“Maybe. But you’d think with all the screaming she’d have shown up by now. Is everyone else accounted for?” A.J. looked back at the students crowding around the tent Suze and Mocha were sharing.
With the exception of Rose and Oriel everyone seemed to be present.
Jaci said suddenly, “Aren’t you freezing? Where’s your jacket, A.J.?”
A.J. realized she was freezing. Her teeth were chattering. She hugged herself. “I didn’t have time to grab my jacket.”
Simon rose. “I think we’re okay here now. I’m going to build a fire and sit up, so why don’t the rest of you get some sleep?”
“You can’t sit up all night, Simon,” A.J. objected.
Simon laughed. “I hate to break it to you, but it’s already four in the morning. It just feels like the middle of the night. You’ll all need to be getting up for breakfast in another two hours yourselves.”
A.J. went around the tent and peered into the opening. “Are you okay now, Mocha?”
Suze gave her the thumbs-up sign.
Mocha’s dark head bobbed. “I’m okay. I know what I saw, though. It wasn’t a deer or an elk or a moose or anything like that.”
“Okay. Well, I don’t think we’re going to solve this mystery tonight. Shall we all grab whatever sleep we can?”
There seemed to be fervent agreement on that score. The other students began to slip away to their tents.
“Simon’s going to sit up, so you’re perfectly safe,” A.J. told Mocha.
“Unless it gets him first!” Mocha flopped down on her back and closed her eyes.
“Don’t worry, we’re fine here,” Suze said, which could have been directed to Mocha or to A.J.
“Sweet dreams.” A.J. closed the flap and straightened. “I’m going to get my jacket and look for Oriel. Will you come with me?” she asked Jaci in an undertone.
Jaci nodded. “Of course.” As they headed for A.J.’s tent she said, “It had to be all those ghost stories and the talk about scary movies.”
“And three s’mores.”
Jaci huffed a little laugh.
When they reached A.J.’s tent they found that Oriel was back in her sleeping bag. She frowned into the flashlight beam directed her way.
“All present and accounted for,” Rose said. “Can we get some sleep now?”
“Where were you?” A.J. demanded of Oriel.
Oriel looked mildly affronted. “I was using the ladies’ room.”
The idea of that dark untamed wilderness being referred to as a “ladies’ room” was sort of funny, but A.J. didn’t feel like laughing. “Didn’t you hear all the commotion?”
“Of course.”
“Didn’t you think you should see what was going on?”
Oriel said coolly, “I could tell what was going on. I knew before we all turned in what would be going on. That child eats like a pig. And it seemed to me that there were more than enough people to deal with the crisis.”
Certainly logical. A.J. couldn’t fault her for that, but Oriel’s reaction still seemed peculiar to her, not to mention a little harsh on Mocha. Then again, Rose hadn’t felt the need to crawl out of the tent and see what was happening. Of course, Rose was seventy years old. Maybe she didn’t feel up to staggering around in the middle of a wet, chilly November night. Even now she wasn’t asking questions. Maybe theirs was a normal response.
“I guess we’re okay here.” A.J. turned back to Jaci.
Jaci swallowed a yawn. “Okay. See you all in the morning.”
“Night.”
A.J. crawled back into her tent and pulled off her boots. Her tent mates were already turned on their sides and hunkered down in their bedding, determined to make the most of what remained of the night.
A.J. slithered into her sleeping bag, which smelled ever so slightly and comfortingly of Jake. She turned out the flashlight.
Rose’s muted snores drifted gently into the night.
Morning was wet and gray and came all too soon.
Simon’s tending had produced a brightly blazing campfire to greet the washed-out dawn. A pot of coffee was boiling over the flames and a kettle of oatmeal with walnuts and apple pieces simmered away.
“This is wonderful. Thank you,” A.J. told him. She hugged herself. “Is it colder this morning?”
“It is. Yep.” Simon shrugged. “I forgot how much I like camping. This was an excellent idea.”
