Legion of Despair: Book Three in The Borrowed World Series (4 page)

“Just call me Jack,” the man said.

“Okay, Jack. I’m Gary.”

“Well, Gary, I wouldn’t be using your call sign anymore if I were you. Perhaps I’m just a paranoid old man, but considering the state of things, it’s probably best not to be broadcasting to the powers that be that you have a working HAM setup.”

“Surely no one cares,” Gary said. “There have to be a lot of sets out there, right?”

“Maybe no one cares,” Jack said. “Maybe they do. Maybe some sectors of the government thrive on chaos and they don’t want the sharing of news to dispel some of that chaos.”

That made sense to Gary. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. “Hopefully we’ll talk again.”

“Okeydokey,” Jack replied. “Take care of yourself and hang onto your scalp.”

Gary set the radio down on his desk. Tomorrow, he would inventory supplies. He would dig out his family band radios and make sure each house had one, talk to the neighbors about securing the road into their property, and try to figure out how they could set up a watch so that they wouldn’t be so vulnerable at night. For now, for tonight, he was doing nothing more than crawling into bed with his wife. Tomorrow was a new day.

As fantastic as his reunion with his family was, his reunion with his bed was also a special moment. His pillow remembered the shape of his head and his bed welcomed him like a long lost friend. As much as he’d complained about his sleeping conditions since Richmond, he hadn’t realized until just this moment how deeply and truly he loved his bed.

Before tucking himself in, he made sure his Glock lay ready on the nightstand with a flashlight beside it. He had retrieved his Smith & Wesson M&P-15 from the gun safe and it was propped against the nightstand too. He put the Baofeng earpiece in place and listened to the radio as he lay there in bed, hearing bits and pieces of regional news, filling in some of the gaps in his knowledge of the disaster. It was nothing that provided any comfort. Instead, it scared him a little. There was so much to do, so much to prepare, but his reunion with his bed – and the wife he’d finally come home to -- became all-consuming and he drifted off to sleep in her arms.

*

Gary slept like the dead until the whine of engines woke him. He was heavily disoriented, trying to remember where he was and who he was with. As someone who had grown up with a dirt bike, he recognized the sound of a two-stroke engine through the fog of his mind. He knew these were the riders Will had talked about. He jerked awake and sat up in the bed. In the dark, he listened carefully, trying to figure out what was going on. It was difficult to place exactly where the riders were because there were several of them and they were separated. The sound told him nothing, muffled by trees and bouncing off houses. The men could be anywhere.

He rose from the bed and stumbled to the window. He was still out of it, so used to waking up in the woods in the presence of his coworkers. Being inside a house felt different. He was sheltered, but realized he was still vulnerable. This was not what he’d expected from home, not what he’d hoped for. He stood to the side of the window so that he would not be visible if light splashed across it. He leaned from cover and looked out.

His bedroom window faced out toward his two daughters’ houses. He could see the erratic movement of light in the trees and across the houses. It looked like the riders were just doing laps around the houses, circling back and forth through the yards.

“Why are they doing this?” It was Karen, his youngest daughter, and she’d just entered the room.

“Stay over there with your mother,” Gary said. “Don’t get in the window. They could have guns.”

Karen sat heavily on the bed beside her mother. Debra was sitting up silently, her back against the headboard. Gary could tell that she was afraid but trying her best to be brave.

Gary then remembered what Will had asked him earlier, about how these riders still had gas to do this. He knew they were stealing it, they had to be. While all this activity was taking place on this side of his house, all of his fuel was on the
other
side of his house, where his cars were parked and where his outbuildings were.

He turned away from the window. “Is your window open, Karen?”

“Of course. It’s impossible to sleep around here with them closed. There’s no air at all.”

Gary picked up his AR. It had a light on it, but the flashlight on the nightstand was more powerful so he grabbed that too. “You all stay here.”

“Don’t go outside,” Debra warned.

“I’m not,” he said. “I’m going to a window.”

