by Jack Heath
I exhale and look at the bowl where I last saw Fred’s keys.
They’re gone.
I mouth a bunch of swearwords, pinching my lower lip between my teeth on the Fs, almost hard enough to make it bleed.
I quickly rummage through the discarded clothes on the floor. The pockets of his jeans are empty. His puffy synthetic jacket has two zippered pockets. I check them. Nothing.
But when I drop the jacket, something jingles.
I pick it up again. There’s a secret pocket on the inside. I unzip it and dig out the car keys. Bingo.
Seven minutes, give or take, until Thistle and the others leave. Plenty of time.
But when I emerge back into the corridor, I can hear voices. Closer this time. More people are in the kitchen.
‘Who was the subscriber?’ Zara is asking.
‘Username PrincessChalk,’ Fred says. ‘Real name Matilda Glasset.’
‘How did she even know where he was?’
I can hear the clattering of plates, the gurgling of glasses being filled.
‘So you saw the suggestion—’
‘And lost my shit, yeah.’
They’re setting the table for dinner. There’s no way I can get to the back door without them seeing me. I’ll have to wait until after dinner, by which time Thistle and the others will be long gone, hiking through the freezing forest on foot.
I retreat into Fred’s room. It’s hard to think with a ticking clock. An unfortunate paradox—the less time you have, the longer it takes to solve a problem.
Cedric’s voice: ‘You really think Lux is FBI?’
‘I don’t know. He’s been acting like a cop, investigating all of us,’ says Fred, who told me to do exactly that. ‘And we never saw his face on any of the Abbey Chapman videos, did we?’
‘You’re saying he didn’t even make them?’
‘I’m saying the rest of him needs to go into the grinder.’
Zara doesn’t speak up for me. I guess Kyle already told her that I don’t know anything useful. Now I’m nothing more than a threat, because I know she’s CIA. If I don’t die soon, it’ll be her having to make a quick escape—
And suddenly I know what to do.
I open Fred’s door. To get to Zara’s room, I’ll have to cross the corridor. I’ll be visible for a second from one corner of the dining table. Usually Kyle sits there.
I wait for Fred to speak again, since Kyle always looks at Fred when he’s talking.
The seconds tick away.
‘PrincessChalk is right, you know,’ Cedric muses. ‘He is a good candidate.’
‘I don’t care,’ Fred says. ‘It’s too dangerous to keep him.’ I dart across the corridor, slip into Zara’s room and shut the door almost all the way. I don’t turn on the light.
I’m now convinced that Zara’s mess isn’t mess. She knows exactly where everything is. An intruder in a tidy room can easily put things back the way he or she found them. That’s much harder in a messy room, and the intruder may not think it necessary.
I don’t have time to cover my tracks. I wade through outfits and books and make-up power to get to the window. Hoping the silver dust I noticed around the padlock wasn’t dust.
Until now, I never wondered how Zara’s handler intended to give her the dossier. She was inside with us, and Fred had padlocked her window shut. But the handler went right up to it the following night. I followed his footsteps.
An undercover CIA agent would want a secret escape route. A window is ideal. So Zara would have sabotaged the padlock, just in case. She could have cracked the tumblers with a hammer and chisel, or—more likely, given the metal shavings I mistook for dust—she could have stolen his keys, opened the padlock, filed off just a little from the tip of the curved bar, and then ‘locked’ it again before returning the keys. Fred would assume she was still locked in, but she was free.
Praying that I’m right, I rattle the padlock.
It doesn’t budge.
Grimacing, I pull with as much force as I can—which isn’t much, given that I only have four fingers and eight pints of blood left.
The lock clicks. Zara was amazingly precise, shaving off just enough metal that the lock could be forced open but not so much that it wouldn’t latch closed.
I don’t pause to admire the craftsmanship. I drop the lock into my pocket just in case I need to hit someone with it, then I lift the window and scramble out into the night.
Five minutes to go. As long as I don’t blunder into the sightlines of any cameras, I should be okay.
