The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group (18 page)

‘Sorry . . .’ I fell back, thoroughly intimidated.

‘Don’t
touch
me!’

‘I won’t. Okay? It’s all right.’ The words had barely left my mouth when I heard a faint buzz, which made us both fall silent and listen hard. Within seconds, the buzz had grown louder. It became more of a whine.

If I hadn’t been so shaken up, I probably would have recognised it sooner.

‘That’s a car,’ I squeaked. Sergio’s head began to snap back and forth wildly.

‘Where – where . . .?’ he stammered.

‘I dunno.’

I couldn’t see any headlights. The engine’s low growl was very misleading; I’d think at first that it was coming from one direction, before changing my mind, then changing it again.

‘It’s heading for the house!’ Sergio yelped, ducking down onto his haunches.

I followed suit. ‘You reckon?’

‘Maybe they were out. Maybe that’s why they didn’t hear us.’

‘Unless it isn’t them in that car,’ I said. And after a minute or two of intense concentration, I added, ‘That isn’t the same car.’

‘What?’

‘That’s not the car they were driving in Sydney.’ I focused on the throaty roar as it grew louder and louder. ‘I don’t even think it is a car. I think it’s some sort of truck.’

As I straightened my knees and raised my head, Sergio pulled me back down again with a jerk – but not before I’d glimpsed the approaching vehicle. It was closer than I’d expected. In fact, as I cowered behind a low, prickly shrub, I heard the crunch of gravel and the squeal of brakes.

Oh my God
, I thought.
It’s stopped
.

There was no mistaking the rattle-and-throb of an idling engine. I held my breath. Sergio clutched my arm. We both waited, paralysed.

Then the engine died. A door slammed. I recognised the grinding squeal of a tailgate being lowered. But it was the snuffling that really scared me – that and the clicking of toenails on metal. I could smell dogs.

‘They saw you,’ Sergio breathed into my ear.

‘Shh!’

He began to grope about for a rock. I didn’t know what to do. Use my chain? Make a run for it? So far, I could only hear one set of footsteps.

‘Hey. Toby. Is that you?’ somebody said.

My heart skipped a beat.

‘I can smell you, okay?’ The voice was a rough-edged drawl, too low to be Gary’s and too Australian to be Lincoln’s. ‘Reuben sent me. I’m Danny Ruiz.’

Danny Ruiz?
That
rang a bell. Reuben and Sanford had both mentioned Danny Ruiz. Danny was the one from the desert. The damaged one.

The menace.

‘You gunna come out? Or will I send me dogs in after ya?’ he growled. Then there was a ratcheting noise that I recognised instantly as a rifle-bolt being drawn – don’t ask me how. (Television, maybe?  I’d never laid eyes on a
real
rifle.) ‘Whyn’t you say something?’ he demanded. ‘Hey! Is that Toby or not?’

Beside me, Sergio suddenly moved. He exploded into the air like shrapnel from a landmine. ‘
Yaagh!
’ he screamed, hurling something heavy. It hit solid metal with a ringing
clang!
A dog yipped. Danny swore. Sergio bolted.

Even now, I’m not sure exactly what happened. It was dark and I was confused. Somebody whistled. There seemed to be dogs everywhere. As I sprang to my feet, four of them bounded past me, two on each side. Then a dark shape loomed up and shoved a long, metal tube under my nose.

I froze as I realised that the tube was the barrel of a gun, gleaming dully in the moonlight.

‘You
are
just a kid,’ said Danny, from the other end of the gun. ‘I thought so.’ Raising his voice, he added, ‘Move a muscle and they’ll go for ya! I swear to God!’

That was when I became conscious of the low rumble behind me. It made the hairs rise on the back of my neck. Glancing around, I saw that Sergio had been surrounded by snarling dogs – four tense silhouettes with raised hackles and glinting teeth.

I lifted both hands, dropping my chain.

‘So which one’s Toby?’ Danny asked. I had to clear my throat before answering.

‘M-me,’ I stuttered.

‘And who’s that?’ The gun jerked slightly, indicating Sergio.

‘That’s – um – that’s . . .’ My mind was a blank. I couldn’t think. I was shaking and sweating, and I felt nauseous.

Maybe Danny sensed this, because all at once he lowered his gun.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’m on your side. I came to get yiz out. I never figured you woulda done it on your own.’ He gave a harsh chuckle, which sounded like two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together. I couldn’t see much of his face in the shadows, but his outline was tall and lanky, and his wispy hair seemed to be worn quite long. ‘How in the hell didja pull it off?’ he asked. Then, in a chatty tone, he added, ‘I went for the jugular, meself. Got shot a few times, but I kept on going. Bulled me way out.’

