They Feed Page 5

  As much as he wished he could pin the blame on him, Tyler knew it wasn’t his dad’s fault that he had shot Stevie. It took him years to accept that it was his own fault. For a while, he had even tried to convince himself that Stevie shouldn’t have been there, but that never worked.

  Tyler clenched his fists. Stevie wasn’t the only victim.

  The stroll down memory lane wasn’t helping any, and night was coming. Soon, it would be just him and the dark.

  He approached the spot where Stevie had died, the opening of a trail that led to parts of the forest few humans had visited ever since the lake went bad. His mind showed him crushed grass and blood spilled and spreading, saturating the earth. A hand shot up from a young man who was dying, his eyes wide and blank, not looking at Tyler but through him.

  Tyler closed his eyes and squatted near the spot. When he opened them, Stevie’s ghost had vanished. The memory lingered. He could still smell the blast, see Stevie’s terror, feel the blood on his hands.

  What was it Stevie had said? Tyler delved deeper into the memory. It wasn’t hard. The day couldn’t be erased, not with alcohol or drugs and certainly not with any psychological mumbo jumbo.

  Tyler repeated Stevie’s dying words aloud. “We have to get out of here. We have to run. We have to escape.”

  He shook his head. He knew they weren’t just the words of a dying man, delirious with pain. Tyler stood and walked toward the lake.

  Rapid footsteps sounded behind him. As he turned, he barely caught sight of an object as it collided with his forehead. Blinding pain shot through his skull, ringing it like a tuning fork.

  He fell onto his back. A shadow moved over him. He struggled to clear his vision, but the black stars floating before his eyes blended into darkness as consciousness left him.

  Sleep came, and with it, the night.

  Chapter 6

  “We’re lost, aren’t we?”

  Abigail was fed up. She was tired and miserable. Her thighs burned. Her calves ached. Sweat and bugs and all the ungodliness of nature infested her beneath her soiled clothes. And it was all his fault.

  She leaned against a felled oak to catch her breath, her hand planted on the bark. Something bit her, and she pulled her hand away, screeching. Four fire ants held on fast as she shook her arm violently. One by one, she flicked them off, wishing eternal damnation on each pest. She looked at the tree where hundreds of the ants scurried about. How had she not seen them?

  I’m in hell. She wondered when, and why, everything had gone so wrong.

  “You okay?”

  Abigail let out a breath and turned to her husband. She no longer cared who won their silent competition. Did that mean she had lost? KY looked ready to collapse, as exhausted as she was. In his sad eyes, she saw that there were no winners in their battle.

  “Well? Are we?” she asked.

  “How can we be lost? We’re still following the trail.”

  “Yeah, but which trail? This trail has more splits than a fucking bowling alley.”

  “Good one,” KY said, his dopey smile returning for the first time in hours. “I got one: more splits than a gymnastics competition.”

  Abigail rolled her eyes. Sometimes, KY could be so utterly useless. He had led them into this mess, and like all his messes, it was hers to clean up.

  “I knew we should have gone left at that last fork.”

  KY shrugged. “Do you want to go back? The last sign said the campgrounds were this way. Someone there should be able to direct us out.”

  “Aren’t men supposed to have some internal compass or something?”

  KY was smart enough not to respond.

  First smart thing he’s done all damn day. Abigail dug through the front pocket of her backpack. It felt heavenly just to get it off her shoulders for a minute. The knots of twisted muscle would need strong hands to loosen them. She let her mind drift back to her honeymoon, when a hot Spaniard had rubbed oil on her back inside a Barcelona beach cabana. The daydream faded, the pain came back, and she groaned.

  After a moment, she found her cellphone. “No bars. Fucking reception sucks balls out here.”

  “What did you expect? We’re miles away from the nearest tower. Hell, we’re miles away from the nearest town. Ain’t nothing but grass and woods and mountains out here. Well, technically, they’re hills.”

  Abigail slapped her forearm. “And mosquitos.”

