No Bad Deed

by Heather Chavez

  Brooklyn turned to Damon. “Make sure the kid’s secure, then get rid of Sam’s body.”

  Damon did as he was told. I heard a car start. I tried not to imagine Sam’s body in its trunk.

  It was just me and Brooklyn now, but too much distance stretched between us for me to grab the gun.

  I let Brooklyn usher me out the door, leaving Leo alone in the house. Giving me time to think. Figure a way out of this. Brooklyn walked me back the way I had arrived on the property. The moon caught the drops of dew on the grass so the blades looked like chips of ice.

  She sped up, forcing me forward, and I recognized her purpose. We were headed for the valley oak at the edge of the property.

  I had noticed the tree upon entering, but I had been too distracted to fully grasp its size. The oak must have been several hundred years old, its trunk broad and its limbs reaching a hundred feet into the air. As we drew closer, the limbs filtered much of the moonlight.

  The earth changed here, too, grass becoming weeds. I recognized some of them: the three-petaled tarweed with its sticky leaves, the hairless stems of what I suspected was nutsedge. But most of what grew here had been too trampled to identify, ground into a tangle of leaves, stalk, and stem.

  Within the spears of light beneath the valley oak, there was only dirt.

  On my death walk, I noticed it all. I gulped the air, crisp and sweet, filling my lungs to the point of pain. I teetered on the edge of hyperventilating. But I could not allow myself that weakness. I looked for an opportunity. I saw none.

  At least every step I took with her was a step away from my son. With Brooklyn occupied with me, and Damon disposing of Sam’s body, if Leo regained consciousness, maybe . . .

  Brooklyn continued to herd me, and though she didn’t speak, I heard her breath. Fast. Excited. Reveling in a moment she had probably spent a long time imagining.

  The dark sky, the oak, and this woman all brought me back to that first night on the trail. I tortured myself with every choice I had made, that night and since. In hindsight, I would do so much differently, but I didn’t think I could have stopped this. I was no more in control than the zebra herded into ambush by a pair of hunting lions.

  I hated being that zebra. What could I do now that would save me, and save Leo? But she had me, at least for the moment, and she walked with the confidence of someone who knew it. Even if I managed to overpower her, it had never been my mortality that terrified me. Even if I escaped, it would be pointless if I couldn’t make it back to the house to save my son, or allow him the time to save himself.

  “You won’t hurt him?” I asked, the question catching in my throat.

  “No,” she said.

  We both recognized the lie.

  In her excitement, Brooklyn had allowed the gap between us to narrow. I slowed to bring her even closer.

  Then in the shadows beyond the oak, a nightmare took form. On the ground, a hole. It was impossible to misconstrue its purpose—the rough rectangle stretched as long as a human body. My body.

  Though I hadn’t measured it, I instinctively knew the dimensions were just about perfect. Labor hadn’t been wasted to construct a grave larger than I needed.

  We stopped beside the hole and she stepped in front of me so that we faced one another. Comfortable with her leverage, she nevertheless put nearly ten feet between us, and between her and the edge of the grave. So, unfortunately, she wouldn’t fall in and save me the trouble of breaking her neck.

  “This is where we gardened,” she said. “Dee and me.” She kicked a clod of dirt in the direction of the grave. “You know why we’re here, right? I’d hate for you not to know.”

  I thought of what Red had told me about the night he had taken me from this place.

  “You’re angry because I escaped this place and you didn’t.”

  Her face tensed, her voice angry. “You didn’t escape,” she said. “You didn’t make a decision and walk away. You were chosen.”

  As a toddler, I had no role in what happened back then, but such arguments wouldn’t serve me now. My captor was beyond appeasing.

  “She made me bury my dog here,” Brooklyn said.

  “That story you told me about Hannah’s abuse. That wasn’t her story. It was yours.”

  The photos of Natalie she had shown me too: those had been hers, not Carver’s. She had witnessed my repulsion at seeing Natalie’s broken body even as she planned the same fate for me.

