Her encroaching dread was overtaken by a sense of hope. Martin, for all his faults, helped Sara through many a fearsome night, holding her close and stroking her hair until she could fall asleep. Finding him would give her a much-needed boost of strength.
“Martin!” she called into the dark. “Where are you?”
“ara…”
The voice came from her right, weak but near. Sara grabbed Laneesha elbow, helping the girl back to her feet, then tugged her toward the pleas.
“Martin. Keep talking.”
The sliver of light swept across the trees ahead, seeking out a human shape. Sara stormed forward, underbrush digging at her legs, ducking under a low-hanging bough.
“elp me ara…”
He was so close now Sara felt like she could reach out and touch him. She turned in a complete circle, aiming the beam every which way, but her husband still wasn’t to be found.
“Martin?”
“ara…”
Sara tilted the Maglite, trailing the light up a tree trunk, across the branches, over to…
“Holy shit!” Laneesha’s voice was barely above a whisper.
Sara realized that this wasn’t some campfire prank, some joke gone wrong. They were all in danger. Very real danger. Because someone had hung Martin by his wrists and hoisted him up a tree, where he twisted slowly like a giant, bloody piñata.
A twig snapped on Meadow’s left. He spun, fist clenched and raised, and then caught the smell. An awful, rancid smell, like body odor and sweaty feet and sour milk.
“Welcome to our island,” a soft voice said.
Then someone tackled Meadow from behind. Meadow twisted, trying to grab his attacker, but he was forced onto the ground face-first, a knee pinning his back. And then his arms were stretched out, followed by his legs.
How many of them were there?
Meadow opened his mouth to yell for help, but as soon as he did a foul-smelling hand jammed something between his lips, forcing it inside. Something hard and round, like a golf ball, but rougher. Meadow shook his head and pushed at the object with his tongue, wincing as the pain hit. Sharp pain, in his cheeks, his lips, the top of his mouth, like he was chewing on a pin cushion.
Meadows sucked in air and gagged, blood seeping down his chin, comprehending what had been shoved into his mouth while disbelieving it at the same time.
“Meadow?” Tyrone called to him.
Meadow screamed in his throat, screamed for the very first time in his life, as his attackers dragged him off into the woods.
When Tom was a little boy, he wanted to be a race car driver when he grew up. He also wanted to be a pilot, an astronaut, a basketball player, a baseball player, a football player, a sniper, a hockey player, and a boxer, up until he got into a fist fight in fifth grade and another kid showed him how much it hurt to get hit in the face, and Tom decided boxing wasn’t for him.
At first, his parents indulged his interests. Tom’s mother constantly shuffled him around from one sporting event to another, and his father bought a $300 flight simulator program for the computer that included NASA-approved specs for landing the space shuttle.
Tom quickly grew bored with the sports. He argued with coaches and teammates, and most of the playing time was spent waiting for something to happen. Tom hated waiting. He also hated the flight simulator. It wasn’t fun like his Xbox, It was slow and complicated and boring. Even the crashes were boring, and Tom crashed often.
As for becoming a sniper, the only way to do that was to join the military. The military meant lots of rules and following orders, two things Tom wasn’t good at. He’d have to settle for buying a gun when he got old enough, and maybe using it to go hunting or something, even though he didn’t know any hunters and had never even held a real gun before.
Driving, however, he enjoyed. He could make his own excitement behind the wheel of a car, and Driver’s Ed was the only high school class he ever did well in, the rest resulting in Ds or worse.
But his parents didn’t buy Tom a car. Partly because of his bad grades, but mostly because every time he borrowed the family sedan it was always returned with another scrape, ding, or missing part. Tom continuously lied when asked what happened, blaming it on someone hitting him when he was parked, but when a State Trooper showed up at the house with pictures of Tom fleeing an intersection fender-bender that he caused, he was completely forbidden to drive. How was Tom supposed to know that some street lights had automatic cameras in them?
The Gransees didn’t fully realize their son’s obsession with driving, and the lengths he’d go to indulge his obsession. After the courts suspended his license, Tom stole a neighbor’s Corvette and led police on a forty minute chase, reaching speeds in excess of 120 miles per hour, appearing live on Detroit TV and as highlights on CNN.
An expensive lawyer, and a sympathetic judge whose son also had ADHD, allowed Tom to get off easy. Rather than doing hard time in juvee, Tom was sent to the Center.
The Center was okay. Sure, it was boring as hell, and Tom missed his freedom as much as he missed driving, but Sara and Martin were teaching him how to stay on task, how to set and reach goals, and how to make better decisions. Also, for the first time in his life, Tom was actually doing okay on his grades. Tests were still a nightmare, but he was allowed to speak his answers instead of having to write them down, and Sara usually helped him study.
Tom liked Sara. She didn’t yell at him all the time like other adults, and she seemed to understand a lot about him, things even he didn’t understand himself. He even thought she was kinda hot, though she didn’t wear hardly any make-up and mostly dressed like a guy.
As for Martin, everyone seemed to like him, and he always treated Tom with respect. But there was something about that guy that rubbed Tom the wrong way. Martin was almost too good. Like it was all an act, rather than natural. Still, he was better than Tom’s old high school teachers, and he treated Tom okay.
Too bad it was all coming to an end. Unlike the rest of the Center kids who would go into juvee, Tom’s father had made arrangements to send him to military school. One of those bullshit boot camps that was supposed to scare teenagers into acting responsible. Tom decided he wasn’t going. As soon as they got off the island, he was going to run. Steal a car, drive someplace far away, like California.
That was the plan. But first he had to get off the island.
Tom stared hard at where Meadow disappeared into the woods, willing him to reappear, to say this all was one big frickin’ joke. But deep down Tom knew it wasn’t a joke. He’d heard the struggle behind those dark bushes, and something that sounded a lot like muffled screams.
Tom was scared. Scared even worse than when the police caught him after his big chase, twenty cops all pointing guns at him and shouting orders. Every instinct Tom possessed told him to get the hell out of there, to start running and never stop.
But there was nowhere to run. Instead, Tom began to pace, back and forth like a caged tiger, eyes locked on those bushes.
“Yo, Meadow!” Tyrone called. “Stop the bullshit and come out!”
“Something took him.”
“Nothing took him, man.”
“You saw the bushes shake. You heard the sounds.”
“He just messin’ with us.”
“Something frickin’ took him, dragged him away.”
“Bullshit.”
Tom backed up, toward the campfire, and walked to the other side of the clearing. No escape there. No way out. Just more bushes and trees and darkness. He veered left, began to circle the fire, eyes scanning the woods, neck snapping this way and that way to make sure nothing was sneaking up behind him.