The Road Sharks Read Online Free

probably small comfort.
    A crosswind came up, and Ghost Wind realized they were not alone out here, the tortured one and herself. An overpowering scent of body odor came from the southwest, near a small hill and she also caught a whiff of campfire smoke. She decided to see if she could shed light on the situation. She dropped her gear into concealment, taking only her big rough-hewn knife, and wove through the sagebrush.
    The camp contained two men, both as filthy as she had ever seen. She was very thankful she was no closer than the top of the small hill, as she knelt in the tall sagebrush.  
    Oh, I know your kind.  
    Had she been nearer the two men, she was quite sure the smell from them would have brought tears to her eyes. Men like this often formed the slavers and kilabyker gangs her people had been so invested in keeping at bay.
    “I’m tellin’ ya, Lester, we should’ve just gutted that fucker. He’s dangerous as hell, man, and we’ve been tryin’ to get Mr. Boy Scout dead fer a damn long time!” One of the men was gesticulating wildly at the other, obviously in a passion over what he was trying to get across. “It was fun as hell to hammer him to that cross, man, and fun as hell to beat on him for a hour or so with the rebar, but he’s strange. He still might come back an’ get us somehow.”
    “Fat chance o’ dat, Benny,” the other replied. “But let’s finish makin’ these spears, and we’ll use ol’ the law dog as chuckin’ practice. That oughtta give us a bit more fun and make things final for our dear Captain Shit Head. Good by you?”
    “Yeah. Good. I owe that guy, and paybacks are a bitch.”
    Ghost Wind had heard all she needed. Now, should she help, or just keep going and mind her own business?
    ****
    He had been hanging for what seemed like years.  
    I wish I could flippin’ die, already. Soon though…
    His hands and his feet throbbed from the thick rusty nails driven through them, and the other wounds he had suffered at the hands of his captors weren’t helping him manage the pain.
    To think I’m going down at the hands of those two dickheads.
    Eli stared down at his leg. As horrific as the wounds from the bear trap were, they were trying to do their thing and heal, at a rate that would astonish the common man. But the sheer number of injuries he had sustained at the hands of Lester and Benny had drained even his ability to heal. If he didn’t escape soon, the great experiment would end very badly.
    I think this might be it.
    Unfortunately, he was far from his peak performance level. Usually, he might have been able to pull out the nails securing him to this god-awful Greek cross, painful as that might have been. Usually he was a lot stronger than he looked, but now, he was weak with pain, injury, dehydration, hypothermia and hunger.
    He looked over the landscape of sagebrush and juniper toward Mt. Hood to the west. Maybe when he died, his spirit would wander over its snowy slopes, free from this pain, free from duty, free from worry.
    Assuming he had a soul. There had been a lot of debate about that.
    As his head drooped, he saw the woman standing right in front of him.
    “What…? Who? Where the hell did you come from?”
    She didn’t answer. He was sure she hadn’t been standing there a few moments before, and he saw no way she could have come through the knee-high sage and bitterbrush to sneak up on him.
    He began to laugh weakly. “Oh, I get it. Hallucinating. And wow, did I come up with a wonder.”
    He looked his fever dream over. She was tall, looking vaguely Native American and was wearing an outlandish outfit that looked half wool and half skins and fur. To top it off, she had some sort of coyote-hide draped over her shoulders and his imagination even managed to provide her with a livid scar over one side of her otherwise beautiful face.  
    She continued to stare at him, not saying a word, as if making a decision.
    “Oh criminy. I want to get off here so bad,