The Gates of Byzantium

CHAPTER 6 JOSH

Pros and cons: What were they?

Pros: He was still alive. And so was Gaby.

Cons: They might not stay that way for very long. At least, not him. Gaby might last longer, but she might end up praying she were dead, too.

Conclusion: They were in deep shit.

Josh concluded that the slimy asshole with the white hair, Folger, was in charge. Or as in charge as five other guys with guns could ever allow one man to be. As Josh watched them interact throughout the day, it was obvious that while Folger considered himself the boss, the others didn’t really see it that way. Folger just happened to be the guy leading them at the moment.

He had woken in Gaby’s lap and known they were in trouble. It was less that he was in trouble and more that Gaby was in trouble. His life was at stake, and they could kill him at any moment, but that was just death. He was afraid to die, of course. Josh wasn’t some gung-ho dumbass who though he was invincible. But he was afraid more for what they would do to Gaby once he was dead.

Like it or not, she had chosen him to protect her.

I’m the guy…

That was clear when she gave him Matt’s gun. It was his job now to rise to the occasion, and Josh didn’t want to let her down. More than death, he feared failure with Gaby’s life at stake.

At the moment, there was a humming pain all over his face. He didn’t know how bad he looked until he saw the expression on Gaby’s face when he opened his eyes.

“How do I look?” he asked.

“Good,” she said.

“Liar.”

“Your face is a little bruised. He hit you with his gun. I think your nose is broken.”

I feel like half my face is broken.

That had been an hour ago.

It took a while, but he was finally able to fight past the pain and get his bearings. They were inside a semitrailer, sitting on a thick rug, though it took him a moment to realize it was actually just carpeting, probably pulled from someone’s house and repurposed. The trailer was wide and long — Josh estimated it was anywhere from fifty to sixty feet long — and about ten feet high (maybe a little higher). It was about ten feet wide from side to side. Josh had seen semitrailers being hauled around Texas all his life, but they had never looked that big to him. Now that he was sitting inside one, he realized how wrong he had been. It actually looked roomy.

His captors had transformed the interior of the semitrailer to be livable…ish. Besides the carpeting, there were small, Army-type cots along the sides, six in all, held in place by metal cables soldered to the wall. They could be folded up when not in use, like metal hammocks. There were boxes of supplies stacked all the way up to the ceiling in front and to the right of them, and a big rack with guns near the cots.

Not that Josh or Gaby could have gotten to the guns even if they wanted to. They were locked inside a cage like animals. The cage was barely three feet long and stretched all the way up to the ceiling, and from one side of the semitrailer to the other. It was padlocked, with the key hanging from a hook next to the gun rack. Josh guessed it was about ten feet away.

Too far. Way too far…

And they weren’t alone in the cage.

There was a woman inside with them. She was blonde and tall and wore a Dallas Cowboys T-shirt. She kept to herself, staying to one side of the cage while Josh and Gaby sat on the other. She had a bruised right eye and her lips were cracked. She stared at Josh like a cornered animal, ready to fight them, their captors — anyone. He didn’t want to think about what Folger and the others had done to her.

“Does she have a name?” Josh asked Gaby.

He said it just low enough so the woman couldn’t hear, but of course they were so closely packed into the cage she probably heard anyway.

“She wouldn’t say,” Gaby said. “I asked her a couple of times, but she hasn’t said a word.”

The woman stared back across at them and said nothing.

They’ve hurt her. The way they’ll hurt Gaby…

Over the last three hours, Josh had seen the men coming and going, their presence signaled by loud clanging of shoes against the lowered ramp at the end of the semitrailer. They left the back doors open because there was no point in closing them with Josh and the others locked in the cage. And in the day, it was probably too hot to keep them closed.

He counted six in all, including Folger. There was Del, the big guy with no neck. Then there was Betts, the one with the ugly scar who had been left behind to watch them. The other three were a medium-height guy with a dark complexion, a short man named Hiller, and finally Manley, who had cat-like eyes with slivers of yellow that made Josh shiver just a little bit whenever he caught a glimpse of the man. The others never failed to look back at Gaby, greedily drinking her in. Except for Manley. The man didn’t look back at her, and for some reason that unnerved Josh even more. You didn’t ignore a girl like Gaby. And if you did, you were up to no good.

