by Kolin Wood
His heart sank.
Why would anybody choose to live in there when they had a fully working, heated, and comfortable utility building right next door? Surely nobody would—unless of course, they were being forced to do so against their will. Len had commented on the segregation, and John had assumed the house as the only option, but right now it did not look as though anybody had set foot in there in years.
A reasonable amount of time—a few hours at least— had lapsed since he had heard the sound of the crazies being gunned down outside the gate. At this time of year, sunrise happened about six a.m., which meant that it was still only early morning. Already, the noise of industry rang starkly from over the fence in the compound. It had assisted his approach and helped mask his rather ungraceful climbing of the tree.
John waited for another twenty or so minutes before deciding to climb down and take a closer look. Just as he stepped off the branch holding his weight, a hidden gate set in the side of the steel compound fence opened outwardly. He stopped still, watching intently as somebody stepped through followed closely behind by another, far larger person.
John gripped the spiky branches tightly in his tired fingers. Dense foliage impeded his view to that side of his vision but as the people drew closer, John felt his spirits lift. The person out in front was Becca, closely followed by Frank who was already stripped to the waist and still carrying a gun. In his happiness to see her, it was all that he could do to stop himself from calling out.
The pair made their way along the trampled path towards the front of the house. Becca walked slowly with careful, lethargic steps and immediately, John could tell that there was something wrong. Her shoulders sagged and her demeanour looked off. Her usually phosphorescent red hair hung limp and matted down in front, covering her face.
John felt sick. As they approached the front door, Frank caught up to her and slipped an arm around her waist from behind, pulling her backward into him with a grunt, at the same time wrapping her up in his big muscular arms.
Bile rose in John’s throat. He could only watch, disgusted, as the big man began pawing at her, burying his face into her hair and sliding his hands up the front of her coat, grinding his pelvis against her bottom.
All the while, Becca simply stood, her head still bowed, making no move to stop or even temper his advances.
Becca! What the hell are you doing? John screamed in his head, as a knot of jealousy planted itself firmly in his stomach.
Frank laughed and said something in her ear which John could not decipher, smacking her hard on the rump. Then he turned and walked away, a visible spring in is step.
For a few moments, Becca did not move. She remained stood with her back to him, but even so, John was sure that he could see the faint shake of her shoulders; she was crying.
His jaw tightened and his legs began to quiver uncontrollably. He opened his mouth to shout, no longer caring about the consequences, just at that the moment when the door to the house opened and Becca walked inside. The door was then slammed shut.
Fury balled his fists tight as John watched Frank bang loudly on the steel fence three times with the heel of his fist. The gate opened and he walked through it without looking back. Seeing him cockily walking away made John angrier than he had ever been in his entire life. He knew that right then, had he had his bow, he would have shot Frank in the back and not cared one iota about it. Just like Becca. No hesitation, no regrets.
Just then, a flash of movement caught his eye, drawing his attentions back to the house. In one of the lower windows, a faint glow warmed a bottom corner of the pane.
Fire.
John glanced up again, to the roof and at the thick chimney column this time; there, faint but visible, a plume of smoke rose up out of the small, upturned pots at its apex.
Bingo. But first, he had to find a way in.
Anxiously, he surveyed the house again, more slowly this time, looking for any possible hope of entry that avoided the front door. The low, garden wall would act as ample cover in the approach, even taking him past the front of the house on the one corner if he stayed low and kept his belly in the mud. The box-like shape of the house itself gave little, if no cover at all, so entry would need to be swift and precise once his fingers touched down on brick. Then he spotted his target; one of the lower windows on the far side of the house appeared to be broken. John figured that he could use it to get inside quickly, provided nobody turned up to ruin his plan. No guard had been positioned outside of the front door or on the gate this side of the compound. He strongly doubted that Len would leave the girls on their own however, so he had to assume that there was a guard inside, or at least somebody with affiliation enough to them to ensure that there were no breakout attempts.
But what then? What if he did manage to make it inside without being seen, over-power the guard, and make it back out again—all assuming that Becca wanted to be rescued? Then what? He had no doubt that he would be able to tamper enough with the weak fence underneath him to escape. He was even fairly confident that, given the size of the forest, it would be almost impossible for them to be followed if they managed to create enough of a head start, but this very advantage would also be their greatest hurdle. Not only was the forest huge, but it was also dark and full of crazies. Plus the whole thing would have to be done at night; to do it in the brightness of the warm summer sun would impede his chances severely. And on top of all that, he still had to locate Murphy.
However, with very little else to go on, his options were limited. If luck fell on his side then maybe the guard in the house would be armed and he would be able to proclaim the weapon for himself. Perhaps he could even lay his hands on a gun.
