Faint of Heart

by Strand, Jeff

  "Having fun?" he asked.

  "What do you think?"

  Alan shrugged. "How should I know? You're an elementary school teacher. Maybe this is the kind of excitement you've been searching for all your life. Maybe this is feeding your incessant craving for adventure."

  "I don't need any adventure."

  "Oh, now, everybody needs adventure. It's human nature." He bobbed his knees up and down. "Don't you want to know what I got you?"

  She reached for the present, but Alan slapped her hand away. "That was a question, not an invitation. First I want to know how you think the game is going. Any helpful suggestions? Anything you think we could be doing better? Was the handwriting on the notes neat enough?"

  Rebecca just stared at him. Was he serious?

  Suddenly Alan grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked her head down, making her wince with pain. "Listen, sweetie, I'm making the best of this situation, so you can at least meet me halfway," he said, with absolutely no trace of his previous levity. "I don't even wanna be doing this. I'd much rather just gut you right here. As far as I'm concerned, this whole thing is a waste of time."

  Then she felt cold steel on the back of her neck. Sharp steel. Alan put some more pressure on it, and she winced again. "So, do me a favor and show a little more spunk, okay? Get in the spirit of things. I'm not asking you to dance around and giggle, but for God's sake at least don't act like a mannequin. Do you understand?"

  "Yes!"

  "Make me believe it."

  "Yes!" she screamed.

  Alan held the blade there for a few more moments, then took it away and released his grip on her hair. "Good. That's all I wanted to hear."

  Rebecca raised her head and brushed her hair out of her eyes. Alan had a thin sheen of perspiration on his forehead. She hadn't been struggling; had he really worked up a sweat from that little action?

  "I...I think you're running the game fine," said Rebecca.

  "Ah, I don't give a shit what you think. I was just messing with you. So, do you want to open your present now?"

  Rebecca nodded.

  "What's the magic word?"

  "Please."

  "Try, please, oh stud muffin, who I would gladly screw for hours and hours on end if I weren't so happily married."

  "Fuck you," Rebecca said.

  She gasped. Where had that come from? She hadn't meant to say that. She clenched her jaws together tightly, ready for him to grab her hair again, or maybe slam the knife into her throat.

  Instead, Alan laughed. "Very good. Now that's spunk. Here you go." He handed her the present.

  It felt heavy. Too heavy to be a head. Unless a head wasn't the only thing in the box...

  No, this was supposed to be proof that he was still alive. There was no point to any of this if his head was in the box. It couldn't possibly be his head.

  She pulled off the bow. "Try to be careful with the paper," Alan suggested. "Maybe we can reuse it for the next one."

  Unsure whether or not he was kidding this time, she very slowly, cautiously began to remove the wrapping, revealing a cardboard box. The contents shifted a bit when she turned the box on its side, but there was still no indication of exactly what was inside.

  She folded the wrapping paper and set it aside, then ran her finger along the lid, which was taped shut. "Mind if I borrow your knife?"

  Alan snorted a laugh. "Yeah, right."

  She dug her fingernail under the end of the tape and pulled it off in one strip. Then she got ready to open the box, but hesitated.

  "It's not a bomb or anything," Alan assured her. "I wouldn't be sitting here if it was anything dangerous."

  Rebecca lifted the flaps.

  Inside were hundreds, no, thousands of spiders.

  Fake ones. Tiny plastic toys. She looked over at Alan in confusion.

  "I guess you have to dig for your present," he said.

  Rebecca knew that she had an excessive, even ridiculous number of phobias, but spiders weren't on the list, much less plastic ones. She dug her hand in the box, not considering until she'd reached almost to her elbow that there might be a mousetrap or something inside.

  No. A mousetrap would've already been set off.

  A razor blade, then.

  She dug more carefully. Alan watched her with a shit-eating grin that made her want to shove a handful of the spiders down his throat.

  Good. Very good. Hostility is much better than fear in this situation.

  Her fingers scraped the bottom of the box, and she cautiously worked her hand around. It wasn't easy, but fortunately she only had to move a few inches before her index finger brushed against something solid. She grabbed hold of it and pulled out the audiocassette tape.

  Alan clapped his hands together. "One point for Becky! Hard to believe anybody still uses those things, huh?"

  She turned the key forward, putting the car in auxiliary, then popped the cassette into the player and turned up the volume.

  The tape was silent for about fifteen seconds. And then Stephen's voice could clearly be heard. "Talk, damn it! Say something! Let her know you're okay."

  "I'm okay, Rebecca," she heard Gary say. Despite his weak, scared-sounding voice, it was unquestionably him. "I'm alive."

  As much as Rebecca didn't want Alan to see her cry, she couldn't help herself, and the tears of relief began flowing.

