by Leah Rhyne
“No! I’ll never leave you again! I told you!” I took my hand and wiped the frozen tears from her cheeks. “I’m so sorry I left you before. I thought it would save you.”
Lucy nodded, and stood. “Okay,” she said, back in control. “Then let’s go. I can walk. My foot’s numb anyway, and the snow should help the swelling.”
“I’m sorry, Luce, but did you just silver-line this?” I waved a hand, indicating the forest, the snow, the fire. Lucy was known for her positivity around the dorm, but she’d just carried it to a whole new level. Lucy only smiled.
We started out slowly, carefully picking our way between trees and rocks, hanging on for dear life when wind gusts threatened to blow us both off the mountainside. The thick trees through which we walked provided a bit of shelter and probably saved Lucy’s life. I don’t think she could have survived had she been fully exposed to the vicious winds.
Still, we weren’t getting very far. We stumbled. We fell. Our clothes were soaked and Lucy shook uncontrollably. I tried to distract her by talking.
“So, Officer Strong, huh?”
Through chattering teeth, she smiled for a brief second. “He called me today. I didn’t even know he had my number. Asked me out for coffee.” Her face was already red, but I thought she blushed.
“What? When?”
“That’s where I went when you were resting. I knew you were okay, so I met him at the café on campus. I needed some caffeine anyway.”
“You’re joking!” The conversation seemed to distract her from her pain. She stopped shaking quite so badly, and we covered more distance than we had before. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me till now.”
“Stop. It wasn’t a big deal. And he was sweet! Such a gentleman. Not like the other guys around here.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “He was all worried about me walking in the snow. Wanted to pick me up, take me home, didn’t want me out there on my own.”
Lucy stumbled again, and I grabbed her arm. Of course, then I tripped, and she had to catch me. We were quite the team, on the side of the mountain in the middle of a blizzard, but the near-fall ripped something in my hip, and I groaned. “Wonder why he was so worried,” I said as we limped onward. “It’s not like there’s a chance you could, oh, get kidnapped!”
But we paid more attention to our path again, and moved more slowly lest we tumble over the edge.
Still, I thought about Adam Strong. He was definitely handsome. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, and even there, in the driving snow, it was easy to remember his smile. A brief flash of envy lit within me when I realized I’d never again have the excitement of going on a first date. I tried not to let that color my thoughts as I wondered about a policeman taking too much interest in a girl about whom he was a little suspicious. What did they talk about, I wondered. Did they talk about me?
I was lost in thought, still trying my best to support Lucy as my own body threatened to give out with every step, when she called out. “A road!”
“Get out your…” I started to say cell phone, hoping that since we’d made it to a road, Lucy’s service would be restored. I froze when I saw the van, the same one from Primrose Path. Its engine ran, its lights were off, and it looked neither warm nor welcoming.
“Get back,” I hissed, yanking on Lucy’s arm. She tripped and fell backwards, landing hard on the uneven ground. She cried out in pain. Behind us, the lights of the van turned on and flashed in our direction. “Stay down! They’ve seen us.”
A door slammed. “Jolene, Lucille, I know you’re out there. It’s just a matter of time until we find you.” The voice was masculine, threatening us with an unsavory end to our tale. We trembled and clutched each other, shrinking further back into the bushes.
Another door slammed. This time, a woman spoke. “Come out, come out, wherever you are, girls. We love you, and we’ll forgive you for the damage you caused up there. Don’t worry. We have a backup plan.” Her voice had an edge, sharp as a knife. I didn’t believe a word she said.
I yanked on Lucy’s arm and we began to crawl through the snow, away from our pursuers.
We made better progress this way, on our knees instead of Lucy’s bad ankle, and were quieter. Footsteps and shouts hung in the air but soon faded into the distance. They couldn’t track us in the blowing snow. A gunshot rang out, and I realized how close to the end we’d come. I collapsed to my stomach, dropped my battered face in the snow, and felt myself fill with a cold, solid panic. Lucy reached an arm underneath me and pulled me along with her.
