Well Fed - 05 (20 page)

Murray stood, a short wall of a man layered in winter clothing and topped off with a purple stocking cap. A set of black bike goggles regarded Gus with a sullen jiggle then switched to the leather-clad speaker and back to Gus once more. Murray nodded and scuffed at the frozen dirt like a petulant school kid. A machete in a crude sheath slapped against his hip. Gus saw most of the men wore edged steel in such fashion, along with their tribal beards.

“Boll, hang around here for a bit. You listenin’ to me, son?”

Gus focused on the man who had sent Murray on his way. Boll had parked himself in a recliner and leaned forward until his elbows rested on his knees.

“What’d we find in that SUV?”

“Nothin’,” Boll answered.

“Nothin’?” the leader asked and regarded a silver-bearded bruiser sitting in a recliner.

“The man had dick all,” Silver Beard replied. “KA-BAR knife in a boot. Aluminum bat. Firefighter gear, which I can see as being as practical as strapping a blast mat to your hide. Some magazines, water, noodles, small bottle of rum, and a sack of flour for whatever reason I can
not
fathom. Of all the things layin’ around to pick up, a fuckin’ sack of muffin mix isn’t that high on my grocery list.”

“Huh,” the leader said in an
is-that-so
tone. He played with the rounded hilt of his knife. “Damn strange.”

“Oh, and toilet paper,” Silver Beard announced.

“Can find a use for that,” one man said, thumbing the hammer of a large revolver.

“You might, but not old Murray,” said another. “I think Murray wipes his ass with the entire roll like he’s whipping up cotton candy or something. Just jams his finger into the roll there and––”

The speaker went through the motions, stirring up some groans and chuckles.

The leader studied Gus. “Y’know something, fireboy? We’ve been collecting tolls here on this strip of highway for a long, long time. And I think you are in fact the first person to come along and
not
be carrying anything of interest. Except the toilet paper. Sure, there were some folks that wheeled through that were too big for us to handle, but for the most part, everyone else we’ve stopped has had…
something
. Makes me wonder if you’re not hiding anything…”

“Not hidin’,” Gus grunted, feeling the cut’s angry sting down his ribs, the blood outlining his exposed contours. “I’m… lookin’ for someone.”

“I’d say you fucking
found
someone.”

Gus suffered through a few more breaths as the cold punished his nearly naked form.

A thoughtful expression covered the leader’s face as he meandered over to where his prisoner hung.

“Who you looking for?” he asked.

Gus hesitated, and a fist hammered into his exposed gut, ejecting all air from his lungs.

“That,” the leader stated while observing Gus gasping for breath, “is for makin’ me wait. It’s as good as you’re gonna get in this situation, and I’m not tellin’ any lies here. You ain’t pussy, and you ain’t got nothin’ of value other than that knife and that tiny quart of rum. We waited all last night for you to come to, and we ain’t waitin’ any longer. Really, you’re just here now because of a dangerous combination of curiosity, boredom, and amusement. None of those feelings are your friends right now. You best answer when I question you, and maybe I won’t take it into my head to do something cruel. Understand?”

“Yeah.”

That put a smile on the other man’s face. “Better. Now, who you lookin’ for?”

“A woman and two kids.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s all. An old bag and two mouths? Boy and a girl?”

Gus squinted in pained curiosity.

“A few people traveled through here matching that description. The men with them paid the toll, so we let them through. We operate a fair business practice here.”

Dark chuckles erupted all around. Boll scratched hard at his beard.

“You failed to see the signs on the road, which is why we shot your ass off the highway. Anyway, tell you what. You’re going to be our guest for the next while. If we get along, who knows? We might even let you go. Maybe even recruit you. Always looking for new talent.”

Then he leaned in, his eyes narrowing. “If we don’t get along, well… at best, we’ll kill you. At worst, crazy man Boll over there will kill you. Then skull-fuck you. Balls deep.”

Gus panted, heart kicking, positively terrified and not trying to hide it.

“So relax,” the speaker said and smiled warmly. He reached out and thumbed drying blood off Gus’s face, not so very sweetly.

“Hang in there…”

And hang Gus did…

Like a chunk of hairy meat under a cold sun.

