I Hope You Find Me (33 page)

“Alan, shut your damn klepto mouth, or I'll
throw
you
out of this fucking truck!” Matt's eyes were wild
when he looked over his shoulder and both Bobby and I screamed at
him to watch the road. The truck slid onto soft ground and gravel
spat into the air, pelting the windows like hail.

“Oh my god.” I said quietly.

“This is your fault, you know.” Matt glanced
back at me.

“W-What?” I stared at him incredulous.
Another branch slapped the hood of the car and dug a scratch down
the side. The shrill sound reminded me of nails on a chalkboard and
I shook off a chill.

“All of this.” He muttered, his eyes darting
across the road, then over his shoulder. “This wouldn't have
happened if not for
you
.”

Alan squirmed and took hold of the handle
with both hands. I fumbled around my legs for the seat belt and
couldn't find it. I dug my fingers into the gaps between the
cushions and eventually found the buckle on my left. Matt braked so
forcibly that both Alan and I slammed violently into the front
seats. As I scrambled backwards a small laugh escaped my lips. I
looked at Alan and thought to myself,
So much for the 'Oh Shit'
handle
. His normally pallid face was an even lighter shade of
pale, making him look ghostly.

“Matt, slow down, man!” Bobby hissed. His
stench filled the cabin and mixed with the pungent smell of my
gasoline soaked clothes to combine a vomit-worthy redolence.

“All your fault…
all your fault.”
Matt
muttered over and over to himself.

We hit an open stretch of road and he floored
it, hitting almost 100 mph before slamming on the brakes to make a
turn.

He laughed bitterly. “You know, Mariah would
still be here if it weren't for you and that asshole.”

My mouth hung open. “
Mariah?
”

“Don't.” Alan warned me, his dark eyes the
size of saucers.

Matt looked crazed as he glanced into the
rear-view mirror. He snapped, “Alan, why don't you tell the story.
You were there after-all, weren't you?”

I gaped at Alan. “What? Where is she?” My
voice, though still hoarse, was recovering some of its force. When
he didn't answer me, I kicked him.

“Okay!” He shrank back against the door, once
again with a death grip on the handle on the roof. “It was all of
us...or her.” His voice was tiny and weak.

Matt took a turn too fast and I was tossed
from my seat into Alan’s lap. I pushed myself off him in disgust
and began fumbling for my seat belt again.

“I don’t understand what you mean.” My
fingers found the buckle again. I ran my right hand up the side of
my seat, digging between the cushion and the door.
Where the
hell is the seat belt!?
I screamed in my head.

“Um.” He paused to look at Matt and Bobby,
who had pressed himself so far away from Matt that even his rolls
looked tiny in his seat. “We stumbled upon Matt and Mariah in L.A.
These two guys rushed our car at gunpoint at an intersection and
forced us all onto the street.” He looked down at his knees. They
were shaking. “They said...they said they wanted
her
. And
they'd let us go.” He looked at me sharply and added as an
afterthought, “They would have killed all of us if he didn't do it.
We owe Matt our lives.” He stared back down at his knees.

Terror ran through me as I looked from Alan
to Bobby, and focused on the back of Matt's neck. “Oh my god.” I
clamped a shaky hand over my mouth, imagining what Mariah’s
abductors would have done to her.

“And you let her go? Your
sister
.” I
flung the words at Matt like knives.

His head jerked around and he swung his right
hand in my direction. A long-barreled revolver shook in his grip.
He screamed at me, “
You bitch!
I told her we shouldn't go to
Nevada! You and that bastard kicked us out, remember? We had
nowhere else to go. We could have stayed there, we could have
stayed and
she'd be here
!”

I shook my head at him in terror. “We didn't
kick you out Matt, you left.” I said quietly.

“Shut up! Shut up! That asshole jumped me; he
made it clear we couldn't stay!” The revolver trembled as Matt
struggled to keep the truck on the road with one hand on the
steering wheel.

“Okay. Okay, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Matt.”
I felt the rough edge of the seat belt with my fingers and yanked
at it, but it was wedged too deeply behind the cushion. I would
need both hands, which meant I would have to turn my back on Matt's
revolver...something I couldn't do. I didn't have to look at Alan
to know the sniffling noise I heard was him crying.

