BURY - Melt Book 3: (A Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series)

by JJ Pike

  Rayton shrugged, got back in his car, and drove down the narrow path as she’d instructed him to. Why couldn’t people do as they were told in the first place? It would be so much easier if she could just be appointed boss and have people do her bidding.

  She checked the clock on her phone. Midge could be out of surgery by now, the wound on her head closed with surgical glue or butterfly stitches. Jim hadn’t called or if he had they were too far out for her to get a signal. All there was left to do was dig.

  Jo turned the Jeep’s headlights on and mapped out the grave site with the tip of her shovel. She didn’t plot out a rectangle. She made it square. Misdirection. The less it looked like a grave site, the better. The soil gave easily, but it was still hard work.

  She heard the splash of Arthur’s SUV hitting the water, but by then the sun had set and the light was gone and she couldn’t see the widening circle of waves spreading from the impact site to the far cliff face. She stopped for a second, put aside her shovel, hopped out of the hole, and got herself a couple of aspirin from her bag. Miracle drug. It’d take the swelling down in her back muscles, even if it could do nothing for the twinge she knew was about to start up again.

  She jumped back in Arthur’s future grave and kept digging. It was a decent size, but still no sign of Rayton. She’d sent him off on his own as a deliberate act of “trust.” Not that she trusted him, but it would be best if he thought she did. She’d be pissed if he didn’t come back. She checked her clock again. Damn. He’d been gone a long time. Longer than it took to drive down, dump a car, and drive back.

  A light bobbed in the distance. Not a truck light. Jo stopped digging and slid into the Jeep, cutting the headlights. What were the odds there’d be hikers out here? Her mind raced ahead. If they asked what she was doing, she’d tell them she was burying a pet. Most people get emotional about their animals. Good way to shut any line of questioning down: go for the most emotional and/or taboo subject you possibly can. Dead dog. That would do.

  The light kept coming at her. It was definitely attached to a human. The up and down motion had all the hallmarks of someone striding her way.

  “Jo.” It was Rayton. He was shouting. Clearly angry. “You said it was a straight drop to the bottom.” Not a good start. He made it sound like Arthur’s vehicle hadn’t gone down. He met her by the Jeep, sweating and scowling and brandishing his flashlight. “His car went over the ledge, taking my truck with it.”

  Jo didn’t want to laugh, but it could have been a lot worse.

  “My truck is balanced on his car, sticking out of the water at a forty-five degree angle.”

  The smile fell right off Jo’s face. There were several words that would have been appropriate at that moment and she thought them all at once. Their night was going to be a lot longer.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Alicia looked through the roof to the sky. There were heavy clouds. That was good. The man had left her no water. She was going to have to capture her own. She had a bowl. If she placed it just right, she’d be able to harvest a few drops. As long as the rain made it through the trees and the roof didn’t steal it and make it go in a different direction and the man didn’t come back before she’d had a chance to drink it. If he found her breaking the rules, he whipped her with his belt. He didn’t tell her what those rules were, but anything she did for or by herself brought on a thrashing.

  Alicia searched the leaves for the largest gap and waited. She didn’t move the sleeping bag away from the gap in the roof. If it got wet, she could wash his smell away. She didn’t even like to sit on it. She did when he was there because not doing what he told her to do only ended one way, but when he was gone, she was free to do as she liked. She sat under a hole in the roof, a chipped bowl in her hand, and prayed to God that it would rain right here, in this part of the forest, so she could have a cup of water.

  It was hot and humid, muggy in a way that spoke of big, fat raindrops splishing on the ground and bouncing high, making her little sister Valentina clap. She was such a lovely toddler. She had chubby cheeks and glittering eyes and a laugh that made everyone around her happy. They did things for her, just to hear her laugh. Alicia couldn’t hold her on her hip the way Mama could, but she cuddled her and kissed her and carried her around the yard in the rain waiting for her to light up, her hands reaching for the clouds, mouth open, eyes squeezed shut and that sound coming out of her like buttered sugar and water on rocks and happy hiccups all in one.

  The lightning split the sky way above the trees, the thunder sounding in the distance. Alicia waited. The rain would come soon. The razor-sharp light, flashing and dividing, sent bolts to the ground and brought the deep roll of thunder closer. She held the bowl so tight her fingers were white. The water hit the top of the trees with a breathtaking smack, like a full bucket of water thrown on a single blade of grass. It crashed down through the leaves and the roof, spattering on Alicia’s dress and making rivers through the dirt on her arms and face. She held her mouth open, just as Valentina had done, and let the drops splash off her tongue, easing the sandpaper throat she’d had all day.

  It rained so hard she had water in her bowl. She sipped it, sitting in a puddle of happiness, letting the image of the bad man trickle away from her. Within an hour, the sleeping bag was sodden. That made her so happy. She’d never wash him away completely, but she had at least made him weaker. She prayed the rain would never stop.

  Night fell and with it more rain. The leaves on the trees meant not all of it made it to her, but there was enough that she could rub her toes and remove some of the grime. The cuff on her ankle had broken the skin and her blood had dried all around her foot. It was good to make that disappear into the floorboards.

