Pain was the first thing his mind registered; bayonet-stabs of agony, lunging and impaling every time he tried to breathe. Broken ribs, he surmised. Some sort of half-nightmare, half-memory started to worm its way through the passageways of his mind, formulating a fragmented image, like a series of half-done puzzles hung with haphazard disarray on the walls of a long and dark corridor, with each disambiguated picture featuring too many missing pieces. William struggled to make sense of what these images meant.
Ricky, with a bullet through his head. Aboubakar, turned traitor. Huntsmen troops, swarming up a stairwell. A gun battle, a rooftop, a bloody fight.
He could remember flashes of something like that, images that seemed to make no sense when he tried to cobble the ragged patches together into some sort of cogent memory in his mind.
Trying to piece together the fragments of memories was proving hopeless, so he focused on the present. He was in a cabin, he could tell that much, and also that it was night. William’s tiger senses began to mould in his mind a fairly complete image of his outer surroundings. Gone was the omnipresent hubbub of New York City; the tireless, smoke-belching machines of humankind did not engage in their ceaseless toil here. No, only the sounds of the deep forest burbled outside, densely alive with glorious chaos. The air was overpoweringly fresh and clean, and the deliciousness of this tree-filtered delicacy was splendidly delightful; in his years in the city, William had become accustomed to the ubiquitousness of foul air – air saturated with the by-products of petrochemical combustion, off-gassed chemical compounds, damp concrete and ever-festering mould and mildew, too-potent perfumes, acrid colognes, and sour refuse piled in eye-melting technicolour mountains of filth that would endure for thousands of years. A million different meals cooking, marinating, rotting … the stink of human bodies packed too close, the pervasive, inescapable wafts of what oozed night and day through the sewers; New York’s concrete intestines, a cancer-riddled digestive tract that choked on the combined piss, shit, vomit, blood, cum, tampons, drugs, condoms, diapers, rotting hair, and sloughed off skin of close to ten million human beings.
It was only now, in this crisp, untainted air, that William remembered what large swathes of the world had once smelled like. Too long had he nested, rat-like, in a cocoon of hedonistic abandon in a garish concrete tomb, punch-drunk on overstimulation and numbed to everything by the three-dimensional cardboard cutout fakery of a 21st century urban existence.
‘God,’ he murmured, drawing in a slow, sumptuous breath, filling his lungs with purifying, life-giving cleanliness. ‘It’s been so long … so very, very long.’
In closer proximity, within the cabin, there were different smells: strong was the sulphurous odour of gunpowder, packed into many bullets, and equally immediate were the subtle but unmistakable scents of cold steel and gun oil; there were weapons here. Elsewhere in the cabin was a miasma of voices, laughing, chatting, joking. None of them were familiar … none except one.
A rich baritone voice, speaking English, but coloured with a North African accent. It was frustratingly familiar, but with his mind still muddled William could not connect voice to memory. An attempt to rise jolted shears of pain through his body, and he suspected that it wasn’t only his ribs that he had broken. While broken bones would heal quickly enough if appropriate care was taken, the agony racking his body was debilitating and impossible to ignore.
A hit … I need one now, right now. I had some … I had some of my special medicine, but where is it? Where the hell is it?
William was hunted, always; this was the primary, overriding condition of his existence. He had to suspect that, as clean as this air was, the environment in which he found himself was hostile. An escape would thus need to be made, regardless of injuries and pain. The hit he needed so badly would have to wait; escape was his first priority. He had no idea how he could have come to be here in his tiger form, but he knew he needed to get out, and get out fast. He shifted into his human form and struggled to his feet, gripping the edge of the nearby desk and wincing with pain. He peered around the room, trying to figure out a plan.
‘One problem at a time old boy, one problem at a time,’ he muttered.
There were some clothes draped over the back of a nearby chair; a plain white tee shirt and jeans. Holding them up, he saw that they were his size; his captors had at least provided these for him. He took the jeans and attempted to slip his legs into them, biting his lip and trying not to cry out from the stabs of pain that accompanied every movement.
The next order of business was to see if there was anything with which he could arm himself. As quietly as he could, he rifled through the desk drawers. There were a few papers and items of stationery, but nothing, unfortunately, that would serve as a weapon.
‘Damn it,’ he hissed.
The throbbing pain in his side was growing more severe, so again his thoughts turned to heroin cravings. Just one hit of his medicine would be able to alleviate this agony. A little hit, just a tiny one…
‘No, no … focus, man, focus,’ he whispered to himself through gritted teeth.
Aside from the sparse furniture the room was empty. His quick search proved fruitless, so he eased himself into the chair, groaning and sweating with the intensity of the pain.
Think, lad, think. How are you going to get yourself out of this one?
A flash of inspiration detonated within his mind, and he probed under the desk, groping around the space into which a chair was supposed to be tucked.
Yes!
Duct-taped there was a machete. William pulled it out and gave it a few test swings to assess its
