by Gin Phillips
He whimpers, although he is also crawling, and she does not want to give him a chance to argue with her and she does not want to give herself a chance to consider what she is doing.
“Make yourself disappear,” she says, already standing, taking an extra second to put her hand on his head—the precious curve of it—as she lets the branches fall. He disappears other than his feet, so she reaches under and bends his legs slightly.
Then she is jogging, a staggering kind of run that makes her feel like a pathetic heroine in a horror movie. She pushes back the pain and makes her strides longer and faster and her knee is irrelevant and there is a beach-ball-sized spider with a lightbulb inside it, hanging from a tree, floppy-legged, incomprehensible. It is smiling around fangs dripping red.
She thinks Lincoln will stay there, both because she has told him to do so and because it is dark outside and he does not know where he is. He is not prone to wandering, especially when he is nervous. He will stay. But noise—that is another issue. She does not trust him to be quiet.
She smashes her feet with as much force as possible. Leaves explode under her feet, turning to dust. She grabs at a passing branch and snaps it in half. She suspects she sounds more like elephant than woman. When she thinks she is a long way away from Lincoln, she cries out, a short staccato ah! that she thinks will carry for a distance. She exhales, long and loud. She holds her hurt hand tight against her belly. She goes back to stomping loudly, moving as quickly as she can, because although she wants to draw them to her, she does not have a death wish.
She can hear the men moving behind her, steadily, making plenty of noise themselves. She feels a rush of satisfaction and bloodlust and fear.
She is past the elephant habitat, and to her left is a nondescript, multistory building with LARGE ANIMAL RESEARCH FACILITY in large letters. The silver gutters and tin roof are shining in the moonlight. She pushes forward, leaves and twigs slapping against her skin. She passes a low-hanging string of pumpkin lights. Her knee throbs, and she thinks of the teacher, of her hobbled movements, and she imagines her safe behind the merry-go-round. She thinks of Kailynn’s hands tugging at her, and she misses the girl’s warmth, and she would not even mind her mindless chatter, and the girl’s hair is so lovely, like red ribbons blowing.
If Lincoln sees a shining light and he is curious—would he move? Or if a bug crawls near him and he runs from it or if he imagines he hears her voice? She is unraveling, the panic catching up to her, and so she runs faster. She thinks of trash cans, solid and safe, and she thinks of how he was an easy baby, good at eating and good at sleeping, but every now and then there would be a spell where he would cry unremittingly and she could not stop it, and she remembers the waves of savage frustration that left her imagining—so briefly—what if I shut him in the closet and left him there? What if the baby’s mother felt that, a thousand times multiplied, terror and exhaustion and frustration, and in one weak second she set the baby away and ran, and can’t Joan understand that?
No. She cannot.
But what if the men were coming close, as they are now? What if that other mother put down her baby and tried to draw the men away? What if that? Joan can see the woman running, hair in her face, arms empty.
She has not been fair to that woman.
There is a give to the ground under her feet. Leaves and mulch and pine straw, she assumes, and then—with her shoed foot—she steps on something different, something that makes her throat close up. It is soft and substantial—the unmistakable feel of flesh and muscle. She jerks back, then realizes that, whatever it is, it is far too small to be human. She peers down, and in the dim light she sees the triangular point of a wing and a rounded head.
A bird. A dead bird.
They have a library book about the ancient Greeks and their sports, and Lincoln has told her that hockey back then was played with a dead bird, and when a team scored a goal, the bird came back to life and flew away.
Lincoln. She forces her feet to move again.
She can hear wind chimes.
Once when her uncle was driving her to the country, she realized the turn signal ticked out the exact tune to a tongue twister she’d just learned—Rub-ber ba-by bug-gy bum-pers / Rub-ber ba-by bug-gy bum-pers—the blinker sang the rhythm of it every time, and it was so clear, so obvious, that the blinker was calling out the words, and now the jingling chimes are ringing out Lincoln’s name, and so are the leaves under her feet—Lin-coln Lin-coln Lin-coln.