“Just put the gun down. You're driving,
remember?” I tried to say calmly, but my voice hitched and caught
on each syllable.

He shook the revolver in my face and began
shouting at me over his shoulder again. This meant he didn't see
the next curve and the drop-off alongside it.

“Matt, look out!” I screamed.

I braced my legs against the front seat,
grabbed at the handle above me and gripped Bobby's headrest with
the other hand. We hit the guardrail head-on and two clouds
exploded in the front of the truck. The airbags lost just enough of
their cushioning that when Bobby's upper body flew forward as the
guardrail broke free and the truck pitched downwards, he slammed
face first into the dashboard. Blood flew backwards, running
sideways on the passenger window in dozens of tiny rivers before
sprinkling my face.

The front tires suspended momentarily in the
air before the weight of the truck tilted and we crashed forward,
tipping the truck over, front-end first. Cans of green beans and
spam tumbled violently from the truck bed onto the roof and rolled
down the hood and over the edge as the truck teetered before
plummeting. All I could see was bright white, then black, bright
white, black, bright white, black as we flipped over and over.
Small cubes of glass floated from one side of the cab to the other
as the windows imploded, slashing at my face and neck, gouging my
arms. A body slammed into me and then disappeared after we hit
something large and splinters of wood and pine needles filled the
cab. My grip on the 'Oh Shit' handle was ripped free when the truck
lurched to the left and began rolling on its side...bright white,
black, bright white, black, bright white, black, bright
white...black.

***

They had turned south onto the highway,
after seeing the back of Matt's truck veer to the right at the end
of the lodge driveway. Long and black tread marks tattooed the
empty road and Connor's stomach clenched. Fin was driving fast, but
clearly not as fast as Matt.

“
We've gotta catch up, Fin.” He gritted
through his teeth, while pulling the harness strap tight around his
chest.

“
I'm going as fast as I can without flying
off the road, okay?” Fin snapped back. For miles they followed the
sporadic skid marks that went into the shoulder and across the
oncoming lane.

Connor cursed when he saw the missing chunk
of guardrail. “There! Stop!”

Fin drove the truck onto the dirt and
slammed the brakes so hard Connor's harness locked. He cursed again
when he couldn't immediately disengage the latch.

“
Christ, get me out of this truck!” He
yelled frantically at the empty cab. Fin had already bolted from
the driver seat and was peering over the damaged rail. Connor's
latch finally released and he threw the door open. Zoey scrambled
out of the vehicle behind him, unsure what was going on.

He was three feet away from the drop-off
when Fin, his face bloodless, turned and stopped him, grabbing him
by the shoulders. “Jesus, Connor, don't look.” His voice
cracked.

He shoved his weight into Fin, gaining a
mere foot of ground. “I need to see.” He flailed his arms until Fin
lost his grip and tried to step away from him. Fin gave him a solid
shove to the chest, pushing him back, further away from the
railing.

“
No. No, no, no. I need to see, Fin!” He
screamed in the larger man's face and punched his jaw. Fin barely
flinched but stepped aside, raising his hands to the back of his
head and dropped down onto his knees.

At least five feet of railing had been
ripped out and Connor moved slowly toward the hole. Canned goods
were strewn about the dirt along with broken glass, plastic, and
pieces of the front end of Matt's truck. The land sloped down
steeply, dotted with the occasional tree and boulder. For what
looked like several hundred feet, fresh tufts of upturned earth
stretched out below him, in a pattern. The bushes and ground
glittered with glass and a bag of someone’s clothes had ripped
apart, sending the contents sprawling over fifty square feet.
Connor could see a man's lightweight jacket hanging loosely upside
down on a pine tree branch at least two stories high. The thin blue
fabric swayed gently against the tree, still caught in the momentum
of its flight.

