by Sam J Fires
“Listen, carefully. You are going to do exactly as I say. Otherwise, the next time you see your companion will be when I throw you her head.”
CHAPTER 6 - DONNA
“Who is this?” demanded Donna.
“Who I am is not important,” replied the voice. “The only thing you need to be concerning yourself with is what I want.”
Eric spoke into his own intercom. “What do you want? Money?”
There was silence for a few moments and both Eric and Donna wondered whether they had lost the connection. Then laughter. “What would you expect me to do with money, pray tell? What I want is something much more important. Here’s what you’re both going to do; you’re going to go back to your shelter, and ask around for Andrea Chapman and Milo Chapman, a mother and son.”
“And what do you want with them?” asked Donna, dreading what the answer would be.
“That doesn’t concern you,” said the voice. “I’m assuming you have a certain regard for your friend’s wellbeing?”
“Wait!” demanded Eric, joining the conversation. “How do we even know you have her? How do we know you’re not using her as a red herring?”
Really? Donna mouthed at him. In Jane’s absence, Donna seemed to be taking over the sarcastic banter, rolling her eyes at him.
“Don’t be a damned idiot. How do you think I’m communicating with you people in the first place?”
“So…” said Donna, silently thinking of how they could possibly negotiate. “… say we find these two people, will you let her go unharmed?”
There was another pause. “Of course,” the reply eventually came, although Eric sensed some mild reluctance in the voice.
Trying to balance the compulsion to play devil’s advocate, Eric asked, “Let’s say, speaking hypothetically, we can’t find these people, even after a solid effort… what happens then?”
“That’s actually a very good question” said the voice, cheerfully. “But I think I’ve got a better one; do either of you know what happens to any poor bastard left out in the sand for too long?”
Donna and Eric froze. It was a scenario they had often contemplated but never taken the time to dwell on for long, partly because they were only too aware of what the answer was.
“If you want to find out, just ignore what I’ve just asked you to do, and your friend will show you. Remember, Andrea and Milo Chapman. Mother and son. I expect to hear back from you within the next three hours. If I don’t…”
And the line went dead.
***
Back inside the bar, Donna, Eric, and Josie considered their options.
“Josie, do you have any idea who might have taken her?” asked Donna.
Josie rubbed her forehead. “Honestly, I don’t know. You have to fight off the odd bastard out here every now and then. It could be anyone who’s decided to take their chances. Whoever it is, they won’t go down without a fight. If they can survive these sandstorms, they’ll have no problem taking out you two.”
“Well, maybe we can go and get some reinforcements,” tried Eric.
“Oh, come off it, Eric” exclaimed Donna. “They’ve barely got enough people to guard the shelters as it is. They wouldn’t send anyone out with us. You really think they will give a shit about Jane?” Donna stopped herself when she realized how cold she sounded. But it was the brutal truth.
Josie picked up on this newfound sense of ruthless pragmatism. “My, my,” she muttered. “Looks like recent events have done a number on you too.”
“We could just go back and find these two people,” suggested Eric.
“And what if we come up empty-handed?” asked Donna. “That’s hours’ worth of time we could have spent getting Jane back.”
“We are NOT leaving her.”
Her insistent sense of loyalty burned Eric. “Where was that touching obligation when you left my friend trapped in a fucking car?”
Donna swallowed audibly. “There was nothing we could have done.”
Eric continued his onslaught. “You really know how to pick and choose when it comes to which people to help, you know that don’t you?”
Now, Donna found her own fire. “I did what I could to save you both. I wish I had done things differently, believe me. There hasn’t been a single day in the last two months where I don’t think about how I might have done things differently. But if we hadn’t acted quickly, we would have all died. And let’s be honest; we’d have been dead a hell of a lot sooner if it weren’t for Jane. Now, you want to continue to throw a stink-eye over Leo? Then fine, I don’t give a shit. You suit yourself Eric, but I am not leaving Jane out there.” Donna started to realize how manic she was sounding, like an emotional firework going off, before it finally died down and she knew she needed to reel in those pent-up emotions. “Sorry,” she murmured. “I went too far.”
“So, what do we do?” Eric decided to put on a show of planning while still needing some direction.
“’We?’” repeated Josie, bemused. “There’s no ‘we’ in this game plan. There’s just you and Donna. Jane’s nothing to me. The only reason I have any shits to give is because she knows Donna. I certainly don’t care enough to stick my neck out for her.”
“Josie… please,” begged Donna.
Josie sighed and for a moment, Donna caught the semblance of the cheerful barmaid who had always been on hand with a kind word. “I’m sorry, Donna. I really am. But the only reason I’ve been able to survive for as long as I have is because I know when to pick my battles. And this is not one I fancy picking.”
Donna thought about protesting but knew that wouldn’t do any good.
“Hold on,” interrupted Eric. “I’m a film director, not a martyr.”
“She’d do the same for us.” Donna remembered how Jane had thrown herself into a storm to save her.
