by Dana Fraser
The numbers danced inside her head. Quadratic polynomials, binomial coefficients, and chi square distributions lined up one after the other, grinding together like gears in a machine until she could no longer smell the smoke or hear the screams.
The skillet pan rattled in the sink, an unfamiliar voice swearing as flesh made contact with a too hot handle. Becca burrowed deeper, her fingers trembling like maple leaves before they dropped in fall. Footsteps traversed the wooden floor, stopping a few feet from the bed where packs of supplies were stacked in the corner.
Nylon whispered against nylon, but she kept her eyes shut, grasped at the numbers, scratched them against the inside of her skull so they would not fade and leave her to deal with her knew reality all alone.
The small handcuff key scraped softly against wood as it was lifted from the bedside table. Fresh bile rose in Becca’s throat. Exhausted, depleted, she would die soon. Maybe this time the trauma would be enough to send her over the edge. They didn’t feed her. The only calories in her body came from the wine they poured down her throat.
At least the wine dulled the pain and washed away the taste.
Tears squeezed their way past her tightly clamped eyelids as the handcuffs were removed, the metal bracelets and her hands falling to the mattress with a dull thump. Footsteps moved away, back to the supplies. The trembling no longer confined to her hands, Becca wrapped her arms around her body and peeled one eye open.
Camo pants, camo jacket, unkempt beard, a rifle slung over one shoulder, there was nothing to distinguish the man from those who had brought her to the cabin except for the lighter colored pattern of his clothing.
Having uncuffed Becca, he paid no more attention to her. He brought another pack in off the porch, one of the big ones like her husband would wear on family hike days. He carried the pack over to the supplies and began cherry picking what he would take with him. Gathering the ammunition first then the energy bars.
Proprietary outrage flushed Becca’s skin when he grabbed an azure-colored bag. Opening it, he released a snort of appreciation as he pulled out a first aid kit, then the water purification kit. Through his shaggy beard, she could see a smile twitch once as he dove deeper in the bag.
Becca knew its contents well. Her husband Thomas had packed it while she had swapped out his ties for the business trip that had him flying to Brussels while she drove alone to Hilton Head for the vacation they were supposed to take together. He had placed the bag in the trunk of her car and she had smiled indulgently, suppressing the words that wanted to tumble out.
The world isn’t going to end.
You’re just worried about the meeting.
Had she been wrong? Was the world in its death throes?
She had left the island as Hurricane Otto crossed Florida and threatened to head north up the coast. Power and cellular service were out. Blockades were up—
Groaning, Becca twisted beneath the pile of soiled bedding that anchored her to the mattress. The man unslung his rifle and shouldered the pack he had brought in from outside. He adjusted the straps on the blue bag—her blue bag—then hung it from his neck, the bulk settling against his broad chest.
His footsteps landed with a hollow thud as he left the cabin, the door remaining open behind him.
Becca angled her head. Tears swimming in her vision, she watched the man walk a straight path toward the tree line. He stepped over a body, the head an explosion of bone and gray matter. The corpse’s exposed neck was inked with a tattoo that haunted her sleep.
She shifted her legs, her feet dangling over the side of the bed. With an invalid’s slowness, she wriggled to the edge and pushed herself up.
Not real, her mind warned as she tried to execute a command to stand up. It was just another dream. This time, instead of Thomas arriving from Belgium to rescue her, she had conjured an indifferent, nondescript male, a chameleon of leaf shaped patterns carrying her blue bag.
Her bare feet touched the cold wooden floor as a breeze blew through the open door to prick her skin. She pulled the lightest of the blankets around her, the others too heavy for muscles grown weak in captivity.
She heaved forward, legs threatening to give out but holding.
Standing, shuffling, unbalanced and careening, Becca slammed her hip painfully against the doorknob as she made her way out of the cabin. In the periphery of her vision, she saw gusts of wind coming off the lake ransack the corpses of the other men who had held her prisoner. Eyes never leaving the tree line, she continued on the same straight path the visitor had walked.
Becca did not expect to see the man when she entered the woods, but he was there, the vague shape of his body growing smaller. She stepped on twigs and stones but felt nothing.
Ahead of her, the bouncing dot that was her liberator slowed.
He could have easily outpaced her, but he didn’t.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
BECCA WALKED until she collapsed to her knees and folded forward, her torso draped over a fallen tree, one arm extended in supplication. Vision blurring, the dot that was the man finally grew smaller and smaller until there was no man or dot at all.
She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she was in darkness and surrounded by the faint odor of lilac, its presence a ghostly trace of the elderly woman that had scented the sheets when Becca first arrived at the cabin. Beyond the lilac, she could smell earth and spruce.
In her sleep, she had wrapped her arms around her shoulders. Against the exposed flesh, she could feel a wool blanket covering her. When she moved, she smelled more of the flower—more of the old woman.
