The car started moving, heading down the street and away from campus.
These had to be Outsiders. And they obviously thought he was part of Joan’s religion. Whatever feud these two groups had going, he’d ended up right in the middle of it, and now he was probably going to die.
Only…
Only he couldn’t get too worked up about it, didn’t seem to care. The drug made him not merely lethargic but satisfied, and for the first time in his life he could honestly understand the appeal that narcotics held.
They drove.
The three men seldom spoke, but when they did it was in that strange—alien—language, and he could not understand a word of what was said.
He leaned back in the seat, looking at the bald guy with the weird head next to him. He could not seem to stop staring at the man, and this close he saw that not only was the shape of the head irregular, but one eye was bigger than the other and the left side of his mouth was raised up into a sort of permanent smile. The man looked more than a little off, almost retarded, although he definitely didn’t act as if he was.
Gary could see details of the clothes of his abductors as well, and he noted with wonder that the shirts had no buttons but were held closed by small pieces of string tied in curiously dainty bows. The pants were leather, but leather that had not been properly tanned and still looked like cow flesh. Lengths of rope acted as belts.
“Where are you taking me?” he asked. He didn’t actually care, but he was somewhat curious. No one answered, and he forgot about it.
After a while, he slept.
Apparently, they had driven all night, because when he awoke, it was morning and they were traveling through unfamiliar countryside. He saw chaparral-covered hills and steep sandstone cliffs. They were on a narrow two-lane road whose centerline could barely be seen and whose very asphalt had faded into a gray so pale it was almost white. Gary felt far less sanguine than he had when he’d fallen asleep, and he had the sense that he would feel stronger, angrier, more himself as additional time passed. Not wanting to give any hint that that was the case, he remained unmoving and forced himself to keep a slight smile on his face.
The guy with the weird head said some strange word that sounded like “Micah,” and the driver reached next to him on the front seat and handed back a length of cloth.
A gag.
Before Gary could react, the gag was shoved into his mouth, whipped around his head and tied. He tasted dirt, root…
… and then he didn’t care about escaping anymore. He knew he should, but he didn’t, and he stared contentedly out at the scenery as his gag was removed. The men to either side were smiling at him, and he smiled back. Through the window, a town passed by: restaurant, gas station, store, trailer court. They bumped over a railroad track, passed by a dry river lined with trees.
What state were they in? Gary wondered. Were they still in California? He didn’t know. And it didn’t really matter anyway.
Some time later, they pulled onto a narrow dirt road that led through some scrub brush and into a rocky, hilly area. The three men had started talking again, saying words that made no sense, and Gary realized that he was hungry. He couldn’t tell if it was closer to breakfast time or lunch, but right now any food sounded good. He was suddenly famished.
The dirt road had narrowed and was now little wider than a biking trail or a footpath. They wound up a small hill, passed between two sentrylike boulders and started down a long, gentle slope that ended at a ranch house and barn. The well-maintained wooden buildings were in a rough bowl-shaped meadow dotted with scrub oak and juniper. Next to the house and barn was a corral, and behind it all was a pasture of dried tan weeds through which a single horse slowly sauntered.
They pulled to a stop in front of the barn, next to a battered, mud-covered pickup truck and a rusted Jeep on blocks. A middle-aged woman was coming out of the house and walking across the dirt toward them. She, too, was wearing drab, primitive clothing, and she wiped her hands on a plain white apron as she approached. She walked with a pronounced limp, as though one leg was considerably shorter than the other.
“Hello!” the woman said, waving, but the driver shouted at her, something short and harsh in that alien language. The woman responded, her words low, hesitant and sounding like an apology. She looked at the ground.
So they could speak English, Gary thought.
Interesting.
As the limping woman led them toward the door of the house, which had been left wide open, he glanced around at the surrounding countryside. Apart from this ranch, there was no evidence of human habitation as far as the eye could see, and he realized that it would be the perfect area in which to dump his body. They could dig a hole somewhere on this land, toss him in, cover him up and no one would ever be the wiser. He wasn’t worried—if it happened, it happened—but the idea did occur to him, and somewhere beneath the layers of apathy, he realized that that was good, that it was important to maintain an interest, however detached, in what they did to him.
The five of them stepped inside the house. It was simply furnished, just the type of place he would expect a woman who dressed like her to live. There were no rugs or couches or soft furniture of any kind, only crude chairs and tables made from the branches of trees, arranged unartfully in a seemingly haphazard manner on the unpainted plywood floor. There were no electric lights, only kerosene lamps, and like the parking ticket on the windshield, this struck him as hilarious. He started giggling at first, then tried to stop himself, which only made the giggles turn into roaring guffaws.
Then he saw the cabinet in the corner.
And the small spaces within it that were filled with rolled-up scrolls.
He stopped laughing.
The man who’d punched him, the one who appeared to be the leader, shouted some kind of order, and Gary was taken through a doorway into another room and tied to the floor on his back, his legs together and arms spread wide as though he were being crucified. There were shackles on the floor for just this purpose, which made him realize that this was not the first time this had been done, that he was not the first person to whom this had happened. The only piece of furniture in the room was a seat made out of a wooden crate that was pressed against the wall opposite the door.
The shackles didn’t hurt, and it was kind of nice to be lying down, even if the wooden floor was hard and dirty. Gary allowed himself to be restrained, then stared up at the dark, cobwebbed ceiling as his captors left the room, closing the door behind them. Moments later, he could hear them in the other room talking, though their voices were little more than indistinct mumbles.
Soon he smelled food cooking, some type of unfamiliar meat, and a while after that the talking ceased. He assumed they were eating a meal, although no one came in to offer him anything. He was starving—he hadn’t eaten anything since lunch yesterday—and that hunger, that need for food, cut through the blissful haze engulfing him and gave his comfortable serenity a sharper edge.
Edge was good.
He needed to keep it, hone it.
But such thinking tired him, and even as he tried to remember why he should attempt an escape, he was starting to nod off, to doze, the hard floor beneath his back feeling suddenly much more comfortable, the position of his shackled arms and legs seeming more relaxing than confining.