Cynthia remembered that not that long ago, John had been a stranger himself. And he wasn’t a monster. He wasn’t a cold-hearted killer. He was a good man. And so was Max. And there was Georgia, Mandy, and many others. They’d been good people. Surely there were other good people out there.
“I was going to try to drag him to my camp,” the man was shouting. “That’s why I’ve got him tied up like this. I couldn’t wake him up no matter what I tried. I didn’t know what to do.”
That part of the story checked out. There was a rope trailing from John’s body, just the way Cynthia would have done it if she’d needed to drag an unconscious person across the snow.
“Come on! We don’t have much time. He looks really hurt. Do you have any medical training?”
Cynthia wanted to believe. She was dying to believe the stranger. And maybe she’d die for it.
She walked towards him, slowly. She slung the gun over her shoulder, and drew her handgun. She felt more comfortable with it. She kept it aimed at the stranger, who kept his hands in the air.
Finally, after what had felt like an eternity, she was there, standing mere feet away from John and the stranger.
The stranger had a kind face, flooded with concern. There was something odd about it. But she couldn’t place what it was. Something incredibly minor. Something that didn’t matter. Not now.
She could feel herself making up her mind. John looked like he was in bad shape. She needed to help him. She needed to trust this stranger. It might be the only way that John would survive.
It wasn’t until Cynthia was very close that she noticed something strange about the way John was tied up. His legs were bound together, as if he was a prisoner.
Cynthia acted rather than spoke.
But the stranger was already moving towards her. He was fast and strong, moving like lightning, quickly closing the gap between them.
Cynthia squeezed the trigger. There wasn’t time to aim properly. She did the best she could.
The stranger grunted in pain. She’d hit him.
But he kept coming. He was simply too fast.
He was tall, appearing massive in his white parka. His expression seemed to have changed. The last thing Cynthia registered was the realization that the stranger had been acting. The whole thing had been a ruse, from his voice right down to his facial expression.
His face now only showed intensity and cruelty. His face was so close to hers. Everything happened so fast.
He was swinging something at her, right at her head.
The gunshot hadn’t seemed to affect him. It hadn’t slowed him down.
Something hard collided with Cynthia’s head. It knocked her out cold immediately.
30
John woke up with searing pain rushing through his throbbing skull. His body felt stiff with the cold. He could barely think, let alone think straight, with his throbbing headache. It was worse than the one migraine he’d had in his life, and that migraine had kept him out of work for two days.
John tried to move. But he couldn’t. His body was responding, but his legs and arms seemed to be tied together. He strained against his bindings, but it was absolutely no use. He couldn’t move an inch.
He lay on his back. The ground was uneven and cold. Slowly, he opened his eyes. He was staring straight up to the sky. He could see some naked tree branches stretched out over the sky. The sky itself was cloudy and grey.
Where was he?
What had happened?
He tried to think. Where had he been last? What had been doing?
The last thing he could remember was leaving the camp early in the morning. The light had been just rising. Or so he thought. The memory was fuzzy. His whole brain felt hazy, and he felt nauseous and dizzy. His thinking wasn’t clear. It was hard to hold onto one thought for too long.
What had he been thinking about? Oh yeah, he’d been trying to remember what had happened to him, trying to figure out why he was bound and lying on the ground.
He’d left with someone. There’d been someone else, someone he cared about. He tried to get his brain to focus, to remember, but it was like trying to run that last mile of a marathon.
Suddenly, it came to him. Cynthia had been with him.
Where was she now? And what had happened in the meantime?
John knew he needed to act rationally. Even if he couldn’t think rationally, he could still do something. He’d been complaining, and perhaps hurt, thinking that his brother Max didn’t have the answers. But in the last week he had learned something important from Max, which was that no matter what, there was always something helpful to do, some action that would get you to a better place than when you started. No matter how hopeless things seemed, there was always something to do, something to try.
Not that John could really think thoughts like that now, remembering what his brother had told him. Instead, it was an attitude that he’d internalized over time.
It hurt immensely, but John managed to turn his head to the side, so that his cheek was pressed into the snow.
There was a man not far away. Only a few feet. He seemed familiar but John couldn’t place him.
He opened his eyes wider, trying to see, even though the extra light only seemed to make the pain worse.
“Ah, you’re awake. Good.” The man spoke in a strange way, with a strange cadence.
“Who are you?” said John. His voice came out scratch and raspy. How long had he been unconscious? Maybe he was dehydrated. Just speaking those words made the pain in his head worse.
“Who am I? That’s a complicated question to ask anyone. I mean, who are any of us?”
It took John a moment to process this strange reply.
“No, I mean. Who are you? And why do you have me tied up like this?”
“You mean you don’t remember me?”
“No,” said John, the words causing him more pain.
The stranger had been facing slightly away from John. Now he turned fully towards him. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, and one of his shirt sleeves was missing. It looked like it’d been cut off. Bits of frayed cloth hung down.
The man had some kind of wound, right below his shoulder, where a tape bandage covered the flesh.
John was so cold it was hard to imagine that the stranger could stand the temperatures without a jacket.
“Well this is a strange development,” said the stranger. “This is going to… ruin it a little for me…”
“What? Ruin what?”
“I’ll have to explain everything to you, I suppose. Otherwise, you won’t understand what’s going on. Who knows how badly I damaged your brain. I wouldn’t worry about it, though. You won’t need it for much longer. The principal thing is that you can get the idea into your head that I’m about to torture you. It’s going to be painful. As painful as I can possibly make it. I want you to fully understand that fact. Otherwise, you’ll just be some incoherent mess of pain. And that doesn’t really do it for me. Not at all.”
John’s confused mind was reeling. He understood everything well enough to know he’d soon die.
Unless he could find a way out.
He thrashed against his bindings. But it accomplished nothing. Nothing at all.
Cynthia.
He’d left with Cynthia.
Where was she?
“Where is she?” said John.
“Your friend? She tried to save you. But I tricked her, and she didn’t realize what was going on until it was too late. You’re all the same, all of you. Your feeble minds are so easily fooled by a sign of faked emotion. I just don’t understand it. And I never will.”
John watched as the man snorted something from a small plastic card. Maybe it was a credit card, nothing but a relic of the pre-EMP world.
“Don’t worry about this little injury,” said the demented stranger. “Your friend tried her best, like I said. It was worth it to me to receive this injury, if the trade-off was going to be that she lived. At least for a little while. This won’t slow me down. Not in the least bit.”