The Ruins

by Matt Rogers

  When the drugs wore off and he found himself still bound and gagged and stuffed in the claustrophobic trunk of an off-road vehicle, he’d panicked.

  He never wanted to go back to how those hours felt.

  He knew Samantha felt the same.

  And Noah…

  Christ.

  She doesn’t know.

  She seemed to sense a look on his face. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Have you seen Noah at all?’

  ‘Not since we were taken.’

  ‘I’ve seen him.’

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘He chops and changes.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Samantha, I think he’s lost his mind.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’ve seen him twice. The first time was four days ago. He was sitting around the fire when they brought me out to feed me. He wasn’t tied up, but they had a gun to his head. But he looked calm. Way too calm for what was happening to him. I thought they were about to execute him, so I looked away. He looked up and smiled at me, and I thought he was the toughest son-of-a-bitch I’d ever met in my life. He was handling the situation with total calm.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But then I realised he’d just lost his mind. I saw him again two days ago. They brought me out for food and water, and then they bundled me over to one of the other huts. Like they wanted to show me something. They opened the door and he was there, twitching and writhing on the ground. Sam, he was frothing at the mouth. His eyes were bulging out of his head. I swear. It was fucking crazy. And then I knew he’d done permanent damage during the bad trip. He’d gone from staring death in the eyes with total calmness to basically having a seizure. We’ve lost him, Sam. He’s fucking gone. You should give up on him now.’

  He saw the crushing pressure of his words in her eyes, and on her face, and in the corners of her mouth. All subtle signs that she tried her best to mask, but it was a small hut, and despite the lack of visibility he could see it clear as day.

  She wanted him to be lying more than anything.

  But she could tell he wasn’t.

  Tears welled in her eyes.

  But she didn’t sob.

  She didn’t dare make a sound.

  After a long pause, she whispered, ‘I’m surprised that didn’t happen to either of us.’

  ‘Same here,’ Ethan whispered. ‘We were beaten and kidnapped by terrorists at the peak of an acid trip. That’s enough to fuck anyone up for life.’

  ‘We’re not going to make it out of here, are we?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Who would help?’

  Ethan used what little cohesion he had left to reminisce on the first half of the global studies degree he’d completed at college. He thought about the geopolitical consequences and said, ‘Nobody. We’re not worth starting a war over.’

  She sobbed.

  He hissed a shush.

  She ignored it.

  He whispered, ‘Samantha! Shut up.’

  She said, ‘What’s the fucking point? We’re going to die either way. Might as well make them angry so they do it quick.’

  ‘They won’t do it quick. No matter what.’

  Impeccable choice of words, Ethan, you dumb fuck.

  She started to cry harder.

  And then, somehow, she pulled it together. She stopped sniffling and sat up straighter, and Ethan looked at her as if there was a clone in her place.

  He thought she’d succumbed entirely to the hysteria, which was understandable, because he’d been seconds away from doing the same.

  But then she’d pulled herself back from the brink, and probably saved both of them from losing it.

  She said, ‘They’re probably going to do it soon, aren’t they?’

  ‘I don’t know why they’re holding us,’ Ethan said. ‘But what’s the point in giving up?’

  Then the door flew open in their faces, and crisp daylight flooded the hut, and a silhouette loomed tall in the doorway.

  For a moment, Ethan thought, We’re saved.

  But then his eyes adjusted to the light, and he saw it was one of the larger dark-skinned Asian men towering over them.

  He was looking at Samantha.

  And he was visibly salivating.

  He didn’t even seem to notice that they weren’t wearing their gags, and that one of her hands was free.

  He was just staring at her with rabid intensity.

  Ethan felt his stomach fall to the floor. He’d just been pondering why Samantha hadn’t been raped yet. It seemed they’d been waiting for some approval to be given — whether that be from higher-ups or someone within the camp itself.

  But now, the request had been approved.

  There were no further roadblocks.

  Which meant whatever was going to happen to them would happen today, after what would no doubt be a long and uninterrupted string of rapes.

  Ethan moaned in despair.

  The terrorist turned to him and smiled through yellow teeth.

  He said something low and harsh in Uyghur.

  Then a shout rose up from the other side of the hut. Ethan heard it through the walls, and so did Samantha.

  So did the intruder.

  His ears perked up, and he narrowed his eyes and grunted in disapproval.

  He muttered something else, which was probably the equivalent of, Be right back.

  And then he disappeared.

  Leaving the door wide open.

  Samantha let out a low, guttural sound. Ethan knew what it was. Pure terror.

  They were now caught in a ticking time bomb.

  From which there was no escape.

  21

  The ETIM soldier — Ismail — had been seconds away from raping the American bitch when the call rose throughout the camp.

  ‘Contact!’

  He growled and stamped over to the closest group, a collection of four fellow soldiers chowing down on some freshly-cooked meat. They looked just as frustrated as he was — they’d just received word that they were to move forward with the torture and execution of the American pigs today. That meant they were free for the taking, and he’d been determined to be the first to claim the girl. He wanted to caress her softly, slowly, and then punish her hard and fast before the others had a chance to get their hands on her. He wanted that beautiful unblemished skin all to himself.

