Afraid

by Jack Kilborn

  Jesus, is it still in the air?

  He stood up, and a wave of dizziness hit him. Josh rushed to the door, kicked something metal. He tracked it down and saw it was a black canister with HCN written on the side.

  Hydrogen cyanide.

  Josh blinked. The dizziness led to a headache. He tried to remember the EMT class he took last year, the class on poisons. Cyanide was supposed to have an almond odor. Josh took a shallow sniff but smelled only death. Then he recalled that forty percent of people couldn’t detect cyanide by scent. He touched the back of his hand to his forehead and had no idea if he was running a temperature or not.

  Continuing on to the exit, Josh felt his chest get tight. He was sure of it now; he had cyanide poisoning. It was in his blood, coursing through his circulatory system. Cyanide inhibited an enzyme that allowed cells to produce energy. His tissue would die, and rapidly.

  Josh tripped over a body, landed alongside some poor guy whose face indicated he died screaming—a glimpse at Josh’s immediate future. He got up and scrambled for the door, wracking his brain for the treatment used in cyanide poisoning. Diazepam and activated charcoal? No, that was strychnine. Naloxone? That was for opioids.

  Amyl nitrite. It induced the formation of methemoglobin, which combined with cyanide and made it nontoxic.

  There was amyl nitrite in the Charge capsules.

  Josh picked himself up and climbed over several corpses to get to the door. Woof tried to jump up and lick him, but Josh kept him back, worried he’d transfer the poison. He rummaged through the pillowcase, found the case of Charge, and put one beneath his nostrils.

  Ready or not …

  The capsule broke between Josh’s fingers and he snorted hard. His sinuses flooded with a hot chemical odor not unlike kerosene, and Josh’s face flushed and his eyes stung and his tongue tasted metal. This was accompanied by a massive head rush that felt like his brain liquefied and sloshed out of his ears.

  He held the fumes in his lungs, letting them get absorbed. At the same time, euphoria wrapped its friendly arms around Josh and gave him a big hug. Josh took another sniff, closed his eyes, and allowed a billion thoughts to enter his brain at once, swirling in from all directions. Euphoria mixing with sadness mixing with memories mixing with fantasies. Then the swirl coalesced, forming a ball, and the ball became a face.

  Annie.

  “I’m so sorry,” Josh said. Or maybe he only thought he said it.

  “It’s not your fault,” Annie said. “You can’t save everyone.”

  Then Annie’s face changed, and she became Fran.

  The image was solid, real, pure. Josh knew he’d been born to rescue people. He hadn’t been able to rescue Annie. But he still had a chance with Fran and Duncan.

  Josh shook his head, clearing it a little. He needed to find Adam’s truck, that yellow Bronco. He took one more sniff of the Charge, picked up the pillowcase, and ran into the parking lot, Woof two steps behind him.

  • • •

  Streng made it up the ramp to the surface, but it had hurt. The steep climb winded him and his shin splints were on fire and his injured kidney felt like someone stood beside him, twisting a knife. He turned the deer hoof, closing the hatch, and then waited for his energy to return.

  After a minute of waiting Streng realized his energy wasn’t going to return. So he pressed onward.

  The Magnum round from his Colt Python hadn’t penetrated Bernie’s body armor, but it had done some major blunt-force trauma. Still, Streng decided to aim for the head, and only when he had a clear shot. He wasn’t the best marksman, but the Colt had a six-inch barrel, and Streng was accurate to about forty feet.

  Now he just had to find one of the bastards. Preferably before they found him.

  Streng yawned—which must have been an indicator of how exhausted he was, because he certainly wasn’t bored. He decided to head for the vehicles, hoping Fran and Duncan hadn’t been moved. Painful as it was, Streng moved in a crouch, alternating between eyeing the ground for Wiley’s traps and checking all directions for movement. What he lacked in speed he made up for by being careful, avoiding two bear traps and a covered pit that he guessed housed punji sticks or some other painful deterrent. He wondered if Wiley had ever accidentally killed some wayward hunter or hiker with his paranoia and didn’t put it past him.

