The Method

by Ralston, Duncan

  Frank knew she was right, but fear held him in place. “This is crazy, Linda,” he breathed in one last attempt to change her mind, to stop her from what would surely be committing suicide.

  “The whole world is crazy,” she said. “The lunatics are running the asylum now. The only way to stay on top is to out-crazy them.” She gave him a fierce look, gripping his shoulder. “We can do this, Frank. You said it yourself.”

  He nodded, holding her gaze. “Okay. Okay, but you be careful. I want you coming home in one piece.”

  Linda leaned in and kissed him on the forehead. He smiled, fighting back tears.

  “The second he’s out of range,” she told him, “you make a run for that door. Use the kitchen phone, get a knife, and wait for me there.”

  He nodded, his eyes welling up, about to spill over.

  Linda took a deep breath and exhaled it shakily.

  Then she darted across the lot in a crouch.

  Frank blinked away tears and watched Walker. The man smoked leisurely, looking off toward the road. Linda dropped down behind their car. The man didn’t appear to see her.

  On her haunches against the trunk of the hatchback, she briefly considered getting in and driving over to the edge of the lot to pick up Frank. Even if she could have somehow managed it without alerting the guy in the long coat, both vehicles sat on slashed tires. They wouldn’t make it far driving on bare rims on a gravel road.

  This was the only way.

  She peered around the rear bumper and saw the man in the duster crush his cigarette under a cowboy boot. As he turned his back, she dashed around to the SUV.

  The alarm began to bleat before she had a chance to touch the side panels. Panicking, she bolted for the dock and crawled out of sight, hoping the man in the long coat hadn’t seen her.

  Frank watched Linda disappear down the embankment as Walker rose from his lean against the four-wheeler and strode toward the noisy SUV.

  “Wait for it . . .” Frank told himself.

  Halfway across the lot, the man reached into one of the deep pockets of his duster, brought out something small and black, and aimed it at the vehicle.

  The key beeped. The SUV alarm blipped twice and turned off.

  “Shit.”

  In the silence, the man in the duster put two fingers to his lips and whistled a single high note.

  “Shit, not the dogs, not the dogs . . .”

  Frank braced himself, listening for the barks. If the dogs came now, he knew they would sniff him out. They’d have gotten his scent from the bear trap, the same trap that had caught their mother. They would want his blood.

  Walker returned to the ATVs as Colby came around the corner, rifle at the ready.

  “That them?”

  “Can’t be sure.” Walker spoke with a Southern drawl, a slow cadence the others lacked. He whipped open his duster and drew a chrome, long-barreled revolver from its holster. “Could just as easily have been a squirrel. Best check the perimeter anyway. They’re the only ones left who saw what you did, and we need them alive.”

  “Copy that.”

  While Colby headed toward the SUV, Walker hung by the door, peering out into the woods. He holstered the pistol and lit another smoke.

  Left with no other option, Frank retreated further into the trees. Once he’d gotten enough cover, he limped down toward the lake.

  Through the trees, he saw Colby try the hatchback doors. The one-armed man approached the SUV and tried to get a look into the tinted windows. He tried the doors and found them locked.

  Colby turned in Frank’s direction. Frank’s limbs seized in fear. Slowly, he flattened himself against the earth as the man’s boots crunched gravel toward him. Terror magnified every sound. The blood in his ears was thunderous, the rustle of leaves like a hurricane.

  The one-armed man stopped at the edge of the woods and shaded his eyes with his hand, maybe fifteen feet from where Frank lay.

  Frank held his breath. If Colby caught him now, he just hoped Linda would remain safely hidden. She could still help the others. She could still make it out of this alive.

  Frank’s elbow exploded with red-hot fire, and he withdrew it from the dirt, rolling onto his side. Little red ants scurried away from the collapsed dirt mound he’d been leaning on. Several had stung him in self-defense. He plucked a flailing insect off his skin and flung it away, the skin around the sting already turning an angry red.

  Down at the dock, an engine sputtered and started.

