Part 7 (1/2)

A second later the Durango hit the ground with a bone-snapping thump, teetering on its two left wheels before collapsing back down to the ground with another rattling crunch. The force of the impact lifted Emily from the seat, and, as the screams of Ben and Rhiannon filled the cabin again, her head whipped hard to the left, colliding with the gla.s.s of the window.

Her last thought before everything went black was that she was sorry she had not been able to save the children.

One second the world was normal, and the next Rhiannon was weightless, at least until the strap of the seat belt tugged her back down into the leather seats with a jarring slap. She was aware of her little brother next to her, his arms flailing as the SUV b.u.mped and rattled over the ground. Her own limbs were useless to her as she was thrown around like the raggedy doll she had played with when she was little.

The first hint she had that the car had stopped was when she realized that the interior dome lights were on and there was a really annoying pinging coming from the front of the car. That was weird because just a second ago the entire cabin had been dark except for the instrument panel's glow. She tried to lean forward, but the seat belt still held her firmly in its grasp, pinning her to the seat. The leather squeaked like one of her little brother's farts as she wriggled her b.u.t.t to try to free herself of the belt.

Rhiannon pushed against the restraints again, but they still held fast. When she dipped her head to look for the belt's release b.u.t.ton, her neck spasmed painfully. ”Owwww!” she cried, but she strained a little more anyway, until her thumb found the b.u.t.ton and pressed. The clip popped from the receiver, and Rhiannon felt the belt's grip loosen as it slid away.

Using the two front seats as leverage, she pulled herself forward until she could see Emily slumped in the driver's seat, her head lolling forward, her hands loosely draped at her side.

Even in the dim glow of the car's interior light, Rhiannon could see a bright splash of blood on the window of the driver's door; strands of Emily's hair were caught in the congealing blood. Rhiannon wasn't sure whether the six-inch stain on the window was a lot of blood or not. It looked like it was a lot, but other than a few cuts and grazes, Rhiannon had rarely seen blood before. She reached out and tentatively touched Emily's shoulder, shaking her gently. ”Emily,” she whispered. ”Are you okay?”

There was no response from the still form in the driver's seat. Rhiannon leaned farther between the seats, ignoring the dull ache in her shoulders and across her chest. Emily's eyes were closed, and Rhiannon could see a line of blood, already beginning to dry, trickling from the woman's bottom lip and down her chin, dripping into a small pool that had soaked into her pants.

”Emily?” She gave her shoulder a final shake. Emily's body slipped slowly sideways until her head once again connected with the b.l.o.o.d.y window.

A low whine from the backseat dragged Rhiannon's attention away from Emily. Thor was standing on the ground outside the car, just visible in the umbra of the open rear pa.s.senger door. Rhiannon's shocked mind began to a.s.sess exactly what was wrong with the picture: the door was wide open-that was why the interior lights were on and the annoying pinging was still pulsing through the cabin. The seat next to hers, the one where her little brother had sat, was empty, the seat belt snapped neatly back against the back of the leather seat.

Something was missing.

Ben! He was nowhere to be seen.

How had she not noticed that? How had she forgotten about her little brother? Her head, still buzzing with that really annoying pinging from the front of the car, felt like it was going to explode any second. How had she forgotten Ben? The little dweeb was so annoying, he was going to be in soooo much trouble when Dad got ahold of his b.u.t.t. He was going to be grounded for- Thor's bark cut through the static filling Rhiannon's head. What had she been thinking? She had to find her little brother right now! She scooted over the seats to the open door. Thor was doing the canine equivalent of shuffling his feet nervously; his tail wagged enthusiastically when he saw Rhiannon moving his way.

The second Rhiannon's feet hit the soft gra.s.s, Thor jumped into the s.p.a.ce she had just exited. He sniffed curiously at Emily's body; first the dried blood that had congealed on her chin, then down her neck and torso, and finally her arm that hung at her side. He gave a sad whine and pawed gently at her unmoving body.

Rhiannon turned slowly in a circle, scanning the wall of darkness for any sign of her missing brother. The SUV was front-down in a shallow ditch, but Rhiannon could hear the engine still running and the lights were still on, which she guessed was a good thing.

