Getting Out

15

Chad was in a sweaty daze, yet he was also on edge. It had been hours since he’d taken his last Vicodin, and he was not enjoying the withdrawal effects one bit. He’d been through this before, when he’d tried to clean up. It hadn’t gone well. He’d ended up destroying half his apartment in an angry rage, screaming at his landlord, and perhaps throwing a cat somewhere, not that he could really remember much of it.

The pills were in Max’s Jeep. Chad cursed himself for leaving them there, but he was always letting stuff accidentally fall out of his pockets, so he’d stuffed the pills in that seat pocket behind Max’s seat.

Not that he could have gotten the pills anyway.

His hands were bound with something, and he lay on his side on the dirty floor in an uncomfortable position. But he was too far into the withdrawal to care about it.

Some of the men who’d dragged them from the Jeep were seated nearby. They sat in lawn chairs around a dying fire, discussing something in low voices.

They’d grilled him practically all night, asking him repeatedly who he worked for. Chad didn’t know where Max and Mandy were, or what had happened to them.

Chad was scared, worried, and confused. But a lot of that fear didn’t have to do with these men. As the night had worn on, it had become clear that these men were just some regular guys from a small town. They were scared that everything had turned off, that there was no power and no communications. They were in the same situation everyone else was in, except that they were in a small town. And so they feared the worst—some kind of foreign government takeover.

One of them got lazily up from his lawn chair. “I’ll go interrogate him some more,” he said sleepily and halfheartedly.

He walked slowly over to Chad, who watched his dirty boots as they came closer to him.

“So,” said the man. “You say you’re not with the Russians, or the Chinese… So who are you with?”

“Come on, man,” said Chad. “I’m an American, just like you. I’m from Pennsylvania. Born and raised.”

He’d been over this a thousand times. He didn’t have the patience for it anymore, despite his position as a prisoner.

“That so?” said the man lazily, his mouth full of chewing tobacco. He spat onto the ground in front of him, and rubbed the ground with his boot, digging the toe into the soil.

“This is bullshit,” said Chad. “Where’d you take my friends?”

“They’re fine,” said the man.

Chad got the sense that these men didn’t want to hurt them.

“I get it, man,” said Chad. “You’re just scared. We all are. But we’ve got to learn to work together on this.”

“How’s that?”

“The way I see it,” said Chad. “It’d be a lot better for you guys if you just let us all go. You could concentrate on doing shit you actually need to do, like finding food, that sort of thing… You can’t be spending all your time essentially working as prison guards… This is just crazy.”

“You watch your mouth.”

“He giving you any trouble?” called one of the men from the campfire.

“Nah, he’s fine.”

“Listen,” said another man around the campfire. “I got to get going. Sally’s going to be worried sick about me.”

“The old ball and chain,” muttered someone else. “Our country’s been attacked and she won’t even let you stay out all night. Doesn’t she know there are some things worth fighting for?”

“I don’t see us doing a hell of a lot of fighting.”

Chad had had enough of it all.

“Shut up!” he screamed, at the top of his drug-deprived lungs.

The men were all stunned into silence.

“You obviously have no idea what you’re even doing!” shouted Chad. “You don’t even know how to interrogate me properly. Now I say either let me and my friends go, right now. That’s option one, OK?” He wasn’t sure he was completely making sense, but he was too far gone and too frustrated to care. “Option two is you go get me my damn pills right now. OK? Option three is that you just torture me already, because I’ve had enough of this shit.”

The men didn’t know what to do. They were all standing in front of him now, staring at this strange prisoner who’d just screamed at them. They shifted their weight. They spat their tobacco juice.

“You know,” said one of them. “Maybe he’s got a point. We didn’t really torture him.”

“Come on, we’re not like that. Plus, Sally would kill me if she knew I was out here torturing people.”

“Desperate times call for desperate measures. If you can’t handle it, then head home.”

“Just kill me,” shouted Chad.

The last thing he remembered was a boot coming towards him, right towards his face. He lost consciousness quickly. If he had been conscious of what was happening, he would have been happy to pass out. It was better than the reality of the withdrawal he was experiencing.