  She glanced at the mound of dirt beside the hole, and her eyes glazed. For a couple of heartbeats, she disappeared into the past, and my foot slid forward. But before I could take another step, her eyes slid back to me.

  “Dee was never very good at keeping her pets alive,” Brooklyn said. “Did you know they found Jerusalem crickets in Natalie’s grave? In the newspapers, they mentioned how she broke her fingers trying to escape, but they never mentioned the bites. Hundreds of them, according to Dee. She used to joke that when the police pulled Natalie from the ground, it looked like she had a bad case of chicken pox.

  “But even if Dee killed her, Carver deserved prison for abandoning her like that. He deserved worse.”

  I heard something then. The scratching of a small animal. I thought of all the creatures that lived here, creatures my corpse would soon feed, and my stomach turned.

  “I think it’s time,” she said. “We haven’t dug Leo’s grave yet, so I’ll have to get Damon on that.”

  Yet? My mind stumbled on that word.

  I had hoped to disable her and, barring that, I had expected a bullet. I had hoped that with me dead, she would have no reason to kill Leo. Too late, I realized a quick death had never been her plan, for me or my son. Pinned beneath the earth, I would die as Natalie had died, but only after she killed Leo.

  From behind, two hands shoved me, hard, on my back. I tumbled face-first into the perfectly sized grave.

  46

  I wasn’t alone in the box. I felt them, even as I heard their scuttling against the wood.

  I probed the edges of the box, pushing against the lid even though I knew it wouldn’t open. There were a few small holes, but they were plugged with dirt, and the earth piled on the box would hold the lid in place as certainly as concrete. I took inventory of my pockets, but apparently I had left my coffin-opener in my other pants. I wished for the scissors Carver had stolen from me. Then again, they had done him no good either.

  I felt them again—the bugs. Hard little shells grazed my calf as several of them breached my pant leg.

  I closed my mouth and screwed my eyes shut. There was nothing I could do to safeguard my thrumming ears.

  The scouting party reached my knees. How many? Five? Six? I pressed my thighs together. I thought of Natalie being buried in a grave like this one, her skin covered in bite marks. My chest grew tight, my skin slick. I struggled to breathe, and this reminded me that my nose was exposed too.

  Another bug, separated from the group, probed my neck.

  I cringed as the insect’s antennae tickled my earlobe. In the dark, I imagined beady eyes set in alien heads, mandibles nibbling, gnawing, scraping.

  But the bugs weren’t the real threat here. I tried to calculate how much time I had before I suffocated, but math wasn’t my best subject, even with a clear head. And my head was far from clear.

  Though math wasn’t my thing, science was. I knew enough of that to realize even as I breathed my limited oxygen, I expelled carbon dioxide, the buildup of which would soon make the air around me unfit to breathe. My respiration and heart rate would become depressed, leading to intoxication, unconsciousness, and, finally, death. How long did I have? I guessed twenty minutes. Maybe less.

  I suppressed the urge to scream. No one would hear, and it would deplete precious air.

  I shifted, startling the bug closest to my head. It bit my earlobe, drawing blood. Had it started the same way with Natalie?

  In that tight space, I had little leverage, but I summoned all I had to throw myself against
the box’s edges. Beneath my legs, I found patches of wood that had gone soft, but located as they were on the coffin’s floor, they were of no use to me.

  My thrashing made the insects angrier. They hissed, and fresh bites bloomed on my legs.

  I tried to be grateful for the bugs and that stupid box. If Brooklyn hadn’t been intent on her very specific torture, she likely would’ve buried me directly in the ground. In that case, I would’ve already suffocated.

  My head ached from the carbon dioxide. Soon, I would get sleepy—was that starting already? My eyelids felt heavier than they had a moment before—and then I’d no longer be capable of making decisions. Next—death. For me and for Leo.

  My lungs cramped. It was pitch black, a night more complete than the one several feet above my head.

  In my grave, the bugs weren’t my only company. The bite of memories was just as sharp.

