Brink of Extinction

by Nicholas Ryan

  Beside him, the man felt the boy’s body begin to relax in the long damp grass, but the man remained tensely drawn. A thousand tiny insects of dread crawled beneath his skin, for with a sickening lurch of intuitive understanding, he realized what was about to happen.

  “My God,” he breathed. “They’ve found the couple in the house.”

  * * *

  The man crept back into the cover of the wooded grove and then sprang to his feet and ran. The boy was by his side, the noise of their frantic dash masked by the great bellowing of the truck’s engine as it accelerated and roared ahead towards the street corner. The vehicle braked wickedly in front of the house that the man remembered from the previous night.

  By the time the man and the boy came into clear sight of the burned and ruined house, the three strangers were already bunched on the porch, and there was a brief but piercing shriek of fear and pain that cut through the vast silence of the morning like a knife.

  The man flung himself down in the snow at the fringe of the tree line. The boy dropped to the ground at his shoulder. Through tufts of stringy grass that grew right to the verge of the road, the man had an unobstructed view clear across to the front of the house.

  In the daylight the ruined building looked more foreboding than it had under the softening veil of darkness. The upper story had been gutted by fire so that the roofline sagged on the brink of collapse. The windows of the house were empty, rouged by sooty scars that blackened the walls and the shingles. A corner of the ground floor had crumbled away in a mound of broken bricks and rubble so that it looked like a great bite had been taken out of the building by a prehistoric monster, and the porch cover hung awry, drooping sadly under the heavy strain of missing support posts.

  The front door of the house was wide open, hanging twisted off broken hinges, and on his knees in the doorway, the man could see the prostrate figure of the stranger who had confronted him at gunpoint in the darkness.

  The stranger’s face was contorted with pain, his back bowed in a macabre parody of prayer, his hands bound behind his back. A thin serpent of bright red blood trickled from his hairline, down into the deeply etched lines of his crumpled face. One of the thugs was standing guard over the kneeling figure with a shotgun in his hands.

  Between them, the other two thugs had hold of the woman. They were dragging her by her arms down onto the grass-choked pathway in front of the house. The woman wrenched and flailed against the men like a wildcat trapped in a snare. She was tiny – a thin waif-like figure dressed in a tattered skirt and blouse. The fabric had been ripped off one shoulder, and there was a livid red welt across her face where one of the brutes had beaten her. The woman had her head wrenched back over her shoulder, fixed and frightened on the face of her husband. She started screaming; screaming with terror and horror and trembling dread. The bearded thug who had been driving the vehicle was laughing a great bull-roar of perverse anticipation, and when they had dragged her down the last step of the porch, he bunched one of his fists and hit the woman full in the face with a side-armed swing. The woman’s head whiplashed, and rosy red blood began to bloom across her lips. The sounds of her screaming died suddenly in her throat. She went limp for a moment, her knees buckling and her head lolling loose on her shoulders.

  The truck’s driver threw his shotgun aside and then shoved the woman down into the grass on to her back. He stood, towering over her, and began to slowly unbuckle the belt of his denim jeans. He took his time. The woman writhed slowly on the wet ground. The driver chuckled, and then made a lewd, lascivious gesture with his hips, but the thug standing beside them, watching, became suddenly nervous.

  The driver dropped to his knees

  “Hank…?”

  The truck driver looked up. “What?”

  The other attacker scraped his hand across his cheek. “You think you should be doing this?”

  “Why not?” the driver’s voice turned into an irritated snarl. Beneath him the woman was moaning groggily, rolling her head from side to side. The driver clamped his hand around her throat, pinning her to the ground while he glared up at his partner.

  “Gideon won’t be happy if we deliver used goods to him,” the guy said abstractly. “If you rape this bitch and he ever finds out…”

  The driver froze for a split second, weighing the other’s words, and then spat venomously. “Fuck Gideon!” the driver hissed. “He’ll never know.”

  “You gonna kill her and miss out on the bounty?”