He followed the path of destruction, his
insides knotting, his breath stilling, until his eyes settled on
the truck. It didn't look like a truck anymore. It looked like a
badly crumpled car; the bed was destroyed and bent backwards, away
from the cab, and the passenger side door was ripped off. It lay on
the driver side, with a steady stream of pale smoke drifting from
under what was left of the hood.

He bit down on his hand and screamed.
There's no way, no way she could survive this. He dragged his hands
down his face and looked around them. Nature was observing in
silence. The birds hid in the trees and even the wind had died. All
he could hear was the rapid thudding of his heart, the blood
pumping behind his ears and his own voice screaming inside his
head. He thought he was screaming out loud because the dog started
barking at him; the echo vibrating down the highway and below them
into the hills.

But the scream wasn't coming from him. He
turned in a slow semi-circle and met Fin's eyes, which were moist
and bloodshot. Fin wasn't screaming either. Zoey barked at his feet
again before rushing down the drop off, skidding through bushes and
stumbling over rocks toward the sound of a screaming woman. Riley
was somewhere down there, alive, and from the sound of it, in
excruciating pain.

Fin and Connor hit the dirt running at the
same time. They slid half-way down the hill on their asses, and ran
when they could stand upright. Zoey stopped near the bottom and
turned around in several tight circles, barking at them as they
stumbled their way down the steep embankment. But then she ran off,
to the truck, following along the massive gouge marks the vehicle
had made on its descent. He saw her pacing around the truck, before
gingerly climbing inside the gap where the windshield had been.
From his angle, he couldn't see inside the cab.

Riley's screams turned into sobs as they got
closer to the wreckage. Zoey barked loudly, as if telling them to
hurry and as soon as the land flattened the men bolted. Fin, being
half a foot taller, sprinted easily ahead of him.

They almost ran right past the body. Alan's
mangled corpse lay in a thick tangle of bushes where the dog had
circled before. His bloodied head was unnaturally lumpy and every
bone in his body appeared bent at all the wrong angles.

Only pausing for a handful of seconds, they
burst into a run again, and reached the truck together. Fin leaned
over the hood and peered inside from the gaping hole that used to
be the passenger window of the cab. Connor scrambled along the
ground, wedging himself partly inside the same way the dog had
gone. He found Zoey lying across Riley's midsection.

“
Oh god, Riley.” He reached in to touch
her.

“
Connor we have to get her out, can you
climb inside?” Fin's tone was commanding and Connor nodded at him
without argument.

“
Yeah, but I can't get in. The seats are
in the way...and...Bobby.” The overweight man's face was gone, a
bloody mess of crushed bone and brain matter. His right arm had
been severed at the shoulder, most likely when the door was ripped
off.

Fin tapped on the hood with his hand. “Climb
up and drop in.”

Riley was crumpled in a ball, her left arm
jammed above her head, covered in blood. A long gash ran down her
right shin and her ankle was buried beneath the driver seat. Fin
lowered him through the side window and he stepped inside the cab,
using the front seat as a step ladder.

“
It's okay, Riley, we're here. Sshh…” He
spoke softly. He had to straddle her to get close enough to touch
her. When he reached out and put his hand on her awkwardly bent
arm, she screamed and then threw up on his foot.

***

For the second time in one afternoon, I woke
up disoriented and in pain. But this pain was different. A searing
heat erupted from my shoulder and when I tried to move my arm the
joint slid loosely, sending waves of intense spasms all through my
arm and torso. And I screamed. I screamed until I couldn’t handle
it anymore, and turned my head to the side and puked. Breathing
hurt my shoulder, screaming hurt, but it was all I could do.

When Zoey wriggled into the cab I started
sobbing, which shook my arm even more. And eventually, I had to
scream again. Everything hurt. Muscles felt ripped, bones felt
busted, and blood was everywhere, though I knew it wasn't all mine.
Bobby's blood was dripping from his dead body and pooling next to
me. I puked again.

Please let them find me before I die,
I said in my head.

It seemed like hours before Fin popped his
head into the missing passenger window, where I had been sitting
when the truck was speeding down the highway. I groaned in agony,
unable to talk, not exactly sure what had happened. The cab smelled
of blood, bowel and vomit and I was afraid of passing out again
from the smell alone.