Legion of Despair: Book Three in The Borrowed World Series (12 page)

When he reached the gate, he could see that the grass was beaten down on the shoulder of the driveway where they’d driven around the gate. He had to close that gap somehow. Then an idea struck him and he whipped off his pack. Digging around in the pocket, he came up with a hank of paracord. He stepped into the weeds and tied one end to the thick trunk of a wild cherry tree. He stretched it tight and ran it at chest level back to the gate, tying it high on the gate post. Then he grabbed his pack, ducked under the rope, and ran the rest of the way to his house.

When he came upon the open meadow that served as a common area between all the houses, Gary could see the headlights of three dirt bikes and two ATVs racing around erratically between the houses. There appeared to be no purpose to their behavior other than to create chaos. Gary did not want to kill them – yet – but he did want this to stop. He raised his rifle and fired two quick shots into a distant bank of dirt. The shots got the group’s attention and they slowed for a moment, obviously trying to see where the shots were coming from. While they were still, Gary aimed near one of the bikes and pulled the trigger again, hopefully creating the impression that he was ready to kill the riders if he had to.

This spurred them into action. Like a swarm of bees, the group buzzed to life and fell into formation. They began accelerating out of the neighborhood and directly toward Gary.

“Will!” Gary called into his radio. “Can you hear me?”

In a moment, the reply came. “I’m here. Where are you? I don’t see a green lightstick.”

“I’m near Scott’s house,” Gary said. “I forgot about the lightstick when I heard the bikes. Come down here. I may need your help.”

Gary moved off the road and into the brush while the riders sped past. He did not want to take a chance on getting mowed down. In the dim light he could see exactly what had been described to him before, riders in black with skull masks hiding the lower part of their faces. Regardless of their intentions or their fighting abilities, they definitely presented a menacing sight.

When they had all passed him, he took off running behind them. He made it less than a dozen steps before he heard the shouts and racing engines that indicated someone had wrecked. He ran up on the scene and saw two bikes wiped out and blocking the narrow trail around the gate, the ATVs trying to get around them. Gary fired a shot into the air as he approached.

This prompted the two ATV drivers to hit the throttle and push their way through the small opening. In the rush, both of them ran over the splayed limbs of one of the downed riders who cursed and cried out. Another rider, who had fallen off his bike, got to his feet and stood his bike up. He was attempting to start it when Gary yelled at him to not move. The rider gave up on trying to start the bike and just jumped onto the seat, crouching and allowing gravity to pull him down the steep driveway. Gary had a perfect shot at his back, but did not feel right about taking it. He knew he probably should, but he couldn’t.

The last rider, swept from his bike by the paracord and then run over by his friends, was on his feet now and staggering toward his bike. The clothesline trap had stripped the man’s mask off his face and his identity was no longer hidden.

“Don’t move,” Gary warned. His words did not slow the man. Gary leveled his red dot on the downed bike and fired one shot, then another, into the aluminum engine block. The crankcase shattered, spraying fragments of cast aluminum in all directions. The rider flinched.

“I said don’t move,” Gary repeated.

This time the rider stopped.

“Turn around.”

Gary heard footsteps behind him. “Will? Is that you?”

“I’m here,” Will replied.

Gary dug a light out of his pocket and shined it on the man’s face just long enough to get a good look at it, then switched the light back off. Gary would have to guess the rider’s age at around twenty. Not much more than a boy. Still, the thought of what this man and his friends might have done at Sara’s house if she’d not turned the tables on them infuriated him. Perhaps he should kill him and get this over with.

“Did you all steal my generator?” Gary asked.

The young man didn’t answer.

“I say we kill him. You think he would have hesitated to kill Sara?” Will spat. “Send a message to the rest of them. Hang his body from a post down by the road.”

Gary didn’t respond to this. Despite everything, he didn’t want to kill another person if he didn’t have to. It bothered him. “What’s your name?”

There was a burst of gunfire. Rounds hit all around Gary and Will, dropping leaves and small branches on them. They hit the ground, rolling toward the side of the road and landing in the ditch. Gary could no longer see the outline of their captive in the dark. As quickly as it began, the fire subsided.

“That was at least two handguns,” Will said. “Sounds like they dumped their magazines on us and took off. It had to be his buddies.”

