by Lauren Algeo
Scott’s body collapsed hard on the floor, followed a fraction of a second later by the Master’s. The walking stick clattered to the side of him. Seeing their father slump to the ground sent the hikers into a blind panic. Two of them ran forward to try and assist him. The other hiker, the male from the motel, made a dive for Mitch instead. He wanted to find out what Scott had been yelling about too. He collided with Mitch’s back and the two of them tumbled to the floor.
Mitch landed hard on his knees and the folded paper fluttered from his splayed fingers. He was filled with an intense rage. Oh no, he was not going down this easily. He swung a punch behind him and his fist connected with the side of the hiker’s head, although it did nothing to stop his attack.
The male managed to slip his hands around Mitch’s throat and he began to squeeze, while clawing mentally at Mitch’s mind. He found his way in easily and started hunting violently for answers as to what was going on. It was a fruitless task – Mitch didn’t have a clue. He could feel his chest becoming tight with the lack of air and he started getting lightheaded.
‘Ellen!’ he tried to choke out.
Suddenly she was there, swinging the Master’s walking stick at his captor’s head. There was a solid clunk as it struck the hiker’s temple. He fell away with a cry of pain and released his stranglehold. He was gone from Mitch’s mind instantly.
Mitch gasped at the sweet air. Ellen tried to help him to his feet but he shrugged her off and scrabbled on the floor for the precious piece of paper. His fingers found it again and swiftly unfolded it. It was a handwritten note from Scott.
‘Mitch!’ Ellen cried behind him.
Mitch looked up to see the female hiker advancing rapidly. The other male stayed by the Master’s side but the one who’d been hit was already back on his feet. He grabbed Ellen roughly by her hair before slinging her across the room. She hit the Master’s desk with a cry of pain but managed to stay on her feet.
The female was glaring straight at Mitch and he started to back away. She had her arms raised, as if to grab him then at the last second she lowered them. A bemused smile crossed her lips instead. Mitch’s eyebrows creased down into a frown. What the…
He didn’t have time to finish his thought. Something that felt like lead smashed against the side of his head and he pitched forward, seeing brightly coloured spots dancing in front of his eyes. Then the world went black.
Chapter 37
Ellen spun around from the desk, feeling a fire of agony spreading from her ribs down to her hip. She saw the female rushing towards Mitch then suddenly the male loomed behind him. He was brandishing the Master’s walking stick, which she had dropped only moments ago. Before Ellen could call out a warning, the hiker swung the stick at Mitch’s head. The blow was so hard she thought she heard the crack of bone. Mitch fell lifelessly to the ground face down.
‘No!’ she screamed. ‘Mitch!’
There were still tears streaming down her face and she realised that she was sobbing loudly. The three hikers turned in slow motion to look at her. Every ounce of fight she had inside her drained in a second. There was only her left. How was she going to take on all of them and have any hope of surviving?
Her legs buckled and she staggered against the desk. If she ran through the patio doors, how far could she get before they caught and killed her? She swallowed hard, trying to claw back some of her courage. No, she couldn’t leave Scott and Mitch in here at their mercy.
She glanced across at Mitch’s body and saw dark red blood seeping out from underneath his head. She didn’t know if he was still alive. Her tear-filled gaze jumped to Scott. He was lying motionless on his side. She couldn’t see his face but she knew he was unconscious. Her heart ached at the sight. What had he done? Why had he sacrificed himself to try and save them?
It hadn’t seemed to work as the hikers were still standing. Her lips were trembling uncontrollably as she struggled to rein in her emotions. She’d never even got the chance to tell him how she felt. Let him know that he had made her believe in the possibility of love again. She wished there had been more than that one kiss. She should never have given into her fears and backed off. The regret was almost as bad as the grief. It was all over now, for all of them.
The male hiker next to the Master stayed where he was but the other two began to walk towards her. Ellen stood up straighter, despite the pain in her ribs, and held her chin up defiantly. She fully intended to go down fighting. The female hiker leered at her. She opened her curved mouth to speak but a piercing noise shattered the air.
