by Jude Hardin
I woke up sweating and trembling and gasping for air. It took me a minute to realize my name was Nicholas Colt and that I was strapped to a chair in the workshop of a madman.
Stoneface was sitting at his table across from me, staring me in the eyes and smiling.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Trying to find some hope in what appeared to be an utterly hopeless situation, I thought about who might possibly come to my rescue. Juliet and Brittney would be concerned—worried sick was more like it—that I hadn’t called them in several days, but they were thousands of miles away in the Philippines. Juliet would undoubtedly try to contact my best friends in Florida, Joe Crawford and Winston “Papa” Fell, to see if they had heard from me. Under normal circumstances, Joe and Papa wouldn’t hesitate to jump in a car and drive to Tennessee if they thought I was in trouble. But Papa was still recovering from his gallbladder surgery, which hadn’t gone well and was probably going to end up in malpractice litigation, and Joe was in Denmark schmoozing some wealthy brewery owners who had expressed interest in Florida real estate. Joe would postpone his business meetings and fly back to the states in a heartbeat if he thought the situation warranted it, but even if he did come looking the odds of him actually finding me were astronomical. I was a needle in a haystack. I didn’t even know where I was. The only ally who might have had a clue was Pete Strong, but I had a feeling he was being held captive as well. He would have sent in the cavalry already if he’d been able.
So there was no one. There was only me, and I was helpless.
I had no way of knowing if it was day or night when Stoneface and a female assistant wheeled a stainless steel cart in and parked it next to my chair. They were both wearing surgical masks and gowns. On top of the cart there were a variety of syringes and medication vials and shiny instruments spread out over a blue towel. There was a white tube about eight inches long and about the caliber of a drinking straw with ports on one end and what looked like a deflated balloon on the other.
“What’s your name?” Stoneface said.
“Nicholas Colt. I already told you that.”
“I’m going to insert your G-tube now. This is what you get for refusing to eat.”
“I want regular food,” I said. “Not that green goop.”
“You can’t have regular food.”
“Why not?”
“Because I said so.”
The assistant lifted my gown and swabbed my belly with iodine. She draped me with blue towels, leaving a naked rectangle under my left ribcage. Stoneface unwrapped a pair of sterile gloves and put them on his hands. The assistant did likewise. He held his right palm out flat and she slapped a scalpel into it and he moved toward me focusing on the windowed area on my abdomen. He was going to cut me, and there wasn’t anything thing I could do about it.
“You’re insane,” I said.
“I was going to give you some anesthetic, but I’ve decided against it. The incision will be very small, and after a few hours the excruciating pain will subside. Tomorrow, I can start pumping liquid nutrition into your gut, and your refusal to accept sustenance will no longer be an issue.”
The overhead light glinted on the scalpel’s blade, creating a star effect through my teary eyes. Stoneface bent over me, holding the knife like a pencil with his right hand and pulling the skin on my belly taut with his left.
“Stop,” I shouted. “All right. You win. I’ll eat your predigested slop. Just don’t cut me.”
When I was twelve, I got into a fight with my stepfather and he ended up stabbing me with a steak knife. My relationship with cutlery has been a little strained ever since. To say I hate knives is an understatement.
“You’ve wasted enough of my time,” Stoneface said. “I should have done this in the first place.”
“Please. I’ll do whatever you want me to do.”
He came closer with the blade. I started bucking and thrashing and twisting in my seat.
“Be still, or you’ll be sorry,” he said.
I spit in his face. The assistant wiped him off with a towel. He set the scalpel down and left the room and came back with another cart. This one had a car battery on it and a black metal box about the size of a dictionary. The box had a toggle switch on the front and a dial that looked like the volume control to an amplifier. A set of wires connected the battery terminals to one side of the box, and another set of wires with alligator clips on the ends coiled out from the other side. Stoneface grabbed the alligator clips and attached them to my scrotum. He turned the dial to 2 and flipped the switch. My body stiffened and a million buzzing acid-dipped hornets jammed their stingers into my testicles. Boiling hot seltzer coursed through my veins in waves. My jaw dropped and my eyes bulged and a long guttural howl erupted from somewhere deep in my chest.
Then it was over. Stoneface cut the juice, but my balls still felt as though someone had danced on them with baseball cleats. The assistant wiped the drool from my chin and neck with a piece of gauze.
“Shall we crank it up to three?” Stoneface said.
I couldn’t speak. I shook my head and grunted like a caveman.
“Are you going to be still now?”
