“Now empty it,” he said.
I started removing the bundles one at a time, stacking them in careful columns.
The clock’s ticking seemed to grow louder and louder, as if the sound was coming from inside my head.
Any day now, Sarah, I thought.
The bag was just about empty. That hideous clock I’d hoped never to hear again struck the half hour. It was getting late early.
Chapter 42Sarah Roberts-Walsh
FINDING THE trail in the dark was easier than I’d imagined, but Anna hadn’t been kidding: this was the kind of dense and tangled forest that horror flicks are made of. My flashlight only lit up so much. Point it at the ground and I wound up getting hit in the face with a low-hanging branch; point it at the trees and I wound up tripping over a rock or a root or God knows what.
And then there was the soundtrack: there must have been a thousand brands of insect chirping and clicking and screeching. I tried not to think about all the creatures I couldn’t hear. Were snakes nocturnal? Wild boars? Florida panthers? I wished I’d paid closer attention when Aunt Lindsey dragged me on her nature walks.
The rifle I was carrying didn’t give me much comfort. It wasn’t Doris’s shotgun, but it had a similar heft and feel. Anna had tried to talk me into buying a handgun. We stood there debating the merits right in front of the pawnbroker.
It was true that a pistol would have been more practical, but I’d never fired one before. Stick with what you know, I thought. Especially when you had a rock star teacher.
I wished Doris was here with me now. She was exactly the kind of person you wanted in your trench at the darkest hour. Loyal, fearless, willing to fight.
I wondered what she thought of me after my sudden and violent departure. Probably she thought I was weak. In my place, she’d have gone down swinging. Or firing. Me, I’d rolled on my back and played possum. At least in her eyes. Of course, I couldn’t tell Doris the full story—for her sake more than mine.
I was starting to wonder if this log existed—if maybe Anna hadn’t sent me on a wild-goose chase while she carried out some plan of her own—when I turned a corner and walked smack into it. If it had been a real log, I’d have bruised my knee something fierce, but because it was synthetic and lightweight all it did was startle me.
I pushed it aside, shone my flashlight on the blue tarp, and let out a scream I hoped afterward would blend with the insects’ general din. There, in the center of the tarp, curled up and groggy, was the largest, fattest water moccasin I’d ever seen outside of a reptile house. Black and tan scales. Squat, wedge-like head. Easily three feet long. I jumped back, unslung the rifle from my shoulder, and took aim, dropping the flashlight in the process so that the snake disappeared in the dark and there was no longer anything to aim at.
“Goddamnit!” I yelled.
The fall didn’t do the flashlight any good—it was flickering on and off now, acting like a strobe light. I knelt down, angled it at the tarp. The snake hadn’t budged. Then it dawned on me: he wasn’t just groggy; he was deceased. I moved a little closer, stomped my foot to be sure. Still no movement.
I slung the rifle back over my shoulder, inched forward, grabbed a corner of the tarp, and dragged it away until the submarine escape hatch Anna had described was clear. Hope you don’t have any friends, I told the snake-corpse, folding the plastic over his body just in case he decided to play undead.
The door was heavier than I would have thought, or else it was stuck because no one had opened it in a long while—maybe since Anthony and Anna took their little tour. I groped around until I found the switch. It was right where Anna had said it would be. The problem was…it didn’t work. I flipped it up and down a dozen times. Nothing. Not even a flicker.
A half hour into our rescue attempt and I had a dead snake, a half-broken flashlight, and a pitch-black tunnel to navigate. But there was no turning back now. It didn’t matter how scared or discouraged I was—three lives depended on me following through with a plan I never should have agreed to in the first place.
So I sucked it up and started down, gun on my shoulder, flashlight between my teeth.
I felt like a cook playing action figure. Courage had never been my thing. I was the girl who crawled out to the edge of the diving board and then lay flat on her belly, clinging for dear life. I was the sixth grader who got bullied by third graders. Later, I became the woman who married a cop because she thought she needed protecting. I promised myself that if I got out of this alive, I’d play it safe until they buried me. No skydiving on my fiftieth birthday. No running naked into the ocean when the next winter solstice rolled around. I wouldn’t even buy lottery tickets anymore.
Meanwhile, the misadventures just kept coming. After a slow and careful descent, I missed the last rung of the ladder and came down hard on my left ankle. Definitely twisted, possibly sprained. I hobbled forward a few steps, reached out to brace myself against the cold concrete wall. I hoped Anna’s memory was solid: I hoped it really was just a ten-minute walk on a healthy pair of legs.
The malfunctioning flashlight made it seem as though there were shadows where there shouldn’t be. Every few yards I’d jump back, land on my bad ankle, and stifle a scream. I tried turning the light off, feeling my way along the wall, but then I was struck with a fit of panic—a sensation that it was the wall touching me
