Well Fed - 05 (21 page)

“That’s not bad,” Edgar noted in a clinical tone. “But even then, you’ll have to wait a bit before his diaphragm unlocks. Gotta have breath to say anything, right?”

“Yeah, you’re right.” A light of understanding went off in Prout’s eyes. “So, where do you suggest?”

“Well, if it was information we were tryin’ to get out of him, I’d say lower him and put his head into a washtub of water. Or cover his face and pour water over it.”

“Drown him?”

“No, no, not that. What does the CIA call it? Waterboarding? Has a powerful effect on folks. Gets them all kinds of social. But I’m old-fashioned. If I want information or just a conversation, I say bend things until they break. Or twist. Cutting is fine too. Nothing like being helpless like fireboy here and feeling a knife coast on down your ribs or whatever. The threat alone is enough to get most folks talking, even if it’s just shit.”

Gus studied Edgar with narrowed eyes, disbelief rendering him speechless.

“Course, that way’s messy as all hell too. And you run the risk of bleeding him out. So stick with the other two. Bend or twist.”

Prout nodded understanding. “So no punching?”

Edgar took a contemplative breath, completely at ease with the conversation. “Oh hell, punch him if you want. Whale on him. I mean, whatever floats your boat, bro. Just that you have to wait for him to recover, right?”

As if to prove a point, Edgar reached up with fingers that might’ve been made of iron and pinched Gus’s upraised triceps, hard enough to get a gasp of pain from the man. Edgar twisted it, as if attempting to rip it from the bone. A short whine erupted from Gus’s bearded face, baring his incisors.

“See,” Edgar said. “Like that.”

“I don’t really get off on that torture shit,” Prout said.

Edgar cocked a brow. “Y’don’t?”

“Nah. I mean, I’ll hit the guy just to straighten him out, but I’m not into hurtin’ just for the sake of hurtin’.”

“Didn’t know that about you, Ryan.”

Prout shrugged.

“Well, if the urge takes you… that’s how I’d do it.” Edgar sized up Gus’s hanging form, studying his bonds and then his body, looking for God only knew what.

“Stomp on them feet too,” he eventually muttered and pointed. “Ain’t nothing more painful than a good old-fashioned foot stomp. Target the toes. Small bones. Easy to break. Painful as all fuck.”

“Jesus, Corey,” Prout said. “Where’d you learn this?”

Edgar’s dark, disturbing eyes regarded Gus with no more emotion than a knob of rock. That monstrous mole dotting his right cheek resembled a mark left by a lit cigarette or a blowtorch. “You go around the block a few times,” the man drawled, “you pick up on things. Pavlov would ring a bell to get his dogs to salivate. Pain’ll condition a subject in a similar manner, except faster. Some would argue, anyway.”

Edgar smirked then, his mouth a furry line under that jungle of a beard. He reached forth and gripped the back of Gus’s head, grabbed the fringe of hair growing there.

“Be a good dog, hear me?”

“Yeah,” Gus answered.

That pleased Edgar, and he released him.

“You still got some of that dried beef that last bunch traded?” Edgar asked Prout.

“I do. Planning on doing up a cooked supper, actually. Still got some of that powdered gravy too. That shit doesn’t go old.”

“Gravy,” Edgar smiled, his mole making him wicked. “Gravy sounds like a feast, doesn’t it?”

“It does, it does.”

The two men meandered off to a white Winnebago. An exhausted but relieved Gus watched them go, shivering from both the pain and the cold. His plunked his forehead against an arm and closed his eyes, locking himself away in darkness.

In the evening, as the dark crept in and around the site like the Atlantic tide, four of the gang members gathered in Prout’s Winnebago. The wind picked up, complaining in Gus’s ear. Every so often, a burst of laughter spiked the walls of the home on wheels, and shadows moved past lit windows. The cold tightened its grip on Gus’s bare skin, making him wish for heat of any kind and freezing the long, ugly cut Boll had made earlier in the day. His feet transformed into numb blocks of ice, and his shoulders barely spoke at all. He shifted and straightened at times, his body screaming. That was fine with Gus. Pain was a good thing in that case. He wiggled his fingers and toes, stood and moved his legs. Everything felt sluggish, nearly frozen but functioning. He wondered when the suffering would end.

The men departed for their individual homes well after night had fallen, their shadows staggering between the RVs as if they’d drunk too much.

