“You dudes see that?”
“See what?” Tom said. He looked left, then right, then, comically, up into the sky.
“Some kinda light. Same direction as the scream.”
“Someone’s gotta be messing with us.” Tom rubbed his palm back and forth over his scalp, so quick it looked like he was going to give himself a rug burn. “Lights and bullshit screams. Trying to scare us.”
Meadow shook his head. “Didn’t sound like no bullshit scream. Sounded real. And close.”
“You maybe wanna go check?”
“You go check, white boy. With your little stick.”
Tyrone shushed them. “Quiet. I hear somethin’.”
He recognized the noise, because they all made the same noise earlier, on the hike to this clearing. It was the sound of people in the woods, trampling over dead leaves and twigs, pushing branches out of the way.
And the sound was moving toward them. Fast.
“Somethin’s comin’,” Meadow whispered.
The trampling was too noisy for one or two people to make. It sounded like at least half a dozen folks, rushing through the forest, getting closer.
The bushes at the treeline shook like a bear was caught in them. Tyrone couldn’t move. He couldn’t even swallow. He knew, knew, that some crazy Civil War cannibals were going to burst out and start chomping him, and he was too scared to do anything about it.
Then, all at once, the bushes stopped moving. The sound of approaching footsteps ceased. All Tyrone could hear was crickets, and the thumping of his own heart.
“Are they still there?” Tyrone had never heard Tom speak so quietly.
“Dunno.” Meadow’s voice was just as soft. “Didn’t hear them leave. Might still be there, staring at us.”
Tyrone’s back became really hot—he was standing too close to the fire. But he didn’t dare move away. He could feel eyes on him. Predator eyes. Something was in those woods, and it wanted to do him serious harm.
“Hey!”
They all turned to the right, Tom bumping into Tyrone, who backed into Meadow. Walking toward them, arms spread open, was Cindy. She smirked, and Tyrone was surprised how relieved he felt to see her.
“You guys look like you just saw a ghost.”
“Were you over there?” Meadow pointed in the direction they’d been facing,
Cindy jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “I came from there. Did you hear Georgia scream?”
Tyrone managed to swallow, find his voice. “Heard someone, that way.”
“Georgia was going to try to scare you guys. But she ditched me. She’s in the trees there?”
Cindy walked past them, heading for the bushes. Tyrone caught her wrist.
“I don’t think that’s Georgia.”
Cindy’s face crinkled up. “Why not?”
“It’s more than one person,” Tom said, his voice low.
Cindy stepped backward, next to Tyrone. Her hair smelled like shampoo. He relaxed his grip a bit but still kept hold of her wrist.
“Maybe she found the others. Maybe they’re all trying to scare us.”
“It ain’t them.”
Tom flinched, bumping into Tyrone, pressing against him. It violated all sorts of personal space, and normally would have resulted in a rough shove and a threat, but Tyrone didn’t move because he saw what Tom saw, just beyond the bushes, barely illuminated from the light of the fire.
A person.
Someone was standing in the darkness, watching them. It creeped Tyrone out so bad he finally uprooted his legs, sidestepping the campfire, backpedaling away while tugging Cindy along. Then that fool Tom came up fast, knocking into them, toppling everyone over.
The act of breaking eye contact with whatever was in the woods scared Tyrone even more, as if losing sight of the enemy meant it could suddenly be anywhere. He looked back at the bushes, seeking out the silhouette, barely noticing Cindy’s hand moving into his and gripping tight.
The dark figure was still there, features obscured by night. Tall, thin, silent.
The moment stretched to the breaking point. Even the crickets stopped chirping.
“You want some of me, mutha fucka?” Meadow was frontin’ now, sticking out his chest and slapping it with his palms. “I’ll rip you a new one.”
Tyrone watched as Meadow walked toward the figure. He knew he should be backing his boy up. Didn’t matter that they rolled with different crews when they were bangin’. Didn’t matter that Meadow was a pain in the balls sometimes. At the Center, Meadow was his brother. They were tight there, much as they were rivals on the street.
But this wasn’t the Center, and it wasn’t the street neither. This place might as well have been the planet Mars. Throwing down in a gang fight was one thing, and Tyrone wasn’t scared of that. But scrapping in the woods with some crazy cannibal—that was horror movie bullshit.
So Tyrone stayed put, squeezing Cindy’s hand, watching as his friend clenched his fists and stomped toward the darkness.
The light came on, faint and yellow, shining on the bone Sara clenched in her hand. It was long, over eighteen inches, covered on one side with clumps of dirt. The other side, the side Sara stared at, had strips of dried brown flesh clinging to it.
The smell was an assault, so overpowering and fetid that Sara dropped the bone immediately, violently turning away and retching onto the ground.
“Was that a leg?” Laneesha moved closer to Sara. The girl was clutching the Maglite she’d obviously found.
Sara wiped her mouth with her sleeve, her throat feeling raw, her tongue foul with stomach acid.
“I don’t know.”
“Looked like a dude’s leg.”
“I don’t know.”
“Why is there a dude’s leg on the ground? Where’s the rest of him?”
Laneesha played the light across the ground. Sara followed the beam as it washed over twigs, dead leaves, chunks of dirt, coming to rest on a single, brown shoe.
“Holy shit! There a foot in that shoe?”
The shoe looked old. Leather decayed and laces gone, flattened by time.
Sara summoned up a bit of strength from some inner well and forced herself to speak calmly. “The light, Laneesha.”
Laneesha didn’t move.
“Laneesha. Give me the light.”
Sara reached for it, and the girl complied. Still on her knees, she hobbled over to the shoe. Using a stick, Sara poked at the tongue, peering inside.
Empty.
“Maybe the cannibals ate the foot,” Laneesha said.
Sara spit—the foul taste in her mouth wouldn’t go away—then got to her feet. She pushed away all questions and doubts and focused on the facts, fighting not to leap to conclusions. “The shoe is old. Really old. That bone still had meat on it. They aren’t related to each other.”
“How you know the shoe is old?”
“Look at the laces.” Sara captured the shoe in the beam. “They’ve rotted away. So has some of the leather.”
“How long does that take?”
“I don’t know, Laneesha. A long time.”
“Maybe it takes a long time for meat to rot off the bone, too.”
Sara rubbed the hand that grabbed the bone onto her jeans. “No. There are birds on the island. Raccoons. The bone would have been picked clean if it was as old as that shoe.”
“So what you sayin’?”
“That probably wasn’t a human bone. Could have been from a deer. Or a pig.”
“Be a big freakin’ pig.”
Sara considered looking for the bone again, to prove Laneesha wrong. And to prove herself wrong, that she didn’t really see cloth clinging to the bone along with strips of meat. But she decided not to. Some things were better not knowing.
“Maybe the cannibals…”
“Laneesha!” Sara knew she was raising her voice, and silently cursed herself for her tone even as she continued. “There are no cannibals. Got it?”