by SLMN
She was so nearly out she could almost taste it.
And that’s when the world exploded.
14
The island pig hit Mary-Joy at full force, its tusk digging into the flesh of her shoulder, ripping the skin apart as its trotters beat at her chest and she went down.
The pig trampled over her, its back legs kicking down on her forehead, the sharp toes ripping out her hair and scratching deeply into her skin.
The gun had been spun from her fingers by the smack of the impact, and she was winded. But it was clear she wasn’t being attacked; the spooked animal was just getting away from her. She hadn’t seen it hiding in the bush, and faced with turning its back on her to go into the hole, the pig had chosen to squeal and rush at her.
She could hear its diminishing trotter beats under the sound of partying from the chalets, and she could still smell its hot animal aroma in her nostrils, ripe with fear and panic.
Still laying on her back, trying to regain her breath, Mary-Joy explored the wound in her shoulder which was starting to throb and ache.
The wound wasn’t deep but it was jagged, and the blood was coming freely. She could feel it running down her arm and pooling in the scars around her elbow.
Mary-Joy applied pressure to the wound and sat up. She had nothing to cover the wound or protect it. Even if she tore material from her pajamas she had no way of holding it in place. She had to hope that in the heat the blood would coagulate quickly and hold until she had an opportunity to find a bandage.
It occurred to her, as the breath returned and her heart reduced its frenetic drumming, that she was lucky the wound wasn’t so savage that she would have had to give herself up to the guards to save her life.
Small mercies.
Very small mercies.
Mary-Joy reached out, picked up the gun and held it tightly, then tighter—trying to blank out the pain in her shoulder, but squeezing the warm metal as hard as she could. As a distraction it worked for a time. She got back onto her knees and pushed on through the undergrowth at the base of the wall. There was enough loose earth around to suggest the pig had been doing more burrowing that evening. The air was rich with the smell of disturbed earth, and Mary-Joy felt the fragrance spurring her on.
The entrance to the hole was just less than a shoulder width, but Mary-Joy wasn’t going to let that stop her from diving head first into it. If she shifted one shoulder then the next, she made progress down into the darkness. Her mouth and nostrils were clogged, she felt fresh mud digging into the wound on her shoulder, but even that pain was not going to stop her. Sharp stones scraped into her side as she wriggled. Her knees barked against the edges of broken rocks which felt like broken glass.
She pushed forward, banging her forehead against low hanging roots, where the bloody scratches caused by the pig’s feet stung and protested.
The bottom of the burrow was slick with pig dung and urine, but she squeezed on, elbows digging in, knees pushing and her belly scraping.
When the blessed moment of relief came, as the tunnel started to turn upwards on the other side of the wall, Mary-Joy felt like yelling like Phil going back into his chalet with his prize of drugs.
But instead she struggled on silently, pulling with her hands, laying the gun down and pushing it along with her chin. In many ways this was another journey that her time on the garbage field had prepared her for.
Often she would have to dive down into the filthiest holes to retrieve a circuit board or a broken phone. She’d had to put up with the slime of rot and the stench of human bodily waste covering her skin with no facilities to wash until she got back to the open sewer outside her shack. Crawling through a hole dug by a pig was a happy holiday compared to the humiliations and survival necessities of the garbage dump.
First one hand, then a shoulder, then the other hand and then her head made it out into the open on the other side of the wall. She threw out the gun, hauled herself up and out.
She’d made it.
This side of the wall was well lit by the moonlight now. Anyone passing on the way to the Enchanted Forest or any Guard Patrols in their Humvees would see her without question. Mary-Joy hauled her exhausted frame up and crawled beyond the line where the edge of the jungle on this side of the island began.
It was only when she lay down again among the vegetation, and felt the wave of listlessness overcome her, that she realized that the injury to her shoulder was worse than she’d initially thought.
The blood loss it had caused was also about to rob her of her consciousness.
It was still dark when she woke.
