The Fear In Yesterday's Rings by George C. Chesbro

Author:George C. Chesbro
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Psychological, General, Suspense, Mystery & Detective, Fiction
ISBN: 9780967450353
Publisher: Apache Beach Publications
Published: 2011-07-24T23:49:19+00:00

Chapter Eight

Arlen Zelezian apparently hadn't thought much of my story—or, more likely, he had never intended to keep his part of the bargain. Whether or not he'd believed me was impossible to tell, but it was obvious that he was willing to kill us and take his chances.

I regained consciousness only to find myself in a drugged stupor—the result, I suspected, of having animal tranquilizers injected into my right arm, which was sore. I was imprisoned in what looked to be an old-fashioned circus cage, mounted on a flatbed truck. The bars of the cage were covered on all sides by wooden shutters, but faint illumination was provided by a naked light bulb dangling on the end of a frayed cord suspended from the ceiling and presumably running on current off the truck battery. I slept most of the time, managed to occasionally awaken with just enough energy to relieve myself in a galvanized steel pail set up in a corner near a locked trapdoor. I knew that we were traveling, for through my drug-induced dreams I could feel the cage swaying and bumping over potholes, could hear the muffled roar of the truck engine. It seemed we were on our way to the next stop, wherever that might be.

I wondered what they had done to Harper.

I wondered where we were going and what was going to happen when we got there.

I wondered where Garth was.

Finally, I awoke with my head relatively clear, but with a splitting headache and a taste in my mouth like rotten blubber. My cage and my body had been hosed down, and I was lying naked on the rough, splintered wood floor in a corner of the cage, covered with a towel. On the floor over by the trapdoor, neatly folded, were my charcoal suit, blue T-shirt, shorts, socks, and shoes. I found the discovery ominous.

Clean clothes could mean that execution day had arrived.

As if in response to my foreboding, the wooden shutters at the front of the cage suddenly flew open, banging against the sides of the enclosure. Wherever we were, it wasn't with the rest of the circus; with the truck engine turned off, it was completely still. It was night, the darkness pierced by what I presumed were car or truck headlights shining into my prison.

"Get dressed, dwarf," a voice with a heavy East European accent said.

I stepped back a pace, shielded my eyes from the headlights with my hands, and squinted. Now I could see that the voice belonged to the potbellied roustabout with the bulbous, Technicolor nose. With him was another man, gaunt and unshaven, who was dressed in ill-fitting coveralls and a stained Greek seaman's cap. Both men were holding guns.

"Where's the woman?"

The potbellied man raised his pistol and aimed it at my chest. "I told you to get dressed."

I got dressed. The gaunt man in the coveralls and seaman's cap said something to the potbellied gunman in a language I thought might be Polish or Hungarian, then produced a key which he used to open the padlock on the wooden trapdoor at the side of the cage.

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