Satisfied that he had a plan, albeit a sketchy one, John slithered back down the trunk of the tree, ignoring the sting in his hands and the pounding of his feet. Once on the ground, he gathered up his pack and moved on his stomach like a snake until he was pushed up flat against the fence, by which time, the entire front of him was soaked through and black with mud. The thick canopy and lack of sunlight had left the entire area in a constant state of damp; conditions which hampered his movements, but very much facilitated his vandalism of the fence. The wood was thin and rotten. The few rusted nails that held the panel to the post popped out easily, and John was able to almost completely loosen one with next to no noise at all. Come the time of their escape, the fence would pose them no problems.
John leaned back against the post. He looked on either side of him at the dark, murky underworld that he now inhabited. Shadows pressed in on all sides. He could barely see the sun anymore, only pin pricks of light, like stars on a clear night. Almost every part of him itched. The thick, peat moss smell of the damp ground was heavy and overpowering. Worms moved in the mulch under his fingers and bugs took turns dashing over his sodden jeans, but he ignored them, turning his mind elsewhere. He was one of them now.
After a while, John unzipped his pack and pulled out a musty, woollen jumper; he had hours to wait and the air around him was already turning cold. He slipped the jumper on, allowing the over-sized sleeves to cover his hands. The effect was immediate, the warmth reminding him of just how tired he was. With nothing to do but wait, he closed his eyes.
The bang awoke him. He opened his eyes, panicking at the lack of light before he remembered where he was. Each movement sent pains shooting down his back, but he quickly realised that it was just that every muscle in his body had seized tight with cold. Wincing at his own apathy, John sat upright, the jumper now heavy and wet, hindering his movements further. A small gap in the fence allowed him a view of the house, garden, and the gate into the compound. The sun was low in the sky, behind the tops of the trees, and the amber haze of dusk had begun to fall. The house was still and dormant, its black windows stark against the red brick like bullet holes in a long dead murder victim. Smoke no longer appeared at the chimney.
Another bang sounded and this time he recognised it as a gunshot, followed by cheerin
g.
John felt a crushing weight on his chest. What if the men had decided to move Becca back into the main compound while he had been asleep? And who were they shooting at? More crazies? Murphy? What if Len had stayed true to his promise that ‘everybody served a purpose’ and Becca had not toed the line?
Before he knew what he was doing, John had shouldered his pack. He would not just sit about and wait for bad things to happen. If he could stop them from happening in the first place, then that was what he would do, come what may. He scurried about on the floor under the canopy until he found a stick suitable to use as a weapon, finally settling on an overly thick piece with a bow in it about three quarters of the way down. The stick was damp but when John tried to snap it across his thigh, it held firm. It would do.
With a small amount of exertion, he was able to force the panel away from the post in order to create a gap big enough to fit through. Long grass veiled the floor on the other side, its’ stems wet with dew. Once through, John pushed the fence back into place. It looked the same as all the others; from any sort of distance, nobody would know any different.
The grass covered his shoulders as made his way across the short, open expanse toward the wall. The vegetation was thick and uncultivated, and several times he tripped headlong into a patch of thorns or nettles; nevertheless, he made it to the wall unseen, ducking low to ensure that he remained out of sight. Sharp edges of rock from the hand built, quarry-slate wall dug into his back and shoulders. Crickets jumped all around him. Over the fence in the direction of the compound, animated shouts rang out, indecipherable but jovial in nature. Whatever the men were shooting at, they were enjoying the sport of it.
Taking advantage of the distraction, John continued on until he was standing at the wall of the house. He laid his palms flat on the brick, holding them there as if trying to find a pulse. But the house remained still and dormant.
The broken window that he had seen from his cover in the trees was to his right. To enter there would take him in the direction of the compound, and while it was not completely unfeasible, he decided that the more sensible option would be to move towards the darker and quieter end of the house in order to see what options lay out of sight around the other side.
An overgrown rose bush away from the front door provided the only cover so he edged towards it, ducking under a window whose bottom had been badly boarded over. At the edge of the house, he stopped and peered around the corner. Almost completely obscured by trees in one section, the rotting fence line continued; a dilapidated wooden shed with only part of a roof held place as the only structure of note. John followed it around, immediately thankful of the shadows that greeted him there. But he soon found that the rear side proved even starker than the front, with only two ground floor windows, both of which were boarded over. In the centre, however, a trampled path through the long grass led to a plain-looking green door.
Three thundering, successive shots rang out, followed by three more, which John quickly realised to be the echo. A door then slammed close by. This time, the shouting when it came was more urgent. John stopped, flicking his eyes across the two upstairs windows in case somebody decided to look out. Another shot and then another, this time followed by a loud, stomach-churning male scream.
There was no time to think about his options. John straightened and took a few purposeful strides toward the green side door. Whatever was happening in the compound, it did not sound like anything that he wanted to be caught up in. For all he knew, Len’s men were already on their way over to the house.
The handle was rusted and cold to the touch. John pressed down on it as gently as he could manage given his adrenaline, and was surprised when he heard the latch click and felt the door open ever-so slightly. It seemed as though his luck was continuing.