  Colby turned toward the lake and raised his weapon as he headed down the slope. Frank saw Walker toss his cigarette and follow suit, leaving the vicinity of the door.

  A moment later, the tin boat zipped away from the dock. Frank couldn’t see the driver, but he had to assume it was Linda.

  The men rushed down to the shore, leaving the side door unguarded.

  Now or never, Frank.

  Frank hobbled out of the woods and across the lot and ducked down as far as he could manage while limping on his bad leg. The whole foot had long since numbed from the pain of his injuries, and he barely felt the jagged gravel as he made his way to the car on one bare foot.

  “Shit,” he breathed. The hunters had slashed all four tires.

  He hurried to the door and gripped the handle when a burst of rifle fire tore through the sunny silence. The sound rocked him. Heart stuttering, he chanced a look out at the lake, where the boat continued toward the far shore, unimpeded.

  All he could do now was hope like hell the shots had missed her and use the chance she’d provided him to get help.

  Frank jerked the handle. The door swung open on an empty hallway. The air conditioning chilled the sweat down his back as he scurried toward the next corridor. He found the maintenance door still locked, and he hobbled past, pressing himself against the wall to peer into the kitchen.

  The room smelled of bacon grease, French fries, and industrial cleaning fluid. A pot bubbled on the stove. The mop and bucket stood in the middle of the room beside the rolling steel counter, the dirty mop head dripping on the floor. The heavy door to the walk-in fridge lay open.

  The wall phone had no dial tone, so he limped over to a set of sharp knives hung from a magnetic strip on the wall beside the grill. He pulled a cleaver off the strip and hefted its weight.

  “Bad ass,” he muttered, and shuffled over to the walk-in.

  The cooling unit rattled and hummed at the back of the fridge. There was plenty of room to hide, and it wasn't quite cold enough to make a prolonged stay painful if necessary. The door locked from the inside, as well as out, with a metal pin hung from twine. The shelves were lined with enough food for days: large plastic condiment tubs, chopped veggies and leftovers under cellophane, wax-coated boxes of vegetables and fruits, and a box of fish on ice, heads and scales intact. The Canada goose hung from a hook near the back, its feathers plucked and washed clean of blood.

  Frank had always hated the birds. They were vicious and shit everywhere. But he felt a sort of strange kinship with it, and not because it was named after his homeland. He sympathized with its current predicament. He felt strung up himself, stripped and at the mercy of cruel hunters.

  He grabbed a hunk of sharp cheese and a handful of cookies and ate them greedily, not feeling very hungry, only knowing he’d need his strength if he wanted to survive.

  Knife at the ready, he checked the hall and stepped out. The maid had cleaned after breakfast. The dining room was empty. He continued to the open French doors to the lobby.

  Cleaver held above his head, he staggered in.

  The lobby stood in disarray, chairs overturned, the front doors flung wide, items strewn on the floor. He staggered over and peered behind the desk.

  No one was there.

  Eyes on the loft, he crossed to the front doors and bolted them, although he supposed the entire wall being glass made the action pointless. He returned to the desk and picked up the telephone receiver.

  “Must have cut the lines,” he
muttered.

  What about the cell phones? Are they in the office?

  He scuttled around the desk and tried the door. “Yes!” Opening it all the way, he saw the computer screen on and the monitor wall flickering.

  Internet?

  He hurried in and locked the door behind him. No movement in any of the rooms on the monitors. The desk drawer held scattered office supplies and candy wrappers tied in bows, but no keys for the rifle rack or the rifles themselves.

  He scanned the narrow room. Files littered a second desk and the top of a filing cabinet. An old TV sat on a rolling cart, like the kind they used to use for presentations in school before the advent of digital. A first-aid kit hung on the wall nearby. He opened the kit, sprayed Bactine on his wounds, covered them with a layer of cotton batting, and wrapped them in gauze.

  While he fastened the bandage, he looked up at the framed photo beside the hooks where the kit had been. A bearded man in a brown suit stood with his arm around the shoulders of a clean-cut blond man in a lab coat, the two of them out front of an old building. The handwritten caption below read Dr. Kaspar with Stanley Milgram at Yale, 1963.

