The Camp

by Karice Bolton

  With every branch that he held up or out for me, I tried to duck without rubbing against it, allowing him to replace it as if we’d never been there. It was a time consuming process, but I think it was that level of caution that had kept us alive so far.

  We made it to the vegetative fortress and sat down after Liam figured out where we would be able to see clearly. He grabbed my rifle and slowly placed it down in front of me, careful not to disturb any branches. He sat behind me and placed his rifle next to him, pointing to the left. I felt his warm breath against the back of my neck, but couldn’t hear him at all.

  I had just let my eyes dip to a berry that was dangling in front of me when I saw the front door open out of the corner out of my eye. My breathing stopped and so did Liam’s. The person looked to be male, but it was impossible to know for sure because whoever it was wore a black ski mask, a baggy black shirt and jeans.

  The person closed the door and stood in front of the shack, looking in both directions and then straight out in front. He bent over toward the ground as if doing some sort of weird stretching like I’d seen in yoga, and then he straightened back up. He didn’t look to be armed, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a weapon or two strapped somewhere.

  He began jogging in place for a few seconds, finally taking off down the trail that led away from the shack, which meant he’d probably jog right by where we were sitting.

  He got into a rhythm of the run and I watched, unable to breath, as the jogger ran by us without giving a look in our direction.

  Maybe the bears would get him, and make it easy for us.

  We gave it about five more minutes and didn’t hear the sound of shoes against the ground before we slowly stood up and snuck over to the shack. The building had been recently pieced together, probably from remnants of the other structures that had been sprinkled around the area. The pieces of wood that acted like siding had many gaps in between, and I tilted my head to try to look inside as Liam opened the door.

  The shack looked exactly as I had expected it to with bare walls and floors. Steph was tied to a chair, unconscious and slumped over, in the center of the room. Liam ran to her, checking for a pulse and nodded at me. “She’s still alive.”

  I immediately began searching for the satellite phone. It had to be here. There was a makeshift table to my right, littered with papers, maps, and photos. There was a cot to the left and then two large Rubbermaid storage containers where food was probably kept.

  I ran to the table first, lifting and shuffling everything around, trying to find the mammoth phone that didn’t seem like it would be easily hidden. Coming up empty-handed, I ran to the first container and threw off the lid, finding nothing but packaged food. I dug through it quickly, realizing it wasn’t there either.

  Liam was cutting off the ropes from Steph’s wrists and ankles, and her body fell forward. He quickly grabbed her before she hit the wooden floor and picked her up.

  “Put her on the cot,” I said, searching through the next container, finding more food and a few things that made my heart ache. There were shreds of clothing that were braided together. I recognized the fabrics from what the victims had been wearing. Whoever was doing this was really sick.

  “No phone in this one, either,” I hissed. “I know it’s here.”

  We were so close and yet so much depended on that phone.

  I glanced at Steph and then at the cot she was on.

  “Lift her up again. I’ll check under the covers and the cot,” I said.

  He scooped her body into his arms, and I ran my hands beneath the sheets and blankets, cringing at the thought that my skin was touching anything of this monster’s.

  “Nothing on top of the cot,” I whispered, lifting the cot up. “Damn it.”

  There was nothing under the cot either. Liam placed Steph back on the cot, and I kept searching every inch of the place when my eyes landed on a plank in the floor that looked disturbed. A flutter of excitement ran thought my belly, and I ran toward it. I pried the piece of wood from the floor with my fingers and saw lots of interesting things that didn’t include the phone.

  “What do you see?” Liam asked.

  “Check it out,” I said, pointing at a box of syringes and a small, plastic box that contained rows of vials.

  Oh, my Word!

  My fingers ran over the tops of the vials as I realized we were one step closer to finding out how the person had been doing it. I wrapped my fingers around the small box and handed it to Liam, and I grabbed the cardboard box of syringes and quickly placed the plank back where I got it.

  “No phone still,” I said, unable to hide my disappointment.

