They’ll follow your snowmobile tracks. These guys are hunting types, probably killed their first buck by the age of ten. You think they’re going to let a pretty little thing like you escape? You think they don’t want to go for seconds and thirds and fourths, like you’re a ten-dollar breakfast buffet, digging themselves and their filthy little nubs deep down inside of your panties? You think they won’t want to decimate anybody that can speak ill will of them to the police? They’re going to kill you, Annie. K-I-L-L… only one way to spell it, baby cakes. They’re going to rape you again and again, maybe even ten times for good measure, and then they’re going to kill you. They’re going to kill you HARD. You killed one of theirs, Annie. You know what that means, right? You killed one of their brood, and there is no greater sin to a pack of beasts.
“Where are they?” she asked The Midget Man’s corpse (which was warm, but getting colder with every passing second), half expecting him to open his eyes and answer her. If he did, it wouldn’t surprise her. A lot weirder things had happened in the past month. “Where are the keys, you little shit stain?”
She pushed his body over with her numb foot, feeling in his back pockets.
Nothing there, either.
Tick tock, tick tock. Here comes the Bald One’s cock.
She wished that nasty side of her mind would curl up and die. It was the same voice that she heard when she’d cheated on Christian, the same side that came to life that time she had slashed her ex-boyfriend’s tires in college, the same voice that had plagiarized her final thesis paper in Business Management class, the same voice that once told her she should run away from her family, to get on a bus and never look back. It’s okay, you’ll do just fine when you don’t have to take care of that little brat and that man-child with the Buddha-belly gut and the charming smile. Yeah, Annie, get on that bus and suck the first dick you sit next to and see how much cash you can get for that little treat, and keep going until you’re in the penthouse and equipped with fake boobies and champagne and bunch of friends with similar habits.
The voice came and went, but it always spoke the same language.
Annie looked towards the window. There was still no sign of The Shiny Bald One and his entourage, but she had a digging instinct in her stomach that they would be back within the hour. She didn’t know how she knew this. Mother’s instinct, perhaps… knowing when your child was about to take a nasty spill on the floor or bump their head on the corner of the cabinet, even well before they made the doomed movement.
The Midget Man didn’t have the keys, so Annie moved on to the kitchen and the cluttered bar area, scanning every surface and nook for the keys. Had The Shiny Bald One taken the keys so that this wouldn’t happen? It seemed quite possible that he didn’t trust The Midget Man… who would, in fact? The Shiny Bald One was smart. Smarter than the rest of them, at the very least.
She pushed through the silver swinging doors of the kitchen galley, scanning the short hallway between the bathroom and the dining area. Nothing here, nothing there, nothing anywhere. Returning to the bar, she first considered grabbing a bottle of something hard and going to town, waiting for them to return, but then she changed it up and started to think like a small person. Midget Man was easily nine inches shorter than she was, so she hunched herself over, looking around at what would have been his eye level, feeling completely ridiculous, though nobody—she hoped—was watching her.
Underneath the bar, she discovered a transparent bin full of dried out limes. She rooted around in there, desperate to leave no stone unturned. Nothing, still. Behind the bar, she shifted the bottles around, looking between them. She wouldn’t drink them, though it seemed like an easier option to the current predicament.
Returning to the fire’s side, Annie caught herself staring at the tiny blue flames that still hung on for dear life, transfixed by the sight. She next looked to The Midget Man’s corpse again, thinking she might give him another search, when she saw the key on the floor, catching a faint glint of the dying flames. It must have fallen out of his pocket when she’d speared him. It landed somewhere between his body and the fireplace during their struggle, waiting for her to come along and get free.
Annie couldn’t be sure that it was the key, but she had no other option at this point. She looked at the writing on the key, but it only gave the name of the key manufacturer: SECURIFLEX, and beneath that a serial number. It was her best bet. It was her only bet. Snatching the key from the floor, she headed directly for the front door, pulling her jacket zipped again and bracing herself for the interminable cold.
She had a new perk in her painful trudging.
Annie kept her eyes glued to the snowmobile, just beyond her reach. Clutching the key tight in her hand, she started to pray to her suddenly revived concept of God that the gas tank would be full. That was all she needed now, to get the son of a bitch started and find it sputter out after a few hundred yards—assuming that she now possessed the correct key.
One foot in front of the other and her mind kept quiet, no longer inciting her with rhyming limericks about her wretched previous evening, nor her horrible brand of motherliness. She tried to recall the sound of Paulie’s voice, hoping she could recreate it and light her internal fire. She couldn’t remember his voice and Annie nearly fell to her knees in tears. Her baby was a fading memory inside of her, and she’d only just been separated from him. What if he died? Would she ever remember anything about him? Annie bit the thought in her throat and shoved it deep down inside.
The snow had drifted considerably in the ten minutes since she’d went back inside to retrieve the key, and already the snowmobile was covered in a thin layer of white. Climbing on to the snowmobile, she ran through her father’s lessons about proper snowmobile riding. It was pretty easy, from what she recalled, but Annie had not been on a snowmobile in at least ten years, not since she was in high school. She hoped it was like riding a bike, in that you never forgot once you learned. She’d never been an expert, nor would she ever become one, but she was going to try for Paulie’s sake.
She could remember just what her father said, almost verbatim, as if he was whispering in her ear. Just remember that you’re in control of the rig. Don’t let it control you or it’ll fling you off and crack your neck before you even know what’s happened. Speed isn’t your friend on these bad boys, keep your head low and maneuver strategically. You get going too fast and you’re liable to—
A sound in the distance. A terrible sound. The worst sound imaginable.
It was unmistakable—a snowmobile approaching slowly. It was working through the snow at a diminished rate, probably from the depth of the snow. But it was coming, all the same. Fast or slow, it was coming, and in her exact direction.
Annie turned the key and the snowmobile started on the first try. It wasn’t like in the horror movies where it took five or six tries before it finally clicked over. Finally, thought Annie, fate was working for her and not against her. “Thank God.” She reminded herself that if she was spared from another—moment—with the slimy bastards and their slimier members that she would go to church every Sunday for as long as she lived. She’d make Christian and Paulie come with her as well. They’d sing the damn songs. They’d read the damn verses. They would cheer, shout, and jump up and down, Halle-freakin’-llujah.
She turned back towards the sharp curve of the road, where the awful sound was coming from. Now she could see the snowmobile, tiny and growing larger as it approached. She had at least a couple of minutes before it arrived. Could the rider see her by now? The only hope was in the fact that there was only one snowmobile and not three of them.