CHAPTER 6“Em! Time for dinner!”From atop the bed, Emma looked over her knees to the door. Her will fought what felt to be a nest of rats chewing at her insides, but the growl that bubbled from her guts spoke of larger creatures.“I’m not hungry.”Past the door, her father sighed.“Now, I know that’s not true. We were on the road for—”Emma leaned forward. “How long?”Searching the room, she realized she’d been too absorbed in the insanity of the situation to look for a clock. “Dad?”A tiny vibration trembled through the door as her father either leaned against it or rested his hand against the wood.“It was a long trip, honey.”“How long?”Emma imagined her father fussing with his moustache.“Seventeen hours.”“Seventeen hours?” Emma was off the bed and pacing to the door. Her hand was nearly on the knob before she relented. Images of her friends’ faces, her town, flitted across her mind like photographs. Their presence felt every bit as distant.Jesus . . . I was out f
CHAPTER 7Emma paced her room.If I can’t figure something out and get away with it, I’ve got four months . . . four fucking months . . .Looking around, she realized she didn’t even have a calendar to mark the days. Instead, the paranoid titles of her father’s books whispered to her about the hours yet to pass. She kicked the bug-out bag to the corner. Frustration staunched the welling tears before they could drip to the floor.No phone, no computer, no movies. Not even a poster, for Christ’s sake!The window rattled behind the metal barrier. Echoes of a high-pitched gust tingled in Emma’s ears, raising the fine hairs on her arms. She rubbed the limbs, trying to subdue the sudden outbreak of gooseflesh until the noise passed.Damn, Dad. I really wish you would’ve at least let me grab my iPod.Shivering, Emma snatched the blanket off the bed and wrapped it around herself like a cloak. She scowled, drawing deeper into it.And it’s fucking freezing on top of it. Location, locatio
CHAPTER 8“How’d you sleep?”Emma watched her father’s hopeful smile wilt under a well-aimed glare. Clearing his throat, he turned his attention back to the eggs cooking on the stove.Emma took a sip from the cup of coffee waiting for her on the table. Her mouth puckered at the drink’s bitterness, but she ignored the sugar and creamer at her elbow.“That stupid wind kept me up all night.”Her father reached for the bag of bread on the counter and pushed two slices into the toaster. “Winters around here are usually pretty harsh. It should start calming down in a couple months, though.”Emma rubbed her eyes and took a long draught of her coffee.Great.The eggs sizzled while she again took stock of the kitchen. While it had fewer rooms, each part of the cabin appeared larger than its counterpart back home, making her feel even shorter than usual. Every cabinet seemed out of reach.“Where did you find this place, anyway?”Her father scraped the eggs off the skillet with a spatul
CHAPTER 9Emma woke to wind.The whistle filled her ears, flooding her skull until her brain threatened to freeze solid. She tried to block the sound, but her hands rose in fitful spasms from where they were buried in the snow. They numbed to rigidity before they could go higher than her chest.“H-h-he . . . ”The word stalled on Emma’s tongue, garbled by the clicking of her teeth. Every muscle in her body clenched, tightening harder while the gusts picked up. Her eyes closed under the blasts of frigid air, ice forming on the lids while the ebb and flow of the gales gave way to one massive roar.The sound hit Emma like a brick wall, rattling her bones. The sinews in her legs stretched as the force snatched her from the snow, wrenching hard enough to drag out a scream when her knees popped free of their sockets.“God!”She pried her eyes open just wide enough to see the landscape thirty feet below her, the smoke from the cabin’s chimney wafting past her face. She coughed on the f
CHAPTER 10Emma closed the door to her room, the tiny click of the latch causing her incisors to draw fresh blood from her lip. Something between a mad giggle and a sob caught in her throat while she wiped her mouth.He lied! He lied to me!This time, she did laugh, soft and tittering.And why did you think he wouldn’t? That the deal was legit? He drugged you to bring you here, for God’s sake!Emma held her palm to her head, suddenly dizzy. Her last vain hope for her father’s sanity shriveled into a little black ball. The thing throbbed inside her skull, synchronizing with the echoes of the hammer blows.There’s no way out now. There’s no phone, no car. No neighbors. The best I’d be able to do is run for it.The wind whistled past the window, dredging the overwhelming cold of her nightmares back into her bones. She clenched her teeth, trying to fight the shiver coursing through her.Don’t give up! There has to be something. Think . . .The harder Emma tried to come up with som
CHAPTER 11“Dad!”Emma regretted calling out the moment the word left her lips. The thin trees swayed in the rising wind as if in response, the low-hanging branches whipping at her face. Through the boughs, she saw the sun was all but gone, making long shadows of the wood around her. They swam around her feet like black snakes—like the tendrils she’d seen writhing in the movie theater in her dream—waiting to ensnare and infect her. From the corner of her eye, she thought she saw one flick toward her ankle.Emma turned and ran, breaking through the twigs and branches her father had been so careful to avoid going in. Scratched and bloodied, she fell into the snow, throwing one backward glance at the spreading darkness before dashing for the cabin.When she reached the shelter, she slammed the door shut behind her, securing every one of the locks before retreating to the center of the room, the rifle raised in her hands. Her own breaths felt like they were strangling her before common
CHAPTER 12Emma stared through the sparks, willing the space inside the doorframe to glow a bright, molten red. Sweat slid down her forehead and past her eyes behind the goggles, blurring her progress. She didn’t stop until the torch’s nozzle began to sputter. Turning it off, Emma lifted the goggles and wiped away the perspiration to observe her handiwork.Not bad, but I better make this quick. If that metal cools off, I’m screwed.She picked up the sledgehammer resting at her feet, adjusting her stance to accommodate its weight before taking a swing at the door. The faux-wood veneer split under the blow, the metal behind it denting. Emma stumbled back, aiming her next shot. The glow inside the door was already starting to dim.Man, I better make this count.She huffed, reared back, and struck out with everything she had. When the hammer connected, the door flew open, crashing into the wall on the other side. Straight ahead of her, a desk rested against the far wall, her father’s
CHAPTER 13Emma took a seat on the floor after another few hours of scouring her father’s personal effects. A mess of open books and printouts littered the floor around her. The clutter of literature and ramblings had yet to shed any additional light on the situation.Emma’s fingers dug into her stomach, the tightness in her gut making her wince.Crap . . . I only had a couple bites to eat all day, didn’t I?She slunk back downstairs and into the kitchen. The room seemed darker than the day before, and each groan of the appliances sent her fingers fumbling for the pistol at her side. Guilt tightened around her heart like a noose when she saw the table still waiting to be set and the empty skillet sitting on the stove range.He was here just this morning, wasn’t he? Cooking for me. Trying to do something nice for me. And where the hell was I when he needed me?Emma rubbed her head, the image of her father working the stove shifting to the one of him hammering the car’s alternator