  The driver chuckled cruelly. The woman below him was slowly coming out of the stupor of her pain. He bunched his fist and slammed it into the side of the woman’s face, striking her hard across the cheek. The woman’s head snapped sideways and her eyes fluttered before unconsciousness overwhelmed her. “That depends,” the driver wrung his hand and flexed his fingers from the sting of the blow. “If she’s a good lay, she might live a little longer.”

  His partner shook his head, uncertain and growing agitated. He took a step away as though distancing himself from the driver, the shotgun lowering limp in his hand by his side.

  “I don’t know… Gideon…”

  The driver got to his feet and glared. His pants were down around the tops of his thighs. He made a fist like an iron hammer and thrust it under the other thug’s nose.

  “You got a problem?” the driver growled. “You got issues with me having a little fun?”

  “No,” the man holding the shotgun shook his head. His eyes flicked down to where the woman laid, her legs spread-eagled, the clothing torn and hanging tattered from her shoulders. Her dress had rucked up around her waist when she had been hurled to the ground. Her body was very pale, the skin of her thighs the color of cream. “But Gideon will kill us, you know that, right? If you deliver this bitch and she’s been used, he ain’t going to be forgiving.”

  “I don’t give a fuck!” the driver’s voice was a roaring bellow that startled birds in the nearby trees to flight. “I want her.”

  The man with the shotgun held up his hand, placating. He took another step away, towards the porch, and then gestured back to the truck. “You’ve already got one,” he referred to the girl tied up in the passenger seat of the big vehicle. “You’ve had your fun, man.”

  The driver’s face became a scowl of fury. “Forget Gideon,” little bubbles of spittle sprayed and foamed at the corners of his mouth with the force of his rage. “Right now, I’m the one you ought to be scared of. And I want the bitch.”

  On the porch, the husband hunched keening a high-pitched sound of distress and helplessness. His face was a slick mask of tears, his mouth hanging loose with horror. He strained against his bonds, until the thug standing over him holding the shotgun kicked him viciously in the ribs.

  “Cathy!” the man cried out, his voice torn and shredded by his helpless despair. “Sweet Jesus, no! Please,” he pleaded to the thugs. “I beg you. Please no!”

  The gunman standing guard reversed his weapon and swung the butt of the shotgun hard against the husband’s head. The sound of the impact was sickening – a noise like a heavy axe being swung against the trunk of an old tree. The man on his knees was thrown sideways, the cry in his throat choked off abruptly.

  On the far side of the road, concealed in the long grass, the man and the boy watched the scene playing out with rising horror.

  “They’re going to rape her!” the boy hissed, the tone of his voice a coarse accusation. “They’ll rape the woman and then they’ll kill them both. You have to do something.”

  The Glock was still in the man’s fist. Subconsciously his hand had aimed the weapon at the thug who was standing over the stunned form of the woman, slowly unbuckling his belt. It needed only for him to squeeze the trigger. It was an easy shot.

  “Shoot them!” the boy’s voice became strained with his rising outrage. His face was dark, his cheeks burning red. “Kill them.”

  The man hesitated and the boy glared at him, his eyes simmering with hatred and disgust. He trie
d to wrench the handgun from the man, but it was too late. The man had already begun moving… shrinking away, back into the dense cover of the trees until they were hidden out of sight of the horror.

  “What are you doing?” the boy’s voice cracked with urgency and fury. “You can’t just walk away!” His hands had bunched into fists and his face was swollen. There was blazing hatred in his eyes, they smoldered red and accusing, and his mouth was twisted by ugly loathing. “You’re a coward.”

  “I’m not going to walk away,” the man said, his voice low and steady. “I’m going to steal the truck.”

  The boy’s face went suddenly white, the blood draining from his cheeks. He grunted the way a man might grunt when he is punched hard in the heart. For a long moment he glared shocked and silent and then finally he croaked, “Have you no honor?”

