I haven’t been in this area in almost a decade, but I know that there is a community here. Reports from the Clarke County traders have always suggested that the group is small, barely subsisting, with few resources, but I don’t know how much I can trust that information now. It’s possible they were the ones who set the trap, though Randall is more likely.
I stand up straight, motioning for Kloves and Marilyn to stay in the car. “Be careful,” Marilyn mouths. I shut the door to help her feel safer. Barkov moves away from the car, walking south across the intersection toward one of the shopping districts of Conyers, but he halts a dozen yards from the Volvo.
“I think they are long gone,” he calls back to me, lowering the shotgun.
I relax my grip as well, holstering my pistol and joining Barkov. “I should have been paying closer attention.”
“Now we know they expected us to follow,” he says, ignoring my comment. “It will be much harder.”
I knew it was a possibility, but I suppose I hoped for a miracle. “We’re going to need new tires. There’s a spare, but only the one. We could head back to the Little Five, but that’s eight hours away on foot.”
Barkov points down the hill to the shops. The boarded-up restaurants, retail stores, and gas stations on either side of the highway look abandoned, but that could be only appearances. Glass is harder to protect than lumber, so even an inhabited storefront would look decrepit.
“No fences,” my friend says, as if that were enough.
“You think there’s no one here,” I offer.
“I think they will be hard to find. At one time there would have been too much here to pass up. But it is very open, and you remember what it was like, yes? Everyone wanted walls. They thought walls made them safer.”
“If there’s no one here,” I point out, “or they stay in hiding, we won’t be bothered. We’ll do a search for usable tires and be on our way. I doubt Randall’s people would have taken the time to make sure we couldn’t find replacements. And if there are people here, we’ll deal with it. It makes no sense to walk back to Atlanta for another car.”
Barkov agrees, and after a few more minutes of searching, we’re both satisfied that the Volvo will be secure long enough for us to retrieve the tires we need. We debate whether to bring Marilyn along with us on the search for tires: leaving her with Kloves would keep her safe, but Barkov and I could use the extra eyes.
Marilyn steps out of the car and shoulders one of our backpacks, stocked with enough food and water to last us the rest of the day, then shoos us along impatiently. “I can make up my own mind. Let’s go. You insisted I come along. So I’m coming.”
We head into what was once a typical example of southern suburban sprawl, full of oversized parking lots and short, expansive standalone shops.
Kloves is the first to point out that most of the abandoned cars here either have flat tires or none at all, victims of a decade’s worth of looting and decay. The tires that have survived tend to be premium models that wouldn’t fit a ramshackle Volvo from thirty years ago. Although he’s no mechanic like Vargas, Kloves has the best eye of all of us for these things, so he hurries ahead to check the wide flatland of asphalt while the rest of us take a slower pace and aim down the center of the highway. There is bound to be a garage, tire center, or lube shop along the main drag, and if we’re lucky we’ll find one that hasn’t been completely stripped.
A quarter mile down the road, Marilyn notices a pair of large birds sitting down in front of a chain coffee shop. “Carrion crows,” she says. “My mother called them that. Here they’re called buzzards. You never used to see them in this area.”
We called them turkey vultures growing up. They mean something big and dead, but I think none of us are prepared for what we find. I assumed it would be a deer, or a dog—maybe even a hollow-head, though they tend to be eaten by their own kind. Instead, it becomes clear as we approach that two people were chained to the cafe’s patio fence and left to die. One man, one woman, both stripped naked.
Barkov is the first to become alert, drawing his weapon again and watching the nearby buildings. Marilyn hurries forward as if there were anything she could do for them. I see Kloves approaching from the direction of a ramshackle Christian tchotchke department store, just as tense as Barkov. He’s raised his shotgun to his shoulder, and he walks almost backwards toward us.
The turkey vultures scatter when we get within a few yards, squawking their discontent. “This is recent,” Marilyn calls over to Barkov, who nods an acknowledgment. She crouches down by the woman’s body. “Carrion crows don’t eat anything that’s started to rot.”
“And they were alive when they were chained,” I add, pointing to the marks on the wrists where the chains dig in.
The bodies look young, possibly early twenties. The faces have been obliterated by the birds, and both abdomens are torn open, but the rest of the flesh is largely intact. I move the woman’s body to one side and reveal a series of angry welts and evidence of whipping going back months, maybe even years. The man has no such marks, but even my untrained eye can tell that his right leg is broken just above the ankle. That must have happened shortly before he died, since the bruising hasn’t spread beyond the site of the break.
“Just like Abigail,” Marilyn says, disbelief in her voice. “Who would do this?”
“They were tortured, then left out here to die,” I mutter. By the time Barkov and Kloves have tightened their perimeter and are within talking distance, my anxiety has doubled. “We need to find the tires and then get the hell out of here. It’s not safe.”
“This is barbaric,” Marilyn says, crossing her arms as if to ward off what she’s seen. “Sexual trauma on the female. Bruising, cutting. Mutilation.”
“Could it’ve been the birds?” Kloves asks.
“No,” she answers. “It was a knife or a scalpel. The cuts are too clean.”
“Let’s just find the tires we need and move on,” I repeat.
