ON HIS RETURN trip from blackout central, the first thing to greet him was an excruciating headache. If someone told him an anvil had been dropped on his head, he would have asked if they were sure it wasn’t two.
The second was that he was tied up. His hands were behind his back, his knees bent, and his ankles latched to his wrists.
Hog-tied!
Reg strained against his bonds to no avail.
Bastard’s got me wrapped tight. But where? What is this place?
He lay on his left side, atop a large, stone slab, carved in the shape of a table. His sole view was a jaggedly hewn rock wall, several feet away. He struggled to pendulum over on his right side.
Immediately, a high-wattage bulb on the opposite rock wall stung his corneas. The reverberating pain made his head feel as if a third anvil had been dropped on it. He squinted and blinked until the pain subsided back to two. As the rest of his senses joined him in consciousness, the aroma of raw sewage stung his nose. He had chased a drug runner under the streets once. It was a smell you didn’t forget.
Left of the blinding light, a metal storage unit built into the wall extended the height of the eight foot cave. Canned goods and food stuffs covered in years of neglect littered dusty shelves. Four fifteen gallon whiskey barrels, stacked in pairs, flanked the storage unit. He tilted his head upward. Against that wall were corroded folding chairs, and a large, black metal trunk.
If this place was what he figured, the black trunk probably contained a change of clothing, short wave radio, flashlight, batteries, a tool set, and heavy rope. All standard supplies for an underground bomb shelter.
This must have been where Fare was headed all along. Pulsating jabs of frontal lobe pain accompanied the thought. He saw no sign of his captor, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t near. And if the way he was tied up was any indication, he was in for a night that did not offer the prospect of ending on a positive note.