After crawling for what felt like an eternity, we found a small cave, its opening partially blocked by a snow bank. Inside the cave was inky black, but it would do. I pushed my hands through the snow, carving out a bigger path for us, and we crawled inside. Outside, the wind kept howling, whistling, and crying like a deranged banshee across the opening, but inside we were finally still.
Not like our problems were about to let up, though. The temperature was still well below freezing inside the cave, and Lucy’s soaking, partially frozen clothes weren’t doing her any favors. I took her cell phone from her trembling hands, hit the power button, and said a silent prayer.
It took a few minutes to power up, but when it came back to life, it was with a whopping three bars of service. We cheered, and then Lucy started to cry. “I’m so cold, Jo. I’ve never been this cold.”
I put my arm around her, silently cursing the fact that I had no body heat to share, and I pressed a button.
Officer Strong’s voice came through loud and clear after the first ring. It was deep and powerful, like Superman. “Lucy! I’ve been trying to call you. Where have you been?”
“Officer Strong?” My voice sounded worse than ever, more like a frog than human girl. I tried to clear my throat, but it didn’t help. Lucy was snuggled up against me, shaking and sniffling, and I kissed the top of her head before I continued. “It’s Jo. I’m with Lucy. We’re in trouble.”
“What? Where are you? I’ll come right away. Does anyone know where you are?”
“We don’t know where we are, not really. Eli knew where we were going, though. I have a lot to explain.”
His voice was steady, even. Comforting. “Okay. Right. I’m at the station. Stay on the line. We’ll find you.”
“Thank you,” I said. “But can you come alone?”
Officer Strong appeared within ten minutes, a small miracle considering the storm. We heard his voice echoing through our cave as he approached.
“Lucy? Lucy?” He sounded bigger than life.
Lucy huddled against the wall of the cave, shaking, draped in the old parka I’d removed from my own body to try to shelter hers. Outside, the wind and snow had finally slowed, and it looked brighter, more like late afternoon than the deepest night. Since it didn’t look like Lucy was able to get up and go to Strong, I did instead. Being impervious to cold and pain came in handy, though I’d lost another finger during our Primrose Path adventure.
“Here,” I croaked when I neared the opening of the cave. “We’re here.”
“Jo,” he called. “Thank God. How’s Lucy? What’s wrong with your voice?”
“There’s something you should know,” I said. “You might want to sit down.”
“What are you talking about? There’s nowhere to si…”
Officer Strong stood in the thigh-deep snow, wearing a long, thick wool coat and knee-high rubber boots, looking like he’d just stepped out of an old World War II movie. I shuddered when I realized he looked like the bad guys, the SS men with their powerful Aryan features. He tromped toward my voice, lifting his legs high to clear the snow bank. I stepped into the light.
He froze, and then began backing away. Crashing into a tree, Strong stumbled, and a clump of snow from a tree branch fell and crashed on his police hat.
I couldn’t help it. I laughed.
“You look hideous,” he said, after he stared at me for a moment, br
ushing snow from his face and gaping like a fish out of water. “What the hell happened to your face? It looks like it’s caving in and falling off, all at the same time.”
“Oh, is it?” I said, as deadpan as I could muster. “Eh, it’s fine. I’ll just stitch it up later.”
“You’re messing with me. Right? You’re got on Halloween makeup for some reason. What the hell is going on, Jo? And how are you not freezing? Where’s your coat?”
I snapped back to reality at the reminder of the cold I couldn’t feel. “Lucy! She has my coat. We need to get her warmed up, fast! Come on!” Forgetting my face, I ran into the cave, slipping and sliding on the ice and snow on lumbering, stick-like legs.
Strong passed me quickly. “Lucy!” he shouted as soon as she came into view. She raised her head, weak but conscious, and stretched her arms out to him like a child to a parent. He ran to her and scooped her up in his arms. “You’re frozen.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “But not all the way. I think I can still be thawed.”
