The Remedy (27 page)

Pushing aside the tempting thought of calling it quits and getting some much-needed rest, Jake turned his attention to the first aid box near the outpost’s front door. Inside he found gauze pads, some medical tape, and a bottle of antiseptic. Pouring the disinfectant on his wounds reignited the pain, but Jake applied it generously, reminding himself over and over that the excruciating sizzle was a good thing.

With his injuries cleaned and securely wrapped, Jake marched over to Phil’s splayed corpse. Touching or even getting anywhere near his ex-coworker’s body was the last thing he wanted to do, but Jake knew he had no choice when he eyed the radio attached to Phil’s belt. It was clear that avoiding the blood completely just wasn’t going to happen, but at least the first aid kit was not without a pair of latex gloves. With his hands fully protected, Jake removed the radio from Phil’s blood-soaked holster and switched it on.

He tuned it to Doug’s frequency. “Doug, come back.”

Static answered.

“Doug, it’s Jake. Answer if you can hear me.”

Again, nothing.

“Shit,” Jake said, tearing the radio from his ear in frustration. The questions that Doug’s failed response brought were practically endless. Why wasn’t he answering? Had he found the tourists who’d left the note? Were they okay? Was he okay? Why hadn’t he returned or sent another ranger to Maple Ridge when Jake hadn’t met him there?

Only one thing was for certain: Jake wasn’t going to find any answers here. His best course of action was to jump back on his ATV and continue where he’d left off before Phil showed up to crash the party. Though heading directly back to the station and calling for backup was tempting, he first had to make sure Doug and the stranded group of hikers were okay. After hearing Phil’s appalling tale, he knew a fungal disease was the least of their concerns.

Phil’s rifle lay in a pool of blood a few inches from his ruined skull. Keeping the gloves on, Jake retrieved the weapon and doused it with the disinfectant. He then wiped it clean and checked its cartridge for ammo: loaded.

Minus one bullet
.

Jake turned to face the dead body of his fellow ranger. Despite the devastated state of Phil’s cranium, Jake knelt over the dead man’s face and pulled the lids down over his open eyes.

“Rest in peace, old friend.”

With the warm wetness of tears pooling in the corner of his eyes, Jake removed his gloved hand from Phil’s sticky face and stood back up. Shifting the rifle to rest on his shoulder, Jake brought his straight fingers to his brow and offered the old Navy man one final salute.

Rifle slung across his back, Jake grabbed the note still lying on the radio’s table and made for the outpost’s front door. He read the note as he walked, wanting to know his exact destination the moment his ass hit the seat of his ATV. He’d just passed through the door’s threshold into the welcoming light of morning when he was stopped dead in his tracks by the words he encountered.

HELP!!!

We are a small group of day hikers in need of medical treatment. One of us has become very sick. The Cedar family has been kind enough to let us stay at their home while we await assistance. They are located on the far west side of Emerald Lake. You will see their chimney smoke from the shore. Please hurry!!!

Jake didn’t bother to read it again. He was already gone.

Once inside, Leigh discovered that the “barn” was more of a makeshift garage. Instead of walls lined with stables or farming equipment, antique lumberjack machines inhabited most of the space. A diesel-powered log-splitter sat abandoned in a far corner, a thick layer of dust and grime concealing years of accumulated rust. A long, two-person crosscut saw stretched along the building’s left wall like the remaining smile of the vanishing Cheshire Cat.

We’re all mad here
.

Piles of axes, hatchets, and bark removers sat scattered all across the floor, and there was even an old, out-of-service pickup tucked away between two stacks of crates, its hood propped open, revealing an empty cavity where the engine should have been. In fact, the only material actually suited for a “barn” was the old, moldy haystack that lay near the entrance.

Bugger threw open the barn’s door and hurled Leigh to the dirty ground. Her captor loomed over her, a demon grin spreading across his face as he reached for yet another knife strapped to his person.

And this one was big.

“No…”

Bugger nodded, the ecstatic anticipation never leaving his eyes as he watched Leigh, who was scrambling backward away from him.

“Oh, yes,” he whispered.

