Defeat (12 page)

She wanted to do the same, but had
found no sign of her sister in three days of searching. She didn’t
know what to do.

She followed a map she had found,
more of a sales brochure than a map, visiting each cabin, knocking
on the door, the windows, the attached sheds when there were any,
and even, in desperation, had broken into a few. Everyone was gone
and there was no sign of Jada.

She traced her sister’s likely
path down to the lake several times, examining every step of the
way, every bush, every tree, hoping to find a clue, but it was as
if her sister had simply vanished.

She wondered if it were the
Rapture.

She didn’t believe in that
nonsense. She knew lots of Christians who didn’t believe in it
either, but aliens had shown up and now lots of people, including
the aliens, had just vanished. Maybe it was real.

But, irrational or not, she didn’t
believe that her sister had been taken to heaven. She believed her
sister was out there, in the woods somewhere, and needed her help.
She just didn’t know where to look anymore.

On the third day after her
sister’s disappearance, Jayla sat on the shore of the lake Jada had
probably hiked to and stared at the water. The skies were cloudy
and the air unusually cold for a summer day, even an early summer
day. Jayla had worn a sweat jacket, and she pulled it around
herself, zipping it up.

In doing so, she almost missed
something. She stared back at it again, and wondered if she had
just imagined it, as it was gone. She stared at the same spot of
sky until she saw spots, and there was no evidence of what she had
seen. But she had seen something.

Unless it was just wishful
thinking.

She stood up and started running
along the lake, heading towards the other side of it, towards what
she had seen. Had Jada hiked around the lake? Was she on the other
side of it, and was the puff of smoke Jayla saw from a fire lit by
her sister?

When a fireplace burned hot, it
was impossible to see smoke from it. But often, when a fire first
started, little puffs of white or gray smoke would come out, and
Jayla had thought she had seen just such a puff of
smoke.

She didn’t know any cabins were on
that side of the lake, they hadn’t been marked on her map, but it
made sense that people put them up wherever they were allowed.
Maybe Jada had broken a leg or something and was holed up in one of
them, starting a fire to keep warm or perhaps cook some food on.
Could Jayla allow herself that hope?

She ran faster.

The lake was large, and it took
her a couple of hours to get around to the other side. She couldn’t
run the whole way, walking briskly when she was out of breath, and
she wondered if Jada had really gone this way on her own. Perhaps
there was a path not far away from where Jayla ran, but she didn’t
want to risk looking for it. She had to get to where she had seen a
puff of smoke as soon as possible.

She arrived at a cabin late
afternoon and it looked deserted. She didn’t see a car, but there
was a barn shaped garage near the cabin. There was trash around the
cabin, which was unusual. Most people rich enough to own high
quality cabins this remote were fastidious.

Jayla knocked on the door and
yelled her sister’s name. There was no answer. She tried the door
knob, but it was locked. She tried to peek through the window next
to the door, but the cabin inside was dark and she couldn’t see
anything. She yelled Jada’s name again.

She moved around the side of the
cabin and tried to look through the windows. She didn’t see
anything. She had just decided to break into the cabin when she
heard a gruff, “What are you doing?”

She spun around to see a grizzled
man in a tank top and dungarees holding the cabin door open. She
ran back to him.

“
I’ve lost my
sister. Have you seen her?”

“
What’s she look
like?”

“
Me, only
younger.”

He shook his head. “I haven’t seen
no one.”

“
Could you help
me look for her? Please? She’s been lost for
days.”

“
I don’t know,”
the man mumbled.

“
Her name is
Jada. I’m Jayla.” She held her hand out to shake the man’s hand,
anything to make a connection to him, to get his
help.

The man reached out and took her
hand limply. “Pleased ta meet ya.”

“
Will you help
me?”

“
I
s’pose.”

“
Thank
you.”

“
You wait here.
I’ll be right out,” the man said, heading back into his cabin.
Jayla tried to peek through the open door as he made it wider, but
it was dark inside and he closed it quickly.

Jayla felt a sense of relief. She
didn’t have to do this alone. That, in and of itself, made her feel
better.

She wandered off the porch of the
cabin and looked around. She was surprised the area around the
cabin was so littered, and wondered why the man wasn’t taking
better care of it. She also wondered where his car was. Probably in
the barn shaped garage.

Curious about her new benefactor,
she wandered around, moving closer to the garage. He still hadn’t
come out of the cabin, so she peeked through a window in the side
door. It was dark.

She looked back up at the cabin,
but there was no movement, so she opened the garage side door a
little and looked in.

There was an old car inside, along
with some barn implements. It looked more like a barn on the inside
than a garage, albeit a small one, and this stoked Jayla’s
curiosity.

She looked back at the cabin
again. What was keeping him?

She turned back to the garage, her
eyes adjusting to the dim light. There was something strange
sticking out of the open window of the car. She suddenly had to
know what it was, and she entered the door and moved quickly to the
car. It was a thick stick, just like her father’s hiking staff, and
Jayla almost turned to leave the garage. But she reached out
instead and grabbed the stick, and even in the dim light, she knew
it was her father’s.

The side door to the garage opened
and the man stepped inside, holding a shotgun. Afterwards, Jayla
asked herself why she hadn’t thought the man would shoot her
immediately, but at the moment she had no such thoughts. She simply
lunged forward, jabbing the staff forward and hitting the man on
the side of the head.