His arms burned to the point where he suspected circulation had been restricted. He stood on the tire rim, the steel gouging its cold brand into the bare soles of his feet. Every breath of early winter, however brief or soft, felt as scalding as a whip.
Blood
, his mind confided in him.
Keep the blood moving
.

Gus had to smile at that.

He realized he hung from the tow truck only if he bent his knees. If he stood straight, he could lift his arms above his head a half inch and enjoy some slack—a finger of wiggle room—and he made the most of it. He twisted his hands, touching the coarsely woven fiber with nearly bloodless fingertips. The men ignored his struggling, confident that the bonds would keep their prisoner in place.

Gus had to admit they’d done a fine job.

Even if he could somehow claw his way free of the rope, his arms would probably fall to his sides like a pair of beef hindquarters. Then there was Boll’s cut, dried but stinging like a foot-long needle pounded into his skin and running a couple of hundred volts. His feet ached on the rim and had no relief there. Gus alternated between standing straight and hanging from his arms. Muscles he’d never known existed screeched with each movement. He tried separating his mind from his body, studying the area he was in. The overpass gang had parked their motor homes on a dirt-and-grass clearing. He craned his head around. The raised slope of the highway loomed just behind, with guardrails reinforced by wood and sheets of metal. Gun ports dotted their length. One lane led into the assembled ring of trailers, with a fire pit and an outdoor grill marking the center. Skimpy lawn chairs and more luxurious recliners rested near their owners’ homes. A small flatbed trailer housed a crude wooden shed, enough to protect its treasure from the elements. The low purr of a gas generator emanated from within. Power cables ran to the RVs. All in all, it wasn’t a bad setup in the least, as long as the gas lasted. Even Gus wondered how much longer the additives would prolong the life of the fuel.

Time slowed, so each shivering breeze seemed like a day. Hollers from the gang occasionally blotted out the creaking of the rope. Boll appeared, scratched his crotch––something which Gus could relate to––and retired to one of the wheeled homes, slapping the door closed behind him. Some of the windows were tinted and dark, but others weren’t, and Gus could see Boll glancing his way every now and again, just checking in.

Around noon, the other gang members retired to their Winnebagos for what Gus believed to be lunch. Harsh laughter penetrated the white and striped walls at times while his feet truly began to hurt while standing on the tire rim. He rested his head against one arm, shivering and enduring the knife-like pain in his shoulders, trying hard not to think of what provisions the gang members might have inside their luxurious walls.

By midafternoon, Gus started identifying the men other than Murray and Boll, through shouts and heated, out-of-sight conversations. Some walked past him wearing scabbards filled with knives, the edged weapons hanging off their hips like badges of terror. Sidearms were slung into leg or chest holsters.

R. J. Comeau was unquestionably the leader, and he wandered along the walls and gaps like a sidewinder with no rattle. He strutted, his head bobbing left and right with every step, leather jacket flung open and swinging, conjuring images of old gunslingers marking their territory—a manner Gus would have found amusing if he wasn’t strung up like a plucked chicken. When Comeau barked, however, the others obeyed, suggesting a history where someone might have been made a bloody example as warning.

Boll, however, reminded Gus of old episodes of
The
Muppet Show
and the character of Animal.

Nate Boone was a stick of an individual, resembling a walking cadaver who’d look more stylish in a mortuary sheet rather than the dusty denim tuxedo he wore. Gus couldn’t tell if his hair was naturally brown or just filthy from the perpetual dust cloud hanging about him. Boone had a steely six-shooter hand cannon strapped to his left thigh.

Whenever Boone came into sight, Gus’s attention fixed on that weapon.

Edgar made Gus nervous the moment he stepped into view. The man was another black-eyed hillbilly type wearing a blue bandanna with a screaming eagle in a tight tourniquet around his forehead. A bulbous mole protruded from the man’s right cheek, large enough that, at one time, Gus thought it was a healing gunshot hole. The only time he appeared, he did so with menace as he leaned up against one corner of the tiger-striped Winnebago and leaned back, folding his arms. He stood there and studied Gus, unnerving him—the way a diver caught in a cloud of blood might feel with a great white swimming around. That session ticked off the seconds until Gus lowered his head and closed his eyes, hoping the monster would be gone when he peeked.

