by Chuck Dixon
"I think they found these on site. There's three more just like them hanging in the mudroom. Given the boot prints we've found, these must have fit the home invaders like tents."
“Bound to be some prints.”
“We also found tie wraps. Cut ones around a kitchen chair set in the great room,” Elliott said.
“They made somebody watch all that.” Danny crouched again, took a handful of gravel in his fingers.
“Delbert, most likely. Had their fun and then took him out to Eight Mile.”
“Shit,” Danny said. He dashed the handful of gravel to the ground and stood.
“Where’s the squirrely looking dude on your team? The one with the soul patch,” he said.
“Derek? What do you need him for?” Elliott said.
“Want to see if I can snake another butt off him,” Danny said. He walked back to the slaughterhouse, vivid in the play of carnival lights across its face.
Gunny Leffertz said:
“Keep telling yourself. It could be worse. It could get worse.”
30
He lay on a cool, rough surface.
He willed himself to lie still as consciousness returned.
Eyes closed, relaxed in the posture of the insensate, he listened.
Two voices. One commanding. One obliging. Spanish. Mexican gutter slang. Their feet crunched on gravel. The sound echoed off surrounding trees. A night wind whispered through the leaves. The surface he lay on was large aggregate fill, not road quality stone. Someone had moved him to this place.
He lay on his side. He was stripped to the skin. His hands were tie-wrapped before him. His legs were free. There was an uncomfortable pressure in his groin. Source unknown.
A sharp boot toe kicked him in the lower back. He feigned the noises of someone slowly rising back to awareness. He opened his eyes to slits. A skinny guy in a rodeo shirt crouched by him, a cigarette clamped in yellow teeth.
“Welcome back, fucker,” the skinny guy said in accented English.
A figure behind Levon guffawed.
“You kill Sabio. Bad idea, fucker. Sabio would have kept you alive a little bit,” the skinny guy said.
“The Elvis looking dude in the kitchen?” Levon said.
The skinny guy repeated this to his partner in Spanish. The guffaw rose to a titter.
"I didn't like him. But you should not have killed him. Now we got to do this, fucker."
The skinny stood, gesturing to his amigo who joined him. Together, they lifted, Levon to his feet. The pressure in his groin turned to sharp pain. Something was pulling on his genitals, a constricting weight.
They were beside a stretch of train track that ran through deep woods. A Dodge Ram was parked up the tracks a ways. The motor was running, sending wisps of exhaust into the trees. A steel cable was hooked over the trailer ball under the rear bumper. The cable slack lay in loops from the rear of the truck to where it ended at Levon's feet. The near end of the cable was tightly cinched at the base of his genitals.
“We going to see how fast you run, fucker. Puedes corer rapido, fucker?”
The other guy, a chubby guy with a baby face and the gimlet eyes of an idiot, bent double sniggering.
“Turn you from an American to a maricon, sí?” Skinny said.
The idiot got it without translation and exploded with a new peal of laughter.
Levon ignored them. He looked to the cable and truck — fifty feet of cable roughly. The hoop over the trailer ball was run through a ring loop to make a slip knot. He could assume the cinch around the root of his manhood was the same. As the slack was taken up the cinch would tighten.
“Well, we going to say goodbye now. Trate de mantenerse con nosotros, de acuerdo? Okay?” The skinny guy clapped him on the shoulder.
“Vamos, Memo.” The two men left him to march to the truck.
“Es mi turno, Beto." The idiot was turning to grin back at Levon standing naked on the grading.
“Sí, hermano. Yo prometi,” the skinny guy said.
Levon watched the men climb into the truck cab. The idiot was driving.
Taking a series of deep breathes, Levon placed one foot before the other, bracing himself on the rough stone. He ignored the pains complaining all over his body. From either the car crash, a beating or both, Levon could feel the effect of deep bruising to his legs, arms and back. His first lungful of air created a lancing pain in his side. A popped rib maybe. Felt more like a stress wound. His eyes were locked on the rear window of the cab. Neither man was looking back at him yet.
