I tried to stop myself from shaking or showing any expressions of guilt. I tried to give the impression I was nonchalant, passively aggressive and totally pissed off, like any prisoner of war would be.
Vinnie stopped in front of me and stared directly into my eyes. I glared back at him, wishing I’d shot him dead on that riverbank. Time seemed to stop still as we silently and mentally engaged.
I noticed a glimmer of recognition in his expression. Then self doubt, then a little fear. I knew his mind was whirring back to that time on the riverbank. I’d shaved my beard, cut off my hair and my face was battered, swollen and bruised.
Would that be enough to disguise myself as the killer on the riverbank that day? Was his memory of events clear enough? Did he realize the killing was only an accident?
Vinnie had the power of my life or death through a nod or shake of his head.
CHAPTER SEVENTY
Vinnie continued to stare at me. I felt my resolve start to waver. How long could I keep up this pretentious, unwavering expression on my face before a giveaway flicker of guilt flashed over my face? Not long, I estimated. God only knew how the high roller poker players managed to keep up their deadpan expressions. I was no card player but I knew I was playing for the highest stakes of all. My life and possibly the lives of all the others around me. I’d have to try and do my best to keep up the pretence.
I saw doubt in Vinnie’s eyes and my stomach jolted. He shook his head and moved on down the line to stare at Dante. I stopped myself from breathing a massive sigh of relief, which would have been a sure fire sign of guilt. I didn’t know if he slightly thought it was me or he had major reservations. Either way, I was temporarily off the hook.
Vinnie looked over a still sobbing Dante and almost immediately shook his head. He turned to Moses, shaking his head vigorously.
“It wasn’t any of these people,” Vinnie said. His voice was high pitched and etched with emotion. He retreated amongst the front row of the crowd, mingling in with the islanders with an expression of misery on his face.
Maybe he’d thought he was going to come face to face with his cousin’s killer. Perhaps he recognized me and couldn’t go through with the ordeal of watching us die. Maybe the whole situation weighed heavily on his mind. Or possibly, deep down he knew this whole, brutal situation had been kicked started by a total accident. Perhaps he knew I didn’t mean to kill his cousin on that riverbank.
I’d probably never know.
“None of our guys from the ship has been over that way,” Smith said. “I know where that riverbank is and know for a fact that none of our guys would go there alone. We moved along the river one day and saw it was full of dead bodies, which would poison the water. We were only worried about the zombies and the militia. We hadn’t even brought you guys into the equation as a threat. Go get your guys to check out the tennis club. Your answer to your problem lies right there. I’m telling you, man.” He was almost pleading our case of innocence and I had to admit, was doing a damn fine job, even if what he was spouting was total bullshit.
Moses simply nodded. He stared at us all for a few seconds. I figured he was weighing up what to do with us.
“All right, we’ll get to the bottom of this situation, one way or another,” Moses said. He turned to his henchmen beside him. “Go check out this damn tennis club. See if this monster man actually exists, will you, Roddy?”
The guy in the blue baseball cap, holding the video camera pulled a disappointed expression and snapped the viewing lens closed. He’d obviously wanted to record some torture and death. The guy shoved the camera into his bag, nodded and gestured to a few of his cohorts in the crowd. Around a dozen fully armed gunmen moved out towards the line of vehicles. They climbed into two separate trucks and took off at speed out of the forest.
Moses looked us over. The heat from the fire behind us died down a little but an islander scuttled out from the crowd and tossed another couple of chunky logs onto the flames.
“Okay, people, go back to your business,” Moses commanded, raising his hand.
The crowd groaned and dispersed, slowly trudging back between and inside their respective log cabins.
Around ten gunmen remained, standing guard in front of us and flanking their leader, Moses.
“What to do with you guys now,” Moses rumbled. “You are the enemy but you still may be innocent. We could just kill you all now in revenge for blowing up and killing a whole load of our people. That act would be totally justified in my eyes.”