As I stagger through the backyard towards the safety of the woods, a sound stops me. This time it’s more like a moan than a howl. It seems closer than the woods, but that’s impossible. I spin around and around, scanning the darkness. There’s no one here. Am I losing my mind?
Then I look down. I’m right near the PVC pipe that I nearly tripped over on my first night here. The one I assumed was part of an underground compost system. Suddenly the shape, curving around and down, doesn’t seem so inexplicable. It’s not for letting water out. It’s for letting air in.
Seven prisoners on the website. Only six in the slaughterhouse.
How about the feed on the Pedo?
I checked. Still working fine.
Is it possible that someone is buried alive, right beneath my feet? That they’ve been here this whole time?
I crouch down next to the pipe. I twist it up to face my mouth, and whisper into it: ‘Hello?’
There’s a pause. Then a shriek of madness and terror from below.
CHAPTER 39
I’m joy on your tongue, tears in your eyes. Freeze me to keep me hot. What am I?
I rip off my shirt and stuff it into the pipe, muting the sound. I shoot a glance towards the house.
For a second, there’s no sign that anyone heard or cares. But then the back door creaks open.
I flatten myself against the dead grass. I’m so filthy that from fifty yards away, I hopefully look like just a rise in the dirt.
A flashlight clicks on and sweeps across the yard. It tickles the tips of the grass blades above my head.
The light clicks off.
Someone says something from inside.
‘No,’ says the person in the doorway. Sounds like Cedric. ‘The Pedo must have had a nightmare.’
Laughter from inside. The door shuts again.
I rise slowly, wondering what to do. Four minutes before Thistle gives up on me and sabotages the tyres of our getaway vehicle. I should just go. Leave this guy to his fate.
But Thistle wouldn’t do that.
‘Goddamn it,’ I mutter, and grab the shovel from the vegetable patch.
No time to wonder who’s down there. No time to feel bad for not figuring it out sooner. I frantically stab at the ground. With one arm, I can’t lift the dirt—I can only drag it aside. This is going to take hours that I can’t spare.
But I get lucky. The shovel gets tangled in a sackcloth sheet. Apparently I’m not the only one who buries things this way.
I grab the sheet and pull it aside. Dirt cascades onto a coffin, buried barely a foot down. I guess Donnie was too lazy to dig any further.
Left him in Huntsville State Park under six feet of dirt. No one will ever find him.
You hear that, Donnie? Six feet.
I expected an old-fashioned pine coffin, but it’s steel. No expense spared. No way to punch through it from the inside. Wires trail out one side to a battery pack in a Ziploc bag. I don’t touch them. Cutting off the feed may trigger an alert.
The muffled screaming continues unabated. If whoever is in there keeps this up, I’ll have to knock them out with the shovel and drag them to the car.
I wedge the side of the shovel into the seam and lever the coffin open. A foul smell sends me reeling. Inside, a gaunt man in priest’s robes is surrounded by granola bar wrappers, empty water bottles and a puddle of his own shit. He’s as bald as a skeleton, with sallow skin, yellow fingernails and scratch marks all over his th
roat. Now that the coffin is open, I can see the fish-eye lens cameras built into the lid.
When the fresh air hits him, the man stops screaming and starts gasping. It sounds like a paddling pool being pumped up.
‘Stay quiet,’ I say.
He looks up at me, his one-armed saviour. His voice is hoarse. ‘Are you real?’
‘I’m real. Get up.’
‘I didn’t hurt those kids.’ His bloodshot eyes meet mine. ‘Never, never.’
‘I don’t care.’ I grab his hand and pull him out of the hole. ‘Come on.’
He’s very weak, staggering around like a newborn calf. His muscles have atrophied.
‘Hurry,’ I say, even though it probably doesn’t matter. We’re already two minutes late. Thistle and the others will be gone, marching on a doomed mission through the woods. This asshole has cost us our chance of escape. But I keep dragging him towards the woods, because I don’t know what else to do.
He’s whimpering and gibbering, trying to tell me something, but half the words sound made-up. He could be protesting his innocence or confessing his sins. I wonder if he’s a real priest, or if the Guards just dressed him like that for the subscribers.