The moon was still high in the sky, and there was a mist rolling from the fields that have been cleared between the compound and the Enchanted Forest. The mist was bringing tendrils of fog here to the edge of the jungle.
Mary Joe’s shoulder hurt to high heaven. Her head was woozy, and the roils of exhaustion that were still washing through her body, told her gently to put her head back into the soft earth and to drift off into blissful sleep again.
What could be so urgent that she couldn’t sleep? At least for a few more hours?
Mary-Joy sat up with a start.
She didn’t know how long she’d been unconscious, but the way her body felt, it could only have been minutes. Perhaps she hadn’t noticed the mist when she’d crawled out of the hole and collapsed. She’d been so intent on getting to the jungle that her focus had been totally in another direction.
The siren started then.
Spotlights from the control towers came on, scanning the interior of the compound, blasting above it. Mary-Joy got to her feet. There was no time to give into the pain or the exhaustion. She must get to the dock, now, or all was lost.
The dock, such as it was, was a metal-framed, timber-covered jetty that ran from the rocky beach out to the deeper water of the bay. At the beach end it led up to a cinder path which joined the twisting road leading up through the jungle to the compound. Mary-Joy’s journey through the trees and undergrowth had been swift, although it might have been faster if she wasn’t in so much pain or with a head woozy from blood loss.
The tear in her flesh from the island pig’s tusk had stopped bleeding now. The wound was filled with dirt which fortuitously had decreased the coagulation time of Mary-Joy’s blood, operating as a kind of cap over the wound. Occasionally fissures would open in the surface of the plug. Dots of muddy blood would seep up, but there was never an extensive repeat of the original flow. Mary-Joy wondered if her time on the garbage fields had exposed her system to all of the infectious bacteria the world could throw at her, and that she would be able to ward off infection better than someone who hadn’t grown up the way she had?
Mary-Joy almost allowed herself a smile at yet more evidence that her horrific and awful life before coming to the island had prepared her for this moment, in more ways than she ever could have imagined.
The jetty was empty. No guards. No one.
There were some rusty oil drums at the beach end, and a small open shack that would have provided shade for the guards if they were there.
When Mary-Joy had arrived four years ago, the dock had looked much the same, except that it was bustling with guards and crewmen from the steamer. The boat was a large rusty hulk of a thing, the name on its bow obscured by years of neglect. Rust stains streamed from the bilges over the once, long ago, firetruck red hull. The central smokestack belched black fumes as it had made the 12-hour journey from the mainland. There were only five or six crew. The Captain had looked down into the hold just the once to see that the manacled girls were still alive and well. As he had done so, his peaked cap fell off his head into the water that ran around the girls’ legs.
A crewmember, hard-faced and unshaken in a dirty, stained once white uniform, had splashed down into the hold to retrieve the cap. He’d belted Mary-Joy a sharp backhander across the chops for the sheer hell of it before taking the cap back up to his Captain. That had been their only interaction wi
th the crew before arriving at the jetty and the island.
Once tied up, Mary-Joy and the other captives had been herded down gangplanks, manacled together by their wrists. After that, they’d been made to walk the mile and a half to the compound in the midday heat, not given drinks or rest. The road up the compound was steep and exposed, offering no shade until it got near to the compound. There, the road wound through a section of jungle before arriving at the gatehouse.
Mary-Joy had been stronger than all the other girls combined, and had all but carried the ones manacled to her. The thin girl from Manila was on the verge of collapsing from malnutrition and being made to walk in the heat.
Mary-Joy had never learned her name and never saw her again within the compound. Perhaps she’d expired not long after arriving. Mary-Joy never found out, and in those initial months had been too afraid to ask.
Mary-Joy left the cover of the trees at the edge of the beach and walked down to the jetty, the pistol still hot and heavy in her hand. She assumed the area wasn’t permanently manned because it didn’t need to be, once everyone was up in the compound security was tight enough—or so she reasoned was the Owners’ collective thought. That made keeping a guard patrol at the jetty a waste of resources. Also, any passing ships or boats would assume the island was deserted. The Owners obviously didn’t want to announce their presence.
