Girl in a Bad Place

by Kaitlin Ward

  I hope Cara’s okay. We can’t both die in this place. I tell myself there’s no way that’ll happen because the alternative is too dark to even contemplate.

  As scared as I was before, it’s not until this moment, locked away here in this empty square of concrete, that I truly realize how dangerous of a situation we’re in. I should never have agreed to come in the first place. The second I saw this building, I should have high-tailed it back to civilization, called someone to come get me, and told my parents I thought Cara was in danger. If I’d done that, we wouldn’t be in this mess now.

  Why did I think I could save her all by myself? The moment I set foot in that commune on Friday, I was trapped. And I didn’t even know it. Once I became part of this whole event, there was no way Firehorse would ever have let me leave.

  I just don’t want this slab of concrete to become my tomb.

  I have been in here for five hours. Which I know because every so often I turn my phone on and check the time. I’m going to have to stop doing that, though, because I’ve drained my battery down to 17% and I don’t want it to get any lower.

  My mind cycles over and over through what I could have done differently. Sometimes it goes all the way back to the mall, to saying no way to coming here in the first place. Sometimes I just replay the part where Alexa caught us. Pointed the gun at my face.

  Gavin made so many jokes this summer about teaching me to shoot a gun so I could go hunting with him this fall. I laughed it off because nothing about that has ever appealed to me the tiniest bit, but what if I’d let him teach me? I could’ve taken Alexa’s pistol, I would’ve known what to do with it when I had it in my hands.

  Of course, that would mean I was okay with killing a person, and I think it’s one thing to wish you could have done it and another to be in that situation and actually pull the trigger.

  I feel shaky and weakened. It’s probably been ten or twelve hours since I’ve had anything to drink. It’s not that long in the scheme of things. But I don’t know when—or if—I’ll get water again. My throat feels closed up, my limbs like gel. I keep telling myself over and over and over again that I’m not going to die, but I’m having a hard time believing myself anymore.

  Six hours and fourteen minutes, and I’m at 15% battery. I feel like the walls are closing in around me, like the oxygen is leaving the air. Maybe the oxygen is leaving the air. Am I exhaling more quickly than the oxygen can leach in from outside? I press my face to the crack in the door and cup my hands around my mouth, trying to force my breath outside.

  My chest constricts and I realize it’s not that the oxygen is leaving the air, it’s that I’m panicking. My lungs feel like limp balloons. I slide back down to the floor and concentrate on breathing like normal. I’ve been breathing my whole life. It shouldn’t be this hard.

  Panic turns to despair and I can breathe again but I’m lying facedown on the rough, cold floor and I can’t find any reason to move. I try to think about people I love. That’s what’s supposed to give me courage, isn’t it? Otherwise, how come villains in movies are always using superheroes’ loved ones as leverage?

  I peel myself slowly off the floor and pound on the door with the edge of a balled-up fist. The sound is so muted, I doubt it can even be heard on the other side. Fury rises inside me, twisting and building like a storm. I will not be shut away like this. I will not be killed.

  I back up until I hit the wall opposite the door, and from there, launch myself with all my strength at the thick sheet of metal barring me from freedom. My shoulder slams into it with a satisfying thud, but then pain explodes down my arm. If someone was right nearby just now, maybe they heard. But the odds of that are not so great. I rest my forehead against the cool, smooth metal and let out a long, slow sigh.

  It might be time to face how truly and completely I am trapped here.

  Nine and a half hours, 11% battery. I’m curled up in a ball in the middle of the floor, shivering and whimpering. I’m not sure if I’m shivering because I’m cold or afraid or stunned. I wrote good-bye notes in the memo app on my phone. One to my parents, one to Gavin, one to Cara. I wanted to do more, but 11% battery feels dangerously low. I have now forbidden myself to turn it back on unless death is truly imminent.

  It feels imminent.

  But it isn’t; not yet.

  I have maintained willpower and my phone has stayed off. I have no idea what time it is. It might have been five minutes or five hours since I last checked. Time has no meaning when you are lying on your back, staring into an abyss of blackness from which you cannot escape.

