The path switched back up a steep hillside. All four of them scanned the bottomlands for some trace of the beasts. Their faces were shiny with sweat by the time they hit the summit. The land beneath was black and unknowable. They couldn’t hear anything.
“Stay close,” said Micah.
They moved down the trail in a tight knot. The path hit a bottleneck. The trees pinched in on either side—
Minerva heard it before her brain was able to grip what was happening. A sly cracking under her boots—
The ground broke apart under her feet. She plunged into darkness. She caught sight of Ebenezer scrabbling at the lip of the earth, bellowing madly, before his purchase slipped and he was falling with the rest of them.
There came a strange weightlessness, that feeling in the pit of the stomach when a plane takes off. Oh, Minerva thought giddily. I’m falling. It lasted no more than half a second. Minerva hit the earth so hard that the breath was knocked out of her. Pain needled across her chest as her spine bowed—then something slammed into her skull with terrific force.
12
MINERVA’S EYES cracked open. She was squinting up at a box of daylight.
“She’s coming to.”
Where was she? She rolled over, moaning. She could feel an enormous lump on her forehead—as if a hard-boiled egg had been sewn under her skin.
“Minerva?” A woman’s voice. “How do you feel?”
She opened her eyes fully. The sky was breathtakingly blue. Why couldn’t she see more of it? Why only that box? It was as if she were staring up from the bottom of an open elevator shaft.
A face loomed over her. Micah’s. Blood lay gluey on his neck. Minerva swallowed. Her throat was as dry as chalk. Micah tipped his canteen to her lips. She drank and coughed.
Ellen said, “Can you get up?”
Minerva managed to sit up. Her skull thudded. She dropped her head between her knees and breathed deeply.
“Where are we?” she said.
“Trapped,” said Micah.
“Trapped how?”
“In a trap,” he answered her.
She lifted her head. Jesus, that hurt—her skull felt like it was full of pissed-off hornets.
They were in a pit. Clay bottom. The walls were sheer and went up fifteen feet. Severed roots poked through the dirt. Must have taken days to dig.
“Was someone looking for a fucking brontosaurus?” she said.
Micah picked up one of the snapped sticks littering the bottom of the pit. Minerva could see it had been sawed partway through. Her father had dug a similar pit trap on the west side of their shack to catch the foxes that had been killing their Buckeye chickens.
“What’s that smell?”
Ellen pointed behind Minerva. She craned her neck to spy a heap of spoiled meat in the corner, squirming with maggots.
“Bait,” Ellen said.
“How long have I been out?”
“Four hours or so,” said Ellen.
What a mad galloping donkeyfuck this had turned into, Minerva thought. Stuck in a pit with their dicks hanging out. And as the cherry on top of this particular shit sundae, she had a knot the size of a goddamn golf ball on her head—she could see its shadow hanging above her left eye like some overripe fruit set to burst.
“Can we get out?”
“I tried already, standing on Micah’s shoulders,” said Ellen. “No such luck.”
“Why didn’t you help them out?” Minerva growled at Ebenezer. “You got two broken legs?”
“Not quite,” he said, pointing at his left ankle. His boot was off. His flesh was swollen at his ankle, the sock stretched out like a gruesome balloon.
“You bust it?” she asked.
“I don’t believe so,” Eb said. “Just a bad sprain.”
Minerva said, “Lucky you. I’d have left you in here otherwise.”
Ebenezer’s smile was as gruesome as his ankle. “You’re a peach.”
Minerva stood. The blood rushed to her head. She swooned, steadying herself against the pit wall. It was then that they all heard a voice from somewhere above.
“Who’s in there?”
A man’s voice. Gruff and a little worried, but not threatening.
Minerva still had one of her Colts. Micah had his pistol, too. But what were they going to do—shoot at the only person who might be able to get them out?
“Hikers,” Micah called up. “Four of us.”
“I see a gun on the ground up here.”
“That would be mine,” said Eb. “I dropped it when the ground opened up and ate me. I’m sure you understand.”
“The rest of you armed?” the same voice asked.
“Pistols,” Micah said.
“Why are you hiking with pistols?”
“The same reason you must have dug this pit,” Minerva called back.
The man said, “Toss them out.”
Micah launched his Tokarev over the edge of the pit. Someone approached above. A shadow fell over the lip of the pit; then it withdrew.
“Never seen a gun like this before,” the man called out. “You do some work to it?”
“It is stock,” Micah lied.
The man said, “I don’t know about that.”
Minerva heaved her gun out next. “You going to help us or what?” she said.
“Considering it,” the man said.
Minerva clenched her teeth. Her head hived with pain. That she would be left at the mercy of these Bible suckers—who else could they be?—was infuriating. She wanted to quote scripture at them, something about the milk of human kindness or whatever, but she had never memorized a single verse.
In time a rope was lowered over the side of the pit.
“Mind your p’s and q’s. We are armed,” the man said.
13
THE COMPOUND known as Little Heaven was carved back against the encircling trees. The perimeter fence bowed under the menacing weight of the woods. The fence was fifteen feet tall and topped with coils of razor wire. Each supporting rib had been fashioned from a delimbed pine tree, with chain-link fence strung between them. It gave the place the look of a backwoods prison. Upon her approach, Minerva could see the roof of a long, warehouse-like structure, and the smaller peaks of the outbuildings scattered around it. She was half shocked to not spot guard towers manned by shotgun-toting Jesus freaks.
It had been a two-mile hike from the pit to Little Heaven. By the time they arrived, they had learned the names of the men who had hauled them out: Otis Langtree and Charlie Fairweather. They seemed the same age, mid- to late-thirties. Otis was the bigger of the two, but both looked like they could use a good meal. Their faces were drawn, their eyes tunneled too far into their skulls.
Minerva learned a bit more about the men besides their names, as they were both happy to talk. Charlie had been a member of the flock for about three years; Otis, much longer. Otis was single; Charlie had a wife and a son, Ben. Charlie had worked at a box factory before coming here. Otis did not speak much of his history. They had both made the decision to join their leader, giving their life savings over to the erection and continuance of Little Heaven.
They both carried .30-30 rifles. Charlie had a Ruger pistol in a holster, too.
“Sorry you fell in,” Otis said. “We dug the pit for animals.”
Ebenezer was slung between Micah and Ellen; he limped painfully along. Minerva refused to help him.
“What did you dig it to catch, pray tell?” Eb asked.
“Bear?” said Otis. “Wolves? Something’s been carrying off our dogs. We used to have five or six. Then a month or so back they started to go missing. Squirmed under gaps in the fence, never came back. Got eaten, we figured.”