I nodded. I still couldn’t figure out why Stoneface wanted to keep me alive with a feeding tube. Just to torture me some more? Some kind of revenge for killing Derek Wahl? Was it because I shut down the Harvest Angels in Florida three years ago?
I closed my eyes, and a few minutes later I felt the cold blade slice into my skin.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I woke up alone. My stomach hurt where Stoneface had inserted the gastrostomy tube. He hadn’t started the feeding yet. I was very hungry. It had been days since I had eaten. There was a pillow under my head, and someone had been kind enough to cover me with a blanket. I would have given a million dollars for a pint of bourbon and a hamburger and some French fries.
The door opened and in walked Stoneface with a plastic bottle full of liquid the color of chocolate milk. He had some clear plastic tubing and an electric pump that controlled the feeding rate. I had interviewed a patient in a nursing home one time and recognized the setup.
“What’s your name?” he said.
“Nicholas Colt. Something wrong with your memory?”
“I trust you slept well.”
“My ass is sore from sitting in this chair and there’s a gnawing pain in my gut where you cut me open. Yeah, I slept like a baby.”
He clamped the pump onto my IV pole. He spiked the bottle and then fed the tubing through a chamber and turned the pump on and primed it. There was a large syringe and a plastic beaker half full of water on the table beside my chair. He drew some water into the syringe and lifted my gown and flushed the tube going into my stomach. The water sent a chill through me. He connected the tubing from the pump to the tube going into my stomach and set the rate on the pump’s little computer and started mainlining the formula into my body. I felt twinges of pain but nothing unbearable. Then I felt a cramp in my lower abdomen.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” I said.
“You need to have a bowel movement?”
“Yes.”
He left the room. Two muscular guys with pistols on their hips came in and unbuckled my straps. They helped me into a clean gown. They handcuffed me and led me down a hallway with my IV pole and urinary drainage bag in tow. We stopped at a narrow wooden door.
“You got five minutes,” one of the guys said.
I walked into the bathroom and shut the door. I had no idea what time it was, or even what day, but there was a window with frosted glass in there and it looked to be bright and sunny outside.
Outside was where I wanted to be.
I crouched beside the toilet, nearly losing my balance, and sat on my hands. I rocked onto my back, folded my knees, fed my feet through the loop one at a time.
Now my hands were in front.
I stood on the IV tubing and yanked the needle out of my vein. It bled some, but not bad. There was a bu
ff-colored tube coming out of my urethra. It led to a larger clear plastic tube, and I managed to twist and separate the two where they joined. I unhooked the tubing from the feeding pump and left it dripping on the floor. I capped the tube going into my stomach with the little stopper that was conveniently attached to the end.
I looked at the window. It was an old aluminum frame and I knew it would squeak when I tried to raise it. I gently opened the cabinet under the sink, saw an assortment of cleaning solvents, deodorizers, brushes and sponges. There was a bottle of white shoe polish and a rusty pipe wrench. I scanned for something to lubricate the window tracks with, but Stoneface must have kept the WD-40 and the petroleum jelly in other locations.
There was a bar of soap on the vanity. I picked it up. I climbed into the bathtub, gripped the soap firmly with both cuffed hands, and slid it up and down the window tracks. I dipped my hands into the toilet bowl and then dribbled some water onto the tracks. Now they were wet and slippery. I turned the lock-lever, freeing the bottom half of the window, and then pressed forward and upward at the same time. In a few seconds, the window was completely open. I stood on the lip of the tub, reached with my arms, hooked my elbows on the outside of the window frame and hoisted myself through. Now I was half in, half out. I shifted my weight and tumbled headfirst to the frosty ground six feet below.
I did a somersault and in one fluid motion rose to my feet and took off running. I was barefoot, completely naked except for the hospital gown. It was freezing. I guessed it to be in the mid twenties, but the adrenaline pumping through my veins kept me from feeling it. There was a tree line a hundred feet or so from the house. I ran for it. It was my goal to make it there and disappear into the woods. There was a barbed wire fence guarding the perimeter of the property, the kind with three strands you see on cattle ranches, but I figured there was enough room for me to crawl under it. I ran, fast as I could, my breath coming out in white puffs.
I was probably about halfway from the house to the woods when a voice from behind me shouted, “Stop, or I’ll shoot!”
