They beat him.
First in the back of the van, clumsy blows, angry fists and feet landing on his body, his head, his thighs, his gut. He had tasted blood. He had gagged as it welled in his throat, coughed, felt the hot wetness on the material that covered his face.
Something, someone, had locked his hands behind his back. A bomb had landed on his temple. Buzzing, floating, suspended on the sickly wave of pain. Another explosion, then black nothing for a time that stretched out like spit clinging to a wall.
Vague smears of memories connected then to now. Being dragged from the van, his head still covered, across grass, into a building with wooden floors.
His clothes pulled from his body. A leather strap, maybe a belt, whipping across his naked shoulders and buttocks.
Then falling, weightless for a moment before the floor knocked all the air and sense from him.
He had woken where he fell. He had pulled the canvas sack from his head, looked around, saw nothing he could distinguish from the sea of black. On his hands and knees, he had explored the limits of the room, the dirt floor, the slimy damp of the brickwork.
But no door.
Eventually, it could have been minutes or hours, he slept. Until now, woken by a sound he could not remember. There, a key turning in a lock.
Ryan’s gaze darted left and right, searching for the door he had been unable to find with his hands.
A creak, and light trickled in.
He struggled through the confusion, the disorientation, until he looked up and saw the open doorway strangely suspended eight feet above the floor. In the feeble light, he made out the zig-zag that cut down through the wall’s faded whitewash, the remnants of a staircase that had been removed to make this cellar a pit.
“He’s awake.”
Ryan recognised Wallace’s southern African accent.
A ladder descended until its feet rested on the floor in front of him. He looked back up to the doorway. Wallace held the Browning pistol, levelled the suppressor at Ryan.
“On your feet.”
Ryan pushed himself up onto his knees. Nausea rolled up from his belly and through his head. He retched and spat on the floor.
“Up,” Wallace said.
Ryan hauled himself upright, listed to the side, found his balance. He placed his left hand over his genitals, feeling like a child caught in some shameful act.
“Back against the far wall.”
Ryan did as he was told, keeping his eyes on Wallace, until the cold damp brickwork pressed against his shoulders. He coughed and shivered.
Wallace kept the pistol’s aim on Ryan as he stepped back to allow Carter to pass, turn, and climb down the ladder. The tall man followed, then finally Wallace slipped the Browning into his waistband and joined them in the cellar.
The three men faced Ryan, each staring hard.
Wallace took the pistol in his grip once more, brought it up two-handed, finger on the trigger.
Carter said, “Take one step forward.”
Ryan obeyed.
“Put your hands on your head.”
Ryan breathed what little air the room had left in it. He placed his fingers on his scalp, felt his testicles retreat from the chill.
Wallace smirked. The tall man kept his gaze on Ryan’s face.
“Legs apart,” Carter said.
Ryan shuffled his feet on the packed earth, his stomach already tightening against what he knew was coming.
Carter made him wait for it, the only sound in the room the air ripping in and out of Ryan’s chest. Then Carter took one long stride and swung his boot upwards.
A fleshy slap followed by numbness in Ryan’s groin. The heavy heat came after, the pressure in his bowel, the molten lead in his stomach. His knees folded and he sprawled on the floor. His gut clenched, sending bile into his mouth and nostrils. He coughed it out. A long groan rose from the hot pit of his abdomen and gurgled in his throat.
Carter and the tall man went to work. Not the florid rage of the beatings they had given him before, but precise blows, sharp knuckles and booted toes delivering pain to the most tender parts of Ryan’s body.
They asked no questions and he screamed until his voice cracked. After a time, Ryan’s consciousness withdrew so that the pain belonged to someone else, some other man crawling and bleeding in the dirt of some other cellar.
Ryan drifted into waking, back to darkness again, the tide ebbing to reveal the pain that had sunk beneath the surface. He lay still, listening to his own heart, the thudding in his ears. When he could resist no longer, he inhaled.
His sides and his back shrieked. The clamour of it reached his mouth as a whimper, and his mind retreated to the darkness.
Time dissolved and reformed, the sediment of minutes and hours settling on the cellar floor. Ryan became dimly aware of lying in a cold wetness, and a sour odour. He knew it was his own urine tainted by the smell of blood. The thought of lying in his own waste got him moving. He fought to bring his elbows and knees under him, every movement punished by a new stab of pain in his midsection.
Three feet of crawling and he lay flat on the floor, his shaking limbs unable to carry him further. When the tremors and the nausea eased, he moved again, kept crawling until he felt the wall with his fingertips. He rested there, he had no idea how long, before tracing the brickwork to the corner.
Once there, Ryan squatted, his back pressed into the angle formed by the meeting of the walls. He hissed through his teeth as the stinging heat sputtered between his legs, gagged when the smell rose to him. As dizziness rushed over him, he placed his hands on the walls to steady himself, desperate not to pass out and collapse in his own foulness.
Empty, drained, Ryan crawled as far away from it as he could before his arms and legs gave out. The coarse floor grazed his cheek. He sank into it, let it swallow him whole.
As his mind fell into blackness, Ryan swore he would kill them all.
The light stirred him.
“Jesus, he stinks.”
Ryan looked up, saw Wallace blurred in the doorway. The squat man held something in his hand, not a pistol, something else.
“Stand up,” Wallace said.
Ryan got to his feet, trapping his cries behind his teeth as pain shot through his groin and midsection. He blinked, tried to focus on what lay in Wallace’s hand. His mind grasped what he saw just as the stream of cold water hit him.
A howl escaped him as the shock coursed through his body. He fell and scrambled back.
“Get back here,” Wallace said, flicking the hose so the water lashed at Ryan.
Ryan crawled forward and got to his feet. He hunched his shoulders against the cold as Wallace ran the water over his body.
“Turn around.”
Ryan did so and felt the freezing punch of the water against his back. Wallace focused the stream on Ryan’s buttocks and thighs, washing away the stench.
“Dirty bastard,” he said. “Take a drink if you want it.”
Ryan turned back to the doorway. He opened his mouth and lapped at the stream, swallowing more air than water. He coughed, and doubled over as the spasm seemed to tear him in two.
The flow of water died and a tin bucket clattered to the floor, rolled across the sodden earth.
“Use that next time.”
Something small and solid struck Ryan’s chest and bounced away. He looked for it in the puddles at his bare feet. There, a chocolate bar.
“Eat that. It’s all you’re getting.”
The door closed, sealing out the light, locking in the darkness. Shivers rippled through Ryan’s torso. He dropped to his knees on the wet earth, ran his fingers over the slick floor, found the chocolate bar.