No Going Back - 07

by Matt Hilton

  She’d wept.

  She woke up without any awareness of having slept. Daylight poked tremulous fingers through the chinks in her prison walls. In darkness she’d been spared much of her prison’s appearance, and now she would have preferred for night to fall again. In this weird half-light she was reminded of a haunted house, and every shifting shadow, every creak of wood or shuffling animal became a demonic creature coming to drag her down to hell.

  A plate with some scraps of meat and beans sat on the floor next to her. A spoon had been thrust into the food. There was a chipped jar containing water. A bucket so she could go to the toilet. She resisted them all, until thirst won out and she gulped down the tepid water. It was only after downing the water that she realised that, at some point in the night, one of the monsters had come to her. She’d lain there oblivious while he’d stood over her. The thought made her skin crawl.

  She again fought her chain, with less success than before. Her palms became a mass of weeping blisters. She wept too.

  She must have slept again because the next thing she knew the gargoyle was back. He grabbed at her hands, inspected them with an angry expression. He struck her in the face again. ‘You are an ungrateful bitch. I tried to make you as comfortable as possible, and this is how you’ve repaid me?’

  ‘Please? Why are you doing this to us? You have to let us go.’

  He struck her again, using his curled fist to jab her under the ribs. Jay collapsed on the floor, her arms wrapped around the scalding white heat in her body. Never in her life had she been hurt in such a way. But it was only the start. His fingers dug under her ribs again, probing at the point where her liver nestled, and if she thought that the punch was awful she had to think again. Not that she could string a coherent sentence together, and managed only a groan of agony that had her lips buzzing.

  Next the man moved to her neck. She tried to pull away but there was no strength in her. He unlocked the leather collar from her throat, but it was no relief, because in the next instant he’d spanned her neck and sunk his fingertips into the nerves under her ears. Pain jabbed to the tip of her jaw and she drooped in his grip. The man adjusted his hand and now his fingers dug into her carotid arteries. Thankfully she did not experience pain this time, only the billowing black wings of a vulture fluttering through her mind.

  When next she opened her eyes she was lying in the wooden coffin set in the desert floor and all three men were standing over her. Each held aloft a tin sheet and a chain. They were talking amongst themselves but she couldn’t make out their words. Someone was wailing and at first she thought it was Nicole or the girl.

  ‘Shut up!’

  Blinking up at the trio of ogres standing over her, she realised the command had been snapped at her. She was the source of the wailing. She shut up, tried to lift her arms to plead with them but found her wrists had been bound beneath the small of her back. She tried to sit up.

  Brent leaned into the box and forced her down with a boot heel.

  ‘Do not move, goddamnit!’

  Jay opened her mouth to beg, but knew that these pitiless monsters would only punish her for it.

  ‘We can’t trust you to stay put in the shack,’ the cowboy said, adjusting his hat with the swipe of his wrist. The chain dangling from his fist rattled like a viper’s warning. ‘So we’re moving you here. Now, if you prove yourself, then perhaps we’ll let you out. But—’

  The gargoyle interjected, ‘Try to escape and I’ll do worse to you than you’ve already suffered.’

  Carson – that was the cowboy’s name she recalled – chuckled at his friend’s bluntness. ‘By God, Samuel! Say it like it is, why don’t ya?’

  ‘She’s got to learn to behave,’ he said as though talking about a naughty schoolgirl.

  The tin sheets had been piled on top, sealing her in, and Jay lay in stunned silence as the chains locked her in position. Her mind was in a state of close-down. Shock, she realised.

  Only when the faint strains of screaming filtered into her prison did she vocalise her terror, but this time on behalf of her friend and young Ellie.

  Perhaps it was her screaming that overtaxed her, because she’d drifted then into Stygian darkness and had known nothing until waking, disoriented and bewildered, this morning.

  Now, with those memories pulsing in her skull with each beat of her heart, she rubbed the rope on the shard of tin, growing ever more furious at her own ineptitude as for the third time she heard the screams of terror drifting on the desert wind.