After counting to three in his head, he filled his lungs with air and blew out slowly just like Ryan had shown him to do when focusing on a kill with the bow. Then, without looking back, John pushed open the door and stepped inside the cool, dark confines of the house.
19
The door creaked as John eased it open. His heart was beating so fast that he struggled to control the shaking in his hands. Inside the house, the gloom perpetuated on into darkness. The red tiled floor of the corridor lay covered in mud. Electrical cables hung in painted clumps from the walls whose original colouring had long-since fallen foul to the huge patches of black mould that had taken sprout there.
Without closing the door behind him, John moved inside. Behind him, the shouting and shooting continued. It was clear by now that something terrible was happening and he needed to be quick. The best that he could hope for was that it—whatever it was—would act as a distraction to his plan.
Not far down, the corridor branched. Here, the smell was thick and rancid, like rotting meat and faeces, overpowering after a night of fresh, untainted air in the forest. John covered his nose with the sodden sleeve of the jumper and began to breathe in shallow breaths through his mouth. With no natural light, the darkness here was so thick that it hung around him like a blanket, smothering everything. He moved onward with slow, shuffling steps, allowing his eyes the time to adjust, the hand not covering his face stretched out before him holding the damp stick.
In the sheet blackness ahead of him, John heard something move.
He froze. Was that… a growl? Hairs tickled the back of his neck as a rash of gooseflesh studded his arms.
For a few moments he stood listening, but could hear nothing except the consistent banging of blood against his ear drums.
Had he really just heard something? Or was his tired, hungry, and severely dehydrated mind playing tricks on him again? Unsure, John took another small step forward, annoyed at his now shaky legs which were barely holding him up.
The growl came again, but this louder and closer—much closer, stopping him in his tracks once more.
Nope, I definitely heard that.
As his eyes made bedfellows of the shadows, like a morning mist the corridor began to clear, offering up angular hints of doorways and corniced ceilings. One large shadow remained however, at the bottom field of his vision, cloaked in gloom. It stalked towards him, low to the ground, filling the entire width of the hall.
John took a careful step backward, relieved that his fear had not paralysed him again.
The dog was huge, by far the biggest the John had ever seen. Its black coat held it almost invisible in the Cimmerian depths, save for the white of the bared teeth and the slatted yellow eyes, which were dipped with mistrust and hate. The growl continued now, playing like the low purr of a small engine.
Afraid, John continued his slow retreat. He was not scared of dogs, never had been, although his experience with them remained somewhat limited to Murphy and a few of the strays that he had encountered on his travels. But the beast tracking the floorboards before him now was not any normal dog. It was a predator, mean and hungry, fully in touch with its most primitive canine desires to hunt and kill.
“Easy there, big fella,” he said, his voice almost a whisper. “I’m not here to hurt you, okay?”
But the dog neither stopped growling nor moving. It remained crouched, down on its haunches, stalking him like a huge jungle cat, coiled and ready to pounce.
Another step.
“Easy now.”
John glanced back. The light and the sight of the open door were a relief. So this was why there were no guards to speak of, he thought. Becca was being kept in check by Cujo, the death hound.
A few more steps and still the dog carried forward, maintaining the space between them but never allowing John the chance to increase the gap. If he could just make it to the door and lock the dog in, then he hoped to be able to find another way inside, maybe around the back or via a different window. Maybe he could do this without conflict.
Just then, something slammed loudly nearby. John jumped. The dog, also startled by the noise, sprang forward, its mouth open and teeth flashing. The beas
t struck him head on, the full force of which caused him to first stumble and then to fall back completely under its terrific weight. As his back hit the hard tile floor, it knocked the breath from his lungs. The huge dog followed him down, snapping aggressively while trying to bite its way through the stick which had been thrust out before him—the only thing separating John from the frenzied, chomping jaws. Drool hung down in long phlegmy drips and the rank stench of the dog’s foul breath clung to his face like a moisture mask.
Pinned down, John pushed as hard as he could, twisting his body in an attempt to try and force the dog off to one side. But the animal was just too strong. More saliva flew as it attempted to wrestle the stick from John’s grasp, shaking its head from side to side furiously. Sharp, unclipped claws raked at the flesh of his chest and stomach, making it feel as though the animal was trying to disembowel him. He made to scream but only managed to bite down on his own tongue instead, drawing blood.
Closer the jaws came and John felt his arms begin to weaken; he was losing the fight. He knew that if the dog managed to tear the stick away, it would be game over. An image flashed into his mind, one of the animal bunched up over his still, barely-breathing corpse, its bloody muzzle ripping away pieces of him and swallowing them down whole. He had not a doubt in his mind that, given the chance, this animal would eat him.
Desperately, John sucked in a small, snatched breath and pushed back with everything that he could muster. He pushed until the tendons felt like they were about to tear free of his neck and the veins in his temple would explode. The sudden pressure forced the dog’s head backward and for a moment, John was sure that he could see the slightest glimpse of doubt in its wolf-like eyes.
