by Stone, Kyla
Ghost jumped up, instantly alert, and pressed against her side. She buried her good hand in his fur, borrowing his strength, and struggled back to her feet again.
“Wouldn’t do that if I were you,” the man said.
She ignored him and stumbled for the door, Ghost still at her side. She tried to open it. It was locked. Blind panic flooded her veins.
“The doorstop,” the man said calmly. “You have to move it.”
Shaking, she bent down awkwardly, bending her knees, and tugged the door stop out of the way. Straightening, she flung the door open.
The frigid air struck her like a physical blow. The shock of it sucked her breath from her lungs. Snow blew into the cabin in swirling gusts.
The night was a cold black thing crouched outside the cabin, waiting to devour her.
“You should shut the door.”
Ghost whined in agreement.
She took an involuntary step backward, bracing herself against the cold. She stood in the doorway, swaying on her feet, fear gnawing at her insides, panic fluttering frantically at her brain.
The thought of being stuck in here against her will terrified her. She hated the claustrophobic feeling of being trapped. Hated it with every fiber of her being.
The man frightened her. What he might do. What he was capable of.
She couldn’t go back out there. It was too dangerous. This was a choice between the terrifying unknown and certain death.
She refused to choose death.
She forced herself to shut the door. Apprehension churning in her gut, she leaned heavily against it, let the solid strength of the wood hold up her shaky legs.
There’s no lock on the inside, she told herself. You can leave any time you want to.
She recounted the logs in the fireplace, the socks on the hearth, the planks of wood on the floor until her rapid pulse slowed and her shallow breathing evened.
“Okay,” she whispered. “Okay.”
“Good choice,” the man said dryly. “Could you please put the doorstop back in place? It’s just a precaution. It’s what I always do.”
Shakily, she obeyed. It wasn’t hard to move if she needed. It wasn’t like it was a lock. “How…how long was I out?”
“You’ve been out for nearly seven hours.”
She shook her head. Seven hours? That was impossible. She licked her chapped lips, pressed her back against the door, her good hand still on the handle. “What—what time is it?”
“It’s after two a.m.”
“What day is it?”
He raised his eyebrows. “It’s Saturday night.”
“I mean…what’s the date?”
“December twenty-seventh.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. “And the year?”
His thick eyebrows raised further. “You don’t know the year?”
“There’s… a lot I don’t know. Just tell me.”
“Two thousand twenty-four. Almost two thousand twenty-five.”
Darkness swept over her. Her legs buckled and she nearly collapsed. Ghost leaned against her thigh. He steadied her with his warmth, his solid strength.
She’d known. Of course she’d known. Over a thousand marks she’d scraped onto that concrete wall, day after day after day after endless day.
She knew she was well into the fifth year of captivity. But to hear someone say it, someone from the outside world, someone who’d been living and laughing and working and loving all this time…all that lost time…
It struck her like a punch to the gut.
She was taken on December 24th, 2019. Christmas Eve. That she remembered clear as day, even as other memories faded with time like those old Polaroid photos left too long in the sun.
He frowned at her. “Are you experiencing confusion? Memory loss is a symptom of hypothermia.”
She shook her head. This had nothing to do with hypothermia. She felt unsettled, unmoored from herself, from reality. But she couldn’t explain that to him. “I’m…sure it’ll come back to me.”
He stood abruptly, moved to the fire, and picked something up. He turned toward her and held out a white mug. “Here. Couldn’t give you anything while you were out. You need to drink something hot and sweetened. With high calories. It’s just honey and hot water. All we’ve got. But honey is a very good choice post-hypothermia.”
He was right. Still, she stared at the mug warily, like it might transform into a snake and bite her.
“Look, lady. You can relax. If I wanted to hurt you, I would’ve done it already.”
It wasn’t the warmest welcome she’d ever had. Still, his awkward bluntness was faintly reassuring.
She took an unsteady step toward him, reached out, and snatched the mug. The ceramic was hot—almost too hot—in her hands.
Her stomach growled. Suddenly, she was desperately hungry.
She retreated to the relative safety of the cot and sat down, Ghost at her heels. She curled the fingers of her good hand around the mug and raised it to her lips. Steam heated her cheeks. She couldn’t help herself—she sighed with pleasure as the warm sweetness slid down her throat.
She drank more of the sweetened drink. Inched closer to the crackling fire. Gradually felt warmth and energy seeping back into her body. Needles pricked her hands and feet as they slowly returned to life.
Still, Hannah didn’t let her guard down for a second.
27
Hannah
Day Four
Ghost flopped back to the floor in front of the fireplace, stretched out his long body, and gave a satisfied yawn. Apparently, the tension was over for him.
Not for Hannah. She couldn’t relax. Her muscles were tensed, her jaw tight. She had to remain vigilant, be ready to run at a moment’s notice.
He saved you. Didn’t matter. Just because this man acted nice didn’t mean he was. She couldn’t trust him.
Trusting the wrong person had cost her nearly everything before. She wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.