Sergio gasped. He’d been standing like a statue, with one knee up and one arm bent, staring at the dogs. But now he turned his head to look at Danny. ‘You mean – you mean you were locked down there? In a tank? Like us?’ he quavered.

Danny gave a snort.

‘Too bloody right I was! Didn’t you work that out already?’ He shouldered his rifle, as if to demonstrate that we were all allies. ‘I’m a werewolf. Just like you,’ he said. ‘And I’m here to make those bastards suffer.’

‘W
ait a second.’
My voice was hoarse and my hands were still up. ‘How – how did you know I was here?’

‘I just told you, didn’t I?’ Danny growled. ‘Reuben Schneider called me.’

‘Yeah, but how did
he
know?’
Unless,
I thought,
he was in on this deal.
‘Who would have told him?’

Danny shrugged. He didn’t seem interested. ‘Reuben called me – I dunno – round four hours ago?’ he replied. ‘Said some blokes were back at Wolgaroo, running fights again. Said they’d probably snatched a frienda his, called Toby.’ Peering at Sergio, he added, ‘Didn’t mention this guy. What’s your name?’

‘S-Sergio.’

Danny grunted. Then he clicked his tongue at the dogs, calling them to heel. They immediately abandoned their posts, slinking back towards their master.

Sergio heaved a long, quivering sigh as he adopted a more comfortable position, with both feet planted firmly on the ground.

‘You can drop your hands,’ Danny informed me. ‘I’m not gunna shoot ya.’ The next instant, however, he unslung his rifle in a threatening kind of way – not exactly aiming it, but making sure that everyone knew it was there. ‘Where’dja think
you’re
going?’ he barked at Sergio, who was heading for Danny’s vehicle.

Sergio halted. ‘I thought – aren’t you taking us away?’ he shrilled.

‘Not yet,’ said Danny. ‘Not until I deal with the bastards who brought yiz here.’ Then he turned back to me, still cradling his gun. ‘So how did yiz both get out, exactly? Gimme a blow- by-blow.’

I licked my lips and lowered my hands. Though I didn’t trust him, there was no way on earth I could avoid giving him some kind of explanation. Not while he was armed with a bolt-action rifle. ‘I squeezed through the bars,’ was what I finally told him, keeping one eye firmly on the dogs.

‘Y’mean the bars in the gate?’ he queried. ‘The gate to the tunnel?’

‘That’s right.’ He obviously knew his stuff; I could tell that he was familiar with the underground tanks. But I didn’t find this reassuring.

On the contrary.

‘And then what?’ he asked.

‘Then I picked the lock on Sergio’s gate.’

‘Oh yeah?’ Danny sounded surprised. ‘How’d you manage that?’

‘With a shim,’ I mumbled. ‘That I made out of a beer can.’

Though I can’t be absolutely sure, I think Danny might have cracked a smile at this. But all he said was, ‘And then what?’

‘Then we took a big steel drum, and I stood on that, and Sergio stood on me. So he could climb out of the pool.’ As I went on to describe the ladder, and the tripwire, and the padlock, the barrel of Danny’s gun slowly sagged towards the ground. He seemed to be concentrating fiercely. At last, when I’d finished, he said, ‘How many are there? D’you know?’

I was stumped. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, who’s in the house? How many people?’ When I didn’t answer, Danny swung around to address Sergio. ‘What about you? Do
you
know?’

‘We don’t even know if anyone’s
there at all,’ Sergio rejoined sullenly. ‘We thought your truck might be them, coming back.’

‘Okay.’ Danny pondered for a moment. ‘So how many
have
you seen? Since you got here?’

‘Two. No – three.’ When Sergio corrected himself, I stared at him in astonishment. There were three kidnappers? He’d never mentioned that. ‘I only saw one of ’em once,’ he admitted. ‘Not long ago. Maybe yesterday or the day before . . . it’s hard to tell the time, down there . . .’ He trailed off, his head drooping.

‘Mmmph.’ Danny nodded. Then he swivelled around to study the small square of light in the distance. ‘How many cars are parked outside?’ he asked.

Sergio and I stared at each other. We waited. Neither of us, however, could provide that information. ‘We didn’t notice,’ I said at last.

‘Okay. So how many guns’ve they got?’ was Danny’s next inquiry. I was startled when Sergio spoke up.

