The impact was much greater than Cullie’d expected. His front tooth splintered as it hit the rock and he let out a grunt of pain as his nose and lips were dragged across the stone. He coughed hard and tried to roll over, but before he could, John was on him. The man pulled hard at his good foot and yanked his shoe away. A second later the maniac pulled what was left of his other shoe from his other foot and Cullie almost blacked out from the exquisite pain. While he was still trying to recover from that, John reached out and pulled at his belt until it came loose. Then his pants and his underwear were next.
Cullie bucked and panicked, convinced that the man was going to rape him. He imagined the pain and humiliation and screamed, pushing with good leg and bad alike to get away from the mad man standing naked above him in the cold waters. John’s bare foot slammed into the small of his back and knocked him back down, half drowning him before the man moved away from him.
“You stink, Landers. You smell as bad as you look.”
“You get away from me you sick fuck!” Cullie’s voice broke and he started pushing up from the water again, desperate to get away from the madman he knew was going to sodomize him.
“Not a chance.” John reached out and grabbed the back of his jacket, pulling hard. Cullie was lifted half out of the water before the ruined material let out a rude noise and fell away from him, dropping him once more into the rapidly swelling run off.
“Oh God! Please!” He was crying again, as John came closer, the knife that Cullie’d been ready to use on him now held casually in his left hand.
Cullie looked over his shoulder in stark terror, ready to do anything this man wanted him to in order to avoid what he knew was coming.
The smile had left John’s face, and the rain that fell was beginning to stick in his hair, to freeze there. He dropped down on his knees behind Cullie and grabbed his good leg, clenching his fingers and digging deep into flesh. Cullie tried to kick with his other leg, but it lacked the strength to stop his attacker.
Without another word, John brought the knife around and in two deft strokes had cut a circle around Cullie’s ankle. Cullie shrieked again and tried to pull away with the strength of his arms, but the blade had done to his good leg what the monster’s teeth had already accomplished on the other side. He lacked the power to escape.
John leaned back for a second; his face a little pale, and shook his head. “I know what you’re thinking. You think I want to fuck you. You’re wrong.”
Despite his situation, the panic level lowered itself a bit, and Cullie crawled forward a few paces, solely because John let him.
“If you were the only woman left on the planet and looked like a Playboy Bunny, I still wouldn’t want you that way.” John stood again and came closer, his flesh shivering in the cold.
“You just relax yourself, Cullie Landers. This is gonna’ hurt.” He moved forward again and this time when he grabbed for a limb, it was Cullie’s left arm. Cullie fought, he swung with his free arm and kicked as best he could with both of his legs. John pinned his left hand in the water and ignored the blows, barely even flinching when he was struck in the side of his face.
Then he started cutting, tearing through the tendons in Cullie’s wrist with ease. “Figured you deserve what you did to my girl, Landers.”
He slapped Cullie with a savage backhand that knocked the wind right the hell out of his sails and moved to grab his one unmarred limb before he could recover.
Cullie screamed all the louder as the blade cut skin and tendon again.
John sat back, panting from his efforts, and stared hard at him for a moment.
“Make you one last deal, you sick fuck. If you can get up and walk away when I’m done skinning you alive, I’ll let you alone.”
Cullie kept screaming until he blacked out.
George heard every sound, every scream that echoed through the woods, and he did his best to ignore them.
He knew that somewhere downstream, Cullie was dying, and he ground his teeth together, wishing he could shut out the sounds.
Cullie had fallen across the waters in the gulley by accident; George found them deliberately, hoping that the frigid stream would mask his scent. He’d seen at least a dozen movies where it worked for prisoners, but never had a reason to test whether or not it really had any affect, at least not until now.
At a guess, he’d made it around half way to where he needed to be. The rain was coming down too hard for him to even consider looking at the map. All he knew was that they’d used a cross to mark whatever the final destination was supposed to be.
He didn’t allow himself to think or strategize; he refused himself the luxury of panic. He simply ran, doing his best to forget everything that had happened back in the woods when he’d let them do what they did to the girl.
Instead he focused his attention on the simple task of moving one foot in front of the other as the cold sapped his energy and the freezing rain fell on his balding head and clothes. It was all he could do if he wanted to survive, and he wanted that desperately.
What had started as rain and moved into freezing rain continued to change, falling slower now, as a mix of hard ice pellets and snowflakes. He kept sloshing through the water, breathing hard and doing his best not to fall on his face in the growing current.
Cheryl would hate him, of course. Even if he lived through all of this, he knew he couldn’t keep her in his life. There was no doubt in his mind that one or more of the monsters would have told her why this was all happening. The one in charge struck him as exactly the sort that would enjoy the theatrics of telling her the gory details.
“No one to blame but yourself, George. Just you remember that.” He spoke to himself, a habit he’d picked up a long time ago, when he decided it was time to get help for his anger issues.
At age fourteen, he started letting himself go, and got into a lot of trouble at school. It was seldom a week went by without him getting into it with someone. By sixteen, he wasn’t just overreacting to situations anymore; he was starting a lot of the fights. By his second semester in college, he decided it was time to do something about his rage. He hadn’t just hurt a kid he decided to fight with — he’d hospitalized him.
When the fight was done he turned himself in to the authorities and faced the consequences of his actions, not because he felt he was in the wrong exactly but because he was afraid of what he might do the next time he lost his temper.
George caught his foot on a loose stone and fell into the water, landing on his ass. Any hope he’d had of keeping his privates warm was immediately destroyed, and the cold that had been gnawing at his flesh sank teeth deep into his bones as he rose from his fallen position.
He thought about heading for the shore, but still liked his chances better down in the water. That decision didn’t make moving in sodden clothes any easier and neither did the chill that refused to leave him.
He’d gone another hundred or so yards when he was first aware of the lights up ahead. Red and blue strobes started splashing the trees and the ravine alike and George stopped for a second, completely shocked by the sudden light.
After a moment he realized there was a bridge up ahead, nothing fancy, but still an unexpected surprise. It didn’t take him long to realize there was a road running through the area, but he couldn’t remember seeing it on the map of the area and he wasn’t about to check at the moment.
The bridge looked like an old concrete piece from the depression era, complete with rusted guardrails, one of which had been ruined. A black shape that strongly resembled the silhouette of a small car’s front end could be seen dangling over the side, along with the mangled railing. It was from behind that particular obstacle that the lights originated.