The Baby Race

by Tara Wylde

  Screw it. They’re in Jersey, not the Appalachian Mountains. Kind of a rural part of Jersey, but, hell, they’ve got cell service. What’s the worst that could happen within range of a cell tower?

  I check in on Katie. She’s flopped out on the living room floor, homework spread around her. She barely looks up when I let her know I’m heading out.

  “Hey. I might be back late. What are you doing for dinner?”

  That earns me a bored glance, at least. “Probably going to Cindy’s. Or I’ll have Emily make me something.”

  Normally, I’d remind her the housekeeper isn’t her personal chef, but I’m already halfway out the door. Now I’ve got a plan, there’s a rising sense of urgency spurring me on. Wasting the entire morning on the cops was bad enough. Stopping to lecture Katie on something I know she just said to annoy me isn’t a good use of my time.

  The drive out to Elsinboro’s a depressing one. It’s not exactly Deliverance country, but for someone like me, it might as well be. I’ve never been much for the country. Don’t even have a place in the Hamptons. It’s not so bad in summer, when everything’s green and alive, but there’s something creepy about bare branches grasping at a gray sky. It’s too much of a—a visual representation of depression. Desolate.

  Then, there’s the whole question of what I’m going to do when I get there. A physical confrontation doesn’t seem like a great idea. Too many things could go wrong. He could have a knife. Or a gun. Lina could get in the middle. He could somehow twist things around so I end up in prison. Technically, I am the one trespassing.

  But the alternative is to do nothing. Can’t do that.

  I figure I’ll park a mile or so out, walk up on the house. Google Earth gave me a pretty good look at the area. There’s a long dirt road, plenty of trees—if I stick to the woods, I should be able to creep right up without being seen. Then, it’ll just be a matter of gathering evidence. A picture of her in the house? No. Not enough. Doesn’t prove she’s there against her will.

  Maybe I can do a video. Catch him threatening her on tape.

  Not sure I could stand and watch that, and not do anything.

  No. Got to play this smart. It’ll only go worse for her if I barge in half-cocked.

  I almost miss my turnoff, playing out increasingly unlikely rescue scenarios in my head, trying to plan for every contingency. It’s a spray of fresh dirt at the intersection ahead that jolts me back to reality. Someone’s taken this turn recently, and too fast.

  I want to put the pedal to the metal myself. But I force myself to take the turn at a more sedate pace, and slow to a crawl as my odometer marks off another mile. Any closer, and I’ll come within earshot. It’s quiet out here—I feel almost like I’m missing a sense, without the city noise to keep my ears busy.

  I pull into what might once have been a driveway and kill the engine. Even taking pains to close it gently, the thud of the door makes me wince. Feels like sound could carry forever out here.

  That’s nonsense, though. I don’t have time for nonsense. I lock up, flinching again at the cheery peep-peep, and set off at a jog through the woods. Which, I’ve got to say, is also twice as awkward as I expected. The ground’s bumpy under the trees, and there’s all kinds of stuff underfoot: dead branches, rotting logs, a ton of tangling viney crap—the worst.

  I make an executive decision to get out of the woods till the house is in sight. Yeah, if Joe decides to go for a walk, I’ll be the first thing he’ll see coming around the corner... But how likely is he to take a nice stroll in the woods, with a hostage back home? I’ll chance it.

  Once I’m free of the trees, it’s a quick jog to the bend. That’s when I realize, with a sinking feeling, there’s no need to be sneaky. I’m looking at an empty house: no car out front, door swinging open. That’s the thump-thump-thump I’ve been hearing for the last fifty yards: the wind banging the screen door against the frame.

  I head up there anyway. Someone was here: there are fresh tire tracks in the dirt, and the smell of wet paint meets me at the porch. The source soon becomes clear: someone’s been fixing up the living room. There’s a pile of old wallpaper discarded in the middle of the room, and someone’s given the wall underneath a fresh coat without sanding it down. It’s the lumpiest, most depressing paint job I’ve ever seen. Even I wouldn’t do that.

