NorthWest (John Hazard - Book II) (22 page)

“I guess that’s true, what with all your focus on getting you and your… your girlfriend there out of this place without getting your asses eaten, and to hell with the rest of us.” She was starting to panic a bit and wanted to keep him distracted. What did he know, anyway? She decided she’d better back off the attitude. She wasn’t ready to spill her guts to these people.

“Well, Macy, you do know my background, right? I mean...”

She couldn’t help herself as she cut him short. “Oh yeah, John, you were some big detective somewhere and then some crazy shit happened and you don’t want to tell anybody the details and blah, blah, blah!” She smiled hoping she was getting the upper hand and distracting the others from the question he had posed earlier. Then John dropped the bomb.

“Yes, Macy. I was a good detective. And once you get the nose for it, you always got the nose for it, which is why I investigated you before I signed up for your course. And you know what I found, Macy? Anyone?” There was no response from the gallery of golden faces who were all waiting for John to give the answer.

“Fucking say it, asshole!” Spit shot out from Macy’s mouth as she shouted.

“John, what the fuck is going on?” Emily asked.

He started out slowly. “Remember when Macy told us if we had any weapons, we might want to bring them for protection against the bears, wolves and such?” Heads were nodding.

“Well, when we were stuck to those trees earlier, Macy here was asking that alien fucker about her sister. If you haven’t heard about Mary, she was Macy’s twin sister. A sister who disappeared somewhere around the age of ten. Isn’t that right, Dr. Renner?”

“Yeah, well, that doesn’t mean shit! A lot of people go missing every day. Hell, right now, we are missing.” Macy was trying to figure out how much he really knew and convince the others that he was way off base.

John set his chin in his hand for a moment and curled his finger up over his upper lip. He took a deep breath before continuing, “You know, I should have put two and two together a couple of weeks ago when you were talking to your assistant about making sure we had a guide who didn’t mind if we killed some animals, vicious ones, if we had to. You weren’t talking about your regular forest-type animals, were you, Macy?”

“What are you trying to say John? What is this?” Sherri asked.

“What I’m saying is that I think Macy was expecting to find aliens all along. I think her sister was taken by some fuckin’ aliens like those when she was a kid. Right, Macy? And she was bringing us up here to help her look for them. This whole class field trip thing was just a ploy.” He glared at Macy as he made his claim. “Wasn’t it?”

“That’s absurd, John. How could I have known anything like that?”

“Yeah really, John. That’s a stretch, isn’t it? I mean, isn’t it?” Karla looked back and forth at the two of them.

“Right, and if that’s a stretch, then there’s no reason why she was asking that alien where her sister is, right?”

“Did you really say that?” Raj asked Macy in disbelief.

“At this point, do I have any real reason to make shit up?” John brushed a large bug off his pant leg as he spoke. “It was something like, ‘Where the fuck is Mary?’, or something like that.”

“You moron, you don’t even know what I said. I asked if it was the one who took h...” She stopped mid sentence and looked down at the fire as some of the others stood with their mouths open. “Shit!” She kicked at the dirt beneath her feet.

“So you did know, you fuckin’ bitch!” Emily grabbed a thick piece of firewood and was standing to use it when John rose and put his hand out to stop her. “Out of my way, John. People died here! And I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for this... this….”

“Lyin’ bitch?” John asked, finishing her sentence.

“Right, this fucking bitch who lied to all of us and brought us out here to die!” She still had the piece of wood in her hand, her arm cocked to use it.

“Now wait a sec, Em.” John was still holding on to her arm. “You were in deep shit at home, remember? You weren’t even going to come until those gang bangers came after you!” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

Emily’s arm had begun to lower when Karla freaked, jumped forward, and grabbed the wood from Emily’s hand. She raised her arm and brought it back to hit Macy in the side of the head. The impact landed hard enough that it sounded like the crack of a bat on a baseball.

“You fucking, stupid, ugly whore! I’ll kill your ass!” She smacked Macy in the head again before John and Eddie caught hold of her arm on the third swing. Sherri sat with her arms wrapped around herself, rocking back and forth, and crying out, “No, no, no, no! Marcus died for this. And the pilot… No!”

Macy had fallen to her knees and there was a large gash in her forehead. Blood was running down the side of her face. “Ohhh, my head! Please, don’t,” she moaned holding a hand up to try to protect herself from the next impact.

“Serves you right, you stupid cow!” Raj was livid. “I could be at home with my parents right now where some nice girl is waiting to marry me. Now I’m gonna die out here in the woods like a stupid animal, part of some sick buffet for some fucking aliens! Fuck you very much!” He was hysterical now, walking around flailing his arms.

“Everybody please!” John raised his voice above the rest. “We’re stuck here now. We need to figure this out and make a plan to survive. Focus on that.” He hesitated a moment, then added, “While I get this bitch tied up.” He walked over to the shredded tent and cut a piece of nylon rope from one of the bent poles. “I think we got us a decoy,” he said as he came back to the fire.

