The clan scouts who came this far told us of a complete breakdown in morality and law. They saw acts of human depravity to leave one shuddering in one’s boots.
She looked at the catwalk again with the monocular.
I sure as hell can’t fight off a large group of men bent on rape and murder, no matter how much Kung Fu training I have. I need to use the Scout Way, the way of concealment, the way of survival.
She climbed back up, and retrieved her gear. Moving to the beginning of the catwalk, she found her way barred by a rusty metal mesh gate, secured with an even rustier padlock. There was barbed wire hanging limply above the chain links that she might be able to climb over. It was, of course, rusty. Looking closely at the lock, she saw it was in very poor shape.
Ghost wind reached into her haversack, and after rummaging around for a moment, drew out a bit of craftsmanship she had created while staying with Lila. It had once been a ball-peen hammer, but using a small makeshift forge, she had beaten it into a hatchet and hammer combination tool.
Carefully aiming at the old padlock, she waited for a strong and loud gust of wind to rush though then struck with all her strength with the hammer. The ancient padlock’s shackle shattered like poorly fired ceramic.
There now, that wasn’t so hard. Things are looking up!
Carefully, slowly she pushed open the creaky gate, wincing at the noise it made. The catwalk stretched ahead and through its metal grid flooring, she could see the ice chunks floating down the river. She ventured tentative steps onto the elderly walkway, and when it seemed solid, began her crossing.
She was halfway across when bolts started snapping.
The first one sounded so much like a gunshot that she thought her imagined sniper had found her under the bridge. When she heard the second, the entire catwalk lurched and she knew she was in trouble. Ghost Wind began to run.
She heard Jannelle’s voice in her head.
Move from the hips, glide! Up and down motion will tear the catwalk loose even quicker!
The warrior scout moved as she had been trained from a young age, not wasting motion, gliding forward with her hips as she ran, keeping low. It wasn’t enough. The walkway lurched under her again, as more bolts snapped and began to separate from the bottom of the bridge.
Jannelle’s voice came again,
Go girl, go! GO GO GO!!!
She was fifty feet from the end of the bridge when the section she had just moved onto tore loose. The snapping of bolts above her was like a twenty-one gun salute and her section slowly began to separate from the bridge, like a loose thread. The end she was on began to dip towards the river, forcing her to scramble using both hands and her feet to keep moving forward. In a few short moments, she was clawing at the deck, climbing towards the next section. Ghost Wind could see only five bolts still held the entire weight on the section she was on.
Great Spirit, please don’t let me die here! I’m not ready!
As if to mock her, the wind began gusting again, and the broken catwalk began to sway. She climbed, hanging on with hands covered in only light leather gloves, her moccasin-covered feet barely able to find toe-holds in the grid floor. She had almost reached the edge of the next section when a particularly vindictive gust of wind hit the bridge and she heard the remaining bolts of her section part all in one loud explosion of sound as her perch began to fall.
Shiiittt!!
Ghost Wind threw herself toward the next section, landing on her ribs and breasts as the section she was on began its terminal descent into the cold Columbia River. Breathless and in pain, she turned her head to see it plummet end over end, hammering down in a huge wave-making splash that sent small tidal waves towards the riverbanks.
So much for the way of stealth. I wonder how much attention THAT will attract.
She inched her way onto the new section and carefully ran the remaining distance to the end. There was a door on this side also, but no lock and Ghost Wind was through and into the tall grass and brush without hesitation. Once into concealment, she waited, watched and listened for the inevitable surge of enemies looking for her.
Nothing.
She sat for an hour, senses on high alert and no one came. Finally boredom drove her to climb up to the pavement to find where the snipers might be hidden.
No one.
It seemed that when 80 percent of a world’s population was destroyed by a man-made plague, keeping someone in ambush on a bridge in the middle of nowhere, was not an effective use of time. The area was deserted.
