The Method

by Ralston, Duncan

  The wine would put out the fire if it spread to the shelves, but it would be cold comfort if Sarge hadn’t maintained orders to keep everyone alive and Colby and the wolf-boy let the four of them choke to death down here.

  “FIRE!”

  He broke into a coughing fit and eased down to the floor, eyes burning. The fire continued to rage at the center of the room. The stairway door disappeared behind a gray haze.

  Linda coughed behind him. Then Alex or Mathias, he couldn’t tell which. The room erupted with a symphony of coughs, like a contagion.

  The stairway suddenly brightened. Smoke rolled out around a man standing in silhouette in the open doorway above.

  Frank crawled back on his butt until his back struck bottles. He lay down flat against cool stone, waiting.

  Boots trundled down the steps.

  “Jesus H. Fucksticks!” the kid said, and coughed.

  “Cover your mouth,” Colby said. “And watch the cussin’!”

  Shadows swirled in the smoke at the end of the hall. The orange flames illuminated their shapes, but the smoke kept them in a haze. One was tall, the other short and hunched.

  “Now!” Frank yelled with his last breath.

  Rocks clacked against the shelves, smashed bottles, and made fleshy thuds.

  Colby and the wolf-boy cried out at the unexpected assault. Frank saw them shielding themselves with their arms—arm in Colby’s case—as they retreated into the hall.

  “Hold!” Frank said.

  The others stopped throwing their rocks. Already the fire was dying, the smoke beginning to clear.

  The kid had left the door open upstairs.

  “How they get untied?” the kid asked.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Colby said. “They’ll run out of rocks soon. You know that, right?” He was addressing them, glee audible in his tone. “What did you expect was gon’ happen? Knock us out with a handful of sauna rocks and run off hand in hand into the sunset?”

  “Fuck you, you inbred prick!” Linda screamed. Frank could see her now through the thinning smoke, lying on her side with a rock poised.

  “I done told you about the cussin’, lady—”

  Linda threw the rock. A bottle near the entrance to the hall shattered and Colby shielded himself, ducking out of the way of the glass.

  “One more rock and I’m gon’ send the boy upstairs to get Petunia. You don’t want to meet Petunia. I guarantee you that. She got a hair trigger and a loud mouth, an’ she just loves to get the last word.”

  An animal roar exploded from the corner of the room. Mathias had gotten to his feet and charged, kicking through the fire toward the men in the hall.

  “Fall back!” Colby ordered. “Get the guns!”

  The big man collided with Colby, smashing him against the shelf. Bottles shattered and fell around them as the wolf-boy disappeared into the retreating smoke and bolted up the stairs.

  Colby grabbed a fistful of the cook’s chest hair. The big man growled and smashed his massive forehead into Colby’s nose.

  Linda winced, hearing the cartilage crunch from where she lay by the sauna door.

  The cook grabbed Colby’s throat in his meaty fist. From where Frank sat, he could see Colby’s eyes bulge and his face turn purple, veins standing out in his temples.

  Frank got to his feet, ready to run.

  Colby reached back blindly for a bottle.

  “Look out!” Frank cried, but he was too late.

  Colby tore the bottle free and smashed it over Mathias’s head. The big man stumbled back, blinking rapidly, a hand clapped against his forehead. Blood poured down his face, and he staggered back into the shelf behind him. Bottles rained from their cubbies and smashed at his feet.

  Without a second’s hesitation, Colby grabbed the knife sheathed at his hip and stabbed Mathias several times in the gut. The wounds oozed gouts of dark red down the cook’s hairy stomach and onto his graying underpants. His eyes fluttered, and he slid down the wall.

  Colby turned his gleaming eyes toward them. He breathed heavily through his nostrils like a wild animal, blood streaming from them. The knife dripped gore, its haft connected to the sheath by some kind of cord or cable. “Anyone else wanna dance?”

  The smoke had cleared, leaving the living prisoners exposed. No one dared say a word.

  “Aw, all these critters are in their skivvies ‘cept you and me,” the man said to Frank. “How come we didn’t get no invite to the slumber party?”

  “You’re a sadistic fuck, you know that?”