The fire crackled. The cabin creaked. Outside, the wind howled mournfully. She studied the man out of the corner of her eye, still cautious.
He was tall, broad shouldered, muscular. Chiseled features and those arresting gray-blue eyes. She’d been too terrified to notice before, but he was ruggedly handsome. Strong, his whole body radiated power and competence.
But there was something else. A tension in his shoulders, shadows behind his eyes, a grim wariness in his expression.
She glimpsed the gun holstered at his waist, the tactical knife on his belt. He was armed.
Nothing about this man suggested that he was harmless.
She needed to be careful. Very, very careful.
The man got up, added another log to the fire, pushed it around with the poker, and sat back down on the cot on his side of the cabin. He glanced at her. “How do you feel now?”
Hannah finished drinking and set the mug down on the floor. She crossed her arms and cradled her ribcage, hugging herself.
She felt drained and shaky. Still exhausted though she’d slept for hours. But the bone-chilling cold was gone. Her head was clear. She could think.
She touched her belly, felt movement, and quickly moved her hand away. “Better.”
He studied her, his head cocked slightly. “What happened to you?”
“I—”
How could she tell him the truth? She couldn’t. The words were locked in a vault somewhere down deep inside her. To speak them aloud would bring the evil here, would make it real and visceral, and she couldn’t do that. “I don’t know.”
He frowned. “You don’t know?”
“My car broke down,” she lied. “I was walking, trying to find help, and I got lost.”
He nodded, seeming to accept her word, and leaned back against the wall, his hands behind his head. “A lot of that happening lately.”
They fell into a tense silence.
Ghost lifted his head, ears pricked, tail swishing on the plank floor. He was
probably hungry and thirsty, too.
She noticed the man had set out a bowl in the corner for Ghost. The water was still half-full. Drips of water splashed across the floor in a two-foot radius. This stranger, whoever he was, had at least been considerate enough to care for her dog.
“My name is Hannah,” she said. “What’s yours?”
The man hesitated. “Liam Coleman.”
“Nice to meet you,” she said, automatically polite. Old habits died hard, even after five years of disuse. “Thank you for saving me.”
He shrugged, said nothing, seeming uncomfortable with the gratitude.
“Do you know where we are?”
“We’re in the middle of the Manistee National Forest.”
“On the northwestern side of the mitten?”
He nodded. “Above Muskegon.”
She took it in. She’d been in Michigan all this time, just as she’d suspected. As a kid, she’d once camped along the Manistee River with her grandparents before they’d died.
“Do you have a phone? I need to—” Her throat tightened. She almost wept at the mere thought of Noah and Milo. That she might actually get to see her son again. To hold him. “My family. I—I need to let them know where I am, that I’m…alive.”
He glanced at her, surprised. “You don’t know?”
“Don’t know what?”
“Phones aren’t working.”
“There’s no service out here? I guess that makes sense.”
“Not what I mean. Near as I can tell, phones aren’t working anywhere. Not in Michigan, not in Chicago. The whole Eastern Seaboard and the Midwest are down; maybe the West Coast, too.”
Disquiet filled her. Foreboding prickled at the back of her neck. He wasn’t making sense. “Down? What does that mean?”
“Power is out. Communications. Even cars. It wasn’t just yours. The computerized parts in almost every newer-model vehicle made in the last two decades got fried.”
She shook her head, incredulous. Maybe he was insane. Or mocking her. Deceiving her with wild stories for his own entertainment. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“Believe what you want. It’s not my job to convince you. But you won’t be able to call home, not even when you get to a town.”
She remembered the lightbulb flicking off in the basement. The fridge and generator silent. The security system down, the secure door unlocked.
Goosebumps pimpled her arms. For once, it wasn’t because of the cold. She felt sick to her stomach. Could it possibly be true? Was this…whatever it was…the reason she was free right now?
“What could do something like that?”
“An electromagnetic pulse,” Liam said. “An EMP.”
28
Hannah
Day Four
“What’s an EMP?” Hannah asked. Just the word sent shivers of dread up and down her spine. She hugged herself more tightly, inched closer to the fire.
“It fries electronics. Transformers. Anything with a computer chip, like phones, computers, and cars.”
“What causes it?”
Liam sat up straighter and raked a hand through his dark brown hair. “A solar geomagnetic storm could fry transformers and take out the power grid. Or a high-altitude nuclear blast.”
“A nuclear blast? Like with radiation?”
His expression darkened. “If it detonated in the atmosphere, say sixty miles up, it wouldn’t cause a massive firebomb and mushroom cloud like with Hiroshima. The threat is in the high-frequency burst of electromagnetic energy.”
He seemed deadly serious. She didn’t want to believe him. She’d rather have it be some sick, twisted joke. But she could still feel the locked door opening beneath her hand, the lurch of hope in her chest.
She believed him.
It was too crazy not to be true. The irony of it didn’t escape her. She’d fled her prison—only to find the world in far worse shape than she’d left it.
