Despite the numerous NO TRESPASSING signs he encountered, Michael Washington walked in the direction of the buildings. He respected other people's right to privacy as much as the next guy, but lost was lost. Although it wasn't exactly an emergency, these people would have to be sympathetic to a person being lost.
Surrounded by thick forest, his only indication that he was nearing the small farm were these posted threats which occurred with an increasing frequency. When eventually he met with a sign that read PASS AT YOUR OWN RISK, he began to wonder what kind of people these were. He was no stranger to the occasional news story of the survivalists, racial extremists, and psychotic killers who hermited the woods of the Northwest. The warnings were quite explicit; perhaps it was a better idea to just move on and avoid the place. Obey the signs. But Michael Washington was too practical, too logical to pass up a chance to establish his location. He wasn't after a ride. He didn't need help. All he needed was the slightest indication on the map of where the hell he was. He stood in front of this final warning for only as long as it took the light rain to start up again. That did it! He was going to find his way out of here if it was the last thing he ever did.
It was.
The structure was thirty feet long and about as wide. At the far end, rain leaked in across the poured-cement floor. The canopy of corrugated metal that arched overhead reminded the woman of an airplane hangar. Rain beat down on it like hailstones. Her ears rang from it. She had awakened in a cage-a dog pen, she now realized by looking around. Constructed of chain-link wire mesh and galvanized pipe, the cage appeared to be about eight feet long by four feet wide, and too low to stand up in. There were dogs in nearly all the cages. She was naked, lying on a brown burlap sack. She had no idea what time it was, who she was 'where she was, or what had happened to her. Some kind of nightmare. The reality of her situation slowly seeped in. She remembered the two men in her house. She remembered the needle in her arm. She tried to sit up. Pain screamed from her side; her arm tangled in an I.V. tube. She recalled a devastatingly bright light and another warm surge of drugs. Again, she tried to sit UP, the pain even more intense. Her hand fell to her side, and she felt the bandage there. Panic overcame her. Dogs. A cage! Naked. There was a bucket behind her, a roll of toilet paper alongside of it. Against the wall, an automatic waterer. The IN. bag was clamped to the overhead wire of the cage. Drip, drip, drip: She could see it feeding her. She rolled to get a better look at the bandage. It was several inches long, redness seeping into the skin around its edges. She felt overtaken by a sudden burst of nausea, rolled to her side, and vomited.
Had she awakened before this? She couldn't remember. She felt completely disoriented. There was nothing here that fit into her reality. it was almost as if this were happening to someone else. She really had believed it to be some kind of intense nightmare at first, one of those in which everything is too real, tactile, painful, and emotionally all-encompassing. But there was no question as to the reality of her situation. If she had awakened prior to this, her situation had not taken hold. Only now, as the dogs began stirring in their cages, as the pain in her side reached an excruciating level, did she begin to grasp her circumstances.
She began to collect herself. There were eight adjacent cages against each of the Quonset hut's two long walls, a cement aisle separating them. The building's only door was to her right. Her cage was sandwiched between two others that were empty. At the far end of the building, to her left, a cage was stacked high with sacks of dog food. Across the aisle to her left a gas heater suspended from the high ceiling emitted a warm wind which blew directly onto her. Perhaps, she thought, that heater explained her placement in this particular cage.
She counted twelve dogs. Some of them carried partially healed scars. She felt dizzy at the sight of those scars. A kennel? She sat up, slowly, overcoming the pain, driven by the need to get out of here. There was a weight on her neck. She grabbed for it, tugged, but it was thick and heavy. A collar of some sort. Only now did she realize all the dogs were also wearing such collars. Big collars, with a heavy black lump attached. She knew what that lump was-a battery; she understood the purpose of these collars. She pulled at it again; her fingers touched a small padlock-it was locked around her neck! She panicked. She crawled on hands and knees over to the chain-link door and grabbed hold. Her collar sounded a brief electronic alarm. It failed to register on her mind as a warning, instead, invoking further panic. She shook the cage door violently.
A jolt of electricity flashed from her neck to her toes like scalding water. Pain as sharp and severe as any she had known. She let go, fell back, and cried out at the top of her lungs.
The dogs leapt to their feet in unison and barked so loudly, so vehemently that it deafened her. Sharon Shaffer clasped her hands to her ears and screamed again, tears pouring from her eyes. The dogs roared on.
Perhaps this was hell, she thought. Perhaps she had died and gone to hell.
As Michael Washington tentatively entered the clearing that held a cabin and a Quonset hut, he heard a sickening cry that cut him to the core. A woman' It was immediately followed by the vicious barking of dogs, but he felt almost certain that he had heard a woman. Perhaps it was nothing more than his active imagination, he thought. He had, after all, only minutes before been thinking about the weirdos who lived in places like this. One of the newspaper stories that lodged in his mind was that of a father and son who had kidnapped a woman backpacker, keeping her in chains, raping and torturing her until authorities finally raided the camp. Had he merely projected the terror of that story onto what he had heard?
Or was there a woman trapped in there with a bunch of dogs?
He broke into a run. A minute later he reached the far end of the structure. The building's only door held an enormous padlock. Locked, with dogs inside? Why? He banged loudly on the door and pressed his ear to its cold metal.
There were so many dogs barking it was impossible to be sure exactly what he was hearing. And yet that sounded like a woman calling for help.
He abandoned his pack and ran toward the cabin, stopping abruptly before he reached it, because it occurred to him that if it was a woman's voice, then whoever was inside that cabin was responsible for her being there.
He returned quickly to his backpack, scooped it up, and made for the woods. He hunkered down and took a minute to collect himself. By all appearances the cabin was unoccupied, but the car tracks in the mud indicated this place was frequented often; and by the look of several of the tracks, recently.
How long would he have to check this out? He left his backpack in the woods, returned to the structure, and circled it fully. Only the one door. Hinges on the inside. You'd need a stick of dynamite to break that padlock. He circled again, beating on the walls to check their construction-too stout to hope to bust up. At one point, he thought he heard that voice again-he was sure of it-but those dogs were so loud! The frustration drove him to a frantic circling of the building. Around and around. He finally caught himself and stopped.
He had to get help. That was all there was to it. He ran along the very edge of the primitive driveway that led to the farm, alert for any cars ahead of him, prepared to hide in the woods if he saw any. The driveway-the road-was the most obvious route to follow: Somewhere out there was civilization, and this had to be the fastest way to it.
The more he ran the quicker his pace, driven by adrenaline, driven as if pursued by someone.
The driveway, a half-mile long, joined a dirt road challenged on its edges by weeds. He followed this road to the right, convinced not only that town was this way-the sun lay to his right; he had to be running south-but also that his car was parked somewhere in this general direction.