by David Smith
"You don't seem like a soldier, boy. What you doing out here?" He asked as I kept trying to twist his leg or even lift it enough to get a little weight off of me, just enough to breath. "You can be my enemy if this is how you want to be treated. You see Spider over there. He's been a good friend to me and that's why he gets permission to sniff around my daughter."
The black-haired girl looked at me from behind him and I looked back at her. He stepped down harder on my stomach. "Did I say you could look at her?!" He yelled. I had to close my eyes tightly against the pressure to keep them from bulging out of their sockets. "Yeah, you ain't no soldier. But I bet you know about 'em."
Just before I passed out, I saw his daughter walk up next to him and pull on his arm. I couldn't hear what they were saying but after he looked at her and said something, she pulled at his arm and he shoved her hard enough that she lost her footing and fell to the floor. After that, everything went black.
#
I woke up with my arms ziptied above my head and placed over something. It was completely dark and the air in the room was so hot I could barely breath, a condition worsened by the soreness at the ends of my ribs and being almost hung by my wrists. So much sweat ran down my body that I could feel it pooling in my boots.
A door opened and the light from outside was blinding as three silhouettes passed through the door a few feet away and it closed again. One light clicked on above my head and I could see I was in a small room but the ceiling was taller than the light would reach. I was hanging from one fork of a forklift, low enough to stand on my toes but too high to walk forward and slide off the end. There was a roll up door behind me and empty metal shelves on two walls. Choppa was one of the three.
"We killed a lot of men yesterday...soldiers. How many they got left up there?" He asked.
"About a hundred." I replied and he grabbed my shirt and punched me in the face so hard my shirt ripped and he tore it the rest of the way off and used it to wipe the blood from my broken nose off his hand.
"What I tell you about bleeding on my floor?!" He yelled as the blood dribbled down to the floor. "There ain't even a hundred people living there." He said quietly to himself.
"They're all soldiers." I said and he punched me again, in the ribs this time. I felt the shockwave go through me and my entire body hurt and continued to hurt as I gasped for air.
His daughter was one of the others in the room and I couldn't help but look at her again. She was looking down at the floor, hiding her eyes but looked up at me when I started breathing again and I could tell she didn't like what was happening.
"Boy! Didn't you understand what I told you before?" He said as he grabbed my face and made me look him in the eye. "Keep..." He punched me in the ribs with each word, "your...eyes...off...my..." I heard the first rib crack as the pain burned all through me. "little...girl!" With the last two words, I wondered if he would send one through my lung or heart and I would bleed out internally. "Unless, you want to help me out. You tell me what I want to know, help me take that place and you can have her and you two kids can live happily ever after."
I could hardly breath, much less speak. I did manage to squeeze out a whisper though as he leaned in close to listen. "I...think..." I had to take in another breath. "that's up to her." I thought about biting his face but I was worried, at this point, that he would kill me if he kept going. He drew back to hit me again and she interrupted.
"Stop it!" She yelled. He looked at her over his shoulder.
"I'm doing this for you girl. You gotta toughen up or you ain't gonna make it."
"You broke his ribs. If you keep it up you're gonna kill him and you're not gonna get anything out of that other one. He's too tough."
He thought for a moment then turned to punch me in the face again. I flinched this time, lowering my head and his meaty fist popped against my forehead. He shook his hand like it hurt a little this time then gave me an uppercut with the other hand that further crush my already broken nose. He then walked over to her, whispered something to her and she nodded. As he walked out, taking the other man with him, the light blinded me again and they left her alone with me as the door slammed.
She walked over to me and stood, looking at the spreading bruises on my ribs and around my eyes. "If I let you down, are you going to try to hurt me?" She asked.
I could still barely draw a breath to speak so I just shook my head. I couldn't believe she trusted me. She did have a lot to learn. But it was the truth. I had no intention of hurting her. I knew she wasn't like the rest in this place and you don't get to choose your family. Even if you could, one could hardly afford to be picky when it came to friends.
She walked around to the controls on the forklift and pushed a lever. The forks eased down quickly with a hiss of hydraulic fluid in the hoses and stopped with a slight jolt. I held my breath and tensed up as my arms dropped down and my knees almost buckled. I almost wished she had left me hanging as the my ribs settled into more relaxed position and new pain shot through me. I let out my breath slowly and let them collapse painfully into place. She helped me walk forward and pulled my hands off the forks and put them over her head and behind her neck. As she helped my back up to the edge of the forklift to sit down I looked at her face through the blood, sweat and tears in my eyes.
She had a face like an angel and there was a genuine concern and sweet sadness in her big eyes as she looked down at the bruising on my ribs. She held her hands gently on my sides and it almost felt as if she were healing me, the agony dulling or maybe just being replaced with the feeling of her hands on my skin, pleasantly distracting from the pain.
She leaned me back on the step of the forklift then lifted my hands over her head and eased them down into my lap before stepping back. Sitting on the step, I was hunched over which gave a little relief and made it possible to take in shallow breaths by shrugging my shoulders slightly. She picked what was left of my shirt up off the floor and handed it to me to try to stop my nose from pouring blood.
