One Minute to Midnight (37 page)

"What happened to us? Where's Doug?
Damn, my head hurts like a bull kicked it."

"Those crazy men took him. I think the
one who knocked you out is their leader." Susie said. She had been
crying and her voice was muffled.

"What's up with Jackie? Are you hurt?"
Rob asked.
His hands were free and he could stand up. Through the gaps in the
wall slats, Rob could see a single streetlight shining down on
several dilapidated tin roof houses outside. There were oil barrels
lined up next to each other and stacks of wooden pallets leaning
against a building.

"I don't know, but they beat her
pretty bad with a bat. Jackie freaked out when she saw what they
did to Doug and she wouldn't stop screaming. She hasn't moved since
we were thrown in here. And I'm tied to the floor and a steel pipe
behind me or I would have checked on her." Susie said. She had her
head against the wall. Rob walked over and began to untie her with
a racing heart and growing dread. He freed Susie's ankles and then
went around to untie her wrists from a steel pipe behind
her.

"What happened to Doug?" Rob asked.
She was quiet for a moment.

"After that dude hit you in the head,
three of his buddies came out of the woods and grabbed us. Doug
tried to struggle, so one of them stuck him in the neck with a big
knife. They killed him, Rob. Right in front of us, and I think
they're going to do the same thing to the rest of us."

"What the hell? Doug's dead?" Rob felt
a sickening twisting lurch in his stomach.

"We have to get out of here." Susie
said.

Rob walked over and shook Jackie
gently, but she didn't move. In the dim light, it was hard to tell
whether she was awake or not, so he knelt down to try and get a
look at her eyes. Her head was a mass of contusions from the
beating, and her long brown hair clung like a wet mop to her face.
Rob reached out, and with the caution of a kid who knows he is one
spin away from launching the jack-in-the-box, Rob moved her hair.
At first it was hard to tell her condition, but when his eyes
focused he could see that she was staring straight ahead and her
eyes were glassed over.

"She's dead." Rob said and began to
cry. Susie was crying as well, but she stood up and put a hand on
his shoulder.
"Rob, those assholes are coming back here any minute and are going
to put an end to the two of us, especially if they find out I'm
untied and you're not dead like they thought." Susie
said.

Rob looked down at Jackie's body for
another second, remembering how beautiful she was and thinking
about how her mother was going to take the news that her daughter
was slaughtered by back woods red necks. Then he got
mad.

"Let's move. Do you remember which way
they brought you in?" Rob asked. He bumped into a table behind him
and looked to see there were three long fish filet
knives.

"I think so, they hit me on the head
and thought I was out cold, but I played possum and they left me
alone after tying me up." She said. They walked out into a small
corridor that led to a ramshackle door hanging off its hinges. The
floorboards creaked beneath their feet, making it difficult to
sneak out. Muffled voices could be heard outside as the two held
their breath and put their backs against the wall. Two men were
talking outside the building and they could smell cigarette smoke
through the building slats.
"Jedidiah said wec’n eat tha girl layin’ in thar n’ then come on
back fer tha rest o’ them bitches!" One of them laughed. Rob looked
at Susie with growing anger.
He tiptoed back into the room they had been held captive in, and
picked up one of the knives, and gave another one to Susie. He cut
his eyes at her and then to the lifeless body of their friend lying
on the floor. Footsteps could be heard coming across the wood plank
porch, and a moment later one of the men opened the door. Rob
motioned for Susie to stand on one side of the doorway, and made a
swiping motion with his knife, telling her to attack when ready.
Rob could feel his heart beating in his ears as he stilled his
fear. Susie was just as scared, and she had never killed anything
larger than a cockroach, but now she was fighting for her life and
preparing to do what she had seen in over-torqued war
movies.

"Bobby, you gotta’ be more effective
when we carjackin’ people. I mean, dude, we gotta eat, an’ these
folks ain’t always easy to catch." Said one.

"Well, I stuck that one in tha neck!
Bled out like a pig. He’s gonna’ be good eatin’, too."

