The Devil's Road: Devil Dog Book 2 (Out Of The Dark)

by Boyd Craven III

  Startled by the yelling, Jamie checked the side mirrors and saw what had caused me alarm. Two military Hummers with machine gun turrets were a quarter mile behind us, and closing fast.

  “You have to go faster,” I yelled to her. “Over fifty-five for sure,” I screamed.

  “I’ll try,” she yelled back.

  “Ride the shoulder,” I heard Luis shout, and my whole body vibrated as we rolled over the rumble strips.

  Slowly we were gaining distance on them. Being much larger vehicles, they couldn’t ride the left shoulder the way we were; they still had to weave in and out of stalled traffic, sometimes using the median instead of pavement. Still, they were too close for comfort, and I knew we were in the range of the .50s if that’s what they had mounted. I was looking behind, waiting for a warning shot, when the road in front of the truck erupted a hundred feet in front of us.

  I was almost thrown over the cab, Jamie had to brake so hard, and I had to grab the top of the window and snag her belt to keep her from being launched over. The tires were squealing, and the side of the truck started creeping sideways, threatening to go into the grassy median. For the first time in a long time, I prayed. None of us could survive that if we rolled. The acrid smell of rubber and the sounds of Mel crying out in alarm were all I could take, and I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes, waiting for the inevitable.

  It was over much sooner than I thought, the truck coming to rest with the rear tires still on the pavement, but the bed over the median. I looked back and saw that the Hummers were closing the distance fast. I’d never seen or heard the shot, but I glanced to the wreckage in front of us, and I knew it wasn’t them. It looked like the crater an HE mortar round would make. It’d torn the asphalt up, cratering the road. Even worse, it had torn into the nearby car, which had come to rest on its roof, blocking half the road. I turned back to see the turrets lowering in on us.

  I raised my hands. There was nothing to do. Courtney saw what I was doing and raised hers as well.

  “What’s going on, Dick?” Luis called.

  “Get out and keep your hands in sight,” I said. “It’s the government. I don’t know why they are chasing us, or who fired what. It’s pretty obvious they wanted us to stop. Let’s not give them an excuse to shoot us, huh?”

  “Mom, I’m scared,” Mel said from behind me.

  “Me too,” Jamie said, her door opening.

  I snuck a look back and saw both her hands come out of the truck first, and then her head. I’d promised them I would get them home to Steve safe. I didn’t know if I could keep that promise now. I just didn’t understand what was going on and…

  “Line up at the tailgate, hands up, or you will be fired upon.” A voice came out of a loud speaker even before the Hummers came to a stop.

  I judged the distance to the ground. If I dropped my hands to climb over, they might think I was going for my gun on the drop sling. If I grabbed the sling to take the gun off, they might think the same thing and open fire. So I went with the safest option. I tried to step over the tailgate and jump down. I landed hard, pain shooting up to my hip. An old wound that kept flaring up made the pain shoot through my body.

  I held my hand up for Courtney, but she dropped without assistance to stand to my left. Luis joined her a moment later, and Jamie and Mel stood to my right. I could hear somebody’s knees knocking together as the second Hummer pulled up next to the first one, both .50s trained on us. Out of the back, a short squad got out, their M4s raised to cover us. They weren’t wearing normal military uniforms; they were wearing camos for sure, but they had a patch on them that said… DHS?

  “Yeah, that guy in the middle,” a voice I hadn’t heard in a while said. “He’s the prick that murdered my father and stole all our stuff.”

  It felt like my stomach dropped out when Ben stepped out of the Hummer and pointed at me.

  “Who’s that?” Courtney asked me, without turning her head.

  “He’s the kid whose dad ran us down with the dogs,” I told everyone as they advanced towards us, guns held up on us.

  “The one who you let live?” Jamie asked me.

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  The last thing I saw was one of the agents pull a black cloth sack out of his back pocket and pull it over my head. I was roughly thrown to the ground, and I felt at least two set of hands frisking me, disarming me, and stripping me of my vest, sidearm, and knife. I still had one in my boot, but a sharp pain in the back of my head over the shouted protests of my friends was the last thing I heard before going black.

