The Blue (The Complete Novel) (25 page)

            It runs through my head that he might have forgotten Dusty. And I ask myself how long it would take him, all alone in the dark down here, getting sicker and sicker, to forget me completely too? But then I imagine Dusty, and I can’t imagine that Voley doesn’t run up to him and give him a thousand kisses and get excited. He has to remember him. And he’ll remember me. I tell him we’ll figure something out, and then I sit and ignore my aches and the rocking ship and the unnerving wind and roar of the sea and try to figure out a plan. A best kind of death scenario plan. Because as much as I hate the waves and the ocean and the idea of drowning in a storm, it’s a better alternative than what that man had in mind. What all of them have in mind.

My mind twists through different possibilities, all the ways I could possibly incapacitate four grown men with no weapons. Only once in a while, when the ship rolls especially hard, I have to speak up again, calming Voley down, getting his whines back down to whimpers. I try to explain everything to him the best way I can, in a calm voice. I hope that he understands but part of me thinks he doesn’t, and that it’s worse since he knows I’m so close by and not coming over to him. But I have to block that out too. I go through every possibility. How to kill them all.

    If they come one at a time, then I can try to let them rape me, play along with it, and then surprise them. Catch them off guard and gouge out their eyes. Kick to the groin. But it will bring too much attention after even the first one. If I could get one down. My hands run over my pockets again as if I’ll find the knife this time. But there’s nothing. They took it all. And then I run past my hip and feel my underwear. I wonder if I could take it off and use it to strangle on of them. Somehow I know though, that even if I had enough strength, they would probably tear. And then they’d kill me. Probably rape my corpse instead. No, it’s no good. None of my ideas are any good. But then, something floats into my mind that seems like it might work. Just for a second, it makes me think I can get out of here. If the storm worked in my favor…

I start by picturing the first one to come down again—the one who wanted to get at me before he was allowed, before their Captain John said he could. But if the storm keeps up, and provides enough of a distraction, I can picture him coming back down again. He’ll come alone because he can’t resist the idea. He can’t wait. When everyone else is tied up with trying to keep this thing afloat as it’s sucked out along the waterspout lane. And maybe he’ll have keys on him. But then again, if he just comes right in here to me, he’ll have to open the lock anyway.

    I try to visualize it all. I see the dark form come back down amidst the screaming wind, and the rain that slashes the deck above. And then the hatch claps shut and it’s all black again. No one will know he’s come back so soon because they’re all so busy helping up there. He probably won’t say anything this time. Just come right in. Maybe he won’t even use the flashlight again. But then it registers—the meaning of what he said to me—the long stare and the light beaming right on me. He
will
use the flashlight. He wants to see that I’m scared. And it hits even harder as I replay the words he said to me: “You’re not going to like this.” It’s the same one—the same personality Russell warned me about once. The one the rain brings up where things are at their worst.  

I remember it clearly: We were sitting by our tent on the edge of Sioux Falls. It was night time and a strong fire was going. We had a pile of good canned food that pains me to recall. But it was earlier that day, when we’d found it, when we’d come across the flooded supermarket, that I’d met the guy.       It was routine then when we came across an abando to split up after the first surveillance was done. We’d spend as little time as possible under the cramped, flaking structure. Always within earshot of each other though. And there had been the man. Somehow we hadn’t caught him in the first sweep. Young, healthy-looking even, but he’d spotted me first and started climbing across the fallen metal brackets to get close enough to call to me. Who are you here with? he’d asked. And when I started edging back, just slowly and carefully enough that I wouldn’t drop the tuna piled up in my hands into the three feet of dirty brown water covering the floor, he told me how dangerous it was for a girl to be all alone in a place like this. The ceiling could come down he had said, and then, real deliberately, he’d told me that you can get into trouble real fast out here alone. But that he could help me. I was cocky because I thought Russell was right behind me. He had a gun then, and the guy didn’t look armed. So I took the bait. Thought maybe we could get something from him. I balanced on one of the overturned racks and I asked him how he could help me. I wanted to know what he had, what I could take. I asked him if he had medicine because I was worried about Russell’s leg. And part of me thought he might even need help. It was dumb and stupid and Russell let me know about it at the fire that night. But the man told me he was sure he could help me, that just a mile away, he had a bunker filled with supplies. Two years worth at least.

