by A. R. Shaw
“Where’s Mom and Wren?” Mae demanded and stopped in her tracks as if she wasn’t going to take another step without knowing the status of her mother and sister. Right then. Right there.
“I…I don’t know yet, Mae. We have to keep going to the safe house. We’ll find them, once I get you two to safety. Don’t worry.”
Though he said the words, in his heart he feared at least for Sloane’s safety. The connection they shared made him feel the dread deep into his soul. Had the soldiers near their cabin been the FEMA soldiers from months ago that bothered Sloane in her old neighborhood hideout? He didn’t know. There were no insignias on their various uniforms. He looked back from the crested hill toward the way they’d come. The Madrona trees stood out against the deepening violet sky like warped prison bars. Where were they?
“Were those the bad men that smoked us out of the house?” Nicole asked.
“I don’t know. Did either of you recognize them?”
They both shook their heads.
“I didn’t ever see them,” Mae said.
“It’s possible they’re militia or just marauders going from house to house looking for supplies or both.”
“They tried to shoot Ace,” Nicole pointed out. “They’re bad men.”
Kent didn’t want to scare the girls, but he had to agree, they weren’t good men, no matter who they were.
“Let’s get out of here,” Kent said, “It’s not much farther to Foley Creek.”
Ace led the way, brambling through the brush like a dog on a bird hunt.
“How did they find us? I thought we were hidden here,” Mae said.
“Let’s keep our voices down. It doesn’t matter how they found us. Old utility records maybe,” he said, unconsciously shaking his head. “Getting to our meet-up place is our mission now.”
“Wish they’d leave us alone,” Nicole said.
He agreed but knew in his heart they would not. Evildoing was something man didn’t live without for long. A natural disaster might sequester the demon within for a time but eventually greed began again.
In another hour’s time, he carried Nicole’s wet, shaking body in his arms and dragged Mae by his side, up to the safe house steps through the forest rain. His heart sank at the sight. She wasn’t here. Neither Sloane nor Wren ever made their way to the safe haven. He knew this in his heart but still hoped his suspicions weren’t true. He didn’t feel her presence anywhere. No signs of them along their path increased the dread in his soul.
“Wait, Mae. I’m not sure those old stairs will hold my weight and yours at the same time. Here, Nicole, let me put you down for a moment. I need to make sure it’s clear,” he whispered
“Ohh…kay,” Nicole chattered as Kent slid her down from his hold next to Mae. Both girls were drenched and exhausted. He needed to get them warm and dry, which meant he had to start a fire. They would succumb to illness again if he didn’t take that risk. Their immune systems were already weakened. The shivering would make things worse since it caused an increase in metabolic rate and taxed the oxygen supply. With Nicole’s damaged lungs it was like making her ride a bicycle through the rain in a storm.
He was going to have to leave them on their own. There was no other way for him to search for the missing ones. And beyond that, he was going to have to take Ace with him…dumb dog would probably get him killed but Ace could track Sloane, or he hoped so.
Creeping up the damp wooden stairs to the tree level house above a garage, Kent used the barrel end of his rifle to unlatch and open the door. There were no signs of previous entry. There were no signs of life at all for that matter. The sparse interior seemed lonely, in fact—sadly out of state. A manmade thing should contain a human soul and yet this place felt cold and discarded. The feeling of abandonment permeated this world. He thought he’d get over in time, but so far that bereft feeling never left him. It hung over buildings, lone stragglers they’d spied in the distance, over sweaty metal swings swaying in the slight breeze. They were mostly gone…and those that remained stayed hidden from the others. Abandoned vehicles, office buildings, highways—it was all over…with only a few that hid in the shadows, too afraid to come out in the light of day. Except that this was the deliberate intention here. A manufactured desolation. One he and Sloane worked hard to achieve.
The cabin door creaked open on its rusty hinges. His eyes scanned the empty interior from wall to desperate wall. A pile of tattered old blankets in the corner a family of raccoons may have nested in, a collapsed metal queen bed frame with a thin, ripped mattress of black tatting sunken through the slats in the middle, a broken window to the left letting in the gloom of dusk on a day drained of joy.
Kent looked back down to the girls shivering on the stoop below. He suddenly couldn’t speak. With a quick shift of his chin he motioned for the girls to come up. It was best for them to bear their own weight on the rickety, waterlogged stairs anyway. With his tall height and weight, he didn’t want to risk falling through them and injuring one of the girls or himself. They could afford no further losses now.
Ace scrambled up after them with no heed to the predicament, passing them on the way, and stuffed his way into the cabin, sniffing the ground first and then the pile of musty blankets in the corner, then the dirty wooden floorboards again.
“Is our stuff still in here?” Mae asked. “It looks empty.”
“That’s the way it’s meant to look, babe. Abandoned and of no use to others. Let’s get inside and settled. Then we’ll start unpacking things.”
5
Wren
“Help me! Help! Mom!” Wren screamed and writhed from the closet cell they had her tied and locked in. Barely feeling her fingertips tingle from the bonds that held her wrists too tightly, she did feel the sticky blood seeping down the sides of her thumbs from the raw places worn along her wrists.