”Ben!” she yelled, surprised at how weak and croaky her voice sounded against the weight of the cool night air. She listened, waiting for a reply. Instead, all she heard was the desperate whine of Thor, still perched on the center console behind the two front seats, pawing at Emily.

What was wrong with this dumb dog? Rhiannon wondered. Didn't he know a dead person when he smelled her? She glanced around the outside of the car. Maybe the dog could be useful. She had seen how her little brother had taken to the big mound of fur.

”Thor!” she snapped. ”Where's Ben?” The dog glanced her way, then went back to sniffing Emily. ”Thor,” she called again, this time a little less sharply. ”We need to find Ben. Where's Ben?”

Thor turned again at the sound of Ben's name. He glanced back at Emily one last time, then jumped down from the backseat and started sniffing around the gra.s.s. ”That's it. Good boy. Find Ben.”

The malamute sniffed left and right a few more times, gave a single bark, and started up the embankment the car had fallen down.

”Wait up, you dumb dog,” Rhiannon shouted as Thor was swallowed up by the wall of blackness. Then she took off running as fast as she could after him.

Rhiannon scrambled up the embankment after Thor, her sneakers slipping on the loose earth. The dog stopped at the top for her, waiting patiently in the last of the light from the SUV's headlights as she pulled herself up the twenty feet or so of incline, his tongue lolling from his mouth.

”Just slow down, dog,” Rhiannon panted as she finally pulled herself over the top of the embankment and onto the graveled curve of the road, but the dog was already off again. She could hear his paws scattering the gravel as he loped down the road, back in the direction of the Jeffersons' place.

”Benjamin!” she yelled the next time she stopped. Sweat, sticky and salty, trickled down her forehead and into her mouth. ”Yuck.”

The stupid dog had already taken off again, but Rhiannon wasn't going to just blindly follow him. She waited patiently for a reply from her brother, then, when there was none, she called out into the darkness again, this time a little louder.

As she waited for her brother to reply, she thought about her dad. She had hoped that maybe she had imagined it all, but she knew that something was very wrong with him. She had seen the shape in the shadows that had those...hooked things stuck in him. Although she would not admit it, she knew her dad was badly hurt, maybe even worse. But her little brother wasn't going to know that. He wasn't going to sense the danger he might be in, that his daddy was no longer who he thought he was.

Although the fear was almost overwhelming for her, she was not going to let the thing that had taken her father take her little brother, too. If there was some way that she could rescue them both, she was going to figure it out. Dad always said she was much brighter than all her friends she hung out with.

The sweat from her climb had begun to cool as the chilly night air slowly claimed her body heat. Her breath formed a white cloud in front of her face. It was so incredibly quiet out here. Except for the occasional rustle of leaves from a light breeze blowing through the branches of the forest, there was no sound. Even the air felt absent, somehow-so still it might as well not be there.

The silence was broken by the sound of scattering gravel as Thor padded back to her location. He looked unhappy that she was not following him, but he could just stuff it. It was her brother that they were trying to find, and she was not going to put all her trust in some dumb dog. She was going to do things her way.

To prove the point, Rhiannon let out a long, loud ”Beeeennnnnnnnnn!” into the night. Her voice echoed through the woods. She winced at how loud her call actually was. Who knew how many more of those things were out there in the darkness? And now they knew where she was for certain. G.o.d! She was so dumb sometimes.

In the distance, carried on the breeze, Rhiannon heard a faint but unmistakable answer to her call: ”Rhiaaaa!” It was barely audible to her, but Thor's ears p.r.i.c.ked up and he was gone in a second, heading off down the path in the call's direction. It was her brother. She knew the little dweeb's voice as though it were her own.

He was alive.

A second after Thor had been swallowed up by the darkness, Rhiannon began sprinting after him.

”What happened?”

Emily heard the voice ask the question again before she realized that it was she who was speaking. For a moment she was confused. Hadn't she been in the SUV? Wasn't she supposed to be going somewhere? There was something important she was supposed to be doing, she was sure of it.