“I want to know who that jerk is,” Gary said. “I want to go after him. I want my generator back.”

“His name is Wesley,” Will said.

Gary reacted with surprise, squinting at Will in the darkness.

“Wesley Molloy,” Will said. “His dad is an attorney. They live a mile or so down the road in that big subdivision. They have a McMansion on the hill.”

“I can’t believe you know him,” Gary said, rolling out of the ditch, taking a knee and listening. “I think they’re gone.”

“We went to school together,” Will said. “But we weren’t friends. And I have to say that I think you should have killed him.”

“I’ve seen too much killing,” Gary said. “Just because people are getting away with killing people now doesn’t make it right. I don’t want to become that kind of person. I don’t want to kill people I don’t have to kill.”

Will shrugged. “I haven’t seen what you’ve seen, Gary, but I worry that these guys will see this as weakness. They’ll be back.”

“I hope you’re wrong.”

“I hope I am too,” Will replied.

On the walk back to the house, Gary could not help but dwell on what Will had said.

“Will,” he said. “Just so you know, I don’t give second chances. I won’t hesitate to kill them if they come back.”

Chapter 8

Bluefield, Virginia

After killing Boyd, Alice experienced a bout of sheer panic like nothing she’d ever felt before. Despite what she’d been through, despite killing her kidnapper, she paced the kitchen frantically, her heart racing and her mind an unstoppable whirlwind. It was a potent cocktail of the aftereffects of adrenaline and the beginning of realizing that she needed to figure out what to do next. When she finally began to rein herself in and calm down, she knew that she first needed to make sure that there was no one else in the house. While she suspected his mother was dead, she could leave nothing to chance. Boyd may have even had a brother or friend that stayed with him. She had to check.

With the gun still in her shaking hand and pale rays of dying light illuminating her path, Alice walked to the living room, the gun pointed ahead of her. Her breath raced and her heart pounded in her ear like a train bearing down on her. She fought to calm herself. She’d never felt like this. The floor creaked beneath her feet, each step amplified and increasing her tension.

She found the living room empty. An old sofa, its outdated colors still vivid beneath the protection of a fitted plastic cover, sat in front of a coffee table covered in lace doilies. Alice couldn’t imagine how that sofa could be comfortable with that crinkly cover on it. There was a crocheted afghan draped over an old blue recliner. A white Bible sat on the side table. There were pictures covering all the walls, but none of Boyd.

Alice crept toward a hallway where all of the doors were closed. At the first door, she reached for a clear glass knob and turned it, pushing the paneled door open. As soon as she saw the pink tub she pushed the door the rest of the way open. The floor was covered in a pink rug that matched the pink rug around the toilet and the pink furry cover on the toilet lid. Alice shook her head. Her mother was fond of the same fuzzy bathroom accessories. Maybe it was an old lady thing.

With her back to the door, Alice was hit by another wave of sheer panic and spun around, her gun waving wildly. She ran back to the kitchen, confirmed that Boyd was indeed still dead and still where she left him, and then came back to the hallway. The other two rooms were bedrooms. One was obviously the old lady’s, the other clearly Boyd’s. She even made a quick check of the closets, but there was no one else in the house.

Realizing that it was becoming harder to see, she knew she needed to find a flashlight. She could not handle being trapped in the dark with Boyd’s dead body. Neither was leaving immediately an option. She was still wearing the ill-fitting clothing that Boyd had given her and she had no gear for the road. The last thing she remembered from before her kidnapping was that she was in Bluefield, which was roughly an hour from her office
if
you were driving a car, but she had no way of knowing if she was still in Bluefield or not. There were dozens of nearby towns where he could have taken her. She couldn’t worry about that now, though. She had to focus on one thing at a time.

Going back to the kitchen, she found a tablecloth and covered Boyd’s body with it. She had seen enough of him to last a lifetime. As an afterthought, she checked his pockets and found a lighter, a ring of keys, and a pocket knife with a locking blade. She set the items on the table, after discovering that the ratty dress she was wearing had no pockets. She scanned the countertops and found a flashlight sitting there. She took it, confirmed that it worked, and tried to get a plan together.