The blade of the knife reflected the beams of morning sun sneaking in through the cracks of the barn walls. Leigh kept crawling as Bugger took slow, deliberate steps toward her. She was a mouse caught in a cat’s game—hoping for a swift and painless death in her immediate future. But Bugger had all the time in the world. And he intended to use it.

Leigh’s hand landed in puddle of tepid water but she didn’t notice. Nothing could tear her attention away from the lust for flesh and blood in Bugger’s eyes.

She shrieked when he darted forward.

He retreated a step and laughed. “What’d you say? I didn’t catch that.”

Though Bugger’s advance came in short, drawn-out steps, the wall behind Leigh was fast approaching. She knew when her back hit that wall it would be the end of the line. She would have nowhere to go and no way to defend herself against Bugger and the prop that looked like it had been stolen from
Friday the 13
^th
in his tight grip.

“Please.” Her voice came out strangled. “Don’t do this.”

Bugger’s eyes closed in elation. He inhaled a deep breath as he savored Leigh’s helplessness and fear. “That’s right,” he groaned in pleasure. “Keep talking.”

With her assailant’s eyes closed, Leigh seized the opportunity to whip her head back and steal a glance at the environment to her rear. The barn wall was a mere ten feet away. Once she reached it, she would be pinned between a wobbly worktable and a large pickle barrel. But it was the table that caught her eye—resting alongside it in the corner closest to her was a wooden mallet.

A weapon.

Leigh would have to somehow take her attacker’s attention away from the blunt object, reach it with her hand, and deliver a blow powerful enough to buy her the time she needed to get away. All before Bugger had time to take that oversized blade and cut into her heart like a butcher’s knife through a stick of butter.

Mission impossible.

Or is it?

Leigh knew her only chance at survival was to divert Bugger’s focus to the anything that wasn’t her own blood.

“Come on, Bugger, you don’t want to do this. Not yet.”

Bugger practically giggled. “What, you don’t think this is fun?”

“Sure it is.” Leigh closed her eyes and swallowed hard. “But I know of a better way we can have fun.”

She stared at his crotch, hoping to bring as much hunger to her eyes as she could possibly conjure.

Bugger stopped in his tracks.

And then burst into laughter.

“How stupid do you think I am?” He followed his question with a few more hoots and hollers. “I may not go to fancy schools like my faggot cousin, but I got enough brains in my head to know when a bitch is trying to trick me.”

He took two more steps forward. Leigh matched them by backing up.

Just a few more feet…

“It’s not a trick!” The sincerity in Leigh’s voice surprised even her. “Haven’t you ever heard of passengers jumping each other when their plane is about to crash? People always want to fuck before they die.”

She lowered her chin so she was staring up at Bugger from beneath her eyelashes.

“And I want to fuck you.”

Again, Bugger stopped. But this time he didn’t laugh or even crack a smile. He simply stared at his prey, attempting to detect deception in her words.

He took a challenging step forward, and Leigh brought her finger to her mouth. Though she couldn’t even stand a tongue depressor during a doctor’s visit, from sheer desperation she was able to stay her gag reflex and allow her finger to travel all the way down her throat to the last knuckle. Her eyes never left his.

Removing the finger from her mouth, she felt her back lightly graze a hard surface behind her. She’d reached the wall.

Leigh stared up at her captor, imagining Alex’s trademark pout and trying to mimic the expression as best she could. “Are you
such
a monster that you wouldn’t give me one last lay before I go?”

Leigh had no idea who was speaking anymore, but it definitely wasn’t her. She wasn’t this good an actress. Hell, she wasn’t this good a liar. And in a million years, she wouldn’t have thought to add, “Oh, who the fuck am I kidding? I just wanted to do it
once
before I died.”

Bugger almost dropped the knife in his hand but recovered before it could fall from his fingers. Clearing his throat like a nervous schoolboy, he asked, “You mean…you never?”

“And it looks like I never will.”

It lasted only a moment, but Leigh couldn’t miss the change in Bugger’s expression, hinting that her act of seduction had worked. With this new, hidden side of hers that had emerged, she kept the look of lust pasted on her face and didn’t allow him to see her satisfaction in this small gain. She’d keep up this charade until he was upon her. And then, with his face buried in her chest, she’d reach for the mallet and come down on his skull like a judge’s gavel delivering a sentence of eternal darkness.