He stumbled back, dropping his
shotgun, and Jayla hit him again. He fell to the ground and she hit
once more. He stopped moving. She stepped over him and fled the
garage, getting outside the door and realizing how stupid she
was.

She went back inside, looked at
him to make sure he wasn’t moving, stepped back over him and
retrieved the shotgun. She ran back outside, breathing heavily,
coated in sweat, her hands trembling.

The cabin door was locked, but she
hit it several times with the butt of the shotgun and the door
opened. She called her sister’s name, then turned the shotgun to
face forward. What if the old man wasn’t alone?

She called out again, then flipped
a switch. No light. Idiot. He doesn’t have electricity either, she
chided herself.

She kept the shotgun ready,
holding the hiking staff awkwardly, and searched the cabin, calling
Jada’s name. Her sister wasn’t in the main room or the kitchen
area. Jayla opened other doors cautiously, just opening the handle
then kicking the door with both hands on the shotgun. The bedroom
and a bathroom were empty.

She went back out into the main
area and looked around. There was a broom closet. She opened the
door cautiously and almost passed out from relief. Jada lay in it,
her eyes wide, her mouth duct taped shut, zip ties around her hands
and feet. Her hands were also attached to a pole with zip
ties.

Jayla dropped the shotgun and
staff and fell on her sister, hugging and kissing her. She heard
muffled moans, and she pulled back, tearing off the duct
tape.

“
Baby, are you
okay? Are you okay?”

Jada’s eyes were still wide and
she screamed a little.

Jayla swung around, reaching for
the shotgun, but there was no one behind her. She stood and went
into the kitchen, searching through drawers until she found a
large, serrated knife. She ran back, the shotgun still in one hand,
and sawed at the zip ties around her sister’s feet.

Her sister’s boots were gone, her
hiking shorts gone, her shirt and underwear filthy and torn. It was
no secret to Jayla what had happened.

She cut the ties on her hands next
and hugged her sister. Jada didn’t respond.

“
We’ve got to get
you out of here,” Jayla said and tried to pick Jada up. Jada
wouldn’t walk.

What could she do? She couldn’t
carry Jada and the shotgun and the staff. And she couldn’t leave
the shotgun here for the man to get it back.

Why had he done this? To a sixteen
year old?

Frustration and fear turned to
anger and hate, and then Jayla noticed the box of zip ties in the
closet. She could make sure he didn’t follow them.

Grabbing the box, her staff, and
the shotgun, she told Jada she would be right back, and she left
the cabin and headed back to the garage.

The man still lay on the ground
and Jayla poked him with the shotgun. He didn’t react. She poked
him harder. He still didn’t move.

She set the shotgun down outside
the building and took the staff. She had to make sure he didn’t try
to grab her while she was putting the zip ties on his hands and
feet.

She raised the staff in the air
and brought it down on his head. To make sure, she hit him a second
time.

“
How could you do
that to that baby?” she screamed at him and hit him again. And
again. And again. She couldn’t stop, but then she did, sitting on
the ground next to him and weeping.

She grabbed his hands, his filthy
hands, and pulled them around behind his back, putting the tie on
it and zipping it tight. When it was as tight as it would go, she
pulled again.

She did the same to his feet,
trussing him up the same way he had tied up her sister.

She also didn’t want him calling
for help, in case he had an accomplice or a neighbor who hadn’t
left yet. She saw an oily rag on a workbench and she went to it,
stepping warily over him. Even tied up, he felt
dangerous.

She pulled his mouth open, it was
hard to do, and stuffed the rag into it, attaching two zip ties
together and putting them around his head and over the rag. She
pulled one tight and it cut into his lips, dark blood spilling a
little out of the side of his mouth.

It repulsed her to be so close to
this piece of excrement. She wanted him punished. She hit him again
with her staff.

Running back to the cabin, afraid
the old man would somehow get himself free, or an accomplice would
arrive, Jayla slammed the door open and told her sister she had to
get over herself and they had to leave. Now.

Jada just lay where Jayla had left
her, her eyes staring glassily at nothing.

Jayla got a cup out of the kitchen
and filled it with cold water. She splashed it on her sister’s
face.

“
We have to go!”
she screamed, but Jada still didn’t move.

Jayla set the shotgun down,
keeping herself between it and the door, and picked her sister up
under her armpits, dragging the girl across the floor. She could
move her, but it was hard and there was no way to get all the way
back to their cabin like that. It would take days.

“
Jada, please. We
are going to die if you don’t move.”

But Jada didn’t move.

What had that man done to
her?

A quiet, dark thought formed in
Jayla’s mind, but she dismissed it. She couldn’t kill him. She
couldn’t take the shotgun out to the garage, place it against the
man’s head and pull the trigger. She just couldn’t do
that.

She wished she had the courage to
do it. It’s what he would have done to them. He would have used
them and then killed them, dumping or burying their bodies deep in
the woods where they would never be found. Especially in the chaos
of war with the aliens, no one would ever have even taken the time
to look for them.

For the first time in her life,
Jayla felt what the lack of civilization meant. There were no
teachers to break up fights, no parents to bring lunches to
schools, no police to arrest monsters like the one she had trussed
up in the garage. There was no law and order.

She felt fear.

“
Jada, we have
got to go!” she shrieked, but Jada still lay
there.

Jayla went back into the kitchen
and started hunting through drawers. She couldn’t find what she was
looking for. She wasn’t even sure the car worked, but then she
remembered Jada’s staff in it, and that must have meant the man had
given her a ride.