  I threw up. I leaned over to the side when the urge overtook me and let go. That’s when I realized there wasn’t a mask on me. My arms were cuffed or zip-tied behind my back and fastened to the chair I was sitting in. Chair? I looked around. The floors and walls were cement. There was a drain in the middle of the floor and a galvanized bucket in the corner. I’d been underground long enough to recognize I was subgrade somewhere. The air was moist and dank, and a single bulb illuminated the room behind a wire and glass enclosure.

  I couldn’t see behind me, but when I coughed, I heard the echo softly. It couldn’t be a large room. Maybe eight by eight feet.

  “So Dick, I see you’re awake,” a voice said back to my left.

  I struggled to turn my head, but it felt like little imps were using jackhammers on my brain and eyes. Probably from being knocked unconscious. Still, I was able to turn my head enough to see that there was a video camera near the corner and a small speaker beneath that.

  “Barely,” I croaked and then was sick again.

  I waited. I thought about Ben, about the promise I’d made to his father. He’d got ahead of us somehow. How did he get ahead of us? Then I remembered the sound of the motorcycle. That made me feel cold all over. I’d killed his dad in self-defense, and against my better judgment I’d made the promise. I didn’t actually know if I would have killed him even without the promise… but I’d kill him now. He was somehow responsible for this… this…

  The steel door across from me opened, and a short man stepped in. He looked gaunt, almost skeletal.

  “Dick, is it? I’m Dr. Skinner. I’ve been asked to monitor your interrogation and make sure you survive it. For now.”

  The words were supposed to fill me with dread, but I felt a slow burn of anger instead. I didn’t travel all this way, leaving behind me the bodies of the fallen - so much killing, so much guilt - to die in some black hole the government had set up years ago. I’d heard of places like this, the places that came about after the Patriot Act. Places for detention and active interrogation techniques on American soil. Abu Ghraib? Guantanamo Bay? Those were just the places the public knew about, and what went on there was nothing like it was rumored to be when hidden on the large tracts of government-owned land.

  “Yeah, Dick Pershing,” I said, watching him pull a cart into the room once he had made sure I was still restrained.

  My hands were mostly numb, so even if I wanted to do something, I couldn’t. Still, waves of nausea washed over me, and I turned to throw up again. When I was done, I turned to find Skinner standing in front of me with a pen light.

  “I’m going to check your eyes, hold still,” he said. Explosions of pain shot through my head as the light penetrated my retinas.

  “You have a concussion. That’s to be expected, you were out for over a day. I was worried you’d gone into a coma.”

  “If you were worried about that, why didn’t you hook me up to an IV, a monitoring system?” I asked.

  “With what you’re being charged with, they aren’t going to spend a lot of time and effort keeping you alive.”

  He pulled out some surgical scissors and started cutting away at my shirt from my neck, down under my armpit, and towards the stomach. He repeated the procedure on the other side and then pulled the shirt off. Quick, effective, and it left my bare chest exposed. He looked me over and then felt the freshly healed gunshot wound on my side.

  “Throug
h and through?” he asked.

  “Yeah, about two months ago,” I told him.

  “These?” he asked, pointing to white-flecked scars that peppered my lower abdomen.

  “Shrapnel. That one almost killed me,” I told him.

  “Grenade?” he asked.

  “Mortar,” I told him.

  “Dick Pershing, former marine, medically discharged. Not for these wounds, though,” he said, poking and prodding at my bruised torso.

  “No, medically discharged. PTSD,” I answered truthfully.

  If he knew that much about me, they still had working computers somewhere with my service record.

  “Who told you about me?” I asked him.

  “I just asked your friends for your name. They’ve been processed as well.”

  “Are they being held here also?” I asked him, since he was being so chatty.

  “They’re being held, but not in this place. As far as we’ve been told, you’re the one who murdered Ben’s family and looted their belongings. Your friends had nothing to do with that from what the boy says.”

