Spilled Blood

14

Lenny Watson slid down onto the wet ground in the dilapidated shell of an old Milwaukee Road railway car. Water dripped through the rusted holes in the steel roof and landed in splatters around him. The dirt of the railroad bone yard was littered with twisted sheet metal. He had a book of matches in his hand, and he lit one, letting it burn down, watching the painted graffiti dance on the walls inside the train car. When the flame grew hot on his fingers, he tossed the match into the mud, where it fizzled with a gray trail of smoke.

He touched his face and winced. The deep cut stung where Olivia had scratched him. It oozed blood again as he felt it. His fingers came away sticky, and he sucked them clean like a vampire. He was bare-chested and cold in the darkness. He hugged his knees to keep them from trembling.

Awful noises assaulted his ears as the boys dragged Olivia toward the abandoned freight car that sat on dead-end tracks thirty yards away. He’d been inside many times with Kirk. It was windowless and pitch-black. There was nothing but a square hole on one end where you squeezed your body in and out. When they’d explored it for the first time last summer, there had been a homeless man living there among the rats and roaches. Kirk had beaten the shit out of him, and he never came back.

Olivia couldn’t scream; they’d gagged her. Her cries escaped from her throat in wild, muffled lilts of rage and panic. He thought about shouting. Or singing. La la la la la la la la. Anything so he couldn’t hear her.

A huge shadow loomed near him, and he heard breathing. He lit another match, and Kirk’s dirty, rain-slick skin flickered in the light. The bent triangles of steel on the corroded end of the train car shell looked like teeth in a shark’s mouth, ready to bite his brother in half. ‘Last chance, Leno,’ Kirk said.

‘No.’

‘I told the others you wanted her first. You’re making me look bad.’

‘I can’t.’

Kirk spat in a puddle. ‘What, are you scared?’

‘I just don’t want to.’

‘You’re a pussy, Leno. Sit here and jerk off for all I care.’

Lenny listened to the angry crunch of his brother’s footsteps as Kirk stalked toward the train car. He forgot about the match in his hand, and it sizzled down to the nub and scorched his thumb. He cursed.

‘Get the bitch inside,’ he heard Kirk call.

Guilt ate a hole in Lenny’s stomach. His body ached to go with the others. He wanted her so badly, but his brain screamed at him. Stop this. Save her. He dreamed of clawing the other boys away from her and rescuing her like a hero. It was a stupid dream. Lenny was no hero. He sat and did nothing. He squeezed his eyes shut and tightened his hands into fists. He wanted it to be over and done. He wanted it to end.

He had Olivia’s cell phone in his hand. It vibrated in his palm and rang, playing a song by Lady Gaga. ‘Bad Romance.’ Her father was calling, hunting for his daughter. He let the call go into voice mail. He flipped open the phone and stared at a photo of Olivia on the screen saver. It was a serious photo; she was in profile to the camera, hair blowing across her face, eyes closed. He flicked his thumb to look at her other photos and recognized most of the faces. Kimberly Magnus, laughing for the camera, even though she was bony and bald. Tanya Swenson, up to her neck in the Spirit River. Picture after picture of Johan Magnus, as if he were a GQ model. Johan in a black leather jacket in the corn fields. Johan poised on the railway bridge in St. Croix. Johan near the slats of the church bell tower, with divided sunlight making stripes on his face.

And then: Olivia herself. Naked. She was in her bedroom; Lenny recognized it. She’d used a tripod. She stood near the window overlooking the river, with darkness behind her. She was skinny, and her skin was china white. She had small rose nipples on the tips of her breasts. Her mound was curly and light brown. She stared into the camera with her mouth slightly open, as if she were trying to make a clumsy seduction. Her eyes had a fragile innocence. He didn’t know what boy had received the photo, but he could guess. It was Johan. He wondered if Olivia was still a virgin or if she had let the minister’s son make love to her.

Seeing her nude felt private and intimate, but he couldn’t enjoy it, not when she was so close to him, in the old train car. Crying. Resisting. Fighting back against the boys intent on mauling and punishing her. He knew she couldn’t see. She could only feel them holding her down. It was seven against one, but she struggled like a warrior. Still fighting. Not giving in. The battle was so ferocious that Lenny could hear the thump of her body slamming on the steel floor of the car.

She was being destroyed.

Stop this.

His thumb hovered over the phone. He caressed it, leaving sweat on the keys. He squeezed the green telephone button with his thumb and scrolled to the most recent call, which was labeled simply as ‘Dad’ on the caller ID. He hesitated. If Kirk found out, his brother would beat him senseless. Lenny was terrified of Kirk’s explosive temper. When Ashlynn dumped him, Kirk had given Lenny three broken ribs and a dislocated jaw.

He listened. Olivia still fought the boys, but soon there would be no more struggle, no more resistance. There would only be silence and surrender. He couldn’t bear to hear it. Not from her.

Lenny pushed the call button.

