He imagined the interior of the warehouse. Darkness with light coming from high skylights, row after row of shelves at tall as some buildings, and the other man wandering through there looking for salvageable goods among the trashed wreckage. There would be miles of shelving and the boy couldn’t imagine trying to hunt someone in that vastness. It was too risky. He needed to get the man back outside where he had an advantage.
Breaking cover, the boy carefully approached the body and made sure he was no longer a threat. He tapped the man with the toe of a boot and got not reaction. He couldn't tell if the man was dead or not but he was definitely out of the fight. His eyes bulged from his head in a gruesome manner. His mouth gaped open and his tongue lolled out. Ragus didn’t want to see the fruit of his violence—what normal person would?—yet he forced himself to look at it. Seeing the consequences was part of what helped you retain your humanity when you were forced to commit acts of violence. It was something Conor told him and it was beginning to make more sense now that he was racking up a body count.
He chanced a quick glance at the building and saw no one visible through the glass front. He stooped and picked up the man’s rifle, slinging it over his back. He crouched again, grabbing the man by the leg. The position of Ragus’ body caused the rifle to come unslung and clatter to the sidewalk. He flinched, then picked it up in his free hand and tugged the body out of sight behind a nearby car.
He pointed the rifle into the air, released the safety, and fired off a couple of quick rounds before returning to the concealment of a bush. He waited, hearing an inner door bang shut before the other man burst through the front door, weapon raised.
“Carlos!” he called. “Where are you?”
With no need to minimize noise this time, Ragus squeezed the trigger several times, pumping four or five rounds into the armed man before he spun and dropped in a tangle. Ragus watched the still body for a moment, hoping the man was not playing dead. When he saw a stream of bright blood running from beneath the man, filling the cracks in the sidewalk, he finally felt comfortable rising from his concealed position.
He walked over and examined him with a little less scrutiny than the first. He was obviously dead and the only thing that stuck out to Ragus was the look of utter surprise on the man’s face. That look, like something unexpected–undeserved–had befallen the man irritated Ragus. The man had brought his fate upon himself.
“Don’t fuck with my friends,” Ragus said to the motionless body, “and you won’t get killed.”
While saying something to the body had felt necessary, he really didn’t have time to waste. He’d pulled off the main trail to deal with these two men and now he needed to get back to it. He didn’t want to open up too much space between him and the remaining kidnappers. He’d like nothing more than to make a pass through the warehouse and see if there were things he could scrounge. He needed another pack, he needed a good sleeping bag for winter, he needed a warm coat, and several other things.
He could stop here on his way back, but for now he needed to get on the road. He felt better sleeping where he could keep an eye on his quarry, harboring the idea that if things got too bad, if Barb was in imminent danger, he could swoop in and try to save her before they killed him. He would gladly give his life for Barb. If not out of his love for her, out of obligation to her father.
He deliberated for a moment, then went to fetch his horse. Rather than take precious time to go through the men’s gear there in the parking lot, he decided to strap all of it—their guns, packs, and sleeping gear—onto his own horse. He could go through it at his own camp and keep the items he needed. Besides, the gunshots may have drawn attention from locals. A heavily-laden horse would be an attractive target.
Once he had everything strapped to his horse, he rifled through the pockets of the dead men. It felt weird, ghoulish, but Ragus could not be picky. He found a cigarette lighter and a good pocketknife on one of the men. He had a pistol belt with a handgun and several pouches of gear. Ragus slung it over his saddle horn to dig through later. He took a similar belt off the second man, and found a pack of cigarettes in his pocket and a switchblade knife.
Ragus had seen cheap switchblade knives at convenience stores in West Virginia. This one seemed decent. The blade had no wiggle to it at all and shot out with a solid click when he pushed a switch with this thumb. He carefully shoved it in a pocket. He already had a knife but who the hell ever complained they had too many knives?
He looked back the way he’d come that day and wondered how far behind him Conor was. Surely he had to catch up with him sometime soon. Ragus didn’t want to think about the alternative, that Conor was lost, had been injured, or was otherwise unable to follow. He was also concerned about the change in direction the group took before these men split off. Before he continued behind them, Ragus had to find a way to clearly mark the change in route so there was no way Conor could miss it.
He rode his horse back to the highway, back to where the men rode down the embankment and switched to a small state road. There were no trees close by for cutting a log marker. He could always get a can of spray paint from the store if they had any and paint a direction arrow on the road. But what if Conor thought it was the police marking an accident or a road contractor marking a needed repair?
Ragus felt the pressing need to get back on the trail but couldn’t move on without marking this intersection. He stared down at the road as he thought and spotted a reflection in the last of the evening light. He squinted at it, then got off his horse for a closer look. It was a necklace. He also thought he recognized it.
It belonged to Barb.
It was some kind of clover necklace the girl wore, but she laughed when he called it a clover. She said Irish folks had another name for it. She rattled it off in some foreign language he didn’t understand at all. She said it was native language of her people.