  “I didn’t murder his family,” I said, a hint of anger creeping into my voice. “His dad was running us down with a pack of hunting dogs.”

  “That’s not how I’ve heard it. I also heard about the families at the telephone building that were gunned down.”

  “What?” I asked him, looking up.

  “Three men here all identified you as the one leading a raiding party to kill the families who had holed up at a phone station building. After that, you looted it and stole their trucks. One of which they caught you in. It’s pretty damning evidence against you. You see, that’s why they wouldn’t let me treat you too much. If you had died, it would have been easier on all of us, especially you.”

  “Why easier on me? I have nothing to hide, and for the record… the men that were killed had been raiding a small community, forcing them to pay a tithe. The community fought back. As it was, my friends had nothing to do with it anyways.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Skinner said.

  “Why is that?” I asked him, pissed.

  “Two reasons,” he said. “Number one is the needle tracks on your arms.”

  I looked down and, shirtless, the scars from years of abuse still showed. Sometimes an injection site would get infected, scar up. My arms were covered in them.

  “Number two, Dick Pershing is a dead man. Who are you really?”

  “I’m a dead man? No, I’m not. I’m right here,” I told Skinner, my anger fading away to confusion.

  “Dick Pershing has been dead for years, so let me ask you one more time, who are you really?”

  I had gone off the grid when I became homeless, chained to my addictions. Had Mary come looking for me? It was possible I’d been declared dead. My only tie to the real world during those dark years had been Salina, but even then, who would believe the records of a walk-in clinic that catered to the homeless?

  “Listen Doc,” I said in a voice full of pain and regret. “I don’t know why your records say I’m a dead man, but I’m not. I’m right here.”

  Skinner sighed and turned to his cart. When he turned around, my blood ran cold. He had a syringe in his hand, already full of a liquid.

  “What’s that?” I asked him.

  “Oh, we were out of any of the truth serums. Sodium Pentothal and the newer things. I figured after I saw the needle marks, I’d do something that would hurt you a little less but be more effective.”

  I tried to struggle, but he pulled a rubber wrap out of a pocket and tied it around my left arm. Finding a vein, he tapped it a couple of times before taking the cap off the needle and tapping that, releasing an air bubble as he depressed the plunger a little bit.

  “What is that?” I asked him.

  “A mild morphine-heroin cocktail. After a few days of shooting you up, you’ll be begging us for another fix. I’ll get the information out of you without having to bruise my knuckles or expend resources on a has-been, washed-out old man. In the meantime, enjoy the trip.”

  He plunged the needle in. It burned like liquid fire, and I felt like my heart was going to burst in fear. Then the smack hit my system as he was applying a Band-Aid to the injection site. My breathing slowed as the drugs took effect. I felt my eyes losing focus. He’d hit me with something stronger than what I’d had on the street, and I felt my eyelids closing slightly.

  “Good, it looks like you still have a tolerance. It means I can hook you again easier,” Doctor Skinner said. “The good news is, after a few days of this, you’ll be begging me to spill all your secrets. But remember my first question… who are you really? Until you respond, it’s going to get harder and harder. I know how to draw out the agony.”

  “I thought you were here to monitor my condition during interrogation,” I slurred.

  “I lied,” he said and started cackling.

  I should have been scared, but warmth enveloped me, and I didn’t care. So far, he’d indicated that the rest of the group was being held, but not here. Safe. For now, safe—

  “I don’t care if you have to feed him yourselves, he needs food.”

  I woke up as somebody was trying to shove a spoonful of mashed potatoes in my mouth. I turned my head and heard an exasperated sigh. As soon as the spoon was taken off my face, I turned. An orderly was standing next to me with Skinner in the doorway.

  “Thirsty,” I told him.

  “Who are you?” he asked me.

  “Dick Pershing,” I answered.

