by Tad S. Torm
The back doors were open. This might prove to be her best shot. The handcuffs were tight and she had not been able to unlock them.
She placed her palms, joined behind her back by Joey’s handcuffs, on the edge of the back seat and twisted outwards. She used them as a lever to prop herself up. With her feet bracing the floor, she pushed up suddenly propelling her body into an upright position.
Thom was just opening the back door on the right-side of the car and was clambering inside. Caro’s head hit Thom’s chin with all the force of a hundred and ten pounds in motion. Thom fell on the back seat, but, unfortunately, managed in his fall to close the door behind him.
Caro realized she had been inches away from freedom.
“Start the car,” yelled Joey. “Quickly now!”
He pressed the taser gun on the red cloak and released the trigger, zapping her again and again.
“Hey, lay off, you gonna’ kill ‘er!” yelled Mike. “I smell burnt flesh.”
“I’m sure that God, in his infinite wisdom, will find some use for her,” Grego commented.
“Amen, Reverend Grego.”
Thom, who was slowly coming back from his blackout, began chanting verses from the teen poems he had written for the School Literary Journal. He stopped only after Joey slapped him hard on the mouth.
After a few minutes of quiet, he started to moan and whimper, mumbling repeatedly the enigmatic phrase:
“Laura, forgive me, Laura, please!”
Joey gave him a sullen look. He pushed Caro down onto the floor and kicked her hard with the metal tip of his boot. Then he placed his boots on top of her back.
“You’re more trouble than worth, you devil, you!”
“What’s up with the girl?” Grego inquired.” She seems awfully feisty.”
“You’re not kidding me. I confiscated from her a whole arsenal of weapons,” Joey said.
“Could she be a cop?” Mike said.
“Probably undercover,” Grego said. “Federal police or special ops, or maybe a private independent contractor. By the way, she moves, I’d say she has special training. And this is your gift to us, Joey? Do you want to bring the security services on our back?”
“It’s too late to worry about it now. How was I supposed to know?” Joey replied deadpan. “This happens to be a very near and dear, an old dream of mine. Let me state it succinctly. It doesn’t happen every day you get the chance to fuck Red Riding Hood.”
“Tell us, baby, are you federal …, undercover? With whom do we have the honor?”
“I have a bad dog,” Caro responded bleakly. “Once he gets on your trail, your fate is sealed and your life has ended.”
It was very dark in the car, but the words gave her renewed hope that she was not alone.
“You don’t know him,” she continued. “And you don’t want to meet him. The four of you are like nothing to him. When he will come after you, you will not have a chance. You’ll be like chickens to slaughter. He’ll catch you and he’ll take you to Hell. He’s relentless. He never stops. You cannot outrun him and you cannot resist him. You cannot fight him because he’s better than you, he’s stronger than you, and he’s smarter than you. You’ll never even see him come unless he wants you to. And then, boy, will he make you suffer.”
“Hey, this is getting boring and repetitive,” complained Grego. “Why don’t you make her stop?”
“Let her speak,” Joey said. “I find it amusing.”
“There is a door at the end of your corridor where DEATH is written in letters of blood. Be aware of the Bad Dog!”
“Sounds like a really bad poodle,” Joey said. “I hear poodles are fierce warriors.”
“You have reached that stage in your life with no to be followed section, no next episode. When you met me, you caught a terminal disease. This is your final chapter.”
“You don’t say. I bet you guys that she’s some jealous dame. She’s just found out that her husband was cheating on her and came to the hotel to catch him in the act.”
“Either way, I’d be careful.”
“Nobody’s following us. We’ve been alone on the road for miles.”
“What about tracking devices?”
--
When you start on the road, you have to take the first step.
Mark was too nervous to play complicated mind games. He had neither the time nor the peace of mind necessary for detection and analysis.
Had he been capable of such feats of deductive prowess, the reality was that the situation he was faced with presented absolutely no clues.
But the first step is hard; however, you cannot start your journey unless you take it, hard as it may be. Because the second step follows the first.
Caro had disappeared without a trace. Mark was searching for the proverbial needle in the haystack.
The second step is even harder. So what are you gonna’ do?
In his current predicament, he could see only one logical course of action and he took it.
He let intuition guide his actions.
‘La fuite en avant’, as the French would say, the leap forward.
Once you take the third step, everything gets easier, your life, their life, God forbid it to be her life too.
The only way to solve this particular problem was to act with blinding speed while praying with your fingers crossed that you are on the right track.
The car he had been following continued to roll ahead at snail's pace.
The driver of this very slow vehicle, driving on a deserted road, seemed a little bit too careful and made damn sure he did not break any rules of the road. Now, as a matter of civilized behavior, his driving may have even deserved some kind of praise.
But there was a flaw in this apparently perfect equation, and it was the fact that no regular Joe drives this way unless he has an awfully good reason why he does not want to be stopped, Mark thought. This driver has something to hide.
One drink too many, or it may be something just a little bit worse. Or maybe a lot worse.
He didn’t blame him now.
Plenty of time for that later.
This behavior in itself was certainly not sufficient to raise suspicion.
