by Dave Dykema
“Did we leave too soon? What would’ve happened if we went to the police?”
“Nothing good, I can tell you that,” Dan spat. “Remember all the stuff Jerry told Sergeant Cameron?”
Melissa got the shivers. Her life was falling apart. It didn’t make any sense. “Sitting in a prison cell doesn’t sound so bad right now. At least we’d be away from Stone.”
Melissa’s mention of Stone’s name put Dan’s nerves on edge. It was intolerable being holed away in this cabin, no matter how nice, while all around them the game continued to play. The solution was outside their grasp, hopelessly eluding them, and the game clock kept on ticking. They had used the last of their timeouts.
Dan stood up, grabbed one of Jerry’s duffel bags, and started back to Jerry’s bedroom. Melissa quickly followed.
“What are you doing?”
He pulled open a dresser drawer and started filling the bag with anything that vaguely resembled winter clothes. The pickings were slim, but he found one sweatshirt, a few pairs of socks, and a blanket.
“Sorry, honey. No clean underwear,” he deadpanned. When she didn’t smile, he said, “We’ve got to get out of here. Stone’s coming. I can feel it. If we don’t leave now, we won’t be able to.”
“And go where?”
“Our best chance is to reach another cabin.”
“On foot? What about Jerry’s car?”
“Jerry hasn’t come back. Jerry’s not going to come back. He’s been gone way too long. Either the police or Stone got him.”
“Why can’t we just watch the road from here, and if Stone comes, then leave?”
“Because by then it will be too late. We’d never move fast enough through the snow.”
Melissa put her chin against her chest, the weight of Dan’s words giving her a sinking feeling.
He held up the duffel bag. “This isn’t the greatest, but it will help us with where we’re going. Do you want to put any of this on now?”
“Give me a pair of socks.”
Dan threw her a bundled up pair and she sat on the bed, curling them onto her feet as she did with her own just a moment before. She put her shoes back on, stood up, and stomped her feet, breaking in her shoes with the double layer of socks.
“Ready as I’ll ever get, I guess.”
Dan came over and hugged her. She returned it strongly.
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
Dan smiled. “Let’s go before we change our minds.”
She nodded.
They walked to the door, took one last look around the cabin and the glowing fire, and opened it, greeted with cold, blowing wind. With a sigh of resignation mixed with desperation, Dan stepped out. A moment later Melissa did too, pulling the door closed behind her.
*4*
The raccoon approached the still figure for the third time, sniffing the air to be sure. Nervously, it quickly scampered up and bit Jerry’s ear. He muffled a pained cry and swatted at it with his one good arm, sitting up, terrified. The raccoon panicked, and ran back into the underbrush.
Jerry’s eyes darted about, afraid of discovery. If the raccoon hadn’t bit him he would’ve stayed put for another five to ten minutes, playing dead.
He felt dead. There wasn’t that much play-acting involved. Once he sat up, his head started to spin.
Too abrupt, he thought. I did that way too fast. Then another thought hit him: The lack of blood…that’s what’s making me faint. I’m bleeding all over, and I don’t have any blood left! I’m going to die here…
Tentatively, he put his hand up and felt his shoulder. There was a bolt of pain, and his jacket was slick with blood, but from what he could feel, he thought it was a deep puncture to his shoulder—painful, but not fatal. His back gave him greater concern. He wondered if his lungs were hit. He tried to feel around and find the entrance wound, but it was just out of reach of his flaying fingers. The snow around him was splattered a rich red, so he knew a lot of blood had flowed.
What do I do now? There won’t be any cars coming, not in weather like this. How am I going to find any help?
Questions like these were rhetorical. He knew he had to get to his feet, make his way to the road, and do everything in his power to get to his cabin and warn Dan and Melissa. So, with an effort, Jerry took his first step.
