Prendick felt the gridiron shift.
“Martin!” he impotently cried. “You promised!”
“I’m a killer, Captain Prendick. Certainly you could have guessed I’m a liar as well.”
Prendick screamed as the gridiron tipped over, dropping him face-first onto the burning coals.
General Alton Tope opened his eyes and shut off his alarm. He’d gotten exactly two hours of sleep. Not ideal, but it would do. He rolled out of bed and went into the toilet, still a bit wobbly from the scotch.
He brushed his teeth, shaved, combed his hair, and dressed in his uniform, perfectly timing the completion of the Windsor knot on his tie with the knock at the door.
The men he allowed into his room were under Tope’s command, but the delivery they’d brought him was unofficial. In fact, records would show that both men were currently stationed at another base.
General Tope didn’t like to play it this way, but his hands were tied. He’d made a mistake recently—a minor one at that—and in order to do what was right it had to be under the radar.
“Show me,” Tope ordered.
One of the men placed a metal briefcase on the bed, popped the latches, and opened the lid.
Tope stared. He didn’t so much as flinch, but he was shocked that something worth so much money was so small. The General told his men to leave, so entranced by what was on the bed that he wasn’t even aware he’d used the word please, as if making a request rather than a command.
The men saluted, then turned on their heels. Tope paid them no mind as they left. There were also papers in the briefcase, but the General didn’t bother checking them, knowing they were in order. He closed the lid and shook his head, marveling at what some people considered valuable.
But then, there were few things in the world that were portable, legally obtainable, easily salable, and were worth twenty-five million dollars.
General Tope didn’t bother checking his watch because he already knew the time in his head. His plane would be leaving a little over two hours, enough time for him to carry out the legitimate orders he’d been given for the day.
He picked up the briefcase and headed out, confident that he was about to take the first step in changing the future of the USA, and by extension, the future of the world.
Laneesha opened her eyes. But she couldn’t see anything, only feel a sharp yet empty throb.
That was because her eyeballs were gone.
Sara closed her eyes. She wasn’t a religious person. She understood the social and psychological needs that religion sated. Apart from a few late night college gab fests with fellow psych majors fueled by wine and pot, she’d managed to avoid having to justify her godless convictions.
But locked in the trunk, relieving the biggest horror of her past and waiting to experience one that would be even worse, knowing she’d lost her kids, her husband, her son, Sara gave herself over to a higher power and prayed for death.
She prayed hard, with all she had, chanting the phrase over and over in her head until please God let me die became one long, infinite word, ends running into beginnings running into ends.
She tried to help God along, hyperventilating to the point of dizziness, trying to suck up the last bit of oxygen in the trunk.
letmediepleasegodletmedieplease…
When that didn’t work, possibly because the trunk wasn’t air tight, Sara tried holding her breath, willing her body to give up, picturing her brain cells dying and bodily functions ceasing through the sheer force of determination.
That didn’t work either. Sara sobbed for a while, alternately being assaulted by terrifying memories of the past, self-hatred at her own naïveté for loving and trusting and being married to a monster, and the despair of what would happen to the rest of her kids, of what had probably happened to Jack, and the horror of the tortures yet to come. The darkness nipped away at her soul, the heat and cramps making the claustrophobia even worse than when Timmy locked her in the trunk all those years ago. The feeling of helplessness was so encompassing, so powerful, she lost all sense of anything else.
The shift was gradual. The sobbing abated, mostly out of exhaustion. The darkness remained, but became a tiny bit more bearable. Anger snuck into the mix, jockeying for position against fear and guilt. It built slowly, and Sara embraced it, fed off of it, and added a fuel she didn’t have when she was nine years old; responsibility.
This wasn’t just her life on the line. There were children involved. Children she’d pledged to help and protect.
And Jack had to be alive. He had to. As monstrous as Martin was, he wouldn’t kill his son.
She had to escape.
Sara stretched out a crick in her neck, shifted her weight, and began to test her bonds. The rope was thin, nylon, the same type the ferals had used to string up Martin.
Should have let the bastard hang there.
She let the anger carry her forward, twisting her arms, trying to get some play in the rope to slip out. Her wrists became slick, first with sweat, then with blood, but the knots were simply too tight.
Then she remembered the nail clippers that she’d shoved into her back pocket while at the campsite. Were they still there, or had Martin taken them?
Sara shifted again, bending her knees to give her hands more room to work. Her fingers dug into her pocket and touched the small metal object.
Small, but packed full of hope.
They weren’t the best tool for the job, and Sara couldn’t see what she was doing, but she opened up the clippers and began to slowly nip away at the rope binding her left wrist.
It was slow going, and involved intense concentration. The clippers were slippery, and the repetitive motion made her fingers cramp and throb. But she kept at it, clipping a few nylon threads at a time, and after five minutes of exhausting work she was through the rope.
It freed her left arm, which was one of the greatest feelings Sara had ever experienced. But her right wrist was still tied to her legs, the multiple knots Martin had used still holding tight. Sara attacked the rope again, using her left hand. But it lacked the control, and strength, of her right, and after ten minutes she’d only gotten halfway through.
Self-doubt returned. Martin could come back any minute. He might even be in the room right now. Maybe he left her the nail clippers on purpose, seeing if she’d try to escape, waiting for her to come out. He’d fooled Sara for years without her suspecting a thing. Clearly he was capable of anything.
The darkness pressed down on Sara, getting into her nose and mouth and ears, reminding her what was going to happen.
Keep cool. Stay focused. You can do this.
She doubled her effort, fighting the cramps, imagining the clippers were a tiny alligator, relentless, tenacious, biting, biting, biting—
I’m free.
Sara didn’t bother with her ankles. She turned onto her back, pressed her feet against the top of the trunk, and pushed like she was doing the mother of all leg-presses.
The trunk lid creaked, then popped open, drenching Sara in beautiful, majestic light.
She did a sit-up, looking around the room, nail clippers clenched in her hand to poke in Martin’s eye if he were anywhere close.
He wasn’t. The room was empty.
Sara pulled herself out of the trunk, rolling over the edge and closing the lid behind her. She inch-wormed over to the table with the tools. There, on the top, was the survival knife.
She recoiled. Martin had found a match for Timmy’s knife, the one that haunted Sara’s imagination. It was horrible looking, with a seven inch blade, and a serrated back that seemed capable of sawing through wood.