The dogs behind the fence see us and go crazy, scream-barking and running around in circles, their collars jingling. I keep pulling the priest along, desperate to get him out of sight.
As we reach the safety of the trees, he collapses.
‘Get up,’ I snap.
He tries, but his limbs quiver and he hits the dirt.
I heave him up. Put his arm around my neck. The smell is horrifying. Holding him leaves me without a free arm to keep branches out of my face. Scratches accumulate on my cheeks.
When we’re barely ten yards into the woods, I hear the back door open again. Someone has come to investigate the barking.
The priest is half limp. ‘Keep moving,’ I whisper, ‘or we’re dead. You understand?’
He doesn’t seem to hear me. He’s dead weight. But I can’t leave him. Not now.
‘They’ll put you back in the ground,’ I say.
That gets his attention. He looks at me with wide, yellow-rimmed eyes. ‘Oh, please, God, no! Don’t!’
‘Not me, them. Shut up and run.’
Cedric’s voice from the backyard behind us: ‘Shit!’ Then, louder: ‘Hey! Come quick! The Pedo’s loose!’
I hobble faster through the shrubbery, twigs lacerating my feet. The priest stumbles along as best he can. We’re maybe a hundred yards from the car, but it’s slow going.
The door bangs again.
‘I fucking told you to bury him deeper,’ Cedric is saying.
Donnie’s voice: ‘This isn’t my fault. He must have had help.’
Fred, grimly: ‘Check the slaughterhouse.’
Eighty yards to go. My teeth are clenched so hard they’re on the verge of cracking. Flashlights sweep around behind us. I think we’re out of their range, for now. I try to move quietly, but the priest’s breathing sounds like a hacksaw. I want to cover his mouth, but he seems so sickly that he might suffocate.
‘Shh,’ I whisper.
Donnie is back: ‘Shit—they’re gone!’
Fred: ‘Who is?’
‘All of them. Goddamn it!’
‘How?’
Kyle: ‘I … I must not have locked the door.’
In real life, a punch doesn’t sound like in Hollywood. You don’t get that deep, baseball-bat-into-a-phonebook thud. With knuckles on cheekbone, you only hear a sharp tap. Just the same, the sound stops me in my tracks. I’m trembling, like my voltage has been turned up.
I’ve wanted to eat people before, but this might be the first time I’ve wanted to kill someone.
The priest squirms, his arm around my neck like a python. ‘What?’
Somewhere behind us, keys are jingling. Why are they locking the slaughterhouse now, after the prisoners have escaped?
‘What?’ the priest says again.
The rusty gate squeals, and I realise my mistake: the Guards aren’t locking the slaughterhouse. They’re unlocking the dog run.
Fred sounds suddenly friendly. ‘Go, girls! Go get ’em! Go!’
The two boxers bark hungrily.
‘Run!’ I whisper.
We stumble through the dark, the priest still wrapped in his soiled robes, me half naked and half the man I used to be. Fast, heavy breaths and the pounding of paws on dirt echo through the forest. The dogs aren’t after us yet—it’s like they’re doing a perimeter check or a victory lap around the house. But the sound is getting closer.
I’m ignoring the cameras now, just blundering right past them. It doesn’t matter if they see us. What matters is getting as far away from those dogs as possible.
But if we escape, the dogs might find Thistle and her group instead.
I falter, missing a step, and the priest almost falls off my back. Maybe I should be letting them find us, so she survives.
Or maybe I should abandon the priest. Let the dogs tear him apart, while Thistle and I both escape.
I take a second to wonder how Thistle would feel about sacrificing a stranger to save her own life. Then I keep carrying the priest through the forest.
Excited barking from somewhere behind us. The dogs have found our trail. It wouldn’t be hard, given the smell the priest has left in his wake. The dogs will be on us any second.
But I can see the pick-up through the trees. No sign of the other prisoners, but even if they’ve punctured the tyres like I told them to, the priest and I can hide inside the cabin for protection from the dogs.
I can hear whispers. The Guards must be catching up to us.