  They’ve started on the kitchen, as well. Looks like they’ve been trying to fix the plumbing: the cabinet under the sink is open, and there’s a section of pipe on the floor. But that’s not what stands out to me. No—that’d be a phone, Lina’s phone, smashed and abandoned on the table.

  When I reach for the phone, I spot a knife on the floor, under the table. A knife, but no blood. I kneel for a closer look. There’s rope fibers on and around the blade, like someone tried to cut themselves free. Lina....

  It hits me: this is my fault. I was about as subtle as a ten-ton hammer. I could’ve been sneakier, taking control of the phone—didn’t have to rub it in his face. What was I thinking, bragging like an asshole? I know where you are.

  And now I don’t.

  Way to go, genius.

  Or maybe....

  A thought occurs to me. If the phone’s not bricked, if it’s just the display, I can still....

  I snatch up the phone and barrel out of there at a dead sprint. I’m back at my car, tapping away at my laptop, in record time—who knew I could run a four-minute mile? Nothing happens when I try to bring up the phone interface. My heart plummets to my boots, but only for a moment. I’m not connected to the Internet. Of course I’m fucking not. No civilization, no wifi. Obviously.

  Twenty minutes of reckless driving gets me in range of someone’s unsecured connection. Another minute, and—miracle of miracles—I’m in. Lina’s display doesn’t even flicker—that screen is toast—but on my computer, I can see it just fine. And I can see Joe’s last browser activity: he Mapquested some campground, half an hour past the house.

  I pull a decidedly illegal U-ey, and I’m back in business.

  It doesn’t occur to me to stop and think about whether this is a good idea. Lina’s out there somewhere, probably cold and scared. I’m going after her. Simple as that.

  143

  Elina

  I’m not sure whether this is a good development or a bad one.

  Joe shook me awake in the dead of night, tossed me back in the trunk without even retying my hands, and now we’re... I don’t even know where. Somehow, he got it into his head Nick could see us, Nick was sending helicopters for us—and his solution was to drag us to a place so run-down, so pathetic it’s probably not even on any map.

  The good: even he’s got to know this is no place for a four-year-old. As long as we’re here, Joey should be safe.

  The bad: everything else—oh my God! This place is like something out of a slasher flick. There’s a one-room cabin with no apparent source of heat, which is where we’re holed up. Then, there’s twin outhouses marked LADIES and GENTS, and a rusted-out trailer on the other side of the clearing. In the summer—some long-ago summer—this place was probably a campground. There’s a corkboard, long since fallen to the floor, with colorful tags spilling off it. You probably drove up in your RV, came to this cabin, and got one of those tags to prove you’d rented a space. Somewhere nearby, there’ll be a lake or a river for swimming. Probably a barbecue pit.

  I worked at a place like this in high school, policing up chip bags and beer cans, shoveling lime down the long-drop johns. It was fun. They had a waterfall everyone used for showering, and a nightly hot-dog roast.

  This, on the other hand, bites the big one. I pull the duvet closer around me. It smells like mold, vomit, and wet paint, just like everything else from that godawful house. And it’s doing jack shit to keep me warm. My teeth are chattering.

  “We need... We need to build a fire.”

  “We can’t.” Joe goes to the window. Three out of four panes are cracked or broken.

  “Seriously, my toes are tu
rning blue. And we’ve been up here for hours. No one’s coming.”

  “You don’t know that.” He cranes his neck to look at the sky.

  “We’d hear it if they were. Come on—untie my feet. I’ll get some water. If we just do a small fire, we can douse it right away if—“

  “They have drones now. Totally silent. We need to stay out of sight. Stay away from the windows.” He steps back.

  I think about telling him a cabin in the woods is easily the worst place to hide if someone’s seriously looking. It’s isolated. It’s obvious. And police helicopters have infrared. Staying out of sight won’t save you if they come looking.

  Maybe he’ll take me back to the city if I tell him that. We can lose ourselves in the crowd, and then I can lose him.

  Then again, maybe he’ll cut my throat: one less heat source for the cops to pick up on.

  I let myself entertain the fantasy that Nick really does know where we are, that he’s on his way, even now. It’s not totally impossible. He could have some...some secret Boy Scout training I don’t know about. He could be following our tracks even now, wending deeper and deeper into the woods. Or he could be here already, skulking outside, waiting for Joe to let down his guard.