  The name of Kaspar’s companion held no meaning to him, so he returned his attention to the computer. The soul-crushing alert had appeared: There is no Internet connection.

  Without access to the Internet or a telephone, their entire plan was shot.

  Shot, he thought, cold terror gripping his innards as he worried he’d never see Linda again.

  In a sudden fury, Frank picked up the keyboard and smashed it against the desk. Several keys snapped off and clattered on the floor. He let the keyboard fall at his feet and leaned back, stretching out his limbs, looking up at the monitors to see if he could spot those murderous fucks outside. The grounds appeared to be as deserted as inside.

  He scanned the other monitors, looking for signs of life. In what looked like his room—the Ludlum book and empty glass still stood on the nightstand, the suitcase spread out on the bed the way he’d left it—the maid lay sprawled on his bed, a red stain blossomed on her white uniform.

  He watched her for several seconds. She didn’t move.

  “Jesus,” he muttered.

  As he eased out of the chair, his gaze fell on the monitor showing the first-floor hall. In the same instant, Jackson emerged from the maintenance door and locked it with a key. He shook his head in aggravation as he made his way down the hall toward the lobby.

  Frank tensed. The bearded man’s image grew as he approached the camera, rifle held in both hands.

  “What’s he doing?”

  Jackson turned at the kitchen. Frank followed him to the next monitor, watching as the man headed toward the walk-in fridge, stooped at the door, and laid his rifle against the wall.

  Now’s your chance, Frank.

  Jackson stepped inside the fridge.

  For Linda.

  Frank pushed himself up. He spotted the thick yellow cable leading to the monitors and tore it from the wall with a buzz of electricity, leaving all the monitors with blue screens and “NO SIGNAL” alerts.

  Satisfied they wouldn’t be able to see his comings and goings throughout the lodge, Frank opened the door and staggered out into the lobby. Clouds had covered the sky in a dull gunmetal gray. No one stood out front.

  He limped to the French doors, peered down the hall, and pushed himself onward, hoping Jackson was still inside the walk-in.

  Heart in his stomach, he stood against the doorjamb and leaned in, half expecting the man to blast a hole in his head right there.

  The rifle remained against the wall, its owner still in the fridge.

  Frank scurried to the steel counter and ducked. The pot hissed on the stove, steam rising. He scuttled around and crouch-limped toward the fridge and the gun, thankful for the rattling hum of the refrigeration unit, aware of how loud his shoe sounded as it slapped against the tiles.

  In the doorway, he saw Jackson loading up a plastic bag with food from the shelves. Frank stepped out of sight behind the door and reached for the gun.

  The door swung open and struck his funny bone. His arm numbed, and he dropped the cleaver. It hit the tile and skittered out of reach.

  Jackson spat out a hunk of cheese and threw the bag of food at Frank.

  Deflecting a rain of cookies, rolled lunchmeats, and chunks of stinky cheese, Frank spotted Jackson reaching for the rifle, and he swung the heavy fridge door at the man. It slammed against Jackson’s shoulder, and he stumbled away, sprawling over a counter. Eggs spilled from their packaging, rolled off the counter, and cracked on the floor.

  Crouching painfully on his bad leg, Frank grabbed the cleaver. He rose just as Jackson went for the rifle again. The big man slipped in the yolky mess, missed the gun, and lurched toward Frank with his arms pinwheeling.

  His full weight struck Frank dead center, and Frank toppled backward. He hit the floor hard, breath exploding out of him as the big man landed on his chest, crushing his ribs, his lungs burning.

  Any remaining doubt these men posed a legitimate threat evaporated.

  This was no game.

  Unable to breathe, Frank struggled under the larger man’s girth, grunting, the hand holding the cleaver pinned. Jackson rose on his belly, allowing Frank a single breath. Cheap aftershave and cheese breath filled Frank’s nostrils, and the man grabbed Frank’s wrist and bashed his hand against the floor, trying to make him drop the knife.

