Nothing Left But Fear

CHAPTER ONE

As he drifted up through layers of sleep, David Lane began to sense that something didn’t feel quite right. He reached instinctively for the comforting edge of his mattress. It wasn’t there. And where was the duvet that usually kept him warm?

His pulse quickened. Reaching further, trying again to find the raised mattress edge, his fingers grasped something that felt like straw. Straw? His eyes shot open. He found that he was not in his bed at all, but lying on the floor of what appeared to be a cavern. Straw was scattered about him everywhere. He was stark naked and itching all over.

Fear struck him like a lightning bolt: He really was no longer in the safety of his own little bedroom at home!

‘Where the hell am I?’

To find out, David jumped to his feet. Or, at least, he tried to. His legs, shaky from some kind of drug infusion he didn’t understand, since he didn’t do drugs, were not prepared for the suddenness of the move. He fell back onto the straw-covered surface, a jarring experience that didn’t help ease the racing of his heart.

He lay there for an instant, breathing heavily, feeling vulnerable and lost. Soon, though, he realised he would have to fight his fear and try to get up again. As he tried to grasp what was going on, he picked up a handful of the straw. It was dry to the touch and had an odd, unfamiliar smell. This did not make him feel any less afraid.

‘Am I going mad? Am I having a nightmare?’

Trying to calm himself, he began studying his surroundings more closely. He noted that the temperature in the cave-like room was warm, so, despite his nudity, he wasn’t cold. What dim light there was came from a single source, what appeared to be an entrance to the cave, but as he looked into the blackness behind him he could feel the almost abysmal depth of an unfathomable, empty space.

A new shiver of fright went from the base of his spine to the nape of his neck. It was as if someone had just walked over his grave. With his thoughts turning to …’where the fuck are my clothes?’…he cupped sweaty palms over his face in frustration and racked his memory for what might have caused him to end up in such a place. He vaguely recalled going to the withdrawal point at his bank in Chelmsford, where he lived, after his social security had been deposited.

‘I don’t remember going to bed at all.’

He rubbed his eyelids, then, as if in some way that would help lessen his confusion. It didn’t.

His mind, desperate for an explanation, soon began to grasp at straws. Train tracks, he thought. A train tunnel and tracks would make more sense than a cave. A quick look around determined no railway track had ever been there.

‘But how did I get here?’

He kept challenging his brain for answers, trying to piece together the few facts he had to make sense of it all.

Again, he recognised that the warm air in the cave certainly was odd; he should be feeling cold by now, but he didn’t. That wasn’t normal. As he looked toward the light, he could make out trees and some sky. That definitely did seem normal, although he had his doubts.

‘That can’t be outside in England, can it?’

Heart still beating fast, David slowly got to his feet, being careful not to fall this time. He stood, wobbling a bit, and drew some confidence from realising he was not under immediate attack. But that feeling was undermined by a wave of emotional — or was it physical? — fatigue.

‘Do I really want to know?’

Whether he did or he didn’t, he realised he had to do something. But what?

He looked at the welcoming light at the entrance. At the moment, naked as he was, he was reluctant to venture out there. Then he turned his head and peered again into the cave’s sloping depths. No way was he going in that direction! Staring into that impenetrable darkness sparked unpleasant images.

‘What if there’s something bad down there?’

That thought triggered a strange foreboding in his brain. He was still very unsteady on his feet, so he braced himself by stooping and resting his hands on his knees. He closed his eyes for a few seconds to temporarily shut out this disturbing, unwanted new reality.

‘Think, David! Think!’

If only he could tap into the memories he knew were dancing somewhere at the edge of his consciousness. If only he could.

Just then, two men came into his mind’s view. Were they real? A flash of fear shot up his spine once more. And he opened his eyes and screamed.

CHAPTER TWO

It was the sun streaming in through the window of her flat that awakened Carly Prow.