They had left him his watch, a plain, ten-dollar Citizen that kept decent time. Right now it was 4:04 p.m.

At 4:30 p.m., Betts came over with three potatoes and tossed them into the cage. “Eat up. There ain’t more coming.”

Josh noticed that Betts had a radio clipped to his hip. The man turned and left without another word.

He was famished and grabbed the closest potato. It was baked and hot, and he almost dropped it. Gaby picked up hers while the woman just looked at the remaining potato, then watched Josh and Gaby break off chunks of theirs and feast on them. Apparently this was enough to satisfy her that the potatoes weren’t poisoned, and she picked up the third and final one and devoured the potato in only a few minutes, skin and all.

Josh sat back against the cold metal wall of the semitrailer and listened to his stomach rumbling. Gaby glanced over and almost giggled. Josh smiled back at her.

“We’ll be all right,” he said.

She nodded, but he didn’t think she believed him.

“I’ll get us out of here,” Josh said.

He was surprised by how certain he sounded and realized he meant it. She had put her faith in him, and letting her down, letting these men do things to her, would shatter that trust. He couldn’t allow it. He wouldn’t allow it.

He wondered how he was going to keep his promise, though.

Yeah, that’s the tricky part…

He figured out how he was going to do it — save Gaby, and hopefully himself, too — when he saw how Betts was looking at her when he returned to the semitrailer a few minutes after bringing over the potatoes. Betts swapped out his sweat-drenched T-shirt for a fresh one from a box of clothes stacked in one of the crates. Betts didn’t just show interest in Gaby, it was primal lust.

After Betts left, Josh said, “Do you trust me, Gaby?”

She looked at him, confused by the question. “Of course I do. What kind of question is that?”

“I can get us out of here, but I need you to trust me.”

“What are you going to do?” She looked frightened and he felt bad for drawing it out, but he had to be sure.

“You just have to trust me,” he said. “Do you?”

“Yes,” she said, even though he could hear her voice trembling slightly as she said it. “I trust you, Josh. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have given you Matt’s gun. What are you thinking?”

The other woman was listening, though trying not to make it too obvious.

Josh looked at Gaby carefully. She was still wearing the white cotton undershirt underneath the plaid long-sleeved shirt, along with the khaki shorts and pink sneakers. He thought it was amusing that even at the end of the world, girls still went for pink if there was a choice.

Gaby saw the way he was looking at her and frowned. “Stop staring, Josh, you’re freaking me out.”

“When Betts comes back, can you take off the shirt?”

“What? Why?” She looked almost offended by the suggestion.

“I promise, he’s not going to do anything to you. I’ll make sure of that.”

She stared at him, and he thought he knew what she was thinking: “Can you actually make good on that promise, Josh?”

He thought he could. Or maybe it was just bravado talking, a vain attempt to delude himself into thinking he could do something he had never done before in his life. It was going to be physical and tough, and he might get the shit kicked out of him. It was, essentially, something he had always avoided throughout his life.

But he couldn’t avoid it now, not if he was going to get Gaby out of here.

Josh looked back at her, summoning all the confidence in the world and pushing it onto his face. “I promise. He’s not going to do anything. But I think this is the only way we’re going to get out of here. We have to do it now, before the others come back.”

She didn’t answer him right away, but after a while — twenty seconds, maybe thirty seconds, he wasn’t sure — she finally nodded. “Okay. Now?”

“Not yet. When he comes back. He has to see you taking it off.”

“What if he doesn’t come back?”

“He will.”

She gave him another long, reluctant look, but then finally nodded. “You better be right about this.”

“I am.”

God, I hope I am.

To make this work, he couldn’t be near her, so Josh got up and moved to the other end of the cage and told her to move closer to the center, directly in front of the door. She gave him another odd look, feeling like some kind of meat being dangled in front of a lion, no doubt, but she did as he asked anyway.

The other woman continued to look on while still pretending she wasn’t. Josh wondered what she would do when it went down. Would she leap to her feet to help, or stay still? His plan didn’t really count on her pitching in, but he wasn’t going to say no to it, either. She was a fighter. He knew that much just from looking at her. But would she fight when the time came? Maybe…

He expected Gaby to start protesting at any moment, but she never did. Instead, she sat back against the wall and waited. It was disgusting and insulting to her, he knew, but it had to be this way. Josh knew intimately how men thought. He was one of the species, after all. Okay, maybe not a man yet, but almost a man. Man-ish. Still, he had been around enough of them to know what they said when there were no women around. He felt almost dirty knowing exactly what had been going through Betts’s mind the last time he had glanced over at Gaby.