She has succeeded—the men are far away from Lincoln now—but she has not thought about this part: how can she get rid of them? She cannot lead them back to Lincoln. And she is not even sure they are still following her. She cannot hear them anymore, actually, not over the sound of her own footsteps and panting breath. She stops.
Nothing. Nothing but leaves and wind chimes.
She does not pause for long. Maybe she has lost the men, but maybe they are still tracking her. Regardless, she has been away from Lincoln for too long. She needs to work her way back toward him, and she can change course if she sees any sign of the men.
It is difficult to make plans while dodging tree trunks and brambles. It is difficult to orient herself—which way should she be going? The trees are all the same. But then she hears the creek as she scrapes her shoulder on the scaly bark of a huge pine tree. She is disoriented enough that she does not know which way leads to the outer fence or which way leads back to Lincoln, but she knows that the creek will take her in the right direction. The sound of the water will help mask her footsteps, and when she spots that hanging spider, she’ll know that he is close by.
The darkness is more complete in this section of the woods. She can no longer make out the ground, and she slows, because she cannot afford to turn her ankle.
She realizes that she does not feel her arm at all anymore, nothing from shoulder to hand, and maybe it should worry her, but it is a pure blessing at the moment. She keeps following the sound of the water, and in the darkness she almost steps into the creek before she sees it. She skids slightly in the leaves and squints down at the water—only a gash in the forest floor. She could easily leap across the entire width of it if both her legs were working properly.
Despite the creek’s narrowness, the bank is several feet high, and it is steep. She cannot tell how deep the water is. It is a shiny black nothing. She thinks she sees a small footbridge farther downstream or upstream or whatever, and she has no idea who would be using a bridge out here, but it is the way toward Lincoln. Then again, does she need to cross the creek? Is Lincoln on this side of the water or the far side? She rubs at her forehead, infuriated with herself, because she needs all her sharpness, all her focus—
She hears feet moving through the woods again, even though she has been so sure that they have lost track of her. She can hear them coming, and she thinks again of her father—his hands were huge—popping heads off doves.
Lincoln, Lincoln, Lincoln. Their feet in the leaves sing out his name, too.
And then she sees them, two shadows walking. They are closer than she expected. She cannot take her time to see if Robby Montgomery is one of them. Instead she drops to the ground, flat-bellied.
Soon their boots will mash her like a dead bird. She lays her palms flat on the ground and pushes, rolling herself down the creek bank, angling herself so that her feet slide into the water first, slowing her.
She goes under the water without a sound.
The cold takes her breath, and she’s squeezed her eyes shut because if she loses a contact lens, she won’t be able to see a thing. But she swipes at her eyes, blinks them open, and once she gets her feet under her, she gets her bearings. The water would barely come past her knees if she were standing, but she is stretched out nearly horizontal, almost submerged. She cannot see past the rise of the creek bank. The shadows are dark and safe. She eases her hands into the water, the creek bed squishing betw
een her fingers, and then she is walking on her hands, seal-like, her body floating behind her.
She assumes there would be bullets if the men had seen her.
The cold water has sharpened her. She is aware of each handprint she is leaving in the creek bottom, each rock against her knee, each spray of water on her cheek, each bit closer she comes to the bridge. She thinks that—if she does not die—she might have been brilliant without realizing it. She can get back to Lincoln like this—floating, not making a sound. She only needs to let the men move past her, and then she can head downstream and find Lincoln.
She gets to the bridge in a few seconds, and then she flips over and backs into the alcove. Her head brushes the bottom of the wooden planks. She is not getting warmer, and she wraps her arms around her knees. There are soft chunks of something—algae?—brushing against her arm, and she does not like that she cannot see what’s under the surface, but that means the men cannot see anything, either.