  Red letting go of the back of my bike, releasing me into the wind. It had been like flying, and knowing he was there, I hadn’t fallen.

  Sam in his hospital gown, reassuring me that he and Audrey would be okay. Though I had always been good with my fists, Sam was the strong one. Had been the strong one. Tears did me no good, but they spilled anyway.

  The kids. Just that.

  Then: a woman yelling at me to shut the hell up, followed by a stinging slap that had cut the inside of my cheek.

  Where had that come from?

  I banged my fists on the wood above me until they throbbed. Then I dropped my arms, a gesture that felt like cowardice.

  I deserved this. I deserved all of it.

  Out there, surrounded by limitless air and a thousand distractions, I could pretend I was blameless. But I wasn’t. I had saved the woman who had killed my husband and abducted my son. I may have been pushed into this grave, but I had allowed myself to be led to its border. The worst of it: I had doubted Sam.

  A bug bit my arm, breaking skin.

  I had been stupid. Reckless. Cocky in my fury. But while I accepted my blame in this, Sam had paid the greater cost. Soon, Leo would, too, unless I stopped wallowing and got out of this box. When the bug bit again, I brought my elbow down on its carapace, crushing it.

  I had taken my death for granted, and then, worse, Leo’s. My head pounded, but I was no longer resigned to what had moments earlier seemed inevitable.

  I would not die in this box like Natalie had, fingers fractured and skin broken by hundreds of insect bites.

  I pushed my legs as far apart as they would go, creating a valley of my thighs. Not daring to hesitate, I brought them together quickly. Some of the insects were stunned, but others bit. I didn’t care if I emerged bearing the marks of thousands of bites, I wasn’t leaving my son to Brooklyn.

  In the darkness, my fingertips took stock of my coffin. It was constructed of old plywood. I let my hands wander along the parts of the box I could reach, searching for more soft spots. Then I worked one of my feet free of its shoe and poked at the bottom of the box with my toe, moving on to probe against the seams.

  The box had been well constructed, but it was only as strong as the materials used to craft it. On my second inspection of the lid, I found a soft patch. Water damage. The wood had long since dried, but it remained weaker in that spot.

  I beat against the lid with my knees and heard a crack. Somewhere. A few more thwacks and dust rained on my stomach. I shimmied upward a few inches, moving my knees as close to the middle as I could. I hoped this would be the spot left weakest by the heavy earth above it. Again, I rammed my knees against the lid. The wood creaked, threatening to split.

  I paused, aware that breaking the box would create another problem. I tried to remember how deep the hole had been before it had been filled with dirt. Once I breached the wood, earth would pour on top of me. But how much dirt? I was pretty sure it had been a shallow grave, but I couldn’t be sure it still wasn’t enough to smother me.

  But I had no other options. I resumed my pounding. Finally, a section of the board cracked, and I pushed it with my knee. I fought the impulse to force it completely free. Again, I was reminded how easily I could be suffocated by an avalanche of dirt, or at least immobilized by the heavy earth upon my body.

  With one knee acting as a fulcrum, I used my legs and hands to push the dirt toward the box’s edge. I worked quickly, with purpose, packing the corners with dirt, seeing moonlight now, my knees throbbing and my fingers raw with the scraping. I shimmied toward the opening, contorting in the cramped space, muscles pulling in directions they weren’t meant to. Shoveling more dirt away, my fingers found the hole I’d made with my knees. I held my breath, screwed shut my eyes and mouth, clods of dirt hitting my face as I reached through the hole. Fighting against the earth’s weight, I pulled myself through the opening. Coughing. Spitting dirt. But free.

  One insect made the journey with me, its mandibles locked on my neck. I brushed it off, then squashed it into the earth with my palm.

  No longer entombed, I stood up and heard the same scratching I had before being pushed into the hole, though it was fainter now. I imagined the bodies of those buried here digging with hands of bone, intent on returning me to my rightful place among them.

