by N. M. Brown
‘Listen,’ Leighton tried. ‘You’ve got to list–’
Leighton felt his feet kicked apart. Someone grabbed his head and his hands were roughly pushed together and cuffed. He twisted his face to look towards the bus, which was pulling away. When the silver bulk had passed, Leighton found, as he expected, the bus stop was empty.
‘Leighton Jones, I am arresting you on suspicion of trespass, theft, and the abduction of a vulnerable person. You have the right to remain silent, you have the right to an attorney…’
He didn’t hear the rest. All of his mental processes were consumed by the horror of Vicki’s situation, and the fact she was aboard the fleeing bus, unarmed.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Janey opened her eyes; the left one was painful and swollen. She tried to reach for it and instantly felt a flash of pain rip across her shoulder. It was then, in those first moments awake, that she realised the absolute horror of her situation. She was naked and fastened to the bed with a pair of steel handcuffs which were looped through the centre bar of the headboard of a rusting metal bedstead. Her head was propped up on a shapeless pillow. Beneath her body, the stained mattress was wrapped in clear plastic sheeting. The room was old with a scarred wooden floor and peeling floral wallpaper. To her left was the only source of watery light – a grimy window. But, perhaps worse than all of these discoveries was the fact a piece of duct tape had been wrapped around her head, covering her mouth. She barely had time to recall the horror of her abduction before she heard footsteps outside the door.
Janey genuinely flinched as the door opened and the tall man who had dragged her to the bus, walked in. His right hand was clamped around what she initially thought was a rifle, but as he approached, she saw it was some type of plastic tripod.
‘Well, hi there, miss.’ He grinned at her. ‘I hope you had a nice rest. Soon, you’re going to need your energy.’
For a painfully long time, the man simply stood staring at Janey, drinking in her naked vulnerability. He loved this part of his ritual, almost more than the later, messier stuff. At this point, he was fully in control – he was the one with the power over the bitch that had attracted him.
He then began to whistle to himself as he assembled the black metal tripod and placed it on the ground at the foot of the bed.
‘You might be saying nothing just now, but you’ll be so noisy later on. That’s why I have these.’ He began to rummage around in his trouser pockets, producing two grubby foam earplugs, which he held out triumphantly. Janey could not think beyond the horrifying fact that the sadistic man who was arranging to rape and murder her, looked so ordinary. There was no scarred deformity, no villainous laugh – just a bland man, like millions of others.
‘Now,’ he said, no longer looking at her, ‘I’m just going to fetch the old video camera from the barn, so don’t you go rushing off anywhere.’
He left the door open intentionally as if to mock his chained-up victim with the illusion of escape.
In response to this, Janey fought an insistent urge to whimper herself into despair. Part of her mind was almost defeated by the absolute horror of her predicament, and yet, something inside her refused to let this pathetic man have any dominion over her. Instead, she focused on the one moment of good fortune in the entire nightmare.
As a child, Janey had saved scavenged pennies in an old jam jar, which she secretly kept in the musty shadows beneath her bed. One rainy February afternoon, she had tipped them out onto her Snow White bedspread to count them. They had all clattered into a metallic puddle on the bed, except for one of the stubborn coins that remained stuck to the bottom of the glass jar, adhered by the remnants of the original jam.
Janey had pushed one of her hands into the jar to release the coin with the ragged nail of one small fingertip, only once her knuckles and thumb joint were in past the rim, her hand got stuck. Reluctant to break the jar, for fear of being cut, Janey had twisted her hand with the strange glass glove. Finally, in a moment of inspiration, she moved her thumb across the palm of her hand and felt a weird inaudible click as it dislocated. Her hand had moved instantly free of the glass prison. In the ensuing years, she had practised this move many times. She would often help her mother around the home by recovering items dropped into small places.
Now, in the abyss of her desperate situation, Janey knew she had one small chance of escape. However, this was dependent on her ability to stay entirely in the moment.