She tried to imagine life without smartphones or the internet. Tried to imagine entire states without electricity or heat in this brutal weather. Winter was only beginning.
She just hoped Noah and Milo were safe. That was all she cared about. Whatever crisis had just beset the United States, she would worry about it once she was home.
Right now, her complete focus was on staying alive.
She cleared her throat. “Is there any way to contact the police?”
“Why would you need to call the police?”
She licked her chapped lips. She didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer.
“I doubt anyone’s out here looking for you, if that’s what you mean. Law enforcement has their hands full already.”
No one had been looking for her for a long, long time. If this EMP thing had really taken down the power grid, she was on her own.
But she’d always known that deep down, hadn’t she? That getting home would never be as easy as breezing into the nearest police station and reporting her status as a missing person newly found.
It was up to her to get home. It always had been.
She pictured Noah and Milo as she’d last seen them five years ago. Noah tall and trim, with his wiry athleticism and easy, charming smile. He was dark-haired, like his Venezuelan mother. Easy-going until he was pushed too far, like his short-tempered Irish-American father.
Whatever his faults, he’d never yelled at her, never hit her. Not once.
Milo was born with his grandmother’s olive complexion, curly black hair, and huge dark eyes, nothing like Hannah’s own chocolate-brown hair, forest-green eyes, and fair, freckled skin.
Milo was inquisitive and sensitive. Tender and affectionate, but also immensely stubborn, like she was.
Her throat tightened. Milo was three years old the last time she’d seen him. He’d be eight now.
How tall would he be? Would he still have that unruly mop of dark hair that always curled over his ears? Did he play soccer? Football? Did he still love Legos and singing Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” at the top of his lungs?
Would she even recognize him?
She missed him so much; it hurt like a physical ache in her chest.
Hannah picked nervously at the frayed threads on the cuff of her sweater. “Do you know how far we are from Fall Creek? It’s south of Grand Rapids. A small town on the St. Joe river near Lake Michigan. That’s my home. Not where I grew up, but where I lived—live now, I mean. With my husband. And my son. That’s where I’m going.”
A memory struck her, far in the blurry past of her before—shouting matches in the living room, tears and crying and arguments and ultimatums. A slammed door.
Hannah marching out into the cold, her cold breath puffing into swirling white steam, her self-righteous anger boiling through her veins. It’s over. I’m done with this, done with him. I’ll take Milo and go back home to my parents. After tonight. After this one night for myself—
But there was no after. No life after that night she stormed away in her car. She’d never returned. She’d vanished so completely it was like she’d slipped through a crack in the universe.
Her gut lurched. Her mind threatened to spiral away again.
“Never heard of Fall Creek,” Liam said. “But I have a map. I can check.”
Hannah clasped her hands in her lap, rubbed at her ruined hand to keep herself present. She was here now, not back in that concrete prison. Not trapped in a tragic past she’d wished she could change a million times. “Yes. That would be good. Thank you.”
The man unzipped his pack, dug around, and pulled out a paper map. She longed to see it, but she was afraid to get any closer to him.
The door was ten feet from her cot. She felt like she could leave at any moment if she needed to. It was a false sense of security—she wasn’t wearing her coat, and her boots were still drying by the fire—but she clung to it desperately anyway.
“Where are you headed?” she asked to distract herself.
He didn’t answer for a minute. The sile
nce lengthened, until she thought he might not respond at all. “Near Traverse City.”
“What’s in Traverse City?” she asked hesitantly. “Is that where your family is?”
Liam stiffened. He didn’t look up. “I don’t have a family.”
“Oh. I’m…I’m sorry.”
He didn’t say anything, just spread out the map on the cot beside him. He traced a line with his finger. “Near as I can tell, you’re close to two hundred miles from Fall Creek.”
Her lungs constricted. “Two hundred miles?”
Without a car, it might as well have been a thousand. The journey seemed endless; the obstacles were insurmountable.
No, she told herself. They weren’t. Nothing was, if it meant getting home to her family. If it meant freedom.
She’d adapted to every cruel and terrible thing the world had thrown at her so far. She’d adapted to her basement prison. She’d adapted to this harsh environment, managed to survive the woods and snow and killing cold on her own for days.
She would adapt to whatever came next.
The truth was, in some ways, she’d always been taking care of herself. Even back in the basement. Even then.
Ghost leapt to his feet. His hackles lifted. A low growl rumbled in his chest.
The hairs on the back of Hannah’s neck stood on end. “Ghost? What do you smell?”
With a savage bark, Ghost ran to the door.
Something was outside.
29
Liam
Day Four
Liam peered out the window into the pitch blackness, Glock in hand. He couldn’t see anything even if there was anything to see.
The night was thick and dark and foreboding.
Cold crawled in beneath the door and pressed through the thin windowpanes. Snow was falling so thickly it appeared solid. The cabin creaked beneath the howling onslaught of the wind.
Ghost barked several times in warning—deep, cacophonous booms that hurt Liam’s ears in such close quarters.