  “We’ll find it. Just keep finding the hiding places and we’ll be do fine,” Liam said, patting my shoulder.

  “He’s been drugging everyone,” I whispered, shaking my head.

  “That’s how he was able to do it so quickly and quietly.”

  My pulse began quickening at the thought of one of the syringes being poked into my flesh if he got back before we were gone. Shaking it off, I continued to scan the floor for more loose boards.

  “We’ve gotta get out of here, phone or not,” I muttered, resigned to the fact that it might not work out how I’d hoped. “The guy might be back soon.”

  “Agreed.”

  Liam was studying one of the bottles of liquid.

  “Thinking what I’m thinking?” I asked.

  He nodded, grabbing a syringe. He stuck the needle’s point into the rubber stopper and slowly pulled on the plunger rod, filling up the syringe with the clear liquid. He repeated the process several more times, and placed the caps on the syringes. I grabbed two and stuck them in the back pocket of my jeans just in case.

  He grabbed the remaining glass bottles and smashed them against the floor near the containers and slid them over the shattered glass. He opened the plastic container and tossed the boxes inside, closing it quickly.

  “What do you think he did with them after the shot and they woke up?” he asked.

  “If they woke up,” I murmured.

  “True,” Liam said, examining the vials.

  A groggy moan surfaced from the cot, and we ran over to Steph. She curled herself into a fetal position, keeping her eyes closed.

  “Steph,” Liam said softly. “I’m here and so is Emma. We came to get you. You’re gonna be okay.”

  Her eyes opened slowly, tracking everything around the room but not looking at us.

  “He’s coming back,” she whispered, her lips trembling. “He’s coming back. He always does.”

  “Have you seen the phone?” Liam asked, shoving his arms under her to scoop her up.

  She gave him a blank look and then looked at me. Her eyes widening with terror.

  “It’s you he’s coming for,” she whispered. “It’s a trap. Your eighteenth birthday.”

  I looked at Liam as he held her close to his chest. What was she talking about?

  “We don’t have time to worry about the phone,” I said, running to the door.

  “We’ve gotta get out of here now,” Liam muttered.

  “An inheritance. He’s coming for us all,” she uttered once more.

  I peered through the gaps around the door and didn’t see anyone. I opened the door, craning my neck slowly, not seeing any evidence of the person we’d seen earlier.

  “Let’s go,” I whispered.

  Steph began quietly sobbing against Liam’s chest as we stepped outside. Her shirt already had strips missing and my heart sunk. What did he do to her? What was he going to do to her?

  “Shh,” Liam comforted Steph. “We’re going to be okay.”

  We took no more than two steps out of the house when a guy ran directly toward Liam with an exposed syringe. I screamed a warning to Liam, as I lunged at the guy who I recognized from earlier, dressed in all black.

  The anger and adrenaline that pounded through me allowed me to push him against the wall with one quick movement, his head thudding a
gainst the siding. He was stunned enough to allow an opening and the one chance I needed. His hand holding the syringe began to wave around frantically as he attempted to lodge the point into me, but I reached around and grabbed one of my own syringes out of my back pocket.

  “I’m right behind you,” Liam yelled.

  I bit the cap off in one quick gesture and jabbed the point into the exposed portion of the kidnapper’s neck, releasing the poison as I pushed on the plunger. Liam jabbed one of his syringes in the other side of the guy’s neck for extra security and pushed down slowly as the guy’s body began to relax.

  My pulse was racing, and I looked behind me at Steph who was sitting on the ground, staring at the tall grass and nothing more. Everything went into slow motion as I removed my fingers from the syringe that was still sticking out of the guy’s neck.

  “We’re gonna be okay,” I whispered, watching the syringe the guy tried to stab me with, fall out of his hand. “Right?”

  I looked at Liam and back at Steph. “I’m so sorry.”

  “You have nothing to be sorry for,” Liam whispered, shaking his head.