            And when I asked what he was willing to trade, if he’d part with any of his supplies and for what, he told me “pain.” It was such a strange answer, but I knew I was dead-wrong about him as soon as he said it—about going against my better instincts for the hundredth time, thinking I was safer than I really was. And everything would have been fine if Russell had answered my calls when the man started chasing me. But he didn’t. It wasn’t until I got out of the place and found Russell by the parking lot that I realized how close I had come to disappearing inside that water-logged coffin.

    He had started toward me, explaining how the trade would work. Just a little pain and I’ll fill you up. No problem. And he’d been direct. Because as I splashed into the three-feet of water and he knew I had stumbled, he sped up and told me that he’d helped a lot of girls like me. And all they ever had to do was put up with a little pain for him. Nothing that you’ll regret, he’d said, That won’t be worth it for both of us. But something awful and unexpected had changed in the voice as he rushed down into the water after me. I didn’t even know what the hell he really meant then. All I knew was that I’d never heard of such a trade. I had heard of sex trades, and every kind of supply trade, and guarantees upon profit, but never
pain.
And if I hadn’t made one good shot—my right hand springing like a coil in the dark, unloading each can I had—and dented his head, heard him roll back in the dark into a metal bracket, hollering in agony while I ran, I probably never would have made it outside. Russell knew as soon as he saw me that something had happened, without a word from my mouth, and together we waited for fifteen minutes for the man to come outside. And when we walked back to camp that night, Russell walked mostly backwards, gun pointed, waiting for a head to show up, in case he was following us. In case he wanted to figure out where our camp was set. He never came out of that supermarket though and he never came to our campsite. I don’t know if he crawled out the back or if he died right there, drowning in the few feet of mud and water.

    “He made it home,” Russell told me that night by the fire. Like he knew somehow. He snuck right out the back, he must have seen me from the windows, he said. And then he told me what it was: Tanner, the rain’s brought out the worst in a lot of people. You’ve seen it for years now. That was the dumbest thing you ever did.

            I felt like he was right, as much as I wanted to blame him for leaving me alone in there. But it was standard routine—we always hunted the abandos apart from each other once we did a sweep to make sure they were empty.

    “But there are even worse things,” he’d gone on, throwing on another piece of wood. And then he’d told me that the rain brings out every sadistic son-of-a-bitch and every sadistic personality in the whole god damn world. But I didn’t get what he meant. He had to explain to me that for some people, for a sadist, he’d said, there is nothing they want more than to torture you. Not kill you, not even rape you. But to keep you alive as long as possible and make you feel pain. I asked him how the hell that was possible, and what the hell it meant. He’d just told me that without the law, it all comes out. Each and every person’s real desires overtake them. And with nothing in the world in their control, and everything gone to hell, they can control that. If they get you, they’ll have control over you. And then, when I told him about the man’s bunker, where he claimed to have all that food and supply, Russell told me it was probably true. He probably did have a place like that not far from where we were. But only to keep his victims alive long enough to get off. That’s how he gets off, Russell said, and that was the end of it. He stayed up the rest of the night, not sleeping a bit until the daylight came and I could give him a fair warning if someone showed up on us.