Ellen instinctively brought her hands up to her ears as a deafening buzzing sound began to echo through her mind. It was so high-pitched it made her teeth hurt. The hikers reacted more dramatically. The female dropped to her knees, pressing her palms to her temples, and wailed loudly in agony. The two males both clutched at their heads, trying uselessly to stem the sound.
Ellen wasn’t entirely sure if the sound was real, or if it was just inside her head. It seemed to be omitting from the Master though. She knew instantly this was the sound from the Grand’s house that Scott had told them about. It meant the Master was dying; therefore Scott was too.
She looked around helplessly. There was nothing she could do. Every instinct in her body was screaming at her to run and get away from the awful noise, but she couldn’t leave them here.
Her legs wouldn’t support her any more and she dropped to the floor. Her panicked gaze flitted to Mitch’s body and she spied something in his hand. A corner of paper was poking out from beneath his uncurled fingers. Scott’s note.
Ellen began to crawl towards Mitch. The hikers were all rolling around in agony on the floor so they were no threat to her. The pain in her head was intensifying and she wanted to curl up into a small ball to try and block it out, yet she struggled on. She reached Mitch’s side and prised the piece of paper from under his palm. She tried not to look at the blood on the floor as she did it. Mitch’s head was angled towards her and his eyes were closed. He looked peaceful.
Ellen smoothed out the note with shaky fingers. Her head felt like it was in a vice, being squeezed tighter and tighter until it would explode. She had accepted her fate and knew she was going to die, but she needed to read what Scott had written first. It was surely some sort of suicide note.
There were several lines of neat handwriting. It was written in short, one-line sentences spaced out to make it clearer. Ellen’s resolve almost crumpled as she read the first sentence.
‘You can bring me back,’ it said.
The chaos around her seemed to fade, and the agony in her mind subsided, as she focussed on his words.
‘Keep your head and follow these instructions.’
There was a numbered list underneath.
‘1. Get the calcium chloride syringe that’s taped to my stomach. It’s marked “1”. Inject it straight into my heart.
2. Do 60 seconds of CPR on me.
3. Inject me with the adrenaline. Straight to my heart. It’s marked “3”.
4. Do 60 more seconds of CPR.
5. Hopefully I wake up.
Do it now. Save me.’
The words spurred her into action and Ellen started to shuffle frantically over towards Scott’s body on her knees. She rolled him onto his back and lifted up his jumper. She stared in bewilderment at the two syringes taped to his stomach, just above his belly button. He’d pre-planned the whole thing – from the baggy jumper to conceal the syringes, to the note in Mitch’s pocket.
The syringes were secured with heavy-duty, grey tape and there was a ‘1’ written in biro on the top piece of tape and a ‘3’ on the one below it. She didn’t hesitate and ripped the first one from his skin. She gripped it firmly in her right hand and pushed his jumper up further, until she could see his chest.
Her left fingers found the spot above where his heart would be. She’d never injected anyone before, especially not into their heart, but she didn’t stop to panic about it. She was running pur
ely on instinct and adrenaline now.
She raised the syringe high then plunged it straight into Scott’s chest and injected the full contents at once. Nothing happened, Scott remained motionless.
‘Quick, CPR,’ she muttered to herself, only she wasn’t aware of it.
She could hear nothing but the deafening, consuming buzz. It was getting louder still and the hikers were all writhing in agony on the floor behind her. She paid them no more attention; she had a job to do.
She began to pump Scott’s chest like she had seen on countless TV programmes. One, two, three, she counted in her head. She didn’t bother with the breathing element and stuck solely to the chest compressions. It seemed to be his heart that needed restarting after whatever he’d done to it.
Sixty seconds seemed like an eternity. Her arms began to ache but she kept going until she hit sixty in her mind. Scott still hadn’t moved. Through her bleary eyes and panic she couldn’t tell if he was still breathing. The incessant buzz told her that he was. The Master was still omitting the death sound so he wasn’t gone yet.