I wondered why Moses hadn’t killed us. Maybe it was because he wanted to find out the whole truth about his nephew’s death. He was hearing a convoluted turn of events but it suited us to keep him interested. My only worry was the guys heading out to the tennis club would find Ralph Pinchbeck still alive, minus an eye and an ear but he wouldn’t match the description Smith had given Moses.
I figured Smith was banking on the possibility that Ralph would be so chewed up by the undead now to the point of an unrecognizable hunk of meat. The island guys would be so horrified by the grisly exhibits of the dead kids they found there to really give a crap whether it was Ralph Pinchbeck who’d killed Lucas on the riverbank or not.
Either way, if Ralph was dead or alive, it still wouldn’t guarantee our survival. That was down to Samuel B. Moses.
“But I’m not going to kill you right now,” Moses continued. “I’m going to show you people some rural island hospitality.”
I dreaded to think what that meant.
The henchmen sniggered between themselves. I doubted if we were going to be shown to a five star hotel and offered frozen cocktails.
The gunmen moved forward towards us. One guy holding a machete pointed the way with the blood stained blade to a pathway between the log cabins. The gunmen surrounded us and shoved us in the direction the guy with the machete was heading. We trudged between the log cabins, receiving malicious glares from the people milling about outside the front yards of their dwellings. A bunch of tethered goats bleated at us as we walked between two smaller log cabins. The air was a damn sight cooler than it had been beside the fire but my sweaty shirt stuck uncomfortably to my back. I glanced around and noticed Samuel B. Moses was conspicuous by his absence. I didn’t see him drift away from our sad little procession but it could only be a good thing if he wasn’t around.
Machete Man led us right through the rows of log cabins to the rear of the camp in the forest. Some island kids had decided to throw clots of mud and animal dung at us as we bypassed the front of their properties. A big, blob of foul smelling manure splattered against the back of my neck, much to the amusement of the kids who’d launched it and the gunmen surrounding us.
We were brutally ushered towards as what I could only describe as some kind of animal enclosure. A low standing fence made from chopped logs and weaved leaves ran around the enclosure perimeter. Machete Man pulled open a gate at the front of the fence and waved his blade at the open space, gesturing for us to enter the enclosure. We had no option but to do as we were ordered and hesitantly trod into the compound. The ground was covered with clumps of foul smelling excrement from some sort of small animal. A pungent stench of ammonia hung in the air and Machete Man pointed the way to a dilapidated wooden shack, leaning at an angle in the center of the compound.
We trudged across the enclosure, treading through shit with every step. Machete Man unbolted the shack door and waved us into the dark recess beyond. The ammonia stench grew stronger, wafting from the open doorway.
“You share with the chickens,” Machete Man barked, then broke out into snorting laughter. “Maybe they smell better than you.”
Dante was the first to enter the shack, hurrying through the open doorway and probably glad of the darkness and a place to escape the tension. We crowded into the foul smelling coop after Dante and Machete Man shut and bolted the door from the outside.
A few chickens squawked their disapproval at us as we hunkered down amongst the hay and a scattering
of feathers covering the ground. The shack’s roof was low and Smith and McElroy couldn’t even stand to their full height inside the cramped space. More chickens eyed us with suspicion as they sat on a waist high shelf, running the length of the rear wall.
“Do not try and escape from here,” Machete man called from outside. “There are armed guards patrolling around the chicken coop the whole time and they will shoot you if you try and run. Be still and chill.”
The light was limited to the sun shining between the wooden slats but was enough to see adequately. A shadow brushed across the light and we heard Machete Man trudging off, wading his way through the chicken shit and then the creaking sound as he closed the enclosure gate.
I breathed out long and hard. It felt good to get a moment of respite from all the anxiety, even though we were imprisoned in a stinking old chicken shed. I glanced around to see how the others were bearing up under the strain.
Dante slumped in the dark corner, holding his face in his hands. Smith and McElroy sat side by side, leaning back against the wall, with their heads barely an inch below the shelf containing the staring birds. Wingate sat between us with the crazy look of a demon in her eyes.
