Secluded

by Alana Terry

  Someone was standing in the doorway of the shed. Was Willow waiting for her?

  She didn’t know what else to do but run. That was her only plan. Into the shed. If Willow was there, if she saw what was happening, maybe they’d find a way to barricade themselves in.

  Closer now. She was shouting warnings, at least she thought they were warnings. Her brain was so focused on escape she wasn’t even sure what she was saying. She just had to trust that Willow ...

  Except it wasn’t Willow in the doorway. It was Brandy. Her huge swell of a belly protruded out in front of her. She stood with one hand behind her back looking peaceful and serene.

  “Out of the way!” Kennedy tried to yell. Had the poor girl lost her mind? Had her imprisonment driven her insane?

  Kennedy raced past the threshold of the cabin, nearly plowing into Willow, who was waiting for her with outspread arms. She tried to pull Brandy inside, but Willow held her back. “Wait.”

  Roger stopped a few paces away from Brandy. “What are you doing off your wall, girl? Did I tell you to come outside?”

  “I got scared. I was waiting for you. I thought something bad might have happened.”

  “Something bad will happen all right if you don’t get back on that wall,” he snarled.

  Kennedy sank into the shadows but kept her mind focused and alert in case Brandy needed her help. Roger was drunk and couldn’t have gotten out of that wreckage uninjured. The three of them could fight him off. They would find a way.

  “Come on.” Roger’s voice was calmer now. Steadier. He took Brandy by the hand and led her as if she were a child to her chains. “You know this is for your own protection,” he crooned.

  “Yeah,” she answered submissively. “I know. But before I go back on the wall, will you hold me for a minute? I got really scared. I thought you were hurt. Those two girls told me your cabin was destroyed.”

  He scoffed quietly. “They’re just jealous. That’s what. You don’t pay them any mind, ok? You know I love you most. I always have, and I always will.”

  He wrapped his arms around her.

  Kennedy glanced at Willow, wondering what they were doing waiting here in the shadows. If a pregnant girl wanted to allow herself to get chained back up on a wall in a shed that might collapse at the slightest hint of another aftershock, was there anything Kennedy or Willow could do?

  “Hold me,” Brandy pleaded. Her voice was so small, Kennedy thought she sounded more like a ten- or eleven-year-old than a grown woman. Pity gripped her soul and held her feet in place even while her brain begged her to run. She watched sadly while Roger held Brandy, murmuring kind words into her ear.

  “You’re so sweet,” she said, but something in her voice had changed. Roger must have noticed it too. He pulled away as Brandy reached into his back pocket.

  “This is for what you did to me.” Brandy plunged his knife into his abdomen, pulled it back out, and hacked again.

  CHAPTER 15

  KENNEDY DIDN’T MOVE. Just stood watching Roger’s crumpled, bloody corpse and Brandy’s expressionless face as she stared down at him.

  Giving him a little nudge with her foot, Brandy asked, “Roger? You ok?” Her voice was sweet and childish again. “Roger?” She knelt down beside him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

  Willow stepped forward and wrapped an arm around her.

  Brandy jumped back. “Get away from me. You’re the one who made me do this.”

  Willow didn’t move. “It’s all right, sweetie. You’re safe now.”

  “I was safe with him,” Brandy cried. “Look what you did.” She stared at the body and recoiled as if she were seeing it for the first time. “Look what you did to him. You hurt him.”

  She pummeled Willow with her fists, but they landed soft. Willow wrapped her in a hug. “Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be all right. We’re all safe now. We’re all ...”

  Another low grumble from the pit of the earth. Kennedy couldn’t keep her balance and fell to her knees.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Willow called out.

  “I’m not leaving him!” Brandy clung to Roger’s dead body. Kennedy and Willow had to exert all their strength to pry her away from the bloody corpse.

  Outside the shed, Kennedy hoped this would be another small tremor, but the back and forth motion of the earth quickly morphed into the familiar undulating. Brandy shrieked when a tree branch whipped in front of her. Willow kept her arms wrapped around her protectively. Kennedy just tried to keep her balance.