The last was a midsized man called Prout, who might’ve been an overweight doughboy in a previous life. Prout wore the stupidest mohawk Gus had ever seen. None of the others made light of the gauche hairstyle, however. The guy seemed to be constantly picking his nose and flicking the results into the dirt. At lunch, he’d gone into his home, eaten, and emerged with a streak of yellow glop clinging to his sizeable beard.

Around late afternoon, with the shadows growing on the ground, Prout came down from the overhead pass and dropped into a recliner not ten steps away from the tow truck. He grunted loudly upon sitting, enough to get Gus’s attention. Prout leaned the chair back and pulled out a
National Geographic
that looked vaguely familiar.

Prout made a scene licking his thumb and started turning pages. His expressions morphed at irregular intervals, flowing from mild boredom to genuine interest. At one point, a look of pure
what the fuck?
covered his face, quickly followed by head shaking and more page turning.

In the end, he left his prisoner alone.

Sleep eventually took Gus.

“I said,
hey
.”

Gus lifted his chin and squinted miserably at Prout, who stewed in the recliner and regarded him like a schoolboy caught doing something he shouldn’t be.

“You asleep over there?”

His shoulders ached, and he couldn’t feel anything in his arms. “No.”

“Good. Y’know something?”

Gus exhaled, and that little movement caused agony around his shoulders. His urine-soaked undershorts burned his skin.

“I never much liked
National Geographic
,” Prout lectured. “Liked the pictures, y’understand, but if I had a choice, I’d go with something that showed a little more skin. A little more
bounce
. But, after all that’s happened through the years, and maybe it’s just boredom talking, but now I’m starting to
like
reading the articles. Never did that before. People change.”

People change. True words. Gus laid his chin back down and shifted the minutest degree, wincing as he did, trying to get comfortable or just to alleviate the stress in his shoulders or even his feet. He knew it wasn’t going to happen, though.

“You a firefighter?” Prout asked.

“Huh?”

“A firefighter?”

Where that question had come from perplexed Gus, and he wasn’t in the mood for a Q&A to begin with. “No.”

“You had that firefighter gear in your ride.”

“What?”

“I said, you had that firefighter gear in your ride. Great idea, in my opinion. I expect nothing could get through that hide. You know the same company makes Kevlar. The older suits weren’t as tough as yours, though. Yours is puncture proof––to a point, anyway. Bet nothing could bite its way through those layers when you had it on.”

Gus didn’t comment.

“You hear me?”

Gus did, but it was a single voice being heard over the twin loudspeakers of his shoulders. All he wanted was to be cut down or, if that wasn’t possible, just left alone. That was all he wanted at that point—to be left to his suffering in peace.

Prout’s face became drawn. He stood with a loud groan, making the recliner work. “Y’know, I’m gettin’ tired of your attitude. Try to be civil here, and you don’t have the time of day for me. I can take a hint.”

Footsteps approached Gus. Though his head felt like a fifty-pound bowling ball, Gus managed to raise it in time to see Prout’s fist connect with his stomach. All the wind left him, and he hung there, spiraling to the right, eyes squeezed shut and unable to breathe. Prout spoke then, but the words washed over Gus’s senses like rain speckling glass.

That earned him another punch to the gut.

Another followed.

Breathing hard, Prout stood back after teeing off and belting a salvo into his captive’s bruising midsection.

“What’cha doin’, dicky?” black-eyed Edgar rumbled, coming into the ring. “Havin’ some fun with the prisoner?”

Slit-eyed and nasty looking, Prout eased off and regarded the bandanna-wearing woodsman. “Cocksucker doesn’t want to be conversational, so I figured a few fists would get him talking.”

“Work any?” Edgar stopped alongside him and inspected Gus like a trophy kill.

“Can’t tell just yet.”

“Havin’ too much fun tenderizin’, huh?”

Prout nodded.

“You want him to talk, there are better ways than punching. Cracking him anywheres might do more harm than good. For example, slug him one in the nuts, and well, he won’t be chattin’ for an hour. Too sensitive.”

“Yeah, I thought so,” Prout agreed. “Why I hit him in the gut.”