“You can’t do this to me!”
Already, the ties that held her ankles had worn through her thick socks. She leaned against a wall and sat on a concrete floor. She’d awakened there the day before. At first, she thought it was some kind of closet. “Hold it together,” her mother said in her mind in the beginning.
Wren knew that was the right thing to do. Hold it together. Don’t react. That’s what they want. They’ll try to wear you down. Tear you apart. She’d listened to her mother’s voice in her head for what seemed like hours and then Wren began to hear things beyond the locked door. Screams, grunts, and moans. “Oh my God…they’re hurting someone. Maybe they’re torturing them? Maybe I’m next.”
Stop…she told herself. Don’t go there.
Hours later, her butt went from freezing cold to totally numb from bearing her own weight on the concrete floor as she bit her bottom lip to keep from trembling from not only the cold but fear.
Female screams of someone nearby finally crescendoed…hating herself for it, she willed the desperate sounds to end.
They shot my mother. I heard her voice after that, though. Maybe she’s still alive?
Warm tears flowed unbidden down her cold cheeks.
Stop…she told herself. What do you know right now…in this moment? She heard her mother’s voice say in her mind.
Wren shook her head, not wanting her mother at the time but not willing to let her go, either.
Mentally, Wren assessed her predicament. “I’m tied…wrists and ankles. Enclosed in a dark closet and sitting on a cold concrete floor. It’s been at least a day here while I’ve listened to the torture of others. Yep…I’m screwed.”
Why am I not gagged? That was a question that suddenly came to her and it wasn’t comforting. It meant it didn’t matter if she screamed or not. It meant no one who heard her cared. It meant there was no hope of rescue. No savior would hear her pleas. No one could help her, just as she wasn’t able to help the person on the other side of the wall. Instead, she wished for the person’s silence. The end of her misery in whatever form that came. Be it her death…but be it her silence.
&nb
sp; “Hold it together, Wren.” It was her own voice this time. Not her mother’s She knew the danger now. Truly, serious danger.
The moans and screams on the other side of the doorway grew louder and more desperate hours later. Wren’s palms could not press hard enough to her ears. The smell of sweat permeated the air. Tears created lines down her cheeks and the sound of someone banging a metal pipe or the barrel of a rifle along the doorway came ever nearer. A large boot blocked the dim light of the crevice beneath her own door. Laughter of a sick man sent tingles up Wren’s spine. Later that night she no longer held it together. Wren screamed.
6
Kent
“I’m hungry,” Mae said as Kent latched the cabin door.
“Not the time, Mae. Why don’t you girls go ahead and open that false vent over there, while I work on the rest. There’s bottled water and a few energy bars in there, if I’m remembering right.”
“Okay. Which one is it? They both look exactly the same.”
“The one on the left. It supposed to look exactly the same. You can unscrew the plate with your thumbnail. It’s loose enough.”
Nicole said, “That’s cle-ver,” in a chattering voice reminding him he needed to get some heat in the room.
He chuckled. “I can’t take credit for the idea. That was all your mom. She’s amazing,” he said as the words caught in his throat. Oh Sloane, where are you?
While the girls knelt down and began working on the loose screws, Kent peeled away a small chunk of paneling about midway along the left side of the front doorway. They’d attempted to find old phone cord for the job when they installed this trick, but couldn’t find any useable enough so they went with paracord. The only problem with it was the bright neon blue, and he stared at the highlighted color now in contrast to the room’s gloom and then looked around involuntarily. It was like finding a three-inch, glowing sapphire in the mud.
With just enough length to wrap the cord around two fingers and securing the rest with his thumb, he pulled steadily down between the crevice in the doorframe. More and more of the cording came free as he wrapped the slack round and round the palm of his hand. The chalky dust of plaster and drywall began coating his fingers. With continuous steady pressure, he continued to pull and move toward the adjacent wall, where the line contoured a large rectangle where before there was none. Finally, the cording stopped, and the real work began.
“Are you done yet?”
Kent looked behind him to see the girls leaning against the wall wrapped in a silver blanket, drinking bottled water and munching on energy bars.
He wanted to laugh but the thought of losing Sloane stifled all of that. “I forgot those blankets were in there. You girls just stay there and build up your body heat. I’ve got this for now.”
Fishing the dust out of the indention where the line stopped with his finger, Kent found the loop and slipped his index finger inside. Holding onto his wrist with his other hand, he pulled away from the wall with steady pressure. A large chunk of the drywall broke off and pulled free.
“Whoa,” Mae said.
“That’s not all,” Kent said and grabbed the edges left in place and pulled them away as well. What was left were several muted-green stacked ammo canisters fit perfectly between the wall studs, as well as several wrapped packages, rolled in thick plastic.
“What is all that stuff?” Nicole asked. The sound of her voice worried him. She was weakening still. There were antibiotics in here somewhere. He’d find them and start her on them as soon as possible. They couldn’t afford for her to fall seriously ill right now.