  Colby’s smirk vanished. He pointed the dripping knife at Frank. “You watch the cussin’ now, fella.”

  “You’re in it for the pain, aren’t you?” Frank continued, undeterred. “That’s why assholes like you join militias. You probably don’t even give a shit about Sarge’s politics or his family’s land.”

  Snarling, the man sheathed the still-dripping knife and began his approach.

  “Maybe you got bullied in school and you want to take out your rage on innocent people, trample women and children under your jackboots.”

  The man stopped in front of him, looking down with a sneer. “You best shut your mouth.”

  “Or what? You’re gonna hurt me? Big deal. You think I haven’t been hurt before?”

  Colby’s left eye twitched. “Not like this you ain’t.”

  “Then do it. Show me pain.” The man didn’t move. “Show me pain, you fucking coward!”

  The arm snatched out and grabbed Frank by the jaw, squeezing his face in a vice grip. “Shut. Your mouth,” he growled, his head trembling with rage.

  Linda rose to her feet. “Let him go!”

  “You one-armed fuck.” Frank spoke with a lisp with his lips mashed together. “You can’t even hold me and hit me at the same time.”

  “Watch the cussin’.”

  Colby let him go and backhanded him across the jaw with the practiced expertise of a pro wrestler. Frank fell on his hands, tasting blood. He spat on the floor at the man’s feet.

  “You call that pain? My dad hit me harder than that when I was six.”

  Colby’s knuckles cracked as he clenched the hand into a fist.

  “Frank, don’t,” Linda pleaded.

  “You don’t have to feel guilty anymore, Lin.” He turned to see tears in her eyes. “Before he’s done with me, you walk away, okay?”

  She let the tears fall. “I won’t leave you.”

  “You stand up and walk out of here and don’t look back, Lin.”

  Colby flashed a look in her direction. “She ain’t goin’ nowhere!”

  “Three of us and one of you,” Frank said. “How are you gonna catch us with one arm?”

  The fist darted out, mashing Frank’s ear into his skull. Stars flooded his vision.

  “Frank!”

  As his vision cleared, he saw blood dripping from the man’s sheath almost as if the knife itself was bleeding. With his brain rattled, he couldn’t quite comprehend what he was seeing. He only knew it was wrong somehow.

  “Go, Linda!”

  The fist struck him again, and this time when the stars came, his vision didn’t immediately return. Something inside his head had broken. One or two more punches and he’d no longer be useful to anyone, except as a punching bag.

  Alex stood alongside Linda.

  “Rebel!” Colby called over his shoulder, his eyes darting between the prisoners in something approaching fear.

  Frank fought through the pain to push himself up as the world came into focus around him. When Colby turned back, Frank charged him with a shoulder.

  Caught unaware, the man’s eyes bulged and he toppled backward.

  Linda rushed him and kicked him in the chest and stomach. It felt like his torso was padded, but she kept kicking, only wanting to hurt the man as he curled himself into a ball.

  “If I’d known you were having a campfire, I’d’ve brought marshmellers.”

  She got in one last good kick and turned to see Sarge sta
nding over Mathias’s dead body, wafting away smoke with one hand, his pistol in the other. Two large men with balaclavas pulled down over their faces stood behind him at either shoulder, both men armed.

  “What in the hot hell happened down here, Colby?”

  Colby rolled onto his back. “Sorry, Sarge. They surprised us.”

  “You’re on KP duty for a week, how’s that for sorry?” Sarge looked around. “Seems like you all just about got the upper hand on us again, Moffats. Right place, wrong time.” He chuckled. “Langford, get the Chinaman. Gitmo, you and I’ll rustle up the Moffats. Colby,” he barked.

  The man looked up, shamefaced, from where he sat holding his gut.

  “You get to carry this fat dead bastard up the stairs.”

  The man in the maroon balaclava grabbed Alex by the shoulders. The concierge didn’t even put up a struggle, just hung his head and went along with his captor. Sarge and the man in the green balaclava—the taller man he’d called Gitmo—approached Frank and Linda.

  Sarge sneered as he passed Colby. “Get your sorry ass up off the floor.”