  “And limestone.” KY’s face brightened. “This whole area is rich in—”

  Abigail flashed her husband one of her patented shut-the-fuck-up stares. “You. Are. Not. Helping,” she said quietly, keeping her glare icy despite the fire burning behind it. “We should’ve just gone to Mushroom Rock. Less hills, less trees and less bugs, I’m guessing. And we wouldn’t be fucking lost!”

  “Relax. We’re not lost. And besides, I got through to the park ranger earlier. He knows we’re out here. When he doesn’t see us moseying down the trail, I’m sure he’ll come looking for us. And if we keep to the trail, we’re bound to run into somebody.”

  “Really? Is that your theory, genius? And who the fuck says ‘mosey’?” Abigail pressed her fists against her hips. “We have been hiking for nearly twelve hours, and we haven’t seen one person.”

  “Well, we heard one.” KY laughed uneasily.

  Yes, we did. She studied her husband. Her fingernails dug into her palms. He didn’t take us off the main trail on purpose, did he? She fumed. The possibility was not only likely but certain. That fat bastard! I bet he’s still trying to play the hero. The fathead led us this way on purpose!

  After several deep breaths, she relaxed her hands. No, even he couldn’t be that stupid.

  “That was shortly after we got here, when it was still dark out,” she said just to be sure. “It’s already getting dark again, a whole day gone. Anybody who needed help out here has either already received it or isn’t ever going to get it. Got it?” She zipped up her backpack, slung it over her shoulder, and started down the trail, but she turned before taking her second step. “And that includes us!” She punched KY in the arm.

  He looked hurt but not from pain. He rubbed his arm and sulked. “What do you want me to do, Abby? What do you want me to say? That I’m sorry? I am sorry. I’m sorry for a lot of things.”

  Oh my God. Abigail could see defeat written all over KY, from his sagging shoulders and downcast eyes to his fidgeting hands and shuffling feet. He looked like a caged gorilla, huddled over himself. He wasn’t exaggerating his hurt.

  He was trying. That was worth something. She toned down her bitchiness. “I’m… sorry.” KY raised his chin a little. “Bug spray?” she asked, again sliding the backpack from her shoulders. She took out the canister and handed it to him.

  “Don’t mind if I do.”

  And the dopey grin returns. With it, Abigail’s discontent returned. She kept it at bay as well as she could by controlling her breathing.

  “So what’s the plan, Stan?” she asked, trying to make light of their dismal situation. She knew of only one reasonable course of action, but she would let KY continue his charade of leadership. Though she’d been unable to stomach him for longer than she cared to admit, Abigail would rather have been trapped in those woods at night with KY than with no one at all.

  “We push on.” KY’s smile had faded. He appeared calm, but she knew he was trying hard to mask his worry. His anxiety leaked through every time he ground his teeth or started to hum.

  Abigail readied herself for a long night. When KY had finished, she doused herself with bug spray until the canister rattled. She straightened her back and stretched her arms to the sky. Then she slapped her thighs and rubbed the muscles. “We ready?”

  KY nodded. “Ready.”

  He took the lead. They continued down the trail, a gradual decline, until the last light of the sun vanished from the sky.

  Chapter 7

  When Tyler woke, his head was still ringing. Sticks and leaves clung to his shirt. Mud streak
ed his skin and soaked through his clothes. Every part of him itched, but for some reason, he couldn’t scratch himself.

  The dull tones inside his skull began to fade, replaced by the chirps of crickets and the incessant droning of cicadas. Then came the croak of a bullfrog, followed by the clang of metal against metal: a blade being sharpened.

  The smell bombarded him next—a rank, musty odor, thick with mold, like rotted wood. As his eyes began to focus, he saw that his other senses had not betrayed him. He found himself in some sort of cabin or shack with walls, roof, and floor all made of decaying plywood, the boards nailed together without craft and rusted nail heads jutting from every surface. It was a tetanus infection waiting to happen.

  To his right, he saw nothing except a wall. To his left, a table stood against the wall, a solitary chair resting beneath it. Dust and cobwebs covered both, except for a small circle on the table where the room’s sole light source—a battery-powered camping lantern, modern and out of place—shined away the dark.