  “If I’d never come here, none of this would’ve happened,” I whispered, trying to hold back my tears as I saw Steph still staring off in the distance at nothing in particular.

  I reached over to the black, knit ski mask and lifted it off his head revealing the identity of the murderer. I already knew who it was, but I wanted to see him for myself. It was my stepfather.

  My body began quivering and Liam grabbed me before I collapsed. As he held me tightly, I looked next to the body of my stepfather and saw a piece of plastic sticking out from underneath him.

  “I think I see the phone,” I mumbled, my throat and lips completely dry and impossible to wet.

  “What, baby?” he whispered.

  “The phone. I think he had it with him or has it, I mean,” I said, gently pushing away from Liam.

  I approached Kroy and reached for the shiny, piece of plastic and sure enough, it was the corner of the phone. His body fell on its side as I yanked on the phone getting it to release from his belt.

  I held the phone with my hands trembling, unable to even function. I looked at Liam, and his kind brown eyes swept over me as he gently pulled the satellite phone from my hands.

  “I’ll make the call,” he said, smiling at me.

  I looked at him and nodded. I didn’t think I’d be able to find my voice. I looked behind Liam at Steph who was now looking at us and I ran over to her, kneeling in front of her.

  She grabbed my hands and pulled them to her lap as the first of many shared tears began.

  I heard Liam talking on the phone, and time seemed to have no value any longer. I had no idea how long he was on the phone, or how long it took us to hike back to the camp, or how long it took for the Coast Guard helicopter to arrive. All that mattered was that it was over and we were alive.

  I looked out the helicopter window pressing my forehead against the glass. I looked down at the ReBoot brochure that had started it all, and Liam gently laced his fingers through mine.

  The Coast Guard had been able to verify what little we had managed to tell them over the phone, but it turned out it was my stepfather who was the new owner of the ReBoot camp. Apparently, if I had died before my eighteenth birthday, my inheritance would have gone automatically to Kroy and my mother. He had set this whole thing up. It was hard to believe this type of evilness existed in the world.

  I felt the tears surface again and glanced at Liam.

  “We’re okay now,” he mouthed to me rather than fight with the noise of the chopper.

  “I don’t think I want to do forestry anymore,” I yelled back and a couple of the National Guard guys smiled at me.

  Liam squeezed my hand, and I looked at the brochure one more time before tucking it in my bag.

  It was over, but now it was up to us to let our lives begin.

  ChapterNineteen

  One month later…

  My phone buzzed and I looked down. Seeing Liam’s name pop up made me the most excited I’d been since the Coast Guard arrived on the island. My stomach fluttered in a million different directions as I looked over at my roommate’s empty bed. She had promised me that she wouldn’t be back until tomorrow, and I didn’t even know what I thought I was going to do with that information, but I was beyond hopeful.

  My phone buzzed again. He was only a block away! I ran over to the mirror and gathered my hair into a loose ponytail, dabbed on some mascara and lips gloss and ran down the hall.

  I pushed the button for the elevator, and realized it didn’t have the same level of urgency that I had and ditched it for the stairwell. I shoved the door open and flew down the three flights of stairs. It felt like every single step I made had a hop attached to it. I had been counting the days until he got here. I’m sure my roommate thought I was crazy, but I didn’t care. I may have sounded a little obsessed, but she had no idea what we’d just been through.

  I did kind of tell her, but the more I spoke the weirder it sounded. The media had gotten a hold of the story, and the first couple weeks were crazy, so at least she knew I wasn’t lying. But it was an odd first introduction.

  My stomach went from flutters of excitement to anxiety by the time I ran through the lobby and busted through the doors. What if it was too hard for him to separate everything from me? I’d understand. After all, none of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for me showing up at the wonderful camp. And to think, I thought the other campers’ were going to be the problem.