  12

  I found the landscape stunning and surreal at the same time. A breeze was cutting across the valley from the north-east, causing a blanket of umber sand to obscure much of the first hundred feet or so at the bases of the mountains. From the low vantage of my GMC their crowns seemed to grow from the billowing dust, huge edifices sculpted by the elements. They had to be ancient ranges, now stripped of their outer shells that lay in a jumble of boulders at their feet displaying their immortal hearts. Strata laid down during different epochs banded the cliffs in myriad colours and textures the likes of which an artist could never conceive. Further to the north was what the Navajo had termed the Painted Desert: if this little-known area was anything to judge by, then that Mecca for tourists must have been truly remarkable.

  Scott Blackstock had given me directions to the Logan homestead, but had also said that he’d never been there so couldn’t describe its layout. Apparently there was only one road in and out, but I detected dozens of minor trails leading through the hills, in older times probably traversed on horseback or foot. I suppose he was referring to an actual highway, because other than the compressed dirt I currently drove over there were no maintained roads. I was off the beaten track: a term that held significance here.

  Since leaving the highway, I’d travelled the best part of twenty miles and knew that soon enough I’d have to abandon my vehicle. Not that I couldn’t drive all the way in, but I didn’t want to announce my arrival to the Logans. If indeed they had anything to do with the disappearance of the women, I wanted to discover that without them being aware of my presence. If there was nothing untoward then I’d leave them be. They sounded like arseholes, the type I normally went up against, but I couldn’t indulge myself while the women were still missing.

  Two miles out from their ranch, I drove the GMC into a steep gulley that was hidden from view to anyone on the road below. I left the keys in the ignition. I wasn’t thinking about a quick getaway at the time, just being pragmatic. Should I never return to the vehicle, at least someone else might get some use out of it.

  Taking a bearing off the sun, I headed due west, choosing to move steadily instead of jogging in. The water was a heavy weight in a rucksack on my back, but I’d secreted my weapons about my person. Within seconds I was lathered in perspiration, and glad that I’d driven here without the aid of the GMCs’ air-con, because I was at least part-way acclimatised to the oppressive heat. Stepping out of a chilled vehicle into this temperature I’d have possibly keeled over in a dead faint. It wasn’t quite Death Valley but near enough.

  The going was easy on the road, but soon I veered off and entered the twisting canyons between the towering columns of rock. They weren’t the labyrinth I had assumed, and I could regularly view the sun so kept on track. Here, though, the ground was littered with boulders and drifts of red dirt stripped from the mountainsides and I had to be more careful. Twisting an ankle didn’t concern me, but making a noise did. Out here in the still desert, a falling rock would sound like a gunshot and alert anyone within a mile of my presence. Shaded by an overhang of rock, I chugged down an eighth of my water. It came nowhere near replenishing what had already soaked through my clothing and then evaporated into the overheated air. While there, I took out the Smith and Wesson revolver and checked it and each of the .357 shells thoroughly, for any grit or dirt that could cause it to misfire. Everything was in good order, but I was conscious that the firepower was limited. My usual guns, either a S
IG Sauer P226 or 228, were automatics and could – depending on the magazine – lay down up to seventeen rounds without the need to reload. When I’d purchased this old-time gun from the rednecks at the truck stop it hadn’t occurred to me to check for a rapid loader. I was going to have to feed each bullet into the six chambers manually every time I depleted the ammo.

  Hell, it was as though I was preparing for a war. There were only three Logans, and two bullets aimed at the right places were enough for any man. Of course, the opportunities for perfect shooting were few and far between in a real conflict, so maybe I’d need to reload many times before they were finished. Then again, that was assuming that the Logan family had anything to do with the missing women. With luck there wouldn’t be any shooting, but I couldn’t deny the old Boy Scout in me.

