Deadly Journey by Declan Conner Read Free Book Online Page A

time to see a passing car. Farther down the road,
I could see a slow-moving vehicle and decided I had to attempt to get a ride.
As it neared, I could see it was a battered pickup truck, pulling an open
trailer. The chugging vehicle looked as though it had driven out of a museum.
Clouds of black smoke belched from the exhaust and the engine spluttered. There
was only the driver behind the windshield. Leaving the rifle behind, hidden
under boulders on a rocky outcrop, as the vehicle neared, I crept through the
hedgerow.
    Standing in the middle of the road, in the
truck’s path, took every ounce of strength and willpower I could summon to
overcome the hurt running through my body. I waved like a madman, and then, as
my legs wobbled, the landscape started to shimmer. It was hard to make out the
outline of the approaching vehicle. All around my head, the vision before me
spun as if I stood in a vortex. Light of head and foot, I hit the ground with a
thud. Dust billowed around me and I choked, taking in a lungful of dirt. The
sound of the truck’s engine exploded in my ears. As I laboured to lift my head,
like a tortoise trying to find its bearings, the radiator grill loomed large.
The shrill grating of graphite on metal… then, as if someone had thrown a cover
over me, darkness descended.

 
    Chapter 8
    False Sense of Security
    I noticed the
stench at first, and then my body bouncing about. The motion reminded me of the
helplessness I had felt as a child when tumbling in a bouncy castle. Childhood
angst returned to haunt me when I was unable to scramble to my feet. I had a
vision of a group of children jumping around me, mocking my situation. Opening
my eyes, I sat up to find I was on the trailer. It smelled as though it had
recently dumped a load of cow dung. Above the sound of the engine chugging, I
could hear the noise of an aircraft engine buzzing like an annoying housefly. I
looked up in time to see a light aircraft fly low overhead. There were pipes
under the wing that gave the impression that it was a crop duster. Through the
wooden slats, I could see we had left the hedgerow behind. We were heading in
the direction of a small farmhouse.
    Clouds of dust and exhaust fumes surrounded
the vehicle as it slowed. We stopped outside the farmhouse door, scattering
chickens, clucking with their wings flapping. The back of the trailer dropped
open. I came face-to-face with the wizened features of the driver. He beckoned
me forward. I shuffled on my backside to the tailgate, dangling my legs over
the side. He was twisted and frail, maybe in his late sixties, but his
appearance belied his strength. He took me over his shoulder, carried me inside
and on into a bedroom. Without ceremony, he launched me onto a bed.
    ‘You passed out. You’ll need fixing.’ That
was the nearest I could translate.
    ‘American. Do you speak English?’
    ‘A little.’
    ‘I need a telephone.’ To make sure he
understood, I formed my hand into a mock handset.
    He shook his head and left the room.
    A woman appeared in the doorway, walked to
the bed, and looked me up and down. It was hard to know if her wincing was from
the sight of me, or the smell. She left the room and two children entered, a
boy aged around eight and a girl around ten.
    ‘Hi, what are your names?’
    They either didn’t understand or they were
shy. They started to snicker and the young boy sidled up to my bedside, poked
me, and stood back. He became excited and started to shout.
    ‘ Americano, Americano .’
    ‘Out, you two,’ said the woman as she
returned with a bowl of water, a cloth and a towel.
    ‘You and the children speak English?’
    ‘Yes, I speak it well. The children have forgotten
most of it, but they understand the word “out”. We lived in Texas for a while
until they caught us, two years back, and sent us back over the border. I’ll
need to fix you up. Lucky for you I trained as a nurse. How did you get like
this?’
    Telling her I was a US government