PART VI FLORIDA #3
I reached under myself to extract the troublesome stone and was surprised to find that it was semi-hollow, with indentations that I could grip easily.
I lifted it above the surface and started.
Gripped in my hand, my fingers looped through its eye sockets, was a human skull.
Audrey saw it and stifled a shout.
We heard the elevator clunk upward, the voices of the Hammer’s men getting more and more distant until they were gone entirely.
We couldn’t leave anytime soon—we had to give our enemies time to leave—so as Audrey climbed back up to the lowest level of the mine, I felt around among the sticks and stones in the pool.
The ‘sticks’ were bones. Tibias, curved ribs, longer femurs. Most were snapped, broken.
The ‘stones’ were skulls.
The base of the mine shaft, I realised, was a pit into which bodies—lots of bodies—had been thrown.
It was impossible to know how old they were.
I stopped counting after I’d picked up twenty skulls.
I climbed out of the pool and rejoined Audrey on the lowest level.
‘Let’s give the Hammer and his goons an hour to leave, then we go up,’ I said.
I put one skull in my backpack plus three of the sharp-tipped bones. It was a long shot, but I wanted to do DNA analyses on them.
‘Sam,’ Audrey said, ‘what the fuck is going on? Whose bodies did we just hide among? And who was living in these cells?’
I frowned in thought.
‘Like you said, mines like these often used leased convicts. When they died, they were buried in unmarked graves. Maybe the workers at this mine were kept down here in the cells and if they died, the owners of the mine just threw them into the shaft.’
‘Just threw them into the shaft?’ Audrey said in disbelief. ‘What kind of person does that to someone else?’
‘Someone who leased impoverished Black convicts. I mean, convict leasing was essentially slavery by another name.’
‘But convict leasing ended almost a century ago, didn’t it?’
‘Formally, yes. Judging from the supermarket bags and Coke cans in here, maybe it went on for considerably longer.’
‘Modern-day slavery . . .’ Audrey said, looking at the filthy underground level with horror.
‘Yeah,’ I said slowly. ‘Something like that.’
After an hour, we decided to risk climbing back up the mine shaft.
We scaled its ladder slowly and quietly, just in case any of the Hammer’s people were still there.
We stepped up out of the shaft into the ground-level entry cavern.
The tunnel leading outside stretched away from us. Through its far door, I could see that it was now dark out. Evening had fallen. The rain was still pouring.
Audrey said, ‘Looks like they’re gone.’
‘No, we’re not,’ a deep voice said from the shadows behind us.
They emerged from the corners of the entry cavern.
The Hammer and his four security guards.
All of the guards gripped pistols.
The Hammer didn’t. He smirked as one of his guards took my backpack and removed my Sig from it. Patting me down, he also took my spare gun. Another took Audrey’s pistol.
‘Dr Speedman,’ the Hammer said.
I said nothing.
The Hammer upended my backpack.
The skull and broken bones tumbled out of it onto the floor.
The Hammer sighed. ‘You have no idea what you’ve stumbled onto, do you?’
He tossed my backpack aside and began circling us. ‘No idea at all.’
He leaned close to Audrey. Touched a strand of her curly hair, sniffed it.
She didn’t flinch, just stared straight ahead.
‘You’re pretty,’ he said slowly. ‘For a mixed-breed.’
She said nothing.
The Hammer turned to me.
‘I have a simple job, you know. My job is to make problems go away. And you’ve become a real problem.’
I never saw the punch coming.
But, God, did I feel it.
I’ve been punched in the face many times, but the Hammer’s blow was like no punch I’d ever taken.
It was quick—lightning fast—and it packed a ton of weight. A special forces punch.
My nose broke, my legs gave out from under me and I dropped to the muddy floor like a sack of shit.
‘I’m sorry,’ the Hammer said, offering his hand and picking me up. ‘That was rude.’
He hit me again.
I went down again.
I lay face-down in the mud, snot and blood gushing from my nose, saliva drooling from my mouth.
Damn, it hurt.
The guy could hit.
And it occurred to me then that Deek Hammonds wasn’t some drunk college linebacker or furious cheating husband.
He was a trained assassin.
There was no way I could beat him in a fight.
As I lay on the floor, he stood over me.