They waited, but Betts didn’t show up. Josh could hear him moving around outside, so he was still there and hadn’t left them. He made a lot of noise and didn’t seem to care if anyone heard. But he didn’t come back into the semitrailer.

Josh glanced at his watch: 6:17 p.m.

This had to happen soon. It would start getting dark around eight, and sundown would come a few minutes after that. Maybe 8:20 p.m., or close enough. The others would also be back by then. Folger didn’t look like a stupid man, and he would have taken the clock into consideration during their supply raids around town. They would definitely be back before eight o’clock. Much earlier than that, probably.

Where the hell is Betts?

Just when Josh didn’t think he would ever show, there was a loud clanging from the ramps and Betts appeared, covered in sweat again. He stalked forward and went straight to the box where they kept their clothes.

As Betts did that, Josh looked over at Gaby and caught her eye and nodded quickly. Gaby shrugged off the long-sleeved plaid shirt and left it lying next to her. Without his prompting this time, she sat up straighter, accentuating her chest underneath her cotton T-shirt, and stared forward as if she didn’t realize what she was doing.

Josh tried to make himself as small as possible, shrinking into the corner of the cage. This was something he had mastered all his life — becoming less, even in a room filled with people. It wasn’t hard to do, you just had to commit. Josh committed now, and when he peeked quickly across the cage, he saw the other woman doing the same thing.

She knows, and she’s playing along. I might have some help after all…

Josh slipped his forearms over his head and looked down at the floor. There was dirt, strips of old clothes and grass, like they were sitting in a pigsty that had been re-used over and over again. Anyone who saw him would think he had drifted off into his own world; or better, had fallen asleep while curled up in a ball. Josh was using his ears to listen and his downcast eyes to catch shadows on the floor. It was a skill he had mastered over the years of middle school and high school, where eye contact with bullies was the same as challenging them to a fight he couldn’t possibly win.

It didn’t take long. After a few seconds, Josh heard Betts walking toward the cage. Betts didn’t say a word but stood outside looking in for a moment. Josh could see Betts’s shadow falling through the bars, and he could imagine the tall, scarred man staring into the cage at Gaby, raping her with his eyes.

Josh willed Gaby not to flinch, not to grab her shirt and pull it back on and run into a corner — anything to get away from what must be Betts’s searing glare at the moment.

Be brave, Gaby, be brave…

Then he heard Betts walking — away from them!

For a moment, Josh was certain Betts had seen through the trap, but then a few seconds later there was the jingling of keys and then Betts’s footsteps returning.

Josh prepared himself. He estimated Betts had about twenty pounds on him. Whereas Josh knew he would have no chance against Manley or Del, or even the short Hiller, Betts was another matter. Betts was all height and no width. Tall people, Josh had found, were ungainly and tended to lose their balance easily, especially those who weren’t athletically gifted. Josh figured Betts was one of those people. Or at least, he hoped.

If not…

Josh heard the sound of the cage’s lock turning, turning, and then click. Then the door opening, and Betts’s footsteps getting closer, and Josh saw Betts’s entire shadow moving into the cage, toward Gaby.

Be brave, Gaby, be brave…

He was sure she would scream, or get up and run away. But she didn’t. He could see her body out of the corner of his right eye, the point of her pink shoes as she sat on the floor, back against the wall, her arms at her sides. Inviting. He couldn’t imagine how much courage it was taking her to just sit there and look back at a man who had things on his mind that would horrify most people if he ever said them out loud.

That’s my girl. That’s my girl…

Josh waited for the right moment. He saw Betts’s shadow fall over the point of Gaby’s left shoe and could hear the fabric of Betts’s jeans constricting as he bent down into a crouch, one foot extended in front of him. Then Josh saw another shadow — Betts’s hand, reaching forward, toward Gaby.

And still Gaby didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t get up and try to escape.

Now.