“We need to get you out of here,” he said. He glanced back at me, and his voice grew more stern. “You, too. You’re coming with us.”
I scowled as he rushed toward the entrance of the cave, Lucy wrapped in his arms. It had been a long day, and I hated being ordered around. “Okay, Dad,” I mumbled. And then I chided myself. Very mature, Jo. Very mature.
Officer Strong buckled Lucy into the front seat of his squad car after removing her wet clothes. In her underwear, wrapped in a thick blanket from the trunk, she looked lost and forlorn, almost like she was already dead. Strong turned the heat on as high as it went in the front seat before coming around to my side of the car and opening the back door. I climbed in.
“Sorry about the bars on the windows,” he said, before tossing the thick, wet parka on top of me. If he meant it to keep me warm, well, I didn’t need to worry about that, now did I? Not that it would’ve worked. The thing was dense with barely thawing frost.
I shrugged out from beneath its weight. “It’s okay,” I said. “Sorry for…all this.” I waved my hand around, indicating myself, Lucy, the snowstorm. As I waved, the tip of my pinkie finger tumbled to the floor, pieces of me crumbling like the powdery, frozen snow blowing around us.
Strong turned white, and I watched him gag, and swallow it back. I appreciated that; I never did like vomit.
“Okay,” he said, his voice suddenly weaker. “Time to fix this. Try not to drop any more body parts on the way to the hospital.”
“No!” Lucy said, suddenly acutely awake and aware. She sat up and knocked the blanket from her body. Her nakedness, her body, was chilling to me, its smooth skin and curving lines such a stark contrast to my own rotting flesh. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Neither could Strong, until he reached over and tucked her back in like a child in a bed.
“Why not?” he said.
“I don’t want her to die.” Lucy barely choked out the words, she was so weak. Then she fainted, falling against the seat back.
Strong jumped, his shoulders jerking beneath the thick, dark coat. He took a moment to feel for a pulse on her neck, his face awash in unadulterated panic. At least minimally satisfied with her heartbeat, he slammed his foot down on the accelerator, jerking the steering wheel, and the police car fishtailed its way onto the road. We sped down the mountain, toward University Hospital. As he drove, keeping one hand on Lucy’s bare wrist, he looked at me through the rearview mirror.
“You. Talk. Now.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, all tiny and meek. Physically, I didn’t feel tired or sore or cold; emotionally, I was a wreck. I wished I could cry, so hard I’d choke on my own fluids and never breathe again. But the tears wouldn’t come.
So instead of giving in to hysteria, I slowly, carefully, told him my story. How I woke up dead but not, powered by electricity and a battery I couldn’t see. I told him how I ran. How Lucy was only trying to help me when she lied to him. How I was afraid to die.
About halfway through my tale, his cell phone buzzed. He picked it up. “Strong here.”
There was a pause, while he listened.
“Yes, I’m in the car…”
“No, not yet. He’s not…”
“Right, I’m on it.” He hung up.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Keep talking.”
I finished with our day’s field trip, and was just warming up to my account of the monster girls when he pulled his car into the emergency room ambulance bay.
He turned to face me as he shut down the car. “I need to get her inside,” he said. “You’ll be safe in here, and I’ll come out to get you soon as I can.”
“You’ll let me know how Lucy is? Right away?” My voice shook.
He nodded. “Yes. Just sit tight. Stay out of trouble. And seriously, you look like hell. You’ll scare anyone who looks through the window. You better cover up.”
With that, he yanked open his car door, pulled Lucy across the front seat, then hurried her inside, cradled in his arms. His name really works for him, I thought, after the ER door closed behind them. Strong indeed.
I waited five minutes before I decided to leave. In the car, I was a sitting duck. Outside, I could run, I could hide, and I could hopefully make it back to the dorm. Unfortunately, I had no way of getting out of the police car’s back seat. The back doors had no internal handles, and the divider between the front and back seat kept me from crawling through the front.
As did my stiff, battered, drying out body.
I’d pay for some full-body ChapStick, I thought, then brushed my hair back from where it hung in tangles before my face.
