by D. J. Molles
Instead, he listened. He listened to everything he could possibly register. His entire world became whatever sounds he could pick up, past the rasping brush of the coarse burlap fabric as it rubbed against the side of his head. There was the rolling engine for a while, and nothing else. Then he could feel the vehicle pulling to a stop and then there was a very brief, quiet exchange.
The creaking of metal on metal.
The rattle of chain link and barbed wire.
A familiar sound. A gate being opened.
In the momentary quiet, Abe tried to listen to how many people were in the truck with him. He could hear someone breathing, and it was out of rhythm with the breathing of whoever was sitting on his chest, but too close to be the driver, he thought. So three people at least?
Then he thought that maybe this was all useless information anyway.
But it kept him from despairing, and when you’re in enemy hands, keeping a sharp mind is half the battle. It gave him something to do. Something besides giving in and waiting for them to do something to him. He would not simply be a lamb to the slaughter. He would keep listening and he would wait for that opportunity to present itself. Because the only way to know when they fucked up and when your one opportunity to get out came along was to pay very close attention.
It had been very cold. Then they’d come through a door. He had seen the glimmering of artificial light glowing when they entered the building, and it was marginally warmer inside, though not by much. But now he knew something important: They have electricity.
Random bands of thugs didn’t have electricity.
Then he’d come to the cell, or the broom closet, or whatever it was. They had set him on his knees on the floor, pulled off his burlap sack, and then slammed the door behind him. He was in complete darkness. There was some shuffling outside the door and then there had been death metal playing at an ear-shattering volume that made him wince at first. The same song on repeat. Over and over.
He tried to count the number of times the song played, just to give himself something to do. Some way to tell the time, but somewhere around thirty times he lost count. The door had opened again, though he hadn’t heard it over the clash of music. Someone had rushed in, thrown a bucket of water on him, kicked him in his belly, and then quickly removed the flex cuffs from around his wrists. Then they were gone, the door slammed, and the music went silent.
In the cold, wet silence, Abe began to shiver. He realized he was chewing the cuticles of his thumb again when it smarted and his lips tasted like blood. He spat and hugged his arms around his body. He worked through the cold, tightening his core until it threatened to cramp, just to keep his body temperature up. Cold would make him compliant, make his thinking and his focus fuzzy. But after a while, the water had dried enough that he wasn’t shivering anymore and then he fell asleep.
He had no idea how long he’d been asleep, but the door had opened and more water had come in to wake him up. No daylight. No sense of time. No one said anything to him. Just splashed the water on him and then slammed the door again. He would fall asleep and then be woken up the same way. This had happened four times so far, not including the latest.
He was confused, disoriented, and his abdominal muscles ached and cramped. The water running over his head and soaking his clothes wasn’t enough to quench his thirst, and the bit that he did get into his mouth tasted bitter and fouled and he feared trying to drink more of it.
He knew all of these techniques, and he knew them well. He had been through Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape. In fact, he’d attended it in the swamps of Fort Bragg, very near where they were, by his reckoning and by the last check of the map he’d done before curling up in his bivy sack the night they had been taken. In SERE school you learned about all the wonderful ways to make people crack. And you endured most of them yourself. The only rule for the instructors was that they couldn’t break your bones. Other than that, it was open season.
Having been through the training did not make the knot in his gut go away.
He suspected the worst was still to come.
He peered into the blazing light of the open doorway, and then it was shadowed by a figure. It was a very large form, the light coming from behind the figure catching in wild hair and bushy beard and creating an odd, red-gold halo. The figure moved quick for its massive size, and the voice that came from it was a rumble like a bear growling.
“Don’t fucking look at me.”
A huge hand reached out and grabbed the top of Abe’s head, pushing it down so his eyes were averted to the ground, and then the black, shit-smelling sack was over his head again, pulled tight against his face and his throat. He felt the man move quickly behind him. There were more people in the room, he could hear their quiet footsteps, but aside from the big man’s single command, no one spoke. The big man hauled him to his feet while another person to the front of him bound his wrists again. This time it felt like tape. Packing tape, or maybe duct tape. All the while the big man that he’d caught that momentary glimpse of was behind him, holding that hood tight over Abe’s head, and Abe could hear the man breathing—slow and steady.
Silently, they pushed him out of the room. All of their movements felt rough and designed to either hurt him or intimidate him. There was a certain aspect to it that got his heart beating faster—Where the fuck are they taking me? What are they going to do to me when we get there? God, this is gonna hurt, isn’t it? You can handle pain. You just need to buckle down and be ready for it—but Abe forced himself to focus on the sounds, on listening. He tried to sense which way he was being turned, this way and that, how many doors they were going through. Did they open freely? Did they have to be unlocked? Was there a passcode given? How big did the door sound? Did it sound like wood or metal? Were they going up? Down? Were there other people? Did he get the sense that he was in an enclosed space, or a bigger, more open one?
