Trapped (41 page)

fectly good ATV waits on the other end, designed for terrain

like this, but Ricky has insisted it only be used for transport-

ing the captives, and that at all other times it remain hidden

under camo-netting, far away from prying eyes.

The Whittle brothers make do, proceeding afoot, having

covered the same ground several times recently. The night is

especially dark—no moon, and the stars obscured by heavy

clouds. Roy illuminates the way with a flashlight, figuring if

satellites can pick up flashlights they’re screwed anyway.

Dug grunting as the sharp grass whips at his legs but Roy

knows his twin could go like this for miles, even in the night.

Maybe especially at night, if there’s something to hunt.

Say what you like about Dug, he’s never been scared of

the dark. Almost the reverse, like he’d come up with a notion

that darkness protected him from those who tormented him

by daylight. Namely their father, until Dug got too big to beat,

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and the kids who taunted him during his brief and disastrous

stint in school.

They come upon the remains of the old settlement just

beyond the saw grass, at the edge of where the wetlands begin.

One of Ricky Lang’s backcountry lairs. The settlement, origi-

nally an Indian camp, had eventually included a dozen or so

ramshackle trailers, as well as a few decrepit chickee huts and

a tarpaper shack or two. Population, as Roy understood it, had

been mixed. Members of the Lang clan, some mixed-blood

Seminoles, a few cracker trappers who’d gone native or who

just liked living outside of civilization. At the end, tribal drug

runners had used it as a storage depot. A little world all its own,

or so Roy imagines, having seen similar type settlements in

the Ten Thousand Islands, where the populace was pretty

much white, though equally impoverished.

Park rangers had eventually taken over, clearing out the

trailers, burning the shacks. Then at some point the area had

been zoned inside the Nakosha Reservation and mostly for-

gotten. Not by Ricky Lang, though, who liked the fact that

it could be accessed by land or by water. Plus, from the air

it looked like nothing more than a small clearing in the saw

grass, one of thousands of such bald spots within the Glades.

The useful bits that remain are undercover, out of sight.

“I’ll check on the girl,” Roy tells his brother. “You get the

other one, take him to Ricky.”

“Where you gonna put the girl?” Dug wants to know.

“Dunno. Closer to home, I guess. Someplace Ricky

doesn’t know.”

Truth is, Roy isn’t sure he wants Dug to know the location.

He’s got it fixed in his mind the girl needs killing, and Roy

knows his twin well enough to understand that his stubborn

notions can become obsessions that must be acted upon. Like

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the neighborhood pets when they were boys, and a few other

much more serious incidents later on.

Killing wasn’t a sex type thing with Dug, just that he liked

to snuff things out. Household cats, wild pigs, human beings,

they all gave similar satisfaction.

“What if he asks?” Dug says.

“You tell him I took care of it. Just hand over the boy and

get out of there. He won’t be expecting no long conversations.

You got your knife?”

“Always got my knife,” Dug responds with elaborate dignity.

“Okay then. You best be careful. Whole idea is, we come

out of this alive. We got plans, remember?”

“I get my own cabin.”

“You get your own cabin, and enough ammo to kill ev-

erything in a ten-mile radius, how does that sound?”

“Good,” says Dug, and obediently turns to the path that

will take him to the boy.

Roy hurries toward the girl. He can feel Ricky Lang in his

head, a nudge of pure fear that makes his knees feel weak.

He’s well aware of the terrible risk he’s taking by failing to

obey. My God, look what befell poor Stick! One moment a

laid-back dude, a living legend, the next moment nothing

more than a howl in the flames. Ricky’s way of saying see

what happens to those who disobey. Not that he’d ever

actually forbidden Roy from hijacking the aircraft, selling it

on the black market. Like most of Ricky’s rules it was a

presumed thing, subject to his whims.

All gone now, that beautiful flying machine. Reduced to

twisted metal, a blackened path on the runway. A man dead,

millions of dollars up in smoke, all because the former

Nakosha chief is in a bad mood, wants to make an impres-

sion on his subordinates.

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Kill the girl.
Just issues the order without explanation.

Like saying
burn the money,
only worse, because even if he

and Dug survive the madness of Ricky Lang, the abduction

and killing of a minor in the state of Florida almost invari-

ably leads to death row. If they get caught. If? A zillion FBI

agents combing the area, what are the odds of not getting

caught on a stone-cold murder?

No, no, no. Roy knows he has to play it smart. Play it smart

and he can still come out the other end with something to

show for his troubles.

His mind ticks over the possibilities as he approaches the

cooler. The old walk-in cooler, ripped out of a failed Miami

restaurant and dumped here in the middle of nowhere, had

once been used to store wax-sealed bales of marijuana.

Somehow it had been missed when the rangers swept

through. Probably because it had been neatly hidden within

a stand of overgrown cypress. Now its thick, insulated walls

make a handy cage of galvanized steel.

Nice thing, the girl can scream her lungs out, all that

emerges is a faint, birdlike shriek. Plus with the foot-thick

door padlocked from the outside, she can be left unattended

for hours or even days. Really too bad they can’t keep her in

the cooler, but eventually the search parties are bound to find

it. Plus there’s the Dug problem.

Roy is thinking about Dug when he opens the cooler door

and steps inside, flashlight roaming. Before he can react,

something flies out of the darkest corner, something deeply

furious, something with a long sharp claw that pierces the

softest part of his throat, penetrating his esophagus.

As he falls to his knees, choking on his own blood, the

furious thing flies past him, out the door and into the night.