  I chugged down another eighth of the water, and then took a leak against the rock overhang. I wasn’t marking territory, just detoxifying. When the container was back in the rucksack on my shoulder, I set off again. Passing beyond the ravines, I came on to a wide boulder-strewn plain dotted with mesquite and ironwood shrubs. Scott Blackstock had told me to watch out for a huge mushroom-shaped mountain that marked the head of the trail before entering the Logan property. There was a likely contender about half a mile ahead, though through the dust I could only make out the upper cap that shimmered through the haze like an alien Mother Ship. Using it as a landmark, I followed the northern edge of the plain, staying close to the ragged mesas in case I had to go to ground in a hurry. When I was parallel to the giant mushroom I turned south, using the towering boulders as cover. The land was parched, but judging by the way the mountains had been weathered and the proliferation of boulders deposited on the plain, I guessed that in some dim prehistoric time flood waters had regularly teemed through here.

  The sun was a milky disc in the heavens, high cirrus giving it an indistinct appearance, but none of its heat was diminished. Having lived in the subtropics of Florida for the past couple of years I’d earned a decent tan, but it was no defence out in the desert. My exposed skin prickled, and the constant trickling of perspiration down the small of my back caused me to move my gun from my usual carrying position to the front of my jeans.

  More water went into my gut; it didn’t surprise me how much I’d consumed already. I’d fought in deserts before and knew that it was a constant necessity to replace lost fluids. What was sometimes neglected was the need to also replenish essential nutrients and salts, and I hadn’t given that much thought before setting off. Already I could detect the first buzz of a headache behind my ears; as a result of dehydration it could progress to migraine proportions. Not that I foresaw a problem, because I’d no intention of wandering round in a furnace all day. I set off again, intent on reconnoitring the area, to determine if my hunch was right and then decide how I was going to play things after that.

  The military are planners. Before a mission is launched every detail is analysed to the nth degree. It is then conducted with strict purpose with each problematic facet taken into account beforehand. Yet missions often fail due to the intrusion of a previously unidentified snag, usually the enemy responding in an unpredictable way. For that reason I wasn’t a firm believer in forward planning: I’m not talking about going into a hazardous situation with my eyes closed, but with the knowledge that if something could go wrong it probably would. I was often in conflict with my commanders, but it was my arse, and often those of my friends, that were on the line, so I preferred to prepare for the unexpected by entering a mission firmly in the red zone. Expect to kill or be killed: that was the ethos I subscribed to. Therefore I only had one objective in mind: if the Logan family were holding the women, I would go in and rescue them whatever it took.

  Mushroom Mountain loomed overhead as I approached the pass on to the Logan property. Up close it reminded me more of a petrified thick-trunked oak, only a hundred times as large. The road actually passed to the south of the mountain, but I took the path under the northern bulge. It abutted another lower line of rock that made a ridge in the desert floor. I considered clambering up to the ridgeline as it would offer me a better vantage point for viewing the homestead in the valley beyond, but didn’t trust the ridge to extend as far as I needed it to. More than likely it would be split into fissures and separate rock formations as the fold petered out on to the Logans’ land. I stayed close to the wall of stone instead and made steady progress. My assumption proved correct when in little under a hundred yards I saw that the ridge broke up into a series of rocks jutting from the orange sand like teeth in a crone’s jawbone. The Logan land didn’t benefit from fencing or any other boundary except from the rock formations that offered a natural crescent around them. The mountain range bordered a huge dust bowl many miles across and disappeared into the far heat haze. I wondered who had originally built their home there, and how they managed to exist in such an inhospitable place. There was no grass for grazing, certainly no crops, so how they had made a living seemed a mystery. In this modern era, the Logans would have other opportunities for revenue, but their forebears?

