Casket For Sale

by Jeff Strand

  Helen’s Side

  “CHOCOLATE CAKE WITH about a gallon of chocolate syrup pour ed over the top,” I said. “What about you, Kyle?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sure you do. You can have anything in the entire whole wide world to eat when we get out of here. So what sounds really, really good?”

  “Nothing.”

  I was desperately trying to keep my children alert and happy. Word games hadn’t been effective, so I’d switched the subject to food.

  We walked slowly through the forest, Theresa following right behind me with her hands on my waist, and Kyle completing the human chain with his hands on his sister’s waist. I tried to keep my tone of voice cheerful, but I also kept a close eye on every single step we took, watching for traps.

  Joe ran alongside of us. I’d carried the pug for a while, but he’d gotten too heavy and I let him go. On one hand, I didn’t want my children to be traumatized by the sight of their beloved pet getting killed in a trap, but on the other hand, I’d rather have Joe accidentally run into a trap than us. And at this point, what was one more trauma?

  “C’mon, Kyle, any food in the world. If you don’t pick one, I’ll make you eat broccoli!”

  “Yuck,” said Theresa.

  “That’s right, yuck. And it will be the biggest piece of broccoli you’ve ever seen. Covered with turds.”

  I was not the type of parent who normally joked about excrement with her children, but I really needed to keep their minds occupied.

  “Mommy, my arm hurts,” said Kyle.

  “I know it does, sweetie. I promise, we’ll get you to a doctor who will make it all better. For now you just have to be my brave little boy, okay?”

  “Okay,” Kyle said without enthusiasm.

  “Now are you going to pick a food or do I have to cook you a turd-covered piece of broccoli?”

  “Maybe a mammoth,” said Kyle.

  “A wooly mammoth?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you want mammoth steak or mammoth stew?”

  Kyle thought for a moment. “I want mammoth pizza.”

  “All right, it’s a nice wooly mammoth pizza for Kyle as soon as we get out of here.”

  What frightened me was that I didn’t know when that would happen. We were admittedly taking it slow, but still, we’d been walking for an awful long time to not have reached the road. I wondered if we were lost.

  “Can I have mammoth pizza, too?” asked Theresa.

  “Sure. Have you ever seen a mammoth? Even Kyle couldn’t eat a whole mammoth pizza all by himself.”

  “And he’s a big snorty pig.”

  “I am not!”

  “Are too!”

  For the first time in my life, I welcomed an argument between my children. But it stopped as Theresa’s voice turned serious. “Mommy, are we going to die?”

  “No,” I told her. “We’re not.”

  “I’m scared that we are.”

  “It’s okay to be scared, sweetie. But we’re not going to die, I promise you.”

  “What if the man who bit Kyle had diseases?”

  “Theresa!”

  “Well, what if he did?”

  “Theresa Lynne Mayhem, stop talking like that. Your brother is going to be fine. The man didn’t have any diseases, and he’ll never come after us again, and none of us are going to die.”

  “Do you think I have rabies?” asked Kyle.

  “No! Damn it, Theresa, see what you did? Kyle, you don’t have rabies. You don’t have any disease. Your arm got bit really bad, and I know it hurts, but it’s going to be fine. There are no diseases you can catch from a human bite.”

  As a parent, I tried to never lie to my children. Sure, Andrew and I did the whole Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, and Tooth Fairy thing, but for the most part I tried to speak honestly and directly with them. This wasn’t one of those times. I was scared shitless that Kyle might have caught something from that monster’s bite, but I couldn’t let my son’s overactive imagination go rampant right now. I had to keep them calm.

  But when Kyle made it to a hospital, he was getting every test in existence.

  “I don’t think you know,” said Theresa, softly.

  I successfully-but only barely-fought back tears.

  The walkie-talkie crackled.

  “Is anybody there?” an unfamiliar voice asked.

  I pressed the button. “Who is this?”

