Linc might be able to work the knots free or grind the rope against the tree until it wore through. If he had a few hours and nobody was watching.
But he had stopped. He'd gotten out of the car. He'd picked a fight he could not win. And now he sat helplessly. Waiting. Waiting and wondering how death would feel. For himself. For his wife. For his son.
“I think I prefer a slow death by knife and then I'll go relax with your wife,” jeered Shane.
He tossed the power supply unit into the undergrowth. It tumbled into the downy shoots of a mulberry tree, clustered with red and black drupes. Red and crunchy and bitter. Black and bursting with tarty sweetness.
“After all, you've proven to be quite creative and we wouldn't want you finding a way out of those ropes, would we?”
"You'll get yours, you piece of shit. You'll never get away with this."
"Really?" Replied Shane.
"If a commercial airliner can be vanished without a trace, disappearing your little family will be no trouble at all don't you think?"
"Bullshit. That was the Arabs. You pack of losers couldn't hide a Redneck in Alabama."
"Let's just keep it our little secret then shall we?"
He was making things up as he went. Must be. He obviously enjoyed the banter.
Linc leaned his head against the tree and waited for the inevitable. They say anticipation of torture is worse than torture itself. Maybe that would be true if Linc had been the only victim.
“Where shall we start?” queried Shane. “Let's get this shirt off. My knife prefers skin to cotton.”
Shane ripped Linc's shirt open and took the knife from a sheath on his belt.
“Let's start with my signature,” said Shane. “You belong to the ROA now.”
Shane paused. Waited for a response.
He wasn't going to get another one. Not going to give him the satisfaction of engaging with him again.
“Not feeling talkative now? Never mind. You will soon enough.”
Linc stared at the three large letters carved and skinned from the body opposite him and waited. He would not give this prick the gratification of screaming. He wouldn't make a sound if he had to hold his breath until his heart exploded.
Shane dug the tip of the knife in at the top of Linc's right pectoral muscle and drew it slowly down in a straight line. Linc exhaled and clenched all the muscles he could find in his chest and throat so his vocal chords would not betray him. The burn spread. Prowled his chest toward his lower ribs.
He'd always thought his tolerance for pain was high. Now he would find out for sure. He wondered how long Shane would drag this out. How long did he have left? How long did Angie have? And Ryan? Long enough for chocolate chip cookies to go stone cold? Long enough to pick through another picnic lunch without him? Long enough to call the office in the morning after he never showed up? Again?
It was a strange feeling, knowing for certain that he was going to die. Regret for all his mistakes. Disappointment for all the things not said. The things not done. The things he would never do again. Never again telling him the pain of a skinned knee would be gone soon. The hair on his neck never prickling again when she slid that nightgown over those curves. Never again making a mess of a fresh loaf of bread at the park because he forgot to bring a decent knife. And the vanished glimmer of denial and hope that somehow he would escape. But overriding all of it, the grief. The tearing in his chest. His wife and son. How could a place so filled with beauty, a place that roused such memories of joy, be so devoid of hope?
“This part is gonna smart a little,” said Shane with a lusty glint in his eye.
He leaned in for another stroke and concentrated on the knife. Guiding it carefully from the original starting point, perpendicular to the first line as he formed the top of the R.
Shane moved his head toward Linc's left shoulder, bent on drawing the tip of the blade around a perfect "R". Was that tumeric and blue cheese? Whatever, it was something to focus on other than the pain. Linc drew his head back. Away from Shane's breath. Away from the pain. And then he knew his survival was a certainty. Angie's survival. Ryan.
He stretched his neck back, to its full extension. He whipped his head forward and drove his boney forehead with all his strength. Felt the crunch and squelch into Shane's fleshy left temple.
Shane's jaw jerked open. A yell, truncated. Just a grunt. He toppled forward dragging the knife along Linc’s chest like the scrawl of a child's red crayon.
Linc focused his eyes as best he could, blurred from the numbness in his throbbing head. He trapped Shane's knife under his heel and dragged it towards himself. He tried to pick it up with his left foot. Clumsy. Inept. He forced off his shoe with his right foot and gathered the blade between his toes. He grappled the knife from his bleeding toes and into his right hand and began to saw at the rope.