Holding the necklace dangling from his palm, watching the light reflect from the gold, he wondered if it had been dropped intentionally or ripped from her neck. It reignited his rage and he now knew how he was marking the trail.
17
Following the kidnapper’s trail was becoming more difficult. The hard surface made it difficult for Conor to use even the most rudimentary tracking methods to determine how far he was behind the group. In soil, the definition of the print, the compaction of the soil, told him things. In woods or a field, crushed foliage gave him information. He was in an information vacuum now, blindly following the occasional scuff in the asphalt which he presumed to be made by the homemade rebar horse shoes and by the bent branches he presumed to be signs left by Ragus.
Even the bent branches were becoming scarcer. This section of highway was four-lane with guardrails on the sides. West Virginia had eradicated roadside foliage with napalm and there was very little left vegetation left within the public right-of-way, leaving fewer means by which Ragus could leave markers. The boy obviously had guts but he was lacking in experience. It was just sheer luck the boy had managed to follow the kidnappers this far without getting himself killed.
Earlier in the afternoon Conor crossed the state line into West Virginia, a state he'd traveled through but knew little about. He was unfamiliar with the road system and what cities it passed through. As night neared, he faced yet another evening away from his daughter. As much as that pained him, he was afraid to ride in the dark and possibly miss one of the scant trail signs. If this happened a few months back, he could have called in favors and had satellite footage, drone surveillance, and possibly even a strike team at his disposal.
There was a beautiful sunset that further enraged him because it was the kind of thing he would have pointed out to his daughter had they been home together. It enraged him because her absence reminded him of the absence of his wife, a woman he felt he’d barely gotten to know before she was taken from him. It enraged him because it illuminated the void within him created by all of the things he’d lost in his life from his father, to his
grandfather, to his country, to his mother, to his wife, and now his daughter. Nothing hardened a man like loss. Nothing reminded you of the passage of time and brevity of life like a sunset. It could stop you in your tracks but disappear if you looked away for even a second. It was a beauty made painful by the inability to perfectly capture it in words, pictures, or in memory.
Conor was just past Princeton, West Virginia when he noticed the billowing black smoke. Considering the state of the world and the general unrest of people, he assumed the smoke to be the result of a bored miscreant or even an accidental fire. At this stage, he saw it as nothing more than something to keep an eye on. Further up the road, he started to smell the smoke.
It had to be burning tires. There was nothing in the world that smelled like it. Surely if this were the kidnappers they were not use burning tires to cook their dinner. Nor could he imagine any group they would intentionally camp around a fire producing such noxious smoke. The fire was close enough now that he was determined to travel past it before he stopped for the night. If the smoke were related to some sort of civil disturbance, he did not want to be within proximity of it and find himself caught in it tomorrow.
He moved past a cluster of businesses located near an exit. There was a Waffle House, a Bob Evans, several adult bookstores, and a few inexpensive hotels. Ahead in the distance, Conor could now see a furious, intense fire in the center of the road with black smoke churning about it. It could have been as much as a mile distant, although it was hard to tell. Concerned it might be a roadblock or a trap, he moved his horse to the shoulder and proceeded cautiously. Stopping at regular intervals, he used a small pair of binoculars to examine his surroundings.
The fire he saw ahead was definitely the source of the burning tire smell but there was something else there. He didn’t see any sign of a trap nor a barricade, and felt safe enough to continue moving toward it. Amidst the denuded backdrop of the interstate highway, Conor saw nowhere he could skirt the scene safely and get a look at it. So in the interest of expediency, he rode right down the middle of the road like he was the most dangerous son of a bitch in West Virginia and he dared anyone to mess with him.
The sun was gone by the time he reached the tires, taking the light and the color of the world with it. Near a minor intersection, a half-dozen tires were ablaze. In some cases, the smaller size marked them as spare tires likely purloined from the trunks of stranded vehicles. The fire scorched the pavement and oily rivulets ran in all directions carrying flames with them. The flickering orange light from the fire was not unlike that of the sun earlier, casting the same tangerine glow to the world. It would have been almost cheery in other circumstances and were it not illuminating a body stretched out in the road.
There was no doubt the corpse was posed, laying on its back in the road with one arm extended toward a break in the guardrail. A heavy rock sat on the cold, dead hand, pinning it in place to assure it remained pointed in a particular direction. On the bare forearm, an arrow had been drawn with permanent marker to make sure the intention of the outstretched arm was not lost on Conor. The number eighteen was written on the dead man’s forehead. Conor had no fucking clue what the number meant.
Of equal significance was the name scribbled just below the number. It read Ragus. The boy wanted to make certain Conor knew who’d left the message. It was a small but important confirmation.
Most folks may have found the boy’s improvised route marker to be a little over the top, perhaps even a sign of some type of mental derangement. Conor understood, though, that a person didn't go through the kind of things Ragus had gone through and not find himself changed. Conor had gone through similar things and he was changed by them as well. Ragus had watched the only person in his life die and he'd had to deal with that himself. He’d had to carry her body outside by himself, dug a hole, and put her in the ground, then bury her.