She was not one for setting her alarm, as this wasted sleep time, and she hated getting up anyway.

She also hated the curtains around the window to her bedroom; these were too small for the opening, which meant there was always a gap for the morning sun to come bullying through.

Turning away to avoid the bright rays, she closed her eyes to continue sleeping. Too late! Her nicotine craving had already begun.

Sitting up, she reached for the Silk Cut packet on her old pine bedside, pulled out a cigarette and put it in her mouth.

Next to the cigarettes was a Jack Daniels petrol lighter of her father’s that she had gotten when he died a few years back.

The smell of petrol fumes filled the space around her as she opened the cover, which always reminded her of her dad. Pausing for a few seconds to smell the fumes before striking the flint, she thought back to how she had loved her dad so much and still missed him.

She struck the flint several times before a small, flickering flame arose, which she touched to the end of her cigarette, and took in a long, first drag, sucking down every last wisp of smoke deep into her lungs.

She loved the first smoke of the day.

Whilst she sat there enjoying it and contemplating what to do next, she studied her room, where parts of the green carpet that she could see were worn and threadbare and more of a light shade of grey.

Carly knew today she had to look for a job and comply with the Claimant Commitment she’d made with the Jobcentre. Not having a computer in her flat, she would have to make a visit to the library at The County Hall.

She hated looking for work; more still, she hated working. But her next visit to the Jobcentre for her regular interview with her work coach was coming up, so she needed to get moving.

Last week, the Jobcentre contacted her about a property company interview, which had been set for Friday.

She began to plan how best to fail at this interview. Not wanting to risk jeopardising her benefits, she knew she had to keep the appointment. However, she was adept at not getting hired; in fact, she had made it a fine art.

The last time she had worked was around two years ago as a cleaner for a large local company that manufactured rubber O-rings. She’d hated the work and it had only been a matter of time before she got the sack.

In the end, she had poured bleach over the carpet in the board room. As she was already on a warning for being late on numerous occasions, she had been fired immediately.

Carly finished off her cigarette, then got up to go to the bathroom.

After she’d relieved herself she studied her dishevelled look in the small, bathroom mirror. Her hair was matted and greasy and her skin looked pale and blotchy.

She then grinned and saw that her teeth were looking quite yellow; she was well overdue a visit to the dentist. Carly hated dentists with a passion, so hadn’t been to one for several years.

Leaving the bathroom, she went back to the bedroom for her second cigarette of the day.

CHAPTER THREE

Peter Druker sat in his office in front of a computer screen checking his healthy bank balance and, on a separate screen, looking at a list of quoted shares that he owned.

His focus was suddenly interrupted by movement just outside the one large window in the room.

Turning his gaze to what had caught his attention, he could see a pair of Mouse Birds, which are plentiful in this part of Africa, playing about in the branches of the bushes.

He took a few moments to watch these birds with their trademark long tails and tufted crests. He smiled at the way they hopped from one branch to the next, constantly checking for danger with quick movements of their heads.

After a few moments, they flew away, prompting him to return to his computer screens and the daily work routine in his office, which was a large room with a dark, wooden desk placed in the middle.

In one corner was a coffee machine with a jug full of coffee, which gave the room a constant, newly brewed coffee smell.

He would always start his day with a black coffee to help him to think clearly. His first cup would normally be drunk whilst he sat on the veranda before starting his work.

He felt restless today and, having been distracted by the birds, he decided to get up to refill his mug with more black coffee tempered with two teaspoons of sugar.

As he put the freshly filled mug to his lips, he looked across to the desk and the computer screens that were all lined up. He stood there for a few moments thinking about what he should do next.

His agitation was not eased by the coffee. He didn’t feel like sitting down, so he decided to go out onto the veranda to have some thinking time.

This allowed him to enjoy the morning sun, which was something he liked to do whilst contemplating his life. It was at times like these when he got many of his new business ideas.

