CW2, D.R. SMITH [little readers .TXT] 📗

sharp pain shot all the way up to his hip leading him to believe he had some kind of pulled or torn muscle. Shane quickly unfastened and unzipped his pants and slid them down to his knees.

Both eyebrows lifted in surprise! A black and blue area covered his left thigh as well as several cuts clustered just over his knee. As he gently moved fingers over the injury to determine how tender it was, the hand snapped back from his skin as the worst part of the damage yielded a super sensitive stinging sensation. This just might affect my departure plans, he concluded. After a visual and touch scan of the rest of his body found no further injuries, he carefully redressed and began to assess the living quarters he was trapped in.

A roll up type mattress was plopped randomly on the floor with only a course green army-surplus style woolen blanket as a covering. No pillow of any kind. A three-legged kitchen chair, that should have had four, was crammed into the corner in order to keep it upright. It was no doubt unreliable. A bucket accompanied by a mostly used roll of toilet paper was provided and was fortunately cleaned out. The cement floor was not covered with anything. Some straw or hay would have certainly complimented this motif perfectly, Shane sarcastically thought. A quick examination of the walls revealed plywood rather than drywall. The latter would have been easily breached, as he was sure his captors were well aware of.

As all of this was located in a part of Arizona Shane referred to as ‘high desert country’, the temperature through the night had dropped significantly. Altitude factored into the northwestern region of the state and although it was very much a desert in geographical and natural features, it encountered many of the climate patterns of a mountain terrain. Winters here could be every bit as harsh as any plains state might experience. The only difference being that frequently temperatures rose high enough through the course of the day to melt off some or all of the snow that might have fallen through the night.

Glancing straight above him brought the first sign of hope for an escape plan. The ceiling was a drop style frame and panel design. One section was consumed with the florescent fixture that lit the room. Two of the tiles were broken, revealing a wide open space looming above and stretching up to the top of what appeared to be a warehouse-like structure. Although the ceiling was eight or nine feet up, Shane felt that the combination of the chair and the bucket could provide enough height to scale one of the interior walls through the ceiling. After that, he would have to adlib as he had no idea what lie beyond the walls of the room.

Suddenly, he heard a door slam. It echoed and sounded quite far away. One of Shane’s eyebrows dipped in a questioning manner accompanied by pursed lips. This room IS inside a warehouse of some kind, he determined by the nature of the sound outside his confinement. The leisurely paced echoing footsteps that followed verified Shane’s suspicion of the building’s size. He decided to play the injured, worn out imprisoned intruder role. A quick scan around the room’s interior confirmed there were no cameras that might capture the phony scene he was about to act out. Shane speedily bundled himself under the blanket, moaning and mumbling, before a hand ever touched the doorknob. Moments later, a sizable set of keys jingled and flopped against the door and its frame as the visitor unlocked and swung it open. His captor entered and strolled over to his bedside.

“Hey Cameron?” the unfamiliar voice spoke while nudging Shane’s back with his foot. “Time to rise Bud. Buck wants you down at HQ in like…” there was a pause indicating a time check. “… 5 minutes”. Continuing to act out the part he had chosen to project, Shane merely groaned out his disapproval and bundled up tighter into his Army rag.

“I SAID GET UP!!” the voice repeated. This time the foot nudge was a kick and sent Shane rolling off his mattress onto the cement with a loud grunt.

Cameron?!? Shane thought. He’s not even close?? Maybe he’s thinking of my last name, he assumed while fighting to squelch a giggle.

Shane heard the man winding up for another kick when he painfully spun over onto the mattress and reached out, preventing the boot from gouging into his side again.

“Ok, Ok … cut me a break!” Shane mumbled loud enough to get the man’s attention. “I’m hurtin’ and I’m tired”

“And I don’t care. But I can tell you this much. Buck cares!!” he said laughing through the last couple words. “and you’re going to care if you don’t get your ass out of that bed in five seconds.”

It was following the man’s last comment that Shane noticed…This guy has no drawl and is grammatically on point. I think its time to make some kind of “in-road” with one of these guys, he quickly deduced. An advocate of some kind would definitely be a plus as the fear his life might be in jeopardy was rearing its ugly head.

“Hey. Can I ask you a simple question?” Shane spoke cautiously after he had stood up. He was using the old direct eye contact routine, a technique Shane had employed frequently as a salesman. It became his ‘go to’ when an account was beginning to show signs of rejection. This guy seemed more… intelligent. The middle-aged warden also appeared to be practicing good hygiene despite the course and make-shift surroundings he was living in. He was sporting a zip collar light-weight pullover from Maine that displayed a nice little lighthouse on its front with the state spelled out beneath it. Oddly, Shane had lost one exactly like it while passing through this area several years ago and for a fraction of a second, thought about asking the man where he had gotten it from. The Dexter deck shoes were what really cued Shane into this man’s former life. This was just not something that your average militia groupie donned.