The wind carried a groan to her as if to prove her wrong. It was faint and for a moment, she thought she had imagined it but as she scanned the southern horizon, she saw some sort of structure, roughly a half mile away. Carefully pulling out the prized monocular, she glassed the area. The structure seemed to be a big wooden X, out in the empty sagebrush lands.
And there was a man hanging from it.
Don’t get involved.
For all she knew, the man hanging on this X-shaped implement of torture was a mass genocidal murderer, and helping him might be the biggest mistake she ever made.
She dropped to the level of the sagebrush and moved in closer.
He looked awful. He was a muscular dark-skinned man, but he was covered in bruises, cuts and what may have even been a few stab wounds. If he hadn’t moved feebly a few times as she approached, she would have assumed he was dead and passed by him.
He was supported to a slight degree by a board that his feet would just fit enough on to keep him from tearing loose from the cross, but it was probably small comfort.
A crosswind came up, and Ghost Wind realized they were not alone out here, the tortured one and herself. An overpowering scent of body odor came from the southwest, near a small hill and she also caught a whiff of campfire smoke. She decided to see if she could shed light on the situation. She dropped her gear into concealment, taking only her big rough-hewn knife, and wove through the sagebrush.
The camp contained two men, both as filthy as she had ever seen. She was very thankful she was no closer than the top of the small hill, as she knelt in the tall sagebrush.
Oh, I know your kind.
Had she been nearer the two men, she was quite sure the smell from them would have brought tears to her eyes. Men like this often formed the slavers and kilabyker gangs her people had been so invested in keeping at bay.
“I’m tellin’ ya, Lester, we should’ve just gutted that fucker. He’s dangerous as hell, man, and we’ve been tryin’ to get Mr. Boy Scout dead fer a damn long time!” One of the men was gesticulating wildly at the other, obviously in a passion over what he was trying to get across. “It was fun as hell to hammer him to that cross, man, and fun as hell to beat on him for a hour or so with the rebar, but he’s strange. He still might come back an’ get us somehow.”
“Fat chance o’ dat, Benny,” the other replied. “But let’s finish makin’ these spears, and we’ll use ol’ the law dog as chuckin’ practice. That oughtta give us a bit more fun and make things final for our dear Captain Shit Head. Good by you?”
“Yeah. Good. I owe that guy, and paybacks are a bitch.”
Ghost Wind had heard all she needed. Now, should she help, or just keep going and mind her own business?
****
He had been hanging for what seemed like years.
I wish I could flippin’ die, already. Soon though…
His hands and his feet throbbed from the thick rusty nails driven through them, and the other wounds he had suffered at the hands of his captors weren’t helping him manage the pain.
To think I’m going down at the hands of those two dickheads.
Eli stared down at his leg. As horrific as the wounds from the bear trap were, they were trying to do their thing and heal, at a rate that would astonish the common man. But the sheer number of injuries he had sustained at the hands of Lester and Benny had drained even his ability to heal. If he didn’t escape soon, the great experiment would end very badly.
I think this might be it.
Unfortunately, he was far from his peak performance level. Usually, he might have been able to pull out the nails securing him to this god-awful Greek cross, painful as that might have been. Usually he was a lot stronger than he looked, but now, he was weak with pain, injury, dehydration, hypothermia and hunger.
He looked over the landscape of sagebrush and juniper toward Mt. Hood to the west. Maybe when he died, his spirit would wander over its snowy slopes, free from this pain, free from duty, free from worry.
Assuming he had a soul. There had been a lot of debate about that.
As his head drooped, he saw the woman standing right in front of him.
“What…? Who? Where the hell did you come from?”
She didn’t answer. He was sure she hadn’t been standing there a few moments before, and he saw no way she could have come through the knee-high sage and bitterbrush to sneak up on him.
He began to laugh weakly. “Oh, I get it. Hallucinating. And wow, did I come up with a wonder.”
He looked his fever dream over. She was tall, looking vaguely Native American and was wearing an outlandish outfit that looked half wool and half skins and fur. To top it off, she had some sort of coyote-hide draped over her shoulders and his imagination even managed to provide her with a livid scar over one side of her otherwise beautiful face.
