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by Matthew Costello

* * *

  Kate walked around one car.

  She looked at the back of the car and wondered if Simon might have crawled under it.

  So annoying!

  “Simon,” she said quietly. “This game is over. Come out now … and I won’t tell Mom.”

  Then she thought … maybe Mom should have told him.

  That we’re going to leave.

  As soon as we can.

  Maybe then he wouldn’t be doing this.

  “Simon. Did you hear me?”

  Still taking care to keep her voice low.

  “Stop it now—and I won’t tell Mom.”

  Nothing.

  She moved to walk around another car, listening so carefully as she took each step for any telltale sign of where her annoying brother might be.

  * * *

  It was a road.

  A dirt road, right where the hill flattened out.

  Beyond it, another hill down. Bigger, the angle steeper, a hill that surely would have the car tumbling end over end, out of control.

  She had to hit that flat area just right, so she could turn the car into it and not roll over.

  Get onto that road and stop.

  She also registered—just barely—what was beyond that second hill. Sitting on the outskirts of the town, which looked dark, abandoned.

  But a building, and grounds.

  A warehouse, with lights, a parking lot with cars and trucks, and an open area.

  All taken in so quickly before her eyes had to go back to keeping the car from turning into a rolling disaster.

  Helen freed a hand from the dash where she had planted an arm to keep herself in place.

  The hand gently touched Christie’s right arm.

  Just a touch.

  Support, human contact.

  * * *

  Christie turned the wheel to the right, just a bit, so as the car went down, it now slid as well.

  She’d have to try the brake even if that made the car slide.

  It was just going too damn fast.

  Christie felt herself sucking in air, gasping, hyperventilating from the craziness.

  Back to the brake, the flat dirt road yards away.

  Just a touch.

  One, two. Which made the car veer more to the right, too much. The worst angle to be hitting the flat dirt road.

  She turned the wheel to the left.

  Now with the combination of tapping the brake and adjusting the steering wheel, she had a better angle for hitting the flat area.

  No guarantee that the car wouldn’t continue moving, sliding, ultimately rolling over the edge and down the hill.

  Then the front right tire finally hit the flat dirt road, and it made the car pivot, a jerking near stop. The other front tire followed.

  Another so-quick tap of the brake.

  A slide onto the dirt road.

  Then the right rear tire hit the road. Another lurch due to the sudden change of angle.

  Until the last rear tire hit the flat, and the car began moving on the road, but Christie knew, with enough momentum that might still carry it over the edge if she didn’t have control of the car.

  But Christie didn’t know what to do, how to arrest the inevitable slide.

  Helen finally spoke.

  “Gas.” The word shot out. Then, quickly, as it registered: “Give it gas.”

  Christie had held her foot suspended over the brake to give those quick taps as she aimed the car down.

  Now she moved her foot over the accelerator pedal, making sure that the wheels were turned the slightest way in, toward the hill that they had just come down.

  And then—

  Then …

  The car moved along the dirt road as if nothing strange had just happened at all.

  The dirt road curving a bit as it circled the hill.

  Christie had to stop.

  If she didn’t stop … she’d scream.

  Or break down.

  Had to stop.

  If only for a moment.

  And as she let the vehicle slow down, she kept repeating to herself, in her mind …

  We’re safe, we’re safe, we’re safe …

  40

  The Farm

  Kate took one more look at the giant cavern that was the garage.

  Either Simon went back upstairs while she wasn’t looking or he had hidden in one of the openings that led to the stone tunnels that ran under the building.

  She didn’t want to go in there.

  And for a moment, she was frozen, standing in the chill of the underground area, growing more irritated and also wanting more than anything to get out of there.

  But she had to look in the tunnels.

  Maybe he wouldn’t have gone far. He couldn’t want to get in trouble again, and Mom would be coming back soon.

  She walked toward the closest entrance, which looked like a cave, the opening surrounded with giant stones.

  Frightening. But she had to take a look.

  Thinking that when she found her brother, she’d like to smack him …

  All she could hear were her own steps as she moved to the entrance, and then, with just the slightest hesitation, inside.

  * * *

  “You okay, Christie?”

  Christie had stopped the car, hands still locked on the steering wheel, not believing what she had just done, that somehow they had survived the crazy careening down the hill.

  “I’m—yeah—I’m okay.”

  “Don’t think … we should stay here. We’re not that far away. From the road. Some of them … could have followed.”

  Christie looked up at the rearview mirror.

  She thought of the line of cars. How many others did what she did, were somehow able to pull out of the line, get away?

  The narrow two-lane road clogged in all the panic …

  No way to turn around.

  Then a question: Why did we come that way?

  It was as if—it had been planned.

  “Right. We better leave. Okay.”

  She took a breath. Her head tingling, as if an overdose of adrenaline still rampaged through it, a narcotic.