What Mary-Joy’s plan needed was a place to hide until the steamer came in with its latest batch of slaves. She didn’t yet know how, but she’d then find a way onto the steamer, and insert herself into one of the two life boats or below the decks until it went back to wherever the airstrip was on the mainland.
What she would do then, she had no idea. At least now she’d made it here, and the steamer would be due tomorrow morning. She just had to wait out twenty-four hours and take her chance. It was massively risky, but looking at the gun, she thought that at least she might be able to defend herself if discovered.
What she would do after that was anyone’s guess.
Mary-Joy jumped down below the jetty. It was cooler out of the sun, and the water looked inviting.
She never had the opportunity to learn how to swim in her short and difficult life, but even so she only had a slight wariness of water. She waded out confidently, to where the seaweed-draped iron piles of the jetty were sunk into the seabed. The metal frame was encrusted with barnacles and other crustacea. The shells bit into the skin of her hand as she hauled herself forward, keeping the gun out of the water, kicking her legs and making progress with just one hand.
Seawater bit into her wounds, washing the plug of earth from her shoulder, but the bleeding was over for the most part, and the saltiness of the water soon became a soothing balm. Mary-Joy hoped the water would wash its salty antiseptic powers throughout the torn wound.
She carried on like this until she reached the end of the jetty. The gun was still dry, her feet no longer touched the seabed. If she had nothing to hold onto, she’d have to learn how to swim pretty fast. Luckily there were enough barnacled iron spars to grab for.
There was a small metal ladder reaching down from the frame above her head. As the swelling but gentle waves bobbed her up and down, she thought the ladder would make it easier to get up towards the steamer when it came in tomorrow. There was also a small iron ledge three feet from the surface of the water. Reaching up, she was able rest the gun on it, and then have both arms free to cling to the iron spars.
She hooked her leg through one, and her arms over another, wedging her backside into the triangle between two spars. She was hot, thirsty, and exhausted, but exhilarated by her progress.
Mary-Joy had given herself a fighting chance.
She fell asleep with the ghost of a smile on her lips.
Mary-Joy awoke at dawn. She’d jammed her body well enough between the spars to have stayed still all night. The gun was still on the ledge, and she had not been discovered. There was, however, a huge rusting wall of metal heading towards her, the sound of a clanging ship’s bell and the steady THUB THUB THUB of the steamer’s engine.
The exhaustion was still the most prevalent feeling in her body, but she knew she needed to wake up fast. The steamer was coming alongside the jetty, and already the waves from its bow were more frequent and powerful. As it came in to dock, the waves it pushed might reach all the way up to the ledge where the gun was resting out of the water.
Mary-Joy pushed herself forward in the wash. Where the top half of her body had dried out already, the shock of dipping the wound back into the salty water sent a white bolt of pain through her frame. Mary-Joy ignored it. This would be her only chance, and she had to take it. She hauled herself up the ladder until she was again well clear of the water. She reached down to the ledge to retrieve the pistol. She climbed up, hooking her gun arm around a rung and pulling up with the other.
The wall of rusted metal was almost alongside. She could hear shouts and feet running about on the wood above.
The realization she hadn’t been woken in the night by guards searching the jetty slammed into her hard. Perhaps the Owners thought she couldn’t have escaped the compound. Perhaps they thought she was still hiding within the compound. Maybe they hadn’t found the hole outside of Charlotte’s chalet…
This notion flooded her with a sense of freedom which swelled through her heart.
If the guards weren’t looking for her out here, then maybe there would be an even chance of getting onto the steamer, offering a real chance of getting off the island.
Gangplanks were crashing down above her. More feet. Shouts. “Get up! Walk now!”
