She felt almost giddy with power, kissing him even deeper, beginning to work her hand in a way she guessed a man would like.
Maybe it didn’t matter, and Lester would still take her back to his playroom and torture her to death. But at that moment, Georgia felt wonderfully normal, like those braindead cheerleaders she used to go to school with, or the old couple who lived in her mom’s apartment building that were always holding hands. She thought about returning to the campsite, and when those losers asked her where she’d been, she could them that she was in the woods, making out.
Georgia gripped him hard as she could, and then his huge hands were around her waist, making her feel dainty, and she might have even moaned a little too, and then she tasted something tangy and realized it was blood and that it was hers.
Sara jumped back so fast she fell onto her ass. The corpse of the man she’d killed flopped over onto its side. Then it was still.
Reflex action, Sara thought. Like a chicken still running around after its head has been cut off.
Sara had a pre-med roomie in college who told her all sorts of stories about dead bodies twitching, opening their eyes, even making sounds.
“I just had like fifteen heart attacks.” Laneesha had both hands clasped to her chest. “He really dead?”
Sara nodded. “Let’s go back, find Martin.”
“How many more of these crazies you think are in the woods?”
“I don’t know. That’s why we need to get back to the camp.”
They moved slowly, the flashlight so pathetically weak now that a match would have been brighter. Sara knew they hadn’t run far from Martin, and she felt they were going in the right direction, but the trees all looked the same and it was so easy to get disoriented. She considered calling out to him, but as badly as she wanted to find her husband she didn’t want announce their presence to whatever else might be lurking in the woods.
Movement, to their left. Something was rustling a bush.
Sara aimed the beam in that direction, and that’s the moment the Maglight finally went dead.
She held her breath, Laneesha clinging to her arm so hard it hurt, listening to the rustling as it faded out. For a bad moment Sara felt like she was locked in that awful trunk again, waiting for that rapist to come for her. The darkness was too big, too heavy, pressing on her from all sides and making it impossible to move.
“Sara?”
Martin.
“Are you and Laneesha okay?”
His voice broke the spell, and Sara tore away from Laneesha and ran to him, throwing her arms around his familiar form, the hug feeling so good and right that it made the desperation of their predicament fade just a little bit.
Then the relief was replaced by confusion, and anger. She pushed Martin away, holding him at arm’s length.
“Martin, what the hell is going on?”
Sara felt his shoulders slump. His voice was thick, pained, and he winced when he spoke. “I don’t know.”
“That whole campfire story. That civil war prison. You made that up. Right?”
“No. I mean…it’s just a story. A story that I remember from camp when I was a kid in Boy Scouts. Scared the wits out of me and my little brother. But it’s not true. It can’t be true.”
“What happened back at the campsite? Were you dragged off?”
“That was supposed to be a joke. I was going to pop out and scare everyone. But before I could, something grabbed me, strung me up.”
“So you don’t know what’s going on?”
“Honey, I swear, I’m just as freaked out as you are. I picked this island because I’ve been here before. I didn’t know there was anyone else here; Sara. Jesus, I would never do anything to hurt you or the kids. You know that.”
Sara did know that. Martin got moody sometimes, but he was one of the gentlest men she ever met. This man would catch and release spiders he found in the house rather than kill them. Sara knew he’d gladly die to defend her.
“What about Plincer? You said this was Plincer’s island. That name sounds familiar.”
“That’s just what we’ve always called this island. Sara, we need to get out of here. When they grabbed me—I counted at least five of those people. Maybe more. We need to get back to the campsite. Do you have the flashlight?”
“It died.”
“Give it here.”
Sara handed the flashlight over. Her husband moaned when he took it.
“Help me, we need to open it.”
Her fingers grazed his swollen hands, then grasped them gently. Together they unscrewed the back off the Maglite. Martin dumped the batteries onto his palm.
“Do you have an emery board?”
“No. Laneesha? You have a nail file?”
“I don’ go nowhere without one. Y’all don’ allow no acrylics, so I gotta make do with what God gave me.”
“Let me borrow it,” Martin said.
Laneesha handed Sara the thin strip of cardboard, the size of a popsicle stick. Martin pressed the batteries between his palms.
“Sand the tops and bottoms. Really rough them up. And then dab the ends in the blood on my wrists. This’ll make them more conductive, suck a bit more energy out of them.”
Sara followed instructions, then popped the Ds back into the flashlight. Light trickled out, faint yellow but better than nothing. She swept it over the trees. If she just found a single orange ribbon, they could get their bearings and get back to the campsite. Then they could use the radio, call for help, and get off this crazy island.
Sara spotted orange, but it was dead leaves, not a ribbon. The strips were phosphorescent, and glowed like reflectors when light hit them. Why couldn’t they find any?
“Where the hell are those ribbons?”
Martin put a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll find them.”
She flicked the beam from one trunk, to another, to another. Nothing.
“We must have tied a few dozen.”
“We’ll find them.”
Sara spun around, tried the other direction. All the trees looked the same. Every damn tree looked the same. They just needed to find one, dammit. This island wasn’t that big. How hard could it be to find a single goddamn…
Then Sara heard something horrible.
“Oh, god, no…”
In the distance. Faint, but obvious.
Screaming.
“Can you hear that?”
“What, hon?”
“Someone screaming.”
Martin looked around. “That’s the wind.”
“It’s not the wind. It’s one of the kids. Do you hear it Laneesha?”
The teen cocked her head. “I don’ hear nothin’.”
Sara began to walk faster. “Which direction is it coming from? We have to help.”
“Sara…you need to calm down.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down, Martin. That’s one of our kids out there.”
The screams seemed to get louder, more frantic. What was happening to that poor child? Sara knew, more than most, about the terrible things men could do, the depths of depravity trolled by those inclined to cause harm. She understood what is was like to be at someone’s mercy, and that some had no mercy at all. The thought of that happening to one of her kids was—
Sara felt herself get grabbed from behind. She went on automatic, widening her stance, shifting her body to flip the attacker. But he got his leg between hers, preventing her leverage, one hand snaking over her mouth and the other reaching for the flashlight.
Sara bared her teeth, ready to chew the bastard’s fingers off, when Martin’s voice whispered in her ear.
“Kill the light. They found us.”
Sara tapped the Maglite button just as she noticed three…four…six…no, at least eight people—filthy and ragged and obviously insane—walk into the clearing just ten yards ahead of them.