A gout of blue smoke from the exhaust pipe and the truck jerked forward spraying gravel. The higher voice of the skinny guy calling for the idiot to take it slow. The truck crawled along the tracks.
They were going to play with Levon.
The skinny guy looked back through the rear window of the cab. Levon faked a limp and an unsteady gait. A flash of those yellow teeth before the face turned away.
Levon broke into a loping run, staying aware not to trip over one of the loops of cable now sliding over the ground as the truck dragged it forward. He could not fall. To fall was to lose.
Without the use of his hands, he lost some of his ability to balance. He dropped his shoulders to lower his center of gravity. He ran in a side to side motion closer to a long distance skater, his shoulders moving forward and back to provide more stability.
The loops were closing as the length of cable worked out the kinks to straighten out behind the truck.
He picked up speed. Legs pumping. The sharp stones gashed the soles of his feet. Blood ran free down his legs as the coarse steel cinch sawed against the tender skin of his groin.
The idiot turned his head to look back at Levon. His eyes grew wide. The skinny guy turned as well.
Levon drove himself harder. The skinny guy shrieked commands.
“Detener! Detener el camion, Memo!”
Instead, Memo punched the accelerator and the truck leapt forward, back wheels spinning in the loose ballast. The tires caught and the Ram tore off with a roar. The cable was sliding up behind Levon as he ran, catching up to him. Once the last coil passed him the line would go taut.
Levon raced to close the gap. Flying gravel pelted his thighs and shin. He launched himself forward in a spring.
The tie wrap between his wrists caught over the trailer ball. The force wrenched Levon’s arms. His shoulders burned with a new blaze of pain. The truck was dragging him now, gravel digging into the flesh of his legs. The terrible pressure on his groin was alleviated. He gripped the ball with numbing hands, his fingers searching the mount for the pin that held the ball in place.
His fingers touched the steel hoop of a cotter pin on one side of the mount and a pair of flanged wires on the other. Over the engine and road sounds he could hear the arguing voices from the cab.
He pressed and pulled on the rusted steel of the cotter pin and pulled it free. The heavy trailer hitch came free, the steel barrel sliding from the box mount.
Gunny Leffertz said:
“You just gonna lie there and die on me?”
31
The truck slowed to a sudden, juddering halt. Levon tumbled free; the thirty-pound trailer hitch hugged against him as he slid over the grading away from the tracks. The long loops of steel cable rattled and sang along with him. He moved as fast as he could manage, making sure to keep his feet clear of the contracting hoops. A single tangle and he'd go down hard.
He was into the weeds along the tracks and heading for a tree line of birches and sumac. The doors of the Ram creaked and slammed behind him. He pelted over a packed gravel service road that ran alongside the tracks.
“El esta aqui! Ahi!” Skinny’s voice echoed in the clearing.
Levon was into the gloom of the woods as the first rounds wicketed past over his head. He stopped fifty yards into the shadows and took cover behind a tree bole.
A flurry of gunfire from the tracks. Red tracers flashed away to his left in shallow arcs. The shots di
ed away, replaced by a shouted exchange between the men by the truck. The engine noise died. They'd take the keys with them. That escape route was eliminated.
As quickly as he could, Levon gathered the long length of steel wire to him, rolling it into loops. He placed his arm through the loops to hang them over his shoulder. The trailer hitch held under one arm, he explored the cinch above his testicles with the tips of his fingers. The wire was slick with his own blood, too slippery for a firm grip.
If he tried to work it loose he risked damaging himself further. The cable was tight against his crotch around a place holding a major blood vessel. Tear that and he’d die here, bleeding out until he lost consciousness.
The voices were closer but off to the left. Boots tromped in the brush. The two men cursed. First at one another and then at Levon, invisible to them in the black between the trees. Skinny called out dire threats, straining his imagination to find a fate worse than the one their prisoner just escaped.