Next step: the adrenaline. Ellen grabbed at the second syringe, accidently scratching Scott’s stomach with her nails, yet he didn’t flinch. She repeated the process and injected it straight into his heart. She expected him to sit up immediately, gasping for air, like she’d seen in Pulp Fiction, but nothing happened. Wasn’t adrenaline supposed to wake you up instantly? There was a gnaw of nervousness in her stomach. What if this didn’t work? What if she wasn’t doing it right?
The pressure of the buzz had reached its crescendo and she could barely see straight any more. She wanted to rip off her ears, anything to try and stop it. She leant over Scott’s chest to perform the last set of compressions. Something dripped from her nose and a dark spot appeared on Scott’s skin, quickly followed by another. Her nose was bleeding. It had to be internal damage from the awful noise.
She ignored it and locked her hands together. One, two, three. She pushed hard, using every last ounce of her strength. Come on, come on. The worry was increasing with every pump of her hands. Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four. Halfway through and no response yet. The pain in her head was excruciating and she battled hard to keep from passing out. Scott needed her.
Forty-one, forty-two, forty-three. Why wasn’t he waking up? Why hadn’t the noise ceased? More blood splattered from her nose but she didn’t pause to wipe at it. Her shoulders were burning with the effort of pushing so hard but she gritted her teeth and kept going.
Fifty-nine… sixty. Nothing. Scott didn’t twitch, or open his eyes, or sit up. She pumped a few more times for good measure but it didn’t change anything.
Then the noise stopped.
Ellen gasped in the sudden stillness and looked towards the Master. He was lying in the same position, completely lifeless. One glance around the room was enough to see that nobody else was moving either. The Master was dead. The three hikers were dead. She skipped over thoughts of Mitch.
Ellen sat back, her hands falling uselessly to her sides. She felt numb with shock, hollow inside. Her ears were ringing loudly and her nose and eyes were still streaming. She’d never experienced anything so intense before. There was no joy that she had survived it though, not if everyone else was gone.
‘Scott!’ she choked out and sobs erupted from her throat. She shoved at his body. ‘Wake up!’ she cried.
Her hands shook his chest furiously then she pummelled him with her fists. ‘Come on!’
She didn’t want to accept that it hadn’t worked, couldn’t accept it. Yet nothing was happening. Ellen lost control completely. She wailed and shouted, and struck his chest several more times until she collapsed, exhausted, on top of him.
She lay there, crying harder than she thought possible, for a few seconds before something registered in her brain. The surface beneath her damp cheek wasn’t still. It was moving slightly. Gently rising and falling.
She jumped back in alarm. Was her distraught mind playing tricks on her? She wiped her eyes with her sleeve and stared hard. No, she wasn’t imagining it. His chest was moving. Scott was breathing! It was weak and shallow, but he was breathing.
Every emotion flooded her body at once and she fumbled at his neck, trying to feel for a pulse. It was very faint; merely a hum below the surface, but it was there. He was alive.
Chapter 38
When Brewer opened his eyes, he wasn’t entirely sure that he was still alive. Everything was so blurred he could only see light and dark shapes. His body felt like stone. His brow furrowed in concentration as he tried to clear his vision.
Everything swam into focus slowly and the first thing he saw was Ellen’s face. She was gazing down at him with a tiny smile on her face. Her eyes. He squinted to see properly. Yes, her eyes were their usual brown colour. There was dried blood caked under her nose and her eyes were extremely bloodshot, but she was ok.
‘Hi,’ she murmured softly.
Brewer found it hard to control his mouth to try and respond. He cleared his throat.
‘Hey,’ he croaked and her smile widened.
Panic gripped him suddenly. Wait. Ellen was ok, and he was alive. The Master…
‘Where…?’ he started. He struggled to sit up only his body was too numb and wouldn’t cooperate.
‘Shh,’ Ellen said, gently easing him back to the floor. ‘Stay down.’