"He's trying to keep you alive but if you don't tell him what he wants to know, he will run out if patience."
"Help me get out of here." I said between breaths.
"You'll never make it out there by yourself like this. Besides, a Daddy's love only forgives so much."
This struck me as wrong immediately. "Come with me, you can help me and we can protect you."
"You and who? You're friend in there is going to be in worse shape than this."
"We can go back to the compound..."
"We can't," she interrupted. "Daddy knows you don't have many more fighters there. He's just waiting for you to confirm it. He's not going to wait long until he..."
I put my hands up, two fingers touching her soft lips. "I wouldn't take you there. You'd be worse off than you are here. My sister is there, a few other good people." I took in another slow, deep breath and whispered. "If we can get to them before he gets there somehow, all of us just get far away from here and let the idiots kill each other."
She thought for a moment. "The only way that'll work is if you tell Daddy what you told me. Tell him everything he wants to know and he'll make you a deal."
"But will he keep it?"
"I know he will. He doesn't care about you and a few others. He just wants the supply lines and the land."
"And what about you?" I asked and she just stared at me for a moment. I could tell she wanted to go but I knew what the answer was going to be.
"I can't go with you. If I tried, he'd kill you and maybe me too."
"Your his daughter. He wouldn't do that."
"You don't know him. You don't know these people. It doesn't matter who it is, the only punishment for disloyalty to the club is death."
"His own daughter though? What about your boyfriend? He'd let that happen?"
"Why do you think he's my boyfriend? He's the most loyal of all. If I ran off, he'd probably be the one to kill me. You still think I'd be worse off with your people?"
; I shook my head and laughed, resurrecting the pain again. "Yeah, at least here, you only have one boyfriend who'd kill you. I'll do it if you promise you'll come with me."
"I can't promise that."
"Then promise me you'll try."
She stared at me for a moment with her big blue eyes from under a strand of black hair hanging in front of her face. She pushed it back behind her ear and said, "I'll try."
"Tell your Dad I'll talk but I have to talk to Mac first. This decision involves him too."
"I'll ask him. I need to put you back up on the rack." I nodded and she helped me back to my feet. She walked me to the front and helped me put my hands up over the forks again. "This old forklift, the cylinders leak down over time, right?" I nodded.
She turned the light off and left with a blinding light and slam of the heavy, metal door. I hung there for what seemed like hours, trying to get comfortable, the idea of dying from internal bleeding, fading into the back of my mind. I rehearsed over and over how this would go, how I would get into the compound and get back out with Beth and hopefully Stephanie, Nicholas and his wife and kid. Perez would be good to have with us too but I still didn't know who he'd side with and even asking him might be too risky. Beth was the priority though. I thought about how I could possibly orchestrate Choppa and Jennings being in the same place at the same time so I could kill them and solve this whole ordeal. I wondered if Kara would double cross me too though. Everyone else in their group was so indoctrinated with the whole 'loyalty to the club' bullshit. Really it was just loyalty to the Boss. So, it could have all been an act to gain my trust but seemed too elaborate a scheme for them and at this point, it didn't really matter. If I didn't trust her, or at least pretend to, I would be dead and Beth would either be killed by Choppa or used by Jennings and his men.
The door opened again. The blinding light had turned a reddish orange as the sun had moved down in the west. Two guys dragged Mac in by his arms, his head hanging and feet dragging behind him. They threw him, face down, in front of me and stood with their arms crossed. As they clicked on the light I could see smears of blood behind him from his bare feet. He put one hand under himself and I could see a few of his fingers were dislocated and twisted sideways. He rolled himself over onto his back and I could see that one eye was full of blood, the orbital bone fractured and pushed slightly into it causing it to bulge. His lips were split and bleeding, his face swollen and so bruised that it had all the colors of torched iron.
I could barely speak. "Mac, can you hear me?"
"Yeah." He said, moving his mouth as little as possible.
"I gotta ask you something. I want to make a deal with Choppa. Want to get my sister out of there before he goes in and let him have the place. Is there anybody else you want out of there? Are you okay with this?"
He lay there for a long time, mumbling under his breath then, "Fuck you." Was all he said.
"Hear me out Mac." I argued as strongly as I could. "You don't like the way things are there anymore than I do. You know it's wrong."
"You don't throw the baby out with the bath water." He said and strained in pain. "Jennings is the problem. These guys'll kill everybody, innocent people. What did you say?"
"I haven't said anything yet. But his daughter says he's going to go on whether we tell him anything or not. And when he does, it's over for them anyway. We can make a deal with him though, get some people out."
He thought for a moment. "And you think you've got the right to decide who lives and dies?"
I couldn't disagree with him but it still didn't seem right to sit there, strung up by my hands while Choppa murdered the entire town.
"I like you kid. I know you mean well but if you tell him anything, I don't care if it makes a difference in his plans at all, I'll kill you." He closed his one good eye slowly and opened it again. "Negotiating with terrorists, playing the bad guys against each other, is how we got into this mess in the first place."