  And now the alert had gone up.

  Contact.

  Someone was approaching the camp, and they weren’t sure who it was.

  So everyone needed to be on guard.

  It was always nothing. Either a brazen tourist trundling past, in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or a small group of Chinese law enforcement, which required some semblance of a fight. Either way they came away with prisoners, and that was always enjoyable. There was no-one out here to hear them scream. Ismail could do whatever the fuck he wanted to them.

  So it was with excitement that he snatched up an old Type 95 automatic rifle he’d lifted off the mutilated body of a secret policeman two years ago. He jogged to the mouth of the camp and pulled up in front of a couple of ETIM soldiers in the know.

  ‘What is it?’ he said in Uyghur.

  ‘Look,’ one of them growled, pointing to the trail that climbed out of the valley. ‘It’s Mehmut. But they’re all wearing different clothes.’

  Sure enough, there were five people in the open-topped jeeps. Ismail figured he had some of the best eyes in the camp, so he squinted hard in an attempt to make out the identity of the occupants. The jeep bounced over potholes as it descended the trail.

  He saw black clothes and black caps, and he knew he’d seen enough.

  ‘Pigs!’ he shouted. ‘Secret police. They killed Mehmut and his men. They’re driving his car.’

  ‘Shoot them!’ the other man growled.

  Eight men opened fire on the jeep as it rattled down the last stretch of trail and came to a natural halt as the valley bottomed out.
There was no-one left alive to accelerate up the subsequent rise. The hailstorm of bullets tore the occupants to shreds — all five of them. The chassis of the vehicle was bulletproof — it was a DIY job, done right here in the warehouse — but the windshield wasn’t. It was plain ordinary glass, and it disintegrated the moment they shot it.

  Then the lead pulped the five men within.

  A couple of their heads snapped back, caught by well-placed shots.

  And then it was all over.

  Ismail approached the wreckage, high on murder, and leered with glee as he surveyed the five dead men within.

  He turned back to the procession that had gathered out the front of the camp and said, ‘They think they can come here? Right when I am about to have the American bitch? Not a chance.’

  A couple of his brothers in arms laughed.

  Others didn’t — they were frustrated they wouldn’t get the first turn.

  Ismail slapped one of the bloody passengers’ corpses in the face to hammer his point home.

  Then he turned and marched right back to the hut.

  ‘Push the truck over to the warehouse,’ he told two of his underlings. ‘We can fix it up good as new with the right tools.’

  22

  Three lowly members of the ETIM camp were tasked with pushing the truck to the main warehouse.

  There it could be cleaned and disinfected and tinkered with, and if any bullets had plowed through to the engine block, it could be repaired. The three men assigned to wheel it over were frustrated — they were new to the camp, and they’d been treated as slaves ever since they arrived. And the jeep was a mess, covered with the blood of five men. It was impossible to do the task without getting dirty.

  So they got their hands bloody as they rolled the jeep through the camp, passing a collection of huts before they reached the main warehouse. They wheeled it through a set of double doors and left it on the concrete floor that had been poured when the camp was first constructed.

  None of them bothered to do anything more than what they’d been asked to do.

  Except the smallest guy.

  He was the most accommodating of the trio, and it seemed he was still in the mood to impress his superiors. He figured he’d give the vehicle the once-over, to make sure there were no surprises waiting for the cleaning crew.

  Which would probably be the three of them.

  They knew better than to think the most disgusting jobs would be handed to anyone else.

  So it was with a certain apprehension that he approached the jeep from behind and popped the trunk.

  He was dreading having to mop up all the blood.

  He lifted the lid, flashed a glance inside the dark space, and turned away.

  Then he did a double-take, and looked again.

  Will Slater shot him in the face.

  Slater pumped the trigger of the carbine and came up out of the trunk with as much speed as he could muster. Athleticism lent a helping hand, and he was on his feet on the concrete floor in seconds.

  He kicked the guy who’d opened the trunk in the chest, sending his corpse to the floor, giving him an unobstructed view of the other two.

  They stared at him, mouths agape.

  Weaponless.

  He shot them each in the throat.

  Tap-tap.

  He’d been using single-fire, but now that all the hostiles in the immediate vicinity were down he switched back to three-round burst. The first stretch, he knew, was always the easiest, and he didn’t need to waste ammunition on stationary targets by putting extra bullets into them after they were already dead.

  One apiece had done the trick.

  But there was no time to take cover, or retreat and regroup, or even hide from the war he knew was on its way. He’d fired unsuppressed rounds, and everyone in the camp would know immediately what had happened. There was no mistaking the violent bang of a gunshot, let alone three in quick succession.

  So he burst straight into motion.

  He rounded to the driver’s side of the jeep and threw the door open and hurled the dead man out of the driver’s seat. The secret policeman’s cap came off as he tumbled to the warehouse floor.

  He’d proved invaluable — as had four of his colleagues.