I let go of the priest, dig the keys out of my pocket and push the button on the remote. The lights in the pick-up come on as it unlocks.
The other prisoners scramble out from behind it. Thistle is with them, her handbag over one shoulder and a phone in her hand. The bag must still have been in the tray of the pick-up, where Donnie dumped it. I told Thistle there was no phone service out here, but she would have tried anyway.
Seeing her gives me a surge of energy—desperation and relief all mixed together. I drag the priest out of the woods. ‘What are you still doing here?’
‘Finally! She wouldn’t let us leave without you,’ Hailey snaps. Then she sees the priest. ‘Who the hell is that?’
‘One more prisoner,’ I say. ‘He was buried in the backyard. Had to dig him up.’
Thistle looks at me, shirtless and weak, then at the priest and his soiled robes. ‘Holy shit.’
I laugh, and then realise the joke wasn’t intentional. I toss her the keys. ‘Dogs are after us. Get in quick.’
Everyone piles into the tray, except Thistle, who gets in the passenger side and slides over to the driver’s seat. She leaves the door open for me and starts the engine.
‘I’m not coming,’ I say.
She stares at me. ‘What?!’
‘I have to get Kyle out of here,’ I say.
I don’t know why I can’t abandon him. He’s committed abduction, false imprisonment, torture, assault, mail fraud and probably a whole host of other crimes.
But Thistle seems to understand immediately. ‘What about the dogs? And the Guards?’
‘I’ll think of something. Just go.’
‘You heard him!’ Hailey yells from the back. ‘Go!’
Thistle doesn’t. She rummages through her handbag, pulls out the can of pepper spray and throws it to me. ‘Use this.’
I love you, I want to say. But, ‘Thanks,’ is all I have the courage for.
‘You too,’ she says, which doesn’t make sense unless she’s telepathic. Then she stamps on the gas and screeches away down the gravel driveway.
I turn back to face the woods. I can’t see the dogs yet, but I can hear their paws, their snapping jaws, their ragged breaths.
I look down at the pepper spray. I’ve never used this stuff. The can is no bigger than a deodorant stick, black, with an orange b
utton on top. It feels light. Almost empty, maybe.
But a little should be enough. After the FBI developed pepper spray in the eighties, US Army scientists determined that it was too toxic to use on civilians. The FBI approved it anyway, which paved the way for other agencies to use it. It turned out that the head of the FBI less-than-lethal weapons program was taking bribes from pepper spray manufacturers. He was jailed, but the damage was done. Pepper spray was already being used by hundreds of other agencies.
When I look back up, the dogs are already here, racing out of the darkness towards me, teeth bared for the kill. I raise the spray can. It’s hard to hold it with only four fingers.
The faster of the two dogs streaks across the dirt, crossing the last six feet in a terrifying leap. I take aim with the spray can and push the button, just as the dog’s huge paws hit my chest, knocking me over backwards.
I hit the dirt so hard that the air explodes out of my lungs. The first blast from the spray can shoots uselessly up into the air, but the dog takes the second one right in its slavering jaws. It makes a sound like a whinnying horse and scrambles backwards, sneezing and whimpering. Eyes shut, it frantically rubs its snout with its paws, trying to get the spray off.
The other dog snaps at my leg. It misses my flesh but grabs my pants. The fabric rips as the dog wrenches its head sideways, like a gator trying to break a deer’s neck.
I spray it with the last of the can’s contents. The dog yelps and backs off immediately. The first one is still freaking out a few feet away.
I have a split second to feel triumphant before the cloud from my first blast, the one that missed, comes back down and settles all over me.
It’s like being set on fire. My eyelids clamp shut as though someone else is controlling them, and even so, my eyeballs burn. The skin all over my face seems to bubble and boil. I can’t breathe. I suddenly feel sorry for the dogs.
I rub my face, but that just seems to make it worse. My palm stings where I touched the chemical.
I’m too dizzy from the lack of air to stand, so I throw the can away and crawl back up the gravel driveway, towards the house. I need water. I can’t think while my whole body is burning. That freezing shower I made Hailey stand in would be perfect, if I can find it.
