Thunderstorm

One vote for the road.

Samuel was gradually acquiring some mental awareness, but not from sleep. He’d been set-upon and beaten. He’d lost consciousness and now, all he knew was that he hurt. Where on his body all of the pain was coming from was a secondary issue. The first one: Where the hell was he?

Forcing an eye open, he saw exactly nothing.

Darkness had fallen. From the middle of the afternoon to the dark, in the summer. He’d been unconscious for hours, then.

Lightning slashed across the sky, the quiet kind, and it revealed a lot more about his circumstances. Sam’s head was clearing a bit, but the momentary illumination served to terrify him. He was in a makeshift cage, and the cage stood in a forest.

Somewhere.

Slowly recalling, Sam realized he’d been bike-packing on a country road, trying to put the world behind him. A software engineer and fitness enthusiast, he’d grown tired of life, in particular, his own. Social media, how ‘bout it, had turned him off. All the violence, all of the hatred, oncoming civil distress, probably war. The bikepacking trip was a temporary escape from all of it. A quiet ride in the countryside.

But now, this. And what exactly, was this? Pushing his body to a sitting position took effort, but apparently he was only bruised, and not too badly. Nothing broken. The knot on the back of his head was the source of most of his pain. At least, he was recovering from that. His eyes were adjusting to the low light level, and he could see now, he wasn’t exactly alone.

There was another roughly-crafted cage beside his, and it wasn’t empty. There was someone in there. A girl, awake, and looking at him. There was more. Sam was still fully clothed. She was not clothed at all.

A youngish girl. Too young. What the hell was this?

Realizing she now had his attention, the girl placed a finger before her lips, indicating he should remain quiet. Then, she pointed. Outward, away.

Sam looked. In the trees. Bodies hanging. Exactly two. Dismembered. Gutted torsos. Pieces missing, including the heads.

Feeling a scream boiling up from his gut, Sam choked. Retched. Sickened, he looked at his hands. Cuts, ripped flesh. He remembered, fighting, locals wearing hillbilly hats in an old pickup, carrying clubs. Lights out. Nausea then, but no worse than now.

Sam realized, he was in a cage because he was likely, food. The girl, worse than that.

Sam felt resolve build in his chest and it bade him to sit up straighter. He did, and every time summer heat lightning rippled across the sky, he squinted and gazed. At the hanging bodies. At the rough, forested terrain. At the construction of the cages, heavy branches, lashed together with sisal rope. The branches had been pointed with a hatchet and driven into the ground. The door was the strongest thing about the enclosure, and it was padlocked.

Sam worked himself to a position where he could access his pockets. His wallet was gone, but buried deep in a pocket in the leg of his pants was something his captors had missed. A small folding knife. A knife!

Working feverishly, Sam chose a branch with the widest gaps next to it and began sawing at the knotted rope where it was lashed, at the cage roof.

The cage was large enough for a man to lie down in, but no larger. The rope, heavy enough and the knots tight enough, if one didn’t have a knife, and the will to live. Had they stripped him as they had the girl, Sam would have been helpless. The branch loosened as he cut through the rope. Sam worked with bloodied fingers to loosen the lashing and then pushed the branch outward, and away. He dislodged it from the ground, noiselessly.

The other cage was about a meter away, the girl on her knees watching, gripping the upright branches that held her there.

The space made by removing one branch might have allowed the girl to slip free, but not Sam. He went to work on a second one. Eventually he did cut the rope, and Sam pushed himself through the gap. For the first time, Sam realized he had no shoes.

There just wasn’t any choice, he wasn’t leaving the girl there. Sam set to work on the second cage.

As she forced herself through the gap, Sam whispered to her. “Cannibals?”

Looking at her feet, she crouched, and nodded. Sam hadn’t heard a word from her. Thin, brunette, twelve or thirteen, perhaps fourteen years old. Sam slipped off his shirt and gave it to her. On her, the long tails made it like a dress.

Now, to get out of there. “Where are they, do you know?” he asked, softly.

The cages had been constructed atop a natural mountain “bench,” with a steep dropoff below. The girl pointed, and whispered hoarsley. “That way. There.”

So, holding her hand, Sam and the girl set off in the opposite direction, stepping carefully, quietly, perhaps ten steps. And then they heard it. Heavy footsteps, coming their way from somewhere behind them.

Sam whirled, moved the girl behind him, then crouched. The heat lightning wasn’t heat lightning anymore. The next bolt, still in the sky, lit up the forest and cracked shortly thereafter, rumbling off aross the mountainside. Sam located a sizable rock, and waited.

The mountain man was average build, a bit smaller than Sam, but this time he was alone and not carrying a club. Sam saw a heavy beard when the lightning flashed, just as the man discovered, the cages were both empty. Immediately, he shouted.

“Hey! Heyyyy! Guys git ovah heah! Day gone! Day loose!”

Sam was sorry he hadn’t gotten close enough before the man shouted. Now he’d have to contend with all of them, and they had to be within earshot. Sam had the size and strength advantage, and he used it.

Running up on him took about ten steps, and Sam clocked him over the head with the rock. Then, he finished the job.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

Sam and the girl were down over the hill before anyone arrived on the scene, but it didn’t take long.

“Jake! Jake! Ohh, gawd damn, looka that. Th’ bastid crushed Jake’s fuckin’ head!”

Another of them spoke up, obviously in charge. “Fan out. They woulda took off down over the hill. We’ll find ‘im. And the pussy. We’ll kill ‘im tonight!”

Four men spread out and started down over the hill, carrying rifles and flashlights.

But Sam had other ideas about that. He hadn’t heard any dogs, but his feet were cut and bleeding, so he could be tracked. And at the bottom of this hill, he heard a stream. He couldn’t move as fast as the cannibals with the girl in tow, so the stream was it.

Turned out, though, it was almost a river, and it was fast, and cold. Didn’t matter. In they went. Flat water, riffles, cascades. The girl gripped him tightly as Sam worked them across the stream, and they came out the other side no more than fifty feet from a waterfall. By now it was raining.

She was shivering and Sam was dead-tired, but they’d moved downstream, several hundred yards. A rest was in order, stop the shivering, and then, it was time to move again.

Sam and the girl huddled together for warmth and companionship, as thunder crashed around them. They knew without doubt, they were both, hopelessly lost.

Sam said a prayer, silently. His intent to leave the world behind had been realized, now if he could just find a way back. That was all he wanted.

It’s strange how close we can come to solutions without ever knowing it. If they were good for just two more miles, up over the next ridge and down the other side there was a fairly busy highway waiting. If they took the easier route and followed the stream, the national forest stretched on for fifty more miles.

And no one knows for sure, which way they went.

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