Becca tried to roll onto her side. She encountered a wall of cold dirt. She rolled toward her other side, panic building in her chest as she realized she was in a narrow trench in the ground. She lifted her hands, her fingertips brushing rough branches sticky with sap and covered with needle-like leaves. Either it was night or the covering of spruce branches over the trench was so thick it blocked out the daylight.
She pushed at the covering, arms trembling from the exertion. Throat parched, she faintly called out even though she was terrified of who might answer.
No one answered.
Working an arm under her body, she lifted herself high enough to push with her shoulder. Sap snagged at her hair. Spruce needles dug at her shoulder and any upward shift of the barrier disappeared as her muscles gave out and she buckled against the floor of the trench.
The crunchy, crinkly floor of the trench.
She patted the surface beneath her to find the foil-like texture of a Mylar blanket. Finding its edge, she peeled it back to find more spruce needles beneath her. No longer fighting her situation, she explored it. Her fingers walked inch by inch along the dirt wall until she found a bottle. She opened it and sniffed.
Odorless.
She tipped the bottle, wetting her finger before touching it to her tongue.
Water.
She drank a mouthful then pulled another one in, letting it soak her gums and tongue and cheeks before swallowing a little at a time as she recapped the bottle.
Extending her legs and pointing her toes, she felt along the end of her pit but found nothing. Feet still bare, she drew them back under the blanket and wished away the cold numbness that pinched at their ends.
A twig snapped and then another. Beneath the blanket, she trembled as she heard a huffing sound. A snarl followed then the scrabble of hard claws over bark. Some of the spruce needles sprinkled onto Becca’s face.
A ray of daylight broke through. Another snarl vibrated in the air. The pin-sized hole above her widened until she could see a golden iris surrounded by fur glaring at her.
Becca laughed—hysterical.
A nose replaced the eye as the bobcat sniffed at the opening. Then the clawing grew more frenzied, the scrapes and snarls blending together. Becca screamed, yelled at the bobcat, hissed as her hands dug beneath the Mylar blanket in search of something big enough or sharp
enough to be a weapon. Whoever her captor was, he had placed nothing but spiny cushioning beneath her.
Spruce needles and loose bark peppered her face. The edges of the hole collapsed, the opening suddenly large enough for the bobcat to reach in. The cat batted around, its sharp claws extended. Becca scrambled and scrunched herself within the trench, her body a tight ball where her feet had been seconds before.
The paw retreated, the bobcat inserting its entire head. The snarls rumbling past its lips misted the air and raised the fine hairs along Becca arms and the back of her neck. The animal kept clawing at the trench’s roof, twisting its weight as it fought to reach her. The branches began to sag. She would be buried for a few brief seconds when the structure collapsed and then the bobcat would be upon her, its jaws seeking her throat, the front paws holding her immobile as the powerful back legs kicked at her stomach, its razor sharp claws turning her guts to confetti.
A thunk sounded.
This is it, it’s collapsing, Becca thought. The cat must have sensed it, too. It froze. No snarling, no scratching. A puff of air left it—its breath and a warm, wet spray hitting her face. Her brain tried to process the beast’s sudden stillness and the scent of copper from where the spray dotted her top lip.
Blood?
The bobcat disappeared with an upward jerk and then more of the branches covering the trench disappeared. Becca saw a torso covered in camouflaged fabric. The hands that pulled at the branches were calloused and stained.
A face appeared and then the beam of a flashlight blinded her. She shielded her eyes, cowering and shaking as badly as when the bobcat had been clawing its way through her roof.
The light flicked off. The face and torso disappeared. She heard the crunch of boots on the forest floor then the rip of a knife through the bobcat’s flesh. Slowly she crawled forward to the hole the man had opened up. She lifted her head just high enough to see over the edge of the pit.
Six feet away, the man who had rescued her from the cabin quietly and methodically gutted the bobcat and carved up its meat. A dappled light covered his face. The beard that obscured his features was a sandy brown. The thick brows above what looked like blue eyes were a darker brown, as was the hair matted to his head. What little skin that showed on his face was tanned a reddish-brown.
She blinked, then squinted. Something was wrong with the bearded area of his left cheek, like there was a shelf or…
He lifted his gaze from the bobcat to Becca’s face and she saw the deep, scarred depression that cut through his cheek.
“There are clothes in here,” he said, tossing a garbage bag at her.
Wrapping the green wool blanket around her body, Becca crawled out of the pit. The ground was cold—late October cold. Her toes lifted as the chill spread up from her bare feet.
“And shoes,” he added.
She wanted to lift the bag and take it behind a tree, but her muscles were wasted, rubbery strings. She sat next to the bag, her back to the man, and pulled out an oversized sweater.
“My name is Re—”
“Don’t need to know it,” he interrupted and stabbed the blade of a hand shovel into the earth.
She flinched, the sound violent as it punctuated his harsh tone. Pressing her lips together, she pulled out a pair of men’s sweatpants. Looking deeper, she found socks that were too big and shoes she’d have to shove some kind of makeshift padding into to keep them from falling off. No bra, no panties.