Suddenly it occurred to me and I don't know why, that if I could convince Choppa to use us as hostages to get them to open the gate, at least we would be there and still alive. Jennings would refuse because he's a coward and doesn't mind sacrificing others to protect himself but at least I could...well, I didn't know what I would do from there but at least I would have more options than I would have being tied to a forklift in a dark room or dead and dumped in the Pearl River.
Of course, I couldn't share this plan with Mac with them listening so I pretended to reluctantly agree. After I hung my head and nodded, they grabbed him by the ankles and drug him away. It seemed his only plan was to sacrifice himself for the good of the community or for some long-forsaken ideal and I just couldn't agree to that. I couldn't let myself believe he would give up his own life so easily though so I chose to believe, instead, that he had some plan he couldn't reveal in front of them, just as I couldn't. I only hoped our individual plans wouldn't cross paths in a detrimental way.
A few hours later, Kara came back. I could tell she had been crying and trying to hide it from everyone. Her eyes were still wet and sparkling and so big and blue, kind and innocent, that I would have sworn her tears could heal wounds but I'd bleed to death before I'd ever make her cry. It was after dark and she came alone this time.
"Word is that you aren't going to tell Daddy anything. I heard him tell two of the others to come in and kill you at sunrise." When she said this, she broke down.
"I'm not going to let that happen. If you can get him to come see me, I'll make a deal with him."
She wiped her eyes, so full of tears, the blue shined like two neon lights. "You will? But the guards said the other guy talked you into not saying anything."
"I couldn't let him know. He's so loyal to the others that he'd kill me himself before he let it happen." I couldn't tell her the whole truth, although I wanted to so badly, those big, blue eyes pulling it out of me from beneath her long, black hair. It killed me to hide anything from her but regardless of whether she was loyal to me and my safety or to her father and his followers, I didn't think she would be complicit. Everyone here was so brainwashed, so indoctrinated, I didn't know how she could be so different, how she could have guarded herself from it her entire life to become a rational, reasonable person with any real sense of right and wrong. Her tears were definitely real enough, but were they for me? What was her reason for being so concerned? I prayed that we'd both live long enough for me to find out.
She left and a few minutes later, Choppa came back. My ribs were still sending sharp pains with every breath and I hoped he wouldn't take a notion to pound on me anymore just to prove his point or for his own sick amusement. He didn't though.
"So," he started as the light flicked on. "You ready to talk, huh?" Kara and her boyfriend were with him.
I nodded.
"Alright. How many men he got?" He said as he walked closer to me and put his hands on his hips, pushing up his gut where it wrapped around his sides.
"Not many, but it won't matter. He's got sharpshooters, good ones. By the time you get through the fence, if you can, you won't have enough men left to sustain the place."
"This ain't what I want to hear." He said as he pulled a long, wide bladed knife out of a sheath hanging from his belt behind him.
"I can help you though."
"And how you gonna do that?" He asked as he stepped within arms length of me and put the tip of the knife to my stomach.
"The Captain, he's low on hands. Mac is his best one. Bring us back to him and when we get inside, I'll kill him. The rest aren't trained soldiers, just hunters, farmers, slaves. With him dead they'll invite you right in."
He looked at me hard, his already narrow eyes focusing into piercing slits. "You a disloyal bastard, ain't you? How I know you won't get it there and turn on me?" He asked and pushed the knife hard enough that it drew a single drop of blood. It felt like a bee sting but I didn't have the strength to pull away even if I had been untied.
"My loyalty is to me and m
y family. The only one left is my sister and she's in there. I know you're gonna get in there eventually. You do it this way and you'll double the size of your forces. All I want is to get my sister and be let go, far away from here."
He pulled the knife back and held it at his side as he studied my face with his dark, beady eyes. "What about my daughter?"
I looked at her and she looked at me. "What about her?"
"You think I'm a fool? I seen you looking at her, making all these kissy faces at each other. I'll tell you right now, she tries to make off with you, I'll kill you, her and your sister. You get in there and don't do what you say, I'll kill her first then I'll get in there anyway and kill you and your sister, you last of all." He said and pointed the knife at me. "You understand?"
I nodded.
"In the morning, we go. You take this knife and you stick it in his head, or she gets it." He said, pointing the knife across the room at Kara, still looking at me. She flinched just a little but didn't look surprised, just stared at him with eyes that begged for mercy. They didn't ask to be loved like a daughter to be protected by her father but like a hostage asking for simple human compassion.
"You broke my ribs. I can barely move. I need a day or two."
"Alright, I'll give you twenty-four hours to get better, then we go." He said as he put the knife back in its sheath then turned and walked out, followed by the boyfriend. She stood a moment longer, staring at me with tears starting to form in her eyes, before turning and following them out, the door slamming loudly.
They brought Mac in a couple hours later and ziptied him to a pipe coming out of the wall, sitting on the floor with his hands over his head. I was surprised and didn't know why they would take this chance. I assumed they must be listening somehow.
