JACK KILBORN ~ TRAPPED (50 page)

“
Cindy.” Georgia’s eyes got wide, staring at something over Cindy’s shoulder. “He’s right behind you.”

Cindy jerked upright, cutting off the stream and tugging up her pants. She spun around, looking where Georgia was looking.

Nothing there.

Backing up, Cindy knocked into Georgia, who was quivering with laughter.

It was just a dumb joke.

Cindy made a fist and smacked Georgia on the shoulder. Not hard, but enough to show this wasn’t funny. “You ass,” she hissed. “You freaking scared me.”

Georgia smiled. “Scared the piss out of you?”

Cindy wanted to be mad, but a giggle came out. While Cindy wasn’t really friends with anyone at the Center, Georgia was okay. They wouldn’t be buddies out in the Real World, but at the moment it felt pretty good to laugh a little.

“
Hey,” Georgia whispered, leaning closer. “Want to scare those dicks?”

She jerked her thumb in the direction of the camp. Cindy nodded. Frightening the boys was less than they deserved, but it was a good start.

“
How?”

Georgia reached into her pocket, and for a fantastic moment Cindy hoped Georgia was carrying, that she was taking out a pipe and they’d smoke some ice right now. But the fantasy died when Georgia pulled some ketchup packets from her jeans. How could she have gotten meth anyway? Cindy’d been at the Center for four months, and security was tighter there than it was in rehab.

Besides,
Cindy thought,
I’m done with that shit.

Cindy had been clean for months, and wanted to stay clean for the rest of her life. Maybe there would even come a day when she didn’t think about meth every few minutes. That would be nice.

“
We gonna throw ketchup at them?”

Georgia shook her head. “I took these from the fridge, hoping I’d get a chance to use them. I squirt it all over my face and shirt like blood, coming running out of the woods screaming, and fall right in front of those jerks. Then you come up from behind and yell and grab them. They’ll shit squirrels.”

Cindy nodded, liking this idea. She especially wanted to freak out that tool, Meadow.

“
What do I yell?”

Georgia shrugged. “I dunno. Boo?”

“
Boo is lame.”

“
You’ll think of something. Help me spread this shit on.”

The ketchup was warm, and smelled good. For dinner they cooked hot dogs over the fire, but Cindy declined, saying she was still ill from the boat to avoid admitting the real reason. Now her stomach rumbled at the scent. Cindy smeared some ketchup on Georgia’s neck, then licked her finger. Not bad. Maybe there were hotdogs left. Maybe Tyrone was hungry, too, and he could roast one for her.

Stupid. He watched me barf. He’s not interested.

Georgia stopped applying ketchup to her face and stared at Cindy in a funny way.

No, not
at
her.
Behind
her.

“
Lemme guess,” Cindy said, still sucking her finger. “Some creepy guy behind me again?”

Georgia opened her mouth, but no words came out. She nodded, her head bobbing up and down rapidly.

“
I’m not falling for that shit twice, Georgia. It wasn’t funny the first time.”

Georgia’s lips began to tremble, her face crinkling in a prelude to a scream. Cindy had no idea Georgia was such a good actress. She hadn’t been this good the previous time.

And for that very reason, Cindy suddenly understood this wasn’t acting. Georgia really was seeing something behind her, and she really was terrified.

Cindy didn’t want to look. The fear crawled over her like ants, and her legs felt like they weighed a thousand pounds. Georgia had lost all color now, and she was whimpering like a puppy.

Look. You have to look. Just do it.

Eyes wide, mouth dry, knees knocking together, Cindy slowly turned around, expecting to see some horrible ghoul with huge teeth grinning inches from her face.

She looked.

There was nothing. There was nothing there at all.

Cindy spun, pissed off she fell for the same trick twice, ready to give Georgia another cuff on the shoulder.

But Georgia was gone.

Sara frantically pushed against the body on top of her. She knew judo. Hell, she taught her kids basic self-defense at the Center. But now, when she was being attacked, her mind went completely blank, and all Sara could do was push.

She felt breasts, and higher, closely cropped hair.

“
Laneesha?”

“
Sara!” The teen’s breath was warm on Sara’s face, and then she was rolling off. “Couldn’t find my way back, so I ran toward the flashlight. What happen to it?”

Sara tried to get her breathing under control. The darkness screamed at her. “It flew into the woods.”

“
Shit. Dark as hell out here. Feels like we got swallowed up by somethin’.”

Sara sat up, heart hammering, squinting into the blackness all around them. “It’s a Maglite. Those things don’t switch off accidentally. It probably rolled under some leaves so we can’t see it.”

“
How we find it?”

“
Couldn’t have gone far. You stay where you are, keep talking to me. I’ll crawl around you and find it.”

“
You gotta talk, too, or I’m gonna freak out.”

Me too. But I can do this.

Sara crawled off, slowly circling the girl. By judging where Laneesha’s voice was coming from, she should be able to cover the area in a widening spiral, without missing any spots or getting lost. In theory, at least.

“
If y’all remembered, I voted for horseback riding for our last trip, not camping on some scary ass island. Sara, you there?”

“
I’m here.” The ground was rough under Sara’s palms, sticks and rocks poking her, cold dirt wedging beneath her fingernails. She went counter-clockwise, gradually orbiting away from Laneesha.

“
I don’ wanna go to juvee, Sara. I feel like I been making progress, y’know?”

Sara couldn’t hold the darkness back. She had to focus on something else. On finding the light. On finding Martin. On Laneesha.

Focus on Laneesha. Be there for her.

“
You’re doing great, Laneesha.”