Gary stepped quickly down the hall, the hardwood floor creaking beneath his bare feet. When he got to Karen’s room, he approached the window cautiously, then glanced quickly out from the shadows. At first he saw nothing, but as his eyes adjusted to the low light he noticed a pair of legs extending from beneath Karen’s VW Jetta.

He didn’t like to curse, but tonight he only applied that to saying them out loud. In his head, he let them roll. If the man was under the car, his intention was obvious. He was puncturing the tank so that he could steal the fuel inside it. Gary did not want to let that happen.

“Crap.” Gary felt his frustration boiling over, both at being awakened in the middle of the night and for having his return home immediately be disrupted by people who couldn’t stay on their side of the fence. Still, Gary did not want to kill a man for this. Jim might have, but Gary wouldn’t, not over gas. He was not that kind of man and he was trying hard not to be.

He drew his rifle up to a firing position and activated his red dot sight. Resting the barrel on the windowsill, he fired a round near the extended feet. He waited for the feet to jerk up beneath the car, but they didn’t.

Gary fired another round.

The feet still didn’t move. Although Gary could hear the bullets ricocheting off the asphalt, he assumed there would be some lead splatter spraying the man’s legs. It would hurt like hell. The man did not move, though. He should have been running like a scalded dog by now.

“I’m coming down there!” Gary yelled. “If you’re still under the car, I’m shooting you. This is your only warning.”

Gary drew back further into the room and watched. He was giving the man an opportunity to run but the idiot didn’t take it. He went back to his bedroom and saw immediately that the dirt bikes were pulling off and heading back down the driveway. It was possible they had some kind of communication and the man under the car had warned them he’d been busted.

“I’m going downstairs!” Gary yelled to his wife and daughter. “Lock the bedroom door and do not come out.”

“Don’t go, Gary!” Debra yelled. “You just got home. Don’t take any chances.”

Gary was already gone, though, scuttling down the steps barefoot. He ran to the kitchen, onto the tile floor, and came to a stop at the door. He looked through a crack in the blinds and tried to see what was out there. Aside from the man beneath the car, he could see no one else.

It crossed his mind that this could be a trap, an effort to draw him outside. Still, he whipped open the door, raised his rifle, and depressed the switch that activated his weapon-mounted light. From the cover of the doorway, he played the light around his immediate surroundings to make sure no one was lying in wait for him. From what he could see, there was no one. Beneath the Jetta, the legs still protruded. Gary doused his light, crouched, and approached the car.

Gary kicked one of the scuffed boots, then immediately backed up, expecting to be shot through an ankle. Not seeing the man’s hands made him very nervous. “Out of there!” he ordered. “Get out now or I shoot.”

The man did not move.

Gary kicked him again.

No reaction.

Was the man passed out drunk? He’d heard of things like that happening, criminals who passed out mid-crime. They go to rob a house and fall asleep like Goldilocks in one of the bedrooms. Usually those people were on drugs or drunk. Gary needed a hand free. He held the rifle single-handed, the pistol grip in his hand, the stock pinched between his bicep and his body. The safety was off. This was not an accurate firing position but surely he could hit someone within arm’s length this way.

He crouched and grabbed an ankle, planning on pulling the man from beneath the car. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do then. Interrogate? Threaten? Shoot? He pulled as hard as he could with one hand, backing his body up and using his legs to pull. The man was holding on, though, and wouldn’t let go. He could not pull him out with a single hand.

“Let go, you bastard,” Gary hissed.

Frustrated, he moved from the front of the vehicle to the passenger side where he would be even with the man’s head. He dropped onto his side in the driveway so that he could peer beneath the car. He leveled his rifle at the man’s head and activated his light.

Gary sucked in a breath and stared in horror. It looked like a zombie from a movie, peeling skin, exposed skull, ragged and damaged features. The man’s entire upper body, face, and head were abraded to the point that he would have been difficult to recognize had Gary known him. Through the blood seeping from the man’s crusted face, Gary could see a rope leading from his distended, broken neck and knotted around a section of exhaust pipe. He imagined the man must have been dragged to death behind one of the motorcycles.

