Felix then turned his attention to the Rushmore Inn, crouching like some prehistoric monster in the forest, waiting to pounce. He half-walked/half-stumbled to the front entrance, trying to get the knob to work. The door wouldn’t budge.
But that didn’t deter Felix. He knew how to get inside.
And once inside, he was going to kill every son of a bitch he saw.
# # #
“Kelly!”
Letti’s throat was so raw from yelling that she was perilously close to losing her voice. But beyond that initial scream, she hadn’t heard anything else from her daughter.
Terrible thoughts fuelled Letti forward.
Was Kelly hurt? Dying? Dead?
Had they caught her?
What if I don’t get there in time?
What if I don’t find her at all?
“Kelly!”
Letti limped up a gradual incline. Her foot hadn’t stopped bleeding since she’d stepped on that finger bone, and the ill-fitting dead man’s shoes had scraped her heels raw. She tried to keep an eye on the ground, looking for some sort of footprints or trail, but the woods all looked the same to her. Maybe Kelly had gone this way. Maybe she was in an entirely different direction.
“Kelly!”
“Dang, yer a loud one.”
Letti jerked her head around.
Millard.
He wasn’t wearing the football helmet or padded suit anymore. Now he was dressed pure redneck, in bibs and a plaid flannel shirt. His eyes were fire engine red, and his long gray hair blew crazily around his twisted face.
“Someone wants to say howdy,” Millard said. He raised up a blood-soaked pillow case, and dumped the contents on the ground.
Oh... Jesus... no!
Florence’s head bounced in the dirt.
“Mom...” Letti whispered.
Millard raised a cattle prod. “And that ain’t nuthin’ compared to what I gonna—”
Letti pivoted her hips, whipped her leg around, and kicked the tall man in the chin. Millard staggered back, and Letti followed up with a punt between his legs that must have knocked his balls up into his skull.
She didn’t stop there. The years of martial arts training her mother had subjected her to were unleashed in an explosion of raw fury. She broke the giant’s nose. His cheek bone. His nose again. Ruptured an ear drum. Knocked out two teeth. Knocked out three more teeth. Broke his nose again. Hit his eye so hard it instantly swelled shut.
But the sick son of a bitch didn’t go down.
In fact, he seemed to be enjoying it.
I’m going to beat this man to death. I’m going to keep hitting him until my hands and feet are broken. I’m going to—
Millard trapped her leg between his arm and his side on her last kick, and then pulled Letti onto her back.
She squirmed. She twisted. But this man was too big, too strong. And he was still holding the cattle prod.
He zapped her in the belly, making Letti curl up into a fetal position.
“Ain’t you a wildcat?” Millard said. He smiled, blood leaking through the gaps in his missing teeth. “Old Millard’s good at tamin’ wildcats.”
He raised the cattle prod like a club, aiming for Letti’s head. She got her arm up in time.
At first she thought the snap! she heard was the prod breaking in half.
Then the pain hit, and she realized it wasn’t the prod at all.
Letti clutched her broken arm to her chest, feeling both sick and unable to breathe.
“All this violence done got me excited,” Millard said.
He spit out some blood, tossed the cattle prod aside, and then began unbuttoning his overalls.
# # #
The second time Cam stabbed her with the scalpel, Kelly turned and ran. The terrain was rough and rocky, and the woods were thick. She could hear Cam only a few steps behind her, following the path she made through the underbrush, making a sound that was part giggling, part crying.
The woods are too thick. The ground is too uneven. I can’t get away from him.
She misstepped, tripping over a tree root, and Cam swooped on top of her, poking her a third time, in the thigh. Then he let her up, let her keep running.
Kelly realized he wasn’t trying to kill her. Not right away. He was just going to keep jabbing her with that scalpel.
“The autopsy report stated he was stabbed more than a hundred and thirty times. None of them were fatal. My best friend died of blood loss.”
This scared Kelly even more, made her even more frantic. She tried to watch her footing so she didn’t trip again, but she didn’t move fast enough and Cam came up behind her, poking her in the back.
It hurt. Every stab hurt worse than a bee sting.
I’m not going to get away. He’s going to keep doing this until my whole body is bleeding.
Kelly didn’t know where to focus her attention, on her footing, or on Cam. She stumbled again.
He jabbed her a fifth time.
Kelly didn’t see how she could get away. He was stronger. He had a weapon. It was too hard to run in the forest. Cam would just keep stabbing her and stabbing her until—
“Be aware of everything around you, and not just what’s in front of you.”
It was Grandma’s voice. The thought was so strong that Kelly felt like Grandma was right next to her, reminding her of what she’d said earlier.
“Use your peripheral vision when you’re running over the rocks, so you don’t have to keep your head down. Keep your eyes ahead of you, but not your entire focus.”
Kelly forced herself to take everything in, not just the ground in front of her. She remembered the trick Grandma taught her, how to see using the whole eye.
Incredibly, the running became easier. She found her footing without having to slow down, and each step was solid and sure. Listening behind her, Kelly could tell she was pulling ahead of Cam, gaining distance.
Kelly lengthened her strides, letting her feet find their own way. The incline became steeper, but she didn’t slow down. Along with hearing Cam clomp through the forest, Kelly heard something else in the distance. Something familiar.
A waterfall.
She opened her ears, sensing its location, and headed toward it. Within two dozen steps the woods broke into a clearing, and Kelly stopped abruptly, staring over the edge of a steep cliff. Her eyes dropped, seeing the waterfall in the distance, the double rainbow floating in the mist it created. Then her eyes dropped further, staring at the rocks below, a drop of forty or fifty feet.
Kelly felt like she did while standing on a diving board. Her knees got weak. Her mouth became dry. She hated heights.
But Grandma came to the rescue again.
“What do you think you should trust more, your eyes, or the solid ground?”
The ground. I trust the ground.
Kelly saw a rock ledge, maybe three feet below her. Narrow, but enough to stand on. It looked solid enough to hold her.
She turned when she heard Cam come up behind her.
“You can run pretty fast, Kelly,” he said, out of breath.
Kelly took a small step back, feeling her heels teeter over the edge of the cliff.
“But now you don’t have anywhere else to go.”
You’re wrong. I do have a place to go.
“I think, this time, I can finally make the screaming stop.”
Cam moved forward, slow and easy, swishing the scalpel in the air. Kelly waited until he was within striking distance.
I trust the ground, Grandma.