Janey twisted her head around to look at the headboard. Moving her hands slowly forward and backwards a couple of times, she performed the simple act of dislocation and pulled first one hand and then the other through the handcuffs. Her main concern was to stop the handcuffs from falling and clattering noisily onto the floor. She managed to prevent this from happening by pressing the metal hoops firmly against the back of her head until she was able to move them onto the mattress.
Her wide eyes scanned the desolate room for any type of potential weapon. She spotted a bedside cabinet and opened the drawer, carefully trying to suppress the dull scrape of wood on wood. Inside was a blood-smeared roll of duct tape, a small Kodak camera, and a long boning knife.
Janey felt a flicker of hope ignite inside her. She held her breath, removed the knife, and placed it under the pillow. Aware that keeping the handcuffs in place would simply be too difficult, Janey let them slip down beneath the knife. She then shifted her body painfully up the bed, and placed her hands above her head in the position they had originally been fastened. She adjusted her sweating hands so they gripped the knife handle, and tried to avoid thinking about its dry, crusty texture.
When the man returned with the camera, he clipped it onto the tripod and switched it on, and Janey heard the motor groaning to life. A small, red LED light blinked steadily beneath the eye of the lenses. The man looked at Janey and ran his tongue over his bottom lip. What he did next was even more unsettling, he turned to the camera, held up two thumbs in a gesture of success and turned back to her.
‘Now, we are going to have some fun, bitch, and if you’re a good girl, I’ve got a nice surprise in the drawer for you.’
He pulled off his T-shirt and pants to reveal his skinny, pasty body before he climbed up onto the bed. He grabbed Janey’s legs, forcing them apart and knelt between them. She noticed his small erection was stabbing at the material of his underwear.
‘It’s time to play.’ The man grinned.
As her attacker hooked his two thumbs into the waistband of his underpants, Janey seized her chance. Springing forward, she drew the knife with both hands from behind her head and thrust it directly into the man’s throat. He let out a strange meowing noise and tried to clamber away. His blood felt unnaturally hot as it sprayed on her exposed skin. Janey rolled off the bed and onto the floor, where she began to crawl clumsily towards the door. Behind her, Dyer was lying face down the bed, rasping and gurgling as his lifeblood seeped steadily onto the slick plastic sheeting. To Janey, the journey to that doorway had the treacly slowness of nightmares. She fully expected to reach the doorway, only to be confronted by the large man with the Hawaiian shirt who had promised to skin them both.
She reached the door and used the frame to pull herself up to her unsteady feet. Things had faded to silence on the bed behind her, but she did not dare turn around, just in case she found herself face-to-face with something unspeakable. Instead, she began to make her way out of the room and on to a large dusty upper landing.
Janey found herself standing upon a floor which was covered with large mason jars. Dark splatters stained the area of the floor between each glass container. Thankfully, it was too dark to see what had been preserved in the glass containers, but the smell of pickled death on that stifling landing was overwhelming. It stank of spoiled meat and chemicals. In response to the stench, Janey felt a rising convulsion in her stomach, and she retched, splattering the floorboards with hot, bitter vomit.
Wiping her mouth, she then hurried down the stairs to the grou
nd floor.
As she stepped off the stairs, Janey found herself in a grubby kitchen area where a small fire was smouldering in the stone hearth.
On the grey ashen corners of the fire, she could see the scorched fragments of her clothes. Beyond the fire was a single wooden door. Moving quickly and as quietly as she could, Janey approached the door and peered out of it. She discovered that it led to the dusty courtyard. This was all the opportunity she needed.
After a brief glance, to check that nobody was around, she stepped outside and had to shield her eyes against the fierce sunlight. From this new location, she could see that the house stood alone in a dry basin of land, with no other house or feature for miles. A single dirt track led away from the property, heading south like a dry river bed leading back to the sea.