“It’s plan B,” he said and remembered the conversation with Sloane the day she said they needed caches and contingencies for their contingencies. He was only concerned at the time with keeping up their caloric intake daily. The last thing he wanted to do was expend the extra energy to build caches they’d likely never need. But Sloane insisted they prepare for the unthinkable. And though the whole time he complied with her wishes and cursed the extra calories they consumed because of her concerns, he couldn’t be more thankful now. She was right. Sloane was always right, it seemed, and that wasn’t a good thing.
That meant they were in real trouble. He’d kidded himself into thinking they were safe as time went on. She at least saw the potential for danger. Hell, while he hatched new ways to get into her tight-fitting cargo pants, she was hatching new ways of concealing their existence and planning for attacks. It made him feel like a schmuck…but then again, he thought with a wry smile…she never complained about the pants-getting. Hell, she encouraged him.
Coughing, Kent looked over at the girls. “Mae, can you give me a hand here?”
She wiggled her way out from under the crinkly silver blanket and came to his side. Kent handed her the first of many cases. “Line them up against the wall. If you see a smiley face on the side, set those over there. I’ll need those first.”
“Okay. What do the smiley faces mean?”
“Battle gear.”
“Oh, okay.”
Nicole asked, “Why do you need that stuff first?”
He stopped for a second and looked from one girl’s eyes to the next and said in a solemn voice, “I’m going after your mom and Wren. You’re staying here.”
7
Sloane
If misery were in human form, that person sat only three feet away from Sloane atop a thin, stained mattress, pale beyond skin’s natural state and so thin and mottled with dark bruising she looked like a calico cat. The ghastly woman sat cross-legged, not staring at Sloane but rather staring through her with eyes so bloodshot, the whites barely visible.
With no sign she even knew of Sloane’s presence, her ghastly stare held wide open with fear, each orb encircled by a ring of green. At first Sloane thought the hue was some bizarre unwashed makeup from a day or two before, but the more she looked, the marks weren’t makeup at all. They were past bruising in perfect circles around her eyes. Her long brown, stringy hair was knotted and oily. She slid one thigh over the other, exposing infected red sores in some kind of exact pattern. She wore only a thin cotton gown. Sloane looked at her in horror when the woman suddenly jolted at a loud metal clang. Her reaction made Sloane nervous too. Misery suddenly bolted upright from her position.
“Who’s coming?” Sloane asked the woman. No response came. Only sudden murmurs like a praying chant.
“What does that sound mean?”
Lost in terror, the woman clenched her legs closed and lay down on her side, drawing her knees into her chest and her hands to her mouth. Then Sloane realized the woman had no undergarments on under the thin gray gown.
“They’ve tortured you?”
No response.
Another metal clang behind their door. Sloane looked to the woman on the bed for her reaction. Eyes still wide, though the fearful moaning relinquished some of its urgent tones. Just then, a desperate shrill from beyond their doorway made her skin tingle. A sound of chains drug along a concrete floor. A scuffle. Screams of, “No! No! No!”
In horror, Sloane again looked from the door to the bed. What the hell is going on here? The woman moved her hands from her mouth to her ears and closed her eyes, shielding them from the pleas beyond the door. Apparently, it was someone else’s turn for torture.
A burning pain in her own thigh caught Sloane’s attention then. She looked down in dread at the spots of dried blood along the thin gray gown she found herself wearing. Then, like a thunder strike, she remembered. The shots, the blinding strike to her head and most of all…the radio call—Wren.
They’ve got her, too.
8
Boyd
“Boyd…take this one. You know what to do. She was a good girl this time. It didn’t take too long,” Hyde said, writing on a piece of paper. “I’m grateful when the methods work well,” he said offhandedly, as if he’d just won a business deal.
Boyd wanted to scream. The iron smell of blood and piss permeated the small enclosed room kn
own as the interrogation room. It was nothing more than a torture chamber with several implements used in the past. There are a few things in life humans find exceptionally interesting. It’s like the world’s way of carrying on something that they might otherwise forget…as if in each human a piece of knowledge rests in the brain as a byte of information, a nugget of past facts for future use.
For some, that fascination is running long distances, quilting, or collecting baseball caps. For others, that interest is making the best cappuccino, learning the Latin names of plants, Italian shoes, or listening to obscure grunge bands while recalling each set tune for longevity. They may not know why they retain this knowledge more than others, but they do.
For Lieutenant Hyde that interest was the history and techniques of torture and its devices.
With a sideways glance at the Lieutenant, he held a near-gleeful smirk upon his face. His eyes gleamed in triumph as he wrote furiously on a piece of paper. The address of a new cache of supplies, no doubt.
“After you put her away, get Wilson in here immediately,” Hyde said, looking up at him, his eyes glistening in excitement.
Boyd just stood there in front of Hyde’s latest victim. Her bare body was covered in sweat, blood, feces…anything a body could expel. He didn’t know who she was, but he knew who she wasn’t, and that was why he did Hyde’s bidding every day. To save his little sister…he’d sold his soul. That’s what he told himself. A life of service for a monster mattered little if he could keep her from this peril.