Then, like a mistuned radio that finally found the right station, her mind cleared and the confusion was replaced by a heavy aching pain in her head and a nauseating dizziness that forced her to her knees. For a few moments, she thought she was going to throw up, but after a couple of deep steadying breaths, her vision cleared. A loud continuous whirring sound filled the inside of her skull where her brain had once been. The noise finally resolved into the dull drone of the Durango's engine. Somehow she had managed to get out of the driving seat and walk a few feet away from the vehicle.

How the h.e.l.l had that happened?

The children! She pushed herself to her feet, almost collapsing again as the world swam in front of her eyes. She staggered toward the lights of the SUV, her hand in front of her eyes to stop the screaming bolts of pain bouncing around her head.

The driver's side door was wide open. She saw the congealed bloodstain on the gla.s.s of the window, and her hand moved involuntarily to her head. She felt a sting of pain as her hand found a raised egg-size lump on the left side of her head, a couple of inches back from her hairline. She pulled her fingers away and looked at the clean tips. Well at least she wasn't bleeding anymore, but good grief, did it hurt like a mother.

The inside of the SUV was empty. Emily made her way around to the pa.s.senger side, leaning hard against the body of the Durango in case her vision betrayed her again.

There was no sign of the children outside the SUV, and she let out a small sigh of relief when she saw that there was no blood on the seats the kids had occupied. That could only mean that they had survived the crash and had left her for whatever reason. There was also no sign of Thor. She knew there was no way her dog would have abandoned her unless he had had to, so he must be with Ben and Rhiannon.

Standing in the dim glow of the SUV's light, Emily realized with a growing unease that she knew exactly where the children were: they were on their way back to the last place they had seen Simon.

The pain in Emily's head pulsed harder and lightning lanced through her brain as she tried to jog back to the driver's seat of the big SUV, forcing her to stop and lean against its rear door while her swimming vision and whirling stomach returned to normal. Was she concussed? Maybe, but she had to get to the kids before they reached the Jefferson house. She had no idea how much of a head start the two children had, so she was going to have to get the Dodge out of the ditch and drive it if she was to have any chance of finding the children before they got to Simon...or he found them.

She edged around the SUV, leaning hard against its body for support. The front-left wheel of the Dodge was lodged in a ditch, canting the vehicle to the left, and the front-right wheel was halfway up the embankment; just a few more feet and the SUV would have rolled over, she realized.

Emily pulled herself through the open door into the driver's seat, slamming it shut behind her, and instantly regretting it as the thud reverberated through her head. She gave a startled cry when the cabin lights went out, plunging her into darkness.

The engine was still rumbling, reverberating through the leather seats and steering wheel as she gripped it. She was going to have to reverse this thing out of the ditch if she wanted to go anywhere.

The headlights illuminated the opposite side of the ditch the SUV had landed in. It was a couple of feet higher than the hood, and she had no doubt the SUV could make it over it if it wasn't for the fact that it was lined with trees.

She slipped the gear stick to the reverse position and lifted her foot off the brake. The engine revs increased slightly, but the SUV barely moved an inch. She glanced in the rearview mirror; everything beyond the back of the Dodge was bathed in the red glow of the vehicle's taillights. The white of the reverse lights stretched barely beyond that but were next to useless for seeing anything.

Sliding her foot onto the accelerator, Emily eased it toward the floor, slowly increasing the revs. The vehicle edged up the side of the embankment, then slid back down when it was almost halfway. Frustrated, Emily pushed harder on the accelerator pedal; the big SUV's rear wheels spun as they fought for traction on the gra.s.s, finally found it, and catapulted backward out of the ditch and onto the field.

Emily's head flew forward then back again as her seat belt lock engaged. Blackness began to creep into the edge of her vision, but she willed herself to stay conscious, pus.h.i.+ng it back until she realized her foot was still on the accelerator. She slipped it off the pedal and slammed on the brake. This time her head flew backward into the head support of the seat, and she saw motes of blackness float across her eyes, blocking the console gauges.

”Jesus,” she hissed when her vision finally cleared again. ”I've about had enough of this s.h.i.+t.”