chapter 2:
Rusty is a gentle Australian Cattle Dog I adopted and has been with me since a year we took over the barn from Dad. My mom went for a routine morning run and never came back, Dad found her on her usual track, she died of cardiac arrest when I was twelve. My sister Andrea took care of both of us and Dad till she moved to the university for master in data science and then migrated to Japan. Dad was going through an extended mourning period and got clinically depressed. When I was 18, I enlisted after getting my high school degree, getting a high score on the Army placement exam.
I trained and served at the base for 2 years and 1 year in Afghanistan. I was shot in my hip and sent back as medical discharge due to injured on Active Duty. After a hip bone surgery, I came back to the Peterson barn. My father had restricted the business to cattle and poultry and had sold the plots adjacent to our two neighbours. With the proceeds, he bought a condo in Miami and moved there in search of a life before I came back. Since a year now I have been making repairs and changes to the two outhouses to convert them into a barn and country themed B&B.
It's lonely to be an ex-army closeted gay man. At 6 feet, muscular with army crop haircut and green eyes, I am not too bad to look at but never had the courage to ask a man out or drunk enough to do it with a woman. So I am a 23 year old virgin, living in a barn surrounded by thin woods, working 18 hours a day, tending to farm animals and building the B&B with my dog Rusty.
That night Rusty kept barking which was so unlike him, scratching at the door. I woke up and checked the time on my phone and it was past midnight. I tried to calm him down but he kept barking and sprinted towards the woods as soon as I opened the back door. I waited for a couple of minutes, then put my jacket on and followed him with an actual torch and not just the phone. When I got closer to Rusty, I heard the commotion and him snarling. Must be trespassers from the road, I had found many places where the fence was cut off to make an entrance, it was filed as a lower priority item to fix in the barn. When I ran towards the small clearing, I quickly summarised the situation, there was a naked person kind-off tied to the tree and legs tied with pants. Two guys were running away, one naked holding his clothes and when I reached, the last assailant threw the phone at the victim and ran away.
As I jogged up to the victim, I discovered it was a boy, badly hurt, assaulted and raped as he was bleeding from his backside. I covered him with my jacket, giving him a quick over to check for any major injuries as there were two knives on the ground. He was very thin and light and shivering. I gathered him to me and picked the phone, the screen displaying 911. The last person had either called 911 or was trying to hang-up on them, I finished the call and gave them my address. I picked him up and held him to my chest and asked "Hey... can you hear me, what's your name?" "Sky... Sky Perez, your dog save me" he slurred slowly and then passed out.
I held on to him till the responders took over and then followed them to the hospital. He was raped by at least 1 person and assaulted by multiple. I gave my statement while they patched and stitched him. They did a personal check on him and his story turned out to be miserable.
His mother was estranged and in Florida. His father was in the hospital with lung cancer and died the night he was abducted. He was 19 years old high school graduate and was to start college, he had taken a gap for his father. He was last seen on 16th street been picked and thrown into the van. The cops had identified the van and three assailants from a CCTV footage.
The investigating officer, Detective Hale, gave me his number in case I see anyone suspicious activity or person in the barn and was coordinating for Sky to be taken home as he was conscious and ready to be moved out since his injuries were not serious besides the stitches to his rectum due to forced penetration.
"Looks like these people knew him and he has wound marks all over him, they have been identified to be from his school and known trouble makers. The van driver Liam Austin, is a repeat offender and has been arrested for drugs consumption and distribution and once for physical assault at a bar fight, similar story for Yuri Carsten. The third boy is still to be identified but looks like has no police record". I explained to him that he may be the guy who called 911 and tried to help Sky, must have realised late that he was stuck in-between something more serious than just bullying a scrawny and poor orphan.