So far he was having a hard time answering these questions, but he tried. And that was important. It was important to always be thinking about how you were going to get away. It was important to never start thinking about giving up. The instructors at SERE would tell you that everyone cracks given enough time and pressure and pain. It’s just a matter of how long you can keep it together. Can you keep it together long enough to be rescued?
But that was back in the day when Abe Darabie had been a person worth rescuing. Now the people that he had fled from probably wished him dead, and the people he was fleeing to didn’t even know he was coming—and probably wanted him dead, too.
So now he just had to focus on… rescuing himself?
Why not? What else do I have?
And that made him think about Lucas again. About whether he was even alive. And he felt something worming its way through him and it felt like worry and dread and nausea, all in one. He had coerced Lucas into coming on this journey. Coerced him at the muzzle of a rifle. Abe was not in the habit of pointing guns at his close friends, but the circumstances had been… complicated. In the end, Abe believed wholeheartedly that Lucas had not begrudged him those actions. And he believed that Lucas wanted to be there with his commanding officer and friend.
Abe had convinced him to come along, and now this had happened. Now Abe was being marched to a place where there would be pain and terror, and he had no idea of whether his best and only friend in the world was still alive, or whether he was enduring pain and terror of his own.
What are they going to do to me?
No. How many doors have you passed through?
Three. Three doors. Heavy doors. Metal, I think. Not locked.
He wished he could smell something besides the fecal smell on the inside of the burlap sack. Maybe he could figure out what type of place he was in, though he wasn’t sure what data he could extrapolate from that.
As long as you’re making wishes, why not wish to see?
Why not wish to be free?
Why not wish to turn the clock back and pick another place to cam
p?
Abe closed his eyes—black on black.
Where are you?
Someplace cold. Someplace with cement floors. Someplace with electricity. Someplace with doors, and small rooms that seem like cells. And a place where they take people to interrogate them. Surely they have some facility? Or do they just strap you to a chair and beat the fuck out of you? Or maybe stand you on a metal table with a car battery hooked up to it?
Someplace… someplace…
The last door they entered sounded different from the others. This one clanked heavily, like solid metal. While the others had sounded like your average industrial doors, this one sounded as close to a jail door as you could get. Iron hinges creaked as they shoved him through and closed it behind them with a loud bang, and then a single, sharp clack, like a dead bolt being thrown.
They sat him in a chair. It was cold. Metal. A folding chair, Abe thought.
The tape came out again. Abe could hear the unique sound of the tape being pulled from its spool in large amounts. Then it went around his stomach and chest a few times, keeping his torso locked into the chair. And finally, around both of his feet, so that they were secured to the legs of the chair.
Abe’s heart pounded, but he forced his breathing to stay level.
Prepare yourself for pain.
The burlap sack was suddenly released and ripped off his head.
He took in as much as he could of the room, but there wasn’t much there. It was a small square, only slightly larger than the cell they had thrown him in. Same cement floors, same drain in the center. There was no light in the ceiling—the bright light in the room came from a pair of hot-burning halogen lamps that stood mounted on a yellow stand in the corner. He could feel the heat of them on his face and in any other circumstance it might have been nice after so long in the cold, but here and now the heat seemed aggressive and stinging.
He had the sense that there were one or two men standing behind him, but the only person he could see was in front of him. This was a man of about average height. He had close-cropped hair on the sides, but the top of his head was going slick and bald. He wore a full beard, but unlike the one on Abe’s face or the huge man that had come to fetch him, this man’s beard was neatly trimmed. Dark brown, almost black, with some streaks of gray. He was not fat, nor skinny, nor well muscled. He appeared decently fed, but not overly so. But by far, the oddest aspect of the man standing in front of Abe were his clothes. He wore pressed khaki pants and a tweed sport coat. He seemed to belong in front of a chalkboard in a college classroom, rather than in an interrogation room.
The man was holding a bottle of water.
He smiled as Abe stared at him, a congenial expression, and held up the bottle. “Hello. Are you thirsty? Would you like some water?”
Despite the cold wetness, Abe’s thirst was becoming desperate. He considered the possibility of poison, but that made no sense. Why capture him in the middle of the night and go through all this trouble, just to slip him some poison when they could just as easily have slit his throat? Then he thought about drugs. There was a strong possibility that the water in the bottle was laced with something…
The oddly dressed man seemed to read Abe’s thoughts. He stepped forward, uncapping the bottle, and he took a long swig from it. He swallowed and smacked his lips. “See? Just water. Would you like some now?”
Abe stared at the bottle for another moment, the clear, cold liquid undulating inside it, catching the light of the halogen lamps. The desire for the water was intense at that moment. He must have been more dehydrated than he had realized. He nodded.
The man brought the water bottle to Abe’s lips and tilted it back. He did it gently at first, until Abe was greedily sucking the bottle dry. The plastic bottle crinkled and wrinkled and collapsed in on itself as Abe got every drop of water out of it. Then the man in the tweed sport coat capped the water bottle and set it down a few feet away.
