Unbeaten

by A. R. Shaw

He didn’t give Davis a chance to ask more prying questions. He radioed ahead instead, even though Davis was pretty sure the doctor was already alerted that he was coming in.

  “Get Doctor Keith up. Davis needs some TLC. She’s going to need assistance.”

  Which meant to Davis that he had a long night of pain ahead of him. Doctor Keith was awesome. She was also very lucky to be the only doctor in town. Otherwise, her lesser gender superseded everything, despite her expertise. Davis even remembered a time they’d come across another doctor of the male variety. They could have brought him to Astoria. Ivan took one look at Davis and a silent decision passed between them. This guy wasn’t coming with them. It would have meant her demise.

  They protected one another in ways they never thought they’d have to, in little ways. Ways that mattered. It was a brutal way of life. As cutthroat as it came. Only once in a while they were able to preserve a little justice, though it always came at a price for someone else.

  They came to a stop and Ivan put the vehicle in park.

  “Look,” Davis began to say.

  “I can’t help you. I wish I could.”

  It bothered Davis that Ivan said you and not your family. Maybe he was only imagining things. “I meant…like Dr. Keith…the boy, Jason’s his name. He’s like her. They’re good people. They don’t deserve this, but they can’t protect themselves.”

  Grim-faced, Ivan just nodded.

  It was the way he looked at him that made the dread overtake him. Ivan’s hand was already on the door handle, ready to leave, but he said, “Did anyone make it? There’s been a lot of executions lately.”

  Davis didn’t expect the question. “I saw the bodies of all of them except for Marvin. He dropped down in a pit. I don’t know if he made it or not. Not would be my guess.”

  “Just as well,” Ivan said and stepped out of the cab, walking around to help Davis into the infirmary.

  “I don’t need your help,” Davis said as Ivan took one arm.

  “You do…you just don’t know it yet,” Ivan said as he helped him walk into the infirmary anyway.

  It was as if his entire body suddenly realized he’d been shot twice, stabbed once and both of his feet were infected.

  “What the hell happened to you?”

  “Hi, Linda,” Davis said.

  Her hair. It was what made him smile, despite the circumstances, each time he saw her. It stood out like sunshine. The curliest mound of hair he’d ever seen on a white woman. Her personality matched. He almost always saw her with a smile. It depended on the company, of course. There were a few individuals in town you just didn’t smile around.

  Ivan helped him onto the table, waved goodbye and left.

  The infirmary was located in a one-room house near Tale’s office. He half-expected the guard to be there, but he was nowhere in sight.

  Linda lived upstairs. Always, there was a guard standing outside on the wooden porch. It wasn’t for her protection. She was not there of her own free will. None of them were, really. She didn’t try to escape but she didn’t make it easy for them to keep her there either. She’d been known to trick them a time or two. They’d finally gotten used to her ruses. Her only response was that they couldn’t keep up with her. It wasn’t her fault if they were lazy.

  No longer were guards allowed to accept any kind of medication from her in trade for goods or looking the other way. She was too charming that way. And she had no dependents like the rest of them. She had no liabilities to be coerced with. That was the thing. The liabilities and the coercion. The advantage and the disadvantage. She held a little bit of power…a lot of good it did her. She was still held against her will.

  “Take ‘em all off.”

  “Geez, Linda,” he said as he gingerly peeled his shirt away from his arm, then removed his boots as well.

  Her eyebrows rose at the sight of the wounds on his heels. “Pants, too.”

  “Seriously? I don’t have anything you need to see under there.”

  It was the way she smiled and tilted her head. “I’ll be the judge of that. Besides, if you throw a clot or something while I have you under, I need quick access to your anus.”

  Shaking his head at her, he said, “That’s just wrong, woman.”

  “It’s not personal. Lie down, big guy,” she said, holding a syringe over him.

  “Don’t,” Davis said. “Don’t put me to sleep.”

  She lowered her voice to something more tender. “You don’t want me digging around in there with forceps while you’re fully conscious, my friend. And I don’t think you realize this, but I have to take a Brillo pad to your heels.”

  “Just do it, Linda. And tell me what the hell went on around here while I was on vacation.”

  She laid down the syringe on the metal table with a clank and picked up the forceps. As she shook her head, her wild curls bounced around, but she wasn’t smiling. The sunshine was gone. “Nice try, but you know I can’t do that.”

  The look in her eyes told him everything he needed to know, though. It wasn’t good.

  39

  Jason

  Jason could not hear the voices in the next room. They’d thrown him into a cinderblock cell and locked the door. There was nothing to sit on. Only a drain in the center of the cold concrete floor. The place looked very similar to another one, not too long ago. One he’d rather not remember. It was the drain that bothered him.

  As of yet no one had tried to speak to him. They’d only taken his backpack and drone and patted him down, emptying his pockets and taking the knife he’d had hidden in there. The whole time, Jason remained calm, studying the faces and exits around him. One light remained on through the night. Jason, huddled in a corner, slid down the wall and finally fell asleep sometime later.