No wonder he couldn’t pull him from beneath the car. These sick maniacs had tied the man here. But
why
? Then he realized the simple and obvious answer.

To keep him occupied.

Suddenly his paranoia spiked and blew through the top of his head. Gary rolled away from the vehicle and rose to his knees, scanning his surroundings with the light. Aware that his light made him a fully illuminated target, he quickly got to his feet and backed into the house. He had the vague fear that someone may have slipped into the house while his back was turned, but he didn’t think so. He ran upstairs and stopped before he got to his bedroom.

“Are you all okay?” he called through the door.

“Yes,” Debra responded, her voice strained. “Are
you
okay?”

“I am,” he said. “You can come out.”

Debra threw open the door and hugged Gary tightly. “What happened?”

“You don’t want to know,” he said. “We’re going to have to change some things around here tomorrow. I think I just got played.”

Chapter 2

Boyd’s House

Bluefield, VA

Alice knew she should be afraid, but really, she was too tired and too depressed to muster the energy to be more scared. She felt defeated. She just wanted it to be over with at this point. This day, this journey, maybe even this life. She wanted to be home with her family and she couldn’t take much more of this nightmare. She was drained. If Boyd was going to kill her, she just wanted to get it over with. She couldn’t take another day like yesterday.

“What do you want, Boyd?” she asked.

He stared down at her, an obscure, menacing presence that absorbed all of the light in the room. He reached into his pocket and removed something, tossing it toward her. She tried to recoil, but she could not. Between the zip ties binding her and her stiffened muscles, she could barely twitch. The object clattered off the floor and bounced into her thigh.

Body lotion?

“It rubs the lotion on its skin,” Boyd said, his voice a stiff falsetto.

“What?” she asked in confusion.

“It rubs the lotion on its skin!”

You got to be kidding me,
Alice thought.
Silence of the Lambs? Really?
She looked up at him blankly.

Boyd smiled. “Just messing with you,” he said. “I loved
Silence of the Lambs
. Always wanted to use that line on someone.”

He was clearly screwed up royally in the head. Who else would do something like that? Who would find this the time to make a joke? Then she realized that she had already answered that question. Someone crazy.

“Why am I tied up here, Boyd?” she asked, her throat parched and her voice cracking.

“I didn’t want you going anywhere before we had a chance to talk,” he said. He dropped to the ground and sat cross-legged across from her. “I prefer a
captive
audience.” He smiled at his own wit.

“Were you following me?”Boyd studied her, watching her face. She couldn’t understand why he was looking at her so intently. Although she had not been sure it was possible, his gaze made her even more uncomfortable than she already was. It gave her a glimpse into the blackness of his interior. Into his madness.

“Or did you just luck up and find me sleeping in that car?”

“I came across you sleeping there inside the car, sound as a baby. I was looking in cars, as you know I’m prone to do, trying to find supplies, and I found you in there. You were starting to stir, so I just slipped under the car and waited for you to step out.”

“Why?”

“I’m assuming that what you mean is why did I
collect
you, and the reason is because we need to talk. I guess I could have sat down with you in the car and talked but I didn’t think about that. I was kind of thinking on the run and hiding under the car was the first thing that crossed my mind. I apologize for the abruptness of it.”

“I don’t even really know you,” she said. “What could we possibly have to talk about?”

He stared at her again, as if trying to read her mind and see what she was thinking. Then it hit her. He was trying to figure out if she knew he had killed Rebecca.

He didn’t know where she went that night. He didn’t know if she ever saw Rebecca’s body or not. As far as he knew, she could have been long gone by that morning and never seen what took place there.

At the memory of the blood, the brutality, it was on the tip of her tongue to start screaming at him, curse him, and call him a monster. What would happen if she did? She knew what would happen. He would kill her. Her life would be over. Her family would never even know what had happened to her.