Christopher Hawk answered on the first ring. ‘Olivia?’

‘She’s in the railroad bone yard south of Barron,’ he whispered, disguising his voice. ‘Hurry.’

Chris heard the police sirens wailing, getting closer and louder as they converged on the hideaway where Olivia was being held. He turned off the northbound highway, but as he bumped across an unsigned railway crossing, two trucks ran him off the dirt road. Their high beams blinded him, and mud splashed across his windshield. He could have turned and chased them, but he had to make a life-or-death bet, and he bet that these boys would have left Olivia behind in a race to save their own necks.

He let them escape.

He sped into the abandoned rail yard, which sprawled over several hundred yards of parallel tracks. His headlights lit up decaying shells of freight cars, painted with stripes of orange and red. They’d been gutted; some were overturned. Other train cars lingered on weed-covered tracks, as if they had been dropped there and forgotten. Swirls of spray paint marked the metal walls. The ground was strewn with railway ties and broken glass. The railroad had moved elsewhere and left its detritus to rot.

He drove into the heart of the ruins. The land around him was flat and huge. He was surrounded by dozens of train cars, like a cemetery for giants. He got out and took Glenn Magnus’s flashlight with him.

‘Olivia!’ he shouted. He listened for any sound, any clue, to where she was. He shouted her name again. ‘Olivia!’

Chris followed the nearest tracks, swinging the flashlight ahead of him. He wiped rain from his eyes. At each train car, he pointed the light inside the hollowed-out windows, illuminating garbage and rats. He looked for tire tracks from the trucks, but the gravel was so rutted and uneven that nothing looked fresh. He called again, but Olivia didn’t answer.

Distantly, above the growing scream of the sirens, he heard music. What the hell was it? It stopped, and then it started again, and then it stopped. He realized the music was a ring tone for a cell phone, but it went silent before he could pinpoint its location. He stepped across more tracks, cutting between hulking slabs of corrugated metal. He thought to himself: Whoever called me used Olivia’s phone. He yanked out his own phone and dialed his daughter’s number. He held his breath, waiting.

The music began again, not even thirty yards away, an annoying staccato beat. He shifted the flashlight in that direction like a spotlight and ran. The music got louder, and he saw the phone, dropped in the gravel, glinting in hot pink as the beam found it. He stood directly over the phone and spun in a circle, lighting up the ground, looking for her.

‘Olivia!’

The sirens became a deafening roar as half a dozen squad cars rumbled off the dirt road. Headlights criss-crossed the bone yard. He was happy to have the police here, but he wanted silence to hear his daughter answer his cries. If she was conscious. If she could call to him. He checked inside two passenger cars, shining his light through dirty, cracked windows. A police searchlight caught him in its glare like an escaping prisoner, and two voices shouted at him. He squinted into the beam and waved them closer. ‘Here! Over here!’

Chris saw another freight car set apart from the others at the end of a track circle. It was untouched by the elements, with riveted steel walls. The only access was a small rectangular hole at the rear of the car. In the glow of the flashlight, something on the ground near the tracks caught his eye. It was a Nike shoe. Pink, like the phone.

Olivia’s shoe.

He sprinted. At the freight car, he used the metal handrail to pull himself onto the bumper near the access hole. He cast the light into the dark interior. Blankets lined the floor. He saw bottles of beer and porn magazines. With his head and shoulders thrust inside, he smelled a powerful sweet aroma of marijuana, concentrated in the closed space. He swung the light, seeing torn clothes strewn around the interior. Fragments of a T-shirt. Jeans. Socks. Panties ripped in half.

He heard a low moan, and he snapped the light toward it. There she was. His baby girl.

Chris reared backward from the car. He was bathed in the tunnels of numerous searchlights, and when he shielded his eyes, he saw half a dozen shadows racing toward him. He waved both hands frantically.

‘Over here! She’s in here!’

He threw himself inside the freight car. The metal floor rumbled and boomed as he crawled toward Olivia, who lay on her back, ten feet away. Her eyes were closed. Her long brown hair covered most of her face. Her body was badly bruised and scratched, but he saw no blood on her skin. When he touched her shoulder, she kicked spasmodically; her fists beat against his chest. She was too weak to hurt him.

Chris wrapped her up gently in his arms. He pulled a blanket over her skin to warm her. ‘Shhh,’ he whispered as he held her. ‘I’m here, it’s all right.’

She struggled, but she had little fight left. He hung on, hearing voices, seeing the beams of light invade the freight car. He stroked Olivia’s hair and continued to whisper to her softly, reassuring her. Help was coming. Help was close. She was safe. It was over.

He didn’t tell her what was really in his heart. The raw intensity of the emotion churning in his body scared him and tasted like acid in his mouth. It was hatred. He wanted nothing but revenge against the boys who had done this to his child. He wanted their throats in his hands. He wanted them dead.

Hatred.

That was the real disease spreading through this town, and he’d caught it. He wasn’t an outsider anymore. He was part of the war.