  A rush of shivers ran down my spine as my mind flashed back to Steph in the makeshift cabin, tied up. If I couldn’t shake the images, how would Liam be able to? I hoped our relationship wasn’t only meant to last on the island, but I had thought a lot about that possibility over the last couple weeks.

  Spotting a truck make its way through a four way stop, I almost jumped out of my skin as I saw him stick his hand out the open window on the passenger’s side and wave. I started hopping up and down, not caring how ridiculous I looked to the other students who were wandering around campus.

  His friend pulled the truck over to the curb, and Liam threw the door open and jumped out before the truck had even stopped. I ran as fast as I could as he opened his arms wide for me, and I dove into them with such a force that I almost made us both land on the ground.

  Liam started laughing and spinning me around as I held on tight, feeling his grip tightening around me with every spin. I couldn’t stop kissing every square inch of him that I could reach while I held on tightly. I wanted to speak, but was afraid tears would take over, and for once I wanted him to see me not looking like a wreck.

  “Baby, it feels so good to have you in my arms again,” he whispered. I heard the truck door close and looked over Liam’s shoulder as his friend made his way over to us.

  My legs were completely wrapped around Liam’s waist, and I had no plans to remove them or jump out of his arms regardless of who I was supposed to meet.

  “I’m Nick.”

  “Nice to meet you, Nick. I’m Emma,” I said, sticking up my hand over Liam’s shoulder to wave. He seemed nice enough, but I just wanted Liam to myself. It had been four very long weeks, with only text, email, and phone to get me through.

  “I just had to meet the chick that Liam wouldn’t shut up about for the last several weeks,” Nick said, winking at me. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him remember someone’s name for more than a day, let alone for this long.”

  I liked Nick more than I knew!

  “Enough, Nick,” Liam warned.

  Nick stood crossing his arms in front of him. He wore dark shorts that were baggy and low, with a gray thermal underneath his t-shirt. But his blue eyes caught my attention. They were very warm and completely full of mischief. He began walking so that he would be in Liam’s line of sight, but then I couldn’t see him anymore.

  I took a deep breath in, smelling the same goodness I remembered
in Alaska.

  “Do you have any friends?” Nick asked me, laughing.

  I felt Liam’s arms tighten around me and knew he was flashing a look at Nick that only made him laugh harder.

  “I’m gonna take off. I just had to say hi,” Nick said, walking back around Liam toward the truck.

  “It was nice to meet you and even nicer to hear that Liam could remember my name,” I said, laughing as I slowly released my legs from Liam’s waist and slid down to earth.

  “Your name’s the only one worth remembering,” Liam whispered, as we watched Nick climb in his truck and drive off.

  “That was smooth, babe,” I giggled, looking into the caramel eyes that made me feel safer with him than with anyone else in the world.

  “Wanna come check out my spectacular dorm room?” I asked, almost unable to stop staring at his lips as he began to answer. God I’d missed those!

  “Whatever you want to show me, babe,” he replied, letting go of me slightly, placing a quick kiss on my forehead.

  Not really wanting to leave Liam’s embrace I begrudgingly turned around and faced the old, brick building that I’d be calling home for the year. There were a few girls huddled on the grass, gossiping and laughing, enjoying the wonderful fall weather, and I knew how lucky I was to be here with Liam.

  “How’s Steph doing?” I asked. We had traded lots of texts back and forth, but I knew I’d get a straighter story from Liam.

  “She’s doing better than I probably would have,” he replied. “I’m amazed at that girl’s strength. I always knew my cousin was strong but I certainly didn’t know she was like that.”

  His eyes glistened and he dropped his gaze down to me. “Just like you. I knew there was something special about you, but I never imagined you were such a badass,” he murmured. “My mom always told me to look for a strong woman to marry someday and I think I found her.”

  “I don’t know if you’re trying to sweep me off my feet or something, but I already arranged for my roommate to be gone for the night,” I said, breaking away.

  “Did you now?” his voice low, as he pulled me back into his arms, gently nuzzling my cheek. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since the day I met you.”