It occurred to John on their long journey to Plainview that if they kept Frank alive they would have a slave to do all the things they didn’t want to do themselves.
Of course, they’d have to take certain precautions to prevent his escape. But that wouldn’t be too difficult. All they’d have to do was shackle him.
And that they did, with three feet of heavy chain wrapped tightly around both ankles. Each end was held in place with a high-security padlock. One which Frank had no chance of picking open or breaking.
The shackles didn’t restrict his movements. He could still gather dog poop and lug cans of food from the back of the warehouse.
They did, however, slow him down tremendously.
And the chain dragging on the floor made an awful lot of noise.
They were not unlike a cowbell.
A cowbell tells a farmer where old Daisy is in the pasture, even in the dead of night or in the heaviest fog.
The chain, dragging constantly against the concrete floor of the distribution center, told John and Justin and the others exactly where Frank was at all times.
One other thing the shackles did: they made Frank’s plans for escaping within two or three days infinitely harder.
Frank put on a very good show.
He was working hard to win over hearts. To show everybody he was a good guy who didn’t mind doing their grunt work.
Who was working hard to show his worth to their group.
His efforts had mixed success.
John and Justin’s Aunt Stacy, a widow, seemed to have taken a liking to Frank.
Most of the others seemed to accept him, or perhaps were just glad they no longer had to take their turn at servicing the port-a-potties.
The only one who was giving him fits was Crazy Eddie, who was known for not liking anyone outside the family. He tried his best to win the man over, but with very little success.
It was Crazy Eddie who showed Frank where to empty the pans from the port-a-potties. He took him to a corner of the massive building and removed a piece of plywood wedged against the exterior wall.
Once the plywood cover was removed, Frank could see what it was hiding: a hole cut into the metal siding with a blow torch, a few inches high and about twenty four inches wide.
“Just slide the trays through the hole,” Eddie instructed. “Once they’re outside, spin the handles to dump them. Everything will fall on a big pile below the elevated dock.”
Frank followed instructions to the letter though he had other things on his mind.
“This is genius,” he said, trying to stroke Eddie’s ego. “But where in the world did you get a blow torch?”
“Oh, there’s two or three of ‘em, over there in the maintenance office.”
As he spoke he waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the north side of the building.
Frank filed that piece of information, as he had so many others, in the back of his mind for use later.
His third day in Frank discretely picked up a partially used roll of duct tape. Since there wasn’t much left on the roll he was able to crush it and stuff it into the front of his pants.
He carried it there for several hours while trying to think of a better place to stash it.
He thought his goose was cooked at one point when he encountered Stacy and noticed she was staring at the front of his pants.
But she just smiled and winked at him before going on her way.
“I gotta get out of here,” Frank thought to himself.
And indeed he had an escape plan.
One of his jobs was to wander around the building to pick up the droppings of Stacy’s poodles. The group, while still suspicious of Frank, allowed him to wander freely because they could hear the heavy chain and knew roughly where to find him.
Frank’s plan was to wait until most of them were sleeping, then to tell someone he was going on a mission to pick up dog poop.
He’d make his way toward the maintenance office and use one of the cutting torches to cut through the heavy chain which bound his ankles together.
Then, to keep the chains from rattling further, he’d tape them to the side of each thigh using the duct tape.
At that point he’d be able to move fairly quietly.
It would be fairly easy to make his way to the personnel door between docks 44 and 45.
The door was locked from the outside but had a panic bar on the inside to allow it to be opened in case of a fire.
As quietly as possible, he’d go through the door and into the parked Humvee, where he’d remove the keys from beneath the seat and start up the vehicle.
Then, as they say in the movies, he’d get the hell out of Dodge.
He thought the only thing that could possibly go wrong was if the battery on the Hummer was too weak to start it. If that happened he’d have no choice but to steal away into the frozen landscape and hope for the best.
That was the one fatal flaw in Frank’s plan… thinking the only thing that could possibly go wrong would be a dead battery.
Actually something else could go terribly wrong.
And it involved Crazy Eddie.
Early the following evening, one by one, the Dwyer family began to retire to the tents they’d set up in the common area of the building.
The tents served to provide each of them a limited amount of privacy, and were fairly well furnished with easy chairs and single beds.
About eight p.m. there were only a few people moving about, and Frank was starting to think this would be the night he’d make good his escape.
Then Crazy Eddie came running into the common area, covered from head to foot with… aluminum foil.
In his right hand was what appeared to Frank to be a Samurai sword.
In his left hand was a liter bottle of tequila that was half empty.
Frank was quite taken aback at the spectacle. He didn’t know whether to laugh outright or shy away and go find something to do.