“What the hell is going on?” Wingate hissed, glaring at Smith and I in turn. “You two know something and I can tell when you’re bullshitting. So you two need to put us in the picture as to what is going on, right now.”
Smith sighed. “It’s probably best you don’t know at the moment, Sarah. What you don’t know can’t come back to bite you in the ass.”
“Try me,” she snapped.
Smith leaned forward slightly. “Honestly, it’s best you don’t know. We’ll tell you if and when we get out of this shitty mess. And I mean it’s real shitty, not just in here.”
Wingate growled in frustration and hurled a handful of hay at Smith.
It wasn’t his fault, it was mine. I thought Smith had done a fine job in keeping us alive. So far.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
“So, what do we do now?” McElroy asked. His voice sounded hoarse and weary. “Are we going to just hang around in this shitty shack and wait to die?”
Smith shrugged. “We wait. We wait for those guys to come back from the tennis club and corroborate our story.”
“You sure Ralph Pinchbeck will be dead?” I asked.
“Who the fuck is this Ralph Pinchbeck guy?” Wingate growled. “And what was that bullshit story all about by the campfire, Smith?”
“Some of it…no, most of that story was true, Sarah,” I said.
“As I said, we’ll tell you everything when the time is right, babe,” Smith muttered. “I don’t want to put you in further danger by telling you anything right now.”
“I hope it was worth it,” Wingate spat. “And when were you going to tell me about those two island tramps that you and Brett picked up along the way, huh?”
Smith groaned. “Sarah, you’re going totally off the scale here.”
“Take a look around you, Smith,” Wingate seethed. “Take a good fucking look. This is what it has come down to.”
I felt I had to intervene. I didn’t sympathize with Smith very often but the poor guy was taking a battering for something that wasn’t his fault. “It was my doing, Sarah,” I said firmly. “Smith had nothing to do with it. It was something I did alone. Smith is just trying to get us out of this situation alive.”
Wingate glared at me in an angry silence for a few seconds.
“You killed that boy Moses was talking about, didn’t you, Brett?” she finally asked, in a disbelieving, hushed tone.
I huffed and dropped my gaze to the straw on the ground. There was no point in lying now.
“It was an accident,” I said. “A stupid accident. The gun went off, the kid’s gun, I mean and hit him in the neck. The other kid, the one who came out and looked us over, he ran into the woods and he must have told everybody here I killed that other kid on purpose.” I felt tears well in my eyes and glanced up at Wingate. “I didn’t mean to kill him, Sarah, I swear to God I didn’t. Now all this has started because of what happened.”
Wingate sighed. “Why didn’t you say sooner, Brett? We could have figured something out.”
“I don’t know,” I groaned. “Everything all just happened too quickly.”
“It was damn lucky that kid didn’t identify you, Wilde Man,” McElroy said. “The fact is you’ve started a big dust up, so you have. A lot of people have died over this. Dunne, Duffy, McDonnell, Hannigen, all killed because you decided to keep your mouth shut and not say anything to anyone. Well done, you.” He scowled at me and spat in the straw between his feet.
McElroy’s words stabbed at me like a hundred knives. “Shit, Mac…I never meant for any of this…” I stammered.
“This situation could have been so easily avoided,” McElroy growled. He seemed to be growing increasingly angrier by the second.
“Okay, Mac, knock it off,” Smith interjected. “What’s done is done. We have to keep calm and play the game.”
“What fucking game?” McElroy roared. “Is that all this is to you, Smith? A damn game? People’s lives are at stake here. Do you really think Moses is just going to let us walk out of here, even they do find this Pinchbelly fellow or whatever his name is?”
Only clucking birds broke the silence in the coop for the next few seconds. Nobody spoke.