He stumbled and wheezed with a rasp almost immediately. His mouth tasted like copper, and when he coughed into his hand there were specks of blood on his glove, confirming that a lung had been stabbed. Now the question was: how badly? Just a prick? Or a serious puncture?
He feared as he trekked onward that the answer would become painfully apparent.
*5*
It took winding down two driveways, searching for street numbers, but Stone and the others finally reached what they thought was Jerry’s cabin. The cars descended on the property like a caravan: Rogers leading in Jerry’s car, Cambridge and Goodall next, followed by Kim and Stone bringing up the rear.
“Reverend Stone, they’ll see us coming as a group, won’t they?” Kim asked, wishing that their car were first. That way Reverend Stone could have the entrance he deserved.
He reached over and patted her thigh like a patronizing father. “It won’t matter at this point. Whether it’s one car or a whole army, they’ll have nowhere to go, nowhere to run…” He smiled broadly. “We have them now.”
“They’re probably too scared to move.”
“Yes, Kim, cowering down, praying to their false gods. It won’t help them.”
Kim pulled the car next to the other two and killed the engine. The men sat in their seats, looking to Stone, waiting for some sign to move. When Reverend Stone finally opened his door, they followed his lead and jumped out too.
Cambridge cupped his hands to the window and looked in. “I don’t see them, but there are blankets on the floor and a fire going. They’re definitely here.”
“They must be hiding,” Rogers concurred.
At this point the three men looked to Reverend Stone again, as if to ask What do we do now? He answered their unspoken question by simply reaching out and trying the doorknob. It was locked, as he expected it would be. He took one of the walkie-talkies they had with them and smashed it against a windowpane. Shards of glass littered the floor as Stone reached through and fiddled with the lock.
A moment later, they were inside.
Like three S.W.A.T. commandos, Cambridge and Rogers ran into the cabin, going down the hallway to the bedroom while Goodall stayed in the living room, opening closet doors and searching behind furniture. Stone calmly walked over to the fire and stoked its dying embers.
“There’s no one here,” Cambridge said, returning from the hallway.
Stone nodded his understanding, gently twirling the prod into the wood, enjoying the crackling sound it made. Kim came up behind him and rubbed his back and arms, trying to comfort him in his disappointment. She thought he hid it well.
“What do we do now?” asked Goodall.
They stood around him like a flock of sheep.
Stone stopped his stoking and turned to them, not seeing the problem as they did. His calm demeanor threw them.
“We don’t do anything. You and Bill and Paul go out and search for them. They can’t have gone far. They are around this cabin somewhere. Kim and I will remain behind. Take the walkie-talkies and keep in touch.”
“And if we find them?”
Through clenched teeth Stone managed, “When, not if. When.”
The three men looked at each other, afraid of him despite their superior size. “When we find them?”
Stone smiled, and jammed the poker deep into the embers. The flames hissed.
“Kill them.”
Into the Woods
*1*
The going was slow. Each step buried their legs in thick, wet snow. Their pants clung to their calves like vines to a tree. Pulling each heavy foot out required a certain fortitude. Every time one of them slipped, the
other was there to catch them, support them, or, at the very least, help them out of the snow.
After one such fall Melissa looked back at the huge depression she just made and froze—not from the temperature, but from a terrible realization.
“Oh my God, Dan! The footprints!”
Dan nodded knowingly as he pulled her up, staring at the marked trail they’d made through the woods. “I know. I realized it a few minutes after we left.”
“What are we going to do about them?”
He shrugged. “Our best hope is for the drifting snow to blow them away. Until then, we better travel as far as we can.”
“Even if the snow does drift over them, we still have big pits where one of us fell. Those won’t go away.”
“No. They won’t.”
Melissa saw that he was getting grim. And standing there talking didn’t help matters. If they were in trouble, it was time to move on again. Walking at least made her feel better, like she was doing something.
