Camp Brotherhood
Southern Pines, North Carolina
“It... I...” God, man, put words together for an excuse!
“Let’s go.” Twin Two grabbed my other arm, and the two of them dragged me into the woods.
“Where are we going?” I stopped walking and let my feet slip from under me, hoping they’d stop.
They were hot in a weird sort of way. They were very muscular, but their white-blond hair reminded me far too much of kids from that Children of the Corn horror movie I saw when I was seven and had nightmares about for a month.
“Get the fuck up, or I’ll slit your throat and bury your fag ass with the preacher.” Oh god, did that mean Martin Dale had actually confessed to killing his molester and the beard wife in front of probably a hundred people?
Twin One swung his right arm and backhanded my face. The pain of the strike rattled my brain.
“What are you trying to pull? I did it because of a bet, you assholes, with one of my fraternity brothers. I have an appointment next week to cover it with another tattoo. It was stupid to do it, but he had to pay me a grand, and that’ll make some of my student loan payments,” I snapped.
“Oh yeah? I don’t believe you. How did you get into the campground? We have people stationed around the perimeter to keep spies out,” Twin Two informed me.
“I was told to get on the bus in Fayetteville.” I didn’t even blink.
It wasn’t actually a lie. Heath’s friend told us how the Defenders ferried guys to the camp for the sales pitch and cookout.
Heath and I found the bus on the Walmart parking lot in Fayetteville and followed it.
When the bus stopped in Ashley to pick up more guys, many of whom appeared to be younger than eighteen, I blended in and got on the bus with them as though I belonged.
I’d even let Heath give me a military haircut before we left home.
The twins stared at each other for a moment before they jerked me to my feet, me fighting to get out of their respective grips. “I don’t trust you, but we’ll let Martin deal with you. Come on, or I’ll gut you.” Twin One pulled out a switchblade and laughed. I didn’t struggle anymore.
We walked for about ten minutes, but everything looked the same to me. I wasn’t sure we weren’t just walking in a circle, but I kept my mouth shut. Finally, we approached a cabin that looked as bad as the ones at the campground.
Half the cedar-shake siding had rotted away and several roof shingles were gone.
There was a dirty beige construction tarp rigged like a tent over a concrete patio where an old lady was sitting in a rocking chair, a colorful paper fan wagging in front of her face and a glass of lemonade on the table next to her.
The screen door was hanging crooked and wouldn’t shut, and there was a hand pump on top of a concrete slab to the woman’s left. It was a damn grim sight.
“Who’s that? Don’t be bringin’ none of those campers here. You know this is gonna get all of us kilt, don’t ya? Marty’s lost all common sense, I tell ya.” Her white hair was twisted up in a bun on top of her head, and her feet were bare. It was like something out of a bad horror movie.
“Granny, this one is a spy. Uncle Marty needs to deal with him. We’ll chain him to the pump. Just ignore him,” Twin Two said.
Twin One went into the cabin and returned with a thick, rusty log chain and a padlock as Twin Two shoved me to the ground next to the pump. He wrapped the log chain around my ankle before joining the ends together to secure the lock.
All I had to do was roll over to free myself and take off into the woods. I doubted the older woman could run very fast.
She walked over to me, something in her front pocket weighing down the apron around her waist. She checked the poorly thought-out lock-and-chain restraint, shaking her head. “If both of their brains were in a blue-jay’s ass, it’d still fly backward.”
I wasn’t sure what that meant, but it sounded as though she was insinuating they were stupid. I tended to agree.
“Don’t get any ideas about taking off.” She pulled a comically massive handgun from her apron pocket and pointed it at me. “This is a Desert Eagle .44 magnum. It’ll blow a hole clean through ya, and I’m a better shot than these yahoos running around here.”
I swallowed the bile traveling up my throat. “Yes, ma’am.”
I reached into the pocket of my jeans to be certain the small voice recorder that looked like a key chain was still there.
It was voice-activated, so I hoped it would continue to pick up everything.
It claimed to have ninety hours of recording time in one charge, but I couldn’t forward the recordings to Heath without my phone. That sucked.
“You’re right there by the water if you want a drink. I’d get up from the concrete before I pumped it if I was you or you’d look like you pissed yourself. Did you get to eat anything over there?” She pointed in the direction I assumed was the campground.
“I’m not hungry.” Like I’d eat anything they gave me. I made sure to keep an eye on the older woman though. If she decided to shoot me, I’d have nothing to hide behind. I had no doubt she was every bit as good a shot as she’d bragged.
She returned to the ancient wooden rocking chair, humming an unknown tune as she closed her eyes, the Desert Eagle resting on her lap. I wasn’t fooled by her faking sleep.
I leaned against the pump and dozed myself, awakened by chatter as two people approached the house. Granny’s eyes opened, and she pointed the gun at Martin Dale, the keynote speaker, and a brunette woman with him.
“Mom, put the gun down. It’s not even loaded,” Dale said as he shook his head. The woman walked over and took the gun from the older woman, carrying it into the house.
She pointed to me. “He don’t know that. Look how Judy’s two idiots secured him to the pump. Why, if I didn’t have the gun, he’d-a just rolled over and took off. I’m guessin’ they brought him here for a reason.” The woman’s voice was harsh.
She finished her drink and went into the shitty cabin through the crooked screen door that gave a spine-tingling screech when she opened it, slamming loudly when it closed.
Martin Dale walked over to where I was resting against the rusty pump you couldn’t pay me to drink from. “Now, what do we have here? Aaron and Abner told me you’re a homosexual. Is that true?”
I laughed, trying not to sound hysterical. “Based on faulty assumptions.” I pulled up the sleeve of my sweatshirt to show him my tattoo. “I have an appointment on Monday to get it fixed.”
Dale’s right eyebrow lifted. “Don’t you need to get on the bus and head back to base with the rest of the guys?”
The panic was settling into my gut as I searched my brain for how Heath phrased it when he took vacation time while he was still in the Army. “I, uh, I’m on leave until the Fourth of July. I just got back from a shitty deployment in— Oh, I can’t tell ya that. Classified.”
I remembered Heath telling Granddad Chuck the same thing. Granddad always said, “Who the hell am I gonna tell?”
Martin Dale smirked. “Okay, Rambo, let’s go inside. Those two numb skulls couldn’t find their way out of a wet paper bag. Untwist your leg because I don’t have the key. I’ll make them find it later.”
I did as he asked and stood. “What are you gonna do with me?”
“I’m going to get the truth out of you and decide what to do with you after. I promise I’ll do whatever I gotta, and I’m not gonna lie... It’ll hurt you a lot more than it will me.”