  The next morning, he’d felt a vibration against the flooring that woke him. Opening his eyes, he saw a man standing at the gate with his mouth open. He didn’t look too happy. Jason knew he must have slept through the initial greeting because now the man’s lips were saying something he couldn’t quite understand. The word ass was mentioned though, so Jason put it together that he wanted him to get up.

  Jason stood against the back wall with his hands held up and out. The guard unlocked the gate and looked at him curiously, like he was some kind of moron, and then waved his hand for Jason to come through.

  They were going to find out that he had less than stellar hearing soon. Who knew what would happen then.

  Jason thought it didn’t matter much. He expected the questioning, the torture. What did matter was that he’d accomplished part of his mission. He found out where they were. He was there. He’d yet to meet the big guy, though. The other part of his mission was to convey this information back to Cannon Beach.

  He just needed to find a way to get that information to them. It wasn’t going to be easy and he doubted he’d have an opportunity to escape. He knew that the moment he saw Davis’s hands on Wren. Something changed in him. He’d committed then; even if the effort took his own life, he’d make sure these people never touched her again.

  The guard walked Jason through an adjoining door to a room just as misery-clad as the last. He wasn’t sure what these guys did with all their time, but decorating sure wasn’t something they had a knack for.

  There was a table, at least, in this one, with a few chairs and another guy who seemed to be looking at the guard behind him. Jason soon understood there was a conversation going on without his knowledge. You learn these things when your hearing is no longer useful. It was the intense gaze of the recipient of the conversation that clued you in. He was listening to something and about to respond. His dark shaved head, the intense black eyes, the glance quickly to Jason. Curiosity there.

  Jason tried to turn around to see the moving lips of the first guard, but he nudged him the other way. Then the guy in front of him was drilling his black eyes into his. His mouth moved.

  “You deaf?” were the words his mouth formed.

  F
or a moment there, Jason wanted to smile and say, “Is that a rhetorical question?” But the guy’s eyes…there was something tortured there, too. There was an unspoken recognition of one to another. In the end of the half-second debate with himself, Jason decided to simply nod. The truth was, he could hear some things…certain sounds but not others. Now was not the time to explain trivial distinctions.

  The man pulled out a chair and motioned for him to sit.

  Jason looked at the chair. Cracked his neck on both sides and turned in a stretch on each side of his waist.

  “Getting ready, huh? Don’t try anything, skinny man. You won’t win.”

  Lithium by Nirvana began to play somewhere in the back of his mind. But the guy was watching him as he took his seat and Jason somehow turned down the tune within just a little bit. Here comes the torture, Jason thought. First the mental, then the psychological, and finally the physical. They’ll all come in their own time and intermingle and repeat, but I’m ready.

  The first guard said something to the second that caused him to nod in agreement, and then he left the room and closed the door.

  Intense eye guy sat at the table before him. He took out a paper pad and pen but kept the items close to his side of the table.

  Jason sat there and stared at him.

  He looked as if he were trying to decide where to start. Then he looked sad, as if someone close to him had recently died. Perhaps it was one of the men they’d killed at their camp. If that was the case, Jason knew this meeting wasn’t going to go well for him. The man finally looked up at him and said, “My name is Ivan. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Jason nodded.

  Ivan placed the pen on top of the paper pad and then slid the set over to him.

  “Let’s get started at the beginning. Who killed Hyde? That’s the first question.”

  Jason nodded and diligently began scribbling on the pad. It took him a while to get all the lines straight, so he held the paper close and covered what he was writing. He wanted to be precise. When he finished, he slid the paper back over to Ivan, but he kept the pen poised for more, his eyebrows raised expectantly.

  When Ivan looked up from the pad, his menacing eyes caught Jason’s gaze first, then Ivan’s fist swung over and grabbed Jason by the hair and landed his head hard down against the table top near the paper pad.

  It was at just at the right angle that Jason could still see where he’d drawn the diagonal line through the x’s on the grid.

  Perhaps Ivan wasn’t ready to play the game.

  40

  Sloane

  It wasn’t until the first light of dawn that they’d hidden their vehicles around an old tire shop when they saw the glowing lanterns on the Young’s Bay Bridge in the distance.

  “There’s no way they haven’t spotted us yet,” Chuck said.

  “If they did, they don’t care. Try to cross that bridge, then they care very much,” Marvin said.

  Sloane looked at the man so willing to give them information in the backseat. A sheen of sweat covered his face and neck. He was in pain and doing a damn good job of not showing it. “Kent, can you give him something more?”

  Marvin immediately held up his hand. “No syringes. I don’t trust you anymore.”

  Kent said something back, but Sloane wasn’t paying attention then. She was looking at the bridge across the water. It was a long one.

  Kent was trying to convince Marvin that he would give him just a little morphine this time, to take the edge off.

  Marvin didn’t believe him.

  “Isn’t there another bridge to the east of here?”

  “Not any more. Tale took it down. Said it was too much of a liability. He only kept this one because of the little airport on this side of the water,” Marvin said.

  “He has air capability?”

  “He doesn’t but occasionally there are visitors from Seattle. If he had air capability, you guys wouldn’t exist.”

  “Why didn’t he just send a ship, then? Defeat us by sea. He seems to have a lot of those.”

