Bones by the Wood (38 page)

“Have you seen him, bud?”

“No.  I woke up here, like this.  My head hurts, Mama.  I need a drink and I need to pee.”

“I know, bud.  My head hurts, too.  You’re just gonna have to hold on, though, bud.  I don’t know how we’re gonna get out of this, but we’ll find a way.  I’ll find us a way.”

She was lying to him.  She couldn’t see a fucking way out.  But she had to believe she could find one.  Unless whoever had put them here intended to leave them to rot.  Oh please, don’t let that be the case.  She couldn’t watch her boy die that way.  Then the horrifying thought hit her that that might be the merciful option.  Oh God no!  She couldn’t think that way.  She mustn’t think that way.  She needed to be strong.  She had to keep her wits about her.  She had to look for an opening.  She had to be strong.

Her ankles were tied to the legs of the chair.  She tested the ropes at her wrists.  Not tight enough to cut off her circulation, but firm.  She took stock of her body.  From head to toe she did a mental inventory of how she felt.  Whatever they’d drugged her with was the worst of it.  She didn’t think she’d been hurt in any way while she’d been unconscious.  She was still wearing the camisole and shorts set she’d gone to sleep in.  The air in the cell was cool.  She shivered.  She hadn’t been violated.  Small mercies. 

As if thinking about it had been a signal, her body began to protest at the position it had been put in for so long.  The aching seemed to take over every limb.  No.  She couldn’t let it, had to block it out.  Fuck it hurt.  Tough shit.  She needed to be strong.

She worked her wrists and felt the rough hemp abrade her skin.  She was already getting rope burn.  She would work until she bled if it was their only chance out of this fucking horror.

“Can you get your wrists loose, bud?”

“No, Mama.  My arms hurt.”

“I know, bud.  I know.  Can you, like, hop the chair around so I can see your wrists?  Maybe we can get you untied.”

She coughed.  Every word was ripping her dry throat to shreds.

“I’m scared, Mama.  What if someone comes?”

“We need to get out of here, bud.   We can’t do that tied to chairs.  We’re gonna have to take the risk.”

She hopped her own chair around to demonstrate, rubbing the skin from her wrists and ankles in the process.  She could feel the skinned flesh begin to weep.  Now she could see the other wall.  The one with a door in it.  The door was solid.  There was no way to tell if someone was outside waiting for signs of life from within. No way to tell if they’d been left, if they’d been abandoned to die.

Josh jumped his chair in a circle.  Thea could see the knots binding his thin wrists.  She wriggled her fingers.  She didn’t have a great deal of movement, but she had to try.  She started to hop and shuffle her chair over to her son.  If nothing else, she could touch him, try to hold his hand.  If nothing else, they would have that.  She reached him, but misjudged the distance since she was moving blindly and nearly sent them both crashing over to the floor.  Josh let out a little squeal of terror, but they got righted again.  Thea started to work at the knots at his wrists.  And that was when the door opened.

A man walked into the room and Thea’s heart sank. He easily had inches of height on her and at least a hundred pounds.  His face was lined, weather-beaten and cruel.  His long, scraggly hair was tied in a rough ponytail.

“Ah, you are awake.” 

He had an accent.  A thick accent.  Oh shit.  Across the border.  The photo.  The body parts.  The lockdown.  The bad men that Dizzy had promised they were safe from.  He’d been wrong, so very, very wrong. 

“Come on,
puta
. You’re coming with me.” 

He untied her wrists.  She had a chance.  She had to try.  She struck out... and he backhanded her across the face so hard and so fast that she spun and hit the floor, hard, to the sound of Josh’s scream.  All her breath had been knocked out of her, but she forced her arms to work.  She tried to scramble up, tried to ignore the pain in her face and the renewed pounding in her head, but she was fuzzy and slow.  The man laid a meaty hand on her shoulder and dragged her up.  She tried to struggle, but it was like being in a jar of molasses.  He caught her wrists and re-tied them. Tight.  She’d failed again.

She caught the immediate scent of ammonia and looked for the source.  Josh’s bladder had given way to his panic.  Her poor boy.  Her poor, poor boy.  She was being dragged out of the room.  No!  She needed to stay.  She needed to protect her child.  Her little boy was beyond terrified.  She couldn’t leave him.  She struggled again.  The big man dropped his hold on her arms, just long enough to punch her in the gut.  Josh screamed again as any air left in any pocket of her body whooshed out.  The man slammed the door shut with a resounding metallic clang.

No, the walls were not that thick.  She could hear Josh screaming for her all the way down the corridor that she was being dragged along.

“Don’t worry,
puta
.  We’ll take good care of your boy.”

Even if she could have made her lungs work she would have been unable to breathe.  Oh fuck.  Oh fuck.  Oh fuck.  They were going to hurt her boy.  And there was nothing she could do about it.  She would offer herself for anything, any pain, anything, sure death, anything if they would just let Josh go.

She realized she was saying as much, gasping and panting the words as stumbled over her stubbornly numb bare feet.

“No chance,
puta
.  We have plans for you all.”

They were going to die.  They were going to suffer.  Josh was going to know pain and terror, more so than he already had, and it was her fault.  She had failed him.