Laneesha
was
making progress. Sara had no doubt that when she was allowed back in society, she’d do well. After getting pregnant at sixteen, Laneesha began stealing to make ends meet. When she got arrested at a department store for attempting to steal several thousand dollars worth of jewelry, the state took her daughter. Since coming to the Center, Laneesha had worked hard, studied for her GED, and showed impressive determination to go straight and get her child back.

“
You’ve only got a month left until your next hearing, Laneesha. It will fly by. You just stay out of trouble until then.”

“
Y’all be at court with me?”

Sara touched a bush ahead of her, feeling through the branches, shaking them to see if they were hiding the light. They weren’t. The darkness seemed to get thicker.

“
Of course I’ll be there.”

“
Martin, too?”

“
Martin, too.”

“
Even though y’all are getting’ divorced?”

Sara stopped. “Divorced? Where did you hear that?”

“
Didn’t hear it. Takin’ a guess. You both don’ look at each other like you used to. Figure now the Center is breaking up, y’all will too.”

Sara chewed her lower lip. She and Martin had been growing apart for years, but when the government cut the Center’s funding he withdrew completely. That was the definition of ironic; two psychologists specifically trained to understand human nature and communication, unable to save their marriage even though they still loved each other.

The only thing left was for Martin to sign the divorce papers. But he hadn’t yet. They arrived yesterday, but instead of getting it over with he chose instead to ignore them, and her.

Sara knew their marriage was over. Once communication failed, so did intimacy. But she still entertained the fantasy of miraculously patching things up over campfire stories and sleeping bag snuggling.

That fantasy faded when Martin pulled this stunt and disappeared into the woods. This trip could have been their chance to really connect, to talk it out, to mend. Instead, she was crawling around on all fours, sorry she ever met the guy.

Scratch that. She could never think that way about Martin. They might not be able to live together any more, but the love was still there. Sara knew the love would always be there.

But right now, she wanted to stab the bastard in the eye. Figuratively, of course.

“
Sara? Where you at?”

“
I’m here.”

“
You sound far.”

“
I’m only a few yards away, Laneesha. The flashlight has to be close. Shit!”

“
What? Sara, you okay? Sara!”

“
I caught a nail on something. Damn, I think I broke it off.”

Sara parted her lips reflexively, ready to suck her injury. She stopped before her hand reached her mouth, a horrible stench wafting up from the ground. It blanketed her tongue and invaded her nostrils, rank and vile and forcing her to gag.

The unmistakable smell of rot.

“
Sara? You okay?”

“
I’m fine.” Sara coughed, spat. The odor brought back memories of her college years, coming back to her dorm after Christmas break to find her goldfish belly-up in the aquarium. When she lifted up the tank cover, the smell of decay was so bad she gagged and spit up.

That was just from a tiny little fish. This stench was coming from something much bigger.

Sara backed away, and her other hand locked onto a large branch. She gripped it, instinct telling her a weapon would be good, and yanked.

The smell got worse, so bad it was like being immersed in spoiled milk. She could feel it in her eyes, her hair, all over her skin and on her clothes.

The branch broke free from the ground, her fingers clenching it tight.

And then the same instinct that made her grab it told her to throw it away, but she was too frightened to open her hand.

The smell was coming from the branch. Because it wasn’t a branch at all.

It was a bone.

When Tyrone was a little boy, he wanted to be a cop. But not a cop like the cops in his neighborhood. Everyone hated those cops. They hassled kids, and never came quick enough when they were needed, and everyone called them
pigs
and
5-0
and they got no respect at all.

Tyrone wanted to be a cop like the cops on TV. He watched a lot of TV. The neighborhood where he grew up had a
bad element
, his moms always said.

“
Being poor don’t make people bad,” she would tell him. “But it makes some people desperate.”

He didn’t get to play outside very much, because desperate people might try to hurt him, so he watched TV all the time. His favorites were the cop shows. The cops on those shows, they got respect. They actually helped people, and people liked them, and no one on TV had to live in a house with bars on the windows like Tyrone did so the
bad element
couldn’t steal his stuff.

When he told his moms he wanted to be a cop, she patted him on the head and gave him a big kiss and said he could be whatever he wanted to be when he grew up, as long as he got out of the neighborhood. And Tyrone promised her he would, and every night, when he said his prayers, he asked God to make him big and strong so he could someday become a cop and take Moms and Grams out of the neighborhood and to someplace really nice, where he got respect, and no one had bars on the windows.

Tyrone frowned as he lost another marshmallow to the fire. It plopped onto a burning log and melted down the side, solidifying in the heat. He watched as it went from bubbling white, to brown, to black ash.

“
This sucks.”

Tom was pacing again, but he paused long enough to ask, “The woods? Or the Center closing?”

“
The woods.” Tyrone smacked at a mosquito on his arm. “The Center. Shit, both. Don’t wanna spend the rest of my sentence in no detention center. An’ I don’t wanna spend the night on no freaky ass island. I’m street, not woods. Holla back.”

Meadow tapped his fist. “Hells yeah.”

Tom laughed, but it sounded clipped and forced. “So you guys are scared?”

Tyrone felt the challenge and narrowed his eyes. “Ain’t scared of nothin’. You sayin’ I am?”

Tom squatted next to Tyrone. He picked a pine cone up from the ground and chucked it into the fire. “You don’t have to sell me. I know you’re all bad ass. But when you saw that guy get shot when you were eight, did you look into his eyes when he died?”

What was it with white people?
Tyrone thought.
Why do they feel the need to talk about stuff like that?