Leigh still knew she couldn’t bear his touch again, but she wouldn’t have to: this new woman could.
She
could do anything in order to survive. Leigh just had to go along for the ride. It was
she
who was in control now.

But Bugger didn’t put his knife away. And he didn’t lower his pants.

He just smiled and said, “Nope. I guess not. But don’t worry. I’ll be just as happy to fill every hole.
After
I slit your throat.”

At these words,
she
was suddenly gone. In fact,
she
had never even existed in the first place. There was no new woman being born within Leigh’s consciousness. No femme fatale or black widow finally getting a chance to come out and play. Leigh was only herself, the same person she’d always been and she would die as: alone with an evil she’d utterly underestimated. Bugger was more than a redneck or a sadist or a rapist.

He was a psychopath. She’d read about them many times in the textbooks of her psychology courses, but none of that had prepared her for the real thing. The complete absence of empathy that was Bugger.

Even the prospect of raping a virgin was tame in his eyes compared to the chance to deny his victim her dying wish. Blood and flesh—those were byproducts. Party favors. How foolish she’d been to think she could convince him to give her anything, even a final mercy fuck. In Bugger’s world, giving did not exist. There was only loss—and his insatiable craving for flesh.

So it turned out that Sam was dead-on. To Bugger, cannibalism was more than a remedy to a horrible disease. It was the act of taking life that drove him. The ultimate consumption.

And now, he was about to consume Leigh.

She closed her eyes, expecting her loving parents to be the last thing she pictured. Or maybe her brother, who had sacrificed so much for her in the past. Or maybe that field behind her grandmother’s house where she used to lie as a child, watching fireflies dance above her head.

But when she closed her eyes, all she saw was a vintage army jacket meant to replicate some past war, a baseball cap of an extinct team, and the kindest smile to ever warm her heart.

Sam.

“Hey!”

The sudden shout jolted Leigh’s eyes open just in time for her to see a fist connect with Bugger’s jaw. Something in the cannibal’s face cracked as he staggered backward, tripping on his own two feet. Right before a pair of black-panted legs blocked her view, Leigh spotted Bugger falling to the dirt floor, confusion twisting his features. For a split second, Leigh believed her vision of Sam to have materialized: her knight in shining armor had arrived to save her.

But above the legs, Leigh saw a torso adorned in a denim vest with a
Dead Kennedys
logo sewn to its back, and she realized that instead, a much darker knight had arrived on a red-eyed steed.

Rob.

Staring through the space between her unlikely savior’s legs, Leigh watched Bugger stumble to his feet, shaking the dizziness from his head. Unfortunately, his bearings were not the only thing he regained as he stared in disbelief at the barn’s latest guest. He also reclaimed his impressive knife, which had somehow remained close by after Rob’s punch had sent him tumbling.

“Robbie?” he said, rubbing the left side of his jaw. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Rob frowned, his hands going to his pockets. “I can’t let you do it, cuz.”

“You son of a bitch.” A wad of saliva, tainted pink with blood, shot from Bugger’s mouth. “Ma said I could.”

Rob shrugged, the gesture reeking of that same immature cockiness that had infuriated Leigh so many times before. “She ain’t
my
ma.”

It was almost painful to watch Bugger’s uneducated mind try to grasp the logic behind Rob’s statement. The busted, ancient machines scattered in the barn had a better chance of running than the addled gears within the woodsman’s mind. Angered by his own bewilderment, Bugger’s mouth twitched as if to push this confusion to the side.

“Okay, then,” he said, that grin full of brown teeth and bloody gums once again returning to his face. He tossed the knife into the air, the blade flipping three times before the handle returned to his grasp. “If that’s how you want to play, let’s play.”

The ensuing image of Rob and Bugger circling could have been plucked from so many movies Leigh had seen. No matter what the film’s particular content or plotline, it was always the same scene: the leaders of two opposing sides somehow find each other in a vast, chaotic battlefield. Although the battle rages around them, men killing each other by the second, these two sworn enemies somehow find the space to pace around each other before one of them decides to strike first.