There is no sound except the rushing of the water. She squats lower. It is warmer to be in the water than to be in the air. The bridge is arched, and she looks out through the semicircle gap between wood and water.
Here they come: she sees two sets of feet on the creek bank. She can see nothing above their knees, because the bridge cuts off her view. One pair of feet leaps over the creek, a long, easy jump, one foot landing and then the other. She is glad that he either did not notice the bridge or thought it was beneath him to bother using it. She waits for the second pair of legs to make the leap, but those legs do not move.
Go on, she thinks. Go on.
But the second man does not cross the creek. Instead the first man vaults back over the water—did he get called back?—and he steps close to the second man, as if they might be talking.
She does not think they would be standing there if they had spotted her. Unless it is still about the game. Trying to flush her out. She slides down deeper, turning her head so that her cheek dips into the water, and she gets a better view of them both. They are facing away from her, and one of them has the thick shape and baggy jacket of Robby Montgomery. The other one is smaller and thin-shouldered. Robby’s friend, she assumes.
So here they are, she thinks. The three of them.
Somewhere out there is the teacher and the girl and Lincoln and the faceless monster in armor and, she supposes, the police. Somewhere out there is a screaming infant in a trash can and a missing mother. Joan thinks about her son and his piles of plastic people and about how sometimes those people are not where you expect them to be. Sometimes Thor has fallen behind a couch cushion and Iron Man becomes the star of your show. Sometimes an arm breaks off the Joker, so you use Poison Ivy as your villain. You recast. You rethink.
The men are maybe two dozen feet away. It occurs to her that she has left her purse somewhere. She is beginning to worry about hypothermia. She thinks of her uncle’s story about how, as teenagers, he and his best friend, Larry, were driving across a bridge over the Tennessee River and a woman going in the opposite direction veered into their lane. Their car crashed through the guardrails of the bridge, and both boys were thrown through the windshield into the river. Did it hurt when you went through the glass? she’d ask. Did it hurt when you hit the water? Did you touch the bottom? Her uncle couldn’t answer all her questions. He couldn’t remember anything from when his head hit the dashboard at the first slam on the brakes until he was stepping up onto the riverbank, his shoes gone. Did you kick them off when you were swimming? Did they get knocked off when you were flying through the air? She was fascinated by what he could tell her—the feel of the slime between his toes and the fact that the woman driving the other car had white hair—but it was the parts he couldn’t tell her that she daydreamed about. She imagined herself there, and she saw all the things that he didn’t remember.
Did you save Larry? she would ask him. Did you yell for help?
I lay there, he would tell her. I just lay there in the mud and I watched.
Her thoughts are drifting again. Her brain is going numb. And her feet are numb, too, numb enough that she is concerned she will not be able to stand, much less walk. She is no good to Lincoln if she can’t walk.
And still the men are only standing there.
No. They are shifting, separating. The thin one is heading away from the water, and Robby Montgomery is grabbing hold of his arm. But the smaller one breaks loose, and there is some other kind of movement that is not clear in the darkness, and then she loses sight of the small guy.
Robby stands for a moment, and she is about to take her chances heading downstream, but then she sees someone else coming. A pair of feet and legs, moving carefully, and Joan recognizes those skinny legs and tight jeans even before she sees the thick mass of hair.
She sees the moment when Kailynn notices Robby in front of her—the girl’s entire body goes stiff. She sees the moment when Kailynn notices that the other gunman is there, too—the girl spins, a quarter turn. She is holding something in her arms.
Joan cannot hear anything that they’re saying. If she backs a little farther under the bridge, she will be unable to see anything.
Maybe it is better that way.
She sinks deeper into the water.