She would have to play innocent. “Where’s Rebecca?” she asked. She did her best to sound genuine. “Is she upstairs having a good laugh at my expense?”

He continued to stare at her, as though trying to sniff out a lie.

“I thought you two were travelling together,” she added.

He fiddled with his shoe lace, twirling the bow around a meaty finger. She noticed the crescent of dirt beneath the nail. “No, she’s not here. We
were
travelling together, but we’re not now,” he said. “You know how she is. She got in one her moods. She became hard to get along with. I couldn’t deal with her anymore. We parted ways.”

Alice nodded. “Oh,” she finally said. She tried to sound resolute, as if she both fully believed his statement and was satisfied with it.

“You haven’t come across her?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

Alice shook her head, which was not exactly easy lying with her head resting against a concrete floor. Her forehead rocked against the cool floor with the effort. “I wasn’t exactly looking for her, though. I decided to just get myself home. She could find her own way. Never really liked the bitch anyway.”

She hoped this comment might somehow endear her to him and put them on the same side. It was a risk, though. If he felt bad about killing Rebecca, he may lash out at Alice for this slight against her.

Boyd nodded. “I’m sure she’s well on her way home,” he said. “She’ll probably be there any day now, if she’s not already.”

“I’m sure,” Alice agreed. She closed her eyes. Her body felt so heavy. She didn’t have the energy for these games. “What do you want from me, Boyd? I have a family I need to get home to. A husband. A son.”

She’d always read that you should humanize yourself if taken hostage. Make it harder for the kidnapper to see you as an object. Take every opportunity to express that you were a person, not an object.

“None of that matters anymore,” Boyd said. “Your son and husband are part of your old life. You’re going to have a new life. With me.”

Alice cracked her eyes and stared at him. “I have a life. I have people that care about me. People that I care about.”

Boyd smiled at her, then shook his head, a look of pity in his eyes. “Not right now, you don’t, Alice. Now you have nothing. But you do have an option. You can have the life I give you or you can have nothing at all.”

“What do you mean by
nothing
?” she croaked.

“Nothing,” he repeated. “As in
no life
. As in I kill you in this basement and you never see another day on this miserable Earth.”

She clamped her eyes shut and lay there. She would not give him any tears.

“You think about it,” he said, rising from the floor.

“Take these zip ties off,” she begged. “They’re cutting off my circulation.”

He stomped loudly up the wooden steps. “Consider it an incentive to think very carefully.”

“I’m hungry!” she cried.

“More incentive!” he called back to her.

*

Alice lost consciousness after he left. She was too miserable to sleep, but the weakness from her deprivations pulled her into blackness. It was like the fevered sleep of the flu, where you lost all orientation to time and place.

When she awoke, she opened her eyes and saw nothing. She moved her head, looked in all directions. More blackness. She listened and heard nothing. For a few moments she thought she had passed away and was dead once and for all, then gradually the throb of her raw wrists and ankles crept upon her and she knew that she was still alive.

She felt the need to urinate, which was surprising to her since she had not had anything to drink all day. She started to just let go and pee on herself, then she decided this might be an opportunity to appeal to Boyd’s sympathy and see if she could gain any ground with him. Showing that she needed him would give him the feeling of control over her and he seemed to want that.

She cleared her throat and called his name. “Boyd.”

What came out was little more than a hoarse whisper. She worked her mouth, trying to distribute what little moisture remained there.

“Boyd,” she called. It was slightly louder this time but she still suspected it could not be heard beyond the basement.

“BOYD!” she yelled, louder this time, stronger.

“WHAT?” he bellowed.

She jerked in terror and nearly lost control of her bladder.

“WHAT?” he repeated, screaming in her face.

Where had he come from?

A powerful flashlight came on just inches from her face. She contorted, tried to crush her eyes closed, the pain from the beam making her head explode. He must have been sitting there in front of her this whole time, in the dark, just…staring.

“Turn it off!” she pleaded. “Please turn it off.”

“You yelled for me,” he said, his voice reverberating off the stone walls of the old basement.