  Gitmo grabbed Frank by the shoulder and squeezed his thumb into the divot above his clavicle. Sarge stood in front of Linda and looked her up and down.

  “Say, where’d you get that scar?”

  “None of your fucking business.”

  He nodded as if she’d made some philosophical statement and he was taking it under consideration. “Well, we’ll swing you by your room for some fresh clothes before we move on to the Old Place,” he said finally. “These men are animals, Linda. Believe you me: you give them an inch of skin, they’ll want to take it all.”

  13 — The Old Place

  The truck rolled over uneven terrain, engine growling. With a black bag over his face, Frank had no idea where they were being taken. All he knew for sure was that the heavy chains linking the cuffs on their hands and ankles wouldn’t be as easy to escape as the ropes had been, even if Sarge hadn’t confiscated his lighter.

  Escape would take a miracle, and Frank didn’t believe in those.

  Colby drove the pickup angrily. An old-time country singer’s “lonesome cattle call” blasted from the speakers loudly enough to scare off all the wildlife.

  Gary “Sarge” Hill and the man he’d called Langford had stayed behind to take care of Alex and give the Mathias and Maria Luisa a “proper Christian burial,” according to Sarge. As they’d left, he had instructed Colby to take Frank and Linda to the Old Place, which Frank had taken to believe must be Sarge’s old family home.

  The hood kept touching his lips and leaving a salty taste. The fabric smelled like sweat and blood, neither of which belonged to him. He was hungry. He was hurt. And he needed to piss something awful.

  “I have to pee,” Linda said, mirroring his thoughts.

  “Hold it,” Gitmo shouted over the music, his voice baritone.

  Linda bit her lip and drew her legs to her chest. Gitmo had leered at her then, and the additional clothing Sarge had allowed her to put on hadn’t curtailed his ogling. She could feel his eyes on her now.

  “Why do they call you Gitmo?” Frank asked, tasting the salty hood. “Were you stationed there?”

  Gitmo didn’t answer, and Linda was glad for it. She didn’t care whether he’d been the architect of the torture that had gone on at Guantanamo or had suffered through it. She already dreaded what might happen once he got them alone at this “Old Place” Sarge mentioned. Knowing the place of anger her impending abuse came from would be worse.

  “Duck,” Gitmo said.

  Branches slapped against the roof of the truck. She ducked as bristly needles brushed the top of her hood.

  Frank caught a branch in the face an inch or so above where Colby had punched him in the ear. He felt it well up immediately, blood trickling a prickly trail down his stubbled cheek. He tried to press the wound against his shoulder, but the injury struck the fat length of chain. “Motherfu—”

  Gitmo prodded him with a thick finger.

  “Better not curse. Colby don’t like it when you curse.”

  “Fuck Colby,” Frank said. “Who names their kid after a cheese anyway?”

  Gitmo chuckled. “Heh heh heh.”

  The howling cowboy gave way to the DJ: “That was Slim Whitman going way back to 1954 with the old cowboy classic, ‘The Cattle Call.’ Next up, we’ve got Tammy Wynette, who’s got a word for all you fillies out there in radioland. ‘Stand By Your Man,’ darlin’. On Montana’s Classic Country, 98.5.”

  Guitars twanged and Tammy Wynette began to croon. The truck went over a big bump, and Linda fell against Frank, their chains clanking together.

  “You okay?”

  His words prickled her neck through the fabric.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  She felt like she could lie against him forever, feeling his warmth, breathing in the familiar smell of his sweat and a lingering hint of cologne, but Gitmo roughly pulled them apart.

  “No talking.”

  She felt their separation like a wound. She hadn’t felt so close to Frank since the Year From Hell, nor had she needed him so much. With the hood covering her face, she didn’t bother to hold back the tears, letting them soak into the dark fabric.

  Whatever this “Old Place” was, Linda knew it was the last place they would ever see.

  The truck tore up dirt as it came to a jerky stop. Colby shut off the engine, and the music died with it. She heard the driver door open. The truck rocked as Colby stepped out and slammed the door.

  “Rock and roll, Gitmo! Let’s get these critters in the house.”

