This time it didn’t.
Her stomach clenched, and she felt ready to hurl. In fact, she was eighty percent there, mouth already open, the gagging sound working her way up her throat, glancing anxiously at the cannibal to see if he could hear her.
She squeezed her eyes shut and repressed it, forced the reflex down. Vomiting was noisy, noise would draw attention, and that could kill her.
The moment passed. Cindy breathed through her mouth, slow and deep, relaxing her abdomen. Then she carefully lifted her hand off and wiped it on the dirt. Gravel and ash stuck to the moisture on her palm, and she vowed that she would never, under any circumstances, eat liver again.
She adjusted her direction to avoid encountering anything else, and continued forward. But it didn’t matter. The cannibals had been messy eaters, and Cindy’s fingers kept brushing against various bits and parts strewn all over the ground. The knees of her jeans soaked through, and her hands glistened in the flickering campfire. She pressed forward, getting to within ten feet of the tent.
At eight feet away, her mouth went completely dry, making swallowing impossible.
When she was within six feet, her breath was coming out in pants.
Four feet from the tent, her head began to feel strange and hollow.
Two feet away, hyperventilation made her dizzy to the point where she was going to pass out. She paused, trying to suck in air through her nose and slow down her heartbeat.
Just a few more inches, Cindy. You can do it…
Then the cannibal grunted, shifting his body. The knife and fork, resting crisscross on his chest, shifted, sliding off and making a clanging sound that to Cindy felt like a shotgun blast. He was now on his side, facing her.
She froze, staring at his still-closed eyes. His cheeks were wet with blood, and little stringy things were caught in his beard. If he opened his eyes it was over. Sara and Tyrone wouldn’t be able to save her in time. Here was a man who ate what seemed to be his friend. What would he do to someone he considered an enemy?
Cindy glanced right, her shallow breathing causing her vision to blur. The entrance to the tent was tantalizingly close, but she was too scared to move. She thought she’d hit rock bottom when she’d passed out in a disgusting gas station toilet, a needle stuck in her arm, lying in a puddle of someone else’s urine for hours until the owner discovered her and called the police. But this—an arm’s length from a crazy man who wanted to snack on her—this was the all time low.
Quiet as a mouse in slippers, little girl. Move like you live in the woods.
Cindy tore her eyes away from the killer, locking them onto the tent. Moving oh so slowly she forced herself toward it, hand, knee, hand, knee, ignoring the horrible, slippery things she crawled over, and then, all at once, her head and shoulders were inside the tent, relief coursing through her like the meth she was so intent on quitting.
That’s when Cindy heard the snoring.
The other cannibal was in the sleeping bag.
Tom patted his full stomach and yawned. He was dog-ass tired, and had eaten waaaaay too much. All he wanted was to curl up someplace and go to sleep. He was even considering doing so right there, in front of the coals. It was warm, and comfortable, and whosever camp this was hadn’t been around for over an hour. If they did come back and get mad that he ate their food, it was their own frickin’ fault for leaving it here.
Sara and Martin would be frantic, of course, if he stayed out all night. But it was their frickin’ fault for playing that stupid trick and trying to scare him. Screw those two anyway. It wasn’t like anything Tom did mattered at this point. The Center was closing and Tom was going off to some frickin’ boot camp. Let them worry themselves to death.
He yawned again, stretched out his arms, and stood, looking for something that would serve as a pillow. There was some sort of cloth near the coals, and he bent down and picked it up, immediately recognizing it.
Meadow’s shirt.
Huh. Weird. But then, Meadow was probably in on the prank too, pretending to get grabbed in the woods. Maybe he was in the trees right now, waiting to jump out.
Tom turned in a full circle, scanning the treeline. It looked just as dark and quiet as ever.
Then Tom did something he almost never did. He doubted himself.
For just a fraction of a second, he wondered if maybe this wasn’t all some big joke, and that there actually were cannibals in the woods. Hell, that mystery meat he just stuffed himself with could have even been a person.
Tom was all about impulse, forging ahead, not looking back. Doubt and guilt existed only as fleeting thoughts. Without his ADHD medication, Tom couldn’t stand still long enough to spell the word worried, let alone act worried.
So he dismissed the doubt as soon as it came, rolled Meadow’s shirt into a ball, and propped it behind his neck as he stretched out onto the ground, facing a severed human hand.
Tom jerked back into a sitting position, unable to believe what he just saw. He looked again.
A hand. Cooked and fleshy, except for three skeletal fingers that had no meat on them.
Never one to pay attention to his surroundings, Tom twisted around quickly, his eyes scanning the ground for the first time. In short order he found four rib bones, a burned lump that looked like a kidney, and a partially eaten leg that still had the foot attached.
“No way. No frickin’ way.”
He reached out, touched the leg bone.
It wasn’t a plastic prop. It was the real thing. And the blackened, melted shoe still attached had a green Nike swoosh on it, just like Meadow wore.
Tom threw up so hard and fast it felt like his throat was being torn out. That’s when the tall thin man with the camera stepped out of the woods and snapped his picture.
Martin’s lower body slipped off the branch, then his chest followed the lead. He hung in a chin-up position, his feet dangling within reach of the axman sitting beneath him. Martin held this position, his fingers screaming at him, knowing he’d be unable to swing his body back up, and knowing what dropping down meant.
Then Jack began to shift. Martin only had one shoulder strap around him, having moved too quickly to buckle the second strap or the waist belt. Jack moved along Martin’s back, under his armpit, and hung over his belly. He opened his tiny eyes, looked up at Dad, and gurgled happily.
Martin’s arms began to burn, then tremble, then unbend slowly, like the air being let out of a pneumatic jack. Below him, the axman continued to gnaw on that large round object. But it was only a matter of seconds until he looked up. Martin knew his best chance was to move closer to the trunk, find a toe hold. But he wasn’t sure his hands would hold out.
Jack gurgled again, blowing a tiny baby spit bubble that burst against his father’s neck.
Martin reached out an aching hand for a grip near the trunk.
His fingers missed the branch.
Jack’s sling slid right off his shoulder.
Martin frantically reached down, catching the strap, tangling Jack only a foot above the cannibal. The hand still holding the tree felt like it had been set on fire. He let out an involuntary grunt.
The cannibal kept his attention focused on his snack, and didn’t see the baby swinging over his head.
Martin summoned up his last bit of strength, swung Jack’s sling in a wide arc, and the strap hooked onto a broken twig.
Jack apparently enjoyed the quick motion, because he squealed with joy.
The cannibal looked up.
The tug was sudden and violent, ripping Martin’s hands from the bough. He slammed into the ground on his side, the shock of the impact making him bite his already injured tongue. Inches from his nose was a severed, cooked head, much of its face eaten away.