Levon crouched low, back to the tree, the trailer hitched hugged to him. He listened to the men wander past him and off to the right in the woods along the track. They were searching back in the direction behind the truck. He waited until they were a good distance away before moving away on the opposite bearing. Moving steady and quiet, he put more space between them.
His head swam — blood loss and dehydration. The night was warm though cooler in the woods. He trudged on, careful to make as little noise as possible.
After he judged he was three hundred yards along, he turned course to return to the tracks. He stepped from the cover of the woods. The truck was a tiny smudge against the field of gravel glowing pearl-like in the moonlight. He scanned the tracks in either direction before hobbling further away from the truck, losing sight of it around a wide curve in the rails.
A few hundred yards farther on and he had not come to a crossing or bridge. No road intersected the tracks along this run. He did spy a wooden box set on posts on the verge along the grading. He trotted to it at best speed. It was a CSX utility box placed there for use by rail workers.
Using the ball of the trailer hitch he hammered away at the brass padlock holding the door closed. With a two-handed grip on the hitch barrel he swung the weight, denting the hasp and scoring the finish off the lock. He wound up using the ball as a ram to break the dry wood away from the hasp until he had a finger hold to pry the door away.
Levon found what he was looking for inside. A massive bolt cutter with a pair of blades hooked like a bird’s beak. There were other tools like pry bars and mallets. And several pairs of heavy leather work gloves. He slid a pair of those on his aching hands.
A long, plaintive bray sounded from the woods back the way he came. He turned to see a yellow glow like an artificial sunrise coming through the trees beyond the curve.
He squatted in an awkward pose to place the blades of the cutter on the cable dangling between his legs. Back hunched, he pressed the handles closed. His hands slipped on the rubber handles.
The light around the curve grew brighter. A single source of brilliance came into view, a glowing eye set high above the tracks. A train was coming. The horn sounded again to fill the night with a wavering one-note blare.
With greater urgency, he pressed the handles together. The beak of the cutters slid at an angle, catching in the wound strands of wire rather than severing them. He pulled the handles wide, freeing the blades and setting them again on another part of the wire.
Levon turned his head to see the train approaching. His vision filled with the spotlight glare and the horn blowing hard enough to be felt in his chest. The light and sound were like a physical thing, pounding him under a high tide of sensations.
He went to work again on the cutters. He could feel the strength leaving his arms. His skin had gone dry and hot. He was dehydrating. His body was using the last of the moisture in its reserves.
The train screamed past him, ten feet away. The aurora of light moved on by to light the night beyond. He looked down the length of the train to see box and tubular shapes stretched far back beyond the curve. A long freight was moving at top speed, the rock of wheel carriages and squeal of steel on steel more deafening than the noise of the horn.
Back along the dark serpent of freight was a new source of light. A pair of lights moving alongside the train at a slower pace. The lights jiggled up and down, wavering back and forth in the shadow of the tall cars.
The Dodge Ram.
It roared forward until the headlights washed over Levon, white and naked against the black night. He could hear the growl of the truck’s engine even over the clank and rumble of the train passing.
With a final press, he slammed the handles of the cutter together. The cable dangling beneath his crotch parted with a snapping sound.
Freed from his burden, Levon slid the loops of wire from his shoulder. The truck was nearing, wheels banging on springs, lights swinging crazy.
Levon played out six feet of wire in his gloved hands and swung it over his head. The thirty pounds of trailer hitch was flung out in a wide arc, once, twice before he let it fly.
The ball crashed into the windshield of the Dodge with the combined force of its own weight and the truck’s forward momentum. The glass imploded as the trailer ball crashed into the cab.
The truck fishtailed, the rear swinging out until a fender caught on the journal box of a speeding freight car. The Dodge was spun three revolutions, bumper-to-bumper, over the gravel in a shower of sparks and flying steel.
Levon had leapt behind the cover of the utility box. It burst into a blizzard of splinters as the spinning front of the truck struck it. The Ram bounced to a stop farther along the grade minus a door and a tire scraped down to the bare rim.