  The answer presented itself soon enough. The ranch-style buildings were clustered on the northern shore of a shallow watering hole. From the desert floor bubbled an underground spring, a remnant of the time when this place was lush and vibrant, which must have offered life to people traversing the desert. Water was probably worth its weight in gold during the pioneering days. Whoever had lucked upon this spot and laid claim to it would have charged other travellers and their beasts to drink. Maybe they had also raised crops along the shoreline, but not now, because these days it was the home of tangled patches of prickly pear. The Logans didn’t have to grow their own food when their pick-up truck could take them to civilisation in no time. They weren’t farmers and neither were they the type interested in manual labour. At least, judging by the state of the buildings they had no interest in maintaining their property. Even their truck, a lifeline way out here, was scabrous and missing parts.

  The pick-up should have been the least of my concerns, but I found my gaze straying to it again. It looked familiar, although I couldn’t at first place where I’d seen the damn thing. Then it came back to me, how I’d been leaving the truck stop last night and was almost sideswiped by a pick-up missing a wing mirror. The jackass who was driving it had levelled a hail of foul language my way. I was certain that it was the same vehicle, and thought that even if they had nothing to do with Jay and the others’ disappearance then maybe I’d be having words with the Logans after all. It was a ridiculous thought, but it was there, and it helped get my blood up.

  What was the driver’s purpose for visiting the truck stop?

  There were many mundane possibilities but I wondered if he’d been there to check up on the local gossip, to determine if his family was being mentioned in connection with the murderous hold-up at Peachy’s gas station only a few miles distant, or the subsequent disappearance of the three girls. Whatever his purpose was, it made me wonder again if there was such a thing as coincidence or if some unknown power was at work conniving to bring us into conflict. Maybe it wasn’t chance that three missing females bore such similarities, or that a random visit to a truck stop in the middle of nowhere led me to make that link, not to mention placing one of the possible culprits in my sights at much the same time. Then again, it could all prove a pile of crap if my recce turned up nothing untoward.

  The Logan family.

  At first I’d assumed that they were brothers, but Scott had put me right. Carson was the elder, and father to Brent. The other, Samuel, was a cousin. Once there had been a couple of women living at the homestead: Brent’s mother Arlene, and also Carla, Samuel’s younger sister, but I was glad to hear that neither woman was there now. Arlene had passed away from throat cancer fifteen years back, while it was believed that Carla had headed for the West Coast and a new life just over a year ago. That, at least, was the story told to anyone who asked about the young woman. No one had heard from her
since, but then most people tried to stay out of the Logans’ business and didn’t raise the subject very often.

  It’s shameful, I know, but there have been times in my life when I’ve hurt women. Not out of choice, but during the wild firefights I’d been involved in during my military days there had to have been some women injured if not killed. I wasn’t proud of the fact, and had never intentionally targeted a woman or, God forbid, a child, and for that reason I was happy that neither Arlene nor Carla could fall into my sights if things did come unstuck with their menfolk.

  From my position I could see a ramshackle dwelling of sun-bleached boards and shingles, and beyond it further barn-like structures in equal disrepair. There was a stockade at the back, empty of animals, and then a mound of junk and debris comprised mainly of deteriorating mechanical implements, empty plastic sacks and steel drums. An ancient wagon rested up on blocks, but now it was little more than a disintegrating feature of the landscape. The Dodge pick-up was drawn up at the front of the house, telling me that at least one of the Logans was at home, but there was no movement or sound to give them away.

  Crouching behind a boulder that reminded me of a lion’s head, albeit ten times the size, I downed some more water. Then, with half of it now gone, I replaced the container in my rucksack, but propped it in the shade in the lee of the rock. I’d made myself a promise earlier that I wasn’t going to spend all day in this furnace but if I just stayed put and watched for an obvious sign that my suspicions about the family were true I could be in for a long vigil. For all I knew they were sleeping through the hottest part of the day, and I wasn’t prepared to wait them out. Before setting off, I made another inspection of my weapon. Having already loaded my pockets with spare ammo, I was good to go.

  That wasn’t exactly true. I should let someone know where I was, because with the exception of Scott and his buddies, no one did, and I didn’t trust them to race to my rescue if anything bad happened. I took out my cellphone, intent on dropping Rink a text message, but true to form there was no signal. At least I tried. I pocketed the phone again.