  Lights, up ahead. The Roadmaster’s headlights. Streng could make out Duncan sitting on the hood, Fran standing next to him. Streng slowed down even further, pausing after every step, listening to the woods around him. When he got within fifty yards, he saw a thin guy in army fatigues, a grenade launcher hanging at his side. It was someone he hadn’t encountered before, and he seemed to be guarding Fran and Duncan.

  The guy paced back and forth, not moving or acting like a soldier at all, occasionally looking at the green screen of his communicator.

  The communicator.

  Streng yanked Bernie’s communicator out of his pocket and shielded the screen with his palm. He quickly read through several updates on the search for Wiley’s home. They hadn’t found it yet.

  Streng had learned the term disinformation in the army. Infantry regularly used locals to broadcast false information on enemy radio frequencies. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to use an oldie but a goodie.

  “Target acquired,” Streng whispered into the communicator. “Immediate assistance needed. One click directly north of the vehicles.”

  That would send them a kilometer in the opposite direction of Wiley’s hidey-hole.

  A message scrolled across the screen.

  We heard you were dead.

  Streng hit the button again.

  “Did the bitch tell you that?” He forced himself to giggle like Bernie. “She’ll burn for it.”

  He waited. No more messages appeared.

  Looking back to the vehicles, the thin guy in the fatigues continued to pace. He didn’t even stop to check his surroundings. Streng still took his time, watching his footing, keeping behind cover. He crossed the last few yards on all fours and finally dropped to his belly when he got within the thirty-foot kill zone.

  Streng extended his arms out in front of him, propping the butt of his gun on the ground, steadying his wrist by holding it with his left hand. The grenade launcher bothered him. If the guy wore body armor—it was hard to tell from this distance, but Streng assumed he did—then a hit anywhere other than the head meant he’d be capable of returning fire. Streng didn’t know what kind of rounds were in the launcher, but he’d seen the M79 in action during the war. It could kill by coming within a few yards of the target. Streng didn’t want that thing to go off anywhere near him or the people he was trying to rescue.

  Streng watched. The guy paced to the left. Stopped. Turned. Paced to the right. Stopped. Turned. Repeated the process. The sheriff focused on the spot where he turned, cocked the Colt, and waited. When the man once again appeared in his sights, Streng fired at his face.

  If the man hadn’t been wearing a helmet Streng would have killed him. But his shot was a few inches too high, and it pinged off the guy’s headgear. Streng fired three more shots as quickly as he could squeeze the trigger, but the Colt had a kick and the guy was sprinting into the woods, so none of them hit. Streng got to his feet and jogged up to Fran and Duncan, who had ducked down behind the Roadmaster.

  “Are there keys?” he yelled before getting there. Fran must have recognized his voice, because she opened the driver’s door and checked.

  “No!” she called back.

  “Look in the truck!”

  Streng slowed down, chest burning, knees weak, his side ready to burst. Duncan watched him approach, his eyes wide as dinner plates.

  “You okay, son?” Streng wheezed.

  Duncan nodded.

  “No keys in the truck!” Fran yelled.

  “Then we have to move. Follow me.”

  Duncan held out his hand and Streng took it, half running/half hobbling back to the tree line, heading for Wiley
’s place. Fran met them and took Duncan’s other hand, and they awkwardly maneuvered through the forest, Streng slowing them down so he could look for traps.

  “Freeze!”

  To the right, next to a big tree. The guy in the fatigues, pointing the grenade launcher at them.

  Streng stopped. So did Fran and Duncan.

  “Drop the gun,” the guy said.

  It took Streng a nanosecond to make his decision.

  “Run!” he yelled at Fran, pushing her and the child out of the way. Then he dropped to one knee and fired his two remaining rounds.

  The guy fired the grenade launcher at the same time.

  The sheriff saw a flash, then felt a punch in the chest at the same time he heard the BOOM. He doubled over, clutching his gut, and before Streng had a chance to wonder how he could still be alive his eyes began to burn.

  Sponge grenade, Streng thought. Soaked in pepper spray.