The one in front came around the
corner and it was still too dark for him to see that there were two
captives missing. Rob put up a finger to Susie to wait, and then
once the other man entered he nodded. With silent and quick
movements, Rob rammed his knife blade down in between the man's
collarbone and neck, and with the instinct of a killer he grabbed
the man’s head, pulling him backward while slicing his neck. Susie
was quick on her feet and as the man in front turned she moved
forward sticking her knife up through the bottom of his chin. The
blade got stuck as she attempted to pull it out, and as blood
gushed from his wound, the man walked forward like a zombie trying
to grab her. He reeked like stale urine and body odor. Rob dropped
his guy to the floor and with a violent haymaker swing, and rammed
his knife into the other man’s temple dropping him with a
thud.
"We have to drag these guys out of sight. The others may come
looking for them any minute." Rob whispered.
Susie helped him drag the two lifeless corpses into a small
door-less closet area and stacked them on top of each other. One of
the dead men had a revolver on him, so Susie grabbed it and put it
in the waistband of her jeans. Rob picked his Santa hat up off the
floor and placed it back on his head.

"We need to find a car, or my truck,
and get the hell out of here." Rob said.

"Are you serious? Those hicks would
find us out there in the swamp and kill us, before either eating us
themselves or feeding our bodies to the alligators." Susie
said.

"What do you propose we
do?"

"You didn't see how they killed Doug
or how hard they beat Jackie with that bat. It was totally uncalled
for, and there's no telling how many other people these degenerates
have killed along the way." Susie said.
"We kill em'." Rob said. Susie nodded back with fire in her
eyes.

Susie pulled the gun out of her
waistband and checked it for rounds; she had five of six chambers
full, so she handed her knife to Rob, increasing his count to two.
With one in each hand, he centered the Santa hat on his head,
making sure not to cut himself and the two peered around the
corner.

There were three houses outside the
building they had been kept in, and the single streetlight in the
center of them threw shadows like a vampire movie. There was a
light coming from one of the houses, so on fleet feet they crossed
the distance and hid under the window. Rob took a look inside and
saw an old man sitting in a rocking chair watching television on a
black and white TV, the rabbit ears hanging off the back, twisted
and rusty with age.

"How many of them did you see when
they attacked us on the highway?" Rob whispered.
"There was that guy, and the other two we just killed, but I have
no idea how many more there are." Susie replied.

Rob looked around to see
if he could find better cover and got a closer look at the barrels
he had seen earlier. The word
PETROLEUM
was written on the
side.
"We have to draw them out to see how many there are. Besides, I'd
like to burn this place to the ground and everyone in it." Rob
pointed toward the barrels.
The scraggly bearded guy who had hit him with the axe handle came
out of one of the houses across form where they were hiding. He was
walking alone from the house across the dirt yard toward the one
they were standing beside, and was drinking a beer. Rob and Susie
ducked down further into the shadows and saw another man exit the
house scraggly beard had come from. They were both sure he had seen
them as he looked their way, but he kept on walking and entered the
house with the old man. Rob made a rash decision after that and ran
toward the house where scraggly beard had come from, both of his
knives held at his sides as if he were a winged bird and not a
running man. Rob threw caution to the wind and entered the front
door, closing it behind him. To his left was a woman in her
mid-fifties watching TV as she cut pieces of meat and put them in
freezer bags. The smell of rotting flesh was stronger in here, and
heavy metal was playing on a small stereo. Rob recognized the song
was To The Threshold by Hatebreed, and when he saw what the woman
was cutting, he was enraged with the fury of a thousand jungle
animals. His friend’s head had been dismantled like a junked car,
and it was almost unrecognizable.
Doug's head was on her TV tray table and what she was tossing into
the bag were parts of his brain and eyes. Without a sound, he stuck
a blade in her neck, and with the other he stabbed her in the
sternum. The old woman lurched forward in her pain and surprise,
further gouging herself on his weapons. He pulled one knife free
and as he was preparing for another attack, a man in overalls ran
from the darkness of an adjoining room with a shovel in his
hands.
"You som' bitch! You goan die!" He screamed. Rob froze in fear for
a split second, and it would have been the end had Susie not come
through the door at the exact time the man was passing by with the
shovel over his head. She knocked him backward as the door thumped
him in the face and knocked him onto the ground.
"Shut the door!" Rob screamed. He ran toward the man and kicked him
in the face. The pain in his foot from connecting with the man's
skull exploded like a nerve bomb, and even his rage could not
completely deaden the experience.