A ten-pound mallet lay in the wreckage of the utility box. Levon picked it up and loped to the Dodge sitting quietly in the wake of the train. The last car of the mile-long freight combo boomed away toward the far hills dark against the stars.
Levon met the skinny guy as he crawled from the cab, face smeared with blood from a ruined nose. The guy looked up at him, yellow teeth visible through torn lips. Levon brained him with two swift blows from the mallet.
There was a silver plated Star pistol in the skinny guy’s waistband. Levon picked it up and circled around to where the idiot sat dazed on the passenger side. The man was bleeding from where his ear dangled by a ribbon of flesh. An eye was already swelling closed above a deep gash in his cheek.
Levon pressed the barrel of the Star against the idiot’s temple and spoke to him in fluent Spanish.
“Put your hands on the dashboard,” Levon said.
The idiot obeyed, fingers clutching the curved dash top sprinkled with beads of safety glass.
“I’m going to step back and you’re going to step from the car.”
The idiot nodded and did as he was told, moving with a deliberate sloth-like pace. His sad eyes were locked on Levon’s face. Levon ordered the idiot to, thumb and index finger only, remove the revolver tucked under his belt. The man child did so. Levon gestured for him to step clear of the cab with his hands held away from him.
“Are you going to kill me?” the idiot said. His voice was a pathetic mewl. A child begging to avoid punishment for some minor infraction.
“I’m not going to kill you,” Levon said in fluent Spanish.
The idiot beamed a broad smile showing the jagged edges of teeth broken in the crash.
“Not until you’re done changing the tire,” Levon said.
In English this time.
32
He made it back to Uncle Fern’s. He could not remember the drive.
Fern found him lying passed out by the battered Dodge.
His next memory was waking up in his own bed, sunlight peeping around the drawn shades. He was hooked to an IV bag that read FOR VETERINARY USE ONLY.
“Shit,” he said to himself.
He dropped back into a deep stupor.
It was evening when he op
ened his eyes. He was still heavily sedated and the world looked pink around the edges. Merry sat by the bed on a kitchen chair, reading a book by the light of a lamp on the bedside table.
“Honey,” he said. His voice was an arid croak.
Merry looked up, fear on her face. She leaped from the chair to call toward the door.
“Jessie! Uncle Fern!”
Levon tried to sit up. His head spun. There were clean white bandages around both of his hands. There were browning blots of blood on the sheets. His feet were bandaged as well in swathes of gauze. His legs were painted in the deep yellow of a disinfectant. Wrapped around his hips was a dressing that looked like an adult diaper. His groin was where he hurt the most, even through the meds.
Jessie came into the room, followed by Uncle Fern.
“You need to lie back. You’ve lost a lot of blood,” Jessie said. She took his shoulders in her hands and pressed him back. He felt boneless, unable to resist. He let her guide him back onto the pillows.
“What’d you put in me? Dog blood?” he said. It took effort to talk.
“Now you’re a comedian. Must be the drugs.” She smiled. It was a fragile smile. Lines of worry around her eyes and mouth. Merry stood close staring in mute terror.
“I’ll be all right, honey. Don’t worry,” Levon said. He reached out to stroke Merry’s arm.
“He will be, Merry. He’s out of the woods. Your daddy just needs rest and fluids,” Jessie said. She changed the IV bag for another of clear fluid.
Merry nodded, eyes on her father. Her chin pruned with the effort to hold back tears. Uncle Fern took her by the hand and led her from the room. Once the door was closed, Levon could hear his uncle’s comforting words over Merry’s sobbing.
Jessie put the probe of a digital thermometer in Levon’s mouth. It beeped. She set it aside to slip a blood pressure cuff over his arm.
“Fern called you?” he said.
“I was already here. He called me when Dale showed up. The burn was going to kill him and I wasn’t up to treating it. I called the EMTs. He’s at the county hospital in Teeter.”