  “How long is this going to last?” Brandy shrieked.

  Willow stood there stroking her hair while Kennedy worried all the movement was going to make her sick.

  Willow was running before Kennedy could realize what the danger was. “Move it!” she shouted. “Hurry.”

  Kennedy blindly obeyed as her ears were deafened by a new sound, no longer the low rumbling but a deadly, angry cracking.

  Brandy shrieked as the snow in front of them shifted. “Hurry,” Willow ordered, nearly dragging Brandy with her. The shed in front of them tossed from one side to the other as the snow around it collapsed in on itself.

  “It’s caving in,” Willow shouted, still urging everyone further away from the crevice that was forming in front of their eyes.

  “No! I can’t leave him there!” Brandy turned around, and Willow and Kennedy both grabbed her arms before she toppled down the ravine that was swallowing trees and snow and everything else in its path.

  “Roger!” Brandy shrieked as the cabin collapsed into darkness.

  Kennedy and Willow dragged her away from the edge of what was now a cliff. It was too dark to tell how far down it went. Twenty feet? A hundred?

  Brandy screamed and struggled free from Kennedy’s arms. “I have to help him!”

  “No, stay here,” Kennedy shouted, but her voice was drowned out by the roaring earth. She lunged forward and grabbed Brandy’s leg in time to stop her from jumping into the crevasse. Kennedy felt her own body starting to slip and knew she couldn’t hold on for long. “Help!”

  The earth gave one last defiant toss and then stopped. Kennedy’s hands burned as she tried to keep her hold on Brandy. “Help!” she repeated.

  Brandy wasn’t struggling. Was she all right?

  Willow knelt beside her and grabbed Brandy by the hips. Straining together, they brought her back to the surface. Willow shined her light down the fissure, shaking her head. “Dude.”

  The crack that had opened in the earth and swallowed the cabin was at least as deep as the tallest trees.

  “Dude,” Willow repeated.

  Brandy was crying quietly. Willow wrapped her arms around her. “We’ve got to find her someplace warm.”

  Kennedy didn’t want to be the one to point out that they were miles from the road and hours from daylight. Neither of Roger’s cabins had survived the earthquake and aftershocks. Where was there to go?

  “What about the truck?” Willow suggested. “If we can get it running, we can turn up the heater and make it until morning.”

  Kennedy was thankful for some kind of plan. “Good idea. Then we can radio for ...” She stopped herself and looked down at the gaping scar in the earth where the cabin, along with the radio, now lay in heaps of rubble. “Never mind.”

  Willow rubbed her back. “Don’t worry. We just need to focus on warming up for a little longer. When the sun comes up, we’ll make our way to the road. It’s going to be just fine.”

  Kennedy nodded. They could do this.

  Willow took Brandy by the arm. “Come on. Let’s get you up out of the snow. Can you walk? We’ll see if we can warm up in Roger’s truck.”

  Brandy didn’t respond. She had stopped weeping and was staring down at herself in wide-eyed bewilderment.

  “What is it?” Willow’s voice was full of compassion. “What’s wrong?”

  Brandy blinked once and continued to gaze at her lap.

  “I think my water just broke.”
r />   CHAPTER 16

  IT WAS OFFICIAL. KENNEDY was freaking out.

  “We can’t deliver a baby out here in the dark in the middle of nowhere!”

  Willow tried to shush her. “Of course we can’t. That’s why we’re going to take her to Roger’s truck and get her warm.”

  “How do you expect to get her there? We can’t carry her that far.”

  Willow raised her eyebrows. “You do know that women can walk while they’re in labor, don’t you? And that your water can break hours before you even start having contractions.”

  Kennedy didn’t respond. When would she have ever learned that?

  Willow wrapped her arm around Brandy. “Come on. The truck’s not far. If we’re lucky, we can drive you out of here. See how the roads are so we can get you some help. You’re going to be just fine. Have you felt any contractions yet?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “It will be like cramps. Sometimes you only feel it in your back. And if you put your hand right here on your abdomen, it’ll get hard. There, that’s one now. Can you feel it?”