  A little hair stood up from between two slats in the floor. It was straight, rather than curly, so she knew it wasn’t hers. Alicia bent down to see how long it might be. It wiggled. She tried to get away, but the chain meant there wasn’t far to go. The hair in the floor wiggled again. She knew what it was. The roaches were so big you could ride them. Not really, but it was a joke Papa had made. Not a good joke. Nothing he said made the fact of roaches coming up through the floorboards okay.

  Alicia stood. It was the rain, driving the ugly insects up from the ground. They wanted to be inside as much as she wanted to be outside. If only they could swap places. The roach squeezed into her room. She would have squashed it if she’d thought it was going to be the only one, but she knew what was coming.

  The door flew open. The man was dripping wet, swearing, shaking his head. Alicia dropped to the floor, pulled the sleeping bag close, and sat on it with her legs tucked to one side the way he told her to. He was the biggest insect of all. She saw her bowl in the middle of the room a second too late. He’d seen it, then seen her looking. He unbuckled his belt and slid it out from his pants. What did it matter if she had water? She knew better than to ask. On the first day she’d begged, but never again. It had made him smile and she never wanted to see his rotten teeth in his ugly mouth on that disgusting face and his revolting body. He whipped her with the leather side rather than the buckle, which he told her she should be grateful for. His father had beaten him with the buckle. She was lucky.

  When he was done whipping her, he did the other thing. She never looked at him or made a sound, though she was shot through with blazing lightning and separated from herself. Afterwards, he shook her, trying to make her cry, but she let herself go limp like a rag doll and said nothing. It made him mad, but it made her glad. There were some things he couldn’t have. Her tears and her voice.

  He never slept at the shack. He came in the night, did what he wanted to do, then left. He brought her a bowl of rice and beans. One bowl a day. She didn’t eat it on the first day. Or the second. But it was better to eat than be whipped. Also, she was hungry. So she ate it when he was gone, licking the bowl to make sure she had all the rice.

  She placed the bowl in the middle of the room. Just because he’d forbidden her
to collect water didn’t mean she had to obey. While the bowl collected water, Alicia went back to her main task. She’d been worrying the nails that held the loop secured tight to the wall. She needed to catch the slivers of wood as they came out so there was no tell-tale hill of sawdust for him to find. She needed the holes around the nails to be a little bigger each day, but not so big that he would notice.

  She held the iron loop firm and jiggled it up and down. The nails the other side of the wall had been flattened, so it was going to take all her strength when she got to the final stage of her plan, but she was fine with that. When the time came, she’d be ready. She tried to think about the happy times and beautiful things while she worked. Mama’s hair cascading down her back when they danced; Papa taking her to the fields with him and letting her pick maize; Valentina laughing. Whatever the memories, she needed to be sure they didn’t go back to the night of their death.

  Alicia’s eyes slid across the wall. There was nothing to look at, but the knots in the wood sometimes looked like faces, other times like a teddy bear, then a frog or bird or cricket. She had started to name them and make stories about their lives. Mr. Frog lived in a hole by the river. He was friends with Miss Chirpy the bird, who wanted to eat Frederick the Cricket. Chirpy sang to her frog with tales of far-off lands and strange foods and weird customs, but it was all a trick to make him trust her so she could gobble down Frederick Cricket. Mr. Frog never let down his guard and Chirpy wasn’t able to eat little Frederick who only spoke of the river and her inhabitants. Alicia painted pictures in her mind of all the things she’d seen and learned with her mama and papa.

  There were knots in the wood she’d never inspected. They were further away and the chain that secured her to the wall meant she couldn’t investigate much. She leaned her head as far as it would go, but the light was dim and she couldn’t tell what creature was poised to join her fairytale land where no one died and no one suffered and all were friends in the end. Too bad it was so far. She would have to wait for the daylight to see if there was a tiger or an eagle or some other predator who needed to join her happy, happy band of reformed characters.

  She worried the metal loop using both hands to jiggle it up and down. The rain slowed. She drank the water she’d collected, just in case the man came back to check on her. She didn’t care if it was from the sky and had dirt from the trees. It tasted better because it was forbidden. She would drink the water and move the loop hard and fast and break the nails and leave this place and run as far and fast as she could.

  The roaches disappeared back through the floorboards after the rain stopped. She’d paid them no mind and they’d gone about their business as if she were a piece of furniture or a log. The moon was brighter tonight. She tried to watch its shape so she could guess how long she’d been there, but it was too hard without any way to record the changes. She had tried making a mark in the wood with her fingernail, but they weren’t sharp enough. All they did was press into the grain and come back out again.

  She paused. The sounds of the forest were louder at night. There was a medium-sized animal who came out about now. The squeals and gurgles meant it was most likely an armadillo. They could come, along with the anteaters, to eat the ants and termites, she didn’t mind. But, if the shack had termites, her job would be done already. The wood was surprisingly strong for such an old, falling down place.