“What?” the man replied in a curt and begrudged tone.

“I always thought you guys were all about numbers. You know… gathering up as many warm bodies as you could get” Shane said with a guarded approach. “Why screw over a guy who knows this territory like the back of his hand, can handle a weapon better than any of you, and is healthy and willing?” The whole time he was tapping a pointing finger against his own chest.

“That’s a question you can ask Buck in a few…” he started as he turned towards the door.

“Now hang on a second” Shane interrupted. “You seem like an intelligent person. What were you…a manager or a business owner or… “ He trailed off waiting for the man to complete the sentence. It appeared to be working. Maine man slowly turned with eyes cast downward and an unexpected somber and mournful look on his face.

“My wife and I had a T-shirt business. You know… monograms, iron-ons. Nice house. Two kids” That very second, Shane abandoned the possibility of that pullover being his. “We lived ALL THE WAY over in Bangor Maine” he said with a hint of pride in his voice. Shane just stood very still, arms crossed, head tilted, reflecting complete interest and shared grief over the guy’s loss of family and livelihood. He shook his head as if to say… What a shame.

“Damn phony pandemic! Damn cheating politicians!” Maine man grumbled.

Feeling as though the timing was right, Shane reached out to gently pat the man’s shoulder. He now decided to step into the truly personal part of this man’s story.

“And your wife? Where is she…if you don’t mind me asking” He spoke gently with as much sensitivity in his words as he could muster. Maine man’s face puckered with emotion and was obviously fighting back tears.

“When the Leftists started going crazy in all the downtown sections of major cities, she happened to be right in the middle of one of their stupid-ass uprisings” Now speaking with gritted teeth and penetrating anger, he turned to face Shane and continued. “She was just shopping dammit! Why would you crack someone’s skull who was just shopping!?”

For a few moments, Shane felt he had both found and won over an ally. In his mind, he had begun patting himself on the back for ‘a job well done’, even ever so slightly reflecting it in his countenance. But it was all instantly swept away when his story hit so very close to home. All preconceptions about his captors became clear and slipped from his heart, realizing he himself was doing to these people what the Leftists and their manipulating media had done to the conservatives for years. Slap a label on them, package them into one neatly wrapped ‘easy-to-hate’ bundle, and toss them into a trash bin… to be ignored and treated as a complete waste of time. Maine man was a person. A person who had once owned a business along with his wife. A person who had raised a family and had hopes and dreams and a future all of which had been destroyed by the power greedy anti-God Leftists and the do-nothing cooperative Republican sell-outs. Basically… power hungry politicians.

“Hey” Shane now held out a hand to shake. “I’m Shane. Not Cameron. And you are…?”

“Trent. Trent Marler” In spite of the hesitation in his response, he still returned the handshake firmly. “You…you know… Buck has something… well, something not so pleasant planned for you”

“I figured as much. You wouldn’t happen to have some influence with him by chance?” Shane queried. Trent’s eyes wandered away from the conversation as he contemplated how or even whether or not to answer that question. Shane sensed he had put the man on the spot.

“Look. I ended up here about the same way you’ve ended up here.” Trent said. “The only difference is, I flew in” Shane had turned slightly away as he pulled his boots on but did a quick double take when he heard this.

“Flew in?!?” he responded. “In what?” Trent stepped over to the window and signaled Shane to do likewise. Tipping his head back and forth a couple times to find the best view, he finally settled on a position and pointed through the bars.

“That”

Moving in closer and replacing the position of Trent’s head with his, Shane followed the man’s finger direction to a location at the edge of a mesa plateau. There, sitting in what appeared to be excellent condition, was a Cessna 150 fastened to the rock with several tie downs. He could only see part of it from this vantage point, but was pretty sure he was right. This was an aircraft Shane was able to pilot.

“Is that a 150?” Shane decided to verify his guess.

“Yup” Trent replied. “Mine. I had to get away from the east coast. Conservatives were being dealt with harshly back there. This just happened to be where my third tank of fuel was running out. I spotted Rough Rock from the air and thought just maybe I could get some here. Not a drop though. It was a flawless landing too.”

Shane began to wonder. Did they ever get any fuel for it? He decided to draw the answer to that question out of Trent.

“So… there it sits just wasting away. Too bad.” Shane said, looking out of the corner of his eye to see if he could possibly catch Trent’s reaction to this observation. He got more than just a reaction.

“Well… no. We finally got some fuel. It can fly again” Trent said affirmatively. “But I’m the only one who knows how to fly it!” he finished with a slight chuckle.

“Where on earth were you headed? A little further and you’d have been running back into Leftist areas again… California” Shane asked.

“It wasn’t a total accident I ended up