  "Tell her you love her, asshole," said Stephen on the tape.

  "I love you. But please don't--"

  There was the sound of a punch, and a pained groan from Gary. "Can I hit him, too?" asked Alan in the background.

  "You shut the fuck up. Now read this."

  In the same scared voice, punctuated by a couple gasps of pain, Gary read a few sentences of a news story about an empty hot air balloon landing in a family's backyard. While Gary spoke on the tape, Alan reached into his inside jacket pocket and took out a newspaper. He unfolded it, pointed to the date--today--and then tapped the front-page article that Gary was reading.

  "All right, that's enough," said Stephen on the tape.

  The tape abruptly switched to an Alice Cooper song. Alan began to sway to the beat as he tucked the newspaper back into his inside jacket pocket. "So, your hubby is all safe and sound. Does that give you a warm happy glow inside?"

  Rebecca tried to respond, but couldn't find her voice.

  Alan shrugged. He ejected the tape and pocketed it with the newspaper. "Well, I think your intermission is just about over. Things are going to start to get interesting now. And by interesting, of course, I mean dangerous and really, really bloody."

  He reached into his inside jacket again. "Too many props in this game, if you ask me," he said, taking out a piece of paper and handing it to Rebecca. "That map will take you to your camping spot. Go there. Set up camp. Your husband and his buddies pretty much just hung out by the campsite all day, so you do the same. I realize that your husband had quite an advantage over you because he has more camping experience, but you have an advantage over him because I'm giving you plenty of warning: expect something very bad to happen."

  Alan opened the passenger door and got out of the car. He repeated the wave and smile he'd greeted her with and headed for the woods. As he reached the end of the clearing, he turned back around and called out to her.

  "Have a good time, Rebecca! You can keep the spiders."

  CHAPTER TEN

  Once he was sure he was out of sight, Alan used one hand to brace himself against a tree, then leaned forward and threw up. His heart was racing, his ears were ringing, and he felt like his insides were on fire.

  Maintaining a casual, glib attitude was absolute torture when you wanted to cut somebody so badly that you almost felt like a crack addict desperately searching for a fix. When he'd lost control and put the knife to her neck...well, it had taken a superhuman force of will to keep from going all the way.

  He wanted to stab her. He wanted to hurt her. He wanted to slice off her face to wear as a mask. He wanted to pou
nd his knife into her body until his muscles ached and there was nothing left of her but exposed meat and chipped bone.

  But he was proud of himself. He'd kept control. He knew that if he messed up again Stephen would probably shoot him dead. Not that he was scared of Stephen, but he definitely needed the guy. Stephen had the patience to watch a victim, to follow them, to determine the perfect moment to strike, and knew exactly how to cover their tracks afterward. Alan was too impatient (he knew this even without Stephen telling him on a regular basis) and would be in prison for certain without his partner's help.

  Anyway, he'd done his job and the girl didn't have a cut on her, so there was nothing for Stephen to bitch about. Alan still thought this whole idea was stupid, but then again, he had to admit that he was having some fun with it. And he'd certainly get to make up for not being able to hack Rebecca up in the car. Oh yeah.

  He began to whistle as he continued his mile-long hike through the woods. If he was lucky, maybe he'd find a squirrel to rip apart.

  * * *

  Go to the police.

  Rebecca couldn't get that thought out of her mind, that she should just turn around, drive to the police station, tell the cops everything that had happened, and let people handle it who had some vague idea of what they were doing.

  Maybe she was putting Gary's life at risk by playing the game. Even if she overlooked the fact that she almost certainly couldn't win, did she expect them to simply hand Gary over if she did win?

  Not likely.

  A more plausible scenario was that both of them would end up dead, and then the lunatics would go out and do the same thing again to another couple.

  If the police got Alan and Stephen surrounded, they might spare Gary's life to keep their sentence down.

  Except that they'd already murdered Scott and Doug.

  Or had they?

  She had no proof that anybody was dead. No evidence besides what Alan and Stephen told her. Maybe all three of them were alive. Maybe Scott and Doug's wives were going through the same thing she was.

  A far-fetched idea to be sure, but possible, right?

  Go to the police.

  No. She couldn't do it. She hadn't spent much time with the kidnappers, but she truly believed that if she violated the rules, they'd kill Gary and leave the country. Alan would, at least. She was sure of it. She could lead the police to the cabin, but Gary wouldn't be there. They'd certainly anticipated the possibility that she would run straight to the authorities, and so Gary would be well hidden.

  By going to the cops, she'd be murdering her husband.

  Better to play the game. At least this way she had a chance of saving him, no matter how remote.