  Despite the pain, Frank held firm until his fingers went completely numb and released the cleaver of their own accord.

  The big man grabbed it, eyes wild, and raised it over his head with an animal roar.

  Linda hesitated for only a moment.

  With the one-armed man just feet from discovering Frank in the woods, she rolled out from under the canoe where she’d hidden and scurried down to the dock in a crouch. Throwing a glance over her shoulder, she couldn’t see the one-armed man beyond the small hill leading to the lake, and she hoped he couldn’t see her.

  She crept toward the fishing boat, willing the keys to be in the ignition, hoping the sound of the engine would draw the men away from Frank and the side door so he could get inside.

  One last chance.

  Linda crouched, unlatched the boat, and stepped one foot onto the driver’s seat. The steering wheel was stiff and wouldn’t budge without serious effort. Perfect. An orange floatable foam key fob hung from the ignition. Unable to believe her luck, she turned the key, praying it would start on the first try.

  The engine roared to life. She thrust the lever forward, and as the boat tore away from the dock, she slipped feet first into the water, plugging her nose and squeezing her eyes shut.

  She knew the dock was raised on floats, but the motor had churned up sediment in the tea-colored water, making it difficult to tell where anything was down there.

  Peering around anxiously, as terrified of being underwater for the first time since a childhood friend had pushed her under as she was by the fact that the one-armed man was surely running down to find the source of the noise, she managed to find the underside of the dock and struggled to reach the surface.

  She rose from the water and sucked in a sharp breath. Boots clomped on the boards overhead. The man stopped directly above her, blotting out the sun. Linda blinked, wanting desperately to clear the water from her nostrils, but not daring.

  The man gripped the rifle.

  The burst of fire magnified to deafening proportions in the cramped space under the dock, and for one terrifying moment, she thought he’d shot down at her. But she was still breathing. She was still wet and uncomfortable. Still terrified.

  He’d fired at the boat still retreating across the lake. With any luck, he would assume she’d ducked from the shot, and the two men would head out on their ATVs to hunt her down.

  A second pair of boots rocked the dock, making the hinges squeak. “You let them get away,” he said. She recognized the voice. The man in the long coat.

  �
��That boat was ‘bout halfway across the dang lake when I got down here,” Colby said. “Maybe it wasn’t them.”

  “Take the quad and recon the other side of the lake. After you just put the fear of the founding fathers in them, they’re bound to be sloppy. They’ll leave a trail. But don’t kill them. We need them alive.” He laid a hand on the other man’s shoulder. “I’ll cast an eye on how Jackson’s faring with the ones in the cellar before I radio back to camp for more artillery. We do not want this getting away from us anymore than it already has.”

  “Are we FUBAR, Sarge?”

  “You’d better hope not, fella.” She saw the man in the duster poke the other man in the chest. “Or the next bullet’s got your name on it.”

  Sarge walked away, leaving the one-armed man with something to chew on.

  The cleaver blade suspended above his head in Jackson’s meaty fist, Frank drove his knee upward into the man’s groin.

  Jackson groaned and rolled off him. Frank twisted out of the way, and the blade clacked against the tile close to his head, skittering away.

  Jackson lay on his back, groaning and gripping his testicles.

  Now or never.

  Frank crawled for the gun. His hands slipped in the sticky egg slop, and he almost fell face first, but righted himself at the last second. His fingers slick with egg, he gripped the rifle and drew it under his arm, falling back against the wall.

  “Fuck,” the large man groaned.

  With a primal scream, Frank squeezed the trigger, preparing for the recoil.

  Nothing.

  Jackson began to giggle. “You asshole. You forgot to take the dang safety off.”

  Frank twisted the weapon and flicked the toggle. “Thanks.”

  The big man’s eyes widened in realization of his error, and Frank pulled the trigger.

  White-hot fire exploded from the muzzle. The bullet tore a bloody hole in the large man’s chest. The man’s whole body seemed to deflate as he expelled one final breath and was still.

  The rifle barrel smoldered. Arms still reverberating from the recoil, Frank cast the weapon aside in disgust.