Kailynn nearly screams when the animal darts across the ground in front of her, rattling pine straw, but when it freezes, front paws in the air, she recognizes it. A groundhog. She does not think there’s such a thing as wild groundhogs around here. But there is a whole family of them in the petting zoo, and she guesses that the men have smashed and bashed that building like they did the others, so maybe there are sheep and goats and Shetland ponies running around, too. Now the groundhog is creeping toward her, and she stays still, letting it nudge at her leg. She has never seen the ones in the children’s area do anything but cower against the back wall of their pen, because all the animals in the petting zoo hate children.
Maybe this one is traumatized. Maybe it wants some comfort.
She reaches down very slowly. You’re supposed to hold out your hand to a dog and let it come to you, and she thinks sometimes little kids are the same way and this groundhog is the same way, too. She gets a good grip on it, careful, and the groundhog likes being picked up. It snuggles closer to her as she makes her way through the trees, its little claws catching the ends of her hair. Her little sister does this, too, pressing close and tight when she is scared. Kailynn takes a few steps forward—she has not been running for a while. There’s no point. She doesn’t know where she is, and she doesn’t know where she should be going.
That’s not true. She should be looking for Lincoln and his mother. She should have stopped running five minutes ago when she saw them fall, but she couldn’t make her legs slow down, and when she finally got herself under control, she was all alone. They are probably dead now—that Lincoln had such pretty hair, and he had smiled at her—and maybe they wouldn’t be if she had never brought them into the storeroom. She thought that it was a good thing. She told herself she was doing it to help people, but maybe that is not true. Maybe she only wanted to keep from being alone. Her little sister begged Kailynn not to move into her own room, because her little sister sometimes gets scared in the middle of the night and she likes to snuggle—like a groundhog—but Kailynn is not sure that the begging is why she stayed. How is she supposed to know if she did it for herself or for her sister? Because one makes her good and one makes her selfish, and if she is selfish, then she has probably killed that boy and his mother.
She strokes the groundhog’s head.
She sees a light ahead, and at first she thinks maybe she has found her way back to the main part of the zoo, but then she realizes the light is coming from a wide shape in the middle of the trees, and she slows down as she comes to an army-style tent big enough for ten people. Next to it is a broken-down jeep. The tent is lit from within, and she can see the silhouettes of three men inside sit
ting in a circle, and she is terrified for a moment before she realizes that they are mannequins. Another Halloween display.
She backs away, changing course slightly, getting away from the light.
She wishes she had more animal crackers. Maybe Oreos or Famous Amos. She is hating the feel of her own mouth. Her father would laugh at her for thinking of cookies—she knows he would—and she remembers the time she and her sister were at home by themselves and she was pouring a glass of tea when they heard a loud noise in the den and then a creepy laugh. She and her sister ran to the bathroom, but as soon as they had locked themselves inside, Kailynn realized she’d forgotten her phone, which she’d need if they were going to call the police, so she inched open the bathroom door a tiny bit. There was a man right in front of her—she screamed in that second before she recognized her father, who was laughing and laughing.
He loves to play tricks on them. She thinks it reminds him of when he was a kid, back before he wore suits and sat through teacher conferences and cleaned up cat throw-up. He was a preacher’s son, and he wrecked the car twice before he turned sixteen. He threw baseballs at windows on purpose. He once caught twenty-three cats in one afternoon and swung them by their tails onto a roof.
A hellion. That’s the word he calls his old self. The other kids were terrified of him. The grown-ups were terrified of him.
People say she is a nice girl. She makes mostly A’s and B’s. Hardly ever C’s. She saves her money in the bank. But now she wishes that she were the kind of girl who set things on fire instead of the kind of girl who proofreads her work. She wishes she knew how to scare people. She wishes she had worked yesterday instead of today, and she wishes she carried pepper spray like her mother has told her she should, and she wishes she had an Almond Joy, cold, and she wishes she were home in bed and her pillows were fluffed, and she wishes she had grabbed that little boy Lincoln and run with him and saved him, and she wishes she were a woman in a video game with pistols on her hips and cleavage. She wishes her father could still pick her up and carry her, but she is too heavy.