No Going Back (26 page)

As unlikely as it sounds, there was the possibility that both of my bullets missed their mark, but for one thing. If I hadn’t hurt Samuel, he’d have launched a counterattack while I’d been engaged in my duel with Carson or minutes later with Officer Lewin. So he was injured. He had to be. Then again there had been times in the past where I’d been shot, stabbed, hit by shrapnel, but had managed to survive my wounds. Back when I was with Arrowsake, and deep in the middle of combat, I’d witnessed men with their entrails pooling out of their eviscerated bodies still laying down covering fire for their comrades. Once I heard of a woman who was stabbed more than forty times by her abusive husband, only to turn the knife on him and end the torture with one thrust. The woman lived. The human body can sustain terrible injuries and survive, or something totally inane can kill it. It’s all about the luck of the draw, and Samuel could have been very lucky that day.

30

When he was a boy it had become apparent to Samuel that he was unlike other children. When he took a tumble, or banged his head, or scuffed his knee it didn’t move him to tears like it did the others. His resistance to pain hadn’t concerned his parents, and if anything his father was proud that his boy was as tough as the rugged desert around them. He was seven years old before he’d become fascinated with his ‘condition’, and in the intervening years it had never been far from his thoughts. At school there was much pinching of flesh, slapping of ears, kicking of shins, and he had wondered why it elicited howls from his schoolmates when to him it was nothing. He felt the force of a punch, or a kick to the guts, but there was nothing immediate or lasting about the way it affected his body or mind.

His fascination with his inability to feel pain had morphed into something else, something that he now understood as sadism, but in the early days he looked upon the agony he doled out as an exercise in self-knowledge. Countless times he’d nipped and dug at the nerve clusters lying beneath his skin, feeling little more than a tickle, yet when he did the same to another child they’d howl in torment. As he’d grown older, his experiments had progressed to punching, kicking, head-butting and biting, and he’d learned much about causing pain to other human beings. He’d discovered books on ancient Chinese systems of martial arts; he thought that the talk of meridians conducting the life force throughout the body was a pile of bull crap, but the corresponding Chi points equated to those same places on the body he’d found elicited most pain. There had to be something in it, and he’d delved deeper.

He learned of another Chinese art: Dim Mak. Supposedly there were masters of the art who could touch certain points on the body and induce death. He thought that was a load of crap as well, but couldn’t deny that by striking or pinching certain nerve clusters he could momentarily paralyse someone, or even make them succumb to an unconscious state through the intense agony he inflicted. He didn’t have any truck with the reputedly magical skills of the old masters, and knew that it was rooted purely in the physiology and neurology of the human body. So too was his inability to feel pain. There was something loose inside him. That was it. Some juncture that should carry the nerve impulses to his brain simply wasn’t working right, as if a circuit breaker had flipped to the off position. He didn’t find it an encumbrance, seeing as it had made him fearless, but it had made him careful. Many times he had injured himself without realising. He recalled a time when he’d leaned his weight on a cooking range and had only become aware that his flesh was sizzling when a smell like frying pork had reached his nostrils. He’d suffered serious burns to his backside and never felt a damn thing.

It taught him he wasn’t invulnerable. He could be cut or burned like any man, his bones could be broken, and even if he didn’t feel the debilitating agony, he could still perish from his wounds. Shot twice, he’d have died as quickly as any man if he hadn’t sought medical assistance. Now, with his wounds cleaned and dressed, his body swathed in compression bandages, he felt OK. He couldn’t be irresponsible about his injuries though. If he opened his wounds again, or they grew infected, he’d be in real trouble. He had a slight temperature, and though he didn’t feel the corresponding pain, his body was stiff and less agile than normal. He couldn’t immediately go after that bastard Englishman – not for a couple days at least. Frustration was building inside him, causing his innards to flutter wildly, and he supposed the weird feelings must equate somewhat to the pain ordinary people felt. It was a strange sensation and an alien one.

All of this had come about due to sensation. But not his.