  It’s surprising how quickly I lost hope. I thought I’d hold on to it longer. For the first few hours, I pounded and screamed a lot. But it’s like the blackness in here has siphoned all the energy from my limbs. Now I just feel numb. No one can hear me. No one knows where I am. No one is going to save me.

  I close my eyes and fall asleep.

  Someone is nudging me with their foot.

  “She’s not dead, is she?” A panicked whisper near my ear.

  “I’m alive,” I groan. My eyes open slowly. Light comes in from the doorway. The door is open! It’s dark out, but after the soul-deadening blackness of my enclosure, the night sky looks bright as the sun.

  Standing over me are Finn and Brigit. I sit up, backing fearfully into the corner.

  “Nice to see you, too,” Finn mutters. “You’re welcome for saving you.”

  “Saving me?” I’m trembling. Brigit holds out a water bottle. I take it because I’m so thirsty and if she’s poisoning me … well, if they’re here to take me to Firehorse, I’m dead anyway. It hurts to see Brigit working with Finn, though. I thought she and I were starting a friendship.

  “Yeah, we thought it’d be kind of crappy to just let you die.” Finn’s sarcasm is not appreciated.

  “But Cara saw those guns in your tent. And you shared the tent with Brian. You’re not … I thought you were one of Firehorse’s … special pets.”

  “Well, I’m not. Firehorse said he’d found those guns in your car. He asked me to keep them safe. Should’ve known there was no way either of you would have assault rifles, but I didn’t, and that’s that. Look, I don’t have time to convince you. We’ve got to get out of here. I assume he was planning to let you die in here, but if he wasn’t, I don’t want to be around when he comes to get you.”

  I don’t trust him, but for the moment, I have no choice. I glance at Brigit, hoping for reassurance.

  “You can trust him,” she says, “at least, I’m pretty sure.”

  Not exactly the reassurance I craved, but it’ll have to do. Brigit holds out a hand to help me up. I take it.

  “After you and Cara took off, and Firehorse tore after you with his inner circle, some of us got suspicious. I mean, you know I was already suspicious. But … more of us.”

  “Especially since a couple of us who thought we were in his inner circle were left behind,” Finn says bitterly.

  “Right, yeah. And while he was away, we found some information in his tent.”

  I breathe easier when we’re outside of the concrete structure, but barely. We’re still completely vulnerable. “Wait.” I yank off the necklace. “These have tracking devices in them.”

  “Of course they do,” Brigit says bitterly. She tosses her own necklace into the structure after mine. Scowling, Finn does the same.

  “Sorry, I interrupted,” I say. “What did you guys find?”

  “Stuff that indicates he thinks he can somehow trigger the world into a self-made apocalypse by killing all of us, then shooting at the cops who arrive, whenever they arrive, and escaping and trying it all over again somewhere else. Till it works.” Brigit’s mouth sets into a hard line. “And I don’t know who he’s planning to frame for it, but I know I don’t want to be the only black girl in the vicinity when it happens.”

  Can’t really blame her.

  “What I don’t understand,” I say, “is what Cara has to do with everything. W
hy is he so fixated on her, specifically?”

  “We were wondering that, too,” says Finn. “I wondered from the very beginning. He was obsessed with her right away. He was so pleased with Alexa for finding her.”

  My heart hurts a little, hearing that. “Is that why you were flirting with Cara? Just using her to figure it out?”

  I might need him right now for the safety of the herd or whatever, but that doesn’t mean I have to approve of who he is as a person.

  “At first, a little,” he admits. “But I like her. If we all make it out of here, then … this isn’t really what we need to talk about right now, though, is it?”

  “I guess not. What’s our plan? What’s happening at the commune?”

  “Firehorse has gone completely crazy, is what’s happened. I honestly don’t know what he’s planning to do right now, but you and Cara really messed things up for him. I think he’s still going to try to follow through on whatever plan he’s got, though.”

  “People are going to die,” I whisper.

  Both my companions are grim-faced.

  “Yes,” says Brigit. “And I don’t know what we can do to stop it.”