“I hope everyone else still thinks so after last night.”
A.J. drew closer to the fire, holding her hands over the flames.
“You missed the deer,” Simon said, perhaps by way of answer. “Two does and a fawn. They were halfway down the meadow before they noticed us.”
“I wish I’d seen them. Did you happen to check the print marks next to Suze and Mocha’s tent?”
Simon nodded. “I did, but it was too hard to tell in the dark and it rained again just before daylight, so whatever made those tracks, they’re washed away now. From what I saw last night, it looked like deer hooves to me.”
“I hope that kid’s not psychologically scarred for life.”
Simon made a derisive sound. “If she is, it’s nothing that happened on this trip. Want some oatmeal?”
“Shouldn’t we wait to eat until after the morning asanas?”
Jaci wandered up, warmly bundled. The tip of her nose was pink. “Coffee?”
Simon nodded to the pot and Jaci sighed in gratitude. To A.J., Simon said, “About the asanas.” He pointed at a formidable wall of clouds moving in from the north. “We’ve had a change in weather conditions.”
“What do you mean?”
“Snow,” Jaci said succinctly.
A.J.’s mouth dropped. “You’re kidding me.”
Simon and Jaci both shook their heads.
“Snow? How soon? I thought this was the wrong time of year!”
“Weather malfunction,” Jaci said. She sipped her coffee.
“We should have breakfast and get going,” Simon said. “There’s no cause for panic, but we don’t want to mess around either. Most of us aren’t dressed for snow.”
A.J. nodded. “Okay. Let’s eat and pack up.”
By then the other students were making an appearance. A.J.’s news that they would be skipping the morning exercises was greeted with unseemly warmth.
“Hey, that is why we came, you know!”
The others laughed at her. “Nah, we came for the good company, for the fellowship,” Rose said. There were assents from the group.
“And the veggie s’mores,” Suze put in.
They made quick work of breakfast and quicker work of packing up, and were well down the trail when the skies opened up.
Rain, even slushy rain, was a lot better than snow, but it was still not optimum weather for mostly inexperienced hikers.
“There are some abandoned houses up ahead,” Simon told A.J. “We can shelter there for a bit. Have our morning snack.”
“Abandoned houses? That doesn’t sound very safe.”
The Pinelands were supposed to be the ideal hunting ground for those interested in ghost towns and ruins. In addition to graveyards and iron bogs and overgrown railroad tracks there were many crumbling foundations and tunnels of some of the industries that had once thrived there: lumber and paper mills, iron works, glass and munitions factories—more than forty-five industrial towns. And there were homes. Everything from farmhouses to stately mansions, all of them—with the exception of historically preserved and maintained Batsto Village—in various states of disrepair.
“I’m not suggesting we explore very far, but maybe we can wait out the worst of it.”
“Unless the worst of it is still to come,” Jaci said, joining them.
“True.”
Suze joined them. “What’s up?”
“How’s Mocha holding up?” A.J. asked.
“She could use a rest. We could all use a rest.”
A.J. nodded, combing the wet hair out of her eyes. “Okay. Let’s find a pla
ce to hole up long enough to catch our breath.”
They continued down the increasingly slick and muddy road. Houses slowly materialized out of the rainy mist ahead of them, silvered by time and weather. The group strung out single file along a tumbled stone wall till they came to an opening that had once held a gate. They went up the path overgrown with weeds.
The roof was gone from the porch at the front of the house, but the steps and floorboards on the porch itself looked reasonably solid. Simon went first, shone his flashlight inside the building, and nodded approval. The rest of the group went cautiously up the stairs, following him into the black square mouth of the house.
The instant relief of being out of the pounding rain faded as flashlight beams played over peeling wallpaper, spiderwebs, and a pile of rubble. The windows were boarded up, but not very efficiently. Gray light filtered through the boards and pinpointed a broken rocker and another doorway leading deeper into the house.