  “This is Officer Trevor Clemens from the Georgia State Patrol. We’ve managed to subdue the assailants who attacked you and your family, but your husband has been very badly injured. Could you give us your location?”

  “What happened to him?” I tried not to sound frantic.

  “He’s been cut. He’s been cut bad, ma’am. We can’t move him until the ambulance gets here. Are you near the road?”

  “I’m… I’m not sure,” I admitted.

  “Are you lost?”

  “I think so.”

  “That’s not a problem, ma’am. We’ll get you out of there. Do me a big favor and give us a shout, okay?”

  I’m embarrassed to admit I almost did it. I opened my mouth, took a deep breath… and then drew the obvious conclusion that I might not really be talking to an Officer Trevor Clemens.

  “Let me talk to him,” I said.

  “Ma’am, he’s unconscious and losing blood fast. I’m not trying to scare you, and I promise we’re doing everything we can, but he may not have much time left.”

  “Shout out to me,” I told him. “I’ll follow your voice.”

  I listened carefully.

  Nothing.

  “Did you hear that?”

  “No.”

  Now a gunshot, far off in the distance.

  “What about that?”

  “Yes, I heard it.”

  “Are we close?”

  “No, but I know which direction to go at least.”

  “Then hurry. Get here as quickly as you can. We’ll be waiting.”

  There was something vaguely sinister in the way he said “We’ll be waiting.” My gut told me I wasn’t speaking to a police officer. I’m sure I could’ve asked some appropriate questions and figured this out for sure, but then I’d risk letting him know what I knew… or at least suspected.

  But whether I was talking to a killer or a cop, one thing was certain: Andrew’s situation was not good.

  Was he really cut and bleeding to death?

  Or perhaps already dead?

  I needed to put that thought out of my mind. Andrew was one hell of a resilient guy. He’d be fine. He could be superglued to a nuclear warhead and he’d find a way out of it. I had to worry about getting Theresa and Kyle to safety.

  I wondered if I should leave them behind. Find a good hiding spot for them and head off on my own. I could move more quickly that way (though still carefully) and not run the risk of taking them right back into the hands of the killers.

  What if I couldn’t find them again?

  They’d be found. We’d call the police, have search helicopters fly overhead, and rescue them. We couldn’t possibly be that far into the woods.

  What if the killers found them first?

  Or wild animals?

  I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t leave them in the forest to fend for themselves. Kyle had almost been taken from me, and I wasn’t going to let him out of my sight again. Hell, aside from restroom and shower breaks, he might stay under my watchful eye until he was eighteen.

  Though I did my best to stop obsessing over it, I was too distracted with thoughts of Andrew to continue playing word games with my children, so we walked in silence.

  At least I knew we were going the right way.

  ***

  JUST AS I WAS starting to unconsciously grow comfortable walking through the woods, I saw another fishing line. We gave it wide berth.

  Something moved next to us.

  I gasped and stopped in my tracks. Theresa walked into my back. “Mommy!”

  “
Shhh!” I listened carefully.

  “What was that?” asked Kyle.

  “Shhh!” I repeated.

  “Is it them?”

  “Kyle, be quiet!” We stood there, listening.

  Branches crackled.

  My stomach lurched.

  The deer bounded past, about thirty feet away. It was gone before I could get a clear look.

  “What is that?” Kyle asked, his voice on the verge of panic.

  “It was just a deer,” I assured him.

  “I didn’t see it! Are you sure that’s what it was?”

  “I’m positive. Theresa, did you see it?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Tell Kyle it was just a deer.”

  “It was just a deer, stupid.”

  “Oh,” said Kyle, uncharacteristically ignoring the “stupid” comment.

  “I hope it doesn’t get killed in a trap,” Theresa said.

  “It won’t. It’ll be fine. Come on, let’s keep going.”

  I kept my hands in front of me so that my kids couldn’t see that they were trembling.

  ***

  “IS THAT THE road?” Theresa asked.