But it came after the brief vision Mark had in the parking lot: the red shape suddenly rising, taking form behind the van’s rear window and then crumpling back in the blink of an eye.
He knew what he had seen.
He was following on the trail.
But if he happened to be proven wrong, he knew what he had to do. He’ll be sure to pay the price. It got to be as simple as that.
Things tend to become painfully simple when you get to the essentials, to the bare knuckles, on the brink of existence.
Taking the steps is the easy part because it turns life and death into an exercise in probabilities.
The lights grew more diffuse and then disappeared altogether.
He watched their absence with a sinking feeling.
But then the lights came back.
The van had turned into a side lane. He heard the sound of wheels scrunching on the gravel road leading into a property enclosed by high walls.
He stopped his car, took a pair of night vision goggles out of the glove compartment and watched.
The night vision came in handy. The van stopped at the entrance gate. The driver had opened his side window and was pushing key buttons too fast for Mark to figure out the code.
The steel gate opened in a few seconds to let the car pass through and then closed with a resounding metal bang a few seconds later after the van had rolled into the courtyard.
Through his binoculars, he followed the van advancing slowly on the sweeping gravel lane for about twenty more feet when it stopped by the porch.
There was not much to see.
A big white dilapidated mansion in the middle of nowhere dominated the scenery. The peeled white paint on the walls uncovered red bricks and gray patches of cement, but most of the wall surface had been taken
over by green and rusty creepers.
Down on the ground, a youngster opened the back door on the left side of the van and stepped out on the footpath. A young woman wearing a red cloak followed.
Was it Caro?
She must be Caro; there is no doubt about it.
Mark cringed.
But this was no time to lose his head. He needed to keep calm. Now it had become more important than ever.
But could he do it? The time had come to prove to himself that he was a professional.
The man-boy took her by the arm, and they both started toward the entrance.
There was something wrong with the way she moved.
Her shoulders stood high, in an unnaturally stiff position, while her arms were held back.
Those were handcuffs behind the red cloak, Mark realized.
It was time for the driver to get out of the car. A huge guy. Equally fat and athletic. He will have to watch that one.
The fat guy started toward the house.
Finally, the right front door opened, and a thin, dapper individual got out, opened the back door and helped the last passenger out. A puny little fellow, wavering on his feet.
--
Joey's father had inherited the FARM from a distant uncle more than ten years before. He needed the money, so the first thing he did once the property was in the clear was to put it on the market. But all his efforts to sell it off failed.
After a couple of years, with no takers and hardly one or two visitors a month, most of whom did not seem so much interested in buying it, but rather in having a good time at his expense, Joey Senior realized he had burdened himself with a white elephant impossible to dispose of.
Despite his best efforts, he finally realized that he couldn't find any use for the property, and soon, in the middle of more pressing business, conveniently forgot about it.
For Joey, this proved to be the perfect opportunity to make it his personal playing grounds.
The farm was surrounded by a high brick wall topped by patches of barbed wire. Tall willows that had been planted by the deceased uncle a long time ago, to hide what happened inside from curious eyes, were now raising their crowns high above the walls.
“And now, to all my dear friends, I beg of you to accept my humble hospitality,” Joey said in an unctuous tone as if he were rehearsing the opening speech for one of his father’s official receptions.
“Let’s get ready for a night of fun and games and remember the good old times! Beer and sandwiches are waiting for you in the kitchen; everything is on the house, including our genteel companion.”
“How about cable TV and adult programming?”
“Hey, careful there, little buddy. Don’t overdo it! Are you forgetting that we have a young lady with us?”
Joey approached Caro, grabbed her by the elbow and pushed her toward the stairs.
“Don’t pull any more tricks, baby! You hear. You know by now what you can expect from me … if you do,” he said, dangling menacingly the taser he was holding in his left hand. “Any wrong move and you’ll have a talk with the high voltage guy.”
Caro responded with an icy cold stare, sharp enough to sink the Titanic, but didn’t struggle. No point in getting killed ahead of schedule by the idiot holding the taser.
She didn’t plan on getting killed, period. That was just a note for herself. But when the time comes, and doesn’t it always come for each and every one of us? Then certainly not here. Oh God, please, not here! Not in this godforsaken hole in the Universe, and particularly not by these idiots, not by these stuttering goons.
And to think it was supposed to be such an easy job.
However, these are the surprises that you can expect when you’re living and breathing the air of this incredible universe of ours. This is no simple business. Sooner or later, by the law of unintended consequences, everything becomes possible.
Caro had just happened to draw an unlucky number. These things happen from time to time.
Now more than anything else she needed clarity.
A simple matter of just holding her breath for a second and think.
She hadn’t done too well so far, and as long as she could not reach a moment of clarity, she couldn’t hope to do any better from now on.
Give me a fixed point and I will upturn the world, or at least, and this is a promise, kill this whole bunch of yokels.
And then she thought of Mark, poor silly boy waiting in the rain, in the flooded parking lot. He must be getting awfully concerned by now, beginning to panic. Ready to start doing unbelievably stupid things. Now that she could not reason with him. Now that she could not keep him on a leash.