  Joe pushes his way under the duvet, ruining the fantasy. I force myself not to shrink away as he cuddles close for warmth.

  “Remember this, Ellie?”

  “Hm?”

  “Last time we came to a place like this.”

  My head spins. I have literally no idea what he’s talking about. “You mean, when....”

  He nods like I’ve actually said something meaningful. “Yeah. When we drove up to Niagara Falls. We stopped at that place with the amazing fries, and that grackle flew off with half of yours.”

  “And you ate the other half.”

  “Well, you didn’t want them.”

  “They were all birdy!” I feel gross reminiscing with him, like this is even a good memory. I want to remind him why we went to the Falls, how it was meant to be his last big adventure, before he started fake chemo. How it cost me most of what I had left, after his fake biopsies and fake radiation already drained my real college fund.

  “The Falls were something else, though. Majestic. One of those things that’s gotta be experienced.”

  I nod. Can’t seem to dredge up anything to say about that.

  “There were like...five rainbows at once, and you couldn’t even look directly at the water with the sun shining through the mist. Like the whole air was sparkling. Remember what you said?”

  I wish I didn’t.

  “You said, let’s come back here every year. When Junior’s old enough to remember. You got him that Maid of the Mist bear. I still have that. Bet he misses it.”

  He never played with that stupid thing.

  “Let’s go back, once this craziness dies down, once we’re all back together.”

  Over my dead body.

  “We can finally have that wedding. Junior can carry the rings. We’ll do it on the Canadian side, and stay there after. Where no one’s looking for us.”

  I should encourage that. If the shit really does hit the fan, and we all end up on the run, the border cops’ll catch us. They’ll see how scared I am, pull us over, and the nightmare will end. “Canada, eh?” I put on my doofiest Canuck accent. “That’s aboot the best idea I’ve heard all day. Hoser. Loonies. Milk in bags.”

  Joe laughs. He seems to be relaxing. Maybe he’ll fall asleep. If I can wriggle out from under the duvet without him noticing, maybe he’ll freeze to death. Maybe I’ll freeze to death, too, staggering through the woods with no shoes or coat. He confiscated those after my first escape attempt.

  Then again, if he dies, I can take his shoes and coat.

  Maybe I can kill him.

  Probably not.

  He’s still droning on about the wedding, how I’ll wear a flower tiara, and Joey’ll have a tiny tux. How we’ll write our own vows, and exchange them under a white rose bower. It’ll just be the two of us, but that’ll be fine, because we don’t need anyone else to be happy.

  On the grand scale of injustices, this is minor, this is nothing, but... We planned a wedding together. He has to remember that—it wasn’t that long ago. I wanted family, tradition, everyone I loved in attendance. Candles, not roses. Wedding crowns, not flower tiaras. Dancing and singing for days. The way he’s ignoring all that only serves to bring it home: I’m not real to him. Not even his son is real to him. We’re all just...side-characters in the story of his life. He’s dreaming his dream, by himself. I’m not sure exactly when he stopped pretending to care what I think, but it feels like a long time ago.

  Outside, something rustles. Joe stiffens against my side. “What was that?”

  “Probably a squirrel. Want to shoot it?” Please be Nick. Please be Nick—please be someone! I prick up my ears, but there’s nothing more to hear.

  “Should’ve brought a gun....” I get the sense he doesn’t mean for squirrels...and I’m incredibly glad he didn’t.

  “Just ignore it. It’s freezing. I’m freezing.” And maybe it is Nick, scuffling around out there. It did kind of sound like a shoe in the dirt... Or maybe that’s wishful thinking. Either way, keeping Joe distracted isn’t a bad idea. “What about—what about after the wedding? The honeymoon? Would that be in Canada too?”

  He shoots me a suspicious look, but the bait’s too good. “Niagara-on-the-Lake. It’s like...Canadian wine country. We can get our own little place on the edge of town. Start a peach orchard.”