  “We have to do something, though,” I insist. “I mean, he still has Cara somewhere. And Avalon’s just a little kid. We have to get her out of there.”

  “We got you out,” says Finn in a small voice. “Some of the others … they just fled.”

  I want to lash out at him, scream that it isn’t enough, we have to get Cara, but I know if Cara weren’t involved, I would already think they’d been so brave.

  “I don’t want anyone to die,” I say brokenly.

  “Neither do we,” says Brigit. “But we can’t save them ourselves.”

  She’s right. And I have an idea. “Take this.” I hand her my phone. “Don’t turn it on yet, wait till you’re farther down the road and more likely to have service. The battery is at, like, ten percent. I think it’s a couple miles along when you’ll start to get service. Send a text to Gavin. He’s the last person I texted, so he should be easy to find in my messages. Tell him he needs to call the police but also that the police need to be aware of who Firehorse is and what he’s planning. The police may very well already be on their way. I don’t know. After you text Gavin, you can try calling my parents. Or your own parents. Whoever. Just make sure the cops know he plans to kill people, including them.”

  “And where are you going?” Finn asks.

  I glance up at the cliff.

  “Mailee. What do you think you’re going to be able to do?” Brigit asks. “Please don’t do that. It’s not a good idea.”

  “Maybe it’s not. But I’m not leaving until Cara does.”

  They both look at me like I’m completely insane. Maybe I am. But I’ve never felt so fearless. I’ve never been good at handling adversity, yet here I am, faced with the worst thing I’ve experienced by far, and I’m handling it. And I’m going to keep on handling it.

  “If you’re serious,” says Finn, “then you should take this.”

  He hands me a knife. It’s the kind that folds in half, but it’s not a tiny one. It could do some real damage if it had to.

  “Thanks.” I smile weakly. “Now, get going, okay? And stay safe.”

  “Same to you,” says Brigit.

  Then they both leave me.

  And I’m fine. I turn back to the concrete structure. I wish there was something I could do about it. The bolts in the hinges won’t budge, but with my knife, I manage to unscrew the part of the lock attached to the door. I put it in my pocket. I’ll get rid of it before I’m anywhere near Firehorse again, but I want to be farther away from the building first.

  I crane my neck to check out the rocky ledge in front of me. From here, it looks pretty high. But I think I can climb it. I’m going to climb it. Firehorse won’t be able to see me from this angle. I’ll have the element of surprise.

  Bravery is intoxicating. I get it now. Once you decide to be brave, once you’ve set yourself on that path, there’s nothing to do but continue.

  We have a rock-climbing wall in the gym at my school. I’ve used it before, all harnessed in. I’ve made it to the top four times. This is just like that, minus the harness.

  That’s what I tell myself as I reach for the first handhold. Don’t look down, don’t worry about what’ll happen if you fall, and everything will be fine.

  The climb turns out to be pretty easy. Lots of places to hold on, none of them too narrow. My arms ache and my head swims from the lack of food in my body, but I make it to the top without incident. Trees grow all the way to the edge here. I am, for the moment, completely protected from view. And I take the opportunity to bury my treasure, the lock piece. Take that, Firehorse.

  The victorious feeling from my climb starts to fade as I realize I have no idea what to do now. I should’ve asked Brigit and Finn for more information on where things stand up here before I parted ways with them. Some of the people scattered, they said, but how many? Where’d they go? Which of the ones left are working with Firehorse, and which are terrified and trapped?

  It’s quiet. Too quiet. I creep through the trees until I see the spot where we camped.

  No one’s there. Where are they? I hear voices, faintly, so they’re somewhere nearby, but it makes me nervous that I don’t know. I edge around and duck into the cave to give myself a few minutes to think. Darkness swallows me up almost immediately, because the opening is so narrow. I trip and nearly tumble over something solid and please, please let it not be a dead body.

  Holding my breath, I crouch, reach out my hand, and feel the ground. It’s a backpack or something. Thank God. Quietly as possible, I unzip it and reach inside to see if there’s anything useful. I’m hoping for a bigger weapon, and I don’t know why, because I wouldn’t know how to use this knife to defend myself, let alone anything else. But that’s where I am, I guess.