He shot up from the corner like a rocket. Or at least, he liked to think he looked like a rocket, though in truth he probably looked more like a small bundle of clumsy hands and feet — or maybe a moderately sized boulder stumbling and fumbling its way forward. It didn’t matter how he looked or how convincing, it only mattered that he was moving.

He was on his feet and pushing forward before he lifted his head and saw Betts, who, sensing movement, turned suddenly in his direction. Josh saw the whites of Betts’s eyes as they widened in surprise, and Josh thought, Suck it!

He intended to barrel straight into Betts and knock the man off balance and drive him into the floor. Instead, Josh just barely clipped Betts’s shoulder, because Betts was standing up, moving much faster than Josh had expected — how could someone that tall move that fast? — and twisting at the very last second. Josh did manage to get a piece of Betts, and the bigger man spun a bit and lost his balance, even as Josh flew past him and landed in a pile, grimacing with pain as his body slammed into the hard floor, the carpeting providing almost no cushion at all.

No!

Josh was still on the floor, trying to get up, when he heard Betts grunting and felt the flailing of feet and legs and God knew what else behind him, because the entire cage suddenly exploded with violence.

It was Gaby. She was fighting with Betts. Josh was still trying to come to grips with his utter failure and Gaby’s attempts to save herself and him, when he saw a pair of feet rushing past him and knew the woman was joining the fray.

Oh, thank you, God.

After what seemed like minutes — though it was more like milliseconds — he finally found his footing and turned and saw Gaby, on her feet, whaling on Betts’s face, while the woman was on top of him, riding his back like he was a horse. The woman had her legs wrapped tightly around Betts’s waist and was raining blows down on his head. She was relentless with her attack, delivering a torrent of fists, her face twisted in unleashed fury. Not that Betts looked like he even felt them. If anything, he looked annoyed, and was trying to shake off the woman while blocking Gaby’s fists as she flailed at him from the front.

Josh gathered himself, took a breath, and raced back across the small space of the cage with everything he had. He picked up speed as he went and crashed into Betts. This time he got all of Betts from the side, and they went spilling — Betts, Josh, and the woman, who was dislodged by the impact and went flying through the air. Josh didn’t see where she landed, but he heard the sound of the cage’s bars rattling, and he thought, Oh, God, I hope I didn’t just kill her. Please don’t be dead, because I think I’m going to need you for the next few seconds.

Josh was on the floor again and trying to get back up for the second time, but he never got the chance. Betts was suddenly on top of him and Josh felt hands — and long fingers, such damn long fingers — going around his throat. He felt stabbing, intense pain, the likes of which he had never experienced in his life — and wouldn’t have thought was even possible — shooting through his entire body. Betts’s face, hovering over him. Up close, the scar looked more terrifying somehow, and Josh couldn’t help but wonder how he had gotten it, and if it had hurt. Maybe it had even hurt as much as Josh’s neck was hurting at the moment as Betts applied pressure and tried to choke the life out of him.

Then Betts seemed to loosen his grip, and it took Josh a few seconds to realize he wasn’t doing it on purpose. Gaby was standing behind Betts, hitting him repeatedly in the back of the neck, and each time Gaby pulled her hand back to strike again, it was covered with blood that got redder and darker with each stroke. Something shiny was glinting in Gaby’s fingers, and Josh recognized the key to the cage. Gaby wasn’t hitting Betts, she was stabbing him in the back of the neck repeatedly with the key.

Josh saw Betts’s eyes start to roll in their sockets and felt his fingers lose strength. Finally, Josh was able to break free. He scrambled to his feet as Gaby staggered back, her right hand covered in thick gobs of blood, the key gripped between two of her fingers with the point sticking out like a weapon. She met Josh’s eyes, and for a moment he wasn’t sure if she was afraid or horrified or indifferent. He wanted to reach out and comfort her, but there was no time for that.

Instead, Josh turned back to Betts, who was kneeling on the floor slightly slumped over, blood gushing out of four — five — holes in the back of his neck. He was in shock and didn’t seemed to be moving, but Josh could hear him moaning. Josh gathered as much strength as he could and lifted his right leg and brought it forward into the side of Betts’s head. The man’s entire body careened over sideways to the cage floor, where he lay shaking, staring accusingly up at Josh and Gaby.

“Come on, we have to go,” Josh said as he grabbed Gaby’s left hand, the one without all the blood (he wondered if he had done that on purpose?) and led her through the open cage door.