A
drink
.

A sip of anything would’ve hit the spot right then, would’ve thawed him from the inside out.

A door slammed, and a dark outline appeared beyond the flatbed with the generator shack. Another joined it, and they huddled out of sight before one retired, exclaiming, “Fuckin’ cold out here tonight!”

Yes, it fucking
is
cold out here tonight.

Only a snow flurry or two was needed to garnish the scene.

The other figure came around the corner of the shack and approached Gus, boots scuffling along the frozen ground. It stopped four paces from him and stood there, studying.

“Comfy?” Comeau asked.

Gus barely had the juice left to raise his face.

“Hm,” the leader grunted and walked past. Metal tinkled, and a motor flared to life. Gus felt himself crumple to the ground, smashing a knee off the torturous edge of the tire rim he’d balanced himself on for most of the day. The knee split and bled immediately, as if it were a mouth spitting out bad wine. The ground shredded his skin like broken glass. Gus cried out, took the pain and drew up his knees. His arms responded but barely, still attached to the lowered boom.

A door opened and closed. An engine started up, grabbing Gus’s attention seconds before the tow truck pulled ahead, stretching him out on the harsh earth. Then the red lights flared like demonic eyes as it backed up a foot, giving him that much slack in his rope.

Not that he could do anything about it.

A ghost appeared over Gus. It pulled on his rope bonds, testing them. Then it stepped back and tossed something over his naked form, blinding him.

“Here y’are,” Murray spoke.

“Got that tarp down?” Comeau asked, getting out of the truck.

“Right here.”

“Yeah, that should be enough. Not like he’s going anywhere.”

“You’re too kind, R. J.,” Murray said.

“I know, right? Fuck it. He’s still a man. That’ll keep the snow off him until we decide what to do with him. Y’hear that, fireboy? We’re debating your fate. You be good now, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll cut you loose in the morning.”

Murray chuckled, and Gus agreed with him. There was no fucking chance of being cut loose. Gus squirmed under the tarp, the heavy plastic crinkling as he moved.

“In case you’re wondering, it’s about four or five degrees out right now,” Comeau said. “Might dip below zero—might—course, I’m no weather man. The weather’s made a liar of me before. Hell, you might be buried under a foot of snow come morning.”

A boot stepped on the tarp. “Best curl that up around you if you can. Tuck yourself in, in case the wind picks up. Seeya in the morning.”

“Seeya, fireboy.”

Gus set his jaw in an effort to stop its chattering. He listened for a moment, hearing the voices drift away. His wrists were crossed over each over, and just moving them wrung a gasp from him. His feet were a different matter entirely. They’d tied that rope tight enough to forever leave its print in the skin there, provided he ever got the rope off.

After hanging from his wrists for most of the day, Gus pulled his arms into his body, wiggled upon the coarse turf, and took one deep breath as comfort—comfort that he wouldn’t get from that night’s bed. Though shivering, bleeding, and lying in his own filth, he was still alive.

And tomorrow was another day.

The night was torture.

Gus dozed at times but only until he woke from violent bouts of shivering or sharp pain. His crotch burned from his urine, feeling like a tea bag that had partially frozen. During the night, the wind had picked up, making the edges of the tarp crackle with movement. Gus didn’t have the strength to lift his legs, as they were still tied to the tire rim, so every now and again, a cold draft lifted his only sheet and rudely tickled his legs. His sinus cavity oozed mucus that he snorted down his throat and swallowed, his only meal of the day. The pebbled ground only punished him more.

At some point, Gus lost track of time.

Then morning found him, cold and bitter and trembling. Voices surrounded him, but none approached, giving him hope that maybe they had forgotten about him.

Or maybe they were just getting ready for an execution.

“So, R. J., what are we gonna do with this shithead?” Murray asked, sounding tired of having Gus in the camp.

“What’s wrong with just keepin’ him here?” Comeau wanted to know.

“He’s starting to stink up the campground here.”

“You can’t smell that?” Prout asked.

A pause in the conversation.

“Yeah, he is smellin’ a bit ripe,” Comeau admitted. “Suggestions?”

“I say we drive him out to the lights and keep an eye on him.” Prout again. “Do some fishing. See what’s biting.”

“Not a bad idea.”

“We could do one of them Mexican piñatas,” Murray offered. “That’d be fun.”