  Nothing had felt like this. Even that night in the camp.

  Then: she remembered that she had quickly looked straight ahead, over the crest of the next hill, down to a small valley.

  Saw a building.

  No—a complex.

  So close.

  A quick roll down the hill and they would have been there. Smashing into the warehouse.

  Was that the place? Where all that food was supposed to be that they had come for?

  She looked at the building.

  Lights on outside.

  She tried to understand what she was seeing, the meaning so slow to come.

  Just the images, taking them in.

  Then, she understood what she saw.

  “Christie, we going?”

  Men with guns at one end as a line of people were led in, under guard, into the warehouse.

  The men guarding them.

  All the men, shadowy figures. No telling who any of them could be. No way at all.

  Off to the side, other figures—these now recognizable if only by how they walked, how they gathered together.

  You face enough Can Heads and you begin to sense how they act, that jerky, feral way they moved.

  Like clumsy cats, crazed tigers whose hunting movements are marred by spasms, shaking.

  Almost as if they had an electric prod buried in them and every few seconds—as they moved—someone gave them a nerve-twisting jolt.

  “Helen—look down there. What’s that?”

  She waited.

  “What?” Helen said.

  Seconds of quiet.

  Then: “Jesus. I—I—”

  “Those are Can Heads to the side, and the guys with guns, those people … they’re marching into that—”

  (Factory. Warehouse. Farm.)

  “The men. The guards. From the inn. What the hell.
”

  Christie said nothing for a second. But she reached down and shut off the car’s lights, suddenly worried that she had sat up here so long with the lights on.

  She turned to Helen.

  “It was a trap. The Can Heads. Working with those men—controlled by them.”

  “That can’t be,” Helen said.

  “Look.”

  They both could see.

  The line of captured men disappeared into the giant building.

  The horde of Can Heads, like rabid dogs, milled about outside.

  One of the men with a gun fired a shot into the air.

  Another door opened at the back.

  Christie couldn’t move, couldn’t simply drive away.

  Not yet.

  She had to watch.

  Had to.

  * * *

  Into the cave.

  Overhead lights made it so she could see part of the way into the tunnel.

  But the small pool of light would end, and then before the next ceiling light, Kate had to cross some shadows, totally dark.

  She still kept her voice low, even though there didn’t seem to be anyone down here at all.

  “Simon.” A bit louder now. “Simon, where the hell are you?”

  Walking deeper into the tunnels.

  Until she knew she couldn’t go any farther into this lonely scary place.

  Even if her dumb brother was in here.

  Just a few more steps and she would turn around.

  Back upstairs, to where he was probably hiding in the closet.

  Laughing his stupid head off.

  Idiot …

  * * *

  Christie watched the warehouse door open and two men tolled out a large wheelbarrow as the Can Heads, weaving and bobbing but not attacking anyone, waited.

  Something in the wheelbarrow.

  Impossible to tell.

  Could be anything.

  Just something in a wheelbarrow.

  The two men moving the wheelbarrow stopped by the man who had fired the gun.

  The Can Heads still standing away.

  Until they dumped the wheelbarrow and something went sloshing onto the ground.

  The men with the wheelbarrow quickly pulled back, now joined by a man with the gun.

  As the Can Heads matched the men’s retreat, and now approached the pile of whatever had been dumped on the ground.

  “Oh my God,” Helen said.

  She turned to Christie.

  “We have to get out of here now. And keep the headlights off.”

  Christie still watched the scene.

  Something inside her said she needed to understand this, so she kept watching.

  * * *

  Kate stopped.

  She pressed her back against the wall, the stone cold, feeling damp even through her clothes.

  She heard voices.

  Two men. The voices deep, echoing in the outer garage, filtering in here, their words not clear at all.

  Almost like barks.

  Like dogs, quietly growling, making sounds at each other. Grunts.

  She didn’t move.

  If Simon was here, would they find him and they’d get in more trouble?

  Maybe … yes, maybe—she thought—she should just come out.

  Be honest. Tell them that she was just looking for her dumb brother.

  And they’d say: You mean, that brat one who went up the mountain and almost got people killed?

  Yeah.

  That one.

  Her hands still pressed against the stone. Feeling the indented areas, the smooth curve of the stone blocks, cool, wet. Time to walk out of this tunnel.

  When she heard, from outside, from far away … a gunshot.

  Then another.

  And suddenly moving didn’t seem like such a good idea.

  41

  The Prisoners

  At the far end of the warehouse, whatever this building was, doors flew open.

  A pool of light from inside spilled into an open area, surrounded by fences.

  “Christie, we’d better go.”

  “Hang on. Just a minute—”

  Something happening here.

  Somehow—she knew it was important. To see this, understand this.

  The open doors. People being led out.

  No.

  More like herded.