  Marvin shook his head. “No one questions him…it’s one of his rules. But my guess would be that you guys are just a nuisance. He’s in the business of supply and demand. Goods and services to major cities. He doesn’t give a damn what happens beyond that bridge, unless of course, you get his attention. Which you did.”

  “By killing Hyde, you mean. By shutting down that operation?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know what he was doing in that building of his?”

  “I’ve heard the rumors. He was a friend of Tale’s. But I think even Tale thought Hyde was creepy. So he sent him up out of the way to conduct his experiments and to glean supplies from the locals. There’s always been a sadistic doctor associated with most dictators. Look at history.”

  “You think Tale’s a dictator?”

  “The worst kind you can imagine.”

  Sloane knew history. That statement sent goosebumps along her arms. “Okay. Can you tell me…are there any good people there? Anyone who would help us?”

  Marvin nodded…the sweat on his brow increased. “There are good people in Astoria. But they won’t help you. They’ve got too much to lose.”

  She gave Kent a silent nod then, and before Marvin knew it, Kent plunged yet another syringe into his skin.

  Marvin cut his eyes over to Kent when he felt the needle prick his skin and said, “I swear, man…you have got a problem. Payback’s…” Marvin pointed to himself and then at Kent before he fell asleep, yet again.

  “Is there something you can do to keep his pain level down without putting him to sleep? I need more information from him but I hate seeing him in pain like this,” Sloane asked Kent.

  He shook his head. “Not if I want to keep a reserve. Besides, I think I need to reset his leg. Something’s not right in there.”

  Sloane nodded and stepped out of the truck and joined Chuck, her daughter, and the others in the next vehicle.

  “Sloane, we’ve been talking…the problem with that bridge is the long jetty that leads up to the suspension bridge itself. It’s wide open. They’ll pick us off easily,” Chuck said.

  “And the other bridge is out of order. It’s our only gateway,” Sloane said.

  “I can swim,” Wren said.

  Sloane nearly sucked in a startled breath. “We’re not quite there yet, but yes, you’re a great swimmer. It might come to that. We need to prepare. We have to move tonight, if it’s not already too late to save him.”

  41

  Davis

  Davis wasn’t proud of it but somewhere during Dr. Linda’s pincushion experiment, he’d passed out. At least, that’s what she’d told him the next morning. She was probably trying to conceal the fact that she’d slipped him a sedative, though. He wasn’t sure. When she denied the accusation, he still had his doubts. Her poker face was legendary.

  The thing that bothered him the most when he woke up wasn’t that he was wearing only a thin gown to cover his manhood, but that he was also handcuffed to the bed.

  “Is this for my own safety? Or for yours?” he said with a slightly veiled threat in his voice.

  “I’m afraid not,” she’d said.

  “Thought not. When’s he coming?”

  “He arrived early this morning by plane, but you were asleep. He’ll return around lunch, he said. Which is very soon, by the way.”

  His breathing quickened suddenly. “Linda,” he said and jerked on the chain around his wrist. The metal clacked against the rail. “Tell me…I need to know.”

  “Shhh,” she said and looked to the doorway. The guard. Her guard…he was always out there somewhere, listening, and ready to betray her. “I can’t.”

  “It makes a difference. If I have nothing to live for, I need to know.”

  She was shaking her head.

  He didn’t know what that meant. This was not the time for misunderstandings.

  The footsteps…there were footsteps coming. �
�Linda!” he said in a hushed tone.

  But it was too late when she edged closer to the bed.

  “Good morning…sunshine.”

  It was him.

  Linda straightened up and pretended to check the IV cords. She didn’t make eye contact with Tale. She didn’t even acknowledge that he’d entered the room. Instead, like a servant, she bowed her head and exited, just after she winked one eye at Davis.

  She’d given him hope in the smallest of movements. She’d given him everything, right there.

  42

  Jason

  By the time the other guard came back to bring, or rather carry, Jason to his cell, his nose was offset from its normal position. This had happened before. Jason was pretty sure it was broken again. The blood continued to stream down his shirt. He tried to hold his head up to stem the tide. His left eye was also swelling shut, which made him dizzy when he tried to walk. He doubted he’d be able to see out of his eye by morning. In all, he thought Ivan held back a little. He’d expected more of him. Something wasn’t right there. Toward the end, Ivan held him up by the shirt to steady him more than to punch him. His eyes betrayed him, from what Jason could see. Finally, the difference came to him.

  Ivan didn’t like the torture. He was only doing the job because he had to. They were watching him. Despite that, he was making a good show of things. There was no permanent damage…unless you counted the broken nose. But by this time, Jason just added this to his collection of injuries. He briefly wondered if his sense of smell would also be taken from him along with his hearing and taste. Jeez, that just left feeling and sight.

  Strewn paper from the pad littered the floor of the gloomy room when they took him away. One of them had a hangman game, penned in haste and blood-smeared. The lines were crooked for the last two letter spaces. He tried to make them perfect. But Ivan had caught on to his shenanigans in the last seconds and tore his artwork away from him, to land where it now lay on the floor.