  It looked that way. I had to force myself to maintain our careful pace. It felt like we’d been walking for hours, though I was sure it wasn’t nearly that long, and I didn’t want to get us killed in a last-minute rush.

  As we got closer, I saw that yes, we were indeed approaching the dirt road.

  Or a dirt road, anyway.

  A few minutes later we emerged from the woods. I couldn’t tell for certain, but it did seem to be the same dirt road we’d been on before. I raised the walkie-talkie to my lips and pressed the black button. “Hello?”

  No response.

  “Hello?” I asked again. “Is anybody there?”

  Still nothing.

  That didn’t really mean anything. I could be out of walkie-talkie range, or the cop/murderer might not have it on him.

  At this point, there wasn’t much we could do but walk along the side of the road. At least now we could pick up the pace without worrying about death traps.

  “Where are we going?” Theresa asked.

  “We’re going to try to find that store,” I told her. “I’m sure they’ll have a real phone there.”

  “Are we going the right way?”

  “Yes,” I said, though I wasn’t one hundred percent sure.

  We walked for a few minutes, Joe bounding happily along beside us.

  Then I heard a car approach.

  We got off the road and ran back into the forest. As Joe trotted past my legs, I scooped up the pug and carried him with me as we moved about fifty feet into the woods and ducked down out of sight.

  This was the tricky part. We wanted somebody to help us, but we couldn’t trust anybody. At the bare minimum, though, we needed to stay out of sight until we made sure it wasn’t a green truck.

  It was a black limousine.

  It seemed pretty darn unlikely that anybody associated with the killers who were after us would be driving that kind of car, but I remained hidden.

  The limousine drove slowly. Almost too slowly. Though I couldn’t yet see who was inside, I could tell the windows were down. On this hot, bug-laden road, there wouldn’t be many vehicles driving slowly with their windows down unless they were looking and listening for somebody.

  So the question was, was this somebody I wanted to find me?

  Just as the car crossed in front of us, Joe barked.

  I slammed my hand over the dog’s mouth.

  The limousine stopped.

  The door opened, and a woman got out. She was dressed entirely in red, and certainly didn’t look like part of Ogre’s team. But she also wasn’t a police officer.

  Who was she?

  Maybe she was an innocent driver who just happened to be passing through, and the police recruited her to help out while they took Andrew to the hospital.

  But why would anybody drive a limousine to a campground?

  Of course, I didn’t know that this road led only to Wreitzer Park. It could lead to a top secret government facility, for all I knew.

  “Helen?” the woman called out in our direction. “Helen Mayhem?”

  We stayed silent.

  “I just heard from the police. Your husband is in stable condition. He’s going to live.”

  She shut the door of the limousine and slowly walked toward the woods.

  Could I trust her?

  If I didn’t trust somebody, the kids and I could end up walking around forever.

  The woman paused at the edge of the woods, peering intently.

  It didn’t feel right.

  She let out a whistle. “Here, doggie!” she called. “Here, doggie doggie! Good doggie! Come here!” She whistled again.

  Joe struggled in my arms. Rotten disloyal pug.

  “Heeeeeere doggie! I’ve got a treat for you!”

  Joe was struggling too much. If I didn’t let him go, he’d attract the woman’s attention.

  I released him and Joe ran toward the road. I placed a reassuring hand on Kyle’s shoulder so he wouldn’t call out.

  Joe ran out of the woods and over to the woman. She knelt down, scratched his head, said a few baby-talk words I couldn’t quite hear, and picked him up. She opened the limousine door and put him inside. Then she shut the door and looked back in our direction.

  “Helen?”

  “Stay right where you are,” I whispered to Kyle and Theresa. “If I tell you to run, run back into the woods, but don’t move until I tell you, okay?”

  My children nodded.

  I stood up and crawled away from them, not toward the road. Hopefully I’d make it a safe distance from them before the woman saw me, and there was enough cover that if she decided to whip out a gun and open fire, I’d be reasonably well-protected.

  If she came after me… well, I’d beaten Ogre, and I could beat her.