His cousin Carson had an unhealthy appetite for sex, and it was something that Brent had inherited from his father. He didn’t comprehend their need for forcing themselves on women. Pleasure he believed was very close to pain, and someone whose neurological system was impaired could experience neither the way others did. The only time he derived any satisfaction was when a woman – or man for that matter – was squirming in agony beneath his fingers. But it seemed that his kinsmen were slaves to their desires. He’d known all along that it would bring them trouble of the worst kind. His sadism came hand in hand with another condition: that of apathy. He couldn’t care less for those that Carson and Brent kept as their playthings, but even in that uncaring state he could see that it was
wrong
, particularly when they’d started in on his younger sister. Not that he cared what they did to Carla, for he felt no attachment to her in any way. It was
wrong
because he knew it would lead to their downfall.

When Carla had finally snapped, and had gone for Carson with a knife, he had responded in the first way he could think of. He’d struck his sister hard in the side of the jaw, knocking her down. He hadn’t meant for the base of her skull to slam the corner of the stone hearth, but what was done was done. Carson and Brent were both distraught as they’d buried her out in the desert, not because of what had happened but because they had lost the object of their fixation. It had been his idea to get another one.

He had seen Helena Blackstock and thought she bore a passing resemblance to Carla. He took his kin to the bar where he’d learned that she was drinking with her husband, Scott, to show her to them. Maybe it was a good job that the police walked in when they did, or Carson and Brent might have tried to snatch her there and then and this trouble could very well have come on them much sooner. They’d had to be patient; they’d waited things out, and allowed enough time to pass that they wouldn’t be immediate suspects in Helena’s abduction. When they did finally take her, Carson had pulled favours with the police department. He wasn’t surprised that Lewin had agreed to cover for them, in exchange for favours of his own. Whoever had dropped the gene that controlled the sexual urge, he must have been on Carson’s side of the family. Lewin was the illegitimate child of Arlene and Carson before they were wed, and a half-brother to Brent. No one knew the full story of how the boy was raised by a distant cousin in Holbrook, but there was no denying that he was a Logan.

Because familial ties didn’t affect Helena the way they had Carla, they’d had to keep the woman a virtual prisoner, chaining her in the barn, and at night locking her in the box they’d constructed in the desert. They only released her when Carson and Brent required appeasement, and that was when they’d taken to making her parade naked before their eyes.

If she hadn’t slipped her bonds that time, sneaked away into the desert, he wondered if his kin would still be alive. While searching for Helena they’d come across the others at Peachy’s gas station. Again it was he who’d had the idea to take the women. Christ, you couldn’t look a gift horse like that in the mouth. Two for the price of one: a woman to replace Helena and a girl to keep and nurture for when the first was worn out. The third bitch was all his to do with as he pleased. He’d had big plans for Jay Walker. He
still
had big plans.

But he had to get well first, and that wasn’t something he could do while he was so frustrated. He
needed
to hurt someone, and he’d just thought of the very person.

He was in the back office of Doug Stodghill’s auto shop, the owner sitting on the chair opposite him. The man had been that way since finishing dressing his wounds.

‘How bad are my injuries?’

‘The one in your shoulder is superficial. It didn’t hit any major arteries or bones and should heal OK.’

‘What about the other?’ Samuel touched the bandage that was wound tightly around his ribs. Blood was leaking through the crêpe, pink rather than red.

‘It could cause problems if you aren’t careful. The bullet went through your latissimus dorsi muscle, but ricocheted off your ribcage. It broke one rib, cracked the two either side of it. The greatest threat to your health is if the wound becomes infected. Even if that doesn’t happen, it will impede movement, particularly on your left side.’

‘So I should be able to use my right arm OK?’

‘Uh, yeah.’

‘Good.’

‘Wounds like yours,’ Stodghill went on, ‘they’d put anyone else in a hospital bed. I can’t believe you’re even on your feet, never mind using your arms.’