But then Josh stopped and hurried back inside, rushing over to the other woman. She was slowly pushing herself up from the floor, and he could tell she was hurt and dizzy from the blow she had taken when she flew into the cage bars.

“Come on,” Josh said, holding out his hand to her.

She stared at his hand, then at him, and he could see her mind reeling, trying to decide if she could trust him, trust Gaby, trust someone other than herself right now. She finally made up her mind and grabbed his hand, and he pulled her up. She was a lot heavier than she looked.

They rushed through the cage door. Gaby was waiting outside. She had dropped the key and was clutching her arms around her chest, trembling noticeably.

“Come on,” Josh said, and started through the semitrailer.

“Wait,” the woman said, and Josh turned around and saw her heading for the gun rack. She grabbed a handgun off a hook — it looked like one of those black plastic guns that Folger had used to hit him — and snatched up a couple of magazines.

Good idea.

He hurried over. The rack was filled with an obscene amount of weapons, from the kind Folger carried to big rifles that looked like they probably weighed more than he did. Josh had never seen weapons like that in person, only in the movies, and they looked almost as difficult to use as they probably were to lift.

Then he saw it — Matt’s silver chrome revolver. And nearby, Matt’s backpack. Josh grabbed both items, shoving the gun into the backpack, then grabbed a couple more guns nearby, including as many magazines as he could scoop up with one hand. He didn’t even know if they would fit the guns, but they were the same color and, well, he could find out later.

He saw Betts’s radio, sitting on the box of clothes. Josh grabbed it, too, and when he looked back, he saw the woman was walking toward the cage, toward Betts, and knew what she was going to do.

“No,” Josh said.

She looked back at him, bloodlust in her eyes. She wanted to kill Betts. She was going to kill Betts.

“No,” Josh said again. “The gunshot. They’ll hear it. We need all the head start we can get.”

She was probably expecting a different argument, but what he said took her by surprise and, to his relief, she nodded back.

Josh picked up the key Gaby had dropped. It was still covered in blood and clumps of flesh and hair, and it made him a little queasy just to touch it. He hurried over and locked the cage. Betts was lying on his side on the floor, probably dead. It didn’t look like he was moving at all, and there was a big puddle of blood underneath him.

“Let’s go,” Josh said, moving through the semitrailer.

The damn thing seemed to go on forever. When they finally reached the opening, Josh stopped and held back his hand toward the women. They both stopped short and waited as he stepped down the ramp, just far enough to lean around the corner. He expected to see Folger or maybe Manley standing outside. God, he hoped Manley wasn’t out there — the guy scared the shit out of him. They all did, but Manley was the worst, with his reptile eyes.

But there was no one out there.

The semitrailer and the big rig that pulled it sat inside a wide and mostly empty parking lot under the baking sun. He recalled the layout of Lancing from the last two weeks he and Matt had spent looking for supplies. The parking lot was part of the city’s municipal area, with a courthouse, a city hall building, and a public library behind him. The street out front led toward North Main Street, where the city’s business area resided. That was probably where Folger and the rest were at the moment.

“Okay,” Josh said, and the women hurried down the ramp after him.

They weren’t that far from the house he, Gaby, and Matt had stayed in, and where Folger had caught them. It was about a block down to their right. The same house that a turned Matt probably still haunted. Or maybe Folger had gone down to the basement to kill Matt (again). If you could even kill them once they turned.

“Where are we going?” Gaby asked, when they were all in the parking lot.

Lancing was a decent-sized city with about 12,000 people. Homes were spread out, intermingled with businesses. Across the street in front of them was a row of private homes. More, mostly older ones, were spread out to their right, and he remembered a subdivision of newer models about a mile north.

“Josh?” Gaby said, sounding anxious when he didn’t answer right away. “Where are we going?”

“The business district’s that way,” Josh said, pointing to his left. “Folger and the others are probably there now. That’s where I’d be if I was raiding for supplies. We’ll go in the opposite direction. There are lots of new houses there. We can hide out in one of them.”

Josh began jogging up the street and the two women followed. He glanced at his watch: 6:25 p.m.

“What about a car?” the woman said. She was keeping up with him just fine. In fact, she wasn’t breathing hard at all, while Josh and Gaby were already out of breath. “We can use it to get out of here.”