He left the office and walked down the long corridor which led to the open front door. As he approached the door, he could see the sun beaming in from outside. The wooden floor made a hollow sound as he walked across it in his boots. The knots and blemishes in the old floorboards were highlighted by the sun’s rays as they cast shadows across it.

As Druker reached the veranda, which was covered by a metal corrugated roof, he took in a long, deep breath of the African air.

A small table and chairs on the veranda were just catching the sun at this time of day. He grabbed one of the chairs and scraped it across the wooden floor so he could sit in the soothing rays.

As he sat there, he noticed the resident Vervet Monkeys frolicking in one of the trees in the courtyard immediately in front of the house. They were there most days, seemingly playing without a care in the world.

His coffee soon finished, he returned to his desk to fire up his diary and plan his next trip to the UK. He was keen to get the trip arranged, even though he had only just returned late last night from a five-day trip.

There were always plenty of arrangements to make and he always stayed in the same hotel in Chelmsford. Druker logged onto the Atlantic Hotel’s website to make end-of-the-week reservations.

Rooms were available, so he booked two for five nights. One of the rooms was for himself; the other was for his colleague, Scott, who would be joining him on this trip like on others before.

After he’d booked the hotel, he went onto book a hire car for the duration of his stay.

Druker had a lot of property, mostly in the UK. Recently, he’d branched out into the United States, where he was buying properties on the back of the huge drop in real estate values after the 2008 crash. Now that the market was recovering, he was gradually selling them off to cash in on his foresight.

His most recent purchase was not an investment at all. He’d bought Mwatusanga Reserve, 25,000 hectares of game reserve in the Zambian Luangwa valley.

The house on the reserve where he lived was in colonial style and included a number of thatched-style outbuildings.

The reserve was perfect. It came with plenty of game, including elephants, rhinos, lions, buffalo and leopards, together with an abundance of herbivores.

Mwatusanga was not far from Mfuwe Airport, which had a runway length of 2,000 metres. This runway was long enough to take off and land his Learjet Global 5000, which requires around 1,700 metres to take off fully laden.

His reserve also had a runway, too, and was now long enough to accommodate his private jet, which had a range of 9,500 kilometres. This meant he could fly to the UK non-stop from his home in Africa.

His Learjet was too large to be kept in his own small hanger, and his facilities were not sufficient to maintain such an aircraft, so instead it was kept and maintained at Mfuwe Airport. He rented a hangar from a local private jet company working out from Mfuwe, as this meant that the plane would be regularly serviced, plus there were proper refuelling facilities at this airport, too. Whenever he decided he wanted to go anywhere, the pilots would fly in a light aircraft to Mfuwe from Lusaka Airport and then switch to his Learjet and fly to his place to collect him.

When he’d first purchased his Learjet, his first flight was not to the UK, but instead to Cape Town in South Africa.

Druker had always been a keen diver and had not yet dived with Great White Sharks, so he decided to make a visit to Gansbaai, which was around a two-hour drive southeast of Cape Town. The small town is known for its great cage diving, and the short trip out on a boat to Dyer Island is something he’d always wanted to do. The flying time to Cape Town was around three hours with the Global 5000’s cruising speed of just over 900Kmh, so this was a good trip to try it out and get used to what it was like, before the longer trip to the UK.

On his inaugural trip, he had arranged for a driver to take him to Gansbaai. He had booked a stay in the Crayfish Lodge, which was a short drive to where the harbour and the boats for his outing were situated. He had chosen this lodge for its panoramic suites and great uninterrupted views of the sea off Gansbaai. Whilst he stayed there, his pilots had been booked into an expensive hotel in Cape Town, all expenses paid.

He chartered the boat privately so he could be the only person on it; he hated the idea of spending time with other tourists whilst on this experience. The company he chartered seemed to have a good reputation from the reviews he read, and was on Kus Drive, which looked out over Van Dyks Bay in Gansbaai. The person who arranged the trip for him was helpful and happy to accommodate his private hire.