As for the others, it seemed business as usual. They pretty much didn’t bat an eye.
Stacy was more interested in his hardware than in his behavior.
“Nice sword, Eddie. Where’d you find it?”
“It was in the manager’s office, hanging on the wall. And my name isn’t Eddie. It is Sir Knight Eddie of the shining order of Knightdom.”
Frank had to choke on his laughter.
Crazy Eddie looked around the area, then took a huge swig of tequila.
Frank, trying to diffuse the situation, said, “I didn’t know Super Foods carried liquor. Is there more where that came from?”
Stacy, trying to be helpful, said, “Oh, yeah. There’s a whole bunch of it in a locked cage, but we busted the lock a long time ago. If you want I can go get a bottle of wine and we can share it.”
But Eddie was having none of that.
“Back away from the maiden, you cur. You are not worthy of being in her presence.”
Frank doubted Eddie even knew what a cur was. He’d likely heard the term in a movie somewhere.
He was pondering whether to move away from Stacy when Eddie lunged forward and swung his sword at Frank’s head.
He missed by several feet, but the sudden move was enough to make Frank back up a bit.
Stacy said, “Cut it out, Eddie, before you hurt somebody with that thing.”
“Shut up, maiden! You are addressing a knight from the round table!”
He swung the sword again, this time in Stacy’s general direction. Although he missed her as well by several feet, she was none too pleased.
“Damn it, Eddie! If you swing that thing again, I’ll kick your stupid ass!”
“Fine! I shall slay your suitor then!”
He went at Frank again and caught him off guard.
Instead of merely lunging forward as he’d done before, he ran at Frank and quickly closed the gap between them before swinging his sword again.
Frank, moving backward as Eddie ran toward him, couldn’t get away fast enough
.
The sword caught Frank across his midsection.
Crazy Eddie, seeing what he’d done, froze in place.
Frank fell backwards onto the concrete floor.
He looked down at the tear in his shirt, then lifted it up to inspect the wound.
It was bad.
Real bad.
He had a gash all the way across his belly, right below his navel.
It was at least fifteen inches long and at least an inch deep.
It gaped open at least two inches at its center.
And it bled like a fountain.
Frank had never seen so much blood coming out of a human being.
He didn’t like that it was coming out of him.
Luckily he didn’t have to watch it for long.
His gaze never left the blood flow. He wondered how much blood was in his body, and how much he could lose and still survive.
It didn’t look good.
The room started spinning as it got darker and darker.
Frank thought of Eva. He didn’t verbalize his words, but in his mind he spoke to her.
“I think this is it, Eva darling. I think I’m finally coming to see you again.”
With that his eyes closed and his head landed hard against the concrete floor.
Crazy Eddie stood still, mesmerized by the scene.
Stacy, suddenly full of rage, grabbed the bottle of tequila from his hand and slapped him, hard, across the side of his face.
“You idiot!” she yelled. “Why’d you have to kill him? I was trying to make him my man!”
Final Dawn Book 12:
WHERE COULD HE BE?
will be available at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble Booksellers, Hastings Books, and more than two dozen on line book stores in October, 2017.
If you enjoyed
ONE OF OUR OWN,
you might also enjoy
ALONE Book 1:
Facing Armageddon
Dave and Sarah Anna Speer had been preparing for Armageddon for years. They thought they’d covered all the bases, and had planned for everything.
It never occurred to them that the single thing they had no control over was the timing.
Sarah was on an airplane with her young daughters when solar storms bombarded the earth with electromagnetic pulses. Everything powered by electricity or batteries was instantly shorted out and would never work again.
Dave was suddenly alone.
He was also unsure whether his family was dead or alive. He assumed that the airplane stopped working and plunged from the sky. But it was scheduled to land in Kansas City at almost the exact time everything stopped working.
Had they landed in time? Was it possible they survived?
This is the story of a man facing Armageddon alone. It chronicles the things he does to survive in a newly vicious world.
It also includes Dave’s desperate and poignant diary entries to his wife. Just in case she did survive, and somehow makes it back to him to find he didn’t make it himself.
From the author of best sellers “Final Dawn” and “Countdown to Armageddon” comes a new tale of one man’s journey through hell… alone.
Chapter 1:
Dave couldn’t get the tune out of his head. He’d heard it all morning long, off and on, playing quietly in the back of his skull. And it was driving him crazy.
Oh, it wasn’t unpleasant. It was a happy little ditty. At least it sounded that way. It sounded more like sunshine and smiles rather than rainclouds and foreboding.
Finally, he’d had enough.
