finding your own way, always getting up no matter how many times you fell.

  Never surrender, never quit the fight. Lucy had adopted his motto for her own after he died of lung cancer when she was twelve—fighting until his very last breath.

  He hadn’t told her gravity was also a bitch—she’d figured that out herself over the years. And right now that bitch stood between Lucy and her family’s safety.

  She released a scream born of frustration and pain. Or tried to. The only noise she could make with her swollen vocal cords was a muffled whoosh. But the dog’s howling from the back of the Jeep more than made up for it.

  A man’s face appeared at the windshield. Followed quickly by two more men—both teenagers, one wearing a Sheetz uniform. “You okay?”