‘I’m a man on a mission, Doug. I won’t stop for nothing ’til I’m done.’

‘You should, Samuel. Give it up now. Get away from here as fast as you can.’ Stodghill’s face was moist with perspiration, and it wasn’t through hard labour. After stealing the abandoned police cruiser, Samuel had realised that he must ditch the vehicle at the first opportunity and had called Stodghill to meet him at the wrecking yard he had part shares in. The cop car had gone through the crusher and was then buried beneath a mound of other squashed cars bound for smelting. Then Samuel had demanded that Stodghill put his previous trade to use. The man had done a tour in Vietnam, and had trained as a medic. It was decades since he’d treated gunshot wounds, but it appeared he hadn’t lost his touch. Samuel didn’t think of him as a loyal friend: he had helped Samuel out of fear. Now all he wanted was for Samuel to be gone, out of his life for good. Samuel wasn’t leaving. He knew that the first opportunity Stodghill had he’d run to the police and give him up.

Samuel tested his right arm. It seemed to be fully functioning, and though he could feel a pulling in his opposite side, it didn’t impede him. He smiled at Stodghill.

Stodghill smiled nervously in return.

His mouth stuck like that as Samuel’s hand shot forward and clamped tightly round his windpipe.

‘Sorry about this, Doug, but you gotta go.’

Stodghill could barely inhale let alone argue for his life.

Samuel pulled the mechanic out of the chair, then propelled him backwards so that his spine cracked painfully against a workbench. There were tools scattered on it, plus sheaths of oil-smeared documents, an old manual typewriter, and a chipped mug. The man grimaced in pain, and Samuel took a moment to study his features, watching blotchy pink patches grow on his cheeks. Samuel squeezed tightly, feeling cartilage popping under his powerful grip.

‘You know something, Doug? I think you’re correct. My right arm seems to be working fine.’

‘Pleeeaaasssseee,’ Stodghill wheezed.

Samuel ignored him, as he lifted his left hand and formed a fist. ‘But look at
this
. This you got wrong. My left works just fine too.’

Since his days as a medic, Doug Stodghill’s outlook on life had changed. Back then he was concerned about his patients and it was his only desire to patch them up; never would he have dreamed of hurting them. But that was then, and none of them were trying to kill him at the time. He was almost blacking out from lack of oxygen, but his natural instinct was to fight for his life. His hand scrabbled along the workbench until he found the coffee mug. He snatched it and, with all the power he could muster, slammed it against the side of Samuel’s skull.

Samuel blinked. Blood trickled from a gash in his hairline, following the contours of his ear and neck to pool in the trough formed by his clavicle.

Yet he hadn’t felt a thing.

‘OK, Doug. I’ll allow you that one.’ He bared his teeth in an exaggeration of a smile as he continued to exert pressure on Stodghill’s windpipe. ‘But you don’t get to hit me again. From now on, only I get to do the hitting.’

31

‘You think he might try to take Nic back again?’

The women had returned to their hotel rooms to freshen up, and it was left to me to deal with their parents who had arrived in Holbrook only a short time earlier. Their reunion had been an emotional affair, at first dominated by tears, then mild recrimination, followed by more tears, but within minutes it had segued into laughter all round. While their mothers accompanied Jay and Nicole inside, Jameson Walker, and Nicole’s dad, Herb, had cornered me in an alcove adjacent to the exit door of the Tipi Hotel. Jameson looked like the burly landowner from a John Wayne Western; in contrast, Herb Challinor was a small balding man who shared the same bone structure as his daughter. We made an odd-looking grouping. Nearby, hotel guests sucked on cigarettes that had been denied them inside, but none of them was in earshot. Both men wanted to show their gratitude to me for bringing home their babies. There was more hugging. I didn’t grow up in a family where men hugged, and it was something I’d had to grow used to after meeting Rink. Lately though, I’d kind of had my hug quota and was a little embarrassed.

My get-out was to mellow the proceedings by informing them of my fears that Samuel had survived and still represented a threat to the girls.