If she didn’t pick up her pace, however, she wouldn’t get a chance at the most precious award: Best Survival in the Face of Death.
She fell into the large clearing and was running across it before she registered the two tents. And her father.
He was halfway between the tent he had assembled, the one in which Victor had raped her, and the spot where she and Victor had spoken for hours this afternoon. Only the faint glow of hot embers remained in the fire. Her father was reaching toward it as if for salvation. Mercy thought of the guy in the desert and the oasis in the distance that he can never reach.
“Daddy!”
She tried to run to him faster. Her right hamstring tightened and gave out. She fell as if she had been shot. She clawed at the ground and crawled several feet before managing to get back on her feet and hobbled the rest of the way to her father.
He’s dead. You’re wasting time. That was good old Miss Cynical finally speaking up again.
She dropped next to him. He was sprawled on his stomach the way Victor had been only he wasn’t making any noise.
“Dad?”
She shook him and tried to turn him over. His body dropped from her grip and hit the ground with a sickening thump.
He was dead. Miss Cynical was right. Her father was dead and she could weep over him all she wanted but that wouldn’t bring him back to life. Worse, it would allow Victor to track her back here and kill her just as he promised he would: right next to her father.
His eyes opened to reveal shining, silver orbs and he coughed himself into a strained, heavy pattern of breathing. She helped raise him off the ground, but he couldn’t help and she had to set him back down.
“Daddy?” Tears blurred her vision. This was no time to cry but she couldn’t help it. Besides, if this wasn’t the time to cry when would she finally get the chance?
When you’re dead.
He groped at her shoulders as if he had lost the ability to use his hands correctly and he tried to speak but managed only a croaking whisper. Blood stained his lips. She almost said that at least they were both choking up blood but it didn’t seem as funny after a moment as it first had.
“I’ll get help,” she said. “I have to get out of here before he comes back.” She sounded much more confident than she felt: how could she simply abandon her father and run herself to safety?
His face squeezed into creases of strained flesh and he managed one hoarse word: “Two.”
She shook her head. “I killed Caleb. Knocked him off the mountain.”
He smiled. More blood dribbled out of the corners of his mouth. “Run,” he said.
She glanced back over her shoulder--nothing yet--and told her father that she was going to get off this fucking mountain and find help and come back for him. He had to be strong, be tough, and not die. She would be back. She promised.
Even as she made that promise and assured herself that no matter what she would come back to rescue her father, she knew it was not a promise she had any control over. If her fate was to die at the hands of Victor the Psycho, her only hope was that her father would die soon and not suffer up here for hours or even days.
“I love you, Daddy.”
His eyes opened again. Little moons in his face. “Keys,” he said.
She didn’t have to waste any time questioning. Like a good father, he had already sketched out her plan of escape. Down the mountain to his car and then off to the police. Or even someplace closer. If any place was actually open.
“I will come back for you.” She kissed his forehead and didn’t like how cold his skin had gotten. How long could he possibly last?
She couldn’t dwell on that right now.
The keys to the car were in his front right pocket where he always placed them. A small metal heart hung from the key ring on a chain. She didn’t need to look at it to know what it was. After Mom died, he bought the heart and had it engraved with her birthdate and day of passing. Between the two dates was her name and the following, Together, we live forever.
“I’m so sorry, Daddy,” she said.
He opened his mouth, breathed in as much as he could, and said, “Go.”
Tears streaming down her face to dilute the blood still coming from her nose and out of her mouth, Mercy Higgins got to her feet and continued down the trail.
FIFTY-THREE
Victor knew how to separate himself from almost anything. He could have conversations in which his body was a robot and his mouth said whatever was appropriate while his mind cavorted in more interesting places. He could suffer physical injury and, for short periods, keep his mind as something separate from the nerves registering pain in his body.
This had been especially useful those nights when his mother came to him and he was too drugged or disgusted to fight her off. She could have her way with his body, but she would not get into his head. She had, of course. She had burrowed deeply into his grey matter. There were moments when she was getting what she wanted from his body and his mind was completely separate. Those times he was able to protect himself. Yet the pleasure of his sex inside hers always threatened to crack this shield. He forbade himself from enjoying what was happening, but sometimes he couldn’t help it. Sometimes it just felt too good and he would thrust back, roll his hips against hers and let her moans carry him to the brink.
For those times, in particular, he hated her and had to kill her.
“That bitch,” Victor said as he finally got to his feet again.
His legs wobbled but he didn’t not fall. He would not let himself fall again. She had gotten the advantage over him somehow, pure timing and luck no doubt, but it was still his fault. The same way he tolerated years of his mother’s naked flesh against his own. If he didn’t assert his power, he would forever be a victim. Even worse, he would never be able to embrace his position in the coming New Times. He would be another weakling, wandering from place to place like a lost mouse, waiting for the moment he was cleansed off the planet.
That would not happen. He had not spent hours training his mind and readying his body to give up now, to allow someone else his rightful place. The universe wanted him to conquer this mountain. This was to be his refuge. But the wishes of the universe were not the same as fate. If Victor failed to rise to the demands of the occasion, the path of some other person would be crossed with his own. That person would be given the opportunity to embrace the coming darkness.
It started with Mercy. He could not let her get away. He had to kill her before she got off the mountain.
As long as his body didn’t give up on him, he would get her. She was obviously heading down the trail toward the parking lot below. It was a fast, direct route. But Victor knew this mountain. Knew the paths that only he had trod. He could get her. It would be a race and it would be close, but Victor was going to kill Mercy Higgins before she escaped Blood Mountain.
FIFTY-FOUR
Mercy glanced back into the woods several times and was lucky each time that she didn’t fall. It was stupid to keep looking, but she had to know because every few seconds she was sure he was right behind her, sure his hand was about to clamp on her shoulder or seize her hair and yank her to the ground.
She kept running, however, recalling the one season of cross country she had tried her junior year in high school because girls said that running was great for toning the butt. Mercy was the girl who, during gym class, walked the track by herself, book in hand. Girls like that didn’t get in very good shape, nor did they garner anything but bizarre glances from boys. So, she had joined the track team and endured one of the most torturous experiences of her life (got that one topped now) but she’d come away with a few important realizations about herself as well as a much firmer butt and thighs that looked damn good in really short shorts.