Meadow managed to roll onto his side. Strangely, the dirt seemed warm. In fact, this entire area seemed a lot warmer than the run through the woods. It seemed brighter, too, but he couldn’t tell where the light was coming from. He craned his neck, trying to see beyond a thick patch of bushes, when an old lady came out of nowhere and knelt down in front of him.
She was rail thin, and her white hair was scraggly and all knotted up. She wore a tattered sweater with more holes in it than threads. The lady grinned insanely at Meadow. He tried to say, “help me,” but it came out as more of a moan.
Then the crazy bitch stabbed him in the arm with something.
Meadow howled, trying to twist away. She pulled her weapon back, then held it in front of her face.
It’s a fork.
Meadow watched a line of spit snake down her chin, then she stuck out a drooly tongue and licked the blood off the tines. Just as she was raising the fork for seconds, one of the men batted her across the side of the head, knocking her over.
“Dinner… not… ready… yet.”
He reached for Meadow, who flinched away. The man, and a partner, grabbed the poles and dragged Meadow uphill, around the bushes.
Meadow now understood the source of the fire and the light. In a small clearing, they’d covered the ground with a bed of white-hot coals. On top of them was some kind of metal cage, big enough for a person.
“Grid… iron,” the man said.
Meadow, a devout atheist, prayed for the first time in his life. He prayed for forgiveness for all of his sins, prayed that there was an afterlife, and most of all prayed with all his might that these crazy fuckers would kill him before they put him on the fire.
His prayers were not answered.
Sara didn’t think, she reacted, thrusting Jack into her husband’s arms and lunging after Laneesha as the girl disappeared into the woods.
Sara had always wanted to have children, a desire that eclipsed all others in her life, compounded because she and Martin had such a hard time getting pregnant. When they founded the Center, the kids they cared for became Sara’s surrogate children, each one as dear to her as Jack. Losing them was the hardest part of the job.
In some cases, the losses were happy ones, with the teens being released back into society, the majority of them going on to live fulfilling, productive lives. But several—the runaways—proved particularly painful for Sara. Like Martin, Sara felt like she failed those children, and grieved for the loss, both hers and theirs.
So having Laneesha snatched away right under her nose was something Sara just couldn’t allow, even if she had to fight to the death to prevent it.
Sara was no stranger to fights.
Following the sounds of Laneesha’s cries, Sara navigated through the trees and underbrush, moving faster than safety allowed. Laneesha wasn’t a tiny girl, and whoever grabbed her was obviously struggling to carry her off, because in only a few dozen steps Sara saw the bouncing yellow beam of the Maglite. Sara poured on the speed, bursting through an elderberry bush into a small, rocky clearing, and found herself facing Laneesha’s abductors.
At first Sara thought they were homeless people, like she was used to seeing on the streets of Detroit; dirty and hairy with tattered clothes. But their snarls, and the crude tree clubs they brandished, made them look more like savages; some crazed prehistoric tribe of headhunters from an epoch long passed. Both of them were thin, bare arms rippled with muscles, wearing insane, malevolent expressions, and it took Sara a moment to realize one of them was a woman—the only way to distinguish her from her partner was the lack of facial hair.
The man snarled, spit flecking his filthy lips, and then charged.
He kept his arm high, ready to bring down his weapon in a clubbing motion. Textbook attack, even if he wasn’t a textbook assailant. Sara went in under the arc of his arm, pivoted her body while grabbing him, and flipped him over her hip, hard, using leverage and momentum to her advantage. She turned on him quickly, kneeling on his ribcage, and cocked her hand back.
She’d thrown the killing blow a thousand times in judo practice, but always pulled the punch. This time she didn’t, giving it all she had, her fist connecting with his bulging Adam’s apple. She both felt and heard something crack beneath her knuckles.
Without pausing to reflect on what she’d just done, Sara whirled on the second attacker, who now stood behind Laneesha, a rusty kitchen knife pressed to the teen’s throat.
“Instep!” Sara yelled.
A small spark of recognition registered in Laneesha’s eyes, the intended result of the many self-defense classes Sara taught at the Center, and she lifted up her right foot and ground the heel down onto the woman’s.
The woman howled, stumbling backwards, and then limped off into the night. Sara didn’t pursue her, instead running to Laneesha for an embrace.
“Are you okay” and “I was so scared” came out at the same time, and then Laneesha began to cry. Sara held the girl, but it didn’t take long for her to calm down. Laneesha was made of strong stuff.
“I thought…I thought I was dead.”
“I know.”
“Why’d they grab me? What’d they want?”
“I don’t know.”
First they went for Martin, and now Laneesha. What the hell was going on?
Sara turned and looked at the man. He was still on his back, hands clawing at his throat. Sara knew she’d broken his trachea, cut off his airway. There was nothing she could do to help him. Sara watched him struggle, even though it was excruciating to see someone suffer so. Mercifully, he stopped moving after a very long minute, and the weight of her actions pressed on Sara like a crate of falling bricks.
I took a human life. I’m a murderer.
“He dead?”
Sara watched his chest, didn’t notice it moving. “Yes.”
She patted the girl’s back, then took a step toward the dead man. Laneesha grabbed her wrist.
“Whatchoo doin’?”
Part of Sara wanted, needed, to touch him, just so she could persuade herself this was all real, that she’d really done what she knew she’d done. Since high school Sara had been involved in the martial arts and self-defense—a textbook case of empowerment and a way to gain mastery over her many fears. Every teacher she ever had, and even Sara herself when she began to teach, repeated time and again the importance of not holding back when in a real fight.
But none of her instructors told her how it actually felt to hurt—to kill—another human being. Part of Sara was exhilarated that she survived. But a larger part, the part that recognized how every human life was precious, made her feel like she’d just committed an unpardonable sin.
“I need to search him,” Sara heard herself say, “try to figure out who he is. I have to call the authorities, tell them what I did.”
“You saved me.”
Sara’s veneer cracked even further. “I… I just killed a man, Laneesha.”
“It was self-defense. You save my life.”
Sara managed a nod, then tried to pull away. Laneesha held her tight.
“Don’t go over there.”
“I have to check him for ID. This man might have a family somewhere.”
“Look at him, Sara. Any family he got won’t give a shit he’s dead.”
Sara stared hard at the corpse, his open mouth exposing a jungle of missing and rotten teeth, eyes bloodshot and staring into infinity. The shoes on his feet were battered old Nikes with the toes exposed, and his pants were held up with a length of rope. Even in death he looked fearsome. But still, he was someone’s son, and maybe someone’s brother, husband, father. Sara often felt she was put on this earth to help those in need, and here she’d just murdered one of them.