‘And since you’re officially a problem, now I got to make you go away,’ he said.
Whomp.
He stomped on my right pinky finger. It broke with a sharp crack.
I shouted in pain.
Whomp. Crack.
He stomped on my right index finger. It broke, too.
I curled up in the foetal position, groaning.
‘Stop it!’ Audrey shouted.
‘Clete, Milo, get her out of here,’ the Hammer said to two of his men. ‘Take her back to the trucks. We can all have a little fun with the lady before we feed her to the gators.’
He smiled sweetly at Audrey. ‘Gotta warn ya, darlin’, my man Clete here can get a little rough with the gals.’
The two guards shoved Audrey out of the mine into the rain.
That left me—on the ground, bleeding and broken—with the Hammer, the big guard named Roke and one other young security guard.
‘Roke,’ the Hammer said. ‘While we have our way with the lady, you can have Dr Speedman here. I know how you like the skinny boys. Do what you want with him and then shoot him in the fucking head. Weigh his body and throw it down the shaft. He is never to be found, you hear.’
‘Copy that, boss,’ Roke said.
Then the Hammer turned on his heel and left, striding out of the mine cavern back to the rainy swamp.
That left me in the cavern with Roke and the other guard.
Roke lifted me up like a rag doll, pressing his bushy moustache right in my face. He must have been twice my size.
‘Tell me, little smart guy, you ever had a giant dick up your ass?’
I could barely speak.
I was still drooling saliva and blood.
One of my eyes was swelling up and my right hand, with its two broken fingers, hurt like hell.
Then I saw it.
A few feet away.
If I could just get over there—
I needed him to hit me.
So I said, ‘No. Maybe you can tell me what it’s like.’
That did it.
He slugged me hard and I fell to the ground a few feet from him, landing perfectly on top of it.
Roke stomped after me. ‘Think you’re funny, huh—’
I sprang off the floor—leading with the sharpened length of human bone I’d fallen on top of—and jammed it deep into the underside of Roke’s chin.
He went rigid.
The bone had gone up through his jaw and into his brain, killing him instantly.
I yanked out the bone and he fell face-first into the mud.
The other guard—younger, less experienced—was shocked. He looked from Roke’s prone body to me to the gun in his hand.
By the time he thought to raise it, I was on him, jamming the bone deep into his ribs.
The young guard got out a half-scream, but then he slumped, eyes wide, blood oozing from his mouth. I’d punctured one of his lungs. He lay there, still, his dead eyes open in surprise.
I gasped.
Heaved for air.
But I couldn’t delay.
I had to keep moving, had to save Audrey, so I clenched my teeth and—crack!—straightened my broken right index finger.
I almost passed out from the pain.
Then—crack!—I did the same for the pinky.
I grabbed a rag from the floor and wrapped it tightly around my deformed right hand. That’d do for now.
I repacked the skull and bones into my backpack and took Roke’s pistol from his holster.
Then I ran out of the mine, chasing after Audrey.
I sprinted through the abandoned gator farm, head bent against the rain. The already eerie place took on an extra element of creepiness in the night.
I raced past the amphitheatre with the empty pool where they’d killed Linc.
Dashed past the holding pens.
Then I heard Audrey shouting ‘Get off me!’ plus the sounds of a struggle.
They’d taken her to the only place that was out of the rain: the gift shop.
I saw movement in there through the broken shopfront windows.
There was only one way to do this: head on.
Running at full speed—my face bloody and bruised, my right hand bandaged, my clothes sopping wet—and leading with the pistol I’d taken from Roke gripped in my left hand, I hurdled through the shattered window into the gift shop.
I beheld the Hammer and one of the guards pinning Audrey face-down against the counter while the third guard—Clete—was unzipping his pants.
Audrey was topless. They’d already ripped off her jacket, shirt and bra, and now as she writhed and struggled, the Hammer was trying to pull down her cargo pants.
I shot Clete first.
In the face.
He fell, dead.
The Hammer—damn, he was quick—released Audrey and in a blur of movement there was a pistol in his hand and he fired it at me at the same instant I fired at him.
I was firing left-handed—not my favoured hand and not with my own gun—but I hit him.