A clump of hair came away with my hand. My hair, which had once been long, blonde, and quite thick, was falling out en masse. Salt in the open wound of my vanity.
I brushed the hair to the floor of the police car, and then went back to plotting my escape. My next step was to kick the window. I hated to get Strong in trouble by damaging his car, but the way I saw it, circumstances had me beyond apologies. I braced myself against the driver’s side door and gripped the armrest in my hands. I stared at the glass, wondering if the shattering glass would do even more damage to my poor body, but it probably didn’t matter.
I spoke out loud, taking comfort in my own voice. “Unless they have a really great mud bath that will rehydrate me, and restore all my skin cells, I’ll never win another beauty pageant.” Then I laughed. “Not like I ever won one to begin with. But I could’ve! I swear!”
Outside the window, a winter bird flew across the orange-streaked sky. The wind blew through the trees, and the bird rode it, rising and falling at the whim of the breeze. It was free, utterly and uncontrollably free, while I sat trapped in a police car like a common thug.
I screamed and thrust my feet out across the car with all my strength. They hit the window with a tremendous crash, but I heard only the crunch of my own bones. The glass vibrated, but stayed intact.
After a few more kicks, the results were no better, and my foot hung on my ankle at a nauseating angle. I didn’t doubt that something inside was broken or detached. It was quite possible that if I kept kicking, my foot would fall off entirely, and I wasn’t quite ready to be an amputee at age nineteen, so I accepted the inevitable: I was completely stuck.
Crossing my arms across my chest, cringing at the snap-crackle-pop sound from my shoulders and elbows, I sat in the car and watched the world outside. The bird was gone from sight, and in the darkening evening sky, the lights of the emergency room bay spotlighted the emergent chaos.
A father walked by, carrying a little girl who held a towel to her lip. Her face was flushed with tears, but she looked safe, riding in her daddy’s arms. Despite the terror in her eyes, I longed to be her for the fleeting moment. To be safe in my father’s arms. It sounded like heaven.
An ambulance pulled beside the squad car, and technicians unloaded a gurney. On it lay a person, covered entirely by a w
hite sheet. Dead. Blissfully dead, I thought. It must be so nice. So much better than this. Then I cursed at myself for being weak. Outside, there were shouts and cries as the gurney slid on some ice. A smallish woman dove after it, quicker than the massive men around her. She saved it before it toppled on its side, but it tipped just enough to dump the white blankets into the filthy snow. The body lay, still strapped to the gurney, silent because it wasn’t a half-dead freak like me. The medics were paralyzed for a moment, but then, sheepish, they picked up the soggy blankets and covered the body’s face. I tried not to care that the dead body looked far more alive than I.
Others came and left as the sky around the hospital darkened completely. They faded into a time-lapsed blur, and as they did I thought about Lucy. Lucy, who was inside the hospital, possibly dying from exposure and hypothermia. Lucy, who stood by my side while I literally fell to pieces. Lucy. My best friend.
Please be okay, Lucy. Please be okay. Don’t be dead. I can’t handle it if you’re dead. Please be okay, Lucy. Please be okay, Lucy. It was my mantra as I stared out into the night.
Please be okay, Lucy. Please be okay. Lucy. Please be okay, Lucy.
It felt like hours passed while I sat there in the darkening back seat of Officer Strong’s police car. With no watch on my wrist and no clock in the car, I had no way of knowing exactly what time it was. Out of nowhere, a dark body appeared outside my window. I jumped back from it, banging my head on the opposite side of the car as I tumbled to the floor.
“Officer Strong!” I said. “Finally! Is Lucy okay?”
But instead of Strong’s long, dark coat, I saw a different pair of dark pants and dark jacket backlit by the flashing lights of an ambulance. Someone crouched down and looked at me through the window. But it wasn’t Officer Strong.
From the OoA Files, dated February 15
Memorandum:
Subject 632G-J remains at large. Removal from her current location has proven impossible, thanks to the crowds of students always surrounding her.
