“There’s something here,” he said. “Something wet.”
“Blood?” Aaron asked.
“No,” Ricky said. “Not blood, but something.”
“Great,” Nick said. “Now what?”
Ricky stood up and turned a slow circle. He put his flashlight under his arm and cupped his hands around his mouth before he shouted, “Riley?”
They waited, each holding their breath as they listened.
“Riley?”
“Ssh!” Aaron said.
“What?” Nick whispered.
“You didn’t hear that?” Aaron asked. “None of you heard that?”
“Heard what?” Ricky asked.
“It sounded like a cough or a choking sound. From down there.” He pointed farther down the tracks.
Ricky cupped his hands again, facing the direction that Aaron had pointed.
“Riley?” Ricky shouted.
“I heard it that time,” Amber said.
“Me too,” Nick said.
“Okay,” Ricky said. “A little more and then we turn back.”
# # #
Ricky scrambled down the gravel embankment and then up the grassy slope to where the woods started. Nick was the only one without a flashlight. When he ran after Ricky, he was stumbling in the moonlight, trying to catch up.
Aaron tried to slide past Amber to go along with his friends. She held out her sharpened stick and held him back.
“Slow,” she said. “You watch my back and I’ll watch the front.”
“Yeah. Okay,” Aaron said.
He turned his light back towards the train tracks and followed her closely by the sound of her footsteps. Amber moved deliberately as Ricky crashed into the underbrush at the edge of the woods.
“Riley?” Ricky called. “You out here?”
“What did you see?” Nick yelled to him as he caught up.
“There was movement right here. You didn’t see it?” Ricky asked.
Ricky and Nick were still stomping around in the tall grass and bushes when Amber and Aaron reached them.
“You have to slow down, Ricky, or someone could get hurt,” she said.
“What does that mean?” he asked.
“Nick said that he didn’t see what Riley was fighting until they came out of the shadows. That means that there could be something out here that’s hard to see, you know? It could be good at stalking.”
“It was, like, camouflaged,” Nick said.
“So let’s take things slowly,” Amber said.
“Yeah, okay,” Ricky said.
“Hey,” Aaron called. “What’s this?”
They moved to him. Amber let the others really investigate while she kept an eye on the woods and the bushes.
“It feels like the same kind of liquid that was on the train tracks,” Ricky said. “Kinda slick and it has an odd smell. There’s no sign that Riley was dragged and we haven’t found blood, so I think it’s a fair assumption that he was still moving under his own power.”
“So maybe he fought and he’s around here, injured,” Nick said.
“Could be,” Ricky said. “If so, timing could be crucial. I say we search a little farther and see if we can find him. If we don’t, we call for help.”
“What’s the downside of calling right now?” Amber asked. “We can still search, but help will be on the way.”
“If he’s fine,” Nick said. “Then it would be a waste.”
“She’s right,” Ricky said. “There’s no downside.”
He pulled out his phone.
Six: Recovery
“I was wrong,” Amber said. “There was a downside.”
“I’m sure they’ll be here any minute,” Ricky said.
“We wasted all that time making sure that Aaron and Nick got back to the car, and now we’re barely searching because we’re thinking that the calvary is going to show up at any moment. We took away all the urgency we had.”
Ricky swung his stick in front of himself as they walked. He kept looking at his phone, which showed a map and had a dot for their location. Back in the car, Aaron was looking at the same map, while he waited for help to arrive.
“We should have stayed on the tracks,” Ricky said. “Just because I found that fluid wasn’t a good enough reason to plunge off into the woods.”
“Don’t beat yourself up. I thought you were onto something. Try the phone again,” she said.
Every few minutes, they had tried dialing Riley’s phone, hoping that he might pick up. There was still a possibility that he had escaped attack and hitchhiked or walked away.
“I don’t want to completely wear it out,” Ricky said. “The office might be able to get one of the carriers to track it if the battery isn’t worn out.”
“One more incoming call isn’t going to kill it,” she said.
The sound of the phone ringing in Ricky’s hand was strange out in the forest. Amber twisted around, trying to look every direction as the ringing echoed in the trees.
“Do you hear…” she started to ask.
“Shh!” Ricky said. He turned down the volume of his own phone. His face was lit by the screen and his mouth hung open as he turned his head and concentrated.
“This way,” he whispered.
For a moment, Amber just watched him storm off between the trees. He was rushing deeper—farther away from the train tracks and the safety of the road. In that second, Amber realized how stupid she was being. She had narrowly escaped danger the previous summer and now it was like she was out there trying to find it again, just to prove that her escape hadn’t been a fluke.
Ricky paused and turned back. “You coming? It’s safer if we stay together.”
“You’re right,” she said. When she walked after him, careful to keep an eye out for any movement at their sides, Ricky continued more carefully. He wasn’t just blindly rushing anymore. She could hear why he had gotten so excited. There was the sound of a phone ringing in the woods. It went off one more time and then went silent. Ricky stopped and called the phone so it would ring again.
Something moved on her right and Amber swept her light to see it. There was nothing there. In the corner of her eye she saw a reflection. Whipping back around, she realized that it was the display of a phone, shining on damp leaves that we’re almost covering it.
“Ricky!” she whispered.
She pointed with the sharpened stick. Ricky carried the other one. He advanced towards