She was about to take another step when a thought suddenly occurred to her…
*2*
Jerry drudgingly plodded on his own trek. Physically, his way was easier, except his wounds made it more difficult. Each breath was a mammoth wheeze that came painfully, causing Jerry to wonder if it was his last. Still, he kept moving forward, and wasn’t about to stop.
Damp blood caked his sweater. Every so often he thought the bleeding had stopped, but then he would stumble over something in the road and feel the seeping warmth on his back again. The jostling wasn’t conducive to clotting.
How much farther do I have to go? he thought, looking around, trying to spot something familiar. The trouble was he hadn’t been up enough to know any landmarks yet. He feared he would die before his dream cabin became commonplace to him.
With that bleak thought in his mind, he concentrated, and placed one foot in front of the other for the thousandth time. One way or another, he was going to make it back to warn his friends.
*3*
“One of them fell again,” Jeff Goodall said, pointing at a large depression in the snow.
“How far ahead can they be?” Bill Cambridge asked.
Paul Rogers looked at his watch. “We’ve only been doing this for twenty minutes. They’ll come up soon enough.” He reached for his walkie-talkie again. “Reverend Stone, can you hear me?”
The line crackled with static, and then Stone’s voice came through. “Barely.”
The Reverend sounded thin, hardly audible to Rogers. He signaled the others to stop. They gathered around him, thankful for the warmth of the group huddle.
“I think we’re nearing the end of our range on these things,” Rogers said, looking over the hills and deep valleys. “The hills could be blocking the signal.”
“Cheap ass walkie-talkies!” Stone fumed, and then collected himself, and spoke slowly and clearly into the faceplate. “Paul, you’re going to have to remain there and repeat my instructions to the others as they keep going. In other words, I broadcast it to you, and then you broadcast it to them. In the meantime, I’ll leave the cabin and catch up to you. Then together we can rejoin the others.”
“Like a relay,” Rogers said.
“Yes. You got it.”
Rogers turned to the men. “Well, you heard him. Get moving and continue to check in. If the signal from you guys starts to get weak, one of you will have to stop so we can keep piggybacking the info.”
“Got it,” they replied, and moved off through the woods.
As he watched them recede, Paul Rogers clapped his hands and stomped his feet, hoping that Reverend Stone would hurry up and get to him.
*4*
“I’ll go with you,” Kim said.
“No. I want you to stay here.”
“Why? What will I do?”
“I want you to stay behind just in case something happens: a phone call…a friend showing up at the door to help…Dan and Melissa doubling back…”
“You don’t want me out there. You think I’m useless.”
Stone grabbed her shoulders and looked deep in her eyes. “Not at all. You’ll know exactly what to do if something does arise. I wouldn’t keep you at home base if I thought otherwise.” He gave her a quick kiss, donned his coat, grabbed his gun, and left the cabin.
Kim watched him go with tears in her eyes and a burning resolve to prove herself.
*5*
Not a single car came along while Jerry fought his way home. It was too late for the summer people and too early for the winter folks. Trying another cabin was pointless. There simply wasn’t anyone here.
He looked down, staring at the sea of white passing in front of his eyes, becoming a blur. Holding his head up took too much strength. It was an exercise in frustration as much as a physical workout. If his driveway didn’t come soon, he didn’t know how much longer he could continue.
*6*
Jeff Goodall blinked against the blustery wind and kept his head down, shielding his bare cheeks from the onslaught of cold.
His walkie-talkie crackled. With stiff fingers he operated it. “Yeah?”
“Just checking in,” Cambridge said. “How ya doing?”
“Freezing my ass off.”
Cambridge snickered as he stood his ground, slapping his hands against his legs. “I hear ya, but barely. Is the signal still strong on your end? You’re starting to break up here, but I don’t know…it could be the batteries.”
“The signal’s still audible, but it’s starting to fade.” He banged on the device three times, slapping it in his palm. “At least the Reverend ought to be catching up to Rogers pretty soon, and then they’ll start moving again, instead of stretching this ‘rubber band’ past its breaking point.”