“Even if we were going to do anything, how are we supposed to go about it?” asked Eric. “LA isn’t exactly a short trek. We won’t be able to cover the entire area in three hours.”
The impossibility of the task ahead weighed on Donna. She started to feel dizzy and the world began to blur. But before she could begin her descent, Eric and Josie rushed forward to catch her, lowering her to the floor.
“Is there anything you can give us that would help us?” Eric asked Josie.
“Besides a few guns, a pat on the back and a prayer for you both? Not really.”
“Okay,” said Donna breathlessly. She pulled herself up off the floor, trying to recapture that burning resolve she had possessed minutes ago. “We can do this,” she said, mainly to herself.
“I’m not worried about if we find her,” observed Eric. “I’m worried what we’re going to do when we come up against the bastard that took her. Two months living out here, what do you think that does to a person?”
CHAPTER 7 – JANE
Jane stirred slowly, feeling hot air around her face. Her face…
Panic-stricken, her hands went to move to her head… only to be stopped by tight shackles strapped around her wrists.
She was sitting on the ground, propped up against a large circular metal pillar. Around it, was a chain connected to the shackles around her wrists.
There were no windows in the room. What should have been a deserted building seemed to have been converted into a makeshift workshop. There were an array of tools and devices stacked on a wooden table. Jane strained to try and get a better look at them. Then she saw the man next to the table.
He was dressed in a leather trench coat, mid-to-late forties, shoulder length brown hair and an unruly beard like some aging rock star, yet his manner and the expression on his face implied an inquisitive, thoughtful demeanor.
“This,” he held up her helmet, “is honestly the best they could come up with? Wasn’t exactly expecting any ground-breaking technology, but I would have thought they could have fabricated something less … amateur.”
He set the helmet down on the table and walked towards Jane, his face darkening as he approached. H
e didn’t say anything at first, his eyes looking her up and down. Finally, he said, “You don’t recognize me, do you?”
“Should I?”
The man’s response came in a smack across her face and Jane felt the side of her head explode. “Ow,” she said through gritted teeth, trying not to let her pain show.
“I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised you don’t remember me,” the man remarked. “We only met briefly, and back in the day, you probably had encounters like ours all the time.”
Jane looked at him more closely, sifting through her memory trying to find something to connect to that face. But her mind came up black. The lack of recognition clearly disappointed him.
“That’s a shame,” he said. “Because I’ve been thinking about you every single day for the last ten years.”
Ten years ago… Jane had been starting her career as a police officer. Back then, fresh out of the academy, she had been determined to make a difference, to the point her colleagues had quickly labelled her a fanatic. All of Jane’s conquests had been for taking one more step up the career ladder.
And now this one was looking to drag her all the way down to hell.
“So, what’s this all about? You going to kill me?” she said without fear. She wasn’t afraid to die. She’d been – was – a police officer. She’d always known that potential death was one of the hazards of the job, and she didn’t see that had changed. She’d gotten used to the idea of dying a long time ago. The only thing she cared about was how she died. And she didn’t want to die chained to a pillar, put down by an ex-con she couldn’t even remember.
“Kill you? You know, while you were lying unconscious, I thought about it. I could pump you full of bullets like I tried to do on the day of the first sandstorm.”
“That was you firing at us?”
“That may have been impulsive,” he said, simply, then his face twisted in fury. “But put yourself in my position. I was separated from my wife and son. I never got to see my boy grow up. I spent all those years inside, because of you.
“Sure, I can blame a lot of people for the way my life panned out, myself included. But you, coming in there blazing like the fastest gun in the west, you were the one who sealed the deal for me.
“My wife wanted nothing more to do with me. She took our son. Said she ‘didn’t want him to have any negative influences in his life’. I never got to see him grow up. I never even got a picture. I missed out on his birthday parties, his baseball games, everything.
“There were times when I knew he would have needed me.” His voice was starting to break. “A dad needs to be there for his son. And you took my son’s childhood from me. And snatched a father away from a little boy. Every day, I thought about you. And I always wondered, ‘what would I do if I ever saw her again’? And then – in a twisted fate – there you were, standing in the street. Sure, you’d aged quite a few years and you were missing an eye. But it was definitely you. And I was looking down on you, with a gun in my hand. You honestly think you would have done it any differently?”
Jane didn’t answer. She had spent so long living on one side of the law, she had never thought about those on the other side. She had persuaded herself that they were scum who deserved what they got, and he was right that she had no idea who he was. He had been no one to her. The same mentality she now employed when evicting all those people from the shelters.
“And now that I have you here. I could kill you. And given the weather we’ve been having over the last few months, I can be creative about it.” The man’s face gleamed with sadism. He went back to the worktable and picked up a small ball, much like the one that had landed at Jane’s feet. Now that she had had more time to soak up the details, she could see it looked like a ball of yarn. He was holding it gently in a gloved hand.
“It’s amazing what you can learn living in this red hell when you can get your hands on a pouch of sand, the right kind of sealant… and the right kind of explosive.”