"You're the one who's gonna' die. You
people are monsters!" Rob stuck the man in his stomach, and then
again in the right arm as the man brought his left fist up,
slamming Rob in the face.

Rob toppled over, bashing
his skull against the wall and saw stars in his eyes as he
struggled to maintain consciousness. The first hit to his head with
the axe handle had given him a serious concussion. Rob got to his
feet and stumbled around the room while Susie grabbed the shovel
and thrust the pointed end into the man's neck, grimacing in her
own world of horror as she did. His neck made an audible
pop
and he fell
backward, clutching his throat like a drowning man. She followed
through and hit him again, knowing that in horror movies the
monster always got up one more time to come back at the dumb girl.
Susie hit him in the bridge of his nose with all her force, and
ended the fight.

"If you get back up, I’ll deserve what
I get!" Susie said. She heard moaning coming from the room the man
had rushed from.

Rob looked down at the woman and took
his knives out of her, spitting on her corpse. Then he kicked her
chair over. Susie walked into the dark room, and in the low light
she made out the form of a person on the far end of the room. There
was no evident light switch nearby, so she walked forward, removing
the pistol from her waistband, ready to fire. When she got closer,
she realized the person doing the moaning was a little boy about
seven years old, and he had been chained to the radiator pipe. This
little boy was emaciated from malnourishment and his clothes were
rags. His hair was also ratty and he smelled like puke.

"My god! What have they done to you?
Who are you little man?" Susie asked. The boy began to cry.
"My name is Derrick Smalls. They took my parents and chained me in
this room. I don't know where my mom and dad are. Can you help me
find them? I asked them where my mommy was and one of the bad men
told me she's in the soup, but my mom's pretty tall and I don't
think she'd fit in a bowl." Derrick said.

Susie wanted to cry for him, but it
would have to wait until they were free, and she was going to help
him escape. She unchained him from the pipe and helped him to his
feet as Rob looked out the window to see if anyone was on to them
yet. His head hurt and he was dizzy, like it would after too many
drinks. Susie saw Doug's head on the small table and vomited.
"Yeah, babe. I know. These people are not done paying for this."
There were tattered curtains beside the window, so Rob took out his
Zippo lighter and set them ablaze. They immediately ignited,
sending a column of flames up to the ceiling in seconds, and it
would not be long before the run down house would crumble like a
house of cards. A bottle of whiskey was sitting on a cabinet across
the room.

"Ten High Kentucky? Jesus Christ, what
the hell are these people drinking?" Rob smashed the bottle over
near the man and then lit the puddle.
Susie was holding Derrick's hand in one of hers, and in the other
one her pistol. Rob looked out the window once more and could see
three people in the dirt yard pointing at the house and coming
toward it.
"How good a shot are you?" Rob asked.

"Pretty good, I guess. Daddy's a
competition shooter and he taught me, but I've only ever shot at
targets."
"Can you hit those barrels across the way over there? I'm too
dizzy." Rod asked.

"Sure!" Susie said.

Flames were all around them now, and
the people outside were almost to the front porch. She knelt down
at the sill, and took aim through the half opened window. Her first
shot rang out like a bomb, taking the red necks completely by
surprise, and although it struck home, she only opened a hole in
the side of a barrel and fuel spilled out on the ground. She fired
again, and what happened next looked like a Hollywood movie set.
The barrels blew, sending liquid fire and shrapnel into the small
crowd outside. People were running around and screaming as burning
petroleum turned them into human torches.
"Let's go!" Rob said. He was stumbling a little and slurring
words.