My head falls out of the flashback and back into the dark rocking cell. And I know for sure that that’s what the man with the flashlight had been. The same kind of person. Because he wants me to know ahead of time what’s coming. What he’s going to do—how it’s going to hurt me. A jolt of terror runs through me as I recall that afternoon in Sioux Falls and make the connection. But even still, knowing what he is, it’s better that he comes alone than all four of them together. Because I just might be able to kill one man. And as I’m sure I’ve figured out the mind of the flashlight man and I hear the storm shrieking and trying to bury us, and Voley starting to whine again, I hear the hatch open again. Then it shuts but there’s no light. And no sound of stepping. No one’s coming down the steps below the deck. But someone opened the hatch. And I think for a moment maybe someone is here, somehow walking so softly that I don’t hear a thing. I wait for the sound of a footfall, or even the metallic click of the lock on my cell to open, but there’s nothing. I wait and wait and wait but no one comes. No one is down here with us.

    I talk to Voley again, trying to get him to stop making noise so I can hear what’s happening above the deck. It’s no use. The ship is rolling too much now, and I give up. I just lay down in the corner and try to calm my own stomach, waiting for the sound of breaking wood. But the hull never splinters and I don’t hear anything but the steady thrashing. My mind returns to the conversation with Russell. I look for answers from the past, for some advice from him that will get me out of this. But there’s nothing. And I know that it’s just me. No help from any weapons or Voley this time. The hours go by without a change in the noise, and I almost become numb to the motion. Just a perpetual dark and a mind that won’t shut up and let me escape. My thoughts turn to jabbing the flashlight man’s eyes out. Taking his flashlight and caving in his temple. Anything to get free. But what happens when you get free? my head fires back. There’s nothing but darkness down here and three men above. All of them with guns. The restlessness continues forever until finally things seem to quiet down a little, as if we’re passing through the worst part of the storm. And then, after another endless stretch of waiting for the hatch to open again but nothing ever happening, and with Voley finally quiet somewhere out there in the dark, I fall into a fitful sleep.

Chapter 26

When I hear the hatch open again it’s like I never even fell asleep. The roar of the wind and the rain pierces the dark, and then come the footsteps and the slamming of the hatch. It’s just one person. And before I can even finish that realization, I see a beam of light cutting through the dark, revealing the cramped space below deck. I sit upright and watch, and as quickly as adrenaline dumps into my brain, he’s back. And ignoring Voley’s barks, the beam turns and rests again right on me. It only takes a second for the same, dry voice to shock me back to life.

    “You’re not going to be so lucky this time,” he says. And he doesn’t move in, just keeps the flashlight on me. He’s lying, I tell myself, they’ll know he came down alone again. That he disappeared. But no one comes down—the hatch doesn’t open again at all.
Where the hell are they?
I think, and somehow the same people who abducted me are now my only hope.
No—this is what you wanted.
Our best chance—just him and me. But he doesn’t move closer and he doesn’t say anything else. It’s as if he wants me to be scared—to show him I’m scared by saying something. I try to think of what I can say to stall for time. It passes through my head that I can go along with him, and tell him I wanted him to come back. Try to trick him. But I know it’s too naïve, as dumb as what I did back in Sioux Falls. That he’ll see right through it. I want to ask him why I won’t be so lucky this time, to see if he’ll spill some information about what’s happening above deck, but before I can answer him, the only thing that makes sense pops into my head: They’re all asleep. Or he’s already killed them all because they were interfering and wouldn’t let him come down alone.

    The thought terrifies me enough to ask him why. I say it loudly, like I’m not scared at all, and it seems to make him move. The moment the words come out of my mouth, he walks right up to the bars and shines the light in so that I can’t see anything and have to shut my eyes to face in his direction. But now that he’s heard me he doesn’t give a shit. And I hear the slide and clink of metal as he undoes the lock. And a few more metal noises follow, and then the sound of the gate swinging out. Voley barks loudly but still no one opens the hatch from above to check on us. I have to decide right now whether or not to try to bolt past him into the darkness, run right at the flashlight, or stay put and play along. And then, as he stands there, and I shove backwards against the wall and into a corner, there’s a different kind of clinking. Something like metal on wood, and I realize he must have placed the lock on the floor. Or a gun
.
I can’t tell which and I can’t see. And then, he ducks down low and the flashlight momentarily shines on the ground, and he’s inside the cell.