Janey knew then that her only option of escape was to follow that track and hide from any approaching vehicles.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
At the same time as Janey Bernal was discovering her handcuffs, Leighton was cramped in the back seat of a cruiser, his hands also painfully cuffed behind him. Unfortunately, unlike Janey, he did not possess the ability to squeeze out of his restraints. The heat was stifling in the locked car and Leighton found himself struggling to breathe.
John Ross, the senior officer who was driving the car, was confident Gretsch would probably reward him with a week’s holiday for bringing this crazy old bastard in.
‘Please, guys,’ Leighton tried to lean forward to engage the two officers in the front of the car, ‘the girl on that bus is in real danger. Can you just radio in, just ask for a car to pull the damn thing over?’
‘Shut up!’ shouted Harold Dean – the passenger side cop, who was playing a game on his mobile phone – without turning around.
‘It’s true,’ Leighton continued, ‘I’ve been investigating the bus and–’
‘Investigating?’ Ross laughed almost too loudly.
‘She could die!’ Leighton shouted – his mind suddenly filled with the endless horrors that could fall upon Vicki, knowing that he was partly responsible for this. He had few – if any options – left.
‘Maybe she got on the bus to escape your stalking,’ Dean said as he turned on the air con.
‘Listen, Jones,’ Ross said with a smile, ‘why don’t you just get yourself an inflatable girlfriend. They stick around a bit longer than the co-eds.’
‘Please help,’ Leighton repeated, his voice more strained this time.
‘Shut up,’ Dean said and made a mock yawn. ‘You’re getting boring, old man. There’s no need to go on and on.’
‘Yeah,’ said his partner, turning around. ‘Maybe you should just sit back, and – oh shit, shit! Pull over, Ross!’
Ross glanced in the rear-view mirror to see Leighton’s rapidly darkening face and his head lolling on his chest. His eyes had rolled to white slits in his face and saliva was pouring from his mouth to form a vertical puddle on his pale blue shirt.
‘Fuck!’ Ross shouted. ‘He’s having a goddam seizure or something; we can’t have him die while in custody. That would be all we need.’
The cruiser came to a stop at the roadside and both police officers climbed clumsily out of the vehicle. There was no noise from Leighton as he was dragged out of the rear seat by Ross.
Almost as soon as he was out of the vehicle, Leighton’s legs gave way, crumpling beneath him, and he tumbled backwards onto the dusty roadside.
‘Dammit, Dean, help me out here!’ Ross called to the younger officer.
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘You hold him upright and I’ll get his cuffs off – and keep a look out for cars. Anyone stops, we say he’s D&D. Okay?’
‘Sure,’ Ross said, and crouched over Leighton, pulling him to his feet. He was a dead weight and the police officer struggled to hold him upright while his colleague moved behind him to unlock the steel handcuffs.
Leighton performed the action so swiftly the officers barely knew what had happened. While Ross was busy unlocking the cuffs, Leighton let out the breath he had been holding, and let his half-lidded eyes fall on Ross’s holster, about four inches in front of him. As soon as one hand was free, he let it fall forward and pulled the Beretta from the holster.
Throwing his head backwards, Leighton smashed it into Dean’s nose. At the same time he saw sudden horror spread across Ross’s face and shot him in the foot. He then spun around and threw the dust he had gathered when he had been on the ground, into Dean’s face. Seizing the moment, Leighton stepped behind him and slammed his foot into the back of Dean’s knees, forcing him to fall forward onto the ground.
He then pushed the barrel of the pistol to the back of his head.
‘Okay, young buck, I want your gun and your car keys, and I want them now!’
Chapter Forty
The stocky man who had pulled a kicking Vicki onto the bus, threw her into the first seat behind the driver and sat alongside her, blocking her in with his body. The dull reek of sweat emanating from his body was almost overwhelming.
Moments earlier, the bus had jolted to a stop and Vicki had tried to wave it on again. Twisting one arm up her back and gripping her throat with the other, he had hauled her aboard the bus and thrown her into the first available seat.