  The moon had moved and was almost directly overhead. It was bright enough that she could see parts of the wall she hadn’t been able to see before.

  She pulled her legs close to her body to try to stop the shakes from taking over.

  The shadows she’d stared at so hard before weren’t frogs or birds or crickets. They were holes. Four holes. Exactly the same pattern as the nails that held her metal loop in place.

  She wasn’t the first girl he’d kept there.

  She had never cried for herself. She couldn’t. It would give him too much satisfaction. But she cried for the other girl.

  The holes in the wall were round. The nails had gone in and come out straight. Whoever had been there before hadn’t worried them, as Alicia had been doing, so that they made grooves in the wood. Had she pulled the chain and freed the nails and removed the loop from the wall? Or had he done it? Alicia didn’t think those thoughts until she was much older. Until she was Alice and far away from that place. Then she saw the holes in her nightmares and asked Bill, “Did she get away?” He never knew how to answer. “Did he kill her?” she would ask. “Would he have killed me?” She clung to him and sobbed. “Why did I take so long? Why didn’t I get out sooner? Why was I so placid? So accepting? So docile? Why didn’t I fight back?”

  Dr. Moore reminded her that she had been eight when she was kidnapped.

  She never answered back. She wasn’t kidnapped. She’d taken his hand and gone with him on the promise of a cup of chocolate.

  “You were eight. Think about it. Eight.”

  I had a bowl. I could have smashed it and used the pieces to cut him.

  “Find a picture of you as an eight-year-old and see how small you were.”

  There are no pictures. None of me or my family. And if they were, it would kill me to look at them. That part of me is dead. It needs to stay dead.

  “Look at pictures of your own children. See how small they are. How vulnerable.”

  Alice stared at Dr. Moore. It was as if she didn’t remember what looking at her children had done to her. It had made her mad. Made the memories come. Made her black out and hurt Aggie. She couldn’t look at pictures of her children.

  “You did what you had to do in order to survive.”

  The moon came and went, completing its cycle, and I hadn’t escaped. It took so long. I didn’t resist. I didn’t fight back.

  “If you had fought back he would have killed you, Alice. We know thousands of people ‘disappeared’ during the civil war that wracked your country for so many years. We have no way to count how many children went missing.”

  I had a way to count. I counted. Day came and with it the sun. I could see the holes now, dotted around the room at regular intervals. How many had been here? Ten? Twelve? More in the other room? How many girls had been chained to the wall and made to do this man’s bidding?

  “He was an evil man who held you against your will. You have to learn to forgive yourself. You did your best. No one could have done more.”

  The nails were endless. When they finally broke, I ran. For weeks, I ran. But only after I’d been there for a month or more.

  “He had learned from the other girls. The nails wouldn’t stay in the wood unless he anchored them to something on the outside. That’s why it took so long for you to work them free.”

  I should have figured it out sooner. I saw the round, even holes the other girls’ nails had made. The evidence was right in front of my face. I should have known.

  “You were eight, Alice. You were resourceful. You got away. You have to remember that you got away. It was an incredible feat of bravery.”

  What Dr. Moore didn’t say was, “You escaped, but the others didn’t.”

  I survived, but they didn’t. Where were they, the girls that had fought Mateo and lost? Were they buried under the shack? Had he taken them further afield and buried them? Had anyone come looking for them? Or had he killed their families too and brought them to this godforsaken place in the middle of a darkened wood? Who mourned them, these little ones? Who spoke their names and said they were missed? Who knew of the terror they had witnessed and the horror they had endured? Only Alice.

  She never told Bill. He wouldn’t have survived that knowledge. He was a good man. She wanted to spare him the truth of the world. It was bad enough that she made them all prepare for the worst, when they lived in such a peaceable, wonderful place. But she couldn’t help herself. For Alice there was always the possibility that a nice man would come offering chocolate and turn out to be the most evil, depraved being on the planet.

  Bill held her tight
, long into the night, and told her she was safe. But who could be safe when such wicked men roamed the Earth?

  Chapter Fourteen

  Bill and Arthur breakfasted together in a small café not far from Bill’s motel, fighting all the while in hushed tones. Bill wanted to face Mateo alone. Arthur thought he should tag along.

  “I gave it a lot of thought last night,” said Arthur. “What if you’re right?”

  Bill sipped his milky coffee. He wasn’t hung over so much as not firing on all cylinders. He’d needed a good night’s sleep, but instead he’d had wild dreams about volcanoes and Aggie and the mice she’d brought home not two weeks earlier, demanding she be allowed to keep them as pets. Then Alice was there, a leather strap in her hand and Aggie appeared, begging him to help. Finally, there was a rabbit in a snare, a snake wending its way down to the river, and a stranger hiding behind a tree. It was all too on the nose. Why couldn’t he have allegorical dreams that made no sense, like everyone else? Why did he have to replay his fears in the night? The dreams had twisted away from him as he brushed his teeth and smoothed down his hair, but left him spent and twitchy and unable to concentrate.