  The man’s eyes went dead and blank. He felt his breath seize in his throat and for long desperate seconds neither of them spoke. Finally the man seemed to come back from somewhere far away and grim intensity returned to his gaze. He seized the boy’s shoulder and dug his fingers into the flesh. “I’m going to steal their truck,” the man said again, the press of his lips thin and pale and determined. “I’m going to drive it back to the overpass and leave it there. I’ll drive slow enough for them to come after me. That will give you time to run across the road and help those people. Take them to the house where we slept last night. They will be safe there until they can rest. I’ll meet you. Wait with them at the house until I come back… and don’t forget to collect our bags from where we left them.”

  The man turned abruptly, and then crawled back to the edge of the road without waiting for the boy to respond. The driver of the truck was on his knees in the grass. The man could hear the sounds of fabric being torn and then the driver held up a long piece of the woman’s tattered skirt and swung it around his head like a victory banner. He was chuckling mirthlessly while the thug beside him looked on with worried eyes.

  The man tensed himself and then sprang from out of the grass, sprinting diagonally across the road to where the big truck sat idling in a vaporous cloud of its own exhaust. He caught a glimpse of the girl slumped in the passenger seat, her face white and her mouth gaping open in aghast shock, and then he was reefing frantically at the door handle of the cab while behind him the world seemed to erupt in a clamor of coarse startled shouts.

  The man flung himself behind the steering wheel just as the first of the thugs realized what was happening. The early morning air was ripped apart by the deafening roar of a shotgun blast, and then the man stomped on the accelerator and the truck leaped forward.

  One of the thugs – it was the bearded driver – came lumbering across the road and into the path of the vehicle. He was naked below the waist, his pale thin legs like those of a stork beneath the massive bulge of his gut. He was waving his arms and screaming his outrage. The man lined the truck up and steered for him. The thug’s expression turned into a mask of terror. At the last second he flung himself sideways and landed face-first in the snow, his skinny buttocks showing pale and puckered as a full moon. The truck flashed past in a slew of snow and loose stones.

  Two hundred yards along the road, the man stomped on the brakes, and the truck came to a sudden screeching halt. In the rearview mirror he could see the three thugs. They were running, coming closer. The bearded one was hobbling painfully, the other two loping along, brandishing their shotguns and bellowing with impotent rage. He turned to the young woman in the passenger seat.

  She was young, but the dark eyes below the tangle of filthy dark hair were ancient and haunted. The coarse length of rope around her neck had been fashioned into a noose, and had abraded the tender skin there to angry red welts of raised flesh. He loosened the knots and lifted it over her head.

  “What’s your name?” the man asked, his voice made urgent by the looming approach of the thugs. The girl looked bewildered. She frowned for a moment and touched a grubby finger to her swollen bottom lip. The flesh there was cracked and tender and she winced. “I can’t remember…” she said at last in a whisper that tailed off into mute silence.

  “Do you know where you’re from?”

  She heard the men’s voices shouting from behind the truck and she turned her head. They were getting closer and one of them had thrown his shotgun up to his shoulder, about to fire. The young woman’s eyes filled with naked fear. The man gripped her arm and she turned on him, frightened and cringing away from his touch. “North!” she said. “Somewhere north.”

  The man flicked his attention back to the rear view mirror. The closest of the pursuers was just fifty yards behind the truck, running on doggedly. The man heard the bucking loud retort of a gunshot and there was a loud clank, like the sound of a hammer beating an iron drum. The man gunned the engine and the truck pounced forward once more, swishing its tail sideways in the loose cover of snow before gaining traction and then leaping forward in a grunt of raw power.

  He drove on for another five hundred yards until he had rounded a curve in the road, and the vehicle became hidden momentarily out of sight of the three pursuers. Then he braked once more, and parked on the shoulder of the road, deliberately revving the big engine hard so that the sound would carry back along the road. He leaned across the driver’s seat and pressed his face closer to the girl’s.

  “Where were they taking you?”

  “Somewhere… someplace to be sold.”