And then a female voice. Full of anger and hate. “Fuck. You. I’m Lainey fucking Ralston and you do not treat me like this you worthless cocksucker!”
Mary-Joy winced as she heard the slap, the snarl of a man and the terrified scream as the girl who had been hit, tumbled off the jetty and fell straight into the water.
15
“We believe our daughter is dead. We thank you for your service, Ms. Durant. Mr. Crane will deal with your invoice. Thank you again.”
Passion sat in Huey Ralston’s office, trying to keep the shock leaping out of her face and slapping the political aide across the chops. She scrambled internally to batten down the hatches and stop her contempt from leaking. Ralston looked hollowed out, gray and thin.
“Mr. Ralston, you can see from the messages on the cloned phone used by Lainey in her Pippa profile that she was being groomed by Jake. She’d agreed to meet him on the day she disappeared.”
Crane put a hand on Huey’s shoulder and said, “That was obviously Gary Malcolm too,” as if that explained everything.
Crane squeezed Ralston’s shoulder, then walked to the office door. He opened it swiftly, the implication clear. Passion was to leave, and she was to leave now.
“I spoke with Gary Malcolm twelve hours before he died…”
“Committed suicide. From remorse.” Crane’s voice was steely and the subtext was that he would brook no disagreement.
“That boy was gotten by the people who took Lainey. I’m sure of it. The operation to take your daughter, Mr. Ralston…”
The other man in the room, Detective Myer, sat quietly in the corner, brushing invisible lint off his pants. He stood up. “Ms. Durant, Houston PD takes a very dim view of outside agencies like yours working towards your own ends, cluttering up an investigation. We’re satisfied that Gary Malcolm committed suicide; the autopsy is conclusive. The suicide note is genuine, and now that we have a body…”
This hit Passion like a whip crack on a frosty morning. “You have a body? When…?”
Myer indicated to the door, Crane coughed and Ralston, rubbed at his eyes. There were tears there.
Myer continued, “We’re keeping the details out of the public domain for the moment. We want to ensure a correct identification, and we’re aware how grief stricken the Ralston family is at this time. We understand why you were engaged and do not blame Mr. Ralston for his atte
mpts…his understandable attempts to keep his family issues out of the media, but your work here is now done. Please leave this to…the professionals.”
This news that a body had been found continued to hit Passion with rapid thuds to the heart. Blows that brought her straight back to the warehouse and the girl Bianca, who’d hung herself rather than be the subject of whatever depravity her captors had planned for her. Then someone—some unknown vigilante—had gotten to the kidnappers first. Torturing and murdering them was still a huge question mark over the death of the girl in Manila. Added to that the disappearances of four previous daughters of rich and powerful men that Passion had investigated to no avail in the last year, and it made her feel a sudden rush of vertigo at the loss.
Not again!
But this time, none of it added up.
None of it.
Passion was sure that Lainey had been spirited away by Fake-Jake. Gary had been forced to write that note. He must have.
The evidence, circumstantial though it was, pointed in that direction. Any fool of a detective could see that; anyone with a brain in their head. And yet now, she felt like she was in a meeting with the Stepford Husbands. The father, the PA, and the Detective all telling her that they were convinced Lainey was dead and the case was closed.
It didn’t make any sense.
Myer pulled a smartphone from his belt holster and thumbed the screen. He held the device up to Passion, but ensured the screen and its upsetting image couldn’t be seen by Ralston or Crane. “Ms. Durant, I took this picture myself last night. I’m sure you’ll understand why I haven’t shown it to Mr. Ralston yet.”
The screen was an image of horror.
A body, bedraggled and dressed in black fishnet-covered clothes, with huge Goth boots on its feet. The dyed black hair full of wet weeds. The pale, waterlogged skin across the face and neck puckered and chewed by what looked like machinery. The flesh opened up to the elements in ragged chunks of red, the pearls of bone breaking through as the jaw exposed beneath.