‘What was that shit about back there?’
Vicki said nothing.
‘I asked you a fucking question!’ he persisted.
The man suddenly grabbed her head, tearing out some strands of hair and twisting her face towards him.
‘I just changed my mind about the bus ride,’ Vicki said quickly. ‘I had just realised I’d left my purse at home.’
‘Sorry, our tickets are non-refundable, honey, everyone completes their journey.’
He chuckled as he released her head and began stroking her leg. Vicki moved instinctively away from him and towards the window. In response to this rejection, the large man sighed impatiently and slapped her hard on her face.
‘Now you play nice, or you’ll get another tap, okay?’
It was in that moment that Vicki almost fainted. She had caught a glimpse of a thick, gold chain hanging like a glamorous noose around the neck of the man. Along the chain, several rings of various sizes and shapes had been threaded. The third one from the end was a small gold band studded with garnets – it was the ring she had bought Laurie for her twenty-first birthday.
‘Did you fucking hear me?’
Vicki nodded, her skin red and stinging.
‘Good, now, take off your jeans!’
‘Okay,’ Vicki said. ‘Just don’t hit me again.’
As she undid the top button of her jeans, the large man began moaning and rubbing his crotch.
‘I’ll hit you as often as I want, honey.’
Vicki shuddered as she leant forward to untie her shoes. Undoing one shoelace, she then slipped her mother’s compact pistol from her sock and undid the safety catch. Sitting upright, she pointed it at the large man. His expression darkened and he made a raging lunge for her.
Vicki fired the gun directly into his stomach, sending a mist of blood onto the face of the elderly man in the seat opposite. The force of the shot knocked her attacker off the seat and into the aisle, where he sat like a sullen child. The bus, which had swerved momentarily, causing angry horns to blare, resumed its course.
‘Somebody kill this bitch!’ he screamed as blood oozed through his fingers.
A clear polythene bag was immediately thrust over Vicki’s head from the seat behind, and some type of cable looped around her neck. Within seconds, it was pulled tight, choking her, while she sucked desperately at the plastic shroud. She was already beginning to see black spots form in her field of vision when she realised what she needed to do.
Twisting her body to the side, Vicki pointed the gun at the back of her seat and fired three shots in succession. The powder from the blast scorched the skin of her back, etching it into her skin like a sweeping tattoo.
The cab
le around her neck tightened for a second, then grew loose. Vicki pulled it from her grazed throat and gasped for air as she ripped the mask off. Glancing to the aisle, she saw the large man on the floor was holding his bleeding stomach with one hand while struggling to open a butterfly knife with the other. Beyond him, the elderly man was trembling as he fiddled with a rubber mouthpiece and large metal gas bottle.
Turning desperately around, she saw two dead men in the seat directly behind her. One had taken a shot to the face and a smear of blood, brain, and bone rose up on his headrest, like a grotesque thought bubble; the other had fallen to the side and was now blocking the aisle. Beyond him were several grunting passengers clambering over the corpse in a desperate attempt to reach her.
Vicki knew she had seven bullets left in the clip – not enough for all the attackers. Time seemed to stop almost entirely… For a moment, she considered turning the weapon on herself, but then she remembered what Leighton had told her: they will stop if they are caught, if they burn themselves out, or if they are killed. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she heard her friend Laurie Taylor’s laughter, rich and sweet. These inhumane creatures could not be allowed to continue or disappear back into the concealing folds of society.
From somewhere out in the real world, she heard the distant swelling wail of a police siren.
‘Fucking kill her!’ the large man screamed again in rage and pain. In the moment it had taken Vicki to consider her limited options, he had opened the knife and thrown it at her. It flew through the air and the blade sunk deep into Vicki’s right bicep. A bright flash of pain tore through her entire arm and she almost dropped the gun. Instead, with the knife still fixed in her flesh, she used her trembling left hand to cup the weapon and took careful aim at her attacker.