There was something soft under his head but he couldn’t turn to see what it was.
‘It’s all ok,’ Ellen carried on. ‘You did it. They’re all dead.’
Relief surged through his body. The plan had worked. The Master was gone.
‘You’ve been slipping in and out of consciousness for the last ten minutes. How are you feeling?’ she asked.
Brewer tried to take stock of his body. Everything hurt. Every muscle, every bone, his eyes, his ears, even his brain, but they were nothing compared to the agonising tightness in his chest.
‘Like I got… hit… truck,’ he managed to wheeze.
Ellen stroked his hair and carefully laid her palm over his heart. ‘I thought you were gone,’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘It took so long to bring you back.’
But you did it, he wanted to say, only he was overcome with tiredness. Darkness threatened to swamp him again and he fought it off. Ellen had brought him back, so where was…
‘Mitch?’ he choked out.
Ellen’s eyes flicked to the left then her gaze lowered. ‘Over there,’ she said quietly.
Brewer managed to angle his head in that direction to look. Mitch was propped up against the wall, holding his bundled up hoodie to the side of his head. It was stained red with blood. The kid was staring at him through glazed eyes.
‘Welcome back,’ Mitch said weakly.
‘What happened to you?’ Brewer asked, sounding equally as drained.
‘Run in with a walking stick.’ Mitch looked as though he was going to throw up at any moment.
‘He was out of it for a while too.’ Ellen’s face darkened. ‘I thought you were both… you know.’
She turned her head back to Mitch. ‘I think you have a concussion and you definitely need stitches. We should get you both to a hospital.’
Brewer attempted to shake his head but it was too heavy. He settled for a twitch instead.
He must have lost consciousness again as he blinked and Ellen was gone from his sight. He craned his neck and saw her sitting next to Mitch. They were both sipping from glasses of water and staring bleakly in his direction.
Ellen noticed he was awake again and struggled to her feet. He saw her wince and clutch at her side briefly before trying to cover it up.
‘You’re hurt,’ he said accusingly when she crouched down beside him.
‘It’s nothing,’ she shrugged. ‘Probably just some bruised ribs.’
She’d rinsed the dried blood from her face while he’d been out of it. Her skin was ashen underneath.
‘How long was I out?’ he asked.
‘Onl
y about fifteen minutes, we wanted to let you rest.’ She paused for a moment. ‘You look grey, Scott. I think you should get checked out as soon as possible.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘There will be too many questions.’
She chewed her lip but didn’t respond. She held out her glass of water and helped him to sit up so he could slurp at it. He groaned with every movement. His body still ached all over, although the pain in his chest was subsiding a little.
From his new, upright position he could see the Master sprawled close by, and the bodies of the other hikers beyond. He hoped that old bastard had suffered right at the end. It was all a bit of a blur to him. He remembered a tussle to keep the Master in his mind but that was all. Then he’d just been sort of floating. He’d felt at peace.
‘There’s a lot we need to ask you but it can wait until you’re stronger,’ Ellen said. ‘We don’t know exactly what you did, I know it saved us all though. Thank you.’
She took hold of his right hand and squeezed it tightly then she leant forward and kissed him gently on the lips. He closed his eyes and savoured the brief moment. He should be dead right now but thanks to her, he was still here.
He felt light-headed and unable to process all of the emotions he was filled with: gratitude, elation, relief, love, and pain. He let them all wash over him, with the pressure of Ellen’s hand keeping him tethered.
Brewer glanced down at the floor and spied his note lying discarded, about a foot away. Ellen saw him look at it and she reached across to pick it up.
‘I can’t believe you did this,’ she said. ‘Put this all in place before you came here.’
‘There wasn’t any other option,’ he replied.
‘You could have left me here,’ she said. ‘You didn’t have to come.’
‘Don’t be stupid, Mrs Mac!’ Mitch piped up. ‘As if we’d have done that.’
‘Well you were both very brave. You risked everything for me.’ Her eyes were shining with tears again. ‘Thank you both.’