  Mostly the pack seems to be filled with clothes, but I do find a flashlight. I debate whether or not to turn it on, and settle for turning it on with my fingers over it, so the light it casts is dim and shadowy. I don’t think anyone’ll notice from outside the cave. And if anyone’s in here, they’re dead silent. Which means they already know I’m here, flashlight or not.

  It’s creepy in here, I can’t lie. And I’m pretending that caves aren’t the sort of place where you find spiders, because otherwise, I’ll lose all bravery. I don’t know what I’m looking for as I creep slowly deeper. But I don’t have a better plan.

  The cave is shallow, it turns out. It tapers off abruptly into nothing, and that makes me suspicious. There’s no way Firehorse picked this tiny, random cave for no reason. I realize that being able to see the commune below is a bonus, but it doesn’t seem like that’s all of it.

  I crouch and sweep my flashlight around, looking for clues.

  And I find one.

  A hole in the cave wall, low to the ground and located under the overhang at the back where it’d be easy to miss. I shine my flashlight into it. Should I go in? I’m not super claustrophobic, but the hole is very small. It seems like a pretty big risk.

  Screw it.

  I lower myself through the hole. It’s tight. I think Firehorse could fit, but a bigger man definitely couldn’t. My toes hit dirt, and after I’m sure I’ll be able to pull myself back out, I let go.

  With a sweep of my flashlight, I figure out Firehorse’s escape plan. There’s a pile of rocks sitting nearby, which he could easily build up over the exit to look like it’s nothing. Probably no one will even realize this is here. It’s narrow where I’m standing, but it widens out quickly, and it goes far. I’m guessing wherever it comes out, he’s got a vehicle waiting for him and whoever he’s bringing along.

  The problem is, he’s obviously planning something awful before he flees.

  Part of me wants to stay here. Or to run down this tunnel to its exit. It feels safer, less scary. But I can’t do that. I came here for Cara, I stayed for Cara, and I’m not
leaving without Cara.

  So, with all the bravery I can muster, I drag myself back through the hole. I accidentally drop my flashlight behind me, which means I can’t see a thing. I curse under my breath and press myself against the wall, edging toward the entrance. I think, at least. I know I’ll get there eventually.

  The halo of sunlight that is the cave entrance shimmers before me just as a hand grabs my wrist.

  “Got away, did you?” Firehorse. No.

  He yanks me roughly out of the cave, nearly pulling my arm from its socket. I grit my teeth so as not to make a sound of pain.

  The reason I didn’t see anyone before is because they’re all on the opposite side of the cave I came up from. Near the steep hill that leads to the commune. It looks like most of the escaped commune members have been rounded up, and they all sit quietly, tied up, with guns trained on them by Firehorse’s stupid loyal few.

  Cara’s here, too, and I’m relieved to see her in one piece. Firehorse shoves me hard toward the group. I stumble and fall. When I scramble to my feet and turn back to him, he’s holding an assault rifle. Not aimed at me, but its presence is enough.

  “Why Cara?” I ask desperately, because I don’t know what else to say. “Why did she have to be part of this? Why did you have to have her?”

  Firehorse chuckles, and it sends chills crawling up my spine. Like the voice of the devil. “This was never about Cara. You figured out so much. I’m surprised you didn’t put that together.”

  “What was it about, then, if not her?”

  Firehorse pinches my chin tightly between his fingers. Bruising my jaw. “You, foolish child. I needed you. Cara was only bait.”

  I try not to look at Cara as the world spins around me. “But—”

  “Everyone here has something in their lives that makes them tragic in the eyes of the media. Abuse, loss, abandonment. Our news outlets like when killers have tragic backstories. It helps everyone sleep at night, to wrap themselves in the false comfort of it. But you, you have had a darling life. Your parents, your sweet little boyfriend, your friends, they would all insist that you would never do such a thing as this. And there’s nothing in your history to prove them wrong. People won’t know what to make of it. They’ll be so … distraught.”