He sawed and sliced and eventually felt his shoulders releasing against popping strands of nylon until he was free. He kneeled by Shane. His stank breath was heavy and automatic and his pulse was strong.
He tried to scream in Shane's ear. Pop his ear drum with rage. But there were no words that would do. No words could express. Just a strangled sob. Instead he collapsed. His adrenaline gone, his strength deserted him. He lay on his back in the grass and the damp earth as if it would swallow him and wash him clean. Joy welled in the corners of his eyes, rising against his eyelids like a levy overwhelmed. His tears dripped and vanished into the soil like threats that had never been spoken, like death undone.
A few well placed steel edges to the knees and ankles would cripple Shane easily enough. He'd never hurt anyone this way again. Leave him here. Let him feel the hate. Let him crawl home, he seemed like a survivor. But he knew Linc's address. He knew where Angie and Ryan lived. Where to find them when Linc was not around. Where to send his stooges to do his wet-work.
His malice wanted Shane kept alive. Make him suffer. Let him live a hard, crippled life. Not give him the easy way out. But keeping him alive was a death sentence for his family.
Somehow the knife did not seem right for the job. He groped under the Mulberry tree and retrieved the power supply. The sticky red surface was matted with leaves and twigs and smelled like mulberry jam. But it still weighed the same. The edges just as firm.
Linc never remembered what happened next. Only that his burgeoning fury was gone at the end. Shane's head looked like a porcupine pressed by eighteen wheels of a Mack truck. No distinguishing features.
He searched Shane's pockets. Found some keys. Searched again until he found his wallet and checked the contents. Nothing was missing. No clues for surviving gang members. His identity safe. His address secret. His family protected.
He started back toward the road. To the collection of bikes. He figured Shane's motorcycle would be easy to identify. Bigger. Shinier. More extravagant. The rest of his crew would ride plain bikes. Everybody must know who was boss.
He caught his foot on a thick branch and fell. Caught a face full of leaf litter. As he rose he realized why he was having such trouble seeing. Why the woods were darker than before. Blander than before. He wiped his forehead and face and cleared the layers of spattered blood and brain from his vision, taking care to push shards of bone away from his eyes.
Blue-green bluntly pointed tips of Concolor firs whipped his arms. Colors seemed deeper. His shoes plowed furrows in a veil of red and yellow, orange and green. Contrasts more intense. Raw leaf litter. Iridescent. Even the squirrels chattering in the oaks seemed more resonate. His vision was cleared. But it was more than that. Like the rest of his senses had been fortified too. Like cleaning the dust off a favorite oil painting. Dust, built up over years. Eroding exquisite colors and textures and tricks of light until even their memory is flat. Then purged and revealed again. More bewitching even than the first time it cast its spell.
By the time he'd finished scraping Shane's flesh from his hair he was standing next to the row of six motorcycles. The nearest ha
d a looping pair of chopper handlebars, bright blue flames running the length of the machine and more chrome than other bikes. He turned the key and it started.
He found a bungee cord on the rear saddle bag and tied the power supply unit to the luggage bar, taking care not to scratch the bike. He would remember to congratulate the IT boys for their choice of hardware.
Linc opened up the Harley Davidson, its rough and throaty roar surged through him. He bumped across the verge, turned onto the blacktop and accelerated toward the highway, a freedom washing over him as the bike gathered speed. The wind scrubbed his eyes, his ears, his mouth. The thump of each piston seeming to chisel away fragments of lingering anxiety.
A dot by the roadside grew to the young woman, still scarcely clad. Linc eased off the throttle and allowed the decompression in the bellowing oversized cylinders to slow him to an idle. Her agitation shrank as he approached.
“You okay?” called Linc over the motor.
“Thanks,” he thought he heard below the V-Twin engine.
“You saved my life.” The walk had given her time to calm down.
“Good thing I arrived when I did,” said Linc, rumbling beside her.
“Where did your friend go?” she replied. “He almost got us both killed. What an ass.”
“Not the first time Harry’s been called that,” said Linc.
"Where are the bikers?"
"They've been decommissioned. Hop on. I’ll take you