When he stood straight again, facing Abe, he folded his hands in front of him. A very formal gesture. The kind smile was still on his lips. “I’m Carl Gilliard. You can call me Carl. I’m going to start off cordially, and we’ll go from there, okay?”
Abe absorbed the information. “Okay.”
Carl put his hands into the pockets of his pants. “What’s your name?”
“Abe Darabie.”
An eyebrow went up. “What about your title, Mr. Darabie? Your rank?”
Abe considered this. Were there any benefits to telling this man the truth? For that matter, were there any benefits to lying? One thing was becoming clear to Abe: he didn’t think these were thugs or bandits. Only one type of person gave a shit about rank, and that was people who were a part of a ranking structure.
Or people that will hold you for ransom…
Another thing that Abe did not like was that neither he nor Lucas had borne anything that would have identified them as military personnel. Their clothes had not been any type of uniform, nor did either of them bear any rank. Their weapons were military, but there were a lot of military weapons floating around in the hands of civilians since the collapse. They had driven the tan Humvee they’d taken from Eddie Ramirez, but military vehicles were no different from military weapons—they were sprouting up everywhere, seized by whoever found them abandoned, or sometimes taken by force.
There was no reason for the man that called himself Carl to believe Abe Darabie was military, unless it was just a hunch he was pursuing.
In the end, Abe went for the plain, ungilded truth, because it seemed the safest thing to say: “I don’t have any rank anymore.”
Carl frowned. “No rank. Okay. Then tell me what your rank was before?”
And we’re back to square one. Abe coughed, cleared his throat. “What’s your rank, Carl?”
Abe had feared this would break the tense strings of civility that had so far governed this exchange, but Carl just shook his head, unconcerned. “My rank isn’t important. Let’s stay on task, Mr. Darabie, and remember what I said in the beginning.” He tapped one of his feet and when Abe glanced down he saw that Carl was wearing suede Dockers. “What was your rank before?”
“Major,” Abe said quietly, then added, “But not anymore.”
“Major, but not anymore,” Carl repeated slowly, as though he were divining the truth of the words by speaking them out of his own mouth. “Why not anymore? What happened?”
Are these guys from Briggs? Is that why they’re asking these questions? This was not the first time the thought had occurred to Abe. In fact, the second that the shit-smelling burlap had covered his face, he had thought, Briggs tracked me down. Briggs and Colonel Lineberger, those sons of bitches!
But if they’d tracked him down, then wouldn’t they already know what was going on? Did they just want him to admit to it? And if so, then why? There was no rule of law anymore. No due process that needed to be followed. Briggs had sent men to assassinate Lee Harden without any questioning, so why would he treat Abe differently? No, if these men were from Briggs, then they would not be asking questions. They would have killed him and Lucas right at their campsite and left them there for the infected to find and clean up.
Unless there was something here that he wasn’t putting together.
Where is the GPS? he thought for the millionth time since he’d been taken captive. It was less a thought now than a permanent background in his brain. A blinking billboard that lit up the darkness in his mind at a constant and steady pace: Where is the GPS? Where is the GPS? Where is the GPS?
There is something here that I’m missing. I have no idea who I’m talking to, so it would be best if I said nothing at all. At least until I figure out who these people are, and who Carl is working for.
Abe took a deep breath and blew it out slowly through pursed lips. Cooperation was easy. It was comfortable. It required no conflict. But digging your heels in had the tendency to get you hurt, especially when you were taped to a metal folding chair in a dark room with a smiling man
that you knew did not have your best interests at heart. But Abe would not show his hand when he had no idea who he was showing it to.
“Mr. Darabie?” Carl had a cringing look on his face. “You look like you’re struggling with whether or not to tell me the truth. I encourage you to speak truthfully to me. Lies have a tendency to sour any relationship.”
Abe shook his head. “Who are you?”
The kind features of Carl’s face were simply gone, like they had never existed. Now he was carved out of stone and his well-trimmed beard was made out of wire bristles and his eyes were just cold orbs of ice. He looked at something behind Abe and gave a slight nod.
Abe clenched his teeth. Here we go…
The chair flew backward and crashed to the floor. Abe felt the back of his head bounce off cement and his sinuses tingled. For a microsecond he was staring up at the ceiling—acoustic ceiling tiles with water spots on them. Then there were two faces—one clean-shaven, and the other was the big wild man that had taken Abe from his cell. Then there was the sound of something being ripped out of water and a thick, wet cloth covered his nose and eyes. They were holding it down hard to keep his head locked in place and it pressed against his eyes, causing a cold ache.
Abe’s first instinct was to start thrashing, but he forced himself to remain still. Thrashing would only burn up the oxygen in his body, and he would need it. He knew what came next, but knowing didn’t make it any better.
Carl’s voice was an emotionless monotone. “We used to do this with jugs or buckets of water, but I’ve found it’s a lot more effective when you have running water. A little more likelihood of drowning, but that’s kind of the point.”