  Brown stains blotted the floor. They looked as if they had been there as long as the shack had. In a corner, hidden by shadow, a field mouse squeaked.

  As his mind began to focus, Tyler evaluated his circumstances. He was standing, sort of. His toes scraped along the floor, drawing circles in the grime. His arms had been hoisted above him, suspended at the wrists by inflexible, cutting metal. He couldn’t see behind him, where the clanging originated. A need to see its source, to see what sort of person had abducted him, made him swivel clockwise.

  Twisting only caused his wrists to flare with pain. He winced and glanced up. Blood trickled down the length of his left arm to the elbow. His right wasn’t much cleaner. Handcuffs bound his wrists. A rope looped around the chain and ran over a crossbeam. He couldn’t see what secured it on its other side.

  He struggled again to see and howled as the handcuffs pared off a layer of skin. Blood trickled into his armpit. The rope remained taut.

  “Finally awake?” a female voice called from behind him. Footsteps approached. Their owner slapped him on the back of the head. “Good.”

  She moved around Tyler. A girl in her late teens, maybe early twenties, entered his view. She wore a loose top, which failed to hide her small but athletic frame. Her blond hair was tied back into a ponytail. She was certainly pretty and might have been a natural beauty if not for the severity that marked her features—the sharp descent of high cheek bones, the narrow bridge of her nose, the mountain peak in her eyebrows, and even the way the corners of her mouth were the only parts that seemed to smile or frown. Hers was a hard face. No doubt, a hard life had formed it.

  Her sapphire-blue eyes—by far her most striking features—dazzled like disco balls, the sparkle ever moving as if responding to an unsettled mind. She was smiling, but danger lived behind that smile. Tyler didn’t need to be tied up to see it. Although something about the girl was familiar, he couldn’t remember having ever met her before, and yet she obviously knew him. He could only imagine how he’d wronged her. He’d wronged a lot of people. Only one way to find out.

  “Do I know you?”

  “Maybe.” The girl leaned into him, inches from his face. “Maybe not.” She retreated back a step. “I doubt a prick like you would remember me. But it doesn’t matter. I remember you, Tyler. I know all about you. I know all about this place, too, and everything you did here.”

  “Here? This place? What is this place?”

  “You don’t remember?” The girl paced, her forefinger curled upon her chin. “I find that hard to believe. It wasn’t easy to find this place, you know? Someone on the search team must have found it and dismissed it. How they ignored those stains on the floor is beyond me. But I did my own investigation. For over two years, I searched and searched, long after those good-for-nothing cops and park rangers had given up. I wouldn’t have guessed it would be so far around the lake from where…”

  She wiped her eyes and swallowed down the pain. “But I found it, as you can see. Me. Alone. No one else. I didn’t need their help, and I don’t need it now.”

  “Lady, I have no idea—”

  She spat in Tyler’s face. Unable to wipe it off, Tyler cringed as warm phlegm slid down his cheek.

  “This is where it all happened, isn’t it? This is where you did it, you sick fuck.”

  She jabbed him in the stomach, knocking the air from his lungs. He’d had cellmates, three-hundred-pound men, who couldn’t hit that hard.

  The girl sneered. “I’ve waited a long time for this. I couldn’t figure out how I was going to get you here. All those hours I spent watching you, waiting for an opening, and you just up and drive here like it was part of some divine plan. Why? Did you want to relive your glory days or something, sicko?”

  Her words came out faster and faster, with more bite than a shark. The faster she talked, the faster she paced. She stomped her foot and paused, letting out a long, slow breath. “I guess I should be thankful, though. You made it so much easier for me.”

  “Look, miss. I don’t know what you think you know, but I’m nobody. I don’t have a penny. I don’t have any friends or family you could blackmail. I don’t even have a dog. Hell, I’ve been upstate for the last—”

  “Six years.” The girl laughed again, but this time it was downright sinister. “You poor baby. You lost a measly six years of your life, and you think that was fair?”