She continued to stare at him, not saying a word, as if making a decision.
“Oh criminy. I want to get off here so bad, I’m imagining rescuers.” He laughed.
“Be silent!” she hissed. It was a rather cheeky thing for a hallucination to say, he thought. He watched her bring out what looked to be a small hatchet married to a hammer head and a small wooden strip that she carefully worked under the spike driven through his right foot. He began to feel a little nervous.
Looking up at him, with her intense blue eyes, she said, “If you scream, those men will come back, and I will slip away and leave you here. Do you understand me?”
He nodded uneasily.
“Do you need something to bite down on, to stifle the scream?”
He wanted to tell her it would be a cold day in hell before this torture would make him scream.
But this sure seems like hell, and I’m damn near hypothermic.
He nodded again, and she took a small limb she had been carrying, reached up and gently placed it between his teeth.
“Prepare yourself.”
The jolt of pain that shot through him as she began to lever out the spike with the hatchet quickly convinced him he was NOT hallucinating. He managed to choke down the involuntary scream to a strangled high-pitched gasp. Tears started from his eyes, and he tried to remember if it had hurt this much when the bastards had driven the spikes in.
It took her a while, using her crude tools, then there was a squeak as the first spike pulled out, followed by blessed relief as the pressure on his foot ended. The spike fell to the ground with a muffled
plong
and he breathed rapidly for a few moments while the wolf woman waited for him to master himself. She looked at him questioningly, then looked at the spike through his left foot.
He nodded. She went back to work.
The next two spikes were not any easier, but she methodically kept working at them and soon he was supporting his own weight on the two by four Lester and Benny had used for a platform to nail his feet to. She was working on the last spike, when her head suddenly turned to the west and her gaze swept over to the hill his captors had their camp behind to get out of the wind.
“What is it? Did you hear something?”
She reached out a finger, flecked with his blood, and put it to his lips.
Message understood; going silent.
She dropped back to the dirt without a sound and snatched up the three spikes. Moving like a gust of wind, she ran to the sagebrush, crouched down and within a few seconds seemed to simply disappear.
A few moments later, he heard his captors returning from their campsite. Though they had left him fully exposed to the wind and elements, they had seen to their own comfort by setting up a couple hundred yards to the south, in the lee side of a small hill. And why not? They certainly didn’t think he was going anywhere but to a shallow grave.
No, scratch that. They certainly weren’t even thinking of going to the effort to pull him down and bury him. That would be too much like work. No, they’d just leave him for the turkey vultures, to just stay where he was ’til his empty skeleton collapsed to the dust.
Gonna be a little surprise for you boys.
He carefully moved his feet back where they had been and hoped that Lester and Benny wouldn’t notice the spikes were gone through all the blood left on them. From the little the young woman had said, he doubted she was going to get any more involved than she already had. Hopefully, what she had done would be enough. Had he been at full strength, he knew he could rip out the last spike with pure brute effort and no tools. The way he felt now, he wasn’t quite so sure.
His ratbag tormentors walked up, and Eli’s heart sank. Both of them carried makeshift spears, made out of saplings, cordage and pieces of sharpened rebar. They could lance him, or maybe they had decided to have a contest. Either way, they could do it from a distance.
“Betchew I kin hit him, first try.” Benny laughed.
“Sure, yer barely fi’teen feet away,” Lester drawled, “Any pusseh could do that. Try it back there another ten feet, by where the brush ends. Hit ‘em from there, an’ I’ll be impressed. Not that I think there’s a bat’s chance in hell ya could do it.”
“Fuck you. Watch dis,” replied the ever eloquent Benny.
Lester moved to the side and looked up at Eli. “Sadly, boy, this is gonna have to be the end o’ our fun. Me an’ Ben got a meetin’ to make with the Sharks down near LaPine. But I do want ta thank yas for comin’ after us and steppin’ in our bear trap. It saved us a whole lotta time and worry that you might catch us when we wasn’t prepared.”