Kill Jill (26 page)

But this isn’t an ideal world. It’s a hog pen filled with wild hogs who suddenly notice Jack trying to climb out of the pen.

They come at him like starving civil war soldiers attacking a stray turkey.

Jack panics and grabs the top section of barbed wire and pulls himself up as fast as he can, scraping long, deep ropes of skin and flesh from his chest in the process.

Though he feels little pain at the moment, he’s aware he left a lot of meat on the barbs, and the deep gullies he carved are going to hurt like hell when his adrenalin subsides.

But at least he’s still alive.

For the moment.

What he needs to do is get his legs up before the hogs drag him back down.

Although the wire shudders and shakes and affords him very little stability, the hogs snapping at his feet provide all the motivation he needs to swing his right leg up and over the top strand.

Of course, barbed wire’s a funny thing. It freely gives, twists, and bends, but when it snaps back in place, it does so with a vengeance. The same springing action that saved him from the hogs moments earlier has now trapped him. His body’s hung on the top strand of barbed wire, and his legs are hopelessly entwined in the second strand, and after some pain-filled moments and heartfelt hissing, Jack comes to the realization that regardless of how hard he kicks, or how much he rocks, he’s not getting off this fence without help.

With nothing else to do at the moment, he takes inventory as best he can and judges his wounds aren’t severe enough to kill him before the goons come back. He also figures if they’re sober enough to make it back from the bar, they’ll be sober enough to realize there’s only one skeleton in the hog pen. Within minutes they’ll find him and feed him to the hogs.

So here he remains, stranded atop a barbed-wire fence, stuck between getting away and getting eaten alive. If not for the determination of the hogs, Jack would have about two hours to contemplate how this would be a fitting end, a metaphor for his entire life.

But the hogs are, in fact, determined to get him, and as a result, they begin crashing their bodies into the fence, hoping to dislodge their prey.

And it works.

Jack loses a significant amount of thigh flesh, and his arms and shoulders are raked by the barbed wire, but he crashes to the ground on the safe side of the fence.

He lies there a few minutes, gathering his strength.

As the drugs begin losing their effect, the pain receptors kick in, and Jack begins hissing worse than Marcus Wisby did when his torso was being torn to shreds.

Jack either passes out for a few minutes or thinks he did. It’s hard to tell for sure, but the result is the same. He’s still in pain, still losing blood, and the hogs are still slamming into the fence, trying to get him.

And Jack still needs to go back in the pen to get one of the ropes. His or Wisby’s, whichever one has sustained less damage.

Because his escape plan depends on that rope.

On the bright side, he has an idea how to do it safely, if only the hogs will cooperate.

Walking on swollen, hog-bitten, barbed wire-scratched legs with gaping wounds in his chest, thigh, side, back, and shoulders, proves more difficult now than before he passed out, thanks to the brief passage of time and the steady erosion of drugs in Jack’s system. Not to mention it’s practically pitch dark, he’s naked, and the terrain on the far side of the pen is littered with roots, pinecones, and the occasional sharp rock.

Jack feels his way around the pen till he gets to the approximate point where the goons parked their truck a few minutes ago. The hogs track him step for step from inside the pen. They’re angry now, having been denied a golden feeding opportunity.

Jack’s happy the hogs are staying close. He knows there’s a smaller pen attached to this one, and when he finds the gate, he can lure them in it. Then he’ll be able to enter the large pen unmolested, and search for the rope he needs.

It takes ten minutes to find the gates, two more to figure out how they work. Luring the hogs proves easier than expected. Jack opens the gate, the hogs run in. Jack closes it and enters the large pen. He figures his best chance of finding rope is to check the area near Wisby’s corpse. Maybe his rope-covered ankles will still be there, or close by.

As it turns out, he’s right. Jack finds the rope, and it’s still coiled, but weighty. By feeling around, he can tell the feet, ankles and a partial leg bone are still attached to it. He drags the bundle a few yards away from Wisby’s remains, hoping to lessen the stink emanating from the kill site, but it all stinks, so he sits in the muck in the dark and starts working on the knot.

As he works, he thinks about how lucky he’s been. Bobby didn’t cut his balls off. The goons didn’t smash his ankles. They didn’t put him in the pen first. The barbed wire never cut his face or private area.

A sudden sound tells him he’s not alone.

What the fuck?

Jack jumps to his feet, but the hog attacks and rams into him hard enough to send him reeling. When it turns back to come after him again, Jack hears something that gives him hope.

A choking sound.

The hog’s choking on something.

A bone?

The hog crashes into Jack again, then stumbles and falls to the ground. It writhes around making gurgling sounds. Its breathing is labored. Just before dying, it squeals a fearsome death cry that sets off a thunderous response from the hogs in the small pen.

Good job, Wisby
, Jack thinks.
You choked it to death!