Marilyn meets my eyes. “It’s okay,” she says, just above a whisper. “We can take a minute.”
But I remember Abigail’s wounds, and what may be coming for Phoebe if I don’t find her soon. However much these two victims deserve our attention, Phoebe deserves mine more. “I can’t,” I admit, and she doesn’t press me. So we move away from the torture scene with our eyes on the stores across the parking lot. There are a few hollow-heads wandering around the shopping district, but most of them look starved and slow. None of them are shriekers, and we avoid them easily.
As I expected, there is a tire store just over a mile from the intersection where we left the Volvo. Unlike most of the other buildings nearby, it hasn’t been boarded up, which makes me hopeful that no one thought it to be of any value. Once we are inside, however, we realize that most of the useful contents have indeed been carried off. A single stack each of emergency spare tires and car batteries remains in the back storage, and while Kloves is sure that a few of the tires will work on the Volvo, I am still disappointed that we aren’t going to find better.
I take Kloves’s shotgun, and he hoists two tires under his arms before we head back out. Barkov suggests taking along a hand-powered air pump, but I point out that Vargas already packed one in the car, along with the single spare tire.
We begin the trek back to the Volvo, but as we step outside, a voice to my left shouts, “Hold it right there!” Without hesitation, I raise the shotgun—and Barkov his pistol—but we are already surrounded by men appearing from behind cars and around the sides of the building. All seven are carrying hunting rifles. All seven look rough enough to be the ones who tortured the two victims at the coffee shop.
A couple of the men chuckle to themselves while a third shakes his head and addresses Barkov. “Now, don’t get yourself riled up, son.” His South Georgia accent is thick. I step forward enough to keep Marilyn behind me.
“How should I be?” Barkov says.
“Shit,” t
he man replies, sounding disappointed. But that disappointment changes quickly to satisfaction. He leers at me. “Well, we might get one good one. Don’t matter. The nigger boy looks like a good mule anyway.”
Kloves doesn’t react except to loosen his grip on the tires.
“What do you want?” Barkov asks sharply.
“Son, you’re going to keep your mouth shut, and tell your mules to come quietly.”
“Which one? Mouth shut or give instructions?” Barkov’s defiance unnerves me almost as much as the men pointing guns do. My palms go slick on the shotgun. I want to tell him to shut up, not to make it worse, but even that could go badly.
The spokesman for the group chews on this for a few seconds, then almost nonchalantly gestures to the man at his left. “Stuff a rag in the smartass.”
“No,” Barkov says immediately. “You are not going to do that. You think you outnumber us, but look at what we are carrying.”
The leader casts glances left and right, as if to count his numbers. Then he says, “Son, we have seven rifles pointed at your head, and you’re threatening me with a popgun.”
“No, I am aiming a Browning M1911A automatic pistol with .45 ACP rounds at your head. I am not—what’s the word?—partial to this particular weapon. It is old and slow. But I am fast, and my trigger finger is strong. Also, I know my firearms. My friend here is holding a double barrel Stoeger Coach, twelve gauge, loaded with bird shot. That shotgun will maim or blind no less than three of you, foolishly standing so close together. And all you have are an assortment of cheap hunting rifles meant for children that you have had difficulty keeping clean and in good condition. I think maybe four of them will not fire. But that is not what matters. What matters, son, is that we are both pointing our weapons at you.”
The other man turns the idea over in his head, and for a few seconds it seems as though Barkov’s bluff will work. But then he smiles, and his confidence returns. There is movement to my right, and with a glance my heart sinks. Five more men have arrived from behind the shop, and they look even more eager than the ones in front of us.
I want my friend to have another trick up his sleeve, but he says nothing. I half expect him to open fire. I prepare myself for the possibility of having to gun down rational men. But even Barkov can’t talk his way clear of a posse this size, and I have Marilyn to think about. In the end, we comply.
DAY FOURTEEN, 1:00 A.M.
I can only assume that by now the Volvo has been dismantled by our captors. Our weapons were confiscated, along with the two tires and my wristwatch. A guard was posted outside, and hours passed before we heard anything more. Food in the form of metallic-tasting canned meat came shortly before nightfall. Just enough to keep our stomachs from complaining.
It must now be after midnight. At least it feels like we’ve been here for half a day. I can’t see the moon through the window, and there are no working clocks in the building. Kloves and Barkov are asleep by the front door, but I’m certain they will wake instantly should anyone rattle the door’s chain.
I can’t sleep. My thoughts race too quickly, and there are too many of them to control. At the moment, I am turning the scene at the coffee shop over and over in my mind. They weren’t travelers like us. The wounds on their bodies suggested intimacy. Their murderers knew them and were angry in very specific ways; they were sexually tortured.
The woman’s marks weren’t the kind that an abused wife gets at the hands of her husband. They were the long stripes of a bullwhip or singletail. And the man hadn’t been marked in that way.
I remember what the leader said to his companions: they might get “one good one” out of us. To them, women are nothing but commodities to be traded. No better than biodiesel or bread. Confronted with that kind of callous, selfish calculation, I find it difficult not to wander down Barkov’s path. But I will not be an executioner. I let my father live.