  “A little.”

  “Good,” Willow answered, although Kennedy couldn’t dream up a single thing that was positive about their situation. Stuck in the middle of the woods, aftershocks destroying everything around them, and now they had a pregnant woman who was about to deliver a baby.

  “We’ve got to get there fast,” Willow was saying. “We don’t want that amniotic fluid to freeze to your skin.”

  Kennedy didn’t even want to know what that would look like and prayed they’d get to the truck on time. God had protected them this far. He’d just have to keep on watching out for them because Kennedy knew there was no way they could survive all the way until daybreak on their own.

  By the time they got to Roger’s vehicle, Brandy’s pants were frozen stiff.

  “I was afraid of that,” Willow said and shined her flashlight around. A tree trunk had fallen across the back of the truck bed, and another one had flattened a four-wheeler that must have belonged to Buster. “Looks like we won’t be driving out of here any time soon.” She turned to Kennedy. “Can you look around for any blankets? I’ll see if we can at least get the heater running.”

  “What about the keys?” Kennedy asked.

  Willow chuckled. “This is the Alaska wilderness. Everybody leaves their keys in the ignition or on the dashboard. See?” She held up a single key on a chain and started up the truck.

  Kennedy turned toward the cabin, feeling awkward on her uneven shoes. It wasn’t until then she realized Willow was wearing nothing but her sock. “Your foot,” she exclaimed. “I never gave you your boot back.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Willow’s face was drawn taut. “We were little busy back there.”

  “Yeah, but what about frostbite?”

  Willow was coaxing Brandy out of her pants. “Worry about that later. Now go get some blankets. Please?” she added as an afterthought.

  Kennedy remembered where Buster’s body lay and made a wide circle to avoid him. She found the blankets without too much trouble and grabbed a few cans of spam, too.

  “Any luck?” Willow asked when Kennedy returned.

  “I got some blankets, but they’re already frozen stiff. I don’t know what good they’ll do.”

  “Don’t worry about that. Come in, and close the doors. I’ve got the heat running. Here. You sit on top of the blankets and get them warmed up for us.”

  It didn’t seem like much, but Kennedy was thankful for something she could do to feel useful.

  “Ok, the contractions aren’t all that regular. It could be a while before anything starts to happen, and there’s a good chance by then we’ll have found some way to get help. Is this your first delivery?”

  Brandy nodded. “Roger said he would take me to the hospital. He said everything would be ok.”

  “He’s right. You’re going to be fine,” Willow assured her. “Kennedy, why don’t you pray for us. Is that all right with you?” she asked Brandy.

  Kennedy’s rear end was freezing from sitting on top of the blankets, which could explain why she sounded so stubborn. “First, we need to look at your foot. You shouldn’t have been running around in just your sock.”

  Willow shrugged. “Yeah, well, you don’t always think things through when you’re trying to stay alive.”

  Kennedy tried to think of something that might lighten the mood but couldn’t. “Let’s just take a look.”

  “I don’t know what it is you’re expecting to see.” Willow stretched her leg across Brandy’s lap and hoisted her foot onto Kennedy’s knee. “Here it is. See? It’s a foot.”

  Kennedy felt it. The sock was frozen stiff. “Should you take that off?”

  “Go ahead. You’re the one all worried.”

  Kennedy aimed the flashlight. “I don’t know what I’m looking for,” she confessed. Willow’s toes were red, but other than that they looked just like toes. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting. Tiny black stumps where the cold had already eaten away the flesh?

  “See? I’m fine.” Willow swung her leg back down and felt Brandy’s midsection. “There comes another contraction. You tell me when they get real uncomfortable.”

  Kennedy still wasn’t ready to ignore Willow. “Shouldn’t you wrap it or something so it gets warm now?”

  “Probably.”

  Kennedy took Willow’s boot off her own foot.

  “Here. Put this back on. I don’t need it anymore.”