He unties the rope, drapes it around his shoulders, exits the pen, opens the other gate so the pigs can come back in and eat their former friend. Then he walks to the ditch behind the clearing where the goons will park their truck after returning from the bar.

He lies flat in the ditch and hopes to live long enough to carry out his plan.

Jack sees the approaching headlights before hearing the truck. As expected, the goons park in the same place, only this time they face the large pen and train their headlights on it. They exit the truck, leaving the lights on, doors open, engine running, so they can hear the country music blasting from the speakers. Before they get ten feet, Jack climbs in the truck, throws it in gear, and mows them down. Then he backs the truck up, gets out, staggers toward the bodies.

Both men are alive, but unable to put up a fight, or mount a defense. Jack finds Gib’s gun, stands over him, fires a shot point blank into his forehead. Ray’s in decent shape, meaning he’s not likely to die anytime soon, but his back appears broken, and he might be paralyzed from the waist down. Jack strips him naked, removes the money and wallet from his pockets, and ties his ankles together with Wisby’s rope. Then he gets back in the truck and angles it beside the fence so he can hoist Ray up and over it like Ray hoisted Jack and Wisby a couple hours ago.

If Jack wasn’t so drugged and weak from the hog attack and subsequent loss of blood, he’d jump in the truck and hit the highway right now. But in his current state he wouldn’t be able to drive a straight line.

What he needs is time. Time to build his strength and let the drugs wear off a little more.

Revenge isn’t the motive for hoisting Ray over the hog pen. The reason for doing it is simple.

Jack needs an alarm clock.

Not to wake him, but to keep him from falling asleep.

He needs rest, but not too much. What’s the perfect amount?

Something between fifteen and forty-five minutes.

What he
can’t
afford is to fall asleep. If he falls asleep he could die from seizure, internal bleeding, trauma, loss of blood, infection, or who knows what else?

So the idea is to hoist Ray up and hang him by his feet over the hog pen. Jack plans to keep him on the hook and bring him to a height that’s low enough for the hogs to make contact, but high enough to keep them from killing Ray too quickly.

Ray’s screams will keep Jack from falling asleep.

It takes him an inordinate amount of time to get the hoist working properly, and he nearly passes out from the pain of trying to maneuver it. But at last he gets it right, and when Ray shrieks, the hogs listen. They stop feeding on the dead hog and scurry over to see what the live goon has to offer. Jack marvels at the desire these hogs have to continue feeding long after he’d expect them to be satiated.

With Ray in place, Jack lies down on the ground beside the truck and closes his eyes.

Jack was…

He was right.

His body’s crying desperately for sleep. Time and again he nods off, but thankfully the hogs never tire of attacking the goon on the hook.

Eventually, the entire truck shakes and groans, as if it’s about to topple over. Jack decides it’s gone on long enough. Regardless of his ability to drive a straight line, he needs to get out of here. He needs a doctor, or at least some serious antibiotics and a sewing kit.

Wait. Not a doctor. A doctor would send him to the hospital, and the hospital would call the police. Nor would a sewing kit be of much use. Half his wounds will be difficult or impossible for him to reach.

What Jack needs is a veterinarian. A veterinarian could stitch him up and give him drugs.

If he lives long enough to find one.

When Jack climbs into the truck he can practically feel his body raging with infection. He feels the end is near. He sees the gun and knows most people would probably give up. It would be so easy to put the gun barrel in his mouth and pull the trigger. He’s got what, four bullets left?

And all he needs is one.

But Jack’s not most people. He thinks of all the reasons he has for living. Like seeing Jill again, if she’s alive. And if she
is
, he’ll want to make sure she’s safe.

Of course, he also needs to kill Bobby and the house goons, and free the prisoners in Bobby’s basement.

The plan he’s formulating to kill one group and free the other is so simple. Bobby and the goons are above ground, the prisoners stay in the basement. The basement is well-built, and those within its walls would almost certainly survive an explosion concentrated on the first floor of Bobby’s house. All it would take to create such an explosion is a rocket launcher and three or four warheads similar to the one Bobby claimed Decker was using to blow up Jack’s lake house.

Jack takes a moment to wonder if Decker actually bombed the lake house, then decides those thoughts are a distraction to his immediate plan. He sees a newspaper wedged between the console and passenger seat. If he takes the time to look, the paper’s date will tell him how long he’s been held captive.

He grabs it, then hesitates.

Is he prepared for the answer?

He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath.

What if it’s been years?

He lets the breath out slowly.

It hasn’t been years.

More likely, it’s been six months, eight at the most. It feels like years, but then again, he saw Bobby just hours ago, in the basement, and he didn’t appear much older than the day they met.

Jack attacks the paper with confidence, but is startled to learn he’s been a prisoner for exactly…

He does the math…