He held it inches from Jane’s face. “I could set this off right in front of you and it would take out your other eye, I can promise you that.”
Jane stared at the ball defiantly, refusing to let him have the satisfaction of seeing the terror that roiled in her body.
“But I figure since you were responsible for having my family taken away from me, now you’re going to get them back for me. I’ve searched high and low for them and found nothing. The day of the storm, I went to their house and saw it had been ransacked. Family pictures, mementos, the things you’d take if you needed motivation for keeping yourself and your loved ones safe. The only place they can be is the shelter.”
“And it never occurred to you to just knock on the front door?”
“I’d have been turned away,” he said. “Thanks to you, I’m a marked man. But now, I will get confirmation they’re safe and maybe they can join me, and we can be a proper family again.”
“And how are you going to pull off this family reunion?”
“I’ve already sent the other members of your search party back to the shelter to confirm they’re there. I’ve seen you with them. Even from a distance, I can tell there’s a certain comradery between you all. I don’t doubt they would go to hell and back to help you.”
“And what if your wife and son aren’t at the shelter?” Jane already knew the answer.
The man leaned down until their faces were inches apart. “Then, Officer Benson, when you get to hell… tell them Gideon sent you.”
Jane lashed out with a defiant headbutt, knocking him backwards… sending the sand-ball into the air.
CHAPTER 8 - ERIC
Might as well get what we came out here for. Eric continued to focus his camera on the disarray surrounding them. He had dropped the idea of doing a commentary, no longer seeing the point. The only reason he had done it before was as a distraction from the impact of what he was seeing.
He and Donna had left Josie’s bar with the few weapons she had allowed them to take. And now they were searching for Jane in the sand-ridden metropolis.
Eric had tried to offer helpful suggestions as to where they could go or what they could look out for but there were no leads for them to follow and he began wondering about the futility of their mission.
The storm had almost completely died down, adding yet another layer of sand to the landscape. Under most circumstances, Eric would have been relieved, but he was also thinking about the people and groups that had supposedly been forming in the wake of the first sandstorm. I really don’t want to be coming across those bastards. Eric knew that now the sandstorm had abated, this would give them the perfect opportunity to venture outside.
Donna was moving ahead at a rushed pace, not wanting to squander a single second.
Eric was worried for her. He didn’t know much about bipolar and he couldn’t tell if she was going through one of her manic moods.
He wanted to ask her how she was doing, feeling a pang of guilt about throwing Leo’s disappearance in her face. He knew that deep down it wasn’t Donna’s fault. He’d just needed someone to blame. He hoped she hadn’t taken his comments to heart.
Eric was about to rush to catch up to her when they heard a noise in the distance.
An explosion, maybe? Not unlike the one at Josie’s bar…
“Eric! Over there!”
Eric rushed to catch up to Donna, who had stopped in her tracks and was now pointing at a building in the distance. There seemed to be red smoke billowing from the side.
“You think it’s Jane?” Eric didn’t want to dive in headfirst without any idea of what could be waiting for them.
But Donna didn’t appear to share Eric’s concerns. “Only one way to find out.” She was already taking off in the direction of the smoke, not letting the thick carpet of sand slow her down. Eric took off behind her.
***
Gideon dusted himself off, more taken aback by the woman’s audacity than the impact of the blow. The explosive ball had not entirely
managed to break the wall, but there were now a few cracks visible in the structure.
He marched over to Jane, grabbing her by the throat. “You’re really trying my patience, woman.”
Jane choked and spluttered beneath Gideon’s iron grip. “Come on, shithead. Make my day. You want me dead? Get it over with. Anything so I don’t have to listen to any more of your fucking monologues.”
His face was a picture of fury and he pulled back his fist, preparing to drive it into Jane’s face… but he stopped himself.
“Feisty,” he said in a tone that begrudgingly contained a small iota of respect. “But for now, I need you alive. If you’re really that valuable, then your patrol will have no problem carrying out my instructions.”
“And… what happens if they come looking for me?” asked Jane, letting her strong façade slip for the first time, conscious of Donna’s ‘no-one-gets-left-behind’ mantra.
Gideon’s eyes lit up. “That would be a very big mistake on their part.”
***
Donna and Eric approached the entrance to the building with an increasing apprehension.
“So… how do you want to go about this?” Eric lowered his camera.
“Well, I don’t see anything in the way of guards,” said Donna with burgeoning confidence.
“We still don’t know how many there are” said Eric, looking up at the building, wondering why the thing hadn’t come tumbling down on top of them.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.” Donna stepped into the doorway. As she did so, there was a very audible click.
“Donna, move!” Eric threw himself forward, tackling Donna to the ground … just as the frame around the doorway exploded, releasing streams of red sand.
“Booby trap. Sneaky son of a bitch,” murmured Eric, surveying the now empty sandbags lined up either side of the door, empty after having been triggered by the thin trip wire which ran along the floor to the entrance.