The rain thundered down on the tin roof.
“Snack time,” Jaci announced brightly, and there was nervous laughter.
It smelled weird and unwholesome, like freshly dug graves and rotting pantries and nesting animals.
“Well,” A.J. said. “It could be worse.”
“How so?” inquired Oriel.
“The building could be on fire.”
“Not for long. Wow. Look at it coming down.” Suze stood at the front door gazing out at the sheet of rain.
“How long is this going to go on?” someone asked.
Simon looked at A.J. and shook his head. “Hopefully this will only last a few minutes,” A.J. said. “But we won’t melt if we have to keep moving. It would be preferable if we didn’t have to do it in a downpour, but I know we all want to get home before midnight.”
Jaci unscrewed the cap of her canteen and took a swallow of water. The others began to follow suit.
Suze used her backpack as a makeshift seat. Jaci and Simon both had backpacks that converted to camp stools. The others dropped their packs and began hunting for water and snacks.
A.J. shined her flashlight through the interior door, checking out the next room. It turned out to be a short hallway. The hallway ended in a patch of watery daylight from one of the side rooms. She pulled her cell phone out and walked cautiously down the hall, sweeping her flashlight beam ahead of her. A fat spider disappeared into some dirty, faded fast-food containers.
The sight of trash, a reminder that they really weren’t that far away from civilization, reassured her. They were only an hour or two away from the cars now, so assuming they didn’t get lost in the rain, they’d be home and dry in time for supper.
She checked her phone and was surprised to see she had a signal. Not much of a signal, but she hadn’t expected any. She speed-dialed Jake as she walked toward the light at the end of the hall.
Only she and Simon were carrying phones. The point of the retreat had been to get away from cell phones and pagers and laptops and all the other distractions of their normal, busy lives.
She put the phone to her ear, listening for a ring on the other end, but there was nothing. She looked at the screen but it was still showing signal bars. She dialed again, listening absently as she glanced inside the room at the end of the hall.
One of the rear windows stood wide-open, splintered boards scattered on the floor, so A.J. could see the ruins of a stone fireplace and what looked like an old framed picture hanging on the wall.
How had that picture not been grabbed or destroyed by vandals?
She crossed the floor. Checking her phone she saw that she was now getting the No Service message. Not exactly a surprise.
A rustling sound beneath her feet froze her in her tracks. A.J. stared down and realized that she was near the edge of a gaping hole in the floor. She had mistaken the dark patch for dirt....
Staring down she could see there was some kind of cellar beneath the house and that it was filled with rubble and debris from the caved-in floor as well as a lot of broken furniture and wild vegetation.
She shined her flashlight into the pit and then did a double take as the beam was caught and reflected. A.J. bent closer and then gulped. A pair of eyes glittered back at her from a long, red face.
Fifteen
“A.J.?” Simon called from behind her.
A.J. started, turning from the gap in the floor. “Simon!” “I didn’t mean to startle you. The rain has stopped. I think we—”
She beckoned sharply, cutting him off. “Come and look at this.” Simon crossed the floor in two steps. A.J. shined her flashlight into the dark. “There’s something down there.”
“What? What’s down there?”
“I don’t know, but its eyes were gleaming in my flashlight beam. Can you see it?” A.J. peered down. “I think it was right over there.”
“It was probably a raccoon. They’re all over the place. Or maybe a fox.”
“No. The eyes were too big.” A.J. swore under her breath and moved the flashlight slowly in the area where she had thought she’d seen something staring back at her.
“How big do you think it was?” Simon sounded more patient than interested.
“Big. I mean, maybe human-sized. Just for a second I thought I saw . . . features.”
She could feel him staring at her in the gloom. “Human features?”
“Yes. Well, I can’t say for sure. It was just a split second and then you called my name.” She tried again to probe the darkness with her flashlight beam, but nothing reflected back. It probably had been a raccoon or a possum. The reflected light could have given an illusion of size.
