She reached the master bedroom. Things looked normal. Dad had a habit of using the floor as a hamper. She’d tried in vain to get him to pick up after himself. “I’m not your maid,” she’d say, but the old bugger was used to Mom cleaning up his mess. Dana was about to leave when she spotted the blood on the floor. Her heart fluttered like a snare drum. Blood wasn’t more than few drops. But part of it was smeared, as though Dad had taken a knock to the head and fallen down.
If those assholes hurt him...
She stormed from the bedroom and gave the other rooms a cursory glance, without finding any other sign of him.
A new plan was forming in her head. Find Jeffereys and make him tell her what happened to her father. No more than a second later, a paralysing fear gripped her. She hadn’t looked everywhere.
They had a small fish pond out back. Dad had built it after Mom passed. Took his mind of being all alone, he told her. Fish might die here and there, but not all at once. They’d never all leave him alone. The pond itself wasn’t much larger than two bathtubs laid out side by side and buried in the soft earth. It was visible from the kitchen window and that’s exactly where Dana went, a heaviness to her step, as though her body didn’t want her to see what was there.
She glanced out and the feeling in her belly was like free falling in one of those amusement rides. Her stomach rose up into her throat the minute she saw the body floating face down. Perhaps he’d been sprinkling food to the fish when the lights in the sky had come and wiped out every last bit of common sense. Wouldn’t have taken more than a slip to send him reeling into the pond. The fish were still alive, swimming around just like any other day.
Or had Jeffereys done this? Had he found her father in the backyard, babbling incoherently and thrown him into the water? The thought of giving him a proper burial somehow seemed less important than finding Jeffereys, looking into his eyes and finding the truth. She’d done the same to Alvarez and a single word had come back in blinding white colors.
Murderer.
The tears and the proper burial would come after.
Dana was out the front door a second later and that’s when she realized that finding Jeffereys’ wasn’t going to be necessary after all. He’d already found her.
“Drop the piece, missy, less you want us to shred you on your own doorstep.”
Jeffereys’ narrow, pock marked face and slicked back hair made him look like an inmate of Folsom prison. Flanking him were Goatee and the Headbanger Kid. All three had automatic rifles at the ready.
Dana laid the SIG at her feet.
“I told you she’d go around,” Headbanger told Goatee. “Now pay up you cheap bastard.”
Goatee sighed and pulled out a wade of bills, slapping them into the kid’s hand, as though paper money was still worth something.
Jeffereys’ eyes were scanning her up and down as though he’d just won himself a shiny new trophy. The black leather outfit he wore squeaked whenever he shifted. “Now give that pistol a nice kick in our direction.”
She complied and Headbanger scurried forward to scoop up her weapon.
“Did you kill him?” she asked and the edge in her voice only made the men laugh.
The grin on Jeffereys’ face stretched from ear to ear. “Sweet darling, what do you take me for, some kind of murderer?”
Carole Cartright
Salt Lake City Airport?
The sound of thumping was rhythmic and constant.
Boom... boom... boom...
A stabbing pain in her head accompanied each beat and as her eyes began to open, the source of the thumping soon became clear. It was the blood vessels around her brain, a liquid vice grip squeezing her tighter and tighter with every excruciating beat of her heart.
Carole looked about her. She was in a darkened airport gift shop, hanging from the ceiling, luggage straps attached to each arm, cutting into her wrists. Holding her legs were more straps which had been tied to aisles that once contained books and candy, but had since been stripped bare. Her shirt had been ripped open, exposing her breasts. She didn’t remember anything that had happened after she blacked out. But the pilot with the girl on the leash undoubtedly wasn’t too keen on having his balls crushed. She had expected a level of retribution, she had maybe even expected death. If she was lucky it would be quick. With this group, however, it would more than likely be slow and incredibly painful. She could live with that, no pun intended. What she couldn’t have lived with was knowing she’d left Nikki behind to be tortured, raped and who knows what else. Carole had found Nikki’s attempts to hunt through the security office for a gun amusing, but right about now she wished more than anything they had found one. If they had, she’d have dropped the pilot right out of the gate and maybe then they’d all be safe.
From the other room came sounds that made Carole struggle against her constraints. The muffled cry of a girl calling out for help. Sounded like Nikki’s voice, but she couldn’t be sure because of the other sounds she was also hearing coming from that same room, grunts and groans and the prospect of what they were doing to her sickened Carole. But more importantly it enraged her.
The power was still off, making it hard to see further than a few feet in front of her. The knots in the luggage straps were crudely made, as though the person who’d tied her up was doing it for the first time. Crude or not, they weren’t nearly as tight as they should have been and Carole could only assume they must have thought she was nearly dead. Which wasn’t terribly far off.
The back of her head was wet with blood. Must have happened when she was knocked unconscious.