“You’re sinking to Boll’s level now.”

“Well, fuck it, I don’t know,” a frustrated Murray exclaimed. “Let me shoot him then if you want to be all humane and shit. Hell, if it’s up to me, I’d just as soon stick a knife in his ear and rotor-root it.”

“And you worked at a bank in a previous life?” Comeau asked with mocking disbelief.

“Yeah, what bank was that again?” Prout asked. “A branch of Fuck You, Incorporated?”

“Fine, you guys do what you like then,” Murray muttered. “I’m keeping out of it.”

The wind fluttered the tarp blanketing Gus, then someone yanked it off. Though it had provided little heat, its removal set off a bout of violent shivering. He instinctively tried to pull his knees in, but the rope around his feet stopped him.

“Man, oh man,” Comeau snarled in distaste. “You shit yourself last night? Jesus.”

“Gotta feeling any fudge he might be holding on to is frozen,” Prout said with a cruel grin.

“Any frostbite?” Murray asked, and Gus squinted at the goggles-wearing man.

“Wasn’t cold enough for that,” Comeau said and screwed up his face. “Maybe only zero last night, if that. Give it a day or two, though. The cold’ll come back. Gotta be below zero for a bit before anything freezes. Or below minus ten for a few minutes––and by ‘a few,’ I mean like twenty or so.”

“He’s chilled,” Prout observed. “But not stirred. Right, fireboy?”

His boot nudged Gus in the ribs like a knob of grit-crusted ice.

“Fuck me, he
does
stink,” Murray said. “Christ, R. J. He sure as hell ain’t no goddamn air freshener.”

“That fresh pine scent left him long ago,” Prout sneered.

“All right, all right,” Comeau cut in. “You guys wheel him on down to the lights and then drive on back.”

Comeau studied Gus, a sympathetic smile covering his face. “Well, this is where our paths part. As you figured out, we talked it over and came to the conclusion that it’s just too damn much of a risk to keep you around. You might get feeling vengeful or something like that later on. Can’t have that. And you
do
smell like shit. Not sure if that’s fear or just plain old BO, but you stink. Anyway, bullets are a little scarce these days, so you’ll understand if we don’t shoot you outright.”

He moved in closer, until his boots were a foot away from Gus’s head.

“Just so you don’t think we’re total bastards, you’re going to sleep for the next bit.”

Comeau soccer-kicked Gus in the side of the face.

In the dark, a place Gus was growing fonder of every time he visited, pain didn’t exist. There was a sense of stretching at times, of pulling, but never anything that lingered. Once he believed he was floating, or attempting to, but his feet prevented him, keeping him close to earth. That was a bit disappointing. When the world was real, he enjoyed flying, though he’d only done it twice. Both times, he flirted successfully with the female flight attendants. Those memories he kept tucked away, for days when he wasn’t feeling very good about himself.

Someone spoke in an alien language, and others chuckled, the sounds reaching him like an old record playing at the slowest possible speed.

Then he realized he was back, facedown and hanging from the tow truck once again. The wind grazed his skin, and he lifted his chin and looked around.

Comeau was walking around to the cab of a pickup.

Murray and Cam Boll were up in the back. Murray had his goggles on and was grinning nastily. Boll wore a disappointed frown.

Sorry, Boll, old man
…
but go butt-fuck yourself anyway.

Murray held up his sidearm and fired three quick shots into the air while shrieking a high-pitched yodel. Boll reached up and pulled the man’s gun arm down, speaking words that were lost in a squeal of tires on pavement. The pickup’s engine sang, strong and willing, bearing its passengers away.

Gus watched them shrink, down a length of highway, toward the overpass in the distance, perhaps three or four hundred meters out. Yellow grassland surrounded him, swaying hypnotically. At its heart was a crossroads of pavement. A single set of traffic lights dangled just overheard.

They had parked the tow truck right in the center of the intersection.

Gus pulled at his bonds and saw that they’d been tied with a fresh length of rope. The tire rim pulled his feet to the ground. He still had a little bit of wiggle room, just not enough to do anything helpful. He inspected himself, still pretty much naked, with only a soiled pair of drawers covering his naughty bits. He still hurt, but just being out of that wagon circle of motor homes lifted his spirits considerably. The notion withered almost as soon as he realized what the gang of highway bandits had done to him. They’d brought him out to this crossroads for a reason—most certainly a bad one.