  “Sold?” the man scowled, incredulous.

  The girl nodded her head.

  “Do you know how to drive?” the man asked the girl. She nodded her head again, her eyes becoming wild and blinking with incomprehension.

  “Good,” the man said. He opened the driver’s side door and stepped down onto the running board. “Climb across the center console and get behind the wheel.”

  The woman clambered into the driver’s seat and grabbed tightly at the steering wheel. The man laid his hand gently on her forearm. The woman shuddered, then flinched as if stung, but she did not draw away.

  “The truck is yours,” the man said. “You’re free. I just want you to do one thing for me first.”

  “What?” her voice was soft, tinged wary.

  “There is an overpass just around the next bend,” he pointed ahead, “a few hundred yards further on from here. When they come around the corner, and you can see them in the rear view mirror, I want you to drive to the overpass and park up for a few seconds – just long enough for them to see you and keep chasing. Then you’re free. There’s a half a tank of gas. It will probably get you a couple of hundred miles…”

  The girl nodded, a brave little face, but now her lip began trembling. Her eyes welled up with tears and then a drop spilled down her cheek. She opened her mouth to say something but the man had already stepped down off the running board and into the mud. He slammed the truck door shut and went dashing away at a crouch across the road, back into the shelter of the ragged scrub.

  The man backtracked through the grove of trees, pausing every few minutes to stand patiently still and listen for the sound of the truck suddenly returning, before moving on again. When he at last reached the burned out ruin where he and the boy had spent the previous night, the sun hung high in the morning sky and he was sweating under the heavy leather jacket.

  The boy was waiting for him, crouched and watchful, behind a crumbled wall of moss-covered bricks. At his feet lay the canvas bag and the duffel bag. His eyes were icy cold, the expression on his face close to contempt.

  “Where are they?” the man asked.

  The boy jerked his head. “They’re in the next room,” he said.

  “Are they alright?”

  Suddenly the boy’s face flushed and became swollen. “What do you think?” he spat. “The husband has probably got broken ribs and concussion. His wife isn’t much better.”

  The man grunted. “But they’re not dead.”

  “Little thanks to you,” the boy said, standing defiant, h
is arms folded across his chest, his stance belligerent.

  A scrape of noise made them both turn. It was the injured husband, clutching groggily at the frame of a doorway with one big bony hand and with the other clamped to his forehead, blood trickling through his fingers. His face was ashen, his eyes red and watery. He opened his mouth but no sound came. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat, and then finally he licked his lips.

  “Thanks,” he said, and then his expression became apologetic and contrite. “I pulled a gun on you last night. Threatened you…” his words choked off, then came back firmer, clearer. “Thank you for what you did.”

  The man nodded. “Do you need anything? Food, water?” He shook his head regretfully. “We don’t have any medical – ”

  The injured stranger waved the man’s words away. “You’ve done enough,” he said. “We’ll be fine. We’re going to head back up north. It’s safer,” he shrugged his gaunt shoulders. “We could do with some company if you’re heading in the same direction…”

  Again the man shook his head. “No. Thanks. We still haven’t found what we’re looking for.”

  The stranger grunted, disappointed for a moment, and then asked, “Which way will you go?”

  “That way,” the man pointed out through an empty window. “Beyond that grove of trees on the opposite side of the road are some old farmhouses. They’re maybe a mile away. We’ll rest there for a while, and then turn west.”

  The stranger nodded and looked hopeful. “Mind if we come with you – just as far as the farms? We need to get clear of here in case trouble comes back.”

  The man shrugged his shoulders. “Please yourself,” he said. “But we’re leaving right now.”

  The stranger and his wife bundled up the shreds of their lives and stuffed them hastily into an old suitcase. The woman threw away her torn clothes and changed into faded jeans and a bulky sweater, then wrapped an old threadbare blanket around her shoulders. She handed her husband his pistol, and he stuffed it hastily down the front of his trousers. They came back into the front room where the man and boy were waiting.