  Slap slap. He pounded the truck by Linda’s head, making her jump. The chassis rocked again as Gitmo climbed out and his boots thudded on soft earth.

  “Where are we?” Frank asked.

  “That’s for us to know and you to find out,” Colby said. “Jeez, that Tammy Wynette always puts me in a hurtin’ mood!” The tailgate creaked as it was lowered. “Up and out, Moffats! Up and out, you critters!”

  Frank struggled to get up, but fell to his knees on the corrugated truck bed. With his hands cuffed in the front, it was easier to move around, but the heavy chains weighed him down. He was pushing himself up again when something zapped his spine, and he sprawled face first on hard plastic.

  As she patted a hand along the side of the truck to find her way to the edge, Linda cringed at the crackling sound. Frank thudded heavily near her feet with a groan.

  “New rule,” Colby said. “Don’t follow my orders fast enough you get zapped.”

  The zapper, whatever it was, struck her left buttock, a low-watt sting like the bite of a large bug. It was nothing like the ten thousand watts she’d experienced during the endurance event three years back, but still startling. She gripped the side of the truck to keep herself from falling.

  “You also get the other one zapped, so think on that. The key here’s to always follow orders.”

  Linda steadied herself and stepped off the truck, judging the height by memory. The ground she landed on was flat. Leaves crunched underfoot.

  The Old Place, she thought.

  One of the men hauled Frank up by the chains crisscrossing his back and dragged him along the corrugated floor. Suspended in midair for a panicky moment, Frank was sure they’d dropped him. But they were lifting him by the chains. They let him go and he slumped to the ground, not far, but enough to lose his breath. When he tried to stand, someone kicked him back down into the crackling leaves. He pushed up on his hands and knees, sick of being beaten down, but helpless to do anything about it with the chains and the bag covering his face.

  If he couldn’t see, he couldn’t fight back.

  He no longer contained the strength to fight back with words. All he felt capable of was crying out and moaning in the hope these men would show him mercy. But neither of their captors seemed aware of the concept.

  Another zap to his spine. He clenched his jaw against the sudden jolt of pain.

 
They struck Linda next. He heard the crackle and her grunt from where she stood above him.

  For no reason.

  “These men are animals,” Sarge had said. He’d set the animals loose on them.

  At least they didn’t bring the dogs, Frank thought, and immediately worried he’d jinxed them.

  “That was just ‘cause we can,” Colby said.

  Gitmo uttered his deep heh heh heh in reply.

  They hauled Frank to his feet.

  “Frank?”

  She was close to him, not touching, but close. Her voice was muffled behind her hood and further muffled by Frank’s own hood over his ears. They were close, and yet, he’d never felt so far away from her, each in a separate dark ocean of pain and fear.

  “I’m here.”

  Another zap. He fell forward into something. He could tell it was Linda when their chains clinked together.

  “Don’t give up.” Her shaky voice was so close to his ear he could feel her hot breath through the fabric.

  The men pulled them apart.

  “No talking,” Gitmo said.

  Someone turned him around. “Get movin’,” Colby said from behind him.

  Frank did as he was told, wary of the zapper at his back. It was likely a cattle prod and not a Taser, or the two of them would be in far greater pain. He staggered forward, doing his best to walk with the chains at his ankles and his injured leg throbbing like an infected molar. He feared it wasn’t fast enough for their captors and hoped he wouldn’t make them zap him again and zap Linda for his mistake.

  Linda’s tears dampened the hood as she stumbled forward. They’d treated her roughly, but Frank had gotten the brunt of it. He was strong. If he hadn’t already shown it at her bedside during the Year From Hell, he’d proven it and more today. But she feared that soon he would crack.

  Hell, she was close to cracking herself.

  Her left foot struck wood, and she stopped just short of tripping.

  “On your knees,” Gitmo said.

  She hesitated. Frank’s chains rattled like Marley’s ghost beside her as he sank to the ground obediently.

  Gitmo jabbed a finger into her old scar, of all places he could have hit. The scar tissue itself was numb, but it still hurt with enough pressure to the area. She dropped to her knees with a cry of pain.