  He didn’t breathe in—which wasn’t too hard, because the wind had been knocked out of him—and clenched his eyelids closed while he crawled out of the smoke cloud. The vapors managed to get up his nose anyway, making him choke and then vomit. But he didn’t stop crawling. Blind and oxygen-starved, he moved as fast and as hard as someone half his age.

  Streng wasn’t sure how far he’d gotten—perhaps five or ten yards away. He chanced taking a breath. It was like inhaling hellfire. Streng spat up again, his nose running like a faucet, the capsicum making his tongue swell up and restrict his airway.

  Keep calm, he told himself. It’s only pain. It will pass.

  That’s what he’d told the half-dozen suspects he’d maced in the line of duty, watching as they spat and swore, silently wondering how they could be such babies.

  He mentally apologized to all of them. This was awful.

  A few more yards, and he breathed again. He was still sucking in fire and brimstone, but it wasn’t as bad.

  It will pass. It will pass.

  He felt the communicator vibrate in his pocket. They were coming. And they knew where he was. Streng clung to a nearby tree, used it to pull himself up, and realized he no longer held the Colt. No matter. He couldn’t hold off four Special Ops soldiers plus the grenade-launcher guy with just one handgun. His only hope was to make it to Wiley’s.

  He tried to look around, but his eyes had swollen to slits and his vision was out of focus. Streng considered calling to Fran but didn’t want her to reveal her position to the enemy. He would have to go it alone.

  The sheriff picked the most likely direction to run, then took off at a jog, hands out in front of him so he didn’t run into any trees.

  He got four steps before hearing the SNAP!

  At first he thought he’d simply caught his leg on something. Then the sickening realization hit him a second before the pain.

  A bear trap.

  Streng fell to his knee, hands seeking the trap, finding the terrible jaws slicing through the muscles of his calf, anchoring into bone.

  Then came agony.

  Streng buried his face in the crook of his arm, muffling his scream. This was worse than the pepper spray. Worse than the kidney mauling. His whole body quaked in anguish, and if he still had his Colt he would have put it in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

  He stuck his fingers in the teeth, tried to pull it apart. It gave—an inch, two, three—and then snapped closed again, prompting another horrific scream.

  Streng’s mind, insane with pain, struggled to form a lucid thought. He needed something to pry the trap open. Maybe a branch. His hands scoured the ground around him, finding nothing.

  The Ka-Bar knife? Streng groped for the fanny pack, finding the Warthog, wedging it into the mechanism and trying to force it open.

  No good. The handle was too short. No leverage.

  Goddamn you, Wiley.

  Streng hated his brother then, hated him more than anyone he’d ever known. He was the cause of this entire mess. And now Streng would be captured, and the pain would get even worse. They’d make him talk. Streng was tough, but Santiago would only have to gently nudge the trap with his foot and Streng would be aching to tell him where Wiley lived. Wiley would die. Fran and Duncan would die. And he would die.

  Better if it were only him.

  Streng sobbed, coughed, spat, and then raised the knife to his own throat, wishing it was Wiley’s. A bear trap. That son of a bitch. How could he? Especially knowing what their father went through, his leg trapped under that tree …

  The sheriff paused. Maybe he didn’t have to die. Maybe he still could get away.

  He tugged off his belt and cinched it under his knee.

  Don’t think about it, Streng told himself. Dad did it. You can do it, too. And if you do, the pain will stop. You’re an old fart, anyway. Three weeks away from retirement. What do you need two legs for?

  Streng brought the knife down. And he began.

  The jaws of the trap had already done most of the work. Streng stuck the blade in where the teeth were already embedded, following an imaginary line around the circumference of the calf.

  Almost like carving the meat off a ham hock, Streng thought.

  The pain was still there, but he felt a curious detachment from what was happening. Detachment. Streng laughed at the double meaning of the word, but it wasn’t a laugh at all, it was a tortured sob, but he had to keep quiet, keep so quiet so they didn’t find him, and then the knife was through the flesh and the muscle and the tissue and he pulled and then screamed again because the leg was still caught.

  The bone.

  He recalled Dad’s story, how he used a rock to break his leg bone.

