Acts of Nature

only the thought of what they might do to Sherry caused the muscles in my legs and back to hold. They were curtain-closing words coming from a man with eyes that now seemed to see nothing but survival, and the look was one I recognized. I now had no doubt he was an ex-con, learned from the inside.
    “I’m gonna have to ask you to move over there by the door, sir, and sit,” he said waving the handgun.
    “Wayne, you go on and get that roll of tape out of the bag there and strap Mr. Freeman up by the ankles and the wrists. Behind his back, boy.”
    Buck had obviously grown tired of the younger one’s miscues. The identifying necklace should have never seen the light of day until some buyer somewhere was ready to remove the stones so it would be unrecognizable.
    “Now whoa, whoa, hold on a minute,” I said, trying to slow things down. “What the hell, fellas. You guys got something going on out here where you’re just salvaging after the storm, we don’t give a damn. Hell, we’re not even owners of any property. We just got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whatever you guys are doing, it’s none of our business and it can stay that way.”
    The kid crossed my ankles and started strapping with a roll of waterproof packaging tape, the kind with a nylon filament running through it. Tough to tear, tougher to break. He seemed pissed now, taking out the anger that he wanted to direct at someone else onto the job at hand. I’d be lucky to still feel my toes in an hour.
    “Hands behind your back,” he said, like he’d heard it on an old movie. But when I hesitated Buck cocked the big hammer on the pistol and I pressed my lips into a line and followed the order. The kid did the same angry trick on my hands, though I was ready and turned my knuckles in, forcing the tendons on the inside of my wrists to bulge as much as my strength could pop them. It would give me some room when I relaxed. I hoped it would be a voluntary relaxation and not because my brain matter was all over the wall behind me.
    As much as the binding hurt it was nothing compared with having to watch the other little shithead do the same thing to Sherry.
    Wayne finished with me and then started to toss the roll to his friend who was too busy staring down at Sherry’s crotch to notice.
    “Yo, Marcus,” the kid said, fucking up again, using his buddy’s name, not that it mattered anymore.
    Marcus caught the tape roll and started wrapping Sherry’s ankles to the posts of the cot. She whined once when he pulled her broken leg over to strap it and I felt angry tears come into my eyes. Retribution had not been part of me as a street cop. The only person I’d ever wished death on was my own alcoholic father who almost nightly dumped his badge and revolver on the kitchen table before he started smacking my mother around with an open hand. But as I watched this kid pull Sherry’s arms up and bind them and then run his fingertips down her now unprotected chest and over her breasts, he became number two.
    “Get the fuck over here,” Buck snapped at the kid. He picked up the canvas bag by the bottom corner and let several metal tools spill out onto the floor: a stout iron crowbar, two different-sized screwdrivers, and a pair of vise grips, a claw hammer, and small axe.
    “I seen by the markings on that door, you already tried to get into the other room there, Mr. Freeman,” he said without looking at me. “But maybe you just didn’t have the right tools with you, huh?”
    He stepped over for a closer look at the door and the electronic locking device.
    “But scootch on over out of the way there, sir. I have had some practical learning on how to get in and out of places folks don’t want you to get in or out of.”
    I slid myself down the wall and didn’t say a word about the hatchway under the room that I’d left wide open in my haste to meet these assholes. I was trying to decide if we were better off biding our time, hoping against hope that the two immature hicks would continue to fuck up somehow and give me an opening, or should I just tell Buck about the entry, let them loot whatever they wanted from the room and maybe he’d be satisfied and leave. The other possibility I was not yet ready to confront: that he’d simply kill us both and leave it to whomever stumbled onto our rotting bodies in a few days or weeks to piece it together. Hell, maybe he’d just kill us and haul our corpses onto his airboat deeper into the swamp