But that was because the only guns Tom had ever held before were toys. This was a real one, big and black wicked-looking. He fussed with the switches on the side, finding the button for the clip and the safety next to the trigger. Tom pulled the top part back—the slide—like he saw on TV, jacking a round into the chamber. Immediately, he felt alive. Even more alive than when he was joy-riding.
Tom cocked the hammer back.
Who’s the frickin’ man now, Tyrone?
They watched as the woman and the girl found the bait. But they didn’t attack yet.
Lester was too close.
They feared Lester, almost as much as they feared The Doctor. So they left the woman and the girl and the man they’d hung up.
Their stomachs growled, but it was okay. They had found a boy. He would be enough for the moment. They could come back for the others when Lester was gone.
There was no rush. No hurry. They had time. Days, if they needed it.
No one who came to the island ever left. Ever.
There was a flash of light in the trees.
Lester.
They began to back up, but they didn’t have to.
Lester was leaving.
They waited. As soon as Lester was gone, they would attack.
Sara reached her hands up over her head and touched Martin’s shoes, making him twist slowly.
“We’ll get you down. Just hold on.”
Sara knew that was redundant—bordering on moronic—thing to say, but she didn’t stop to dwell on it, already shining the weakening Maglite up past her husband’s bound wrists. She followed the rope to where it looped over a high bough and stretched taut on an angle through the branches, all the way down to its end, tied around the base of a tree trunk a few meters to their right. Sara hurried over, sticking the flashlight in her mouth, attacking the knot with her fingers.
The rope was thin, nylon, the knots small and hard as acorns. She tried to pry at it with her fingernails, wincing as she bent one backward. The Center didn’t allow weapons or anything that could be used as a weapon. Matches, lighters, aerosol sprays, tools, and even the plastic cutlery they used for eating; all was kept under lock and key. This rule was retained for the camping trip; the sharpest thing they’d brought along was some fingernail clippers, but those were back at the campsite.
Another nail bent and cracked, and Sara felt like screaming. The agony Martin was in must have been unbearable, and if he’d been strung up there for as long as they’d been searching for him chances were good his hands had lost all circulation. No blood flow meant tissue death. Sara felt like whimpering. If they didn’t get him down fast…
“Try this.”
Laneesha stood next to Sara, and held a dirty rock about the size of a softball.
“It’s got a sharp edge,” Laneesha said, pointing.
Sara traded Jack and the flashlight for the rock, took a deep breath, and tried to keep her emotions under control.
“Good work, Laneesha. Hold this on the rope for me.”
Sara raised the rock up and struck the rope where it wound around the trunk. She hit it again, and again, and again, the bark slowly chipping away but the rope seemingly unmarred. Cramps built in her hands and shoulders, but Sara had to save Martin and she wouldn’t relent, gritting her teeth against the pain, willing the rope to break, not daring to stop until—
The twang sounded like a bass string being plucked, the rope whipping past Sara’s face as it shot upward. Martin fell to earth. He made an umph sound when he hit, tumbling onto his side, his back to her.
Sara ditched the rock and scrambled over, awash with concern. Laneesha came up from behind with the Maglite, shining it onto Martin’s shoulders, then around to his face.
“Oh, shit.”
Laneesha dropped the light, and Sara wasn’t sure what she’d seen. She picked it up off the dead leaves and knelt next to Martin, focusing the weak beam on his face.
Jammed into her husband’s mouth and protruding from his lips was a ball of nails. They jutted out of his cheeks like cat whiskers, dark with dirt and blood.
“Oh, jesus, oh baby…”
Sara’s first instinct was to help, to nurture, which she would have done with anyone in this situation. She worked soup kitchens every Thanksgiving. She spent a summer in Peru with the World Health Organization, helping to care for a TB epidemic. Sara had endless resources of empathy, and equal measures of strength to keep from breaking down. But seeing Martin—her Martin—like this, hit her right in the heart, and the tears came so quick and fast she wondered how she could have been so resolved to divorce this man if she still cared this deeply.
Sara put a hand on his forehead, her touch gentle so as not to hurt him any further. Her husband’s eyes found hers, locked on.
“ara…”
Sara handed Jack off to Laneesha. “Shhhh. It’s all going to be okay. Are you hurt anywhere else?”
He made the slightest of nods, then brought up his bound hands, tied together at the wrists. They were swollen, and the color of ripe plums.
Sara wasn’t able to hide her wince. She examined the rope, saw it was a simple slip knot.
“Okay, I’m going to count to three, then free your hands. When your circulation returns, it’s going to hurt really bad. You ready?”
Another nod. And Sara saw something in his eyes, something beyond the fear and pain. Trust. Trust, and unconditional love.
“Do you know I love you?”
She nodded, unable to answer because of the lump in her throat.
“Then we don’t have anything to talk about.”
Sara blinked away her tears, clamped the light under her armpit, and held his wrists.
“One…two…”
Sara went on two, pulling at the rope with one hand and pulling his right arm with the other. The rope resisted at first, then slipped off.
Martin’s eyes went glassy, then rolled up into his head as he let out the most chilling, agonized howl Sara had ever heard in her life. Sara bit her lower lip and kept her own cry inside, patting Martin’s chest, wishing she could bear some of the pain for him.
His back arched, bending at an almost impossible angle, and then, mercifully, he passed out.
Sara seized the opportunity. She worked fast, digging a finger into the corner of his mouth and touching the horrible gag stuck inside. It was a wood, roughly golf-ball sized, and Sara counted eight nails protruding out of it, each two inches long. Two skewered his right cheek, one his lower lip, and three his left cheek. The other two jutted from his mouth like tusks.
She stretched his left cheek back, forcing the gag further to the right, making the wounds on that side bleed fresh.
Martin’s eyes popped open and he lashed out, smacking Sara on the side of the head, sending her sprawling.
Sara opened her eyes and stared up at the forest canopy, a small opening allowing a few stars to shine through. She’d once again lost the flashlight, but little bright motes swam through her vision like sparks. Her head was ringing.
It was the first time Martin had ever hit her. Not his fault, of course. He’d been unconscious. But it was as good a blow as she’d ever sustained, especially since she hadn’t been on guard to block it.
She sat up, squinting as the light hit her eyes.
“You okay?” Laneesha asked. “He clocked you pretty good.”
“Shine it on Martin, Laneesha, and kneel next to him.”
When the beam rested on Martin’s face he was looking Sara’s way.
“orry,” he said around the gag.
Sara blinked a few times. “We need to get that out of your mouth. I know your hands hurt, but I need you to keep them behind your back for me. I have to put the rope on again.”