  With as much power as I had left in my burning legs, I ran toward the lights of the house, which seemed impossibly far away.

  47

  I entered through the kitchen. It was dark, but all the lights blazed in the living room. Damon’s voice carried. “Carver was a piece of crap—that woman, too, for what she took from you—but I’m not hurting a kid.”

  “You’re an idiot.”

  By Brooklyn’s sharp intake of breath, I guessed Damon had grabbed her. “Yeah, I think I am.”

  I risked a step forward, able to see into the living room now. Leo sat on the couch, where he had been the first time I had entered this house. His hands were secured behind him with duct tape, a strip of it also covering his mouth, but his feet were free.

  Brooklyn touched Damon’s arm, but her tone was harsh. “His parents are dead anyway. What’s he got to go home to?”

  He pushed her away, wiping his palm on his shirt. “You’re a monster. You’re . . .” He couldn’t finish the sentence, his face pale, his voice shaky.

  “I’m not a monster. I’m a monster’s granddaughter.” Her voice was ice, though I wasn’t sure he recognized the threat.

  Taking advantage of their distraction, I chanced another step. Still in the shadows, able to see them but not yet in their line of sight. I noticed Leo’s eye had been blackened since I had last seen him, and my mood darkened with it. I hoped that meant he would be ready to fight if it came to it. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror—face streaked with dirt, eyes feverish.

  “He’s a witness, but okay. Whatever. We don’t have to kill him. Is that what you want to hear?”

  “That is what I want to hear, but I don’t believe you.”

  Damon turned away from her and walked toward the door. “You don’t want to do that,” she warned, but he kept walking.

  When Damon crossed the threshold, Brooklyn followed, and I moved quickly, stepping from the shadows into full light. Their argument carried from the front porch, a tangle of accusations and insults, and I was near the couch when I heard it—a crack that split into a boom, the same deathly echo I had heard when Carver was shot in the head.

  She must have shot Damon.

  “Why’d you do that?” she said.

  I froze, believing for a moment Brooklyn meant the question for me, separated as we were by only a screen door and less than ten feet.

  Then she shouted the question a second time, “Why’d you do that?” Directed at Damon, not me.

  I grabbed Leo from the couch by his elbow and turned toward the kitchen to leave the way I had entered, but the screen slapped in its frame, and Brooklyn was again there. She held the gun in a relaxed grip at her side, but its barrel rose when she saw me.

  She took a shot. We were closer to the hallway than the kitc
hen, so the gunfire forced us in that direction. With his hands tied behind his back, Leo’s gait was awkward, but quick. We retreated farther into the house, turning instantly into the hallway, moving as fast as our legs and the limited space allowed. I yanked Leo by the elbow to telegraph turns but that was our only communication. We both understood the need for silence.

  The house was large but not endless, and in the second hallway, I started testing doors. The first was locked, and the next two opened onto rooms that were unsuitable—one a bathroom with a small window, the second a walk-in linen closet with no window at all. But the third door swung open into a bedroom.

  I pulled the door closed behind us and locked it. I resisted the urge to press my ear to the door. I couldn’t hear Brooklyn, but I knew she was out there, trying doors as we had, quiet now, the time for taunts gone.

  I opened the window and pushed out the screen. I untied Leo’s wrists and yanked the tape from his mouth, then signaled for him to go first, but he was already pulling himself up. He bounded through the empty frame and dropped to the ground below in one fluid movement. My exit was less graceful, but with my son’s help, I managed to land without my knees buckling.

  The knob rattled in the room we had just exited. Then it stopped. The locked door provided only the slightest of obstacles, and given unlimited time, Brooklyn would find us. She knew this property’s hiding spots better than we did, and she only needed to get close enough to aim her weapon.

  My legs itched to sprint, but we couldn’t run blindly, so I shot a glance to the left—a garden shed a short jog away and a detached garage just beyond that. I discounted both. Too obvious. Too far.

  I thought of the cars parked on the other side of the house, but they were useless without keys.