“That’s interesting,” Simon said politely, “but I think we better seize this moment to get moving before the rain starts again. Besides, if what you saw was a wild dog or something on those lines, we don’t want it following us down the trail.”
“Right.” A.J. stepped back. She clicked her phone off.
“I was hoping we could call ahead and let someone know what’s going on, but I can’t get enough of a signal.”
“No. Signal is hit-or-miss out here. When we get to the cars, we’ll be able to phone. But we’re not late yet. In fact, we’re making pretty good time.”
That was because no one wanted to spend a minute longer in the rain and mud than they had to.
A.J. agreed and with one final, reluctant look at the opening in the floor, she followed Simon back to the main room where everyone was donning their packs and hoods.
“I would kill for a hot pizza right about now,” Rose announced and Mocha concurred in heartfelt tones.
“I’d kill for a hot bath,” Oriel said as they shuffled onto the porch.
They went down the steps and picked their way through weeds and broken walkway back to the opening in the wall and the trail beyond.
Though the rain had stopped at least for now, wet dripped from pine needles and beaded bare limbs. The plops sounded loud in the vast silence. Their footsteps made dull thuds on the soggy ground.
They walked in a straggling group, two and three abreast, and no one had much to say.
Something wet touched A.J.’s nose. She looked up as a soft feathery bit of white drifted down and evaporated against the ground.
It was snowing.
At the head of the group, Simon urged everyone to pick up the pace.
Groans and mutters followed this advice until someone pointed out the snow lazily floating down.
That was the incentive everyone needed. They sped up, pushing past their fatigue and sore muscles. There was little chatter now.
A bee buzzed past A.J.’s cheek and ploughed into the bark of a tree a few feet ahead and to the right of her. She thought vaguely that it was awfully cold weather for bees when the crack of a rifle split the rain-washed silence.
Pine branches bobbed, pine needles flew, and another rifle shot fractured the rainy afternoon.
Wait a minute, the rational, civilized portion of A.J.’s brain thought. This can’t be happeni
ng. This only happens in movies....
Startled faces were turning her way.
“Hey,” Suze shouted. “There are people here!”
“Holy shit,” Rose yelped. “Someone’s shooting at us.”
Yes. That was it. Someone was shooting at them. All around A.J., students were screaming, running. Of course. That was the normal reaction to being shot at. No normal person was prepared for this, trained for this; A.J. certainly wasn’t.
She joined the terrified flight down the trail. Ahead of her one of the gray sweatshirted figures lumbering beneath a backpack stumbled and clutched her arm, but kept running. There was another of those terrifying bangs that seemed to roll on and on forever echoing through the woods. The cries of the women sounded like frightened birds.
“Get into the trees,” A.J. yelled breathlessly. “Go for the bushes.”
Why hadn’t they stuck close to home? The Skyland region had plenty of beautiful places to camp and commune with nature. Why had they decided to head for the Pine Barrens? Everyone knew the Pine Barrens were a weird and dangerous place.
They dived into the greenery lining the road and vanished—although the sounds of fear and alarm could still be heard as they thrashed around seeking hiding places.
A.J. found herself kneeling in a bed of pine needles behind a thick fallen tree trunk with Jaci and Suze. “Where’s Simon?”
Jaci shook her head. Beneath the cheerful red cap her face was bone white.
A snowflake landed on the log—and stuck. Another drifted into place beside it.
Suze said through chattering teeth, “He grabbed Mocha. I think they’re behind that big cement pillar.”
“Could this be an accident? Is it hunting season?”
Jaci and Suze said at the same time, “Not for rifles!” Not for rifles? What did that mean? Then what was happening here? Why would someone fire at them? Were they inadvertently trespassing? It made no sense. No one could possibly think they could kill eleven people and get away with it—and certainly not this close to the outside world.
The rifle cracked twice more. This time its report was met with dead silence. The only stirring was the slow, steady drip of wet from the trees to the ground.
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