On the morning following his arrival, and on the day of his trip, it was drizzling with rain. The weather hadn’t stopped the trip from going ahead, though, and they’d set off at just after 7:30 in the morning, heading out to what is known as Shark Alley, which is in between Dyer Island and Geyser Rock, where 60,000 Cape Fur Seals breed. Druker recalled the smell of rotting fish that had hit him as they first approached the seal-covered rock, which was caused by the huge amount of their fish-scented faeces that blanket the island.

Soon after they’d arrived in Shark Alley, the crew had begun to throw chum into the water and to drop a decoy, which looked much like a seal pup. It took a few hours before they had lured a couple of Great White Sharks near the boat, but in the end the trip turned out to be very successful. He had seen a number of Great White Sharks whilst he was in the cage, with two of them coming up very close to check him out. After he had come up from the cage, he remembered he had felt cold, as the weather hadn’t improved all day. He’d asked the skipper to return to base, in order to get warm and because he had been satisfied that he’d seen enough.

After he had tipped the team in his usual generous way, his driver had returned him to Cape Town’s airport. He’d met his two pilots in the terminal, where he boarded his plane in no time at all. He loved the new-found freedom that his new toy had given him, and he loved the flexibility it afforded him. On the flight home, he sat in one of the plane’s luxury seats, drinking one of his fine red wines and looking out of one of the windows, whilst smiling to himself.

After this visit to Cape Town, Druker had soon arranged his first trip to the UK, which had also involved organising the pilots, and arranging a hire car and hotel accommodations. The pilots would deal with all the flight arrangements necessary for this. But there were certain elements of paperwork that he had to get involved with, especially when it came to his departing and arriving directly from Mwatusanga without the need for him to go via an international airport and via immigration and customs.

CHAPTER FOUR

David’s main feeling of horror, which right now was even scarier than finding himself where he was, was that … ‘perhaps someone saw me naked.’

He thought about how, when he’d screamed, he’d imagined the possibility of something prowling in the shadows, but right now the thought of someone having seen him naked sent a shudder through his entire body. It was a deep-seated fear that was far beyond monster scary for him.

He re-opened his eyes and looked up. When he gradually got back to standing fully upright, he was careful not to hit his head on the ceiling of his newly found ‘bedroom.’ As he stood and turned his head, he became aware of a small, stabbing pain in his neck, a pain that ran up and into the base of his skull, almost as if someone had pierced his skin with a needle.

He reached around with his hand to feel the skin just on the nape of his neck, to locate the point at which he’d felt the pain originate, and as he ran his fingers over the site, he could feel a small lump. It was the size of a small nut. As he explored the area with the tips of his fingers, as he pushed and squeezed the skin, it seemed as if there was something just under the surface that moved when he pushed it.

He also could feel a small cut, which had yet to properly heal. The area around this strange object felt inflamed and sore, and if he didn’t know better, it was as if he’d undergone some kind of small, surgical procedure.

‘But then, why would they leave the lump under my skin rather than remove it — unless someone has placed something there,’ he thought.

With this discovery, his whole body shivered with a raw sense of the unknown. David felt totally out of control right now. He tried to clear his fuzzy mind and think back to a time before he’d awakened in this cave. He tried to bring forward the vague recollection of the two men, a memory he was sure would help him to work out why he found himself in this strange place. There was a stocky man with a tanned and almost leather-like skin. The second man, who didn’t have the same distinctive features as the first, did have lot of very dark hair, he recalled.

‘My memory is good enough to remember these two men, but why can’t I remember any more than that?’ he thought frustratingly to himself. ‘Or was this a dream I had whilst asleep?’

Turning back to the object under his skin and the small cut above it, he had no recollection of what had caused this injury, but he was becoming even more concerned over what the object might be.