  The men with the guns surrounding them, making sure they stayed together, that they didn’t move.

  And Christie felt that it was all wrong before she could really understand it. Some instinct kicked in as her mind raced to catch up.

  To see, then to understand that the men with guns weren’t herding people, that these weren’t the men from the inn that had come here to raid food and supplies that clearly didn’t exist.

  Into this trap.

  That the people she was looking at, in the fenced-in area, were actually children.

  Her fist went to her mouth, the understanding kicking in, as sick and twisted as it could be.

  Then, one bit more of understanding.

  A terrible clarity.

  She moaned in the car: “Oh, please, no…”

  * * *

  Gunfire around the building.

  Kate’s palms pressing flat against the stone.

  Why would anyone be firing guns?

  Most of the men, the guards who kept this place safe, had gone with the others, with her mother.

  Just a few left.

  Now this shooting?

  It could mean—the thought registering clearly now—only one thing.

  We’re being attacked.

  Only this time, with so many of the others away.

  Kate removed her hands from the stone as if prying them away, freeing herself from the curves of the cool stone wall.

  The men in the garage began shouting. No gunfire there yet.

  Were the men shooting from the house or—?

  And: what should she do?

  Then, from behind, the slightest sound echoing from behind her down the twisting tunnel that must lead to the distant back of the property.

  Other noises.

  A clattering sound.

  Things being pushed, moved, and not too far away.

  Kate started looking around the tunnel, where she was trying to quickly figure out what her options were.

  Thinking … do I even have any options?

  * * *

  “What is it?” Helen asked.

  Christie released one hand from the steering wheel to point at the far end of the warehouse, to the open area, the pen surrounded by fences, the men with guns.

  She could barely say the word: Children.

  It took Helen only a moment to see, then, “Oh, sweet Jesus.”

  In those moments, Christie had taken the images in, and now understood what she saw.

  “They’ve captured children. They’re keeping children.”

  Helen shook her head. “No. They can’t. That can’t—”

  Christie threw the car into reverse to pull back from the edge. Then the Honda rocketed back, stopped by a sharp brake.

  Then, she threw the car into drive and they started moving ahead.

  “What are they doing?” Helen asked.

  Did she really not understand, or was it just too unbelievable for the woman to grasp?

  “They’ve captured children. Holding them there. Under guard.”

  Christie didn’t say the obvious.

  “But why children? They just captured a bunch of our men. I don’t—”

  The dirt road curved around, and in a moment the car vanished into a wooded area, on this road she hoped led somewhere.

  “Like…” Christie said, so obvious now … “livestock. Growing them. Maybe they’re easier to move, to control. I don’t know.”

  “We have to do something.”

  The dirt road straight, and now running away from the hill overlooking the warehouse.

  Christie threw on the headlights.

 
“For them?” Christie said.

  “We can’t just let—”

  She didn’t get it, Christie thought. Didn’t really understand at all.

  The rest of the horror.

  She was tempted to floor the accelerator, but the road was narrow, with branches still to be skirted, rocks to be passed.

  She could only go so fast.

  “This was a trap, Helen. A trap! The news about all that food inside a warehouse? Just to get our people here.”

  Helen got it.

  “Oh, God. The inn.”

  “Right. The inn, left almost defenseless. All our kids there, all the young people. For them to capture.”

  Christie couldn’t believe the words she was saying as she pictured her own two kids, the only two people in the world her mind would let her think about, worry about.

  Back there.

  On their own.

  Helen’s next words were spoken quietly, calmly, filled with the grim meaning of their journey back to the inn.

  “Drive as fast as you can.”

  * * *

  Kate looked to where one pool of light ended, just catching the curve of another tunnel that split off from the main passage here.

  The sounds seemed to be coming from straight down the tunnel.

  The jangling, crashing noises had stopped.

  The thought:

  They’re in.

  Whoever was trying to get in … was.

  She would have only seconds to do something.

  Kate looked at a smaller tunnel that led off to the side.

  If she ran to the garage, she would be between the guards and whoever was coming inside.

  And so—though going into the small tunnel meant moving away from the men with guns, from the garage—she moved as fast as she could.

  Thinking that every step had to be so quiet as she entered the smaller tunnel and started looking for a place to hide.

  * * *

  Simon stood at the window of the room and looked out.

  Just below the window, men from the inn had guns out, and started shooting—but they didn’t seem to know what they were shooting at, turning left and right, pointing.

  Their heads also turning, looking out to the nearby woods, over to the other side of the lake.

  He heard their voices.

  But with the window shut, he couldn’t understand what they were saying.

  Simon thought … almost everyone is gone.

  Not a lot of guards here.

  It had seemed like a fun idea to run away from Kate, but now he wished she’d come back to the room.

  He didn’t like being alone here, not with the men outside looking around, their guns out, taking shots at nothing.