“It’ll be dark soon,” Josh said. “We’re better off staying here until morning.”

“But won’t they find us again?” Gaby asked.

“There are hundreds of homes here. The area we’re headed to has about a hundred of those in a thousand-foot square block. They’re not going to search all of them, not before nightfall. We can figure out what to do in the morning.”

That seemed to reassure them enough that neither Gaby nor the woman argued.

After a few minutes of walking, Josh led them across the street and through a wooded area where they couldn’t be spotted from the roads. He kept them on a straight path until they emerged into an open spot with two sprawling lodges to their right. Josh remembered debating with Matt about whether to try their luck inside the buildings just a few days ago.

Sorry, Matt.

They crossed the lodges’ big yards, brushing their way through its overgrown grass, and finally arrived at the subdivision. Homes were spread out from one end to the other, like identical toy buildings. He led them farther inside, passing two-story houses with dry concrete swimming pools in backyards and unmowed lawns that reminded him of jungles instead of a neighborhood.

“Look for a house with a basement,” Josh said.

It took them thirty-five minutes of running from home to home, peering through windows for signs there were creatures inside, all the while keeping an eye on the sky for nightfall and their ears open for any pursuing cars. Eventually, they found a home that met their needs. It had a basement they could access through the kitchen, and Josh saw solar panels winking on the roof.

He led the women into the house through the back door, their guns out. During their long walk over, Josh had discovered that Matt did have a box of bullets in the backpack, and he had reloaded the revolver. They entered the kitchen and almost jumped for joy when they reached the basement and he discovered the door wasn’t locked.

Josh pushed opened the door and peered inside. He did his best to keep his hands from shaking, though it was incredibly difficult. The lightbulbs were dead, of course, but there was enough light coming in from a window the size of a shoebox along the back wall that he could see about half of the basement.

“Stay here for a moment,” Josh said.

“Be careful,” Gaby said.

Josh went down the stairs slowly, the gun in front of him. Suddenly he remembered how many bullets he had shot Matt with and how Matt had just kept coming, and the gun didn’t feel so good in his hand anymore. He sucked it up, though. Gaby and the woman were watching him. But especially Gaby. He had led them here; now he had to make sure it was safe, even if he had to use himself as bait.

I’m the guy, and this is my job.

I’m the guy…

He reached the bottom of the stairs, then walked to the center of the room and…waited.

He didn’t speak or move, but looked around him at the dark patches where sunlight couldn’t reach.

There was nothing. No movement. No sound.

God, please don’t let there be anything in here…

After about two minutes, Josh breathed a sigh of relief and looked back up at the women. “Okay, I think it’s safe.”

Gaby hurried down first while the woman closed the basement door and locked it. They used the light from the small window to navigate around the room, looking for things they could eat. Josh found an old case of bottled water covered with a thick coat of dust near the back. He tore the plastic wrapping and handed bottles out.

“Keep hydrated,” Josh said. “It’s fine now, but it’s going to get really hot down here when the sun comes back out tomorrow.”

The woman took the proffered bottle. “Sandra,” she said. “My name’s Sandra.”

“I’m Josh, and that’s Gaby.”

“Nice to meet you guys,” Sandra said.

They settled down on the floor with their bottles of water. Gaby sat down next to him and struggled to lift the bottle to her dried lips. Her hand, the one still covered in Betts’s dried blood, was shaking badly. After a while, she managed it, but some water splashed on her shirt, which was already peppered with specks of blood.

They couldn’t find a single thing to eat, not even to nibble on, and their stomachs began growling. No one said a word as the light outside faded and the basement turned pitch black. After a while, Josh couldn’t even see his own hands, much less Gaby sitting next to him. He couldn’t locate Sandra across the basement from them anymore, though he heard her breathing.

Sometime in the night, Josh felt a hand touch his in the darkness. The contact came out of nowhere and momentarily alarmed him, until he remembered she was sitting right next to him. Gaby twined her fingers with his and squeezed, and Josh felt his heart skip a beat.

“Josh,” she whispered.

“Yeah?” he whispered back.

“You did really good back there.”

“You, too.”

“You’re the guy.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He smiled in the darkness. Gaby’s hand, in his, felt good. More than that, it felt right.

I’m the guy…