She needed clothes first of all. Then she needed something to carry her gear in. She hoped Boyd still had one of the packs they had stolen from the FEMA camp. That would be perfect.

With the flashlight in hand, she went to the old lady’s closet and quickly realized that there was nothing in there that she wanted to wear. There was nothing in there even purchased in the last thirty years. Even if they would fit, they were not the kind of clothes you could walk in for days. She couldn’t imagined herself hiking home in a polyester pantsuit, a silky blouse, and a scarf tied around her head. She went instead to Boyd’s room.

Her earlier visit had simply been a cursory glance to make sure that room was empty. Now she tried to figure out what this room told her about the man. The walls were covered with the kind of posters that you might expect on a teen boy’s wall – fast cars with bikini-clad women reclined across them, heavy metal bands, and video games. There was a rack on the wall displaying a collection of cheap samurai swords and martial arts weaponry. That was not a comforting thought to Alice, imagining that Boyd had access to those kind of weapons while she’d been tied in the basement. She thought she was lucky to not end up with a Chinese throwing star sticking out of her forehead.

Shining the light around the room, she hit on one of the black 72-hour backpacks from the FEMA camp.

“Yes!” she said, celebrating any victory at this point.

It was a start. It was a Get Home Bag. The bag was empty but that didn’t concern her at this point. She shined the light around the room and realized that, as a man without a job, Boyd had been a creature of comfort and his primary wardrobe was sweat pants, ragged t-shirts, and hoodies. She was pretty certain that despite the difference in their sizes, she could make that work. With drawstring waists and elastic cuffs, sweatpants were not exactly fitted garments and could fit people of all sizes. She shed the dress and pulled on what she hoped was a clean set of black sweatpants that were spilling from a half-open dresser drawer. She put them on with a Black Sabbath shirt she also found in the closet, along with a matching hoodie. The fit wasn’t ideal but it was an improvement. Even better, it was a genderless outfit that would blend in easily on the road, both day and night.

She dug around in the dresser and found a pair of socks, taking a spare set for the bag. She pieced together a spare sweat suit and put that in her bag. She found a set of Boyd’s tennis shoes and tried them out but they were hopelessly large. She would have to wear her ragged pair from the basement and hope they’d hold up long enough for her to get home, even though one sole was beginning to flap when she walked. If she was lucky there would be a roll of duct tape somewhere she could fix it with.

She pulled out the top drawer of Boyd’s dresser and looked for anything useful. It was not what she’d hoped. She found another lighter but that was it. Most of the drawer was filled with empty prescription bottles he’d saved for some reason. She returned to his closet and scanned it for potentially useful items and was again disappointed. There was a boat paddle, a large stick, a pile of shoes, and a few scattered items of clothes.

Before she left, she caught sight of the rack of swords and weapons again. She needed a good knife. Boyd had the sharp hunting knife on his belt, but she wasn’t interested in moving his body around to remove the sheath. She examined the rack and spied a Gerber boot knife with a belt clip. That would be perfect. She could clip it inside the sweatpants and wear it without it being visible.

She went back to the living room and looked for another closet. Finding a coat closet, she located a rain coat that must have been one of Boyd’s old ones. It was too big for her but it was better than nothing. She crammed it in the bag too. In the old lady’s room, Alice found a box of ammunition for the pistol. Several rounds were missing and Alice assumed those missing rounds were the very ones now in the gun. As a mother, Alice couldn’t imagine going to a gun store and having to buy a gun and ammunition for the purpose of protecting herself from her own son. That was a hell of a thing to have to deal with in your life.

Alice found no holster for the gun, which made sense if the woman merely carried it around the house and slept with it under her pillow. Alice would just have to carry it in the pocket of her hoodie. It would be easy to get to there. Perhaps the visible weight of it in her pocket would serve as a deterrent and encourage people to keep away from her. She hoped this was the case. On her way out of the room she saw a bottle of ibuprofen sitting on the nightstand and swiped it. Remembering the pain of her previous days on the road, she would appreciate having this when the aching started. However, after her imprisonment in Boyd’s basement, she would not complain about resuming her walk home even if her body hurt.