Blood spurted from the side of his head and he flopped backwards, spun by the impact, and dropped behind the counter, out of sight.
His bullet whizzed past my left ear, missing by millimetres.
The third and last security guard also drew his gun and was levelling it at me when Audrey elbowed him in the groin and he doubled over.
This gave me the precious seconds I needed to pivot and shoot him twice in the chest.
He slammed back into the counter and slumped to the ground, dead.
I stood there for a moment, gun levelled in my one good hand, gasping.
Then I hurried to Audrey’s side, whipped off my jacket and placed it around her naked chest.
‘You all right? Are you hurt?’
‘I’m okay. Just.’
As I put my jacket on her, I glimpsed her breasts but quickly averted my eyes.
I think Audrey noticed, but she didn’t say anything.
I gathered up her clothes and handed them to her, looking away as she put them on, and also scanning the area for any more bad guys.
I could see the Hammer’s body lying motionless on the ground behind the counter, underneath a grisly splatter of blood on the wall.
‘Sam.’
I turned back. Audrey had got her shirt and jacket back on.
Then, to my surprise, she kissed me on the cheek. ‘Thanks for saving me.’
‘Anytime. We have to move.’
I guided her out of the gift shop with my bandaged right hand.
We burst out onto the turnaround in front of the abandoned gator farm.
The guards’ vehicles were parked there: a black Ford pickup—with orange siren lights and the SSS logo on it—and two Yamaha dirt bikes.
I shot the tyres of the pickup and those of one of the dirt bikes.
I straddled the other bike.
‘Get on,’ I said.
Audrey jumped on behind me, wrapped her hands around my waist and said, ‘Punch it.’
The bike’s rear wheel kicked up a spray of mud as we peeled out of there and sped away into the rainy evening.
We got the fuck out of Florida.
We rode the trail bike into the night and didn’t stop till we reached Louisiana soon after midnight.
There we checked in to my trusty Motel 6 outside New Orleans—the one beside the electrical substation—paying cash for two rooms.
Over my objections, Audrey tended to the wounds on my face—my busted nose, bruised left eye, and cut lip—dabbing them with some alcohol she’d bought from a nearby CVS along with some other medical supplies.
She splinted my two broken fingers and was wrapping them in clean bandages when, overcome by exhaustion and pain, I fell asleep.
When I jerked awake later, sometime in the middle of the night, I saw that Audrey hadn’t gone to her own room.
She was asleep in the chair beside my bed, sitting upright with a pistol across her lap.
At 6 a.m. the next morning, while Audrey slept in the chair, I got up and took a long hot shower.
The jet of steaming water slamming against my face felt good.
Shortly after, I was standing at the mirror with my towel wrapped around my waist, checking all the cuts and bruises on my face, when the door behind me opened and suddenly Audrey was pressed up against my back.
She was naked.
I froze, alarmed.
Her body was warm and soft. It felt amazing.
‘You ever been with a girl, Sam Speedman?’ she whispered gently.
I swallowed. ‘Not . . . not exactly, no . . .’
She turned me around, touched my cut lip.
‘That’s not right. Sweet guy like you.’
‘Women don’t . . . see me that way,’ I stammered.
She nodded slowly, running a finger gently over my bruised left eyebrow. It felt unbelievable.
‘Yeah, well, I see you, Sam, and what I see is a brave, decent and kind man.’
She kissed me.
Firmly on the lips, with her eyes closed.
I’d never been kissed before. It was an entirely new sensation. I liked it a lot. And I really liked that it was Audrey kissing me.
Then she slid off my towel, took me by the hand and led me back into the bedroom.
At 8 a.m. we left the motel.
About a mile down the road was a car yard. There I paid four hundred bucks in cash for a beat-up old VW Kombi van.
‘Where to?’ Audrey asked.
‘Now that we’ve verified a few of the things he mentioned, we need to talk to Cyrus Barbin about these wealthy Southern families,’ I said. ‘But before that I want to find the missing investigator who I think disappeared by choice. I want to find Bill Brewster.’
‘Is this the guy in Morgan City?’
‘Yeah. The customer who buys the strong wheated bourbon Brewster was known to drink and who also purchases soccer stuff for kids.’
Audrey said, ‘Then let’s go to Morgan City.’