“Help me,” Rudy shouted. The flames around him had begun to nourish themselves on his jeans. “For God’s sake Tony untie me. I’m burning up.”
Confident Tony was distracted enough by the rope and flames, Natalie had fled toward a more protected position. A ladder on the opposite side from the coral led to a loft. She had taken the first two tentative steps up its rungs when Rudy’s anguished cry stirred her heart with pity and she turned toward him.
“Aaaaahhh,” he shrieked and began to writhe under the constraint of the ropes as the flames began to devour his legs.
When his sweatshirt burst into flames Natalie started down the ladder. She couldn’t just standby and do nothing. As her right foot touched the ground, he screamed again.
“N A T A L I E!” His legs frantically thrashed to no avail and his body twisted without relief.
She fought tears as she watched his pyre. Even if she could get to him in time, with the rope she had tied him up with, she knew she couldn’t release him before the flames charred his flesh. But she had to try. As she pushed away from the ladder, however, Tony, who stood between them and to her right, raised the pistol.
“See you in Hell, lover boy,” Tony said, with an almost reverent tone.
“No!” Natalie shrieked as the gun exploded. The shock of the explosion forced her eyes to blink. She opened them quickly and turned back to Rudy. Where his head had been, a blaze now danced around his stillness. He slumped against the post where she had tied him.
She looked toward her assailant. When last she had seen Tony a second before, his gaze was focused on the lifeless torch on the other side of the barn. Now he glared at her. Whether he had used his last bullet to silence Rudy like he warned or put him out of his misery, she couldn’t determine. But one thing she was certain of, for whatever reason, he wanted her alive, at least for a while. She jumped back on the ladder and began to climb.
“Here, pussy, pussy,” Tony chanted and dropped the revolver. “We have unfinished business don’t we?”
Natalie reached both hands to the next rung and continued to climb. The rungs were mossy from years of nonuse in the moist climate. Her feet were four feet from the ground when her right foot slipped. She held on with her hands as her body slammed against the rungs. Although she banged an infected knee against one of them, she ignored the pain again and, able to regain footing, she continued to scurry up the ladder. She made sure to support her step on each rung with the arch of her foot.
Above the roar of the flames, she could hear Tony’s footsteps as he splashed through one of the many puddles on the barn’s dirt floor.
“Here pussy, pussy,” he chided again. “You have something I want and I won’t stop until you give it to me.”
Natalie remembered in the warehouse Tony hadn’t raped her. “Not this time,” he told Hank, “I’ll take her later.” Now she knew this was later. What else could it be? How he would force himself on her and then get away from the barn before it buried him in flames she couldn’t imagine—unless he didn’t plan to live through the inferno. But that made no sense whatsoever. Everything she perceived about Tony indicated he was a survivor. He didn’t find a doctor for Hank so he wouldn’t have to answer questions about the gun. He shot and killed so many people along the way so he wouldn’t leave witnesses. She had questioned him about his plan, “you didn’t kill me when you could have.” But what was his end game? Was he running from something or toward it, and what did she have to do with it?
Whatever he planned for her role, she had to take action. She couldn’t take the luxury of time to ponder long in uncertainty as the flames that feasted on the wall across the barn had reached the roof. They now spread across the fresh fuel in their selfish quest. If they didn’t get out of this furnace soon, Rudy’s prediction that they would all die would be manifest.
She scrambled into the loft and stepped between the side rails and into the hay. She looked across the barn toward Rudy. Above the smell of burned flesh she caught the astringent scent of melted rubber. She remembered just a few days ago the innocent kid with brown helmet haircut and the squeaky athletic shoes opened the door to her dressing room like a gentleman. Now, he was nothing but blackened, scorched remains.
The scrape of Tony’s foot on a ladder rung pulled her to the pen tucked into her panties. She pulled it out with her right hand.
“This is getting real tiresome. Tony has plans for you. What’s that they say? ‘Resistance is futile?’”
Natalie had shared her dad’s passion for science fiction and recognized the Star Trek reference to the Borg’s irresistible assimilation tactics. Even though she didn’t have the right weapon to stop him, she knew what she had to do to thwart Tony. She could hear him climb rung-by-rung in a slow ascent. “Here pussy, pussy,” he chanted as he drew closer. She realized he moved up slow and deliberate to intensify the terror, but she wasn’t going to let him have it his way. She was no longer the timid farm girl from Iowa afraid of snakes. This bastard was nothing more than an old sidewinder. She would crush his head if she could.
_____
©
Jearl Rugh 2012
All
Rights Reserved
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