“Okay, let’s play a game,” he announced while looking in the rearview mirror at Lindsey and Beth.
“I’ll hum you a tune, and the first one to guess the tune gets a candy bar when we get to the airport.”
Sarah looked at him from the passenger seat. With that look.
“Excuse me, mister? You’re going to get the girls all hyped up on sugar just before I take them on a four hour plane ride?”
“Not both of them, honey. Just the one who guesses the name of the song.”
“Uh… no. If that song is still bugging you, just hum it. If any one of us guesses it, you can buy each of us a cinnabon.”
The girls laughed. Beth gave Lindsey a high five. Lindsey said, “All right! Go, Mom!”
Dave coughed. At first he had no words.
Then he found some, and stated the obvious.
“Why is it okay to get all three of you hyped up on sugar but not okay to do it to just one of you?”
“Because you know I have a thing for cinnabons. And I’m the mom. So that makes me the boss.”
Lindsey broke out in uncontrollable laughter from the back seat, and Beth said, “Ooooohhh, Dad, you just got owned.”
“I don’t know if it’s worth it. I mean, those things aren’t cheap, you know.”
“Oh, we know, don’t we girls?”
Two heads nodded up and down behind her.
“But, Dave, they are soooo worth the price. And I’ll give you a bite. And think how sweet I’ll taste when you kiss me goodbye.”
Beth made a gagging sound.
“Besides, if you want us to help you with that song, you have to pay the piper. It’s only fair. And if you don’t, it’ll continue to drive you crazy for days. Maybe even the whole week we’re gone. And we’d feel so bad for you if that happened.”
“Yeah, you’re just oozing with sympathy for my plight.”
Sarah smiled and blew him a kiss. She was even more gorgeous now than the day they’d met thirteen years before. It suddenly dawned on him that he was an incredibly lucky man, to have such a beautiful wife and family. And that the price of three cinnabons wasn’t that great, in the grand scheme of things.
In other words, he played right into Sarah’s hands. She knew he would, as soon as she let the kiss fly.
“Okay, here goes.”
Dave started humming the tune that had played in his mind a thousand times since the previous evening.
It took the three of them no more than ten notes. They’d have been Name That Tune champions in another era.
All three of them blurted out, almost simultaneously, “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.”
Then Dave felt incredibly stupid.
“Of course. How could I have not known that? The old Mr. Rogers theme song. Sheesh! Now I really feel dumb.”
Sarah said, “Did you know that Fred Rogers was a Green Beret in Vietnam, and wore his red sweater to hide all of his tattoos?”
Dave scoffed.
“Where did you hear that?”
“On the internet. Why?”
“That story’s been going around for years. It was debunked a long time ago. Mr. Rogers was a fine man, but he was never a Green Beret.”
“Oh, yeah? Where did you hear that?”
“On the internet.”
It was too much for Lindsey.
“Gee whiz, would you two stop believing what you read on the internet? Nearly all of it is garbage.”
She turned to her little sister.
“Do we have to teach these old people everything?”
Beth said nothing but nodded her head decisively. She was in firm agreement.
Dave was a man of his word, and after the family checked in at the ticket kiosk and Sarah and the girls got their boarding passes, they made a beeline to Cinnabon.
“Daddy, are you going to walk us to the gate?”
“No, honey, I can’t go through security without a boarding pass, so I’ll walk you as far as I can and then you can give me a great big hug and a kiss.”
“I wish you could come with us.”
“I know, sugar. I wish I could too. But with two of the guys being sick at work, they just can’t let me take vacation right now. Uncle Tommy will understand, and we can go fishing another time. And you’ll be so busy helping Aunt Karen get everything ready for the wedding, you won’t even have time to miss me.”
“Bet I will!”
Sarah looked at him longingly. They were going to be apart for their twelfth anniversary. It would be the first one they’d missed.
It was as if he could read her mind.
“We’ll do something special when you get back, I promise. We’ll get a sitter and go spend the weekend at the lake. Just the two of us.”
“I’d like that.”
He walked the three special ladies in his life to the TSA checkpoint and got his hugs and kisses.
He held Sarah close and told her he loved her.
Little Beth rolled her eyes and said, “No mush, you two.”
Dave paid her no mind. He looked Sarah in the eyes and said, “It’ll seem like forever before I see you again.”
Neither of them had a clue how true those words would be.
ALONE, Book 1:
Facing Armageddon
is available now on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble Booksellers, selected Hastings book stores, and at other fine booksellers.
Table of Contents
Final Dawn
ONE OF OUR OWN
The Story Thus Far…
ONE OF OUR OWN
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One of Our Own: Final Dawn: Book 11 Page 19