Yet I cannot help but remember my relief, my sense of release, when I learned that he was dead.
Marilyn comes to me out of the darkness, finding me seated on the floor with my back against the sales counter. She slides down next to me and grasps my arm. Her touch brings back fragments of my life after Jeannie, and I shiver both with recollection and ill-timed desire.
“What are they going to do, do you think?” She whispers this as if there were any threat of overhearing—as if that even mattered. Still, her voice is steady and unafraid.
I don’t want her to have to think about it. I try to find some answer that doesn’t hint at the truth, but there isn’t one. Marilyn is the most vulnerable one of us: a young black woman surrounded by racists and rapists is unlikely to come out unscathed. They spoke to Barkov because he was the only one they might have conceivably respected, but they were disappointed to learn he is Russian. That means every last one of us is expendable to some degree or another.
Useful only as labor, perhaps. Or as merchandise for exchange. I assumed that Randall’s people set the tire spikes in the road, but it could well have been these Conyers men.
And yet the woman they murdered was young and white and probably attractive when she was alive. She wasn’t used as a “mule.” It’s much more likely that she was a “wife” in the loosest of senses: a woman kept only for sex. For children, possibly. I can imagine a scenario much like the one that befell Abigail. The dead woman’s partner may have been another Owen.
I can’t believe that this is the nature of the world now. The Little Five can’t be the only remaining sanctuary, the only simulacrum that isn’t thoroughly broken. But perhaps I’m being naïve. Perhaps I am not admitting the truth so as not to feel like a child again, powerless, overshadowed by the edifice of a father’s anger.
So I don’t answer Marilyn directly. I don’t want to be the one to tell her that we are probably no more than goods for sale in exchange for bodies more to their liking. Instead I say, “They won’t do anything. They aren’t going to get the chance.”
“Sam,” she says, chiding me. “You know what I think about heroes. And I don’t need to be protected like that. I’m not that breakable.”
“I know,” I concede. “I do. But I shouldn’t have gotten you into this. You didn’t want to come.”
Marilyn smiles. She touches my cheek softly. “I told you, I can make my own decisions, too.”
Barkov stirs, rising to a sitting position, then standing as if there were no transition from sleep to wakefulness. “Edison, it’s time. Come with me.”
“Time for what?” I ask, rising and stretching my back.
“Time to leave,” he says, then leads me into the back storage area where we found the tires. He points to the tower of car batteries stacked like cases of beer, nearly to the ceiling. “What do you see?” he asks.
It takes a moment or two for my eyes to adjust to the deeper darkness, but I understand what he is getting at when he starts counting. “There are too many,” I say, almost whispering. “And they’re all still neatly stacked.”
Most batteries will die within four or five years without exceptional care. What’s more, it’s necessary to charge them regularly to prevent them from going flat, even if you aren’t using them. This pristine stack of batteries in the back storage of a tire store tells me that the people who live here, the ones who took us captive, may not have a working vehicle. Then I remember that they took the tires from Kloves. They didn’t return them to this room: they took them away. They don’t intend to strip the Volvo. They intend to use it.
“Your car must be close,” Barkov says. “It is too exposed where it was. They would have brought it back.”
“I don’t see how that helps us,” I say. “We still have a guard, and the door is chained shut.”
“They are not smart,” Barkov answers with a smile. “The back door used to be locked electronically.” He walks to it, lightly tapping the silver studs of the industrial-looking keypad. The lock is not engaged. “This leads to the garage. That door may b
e chained. But there will be tools in the garage that I can use to pick that lock or break the chain. Then you will go find your car and bring it here. But it must be soon, before the morning comes.”
I open the door a few inches, peering out into the darker gloom of the garage. “And it has to be me, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. Because they won’t shoot you if you get caught.”
But that triggers another thought. One that he is not going to like. “So you’d agree that they were talking about the network. They’re part of it.”
“The human traffickers, yes.” Barkov has said the words I couldn’t bring myself to say. “What you described to me is very much like what we used to see, back before all of this. In Eastern Europe, in some cities, they were on every street corner. Some traded in workers. Others in prostitutes.”
I try to block out images of Phoebe. I’d guessed all of this already. “The men here trade the people they capture for—what? Women of a certain age?”
Barkov nods. “That is what we saw at the cafe, yes?”
“Yes,” I echo. The abused corpse, the long-term torture. It matched what I expect would have become of Abigail had she not found someone to take her away from Dahlonega. “This puts us a lot closer to finding Phoebe than we were before.”
Barkov clicks his tongue and gives me a rough sigh. “I know what you are thinking. But we do not have the numbers. We do not have the weapons.”
“We could take the guard,” I point out. “We might not need anyone else. Just someone to push us in the right direction. I assumed Randall was taking Phoebe to Clarke County, but that was only a guess based on where the truck came from. If he was picked up by someone else, we could be going in completely the wrong direction.”
“Cowboys,” Barkov mutters, though not bitterly. “The guard will not know anything. But we can use him as—”
“Leverage?” I finish.
“There is a chance that it will not work,” he says with a lecturing tone. “The man they killed with the woman, I think he was one of their own.”
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