McElroy shook his head. “The answer to my rhetorical question is a resounding ‘no.’ Moses will have some other hellish fate in store for us and everybody else on that warship still stuck out there at sea. You better come up with an improvement on the plan you have in place, Smith because what you are doing now ‘aint going to benefit any of us, I’m telling you now. You dance with the devil, you have to be a few steps ahead.”
Smith turned away from McElroy and stared into space. I felt rotten and wished I’d owned up to the fatal accident when we were standing around the campfire. McElroy was right. Keeping silent about the whole situation was only prolonging the inevitable. Moses wasn’t going to simply let us go about our business, even if he bought our bullshit story. I knew Smith knew it too.
We sat in silence for a while, contemplating and processing the reality of our plight. Smith sighed and flapped his hands in the air.
“So, what do you figure our next move should be, Mac?”
McElroy raised an eyebrow. “You really don’t want to know what I think.”
“No, Mac, I do,” Smith sighed. “You’re probably on the button with what Moses is trying to do. He’s just letting us stew in here for a while until he figures out what to do with us.”
“Well, I figure the first thing we need to do is get the fuck out of this damn shack,” McElroy said. “We need to get hold of those SMAW rocket launchers and some small arms weapons. The only way we’re going to solve this problem is to wipe out Moses and the core of his crew.”
“Wow!” Smith gasped. “That’s some kind of James Bond type mission, pal.”
“It’s the only way we’re going to put an end to all this,” McElroy said, leaning his head back against the chicken coop wall. “You asked me and I gave you my honest answer.”
Smith and I exchanged an anxious glance. The worrying thing was McElroy was right, again. But his plan seemed too bigger task to successfully pull off.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
“How long do you reckon before those guys who headed out to the tennis club will be back here?” Wingate asked.
Smith shrugged. “Could be a long while. I don’t even know where we are in comparison.”
I wanted to have an input but I felt so low I was unable to speak or think of anything that might help our predicament. I always had a habit of making things worse anyhow. It was probably better I just stayed quiet for a while.
That scenario at the riverbank kept on replaying over and over again in my head. I wished it would stop but no matter how hard I tried to think of something else, that dead boy, Lucas kept looming up through my thou
ghts and the whole tragic saga would play out again.
The running and fighting had kept my mind occupied and helped the bad thoughts stay adrift from my brain. Now they were back with a vengeance, catching up for lost time and making me suffer with every second that ticked by. Hannigen, Duffy, Dunne and McDonnell were all blown out of the water and now in pieces, feeding the fish in the Caribbean Sea. That was another tragedy I could take the blame for.
The chicken coop felt claustrophobic and cramped and seemed to become increasingly hotter and smellier. I felt I had to get out of the place and do my best to try and put right all the wrongs I’d done recently. But how the hell was I going to do that? What could I possibly do to make things better? I needed a plan. I needed some inspiration from somewhere. I needed to be the one to take us out of the chicken coop and stop the rot.
I stopped myself from dreaming and forming delusions of grandeur. Who was I kidding? I couldn’t fight my way out of a wet grocery bag without a gun or Smith to back me up. What a waste of space I was. I gritted my teeth and pushed the rerun of the riverbank scene out of my mind. Come on, man, think, you bastard!
I gazed around the stinking shack. McElroy had a dazed expression on his face and he was talking to Smith and Wingate, who both looked totally done. Dante sat slumped in the corner with such a miserable expression, as though he was a boy who got no presents for Christmas.
McElroy was making no sense in what he was saying. Perhaps he was concussed or something. His voice seemed slurred and his head was blurred. How is his head blurred? I shook my head. My mind took a summersault. Oh, no! Was I having one of my psychotic reactions? Maybe I was going to spontaneously combust. But at least if I burst into flames the others could escape the chicken coop while the guards outside tried to put out the flames.
I breathed heavily and wiped sweat from my forehead before shrugging off my combat jacket. Think rationally man! No, I realized I wasn’t going to suddenly erupt into a fireball but the thought did give me an idea.
The Left Series (Book 7): Left Amongst The Corpses Page 29