“It doesn’t help when people go down into the deep valleys either. This area is awfully hilly.”
“Tell me about it. My legs are sore from climbing. Have you looked down some of these precipices? Some of them are pretty steep. I—hold on…” He stopped short.
“Jeff?” Cambridge asked.
But Jeff Goodall didn’t hear it. He had clicked off his walkie-talkie to maintain radio silence. He didn’t want his prey to be alerted to his presence by some pointless crackle or hiss.
He saw Melissa up ahead.
She was alone, her back to him.
That left the question: Where was Dan?
The answer came to Goodall in a wide variety of choices, ranging from the simple to the sublime. He could be off the trail, pissing behind a tree; maybe they split up, thinking they had a better chance of making it out alive that way; or another possibility: Melissa came to her senses, renounced Dan, and was heading out on her own. Granted, that last choice didn’t seem very likely, but he was starting to feel confident enough to ask—before he twisted her neck one hundred eighty degrees and tasted the blood that flowed from her eyes and ears.
He looked back at the tracks she left behind. His ran parallel, and it was hard to tell, but she did seem to leave a single pair of tracks. Dan’s must have branched off somewhere. He wondered why he had missed it before. Probably because I was so fucking cold that I wasn’t even looking at them anymore, rather simply trudging onward…
He started to approach, keeping in the shadows in case she looked back. As he drew closer, he started to walk more out in the open, finally walking boldly down the middle of the path, with a gang member’s cocky strut through home turf.
“Melissa!” he called out.
She spun around, and gasped.
He loved the wide-eyed terror shown in her baby blues. Her lips pulled back, revealing her teeth, like a child bracing for a parent’s slap as punishment for a wrongdoing. There was nothing vicious in the expression—it was one of total fear.
“Jeff…” she managed finally, composing herself somewhat as she continued to stagger backwards.
“Don’t run from me,” he said. “It will only take longer that way.”
“What are you going to do?”
> Goodall grinned as he moved in, not answering, delighting in the fear he felt certain welled up within her. She stopped staggering, obviously too paralyzed to even move now. She looked at him, cowering, simply awaiting her fate.
But her face didn’t project complete horror anymore. It was almost…calm. He spun around, but it was too late to stop Dan’s blow, his forearm smacking into Goodall’s nose bridge, splintering it.
Goodall fell to his knees, howling, shielding his face, as thick blood ran between his fingers to drip in the snow. While he was down, Dan wound back and kicked him in the face, driving slivers of bone deep into Goodall’s brain. He crumpled to the ground, silent.
After a moment, when it appeared safe, Melissa came forward.
“Is he dead? Did you kill him?”
Dan wiped his brow. “I don’t know. I think so.”
Melissa ran a wide arc around the body, keeping as far away from it as possible, and gave Dan a hug. “It’s okay. Try not to think about it. You saved my life.”
“I shouldn’t have used you as bait like that. What would have happened if I didn’t double back in time?”
“It was a good idea to backtrack using my footprints to confuse them. I could tell he had no idea where you were…until it was too late.”
“That may be true, but we were lucky this time. Next time might not go so well.”
She smiled bravely. “I have faith in your stalking.”
“I’m glad one of us does. When you suggested it, I wasn’t sure.” He gulped. “I heard my heart pounding so loud I had no idea how much noise I was making.”
Melissa looked at Goodall’s dead body. “Not much, I’m thinking.”
“Even so, I’d feel better if you were somewhere safer, not on the open path. The next one might have a gun.”
Melissa gave in and nodded.
“Where should I go?”
*7*
Reverend Stone finally caught up to Paul Rogers. He walked uphill the whole way and once Rogers saw him he waved his hands and shouted. Stone huffed and sweated, annoyed. He gave him the smallest of acknowledgements, allowing Rogers only the comfort of a brief nod from ten paces.