The girl’s voice came again, this time accompanied by a nerve shattering shriek; Carole began to rotate her wrists, trying to work her hand free, kissing her thumb and pinkie finger together as she did. The strap was moving, bit by bit she could feel her wrist slipping out from the knot. A shadow emerged out of the darkness. Wearing a ripped suit shirt and pants, he entered the store, hardly noticing her. He was rummaging through the shelves for food. The man’s hands fumbled onto a bag of potato chips and he tore it open, cramming the contents into his mouth. Next to the now empty chip rack was a showcase for caste iron replicas of The Salt Lake Temple; the Mormon’s holiest of holies. Then Carole’s eyes flit upon the t-shirt rack beside it and an idea suddenly formed inside her head. She wouldn’t need a gun. Not if she could get free.
Her right hand nearly slipped out before she could grab hold of the loop with the edges of her fingers. Her body was being held by two opposing straps, connected from the ceiling and to lose one would mean her body would start swinging to the left and maybe crash into something. That would alert Chip Eater to her presence, which was the last thing she wanted to do. The shop was dark and he hadn’t seen her yet, his face smeared with crumbs, and that was how Carole wanted to keep things.
Chip Eater tossed away the empty bag and continued hunting for any scrap that hadn’t already been devoured. It hadn’t been more than maybe 24 hours since the disaster, but there were still hundreds of people in the airport and many of them had probably been hunting for food since then.
Satisfied there was nothing left to pillage, Chip Eater moved on, picking at the crumbs around his face and shoving them into his mouth.
Carole had used that time to work her left hand free and it was as she dropped to the floor as quietly as she could that she heard the girl in the other room begging the man to stop and knew then for sure that it was Nikki.
It was dark near the ground and Carole swore as she struggled to untie the straps from her legs. Free within moments, she plucked a white “I Heart Salt Lake City” off the hanger along with one of the bronze statues of the Mormon Temple.
Keeping to the inside wall, she made her way through debris left over from the earthquake and subsequent looting and toward the sounds of the young girl’s voice. She wrapped the t-shirt around the heavy statue and cupped the ends in a tight fist. The resulting weapon would act as a mace and would surely crush the skull of
anyone stupid enough to get in its way.
The grunting was coming from behind the door facing her and she pushed it open and right away felt something inside her break.
She had been right. It was Nikki, lying naked from the waist down, on a bed of newspapers; she was swinging wildly with both fists to fight off the figure that was trying to rape her. He was reaching down between his legs as though the plumbing wasn’t working so well and right away, Carole knew it was the pilot whose balls she had crushed. He had intended to show them who was boss, but hadn’t counted on the lasting impact of Carole’s grip.
Without missing a step, she walked right up behind him and brought the homemade mace down on the top of the pilot’s head. The sound of his skull cracking open was clear and sickening, but what Carole hadn’t counted on was the scream that echoed from behind her. She turned just in time to see the pilot’s girlfriend charging. Carole made ready to swing her weapon when the woman’s neck snapped back and her legs kicked out from under her, sending her limp body crashing to the ground. Carole hadn’t done a thing. In the pilot’s mind, she was his property and as such, the bastard had chained her to the wall like a dog that had no idea how short its leash really was.
Nikki’s jeans were in the corner and Carole grabbed them and brought them to her.
“I’m so sorry, honey.”
Her daughter reached out and slid her arms around her mother, her body sobbing violently. She pulled away and her face was spattered with the pilot’s blood.
“Get dressed Nikki, we aren’t safe yet.”
The pilot wasn’t moving, but that wasn’t a big surprise, given that the back of his head was caved in. She winced at the sight, fighting the sudden urge to vomit.
Hold yourself together, Carole. If for nothing else, you have to stay strong for Nikki.
When her daughter was dressed, they entered the gift shop. Trying to be quiet and keep low, they saw two figures standing near the exit. The sound of their feet crunching the debris littering the floor, as well as Nikki’s continued whimpering, made stealth nearly impossible. They heard footsteps coming toward them and Carole and Nikki stood. The sling with the cast iron temple was still in her hand. She absolutely hated the idea of using any religious paraphernalia to attack another human being, but at the time she’d been a little short on options.
Nikki tapped her arm. “Mom, look behind you.”
Carole turned and saw the dull red outline of a fire extinguisher. She pushed the bloodied sling into Nikki’s hands and pulled the extinguisher off the wall. The hose was attached to the body by a clip and she yanked it free. The two men came out of the darkness and Carole saw right away that one of them was the Chip Eater, his gaze on Nikki as though he wanted to make her his. Carole aimed the hose, squeezed the handle and nothing happened. Panic rose up within her guts. She might have been lucky working those knots free and saving Nikki, but she didn’t think her luck was going to last much longer.
“The pin, pull the pin!”
Carole did and when she squeezed this time, a white billowing plume shot out of the nozzle. Both men reeled back in shock, falling to the floor. Carole gave them another taste, screaming as she did.
“Back off, assholes!”
They might not have understood her words, but the terrifying blast of high pressure sodium bicarbonate sent the men scrambling for safety.
“Hold on tight, honey.”
They left the gift shop surrounded by a mob of dishevelled figures. Carole knew these extinguishers didn’t have more than a few seconds of pressurized gas so she’d have to make every shot count. The sound of a discharge sent a shockwave through the crowd. Some ran away, others stayed, but everyone backed off, which was the intended goal. The two women, arm in arm, backed away from the crowd until they finally turned and ran.
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Primal Shift: Episode 2 Page 6