How did that not change you? Not damage you somehow?
Conor pulled out his headlamp and followed the directions from the dead guy. At the gap in the guardrail, he found trampled grass and disturbed sod from the feet of dozens of horses. The kidnappers had left the road here. Had it not been for this extreme signpost Ragus left him, would Conor have noticed the change in course? He didn’t know.
It was getting too dark to follow the trail now. He would put some distance between him and the fire, then he’d set up a quick camp for the night. Courtesy of the men back at the restaurant, he had a decent supply of smoked beef. That and a little grape Kool-Aid would make for a lovely dinner.
18
When the kidnappers finally stopped, the day was completely gone, the light changed to the monochromatic blue gloaming of late evening. Of the eighteen kidnappers present, three cruel bastards were selected by Lester to manage the prisoners. One by one, and in the same touchy and inappropriate manner, each woman was cut loose and helped from her saddle. Those released from the saddle were clustered together on the ground, seated nearly on top of each other as the men gaily went about their work. They commented without shame on the various physical qualities and attributes of the women they touched. The women bore the indignity with withdrawn stoicism, aware there was no recourse available to them, and that to protest might invite worse upon them.
It amazed Barb that these men could be such jerks even in the midst of their own suffering. They were all covered nearly head to toe with some vile rash. They scratched all the time. Some of them had pockets of infection from constantly digging at their itching arms. It made the men even more disgusting than they already were.
In the absence of any structure in which to lock the women, Lester informed them they would remain bound together for the night. "I'm sorry to you. I know it will be a little uncomfortable. All I can say is it sucks to be you. I’ll have a man watching you all night. Any of you try anything stupid, I’ll make an example of you. You probably don’t want to know what that involves."
Barb's wrists were already raw and aching from the sharp edges of the plastic zip ties, having cut into her hands as the horse jostled her around all day. She wasn't the only one in such discomfort so it would have done no good to complain. While these men were not overt sadists, they were bastards. They made it clear the comfort of their cargo was secondary on this mission.
The group was served a dinner of smoked beef, canned peas, and canned peaches. As the cold beef was cut and distributed, the last of the smoked beef, the unspoken question on everybody's mind was what had happened to the two men left behind at the restaurant. It was their job to cut up the remaining beef, pack it onto the horses, and then catch up with the remainder of the group. They should have caught up hours ago.
Barb was fairly certain she knew what had happened to them. The fact they had still not shown up made her think her dad may have crossed paths with them. If he had, she could only guess how it ended, but she felt she was safe in assuming the men would not be rejoining their party. The absence of the two men was not openly discussed in front of the women but Barb overheard comments between Top Cat, Lester, and other men. There was debate as to whether a couple of men should be sent back to search for the two who were AWOL.
"You don't throw good money after bad," Lester said. "I'd rather be certain of having the men I’ve got than to take a chance on losing more. Who the hell knows what happened to them? They could have met some women. They could have found a bottle of liquor stashed in that restaurant somewhere. They could be back there having a barbecue and living it up."
"That better not be the case," Top Cat growled. "I get wind something like that is going on, I’ll drag the pair of them behind their horses all the way back to Douthat Farms."
As warned, the women were bound together. A single rope was threaded through each woman's arms, which they could not escape because of their hands being zip tied together. Any woman attempting to escape would have to drag all the others along with her unless she had a means to cut the rope.
As darkness settled over them and a gibbous
moon rose slowly in the southern sky, the men built a campfire. Women began drifting off to sleep, practically elbow to elbow beneath the tablecloths that served as their blankets against the chilly night. The accommodations were not comfortable but the women were exhausted and sheer tiredness raked them into sleep.
Barb was awake, listening to JoAnn’s breathing slow and grow deeper. The kidnappers settled in for the night too, laying their sleeping bags out on crinkly blue tarps or off to the side, directly on the ground. Barb listened intently, hoping she could learn the watch plan for the night. Instead, she found Lester and Top Cat discussing the new glaring absence among the group.
"Those two clowns we left at the warehouse should be back by now too," Lester said.
Top Cat sighed loud enough that Barb heard him over the crackling of the fire and the snores of the sleeping. "Yeah, I don't know what to think about that."
"I guess they could've found some alcohol to get into. They know you won't let them bring it into camp so they might have stayed behind to live it up for the night."
"Same deal as with the other men,” Top Cat said. “They show up late reeking of booze and I’ll make an example out of them."
“I hear a lot of talk about you making examples out of folks but I see few examples of you making examples out of folks. You get what I’m saying?”
“If you don’t like my management style you’re free to go,” Top Cat said.
Lester bit his tongue. He didn’t want to go. He wanted Top Cat to go.
There was a lull in the conversation and Barb listened to the crackling of the fire, the chirping of the cicadas. In the distance coyotes started their song, yapping and howling.
"If it ain't drinking or women, what do you think it is?" Lester asked. "That's four men. The odds of four men not coming back are slim, wouldn’t you think?"
The Mad Mick: Book One of The Mad Mick Series Page 12