She had to calm her heart.  Had to.  It was beating so hard.  She was going to have some sort of fucking event.  She was going to pass out, but she couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t...

The man pushed open another cell door.  The smell of the damp, which invaded the corridor as much as it had their cell, and which had been fighting with the rank stench of the man’s body odor, gave way to the tang of roasted meat.  What the fuck?  What were they grilling?

And then she saw.

Dizzy

He was tied to a chair, as she had been, but his chair had armrests.  His wrists were tied to the armrests.  He was wearing only his jeans, not even his boots.  His upper body, his arms, his face, all of his exposed skin was a gut-wrenching awfulness of wounds, of burns, cuts and bruises.  Oh Jesus.  Oh fuck.

He was struggling to open one swollen, bruised and bleeding eye at the sound of the door opening.  The other was swollen completely shut, a mass of black-tinged purple and blood.  She knew he’d seen her when he started to struggle against the ropes that bound his hands and feet.

“Josh?  Where’s Josh?”

Dizzy’s voice was thick and slurred through his split and bruised lips.

“He’s...”

The man, the guard, her jailor, backhanded her again.  Pain exploded through the side of her face.  The blow sent her back down to the floor.  She landed awkwardly, unable to break her fall with her bound hands.  Thea spat out the blood that had gushed into her mouth, and a tooth came out with it.

Dizzy roared.

Another man entered the room through the still-open door.  If the first guard had looked cruel, then this man was soulless.  He was of a similar stature, but his black hair was cropped close and he had a beard just around his mouth.  Thea saw that the second man was carrying a gun.  Were they going to be shot now?  Were they going to shoot her in front of Dizzy?  Were they going to shoot Dizzy in front of her?  They couldn’t kill her.  She’d promise anything.  They couldn’t shoot her.  She had to find a way to save her boy.

There was something wrong with the weapon he was holding.  It looked like an evil, black gun at first glance, but at second glance she saw that the barrel was thick and square.  What the fuck?  Oh Jesus, what was going to happen to them?  Thea spat more of her blood onto the floor.

Her head snapped around at the sound of scraping.  The first man was dragging a chair over, the twin of the one Dizzy was tied to.  He dropped it in place, and came for Thea.  She tried to struggle, which earned her another disabling punch to the gut.

Dizzy roared again in impotent rage.

It was all she could do to gulp air past the pain.  She couldn’t stop them tying her arms to the chair.  She was weak without the power of oxygen.

What the fuck were they doing to Josh while she was here?

She wasn’t there to protect him.

He was alone.

Please God, let him be alone.

Please God, don’t let there be any of these men in that room with him.

Please God, don’t let them be hurting him.

The man with the beard crouched down by the side of her chair so that he was more or less on eye level with her.

“So
puta
, we have you, we have your son, we have your man.  And for what your man did to our leader, for trying to exterminate us like roaches, we will have revenge.  We will exterminate his family, his club.  Where he failed, we will succeed. 

“But first, we’re going to make an example of the three of you.

“As you can see, we’ve started on your man.  We’re going to keep going, but we will leave him alive, just enough that he will be able to watch what we do to you... and to your boy.

“Then the three of you will die.  When we will it, you will die.  You will beg us to kill you before then.”

Oh God.  Please let Josh be on his own in that cell.  Please God, let them leave him alone. There had to be a way out of this.  She had to find it.  Just, please God, let them leave him alone.  He’s just a child, my child Lord.  Please make them leave him be.

The second man aimed the gun thing at Dizzy and pulled the trigger.

Thea called out with what little sound her abused lungs could muster.

But there was no bullet.  Two thin metal wires shot out and the tiny metal pin they were attached to embedded in the damaged skin of Dizzy’s torso.  He was shaking and jolting, grunting through clenched teeth. It wasn’t a gun. It was a Taser.  They’d electrocuted him.

The bearded man walked over, and calmly yanked the electrode out of Dizzy’s body.  It left a small wound among the mass of injuries, a tiny circle.  A thin trickle of blood ran down Dizzy’s torso.

The bearded man walked back, took aim and fired again.

He fired over, and over and over.

Each time Dizzy refused to, or couldn’t, scream as his body locked tight and spasmed violently against the restrictions of his bonds.

There were lots of the little trickling wounds now.  Each time the shock finished, Dizzy went limp in the chair, not even twitching as the electrode was pulled from his flesh.

The man who had dragged from her cell, who hadn’t had any problem hitting her like she was a stray dog, kept stroking her bangs out of her eyes and brushing her hair off her shoulders.  The tenderness in those light touches turned her blood to ice.  At every caress, she flinched, and every time she flinched, he slapped her.  Not as hard as the blows that had cost her a tooth, these were quick, stinging flicks of his wrist.

And through it all, neither of the men spoke a word, and that in itself was chilling.

Twice she’d called Dizzy’s name.  Now she was gagged with a stinking rag that smelled like shit.  It literally smelled like someone had wiped their ass with it.  The thought as much as the smell made her retch.

The bearded man had put the Taser down somewhere and was heading towards Dizzy with a knife, a fucking huge knife, and the first guard was coming for her.  Oh shit, they were done playing.