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Chris Jordan

9. Oof Says The Monster Man

Pure adrenaline carries her out of the steel prison, into the

muggy darkness. Clawlike branches scratching at her face,

tugging her hair, raking her bare arms. There’s no up or down,

no direction home, just the explosive desire to get away.

Wherever she imagined she might be, it is not here, in the

absolute wilderness. The steel box made her think of build-

ings, maybe a village near the remote airstrip where she had

Seth had put the Beechcraft down, enjoying their big adven-

ture. A real live Indian chief! What a kick, what a tale to tell

her friends. The real thrill, though, had been piloting the

aircraft all the way from New York. Seth finally taking

control for the tricky landing on the narrow strip, but that was

it. And then, of course, the dream flight turned into a total

nightmare moments after they touched down.

Heedless of the branches and thorns and vines, Kelly

crashes headlong through the stand of cypress, arms shield-

ing her eyes as best she can.

Is he dead? Did she kill him? She’d been aiming for an

eye—hours she’d waited, crouching in the corner like a taut-

wound spring. Psyching herself up. Telling herself this was her

one chance. Go for the eye. Blind him, kill him, whatever it

takes.

Get out of the box or die trying. And then run for your life,

girl. Run as long and as far as you can.

All of a sudden she stumbles into a clearing. An area large

enough that the edges melt away into the night. She looks at

her scratched and bleeding hands, realizes she no longer has

the weapon she honed so carefully.

Hide.
She must find a place to hide until the sun comes

up, whenever that is. The man she attacked may be alive, or

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317

there may be others. She has formed a firm conviction that

more than one man has been keeping her captive. Changing

the foul bucket, leaving behind the bag of pasty, white-bread

sandwiches and the jug of water that has kept her alive,

barely. Two at least, maybe more.

At that very moment, heart slamming and lungs heaving,

she imagines footsteps following her.

Run!

Weakened by her captivity, half-starved, the adrenaline

takes over, making her legs pump furiously. Kelly sprints

through the clearing, then through grass up to her knees.

Runs like a madwoman until the rough ground reaches up,

catches a foot, sends her sprawling facedown.

Wham. Knocks the breath out of her.

Lying in the rough grass she manages to roll over, search-

ing the sky for stars. Fearful that if she doesn’t find some-

thing to judge direction she’ll end up running in circles. Her

eyes detect a few faint stars intermittently obscured by low

clouds, and somehow that calms her slightly. Her breathing

returns to something like normal.

Stay where you are, she decides, until you get your

bearings. Then choose which way to run.

Gradually her heart slows to match her breathing and she

begins to discern sounds. Insects buzzing. A bird squawking

some distance away. Heron? Owl? Something wild that’s for

sure. The low-pitched bellow of something far away—could

that be an alligator? Does that mean she’s close to the Ever-

glades? Miles from where they landed, if true. Crickets, very

close, mere inches away. And then another sound that pours

like chilled water through her veins.

A human voice.

“Move along, you little shit!”

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Chris Jordan

Kelly flattens herself, trying to blend into the ground. Is

the grass deep enough to hide her? In a panic she tries to dig

herself into the rough ground. Impossible, too hard.

Lie still, her instinct urges. Be quiet. Be small.

“I ain’t carryin’ no full-growed man,” the voice says.

“Walk or be dragged, them is your choice.”

“My legs don’t work,” says another voice. Faint and ob-

viously in a lot of pain.

Seth!

Kelly lifts her head until her eyes just barely clear the

grass. At first she can’t see anything. Gradually her vision

adjusts and she can make out what looks like a dark, hump-

backed creature slowly making its way along the edge of the

clearing, barely visible.

The humpbacked thing becomes two men, one of them

hobbled, barely able to walk.

“That just cramps in your legs. Walk ’em off.”

The hobbled man—it has to be Seth—is tied up somehow,

hands bound, a rope around his waist. The other man,

medium size but strong looking, is all coiled impatience.

Jerking the rope as if he enjoys the grunt of pain it produces.

“You want me to chop off another finger? I can do that,

you want.”

Eyes narrowing, Kelly begins to search the ground for a

weapon. Hands encountering nothing but hard dirt beneath

the blades of grass.

Having convinced herself that Seth’s oppressor is focused

on tormenting his victim, Kelly crawls and slithers until she

reaches the edge of the clearing. Has to be something, a

branch or a stick, something to poke the monster in the eye.

What she finds, belly flat to the ground, is a chunk of rock

about the size of her head. Charred and smelling of a camp-

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319

fire. Her hands explore the weapon, finding it very rough and

not quite as heavy as expected.

Whatever, it will have to do.

Gathering the meaty rock into her hands, she waits for her

moment. That’s the hardest part as her fury rises, waiting as

the monster continues to torment her friend.

“What are you,” the monster demands, “some kind of fag?

There’s nothing wrong with your legs! You tryin’ a trick me,

huh? We’ll see about that!”

The monster does something and Seth collapses.

“Get up and walk like a man! We ain’t got all night!”

The monster bends over Seth, a fist raised.

Kelly explodes across the clearing, the hefty chunk of

limestone raised high. And as the monster turns, astonished—

the thing has human eyes, is that possible?—Kelly brings the

rock down on his head with every ounce of her adrenaline-

charged strength.

“Oof!” says the monster man, falling backward.

A moment later she and Seth Manning are running for

their lives.

10. Eyes That Couldn’t Care Less

The Irish have their wakes, the Jews sit shiva. At the

Glades Motorcourt Inn there are no kegs of whiskey, no

mirrors to cover, unless you count the cracked glass over the