  Slater had strapped them into the passenger and rear seats back at the scene of the slaughter, and then laid an extra corpse across the rear footwell before he drove back to the camp. Then, at the top of the hill above the ETIM encampment, he’d got out and pinned the extra corpse into place in the driver’s seat. He went around the back of the vehicle, gave it a giant push to set it gently rolling down the hill, and then leapt into the trunk as the jeep gained momentum.

  Gravity had done the rest.

  It was astonishing how quickly he’d fooled the entire camp with a convoy of dead men. They’d been deceased long before ETIM bullets riddled them. But ETIM wanted the credit for what appeared to be a flawless display of shooting, and they’d been blind to what had really unfolded. They should have seen the bodies were too cold, already stiff, already pale.

  But they weren’t concentrating on that.

  Now Slater put his carbine down, slotted into the empty driver’s seat and fired the jeep to life. He breathed a sigh of relief when the engine started, and he twisted the wheel and turned it around in the warehouse and lined its nose up with the open doorway. Then he slipped straight back out of the vehicle, and in one swift movement reached over the centre console and snatched the material around the dead passenger’s thigh.

  He lifted the guy’s entire leg over the console, completing a rudimentary splits, and dropped the limp foot onto the accelerator pedal.

  The jeep shot off the mark.

  Slater stepped back, giving himself half a second to admire his handiwork, and then took off at a sprint in its wake.

  Along the way, he snatched up the M4A1 carbine he’d dropped.

  Only one way to do this.

  The jeep accelerated out of the warehouse, into the open muddy land in the centre of the camp. The ETIM soldiers who’d heard the initial gunshots, all of them trigger-happy and confused, made the same mistake they’d made the first time.

  They shot at the first thing that moved.

  Bullets pinged harmlessly off the chassis, and a cluster of rounds dotted the four bodies left in the jeep. They were already riddled with bullets, and clearly dead as nails, but Slater had made a career out of capitalising on knee-jerk reactions.

  He came sprinting out of the open doorway and lined up his aim on the combatants who were clearly armed.

  Bullet by bullet, he unloaded the clip in three-round bursts.

  23

  It felt like a marathon of a battle, but in reality it was over in seconds.

  Slater killed a group of three men closest to the jeep, who were already beginning to realise that they’d fallen for a decoy. By the time their gazes drifted past the speeding out-of-control vehicle to the large dark-skinned man trailing behind it, it was too late. Slater was a moving target, and his reflexes were unparalleled, and he already had his aim lined up. He perceived the closest threat before they even knew he existed, and by the time they figured it out they had lead in their chests.

  He dropped all three of them with two separate three-round bursts, cleanly sweeping the barrel from left to right. They went down and stayed down. All three of them had been holding rifles. Ready to react.

  The rest of the camp weren’t as prepared.

  The majority of the ETIM soldiers thought they’d neutralised the threat. They’d shot five secret policemen before the firefight had even begun, and there was no doubt they were feeling real high and mighty about themselves.

  So a lot of them had their guns down, and were en route to various huts and outbuildings, either talking amongst themselves or savouring the thrill of victory.

  Which meant, of course, they were entirely unprepared for a charging berserker to emerge from the warehouse.

  Slater counted seven men in
sight, spread out at intervals throughout the camp. Some were close. Some were too far to hit accurately with the first shot.

  He sized up all of it, and then took advantage of the vicious crruuunnchhhhh that resonated through the camp. The jeep had demolished one of the huts, and the impact had flipped it on its wheels, and it had come to rest on its side in the wreckage of the building. Corpses were strewn around it — Slater counted four, and gave silent thanks they were the secret policemen.

  No-one had been in the hut before the impact.

  Despite their best intentions, most of the eyes in the camp darted toward the noise. It drowned out even the gunshots.

  He shot a man going for his pistol in the throat, and killed another who was sprinting toward a stockpile of assault rifles near the mouth of the camp.

  Five.

  But right then and there, he knew he’d won.

  The five remaining ETIM soldiers were unarmed, and none of them were anywhere near weapons. They were wearing simple clothing garments that left no room for concealed firepower. They were all standing there, mouths agape, surrounded by devastation which, as far as they could tell, had been caused by one man.

  One man alone.

  That same man was now sweeping his carbine from target to target in a clear, calculated manner. It was immediately apparent that there was an experience gap. They knew the second they moved in a hostile manner, he’d shoot them in the chest or the face. They weren’t prepared for this. They were used to ragged conflicts with other tribes, or skirmishes with amateur secret policemen who had too much power for their own good and figured they could go up against full automatic weaponry without a problem.

  They’d never run into anyone like Will Slater.

  He kept up the rapid movements from man to man, making sure none of them left his peripheral vision.

  Then he took one hand off the carbine and gestured for them to move closer together.

  To bunch up, in a group of five.

  They obliged.

  They were terrified. Half their camp had been wiped out in the blink of an eye. They might have seen death and destruction before. Maybe even up close. They’d tortured and killed and raped, no doubt. But they’d never seen anything like this. Their closest allies were in the dirt at their feet, bleeding into the muddy earth. They were defenceless. And their enemy was unknown. Slater certainly didn’t look like an opposing radical, or a secret policeman.