Slightly unsteady on his feet and still feeling woozy, he walked slowly towards the cave entrance. As he moved off the straw ‘bed,’ he could feel the cool ground beneath his bare feet. On his way to the entrance of the cave, he studied the walls of his enclosure, which were made of a hard-looking grey rock, which seemed to him like rough granite. It looked like the cave had been cut out and formed over a long time; that many millennia had passed since it was first shaped by nature.

David observed the jagged edges of the stone face of the cave, which carved out areas of light and shadow. This shadowing effect made the walls look to him like a torrid sea, with each of the tips that jutted out appearing to form waves, as if there were an invisible storm wind blowing in from the cave’s entrance. He tried to imagine ships sailing across this dark, rough ocean surface, as this wind appeared to move the rock’s surface back towards the dark space behind him and beyond.

He continued to move slowly to the cave entrance and, as he turned his gaze to the light source beyond the jagged opening, he felt very uneasy. He sensed he was not alone. As he cautiously approached the misshapen oval, his tired eyes took some adjusting to the bright sunlight ahead, which gleamed inside, its beams glinting off the stones on the floor of the cave.

David hesitated for a few seconds, contemplating his situation, and as he did, his attention was drawn to a sound. It was something which he’d not been aware of when he first arose. The soft noise suddenly became very apparent to him; it was coming from deep within the cave. David looked back and into the darkness beyond, listening intently.

CHAPTER FIVE

Graham Smith awoke with a start and found himself on the floor.

‘No, it isn’t the floor. It’s hard ground I’m on and I’m outside in the open’, he instantly realised.

As this knowledge came to him, he jumped up. In doing so, he also found that he was completely naked. Suddenly, he felt extremely vulnerable. He looked around to see who might see him without his clothes on and tried to make sense of the situation.

As he surveyed the area around where he had been lying, Graham found that he was not in his familiar home in Chelmsford, but instead in a forested area. And it was very warm.

‘I’m not in the UK,’ was what went through his disbelieving mind.

Graham’s body was not designed for being in the wild, with its huge stomach and stubby legs; his was not a physique that would be best to get him out of trouble.

‘Where am I?’ he questioned. ‘Why am I here?’

He began to move forward to see if he could find his way out of the trees, to see if he could find help, but as he walked he quickly realised how hard the ground was on his bare feet, making him hobble a bit and wince, as the stones bore into his soles.

Looking around and wondering how he’d got here, he realised his mind was unusually fuzzy, a feeling that could have been from whatever had knocked him out.

‘I must have been drugged with something,’ he concluded. ‘But who did this and why?’

As he framed the question, dancing on the edge of his memory were images of three men, one of whom was familiar to him for some reason. They seemed to be intent on subduing and capturing him, but his persistent mental fuzziness made this memory vague.

‘How did I get here, though?’ he puzzled, but then his thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the sound of a bird sitting on a branch above his head, which brought him back to reality and where he was.

It sounded like a pigeon, and as he stopped and looked up to where the call had come from, his thinking cleared. He began to survey the trees in the wooded area where he stood. These were all unfamiliar to him; they made him feel very uneasy. He started to wonder what other animals might be lurking in them or somewhere else around him.

Soon his senses seemed to be on a higher alert than he’d ever experienced before. It was as if his hearing had been tuned in; every sound was magnified. His body tingled and quivered with anxiety, a feeling which he’d never had until now. It felt like a deep, primal fear was going right to his core and into his bones, even though he couldn’t actually see any danger. Somehow, he sensed there was something out there or that he was being watched by dangerous creatures.

What didn’t help was that he was unclothed. His nakedness made his heightened vulnerability seem even more surreal. But, in a strange way, without the thin protection of clothing, he somehow felt more a part of the wild environment that he found himself in.

After having a cursory glance around, there was nothing obvious that he could use to cover himself up with, so he began to walk again. Step by step, he moved slowly through the trees.

Graham kept his hands over his crotch, just in case he