‘One each,’ he said, after a short bout of mental arithmetic. Then he amended this total. ‘No. Hang on. The third guy was carrying Lincoln’s gun. I remember that.’

‘Which is?’

‘A shotgun. Ten-gauge.’ Sergio seemed to be warming to the subject. ‘The other one’s a handgun. A Glock. Gary told me.’

‘Gary
told
you?’ I echoed. And Sergio stiffened before muttering, ‘Yeah. When he stuck it in my face and said he’d blow me away with it.
That’s
when he told me.’ After a long, drawn-out silence, he added, through clenched teeth, ‘I wanna do the same to him. And then I wanna pull the trigger.’

My jaw dropped. I caught my breath. But Danny was completely unfazed.

‘Yeah. I hear ya,’ he remarked carelessly. ‘But we gotta catch ’em first.’ Having shouldered his rifle again, he checked the illuminated dial on his watch. ‘It’s half-past two,’ he went on. ‘They might not check on yiz both until breakfast, if we’re lucky. Which’ll give us a bit of time to get in there. Set up an ambush.’

He’s crazy
, I decided. Reuben’s warning popped into my head:
Danny’s really messed up
. . .
he’s a full-on menace
. . .

What’s more, he still hadn’t satisfied my curiosity. Okay; so he’d heard about me from Reuben. But how had Reuben found out where I was, if he didn’t know Gary or Lincoln? What if this was all some elaborate plot, to get Sergio and me back in our cages without shooting us?

‘Nuh-uh,’ I announced. ‘Not me. I’m not going back in there. I wanna go home.’

Danny regarded me for a moment. I heard him sniff. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, in faintly scornful accents. ‘You’ll be safe with old Danny around.’

But he was missing the point.

‘So what?’ I countered. ‘Who cares? I just wanna go home.’ Anticipating a sharp response, I quickly went on the offensive. ‘Aren’t you here to take us home? Isn’t that why Reuben sent you?’ I demanded.

‘What – home to Sydney?’ Danny gave a snort. ‘No bloody way. Reuben can do that.’

‘Huh?’

‘Reuben can do that,’ Danny repeated. ‘He’s driving up from Sydney now. Should be about . . . I dunno . . . four hours? Five?’

‘
Five hours?
’ Sergio butted in. ‘Where
are
we?’

‘Outside of Cobar. Near Broken Hill.’ If Danny expected some kind of reaction, he was doomed to disappointment. I’d never heard of Cobar.
Or
Broken Hill. Neither had Sergio, by the look of it. He scratched his head.

‘So we’re in the outback?’ he wanted to know.

‘Miles from anywhere,’ Danny confirmed. ‘That’s why I can’t leave. Not yet. Or they’ll shoot through before I can bag ’em.’

He seemed to realise that I was the one who needed persuading, because all at once he yanked me towards him. Up close, despite the poor light, I could just make out that he was missing some teeth, and that a scar was dragging down the corner of his left eye.

There were other scars too. All over his face.

‘See, if those bastards are in there, and they find out you’re gone, they won’t hang around. They’ll fly the coop. Just like that.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘And we’ll lose ’em for good, because it’s not like they’ll leave a forwarding address.’ When I still didn’t comment, he scowled at me. ‘You want that to happen?’ he chided. ‘You want ’em to kidnap some other poor kid?’

I recoiled from his bad breath, which smelled of sour milk and fried onions.

‘They won’t get away with it,’ I insisted. ‘The police will track them down.’

‘The
police
?’ spluttered Danny. And Sergio exclaimed, ‘They
are
police, you moron!’

‘No, they’re not,’ I said.

‘Yes, they are!’

‘Sergio, they were just pretending. So they could get us into their car.’

‘How do
you
know?’

I didn’t, of course. I just had a hunch. Danny hawked and spat.

‘Forget the police,’ he declared. ‘I got no dealings with the police. Not
ever
.’

Oh, great
, I thought. And aloud I said, ‘There’s no way the police won’t get involved. My mum would have called ’em already. She’ll be frantic.’ The thought of how Mum must be feeling brought tears to my eyes. I was so homesick, all of a sudden, that I wanted to curl up and bawl like a baby. That’s probably why I got mad instead. ‘I need to phone Mum right now!’ I snapped. ‘
I need to tell her I’m safe!
’

‘Fine. You do that,’ said Danny. Then he jerked his thumb at the house. ‘But you’ll have to use their phone, since I don’t have a mobile.’