  And as desperately as she wanted Gary back, she knew that at least part of her desire to involve the police was to get out of it herself. To not have to go through the same nightmare. To not risk her life, and possibly die.

  Probably die.

  She was probably going to die this weekend. A horrible, grisly death. Maybe even a long, agonizing one. Who knew when they kidnapped Gary, and what they'd been doing to him all this time? Maybe reliving his experience meant being strapped down to a table while fingers and toes were cut off in thin slices with a hacksaw. Maybe Gary had been reading the newspaper with only one eye.

  She could head right back to the bar and call the police.

  But she wasn't going to do that. She didn't care how frightened she was or how much personal risk was involved, she was going to do everything she could to rescue Gary. The excruciating pain of her murder would be less torturous than having to live with herself if she gave up on him.

  * * *

  It took about forty-five minutes of driving, fifteen minutes of it on miserable dirt roads, before she reached her destination on the map. The road just stopped in the middle of the woods, so she parked the car and got out. According to the map, her campsite was a half-mile hike straight ahead from the end of the road, and she'd know it when she reached it.

  She knew that setting up camp would involve several trips to and from the car, but she didn't want to start carrying things until she knew for sure where the campsite was. If she was going to get herself hopelessly lost, she didn't want to worry about lugging a tent around.

  Actually, she would carry something. She opened the passenger door and retrieved the cardboard box. Hansel and Gretel had breadcrumbs, she had plastic spiders. Worst-case scenario, she could find her way back by following the trail of dead birds that had choked on them.

  * * *

  The ground was relatively flat and the trees thinned out quickly, so Rebecca was able to keep up a rapid pace. About fifteen minutes later, she emerged from the woods at the edge of a large, beautiful pond.

  It looked like it was about a hundred yards wide, though the grass was tall enough at the far end that she couldn't tell for certain where the water stopped. It stretched out about fifty yards to her right, and another hundred yards to her left before curving around some forest area.

  She walked out to the edge of the water and bent down to scoop up a double handful. The water was incredibly cold, but looked fresh and tasted fantastic.

  She spent a couple minutes surveying the area. There was a circle of rocks with ashes in the center and three logs around it, proving that the guys, or at least somebody, had been sitting around a campfire. There was also a small pile of branches that were obviously meant to have been used as firewood, and a couple of beer cans in the ashes, but no other litter.

  Though she wanted to investigate more, Rebecca decided that it would be best to get all the camping gear in place first. If they wanted her to camp, she'd camp. She wasn't about to have them decide to kill Gary simply because the tent wasn't set up in time.

  * * *

  Despite the chill, Rebecca was hot and sweaty by the time she finished dragging the tent bag to the campsite, except for her fingers, which were cold and numb. At least there was no wind. She sat on one of the logs for a few minutes, breathing heavily. Her face still hurt where she'd forced the man to punch her, and her lungs were burning. She just wasn't a manual labor type of person. Nor was she an outdoor person. Nor was she a cold weather person.

  But she also wasn't a bloody violence person, and if she was willing to face that, she could certainly handle manual labor, the outdoors, and cold.

  It took her two more trips to get the rest of the stuff. At first she considered only taking what she thought she needed, but decided against it. Anyway, when it started to get really cold, she'd be glad she had Gary's extra clothes.

  She sat back down on the log, absolutely exhausted, and rested for about ten minutes. Now there was a little wind, and her teeth were starting to chatter. But she'd be okay. She'd get a fire started, set up the tent, and then relax as much as she possibly could.

  Well, rest maybe. Relaxation wasn't an option.

  Something bad was going to happen. Gary and his friends had at least had time to drink a couple of beers and start a fire, so nothing could happen before that, right?

  Of course, they'd probably been able to empty the car in a single trip.

  But she was only one person. She couldn't be expected to keep up with three men. It wouldn't be fair to replay the events of the weekend before she had a chance to catch up, right?

  And why, pray tell, would you assume that these gentlemen are going to play fair?

  She stacked a pile of the branches on the old campfire then doused them with some lighter fluid that had been in one of Gary's sacks. She lit a match and tossed it onto the branches, starting a fire immediately. Thank God she didn't have to rub some sticks together.

  Though she wanted to get the tent up as soon as possible, it was more important to keep the fire going, and there weren't many branches left. She went back and started walking along the edge of the woods, gathering up branches from the ground. They were plentiful, so she quickly returned to the campfire and added them to the backup pile. While that would keep her going for a while, she
decided it was probably best to stockpile as much as she possibly could. Things were going to get more and more dangerous as time passed, and if she could avoid going near the woods, with all its places for somebody to hide, she'd be much better off.

  As she gathered her fourth load, she noticed a speck of red on one of the leaves. She flinched and looked at it more closely.