Sooner or later, left to his own devices, one day he’ll go too far. And it will cost him his head.
But then sooner or later we’re all dead.
She forced a grim smile on her face. She could not waste her life in this way. She needed to find a way to save herself.
“Better,” Joey grinned, leading her to the second floor. “A lot better. Positive thinking is what you need more than anything else. We’ll all enjoy a pleasant evening. And you know what? Because I’m sure of that. You’ll have a lot of fun. As long as you’ll obey my orders, everything will be fine. Of course, if you don’t ... it gets rather unpleasant.”
Joey frowned.
Caro thought he looked like an evil clown.
Clown or not, I swear I’ll put your head on a stick, Caro thought, but this time, she smiled coyly.
“No doubt about it,” she said.
“So you see. I think we finally understand each other.”
He cupped her left breast in his right hand and massaged it, his fingers pressing tight as if he were squeezing a lemon, while he looked her straight in the eye with an unblinking stare. He shook his head, a disapproving smirk on his face. He watched her closely and let her step ahead, uneasy, morose, slightly off balance.
This was supposed to be the moment when he broke them. The moment when the terrorized victims started to panic. By now, she should be out of her wits. Frozen with fright. Unless they totally lost it and started moaning, whimpering unintelligibly, and throwing fits of hysteria.
At the very least, he expected a little cursing, a little negotiation. Pleading, begging, bargaining, the appeal to morality, to God or the Devil, the unabashed craziness, the promise of riches, or at least just an old fashioned ‘Go to hell!’
Breaking them was half the fun. What kind of a woman made of stone can go through this kind of experience without showing any emotion?
“Tomorrow morning we’ll say good-bye. You’ll forget about everything that happened here. I’ll give you a lift to your hotel. We’ll part amicably as if nothing happened.”
“Tomorrow morning, maybe even sooner,” Caro grinned, a little evilly.
Now it came his turn to be afraid.
“Anything wrong, Joey? Do you need any help, Joey?” he heard Mikey’s voice, coming from downstairs.
“No thank you. My chosen requires a little rest, that’s all.”
He opened the door and pushed Caro inside.
--
“Just like in the good old days,” Mike was watching his two friends, Thom, and Grego. The three of them had all gone directly to the kitchen.
They were equal when it came to the hunt, but Joey was a little more equal than the others. It was his game they were playing. It was his territory they occupied.
“Our friend Joey. Always the man of mystery.” Grego quipped.
“It’s been such a long time … since the last time,” Thom started to whine. “We were just kids then, who couldn’t tell right from wrong, lacking in judgment, idiots really, minors not responsible for our acts.”
“One for all and all for one,” Grego said.
“Remember all the good times we had?” Mike said.
“Friendship meant something.”
They toasted, clinking beer bottles.
“I’ll go sit on the porch. I need to clear my
head,” Thom said, staggering on his way out.
“You’ll get your revenge Thom,” Mike said. “Just you wait!”
“This girl,” Grego said. “She’s not like the other girls we brought in. Did you see how she clipped Thom … Just think! She had only a fraction of a second to do it. If Joey hadn’t used the taser, I don’t know what would have happened. We’d probably all be dead.”
Mike waved his hand dismissively, “She must have taken some self-defense courses, I’m sure. You shouldn’t make too much out of it!”
“She didn’t say a word. She didn’t cry. She didn’t beg us to let her go. Cold like a block of ice, she was.”
“Nonsense! She’s probably still in shock. She’ll be totally different once the effects of the electrical charge wear off. Joey loaded her with enough juice to stop a cattle herd dead in its tracks.”
“Maybe. I hope you’re right,” Grego said, lighting a cigarette. “But let’s be very, very careful nonetheless!”
Chapter 5: Counterattack
Joey turned on the light and closed the door behind him. The room was empty except for a queen 4-poster bed with a mattress and two pillows on top. There was a rustic table with a chair in a corner.
“Do you think you’re better?” Joey suddenly yelled in Caro’s ear. “You think you are different, don’t you? But now I will demonstrate to you the contrary, Miss. Red Riding Hood. During this night, I’m pretty sure there’ll be times when you’ll feel uncomfortable, and you’ll hate me, and you’ll hate yourself; there’ll be times when you’ll not understand what is happening to you and around you. You’ll resent it and you’ll despair. You’ll experience fear, but also strange pleasure and joy. The human mind is so convoluted, so complicated. Nobody can claim to understand it. But on the other hand, you have to take into account that any worthy goal requires effort and sacrifice. Otherwise said: no pain no gain.”
Joey grabbed her by the shoulders and forced her to face him. He slapped her face hard; then he cupped her head in his hands and pushed it close. His kiss was hard; it crushed her lips. He opened her cloak, lifted her blouse, unzipped her jeans and slipped his fingers underneath, caressing her hips. His hands rounded her lower back, feeling the warmth of her skin with the tips of his fingers and his marauding palms. Then his hands moved up to her upper back. He unhooked her brassiere. His hands slithered under the cups of her bra and massaged her breasts.