He obviously felt that he had said something funny, because he cracked a grin so wide that I could actually see it in the dimness. As for me, I wasn’t amused. Not only that – I wasn’t convinced.

‘You don’t have a
mobile phone
?’ I asked, in disbelief. ‘You drive around in the outback and you don’t have a mobile with you?’

Danny shrugged. ‘No coverage,’ he replied, before abruptly changing tack. ‘See, all I’m gunna do is, I’m gunna make sure those bastards stay put until Reuben arrives,’ he explained. ‘Then we can take it from there. Okay? Figure out what the hell we should do. Sounds good to me.’

I was about to object when he suddenly turned on his heel and headed for the back of his ute. Though I couldn’t see exactly what he was doing, all the clinks and clunks and rattles told me that he was searching through a metal locker or toolbox.

The dogs appeared to be even more confused than I was. They certainly stared after him in a lost kind of way. But they cheered up when he called to them.

‘Come by!’ he yipped, then muttered ‘Gotcha!’ as he stuffed something long and thin under his arm.
Clang
went the lid of a toolbox.

‘Don’t satellite phones work out here?’ I asked, in the belief that Danny and I were still having a conversation. But he didn’t answer. He simply walked on by, moving towards the house – and for a moment I didn’t understand. What was he doing? Where was he going?

The dogs surged after him, silently obedient. That was when I realised: he didn’t intend to hang around any longer. He was off to do some damage instead.

A pair of boltcutters was dangling from his right hand.

‘Wait!’ I cried. ‘What about us?’

‘I’m going with
him,
’ Sergio decided. And he began to follow Danny.

‘But what about the ute?’ I said feebly. ‘Aren’t you gunna drive?’

‘Oh, sure.’ Danny’s sarcastic retort floated back to me over his shoulder, like a whiff of stale air. ‘I’ll drive right up to the front door with me headlights on, just to give ’em some warning.’ He uttered a honk of laughter. ‘Maybe I’ll ask ’em if they wanna be chained to the floor, as well.’

I stood watching as he marched away, his rifle on his back and his raincoat flapping open. Moonlight glinted off the top of his balding scalp. His big heavy boots thudded and crunched over the parched ground, while his dogs padded along beside them. Sergio, I thought, looked a bit like one of the dogs; he was scurrying behind Danny with his head down.

I suppose I could pretend that I followed them both because I wanted to call Mum, or because I was keen to stop anything really bad from happening. But it wouldn’t be true. The fact is, I couldn’t bear the thought of being stuck out in the middle of nowhere all on my own. As Danny’s dark silhouette receded further and further into the shadowy distance, I became more and more uneasy. Don’t ask me why. It wasn’t as if the guy was going to protect me, since he was obviously trouble on steroids. Maybe I had a pack mentality, back then. Maybe I was programmed to follow the alpha dog.

Not anymore, though. Boy, have I learned my lesson. These days, believe me, I would stay with the truck. You know that old saying, ‘safety in numbers’? Well, it’s not always true. Sometimes the more people there are, the more dangerous it gets.

Anyway, I followed Danny and Sergio back to the pool, even though I was almost screaming with anxiety and frustration. Danny didn’t say anything about my change of heart. He was too busy formulating a plan of attack.

‘What we
don’t
want is a shootout,’ he declared. ‘But we’ll get one if we storm the front door, or try to crawl through a window. We’re outgunned, so we gotta be careful. We gotta take ’em by surprise and sneak in through the tanks.’ When I pointed out that the house couldn’t be reached from the tanks, because both interconnecting doors were still locked, Danny waved my protest aside. ‘We’ll fix that,’ he promised. ‘Don’t worry.’

Then he insisted that each of us carry one dog down the ladder into the pool, while his fourth dog remained up top, on guard. It was a stupid idea. All of the dogs were big and mean and heavy – American Staffordshire terriers, for the most part – and they didn’t want to be picked up. They certainly didn’t want to be picked up by
me
. In the end, I dismantled my homemade shoes and tied the strips of mattress ticking through the holes in Danny’s coat, transforming it into a kind of sling that we used to lower the dogs down, one by one. Danny and Sergio did the lowering, while I supported the dogs from underneath.

Afterwards, when Danny descended the ladder to join his dogs, he told me to retrieve Sergio’s mutilated mattress. ‘That has to go back where it came from,’ he insisted, ‘or things won’t look normal.’ He went on to emphasise that, unless everything looked absolutely normal, the ambush wouldn’t work.