Guardian by Dan Gleed Page A

where cold metal dug into the thin flesh of my forehead and a dark, hard face loomed menacingly at the other end of a long arm. A simple question hung in the air, but the quiet, disinterested menace with which it had been asked left me in no doubt the speaker meant what he said. Which, I have to confess, at any other time would have plunged me into total bewilderment but, right now and for some unfathomable reason, failed to make even the slightest impression.
    â€œIs there any reason I shouldn’t kill you?”
    I remember I really couldn’t think of a suitable answer. The trauma of the last few hours had taxed the very depths of reason and, like all nightmares, the situation seemed almost surreal. All I could do was stare at the pistol and the face, knowing that it wouldn’t take much to tip me over the edge. Which led to a calculating, if nascent resentment beginning to build somewhere deep inside. A capability I never knew I had and one that made me realise, for the first time, not everything might be lost. Recovery was possible. Somehow, I might get past this. I could, after all, hope somehow to repair my bruised and battered self-esteem. At which point, the menace intensified.
    â€œYou’ve got five seconds to convince me, or you’re dead.” “One”. “Two – .” I felt rather than heard the shadowy figure take up the first pressure on the trigger and suddenly I knew it needed only the lightest touch to blow me away. “Three”. “Four.” From somewhere out of sight I heard a faint stirring.
    â€œBoss. Hold up. I know who this kid is. I saw his picture in the paper. He’s the one who left his friend to die. You remember, the one who got eaten by a lion?” There was a heavy silence. Then the pressure from the silencer eased slightly. I could see the gunman, whoever he was, was interested, despite himself.
    â€œSo. We have ourselves a real, live coward.”
    I watched the gunman’s eyes travel slowly down to my feet and then back up. And by the time they returned to meet my gaze, there was speculation in them. “Now, that might be quite handy. Tie him and gag him while I have a think about it.”
    Rough hands pulled me abruptly to the side and a knee sent me flat on my face, the tip of a tusk digging painfully into my exposed throat. There was swift efficiency in the hands that bound me and tightly fastened I stayed, with bodge tape slapped carelessly across my mouth to keep me quiet. Then with little regard for the niceties, I was dragged face down across the freight car floor to the far corner. Silence. Uncomfortable to say the least, I remember trying to ease the various aches induced by the restraints whilst, at the same time, straining to listen to the terse whispering passing back and forth between my captors. With a total lack of success. In the dark I couldn’t even work out how many there were. Thoroughly disorientated and with my hands hauled painfully tight behind my back, I was reduced to little more than turning my head and looking towards the wagon’s entrance, where a thin line of light forced its way around the edge of the sliding door and provided the one and only point of reference.
    To be honest, by that juncture the sheer shock of what was happening had once again leached away any genuine willingness to fight back. But lying there, abandoned, anger slowly began to overtake the debilitating sense of futility I’d been living with since the encounter with my father the previous evening. Physically, I was completely helpless and knew it, but hidden within me something akin to resolve finally began to take a certain shape.
    Because my ear was pressed against the floorboards, I was the first to catch the sound of footsteps crunching through the ballast stones scattered alongside the track. A tuneless whistle, magnified by the wooden floor, floated out of the silence. The sound of a man at ease with his world.