Payne saw the accident out of the corner of his eye-the gruesome collision of the two vehicles and his best friend’s violent spill-but realized there was nothing he could do to help. As much as he wanted to return to the crash and offer his assistance, he knew he couldn’t afford to. It pained him to be so selfish, so uncaring toward Jones, but he realized if he turned around now, he might lose track of Ariane forever. And he just couldn’t risk that possibility.
***
DESPITE
the thick layer of fog that clouded his mind, Bennie Blount was able to recall many details of the accident. The truck, the ATV, the vicious impact of the dog.
God, he suddenly realized, it was a miracle that he was even alive.
While giving his body a moment to recuperate, Blount tried to clear the cobwebs in his brain but was unable to snap out of his accident-induced haze. His head throbbed with every beat of his pounding heart, and his vision came and went at unannounced intervals, making it all but impossible to concentrate. He tried to focus on something simple-the names of his family members, his childhood home, what he ate for dinner-but his concentration was distracted by the warm sensation that slowly engulfed his face.
The feeling, unlike anything he had ever experienced, started in his cheeks and gradually crawled toward his eyes at a slow rate. At first, Blount wasn’t sure what was causing it. A swarm of insects? The blowing wind? A hallucination? But in time, he realized what was happening. His entire face was filling with fluid.
As he lay there, twisted and grotesquely mangled, Blount could feel his cheeks as they swelled at a hideous rate. Blood flooded his taste buds as the copper-flavored liquid surged from his nose like a waterfall and drained into his open mouth below. It quickly filled with the warm fluid. As it did, he tried to purge it with a quick burst of air but realized that he was unable to. Unfortunately, he had bitten his tongue during his fall, and the severed tip floated in his mouth like a dead fish in a crimson pond.
Blount tried to roll onto his side by using his arms and hands, but nothing happened. His limbs didn’t respond, and he remained stationary. Next, he tried to pull his knees toward his chest, hoping to see or detect movement of any kind, but his legs remained planted on the ground. In a final test, Blount tried to wiggle his fingers and tap his feet, but they remained lifeless.
He wanted to prove that he was making a mistake, that he was simply overreacting and wasn’t paralyzed, but his body was unwilling to cooperate.
Sadly, it kept letting him down, over and over again.
CHAPTER 55
DESPITE
the agony in his arm, Payne managed to close the gap between himself and the surging truck to less than five feet. Once he matched the truck’s speed, Payne pulled his right leg from the ATV and placed his foot on the vehicle’s seat. After doing the same with his other leg, Payne found himself steering the Yamaha in a catcher’s stance, a position that would allow him to leap onto the back of the truck.
But Holmes wasn’t about to let that happen.
Using his passenger-side mirror, Holmes spotted Payne in pursuit. In an effort to thwart him, Holmes swerved the truck violently to the left, trying to shake free of the highspeed pest, but Payne adjusted quickly, gliding adjacent to the right edge of the pickup. Without delay, Holmes whipped the steering wheel to the right, trying to flatten Payne with the violent impact of the two vehicles, but the maneuver backfired.
Since Payne was anticipating Holmes’s move, he used the truck’s approach to his advantage, jumping from the Yamaha a split second before impact occurred. Holmes laughed when he heard the metallic crunch of the two vehicles and glanced in his mirror to examine the wreckage, but the darkness prevented him from grasping what had really happened. The only thing he could see was the spiraling glow of the ATV’s headlight as it turned over in a series of violent flips.
“It was nice bumping into you!” Holmes howled.
Little did he know that Payne was still along for the ride.
THE initial sound came from behind, and it made Blount’s heart leap with fear. It wasn’t a distinct noise like a bark or a howl, but Blount still knew what had produced it. It was Tornado, the hound from Hades. The bloodthirsty dog had paralyzed him and was coming back for more.
Blount knew if he remained stationary he wouldn’t stand a chance against the blood-crazed beast. The dog would pin him to the ground with its thick, muscular body and thrash him to death with its razor-sharp teeth. He had seen the animal in action during its training sessions with Ndjai, so he knew what it was capable of doing. If he was to survive, Blount needed to get to his feet and find some kind of weapon to defend himself. But how? He couldn’t run or even twitch. What chance did he stand against something like Tornado?
Realizing he couldn’t put up a fight, Blount tried to scream for help, hoping that Payne or Jones would hear him, but his severed tongue and mouthful of blood restricted his effort. Instead of a shout, all that he could produce was a muffled whimper. And no one was close enough to hear it except Tornado, who heard the plea and sprang forward to investigate.
IF he had wanted to, Payne could have killed Holmes immediately-all it would take was a bullet to the back of his head-but there was a slight problem with that approach: Who was going to stop the truck? The vehicle was going too fast to stop on its own, and since Payne was in the back of it, the thought of it ramming into a tree or plunging into a swamp wasn’t appealing.
No, if Payne was going to take out Holmes, he had to do it from close range with a great deal of finesse. It was the only way to guarantee his own safety.
Payne pulled the Glock from his belt and studied the back of the truck, hoping to find something useful. The bed was bare except for a tool chest, a tire, and a thick military blanket. Payne thought for a moment, trying to figure out how he could use any of these things to his advantage, when an idea hit him. He could use the blanket to obscure Holmes’s vision.
With a quick tug, Payne slid the blanket across the bed and readied it for use. All he needed to do was toss it over the front of the-
“Oh, my God!” Payne mumbled.
He stared at the object on the other side of the truck and couldn’t believe what he was seeing. How had he been so blind when he first climbed aboard? How could he have missed such a large lump under the blanket? It just didn’t seem possible.
But there it was. Or more accurately, there he was. The captive who’d been pulled from the Devil’s Box before Payne had been placed inside. The man was handcuffed, unconscious, and lying no more than five feet away.
Payne crawled across the truck bed and tried to examine him, hoping he was still clinging to life. His skin was red and blistered, not only from severe sunburn but also from insect bites. Even though his eyes were responsive, they were lethargic-possibly from dehydration or an illness of some kind.
“Hang in there,” Payne whispered.
He glanced at the open terrain of the surrounding field and realized that he needed to make his move immediately. He didn’t want to abandon the sick prisoner, but if he struck now, he knew there was no chance of the truck slamming into anything solid.
“Everything’s going to be fine.”
Stretching the blanket in his two hands, Payne crawled toward Holmes. Although pain ripped through his biceps as he worked, he realized that he had to use his left arm to complete the job. There was no other choice.
Taking a quick breath to ease his agony, Payne thrust his arms through the broken back window and arched the blanket over the face of the stunned driver. Holmes instantly released the steering wheel and used both of his hands to tear at the thick blanket, but Payne wasn’t about to give in. In fact, he felt like a rodeo champion clinging for life on the back of an angry bull.