  Skinner walked up and pushed a button, tilting my chair back. It startled me, and I tried to sit forward so I wouldn’t fall and found myself strapped to the chair. My hands were no longer behind my back but strapped down to the chair's padded arms. Thick straps were around my chest and stomach as well. While I was out, they’d moved me to a different chair, maybe a different room.

  “Get the feeding tube,” he barked, and the orderly walked out of my sight, to return a moment later with what looked like a stainless steel funnel and a plastic tube.

  “Normally, we pump it in. You’re not going to need that. Now you can either suck on the end of the tube and eat and drink, or we can do this the hard way. Who are you?”

  “Dick Pershing,” I answered.

  “Wrong. Why did you murder Ben’s family?”

  “I’ve never committed murder,” I answered truthfully.

  “Who are you?” he repeated.

  “Dick Pershing.”

  “Dick Pershing is dead!” Spittle flew from his mouth, and he swung an emaciated hand at me.

  The slap hurt more than I thought it should, and I licked the inside of my mouth where the hit had pushed my inner cheek into my teeth. I sucked the blood out of my teeth and looked at him dully. He spun and walked out of sight for a moment. The orderly stood there, holding the feeding tube at the ready. Skinner walked back into sight with two objects I remembered. One was a syringe, the other was a can of Ensure.

  “So we’re going to do this the hard way,” he said, shooting me up in the same arm as before without the rubber band, or waiting to find a vein.

  The first time hurt because he hadn’t been careful, but he wasn’t trying to be careful now. He wanted to punish, to hurt. I gritted my teeth until he pulled the needle out. I looked and saw blood trickling down my arm.

  “Preston, tube him,” Skinner said, shoving the can of Ensure in his surprised hands. “I’ll be back in a few moments.”

  “Uh, sure Doc,” the orderly named Preston said.

  I wanted to fight it, but I was flat on my back with my feet in the air. When he started pushing the tube down my throat, I gagged, my body’s natural reflexes trying to expel the foreign invader. Once the heroin hit my system moments later, I was still gagging, but now floating in a sea of warmth. It wasn’t so bad. I heard the top of the can getting popped, and soon a cold feeling started filling my stomach. I looked at the funnel he was pouring the Ensure into. The tube had gone from clear to an
off-white as it trailed down.

  I closed my eyes. Sleep would come soon. It had to.

  My head was rocked, and I was spitting blood. Opening my eyes, I saw a burly guard with black gloves wind up and throw another punch. It connected on the other side of my jaw, rocking my head back in another direction. I spit again and would have doubled over if I could when the punch in the gut knocked the air out of me. I coughed and struggled for breath.

  “See, I knew you wouldn’t be out as long. You ready to answer my questions?” Skinner asked.

  My throat was dry, and the guard was looking at me warily.

  “I’ve been willing,” I said, gasping between breaths. “Your problem is that you don’t believe me,” I told him.

  “Ok, so let’s go past the fact that we don’t know who you are… Why did you murder Ben’s family? You admitted to killing them. Why did you do it?”

  “His father had me pinned down,” I said, my voice thickening as the drugs kicked in.

  Like before, it felt like it was more than just the heroin in my system. Probably something to get me addicted faster. It felt good. Warm, like I was floating. Even the pain in my mouth and chest was a small thing. I felt wonderful.

  “Why did his father have you pinned down?” he asked. “What started the wrestling match?”

  “I wasn’t wrestling,” I told him. “I was pinned down by gunfire. I got the drop on him. I gave him a choice. I could leave him to die slow, or I could put him out fast and painless.”

  “Is that what you did?” he asked me.

  “Yes, after I promised not to kill his son,” I told him.

  Skinner was silent, and my eyelids were getting heavy. He hadn’t shot me up with a recreational dose; he was trying to find the point right before it knocked me out and the point of lowered inhibitions. It was heavier than anything I’d bought on the street.

  “Remind me why you were pinned down,” Skinner asked me, pulling another syringe out.

  “Yeah, give me that,” I told him hoarsely. “I’ll tell you.”

  He looked at it as if he hadn’t realized he’d picked it up.

  “Already? You want more?” he asked.