  Tyler’s walls shot up. He had been punished. In the eyes of the law, he had done his time. Sure, maybe it wasn’t all that he deserved. Maybe it wasn’t all he felt he deserved, but he had experienced more than his fair share of punishment over the course of his twenty-two years, more than this bitch could ever know. Who the hell was she to judge him? What harm had he ever done her?

  He gritted his teeth. “Actually, I think some things were extremely unfair, miss…”

  “Now, there’s something we can agree on.” The girl clapped and smiled a bit broader. It wasn’t the smile that caught his attention, though. It was her eyes. They weren’t smiling. They were deep-blue orbs with the soul-piercing sort of glare that brought back memories. He did know this girl.

  Her glare, just as it had done six years ago, stripped away his resolve. His lips began to tremble. Guilt crept up on him, and before he could even think to suppress it, it had swallowed him whole. For some reason, this judgment, her judgment, was the only sentence that seemed proper.

  “You’re…” But Tyler couldn’t finish the statement. He never knew her name. To him, she had always been the girl in pigtails who haunted his dreams. She had traded two pigs for a pony, but the rest of her was the same, just a bit older and a lot more volatile. Somehow, he knew that on the day his life had reached a turning point, hers had been ripped asunder. All the pain and loss he felt, she shared. All the anger he bottled, all the vengeance he sought, she yearned to exact.

  The difference was that he was the target of her hate. Maybe they shared a common enemy.

  Her eyes softened. “So you do remember,” she said, raising an eyebrow. A frown replaced her smile. “Good. You need to remember. Otherwise, all this would be pointless.”

  Tyler’s head dropped. She could only have one plan for him. Justice. It seemed right. He accepted it, though he feared what would come. He would not beg if he could help it. He would try to give her all that she wanted and pray that it would somehow make her whole again. Deep down, he knew it wouldn’t. Nothing ever would.

  “Get on with it,” he said.

  “What’s the rush? You took away about fifty years of his life. I want to make sure your pain at least feels like it lasts that long.”

  “I hope you know what you’re doing. If you were smart, you’d leave these woods now and never look back.”

  “I know exactly what I’m doing.”

  Tyler doubted she grasped his meaning. He didn’t want to care. He’d never cared about anyone in all his years on earth. Not until her. Guilt was funny that way. If she did what she planned, she was go
ing to have to live with guilt herself.

  Stripped of any pretense, he looked deep into her blue eyes, wondering if the girl who existed before he shot her brother still hid in there somewhere. His heart ached, not for his loss or the pain that would come, but for her loss, her pain.

  His sadness made his body sag and his wrists hurt that much more. She must have seen that sadness in his eyes. He doubted she would grasp its meaning.

  She pulled herself against his shirt, her mouth so close to his ear that her hot breath caused his hair follicles to quiver. “I would tell you what I’ve got planned for you,” she whispered. “But that would spoil the surprise.” She came around to face him straight on, cupped her hand beneath his chin, and raised it to her eye level. Her fingernails dug into his cheeks. “Take a good look,” she said, her words almost a snarl. “My name’s Dakota. Dakota Coogan. And I’m the last person your sorry ass is ever going to see.”

  She walked behind him and out of sight. The sound of metal against metal returned.

  Chapter 8

  “Damn it, Tyler!” Charlie pounded his fist on his desk. He folded his hands together. Forgive me, Lord. He promised he would come back.

  For what seemed like the thousandth time, Charlie had risked his neck for a parolee who didn’t deserve it. How many times had his boss and mentor warned him not to waste his time with the clientele? “Every one of them will lie to you, cheat you, try to get one up on you and, if you’re not careful, some of them might even try to kill you,” his mentor had told him his first day on the job. “They’re losers, the whole lot of them. People don’t change. Once a loser, always a loser.” Charlie could hear the man laughing now.

  But that sentiment fairly summed up what the world had once thought of Charles Jackson. If it hadn’t been for the guidance of Father Daltry, he’d still be a loser. He had taken refuge in a church after stealing drugs from the wrong people. High, he passed out in a pew, and when he awoke the next morning, he found himself tucked into a bed. The priest had found him and given him food and shelter and a second chance. A real second chance, not that flimsy kind that a criminal record afforded most ex-cons.