  Streng didn’t have a rock. But the Ka-Bar Warthog was a heavy blade, razor sharp.

  He began to chop.

  The belt tourniquet wasn’t helping much. Streng’s fingers were slick with blood, and he’d become so dizzy it was a struggle to stay awake. He alternated knife blows with manually checking to see if the bone had been severed yet; the pain had become so all encompassing he couldn’t tell without touching.

  Hack.

  Feel.

  Hack.

  Feel.

  Hack.

  Feel.

  Cut! The bone was cut!

  Streng let out a strangled grunt of triumph, put his hands behind him, and tried to pull his leg away again—

  —and screamed.

  He was still caught.

  He palpated the area with muddy fingers. The bone was severed. The flesh was severed. Why was he still—

  Son of a gun, Streng thought. Another bone.

  In all of Dad’s stories, he’d never mentioned that a leg had two bones in it.

  Streng sought out his fanny pack, located the box of Magnum rounds. He broke it open, selected one, and wedged it in the hinge of his mouth, between two molars.

  Bite the bullet, old man.

  Moaning deep in his throat, Streng raised the Ka-Bar and hacked as fast as he could, not stopping to feel, not wanting to drag it out any longer.

  He knew he had to keep quiet, but he couldn’t anymore. The scream came from deep within and went on and on like a foghorn. Streng hacked and hacked and screamed and hacked.

  On the eighth hack his leg came free.

  Streng didn’t pause to celebrate. He dropped the knife, grabbed two handfuls of dirt, and began to drag himself away from the trap. The pain had reached a point where it seemed like it wasn’t even happening to him anymore. It had become another entity, a doppelgänger of himself, a creature of pure suffering. He crawled alongside his pain, down on his belly, pushing himself forward with his remaining leg, determined to get away.

  Noise, to his right. Streng squinted.

  Ajax.

  Streng considered his next move, and realized he only had one—release the belt on his leg and bleed to death.

  He reached down, seeking the buckle.

  “Aren’t you a big one?”

  The voice came from the left. Streng stared, saw Wiley in his ghil
lie suit, holding a shotgun.

  “Body armor,” Streng managed to say.

  Wiley aimed at Ajax and squeezed the trigger.

  Streng knew he was hallucinating, because it looked and sounded like Wiley fired eight shots within two seconds.

  Ajax crumpled like a demoed building, spraying arterial blood so far that some of it hit Streng in the face.

  “Body armor my ass,” Wiley said. He reached down and Streng felt himself being dragged.

  Abruptly—and absurdly, considering the circumstance—everything became clear to Streng. He had always looked up to Wiley. Put his older brother on a pedestal. Through the haze of pain, Streng realized that he wasted thirty years trying to analyze why Wiley didn’t measure up to his standards, when he should have simply accepted him. Family shouldn’t judge. Family should forgive.

  “I’m sorry,” Streng mumbled, hoping his brother heard him.

  The sheriff was sure he heard Wiley say, “I’m sorry, too, Ace,” right before the pain reached a crescendo and he passed out.

  Fran huddled close to Duncan and waited in the strange purple room for her father to come back.

  My father. Fran still couldn’t get her mind around that.

  Two minutes earlier she and Duncan had been running through the woods and were stopped by what appeared to be a swamp monster, vines and sticks hanging from its body.

  “I’m Warren,” it said. “Follow me.”

  Fran followed. She’d just seen the sheriff get shot, and much as she mistrusted the man in front of her, she had to protect Duncan. Warren Streng led them to a dead deer, pressed some sort of button, and the ground opened up.

  “Slide down. I’ll be right back.”

  Fran clutched her son and they went down the ramp on their butts, Fran using the rubber grips on the bottom of her sandals to slow their descent. When they reached bottom they were in a room illuminated by black lights. The decals on her sweatshirt and Duncan’s white shoelaces and socks glowed purple.

  Above them the hatch closed. Fran startled at the sound. They’d escaped the Red-ops, yet again, but she still felt a long way from safe.

  “Is Sheriff Streng okay?” Duncan asked.