Making sure the sweater covered her bottom, she slid the sweatpants on and drew the drawstring tight, the excess fabric bundling together at the front.
“Thank you,” she said, sliding the socks on.
He didn’t answer, just kept digging. She looked over her shoulder and recognized the beginning of a Dakota fire pit. He would be able to cook the bobcat’s meat without smoke giving their location away.
Her gaze went to the trench she had been trapped in. It had felt like a prison, but she realized now he had tried to keep her safe while she had been unconscious and he needed to leave her.
Putting the clown shoes on, she walked a small circle around their campsite, gathering up fallen leaves to fill the inch-plus gap beyond her toes. When she had enough, she grabbed the water bottle in the trench and the two blankets and sat on the ground near the fire pit as the man began to cook the bobcat.
Becca sat quietly, stomach growling. She thought of trying to tell him her name again, but didn’t. She thought of asking him his name but knew he would not answer.
“Where are you headed?” she asked as the first strip of meat finished cooking and he handed it to her on a metal plate.
He glanced up, the blue eyes laser bright, then mumbled as he looked away.
“Where no one else is.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“BETTER FIND YOUR LEGS,” Sean growled, stopping twenty feet ahead to glare at Becca over his shoulder. “I’m not carrying you.”
She nodded, the gesture feeble, and took a few steps forward before stopping again. Sweat poured down her face even though Sean assured her it was the first of November and she had both the wool blanket and Mylar sheet wrapped around her.
Her flesh was burning from the inside out.
Sean marched back to where she had stopped again. The hostile glare should have terrified her, but it was a facade. She knew he wasn’t going to abandon her.
“I’m sorry,” she croaked, her throat perpetually dry.
“I’ll dig you another trench,” he said, sliding his pack off. “Leave you the 45—”
“No!” Reaching out, she touched his arm, the contact doing nothing to ease the fear that surged through her at the idea of being buried again.
He unhooked the hand shovel from his pack. “You need antibiotics. You don’t have time to walk to where they’re at.”
She stepped in front of where he appeared ready to dig.
“We don’t know where we’ll find any medicine,” Becca reminded him.
She had been following behind him for a week. While she was no longer deprived of food or water, she wasn’t getting stronger. The number of miles she could cover in a day kept decreasing. The few empty houses and abandoned vehicles they came across were already picked over, nothing inside them to fight the infection that gripped her.
Her lungs were fine. Her head was fine. She hadn’t gotten sick from a virus floating on the air or clinging to the surface of a doorknob.
Becca closed her eyes and let the numbers crowd the black screen in front of her. She sank to her knees.
“Please don’t leave me like that again, Sean.”
Yes, he had a name. It had taken four days for Becca to draw it out, and only the first name. He hadn’t provided it with any grace or ease. It had left him in another one of his angry growls. But once Becca had it, she knew that he had relinquished a little of his power over her—and over himself.
Sean melted to the ground alongside her and gathered her cold hands into his. “You’re not going to make it.”
Jeez, that was cheerful!
Becca slid one hand free and touched the cheek where his scar ran. The injury had happened after the power went out, she knew by its still raw appearance. And she had seen two more scars on him—bullet wounds—that must have happened at the same time.
“Neither one of us was supposed to make it,” she softly argued, cupping his bearded jaw.
He pulled away and returned the shovel to the pack in resignation. “We’ll rest here until night. It’s too dangerous to travel during the day around these parts.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, ignoring the layer of accusation in his tone.
Travel was becoming more dangerous because they had left the rural, heavily wooded areas at Becca’s request. The way he figured it, they should be at least two days deep into Hoosier National Forest, where he had intended to hide out for the entire winter.
She had been stunned to hear their original destination. Up until th
at moment, she thought she was still in Kentucky where her captors had pulled her from the burning Mercedes. But in her unconscious moments, they had deposited her about seventy miles from her home in Evansville.
Even then, she didn’t know which side of the national park they were on. It had taken two days for her feverish mind to realize they were walking east. Two more days heading in that direction would pass before she pried his name out of him.
But once she could look him in the eye, tell him about her son and daughter, and call Sean by his name?
That was when Becca finally had the power to change his direction.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THOMAS RESTED ON HIS BACK, a pile of bedding cushioning his body from the hard concrete floor of his basement in Evansville. An LED camping light was within arm’s reach, but he didn’t turn it on. The impenetrable blackness of the room matched his dark mood. He had been home for a few days. He had evidence his son and daughter were together and alive a week before his arrival. He even had, he suspected, the answer to where they had gone.
He just couldn’t decode it.
Yet another way he was lost without Becca.
The last three years of his life had been for nothing. If he had poured the personal resources he put into his business into his family instead, they would all be together now. He wouldn’t have gone to Brussels, probably wouldn’t have shipped Ellis off to the school in Bonnie. He would have gotten the cabin and acreage over the border in Kentucky. When the power went out, he would have recognized the danger and removed his family to safety.
Instead he had dreamed that he would be able to warn his country in its times of greatest need.