She returned to the kitchen and stared at the tablecloth-covered body once again, making sure that it did not move beneath the cover. In her head, she kept seeing Boyd rise beneath the cover and come after her like some killer in a slasher movie. She would not have been surprised at all. Once she was satisfied that he was still dead, she went through the kitchen looking for anything that might be of use to her. There were still some cans of foods, some stale crackers, and part of a jar of mixed nuts. There was an old jar of applesauce, two cans of deviled ham, and a jar of home canned pickles. Alice threw all of it in the pack, along with a can opener. She took the roll of paper towels from the dispenser and shoved it in her pack, along with a set of utensils.

She opened drawers until she found the junk drawer that every kitchen has. She found more batteries for her flashlight and another cigarette lighter. She even found the roll of duct tape that she’d wondered about earlier. The presence of a small votive candle in the drawer made her think of using candles for light at night if she was holed up in a safe place. She went back to the living room and, sure enough, there was a set on the mantle. She pulled them from the porcelain holders and dropped them into the pack.

She took another glance at Boyd’s body and confirmed he hadn’t moved.

“Think, think, think,” she whispered out loud. “What else do you need?”

Then it came to her. “Water bottle.” She started opening cabinets. She found a few small bottles of tonic water under the counter. It wasn’t to her liking, but it was better than ditch water. Her stomach had been starting to bother her and she was afraid that the ditch water she’d had was making her sick. That was all she needed.

Despite not wanting to return to the basement, she needed her shoes since she couldn’t find any others that fit her. With her flashlight in one hand and the pistol in the other, she descended the stairs to her former cell. By her pile of disgusting clothes, she sat and put her shoes on. When she sat the flashlight down, it rolled slightly and the beam came to rest, shining on the water heater. It gave her an idea. With her shoes on, she crawled to it and tapped it with her knuckles. It sounded full.

She opened the drain valve at the bottom. There was a whistling sound and water started to seep from the valve. Alice quickly turned it off. She remembered seeing some empty Gatorade bottles in the kitchen. She ran up the steps to retrieve them, then returned to the water heater. Carefully tilting each bottle up to the valve, she filled three bottles with the water. After she was done she held the flashlight up to a bottle and examined the contents. The water was clean but had flecks of limestone sediment floating in it. She knew that would settle out over time, and wouldn’t harm her if she drank it.

Heading back upstairs, she packed the bottles into her bag and quickly scanned the kitchen, trying to think if there was anything else she needed. She didn’t come up with anything. Realizing that the quicker she got on the road, the quicker she’d be home, she shouldered the pack. She checked her pockets and made sure that the gun and flashlight were accessible. Her plan was to walk by moonlight as far as she could so that she wouldn’t draw attention, using the light only when absolutely necessary.

She took a last glance at Boyd’s body, wondering if she should offer some last dramatic words to the dead psycho who was now glued to the floor by his own congealing blood. She decided that she’d not waste another breath on him.

She went to the back door and glanced through the curtain. She saw nothing out of the ordinary. She opened the door and stepped out on the porch. Looking around, she was hit by the reality of her situation.

“I have no fucking idea where I am,” she whispered.

*

Alice cautiously moved from the backyard to the front, listening for any one of the million things that worried her. Once in front of the house, she could get a rough lay of the land in the moonlight. She was able to make an assumption based on her familiarity with Appalachian towns and guess that the main road would be downhill of where she now found herself.

The street in front of the house extended in both directions and either could be the direction that led out of here. She chose right and began walking. With luck on her side for a change, she soon found that the street joined another. A left turn took her down the hill to an even wider street. Once there, she turned right and soon found herself at a stop sign beside a divided street. That was surely a sign she was moving in the right direction. She studied the street name and it meant nothing to her.

There were houses along the street in both directions. Some had pale glowing lights inside them, probably lanterns or candles. She was deathly afraid of knocking on a door. She didn’t want to end up locked in another basement, or worse. She also didn’t want to get shot for knocking on a stranger’s door under the current circumstances. With her vision telling her nothing, she decided to just stand still and listen for a moment.

After her brain separated and categorized the sounds of the night, she distinctly heard the murmur of conversation. Rather than immediately flipping out and running, which did indeed cross her mind, she continued to listen to the voices and see what she could tell about them. She could soon tell that it was both a man and a woman speaking and that they appeared to be sitting on a nearby porch, although she could not tell which house yet.