I started zigzagging, knowing it wasn’t likely for them to hit anything from that distance with handguns. I didn’t figure they would shoot me anyway. Stoneface wanted me alive. He wanted to make me as miserable as possible for as long as possible. He wanted to use me for his demented experiments. Why, I didn’t know. But he was going to be furious when he found out those goons had allowed his prized lab rat to escape. They wouldn’t shoot me. I was counting on it. I was counting on it right up to the time I heard the rat-a-tat-tat of automatic rifle fire. I kept zigzagging. Blood started trickling out of the hole in my left arm where the IV had been. It was coming out in a steady stream and leaving a trail of droplets on the ground. My hands were cuffed and I couldn’t reach the wound to put pressure on it. It wouldn’t be hard for them to track me, with or without dogs. I tried not to think about it. I kept running.
I was almost to the fence. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Stoneface’s muscleheads running toward me. I didn’t have time to get down on the ground and try to scoot under the bottom strand of barbed wire. My only chance was to hurdle the fence. I estimated the top strand to be about three-and-a-half feet from the ground. It had been a long time since I’d done any jumping. My lungs were on fire and my legs felt like rubber. My heart was about to explode.
The hospital gown was going to be a problem. I was afraid it was going to get snagged on the barbed wire. I reached behind my head and pulled the slipknot on the tie string. The sleeves were held together with snaps and I jerked them loose and the garment floated away in my wake. Now I was naked and it was twenty-something degrees and I knew I was probably going to die soon.
In eighth grade there was a high jump set up in the gym, and we learned several different techniques to clear the bar. One of them was called the Fosbury Flop. You turned and launched yourself backward, arching your back at precisely the right moment and landing on your shoulders on a padded mat on the other side. My personal record using the Fosbury Flop was five feet, four inches. It was a height any serious track and field athlete would laugh at, and it was thirty-some years ago last time I tried it. I decided it was my best shot. I decided to go for it. The skin on my back would either be shredded by barbed wire or I would end up a quadriplegic from the landing or I would make it to the other side okay and gallop into the woods. Assuming Stoneface’s men didn’t lose their patience and open up with the machineguns.
Everything started moving in slow motion as I approached the fence. I decided to aim for a pile of leaves and pine needles that had blown between two of the posts, thinking it might cushion my fall. I ran toward the fence line at an angle and started making my turn about ten feet from the spot where I planned to leap. I was a couple of feet away now with my back to the fence and my eyes on the men chasing me and I went airborne and arched my back and easily cleared the top strand of wire, but the urinary catheter dangling from between my legs got caught on a barb and something big got yanked from my bladder and down through my urethra and I fell and rolled on the ground on the other side of the fence feeling as though I’d given birth to a cantaloupe.
All those hours in the gym worked against Stoneface’s men now as they tried to squeeze their enormous chests and shoulders and arms under the bottom strand of barbed wire. I got up and ran into the forest. There was no trail. The dead and prickly underbrush was probably doing a number on my feet, but they were numb from the cold. I couldn’t feel them at all. It was if they weren’t there. The inside of my penis, on the other hand, felt as though it had been scoured with a brush.
I ran deeper and deeper into the woods, changing directions every few seconds, intentionally finding fallen trees and other obstacles that might slow the hounds I figured would eventually be tracking me.
I came upon a clearing and stopped and gazed up at one of the most horrific things I’d ever seen.
Swinging in the breeze from the largest branch of an old oak tree was my dear friend Pete Strong.
Pete was dead. They had hanged him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I didn’t have time to grieve. I was going to die of hypothermia if I didn’t do something fast.
Pete’s feet were only about twelve inches from the ground. I patted his pockets and found Lester’s knife, a wallet, a set of keys, and the butane lighter he used for cigars. I cut the rope binding his wrists. I unzipped his coat and pulled it off of him and wrapped it around my shoulders. His holster was still on his belt but the 9mm Beretta was gone. I untied his boots and pulled them and a nice pair of thermal socks off his feet. It was clumsy and cumbersome working with the handcuffs on, but I managed to pull his pants off next and his long underwear. I unbuttoned his shirt and pulled that off. Now he was naked except for a T-shirt and a pair of boxers and a gold Rolex. I took the watch. It was a little loose on my wrist, but not loose enough to fall off.
I put the long-johns and the pants on, then the socks and boots. It was impossible to put the shirt on, so I held it to my chest to cover the bare spot and headed deeper into the woods.
I needed to find a road, but I had no idea which way to go. Daylight was fading fast. I would be harder to find in the dark, but the temperature would plummet overnight and I would probably freeze to death before morning. My only hope was to find some sort of shelter and build a fire.