  I crawled for a couple of minutes, until I heard the limousine door open again. Then I stood up. “Hey!” I shouted.

  The woman closed the door and turned back to look in my direction. “Helen?”

  I waved at her. “Who are you?”

  She walked toward the woods. “My name is Tracy. Man, am I glad to see you! I can’t tell you what a messed-up day it’s been!”

  “Don’t come any closer!” I warned.

  She stopped. “That’s fine, that’s cool. I’m just here to take you into town. Where are your kids?”

  “How did you get involved?”

  “Just driving through, minding my own business.”

  “In a limo?”

  She shrugged. “Picking up a client. One of those rich schmucks who go camping with satellite TV and an Internet connection.”

  “When will the cops be back?”

  “No idea. They’re incompetent around these parts.” She glanced at her watch. “Look, I know you’re suspicious and stressed out and all that, but I’m getting eaten alive by these damn bugs and I’m gonna lose my job if I don’t get you to the hospital and then pick up my client.”

  She seemed nice enough, but this didn’t feel right. I’ve always had a really good internal bullshit detector (an absolute necessity when you’re married to Andrew Mayhem) and though it wasn’t sounding a red alert, it was definitely beeping.

  I couldn’t trust this lady.

  So now what?

  I cautiously backed away, and then screamed in surprise and agony when something snapped shut over my ankle. As I fell to the ground, dropping the walkie-talkie, I saw it was a wolf trap.

  Chapter Seventeen

  THOUGH THE RUSTY jaws of the wolf trap were flat rather than jagged, t he pain was so intense it brought tears to my eyes.

  I blinked away the tears, gripped the jaws of the trap, and tried to wrench it open. The trap opened most of the way with a creak like teeth against a chalkboard… and then popped out of my grip and snapped shut over my foot again.

  My reaction was n
ot quiet.

  The trap was attached to a chain wrapped around the base of a large tree, mostly hidden by leaves. Doing everything I could to force the excruciating pain out of my mind, I pried the trap open once again and withdrew my foot.

  It snapped shut with a loud clang.

  I didn’t know if my foot was broken or not, but I did know I wouldn’t be running on it anytime soon.

  I stood up, bracing myself against the tree, and looked back at the road. The woman had entered the woods and she held a gun.

  I wanted to call out to Theresa and Kyle, to scream at them not to move, but that would let the woman know where they were. I prayed they would stay put.

  My breathing was so rapid I felt like I might hyperventilate. I moved behind the tree, even though the pain shooting through my foot was almost worse than giving birth. It wasn’t likely this tree could hide me for long, but it gave me a few seconds to figure out what to do.

  Those few seconds passed without any grand revelation.

  I heard the woman approaching. She wasn’t coming straight toward me, but rather to the side, probably trying to get a good shot without putting herself into harm’s way. If I were lucky, maybe she’d step into a wolf trap of her own.

  A flash of red to my side.

  I pulled out of the way just as a shot fired. It wasn’t a loud gunshot, but more of a swish. Another shot, and a dart slammed into a tree next to me.

  Still no brilliant plan of escape.

  I sure as hell couldn’t outrun her. The only thing I could do was try to climb the tree. Fast.

  I reached up as high as I could, grabbed the lowest branch, and pulled myself up. I braced my feet against the trunk and “walked” up, which hurt worse than if Theresa and Kyle had been born simultaneously, but it didn’t matter even if I was shattering every single bone in my leg. If I wanted to survive, I had to climb.

  I screamed a lot, though.

  I got my feet onto the lowest branch and pulled myself onto the next one as quickly as I could. I could almost feel the adrenaline rushing through my veins as I climbed.

  Swish!

  A dart struck the branch inches from my right arm.

  I glanced down and saw the woman running toward the tree. There wasn’t nearly enough branch cover, and I wasn’t nearly high enough for her to miss unless she was a seriously crappy shot.

  I pulled myself up to the next branch, and then my foot slipped. I hung there helplessly for a few seconds.