  Acres of peach trees in Canadian wine country. Yeah. That sounds affordable. “Sounds like heaven,” I murmur. I can’t keep the disgust off my face as I rest my head on his shoulder. Doesn’t matter. He can’t see from this angle.

  “It’ll be great,” he says. I can’t see his face, either, but I know the expression that goes with this tone of voice: dreamy, distant, enraptured. Back when I was eighteen, it made me weak in the knees. Thought he was some kind of sensitive soul. Especially when he got going on one of his speeches—Joe could make anything sound good. But now I’m tuning him out, straining my ears for the slightest indication we’re not alone.

  The woods are never silent. I used to be pretty good at distinguishing ambient sounds from human sounds, but it’s been a while. And I’m a city girl at heart. That scrape—that might’ve been Nick peering in the back window, or a low-hanging branch grazing the roof. And that tiny patter—a boot scattering pebbles? Or a mouse tripping across the stoop?

  I need to get the rope off my ankles. If there is someone out there, I want to be ready to make a break for it.

  “Quit wiggling.”

  Shit. Can’t move my arms with him battened onto me like a moth on a tree trunk. Got to get rid of him, at least for a minute.

  I cough. “Could you—could you at least get us some water?”

  “Didn’t bring any.”

  Seriously? “Then you need to find some before dark. There’s got to be a stream or something—I think I can even hear it.” There is kind of a rushing sound, off to the east.

  “Can you even drink stream water? Without getting sick?”

  “You can if you boil it.”

  “We’re not building a—“

  “We have to. At least when it gets dark. Or we’ll freeze to death. Nobody’s going to come out here at night, anyway.”

  “I said no fire!” He surges to his feet. For a second, I’m convinced he’s going to kick me. I scuttle backward till my ass hits the wall. “What the hell’s the matter with you? I’m just going to check the car. I think there’s some Gatorade in the back.”

  “Sorry....”

  He storms off. That wasn’t elegant, but at least I got what I wanted. He left the car half a mile away, under the canopy of what was once a picnic area. Hidden from any inquisitive drones, I guess. That’s got to buy me at least fifteen, twenty minutes.

  The second the door slams, I’m picking at the knots: slow and steady, no pan
icked scrabbling this time. By the time he comes back, I want to be sitting here with the rope wrapped around my ankles, in case he checks—but tied to nothing but itself.

  144

  Nick

  This place sucks.

  I thought the woods around the farmhouse were bad, but out here, this is a whole other beast. Even the road’s full of lumps and potholes, and there’s been a stone in my shoe for the last quarter-mile that will...not...shake...out. Must’ve got under the insole.

  I haven’t even been walking that long. Got out of the car when I saw the “Camp W—k-nd-r” sign, not knowing where they’d be hiding, but this place is bigger than I thought. Bigger and emptier. So far, I’ve passed a tumbledown snax stand, a basketball court with two decent-sized trees erupting from the tarmac, a sign marked “SWIMM—G H—E,” and what’s got to be Joe’s car, cleverly concealed under one of those depressing covered picnic areas. The roof’s collapsed on one side, and most of the picnic tables are in the ditch. Doesn’t look like anyone’s been here in years.

  Worst of all, it’s getting dark. I wasn’t sure at first: the canopy’s pretty thick here, even in winter. But, no. The sky was more of a...more of a gull wing gray, half an hour ago. Now I’d call it gun gray. With a hint of blue. Like an old lady’s hair.

  There’s something up ahead, though. The road’s been widening out for a while, and there’s a clearing, with a trailer and a cabin. And the creepy skeleton of a swing set. The chains are still hanging there, but the seats are gone.

  They’ve got to be here: the trail doesn’t go on past the clearing. I veer off into the trees. There’s a layer of wet, rotten leaves underfoot—eugh. I don’t remember it raining recently. Maybe it never gets properly dry here, with the canopy keeping the sun off the earth.

  I squidge around the edge of the clearing till I reach the trailer. There aren’t any lights on inside, but I sidle up anyway. Most of the windows are missing, the curtains hanging in water-stained shreds. I steel myself—if they’re in there, and he happens to be looking up just as I look in, there won’t be much I can do about that. But I don’t hear anything. Maybe they’re asleep.