Chapter 42

Tony tore at the rope and the smoldering jacket until he was free. He dropped them to the dirt floor, stood to his feet, and reached to his waistband for the gun. It wasn’t there. He ripped his eyes from Natalie to the ground and spun around. The orange glint from the fire reflected off the polished nickel barrel behind him. It lay two feet away. With one step, he grabbed the Colt and glanced toward the crackling sound back in the corral. The voracious appetite of the fire, in a feeding frenzy, greedily raged up the wall of the barn.

“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 on fire.”

*

Confident Tony was distracted enough by the rope and flames, Natalie had fled toward a more protected position. A ladder on the opposite side of the coral led to a loft. She had taken the first two tentative steps up its rungs when Rudy’s anguished cry stirred her 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 couldn’t standby and do nothing. She jumped from the ladder and as her feet 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. She had to try, though, and pushed away from the ladder on a dead run.

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 closed and she dropped to her knees. When she opened them again, she 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 his assailant. Tony glared at the lifeless torch on the other side of the barn. Whether he had used his last bullet to silence Rudy as he had warned or put him out of his misery, she couldn’t see that far into his mind. One thing she was certain of, for whatever reason, he wanted her alive, at least for now. She pushed herself to her feet again and raced back to the ladder.

“Here, pussy, pussy,” Tony chanted and dropped the revolver. “We have unfinished business don’t we?”

Natalie began to climb reaching hand over hand. The rungs were mossy from years of nonuse in the moist climate. Her right foot, four feet from the ground, slipped. She held on with her hands as her body slammed against the rungs. Although she banged her infected knee against one of them, she ignored the pain again and, able to regain footing, continued to scurry up the ladder. She supported each step 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’d 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.

That made no sense whatsoever. Everything she perceived about Tony indicated he was a survivor. He didn’t find a doctor for Hank so questions wouldn’t arise about the gun. He shot and killed so many people along the way not to 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 any of 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 dire prediction of their ultimate date with a fiery death 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 the brown Hobbit-like haircut and the squeaky athletic shoes opened the door to her dressing room like a gentleman. Now, he was nothing but blackened, scorched flesh.

The scrape of Tony’s foot on a ladder rung pulled her mind 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 knew he intentionally moved up slowly and deliberately to intensify her 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’d crush his head if she earned the chance.

The side rails of the ladder extended above the bed of the loft by three feet giving climbers hand supports while they stepped in. She sat in the hay, reared back, and kicked at one of the rails with her right foot several times. It had been fastened to the loft securely and didn’t budge. She aimed her foot at the other rail and pounded on the post. This time she felt it move. She hit it again and again. The rusty nails came loose and one side of the ladder swung out from the loft.

“Shit, what you doing, Whore?” Tony shouted.

Natalie scooted toward the rail and pushed it as hard she could with her foot. It twisted out but she was still unable to budge the other side. Just then, she saw Tony’s hand reach for the rail still attached. As the last remnants of daylight trickled through a hole in the roof and fell across the top of the ladder, Tony’s snarling, acne-scarred face appeared in the light. The rake had caused fresh wounds and blood trickled from his forehead and cheek. He had the look of a madman on his countenance with his teeth clenched together in a Cheshire cat grimace.

Natalie lay on her back and jammed her right foot at Tony’s face. He ducked his head to his right and grabbed her ankle at the same time. His right hand, wrapped around the ladder rail, was exposed and she slammed her other foot against his knuckles.

He quickly let go, balanced only by his feet on a narrow ladder rung and Natalie’s ankle. He held it tight and waved his right arm like a windmill.

She kicked her right foot to disengage his hand and throw him off balance even more. His vice of a grip held tight. Using her leg, he pulled himself hand over hand back toward the ladder.

Her body slid toward the edge of the loft and she slammed her hands into the hay to act as a brake. With no purchase, she continued to inch forward.

Tony reached out for a rung, just getting the fingers of his right hand around it.

Natalie lashed out again with her left foot. She aimed at his face again. This time the spiked heel of the black leather boot caught him in the right eye. His head snapped back from the force of the blow. A scream of anguish escaped his lips and he grabbed his face with his right hand. Thick, red ooze flowed between his fingers and dribbled down his cheeks.

“Bring it on, Whore.”

That outburst caught her by surprise. Did he need violence to arouse his sexual appetite? Despite the confusion, she sensed a glimmer of hope radiate through her as she realized she could win this battle. Soon Tony would slither off into some dark corner to lick his wounds or die.

With his left hand, Tony pulled on her foot again. Her body slid closer to the edge of the loft. Much closer and she’d be suspended over space. She reached for the side rails of the ladder and held on.

He released his right hand from his eye and stretched for the rail. With his left hand, he let her foot go and reached for the other support.

With her foot free, she kicked him once more. This time the sole of her boot planted in his chest. It didn’t throw him. His hands held tight. She kicked again but he was too close to affect any damage.

“Right where I want you, Whore!” he screamed and stepped up another rung. Blood dripped off his face and into the hay between her legs as he leaned over her body.

She rolled backward in a reverse summersault and came to her knees. The hay scratched against the infection and the wound throbbed. She held her position, though, and watched the agonized look on his face morph into a menacing scowl.

He opened his mouth but, with the butt of the pen braced against the palm of her hand, this time she was prepared to stifle his retort. Natalie thrust the pen toward the demonic face contorted in front of her. It passed through his snarling lips and found lodging in the back of his throat. She pushed as hard as she could until she felt the point penetrate his esophagus.

*

Tony gagged and gasped but couldn’t speak. The blow pushed him back from her. He released his left hand from the ladder and grabbed the pen. With a quick tug, he extracted it from his throat and threw the offense to the dirt floor below. Although the pain in his eye and now his throat was excruciating, she had proved her worth.

*

Natalie could see his silhouette against the raging hellhole on the other side of the barn. While he had fought with the pen, she had turned around on her knees. Now she eyed her target and kicked backward into Tony’s chest. He swung out and tried to catch the handrail again with his left hand, but missed.

She kicked again. This time the sole of her boot slammed into his throat.

*

The instant her foot made contact, Tony knew his larynx had been crushed. He reached for his neck with both hands and attempted to free the obstruction in his windpipe. Already off balance by the first blow, he fell backward.

Everything was suddenly out of control. No sight penetrated through his blood-drenched right eye and the left, filled with tears, made Natalie’s image at the head of the ladder a blur like an unfocused photo. Oxygen didn’t flow naturally into his lungs despite his efforts to rip the damaged obstacle from his throat. His equilibrium off balance, his world seemed upside down with no hope of righting it.

*

As soon as she saw him fall backward, Natalie spun around and looked between the rails of the ladder. Tony plummeted through empty space. From the light of the blaze now overhead, she saw a puzzling look of satisfaction on his face and above the roar of the inferno, he struggled to laugh. Not the sinister screech she had become accustomed to but a chortle seemed to say he was at peace. Defeated and yet unexplainably relieved.

The sound of the thud when he hit the ground, like a sack of manure tossed over a fence, seemed anticlimactic compared to the perverse language he had used against her. In the fingers of firelight that danced across his crumbled body on the dirt floor, he looked like a discarded marionette among the barn’s decay-ridden remnants.