“You’re hurting me,” she said, twisting her body, trying to get her face out of the beam of the powerful light.

“You don’t know what hurt is,” he said. “Yet.”

He turned the light off and the pain in her head disappeared as quickly as it had come. She was breathing erratically, her heart pounding. “Thank you,” she gasped. “Thank you.”

He said nothing for a moment and she lost track of him in the darkness. She felt him, though. Knew that he was there now, knew that he was within reach.

“What do you want?” he asked. His voice was different now. It was a voice she’d never heard from him before. Before he’d almost been playful, though still clearly crazy. He’d displayed a sense of humor.

This person here in the darkness with her now sounded demonic. She felt that he was right on the razor’s edge between continuing this game with her and slaughtering her as he had Rebecca. This was the man she’d seen choking Rebecca in the luggage compartment of that bus, and no doubt the man that killed her as well. It was the shadowy, evil man that lived inside the other. She had to pull the other back somehow. She had to make the monster retreat back into the cave and leave the other man, the man that she might have just the slightest chance of outwitting.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” she whispered. She tried to make her voice as non-threatening as possible, adding a note of embarrassment, of desperation. She wanted to make sure he knew he was in the position of power in this interaction. It was the only way he would possibly go for it.

“Then go,” he said. She could tell from his voice that there was some of the old Boyd in there. This was the voice of the sarcastic smartass, not the killer. Still, there was an underlying rage and hostility that scared her.

“I don’t want to go on myself,” she said. “I smell bad enough and I don’t have any other clothes. Can’t I just use the toilet?”

“They don’t work anymore,” he said. “There’s no running water.”

“Then where are you going?”

“The yard,” he said, as if it were the dumbest question he’d been asked all day.

“Can’t I use the yard too?”

He was silent. She could hear him breathing. She could feel him thinking, the rusty, encumbered wheels grinding.

His flashlight clicked on and she shut her eyes tightly. She heard Boyd stand and move about the room. Items were moved, a plastic bag rustled. Suddenly hands grabbed her and rolled her over onto her face. She heard the rattling of a chain, then felt something around her neck. She heard the plastic ratcheting sound of another zip tie and felt one bite into her neck. She gasped in panic, thinking he was going to tighten one around her neck and kill her. Though he stopped short of that, she could not push the thought of dying that way from her head.

She heard a metallic click, then a pulling at her wrists as that zip tie was cut. Soon, her feet were free too. She sagged onto the floor, limbs outstretched, feeling the blood restored to her aching extremities.

“I thought you had to pee,” he said. “Get up.”

She stood awkwardly, staggering. She was dizzy and her feet were still numb. She felt a tugging at her neck. It wasn’t hard, but it was enough to stop her in her tracks. Then Boyd tugged harder and he was at her back, whispering over her shoulder, his mouth inches from her ear.

“I have you on a leash,” he said. “I ran the zip tie through a link of this chain so you cannot get loose. Don’t even try. You can do what you need to do in the backyard, but I’m not letting go of this leash. If you try anything at all, I will tighten it and watch you die.”

She thought this over for a moment. “I’m not sure I can pee with you standing right there,” she said.

“This is the last time I’m asking,” he said. “Do you want to go or not?”

“I’ll go,” she said quickly, not wanting to take a chance on him changing his mind.

He used his light to get them to the stairs and then turned it off. Boyd went ahead of her, walking with a sure step up the dark stairs. Halfway up, her leash tightened and he yanked. She had no choice but to start feeling her way up the stairs using her hands. On all fours, trying to negotiate the unfamiliar stairs, she indeed felt like a dog on a leash. She resolved that she would make him pay for this if she ever had the opportunity.

At the top of the steps, Boyd swung open the creaky old door, stepping into the house. When she joined him, she could see nothing. She involuntarily put her hands on Boyd’s arm, using him as a guide through the unfamiliar terrain of the house. In a moment, he pushed against the metal latch of a storm door and they stepped onto a porch.