  Willow sighed. “Fine. But I’m only doing it so you stop worrying about me.”

  As if Kennedy would ever stop worrying at a time like this.

  She hugged her arms around her, wondering how long it would take for the truck to heat up, wondering how long the night would last, wondering what they would do if Brandy’s baby decided it was ready to be born before help arrived.

  CHAPTER 17

  “WHAT TIME IS IT?” KENNEDY rubbed her eyes. She hadn’t meant to doze off, but she soon came to realize that childbirth was nothing like the movies where your water breaks and in minutes you’re screaming and writhing in agony. With nothing better to do, she had leaned up against the window and let exhaustion overtake her.

  Willow swept some hair off Brandy’s sweaty brow. “Almost eight. You were out forever. I’m glad you got that sleep. You really needed it.”

  Kennedy felt guilty for not being more useful. “How are things going? Is she doing ok?”

  Willow smiled faintly. “You can ask yourself, you know. It’s just labor. It’s not like she can’t talk.”

  Kennedy felt herself blush. “Ok, how are you feeling?”

  Brandy winced. “Contractions are starting to hurt now.”

  “She’s in the transition stage,” Willow explained. “The good news is her body’s figuring out what it needs to do just fine. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’ll start pushing soon.”

  “What? Don’t we need to take her to the hospital?”

  “First of all, the hospital wouldn’t do anything for her but throw on a bunch of monitors and push an epidural that she doesn’t need. But if we were in town and had access to a midwifery, then yes, we’d take her there, but did you see that tree? The entire back half of the truck is pinned down, and even if we found a way to lift it off, we wouldn’t be able to get very far with the tail end dragging on the ground. Anyway, women have been delivering babies without men in white coats telling them how to do it for millennia. So what I need you to do is promise me that you won’t freak out, and if I ask for your help, you just have to tell yourself to get over any nerves or squeamishness or anything else, buckle down, and do what I say. Got that?”

  Kennedy swallowed down a wave of nausea and nodded.

  Willow held her gaze. “I’m dead serious. You don’t freak out on me, and you do exactly what I need you to do when I need you to do it. Have you ever seen a live birth before?”

  Kennedy was sure that whatever blood she’d had left in
her brain had rushed to her feet by now.

  Willow shook her head. “Never mind. Just remember, when you’re a doctor, you’ll have to do all kinds of more stressful things than this. So here’s your crash course. Ready? And you listen too, Brandy, because I think your time’s coming up. When it feels like you need to push, that’s your body telling you what to do. Kennedy and I are going to do our best to keep you squatting over the seat. You put your forearms here like this, and one leg on my knee and one leg on Kennedy’s knee, and that way you’ll have gravity on your side. When the urge comes, it’ll feel like you’re making a really big poop. I’m not going to try to put it in any nicer language than that. You’re going to feel like you’re forcing out a ten-pound piece of poop. You’ve probably seen in the movies where the mother screams and yells and thrashes around wasting all her energy, but that’s not what you’re going to do. You’re going to stay nice and quiet and focus all your strength on bearing down. Not yet. Your body’s not quite ready, but it will be soon, and when that happens, you just let us know, and Kennedy and I’ll be here ready to help you. You can do this, right?”

  Brandy’s voice was choppy. “Do I have a choice?”

  “No, you don’t. But don’t worry about that. Your body knows just what it needs to do. Kennedy, you ready? I want you to sit right there, and, Brandy, you put your knee on top of hers so it will sort of be like you’re squatting. In between contractions, you just sit back down on the seat and try to get some rest. Are you doing ok? Are you warm enough?”

  “I think I have to pee.”

  “That’s totally normal,” Willow said. “Here, Kennedy, hand me that coffee cup.”

  Kennedy was trying to convince herself that now would be no time to faint. Willow was right about one thing. As a doctor, she’d have to help people in all kinds of situations just like this, except she’d always planned to do it in a warm, sterile hospital room, with clean clothes, gloves, and plenty of nurses to assist.