Forty Three

By the light of the fire, the team was able to forage enough small pieces of wood from the immediate area to keep it going without taking any more chances out in the darkness. Occasionally a coyote could be heard howling in the distance. The discussion around the fire had turned from what to do with Macy to what to do at sunrise and back again to Macy. While they debated, the professor sat tied up in the firelight glaring at them like an escapee from an asylum.

“We could have finished our class with a trip to a haunted house, or some other known paranormal phenomenon,” Raj pointed out. “But she had to bring us all here telling us it was some kind of graduation requirement when all the time she had her own selfish motives and was just using us to assist her.”

When a vote was finally taken, they held Macy entirely responsible for their current predicament and, because of the danger they believed would come with the morning, they decided that John should lead them and Macy should bring up the rear. Her hands and feet would be sufficiently bound leaving enough slack in the rope to allow her to walk as though she was wearing leg shackles similar to convicts being transported.

That way if the aliens attacked again, Macy would be their first bite and that might give the rest of the team a enough time to escape. Of course, Macy was not too fond of the plan and voiced her opposition strongly as soon as it came up. “You can’t do that to me, I’m a human being! I’m a woman! I’m an American citizen, I deserve a fair trial!” She pleaded.

To which John replied, “Shut the fuck up!”

What they needed now was to get some rest or they would not be able to get through the next day, especially if they had to run to keep ahead of the aliens.

“We should sleep in shifts, don’t you think?” John suggested. “Two people at a time can stand watch while the others sleep.”

“You and Emily can be the first to watch,” Eddie said. “Then Raj and Sherri. Karla will take the last shift with me, okay?” He looked at Karla who was already heading to one of the tents that was still clean enough to sleep in. With about two hours watch for each pair, that would just about take them to dawn.

“Fine by me,” said Emily.

“I want to be on the move before sunrise,” John confirmed.

Macy had fallen asleep before the first watch even started. Her head injury and loss of blood allowed her body to give way to sleep even while sitting tied up. Her hair was matted with blood from Karla’s attack and her face was pretty messed up. Sherri had applied some makeshift bandages to stop the bleeding, but other than that no one showed any real concern for her well-being other than to make sure she didn’t die before sunrise.

While John and Emily took their positions, the others took shelter in the tent. They grumbled at each other as they packed themselves in like sardines, but ultimately the four of them were able to settle in. It wasn’t long before someone inside the tent was snoring.

Macy was tied up tight to prevent her from running off or trying to hurt anyone during the night. They had covered her with some clothes they had found scattered on the ground around the campsite after she kept complaining about being cold. It wasn’t that anyone cared if she was cold or not, they just couldn’t take the complaining anymore.

Now that everyone else was quiet, John and Emily sat by the fire silently staring into the flames and watching the red hot coals glow. After some time Emily asked, “Do you think we have a chance of getting out of this alive, John?”

He wondered how honest he should be and let out a sigh. “I can’t say that I’ve ever been in shit this deep before, but I’ll tell you what, Em. I am not about to give up and die out here.” He stirred the coals with a stick.

“What are we going to do about Macy?” She looked over at the woman slumped over on the ground.

“Don’t you believe that she knew what she was getting us into when she brought us out here?” He inquired.

“I don’t know John. When you stop and think about it, how could anybody have predicted this? It just doesn’t make sense.”

“Wouldn’t you agree that even if she didn’t know exactly what would happen, she still knew it was some dangerous shit we were walking into? I mean, she all but demanded that we bring some kind of a weapon.”

“Maybe that was only because she was worried about bears and wolves. There are still dangerous animals like that out here, you know.” Emily sounded compassionate.

From her place not far from the fire, Macy shifted her weight and perked her ears when she overheard this part of the conversation. She smiled, knowing that the blind compassion of someone like Emily or Sherri could possibly save her. Fools were often convenient pawns.

“So what are you trying to say, Em? You were the one who was going to beat her with that log, remember? Now you want to untie the bitch? Mark and Marcus are dead, ripped apart by those things, and she basically knew that it could happen. She considers us all to be expendable.”

Macy started to turn her head to give them a pained look, maybe express regret for what had happened, and to say she was sorry, when Emily continued, “No, John, that’s really not what I meant.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“I agreed to our arrangement. We should make her walk at the back at the group so if those things come up on us, they’ll tear into her first and give the rest of us time to run away.”

“Hey! Good thinking, girl.” He bumped her on the shoulder playfully. “That is the plan.”

“Yeah, but maybe we should break her ankle or something just to make sure it works out that way.” She looked at the smile spreading across John’s face. “I’m serious!”

“Yeah, I know you are.” He shook his head and threw a small pebble at Macy’s back while trying to force the smile from his face.

As the pebble landed, Macy jerked in surprise. She resolved to get loose somehow and get away from this group. She’d need a few hours of sleep before she could even attempt it. She would try to make her getaway when one of the other couples were standing watch.

Forty Four

Aside from the howling coyotes, Raj and Sherri’s watch was uneventful. Nothing moved in the forest, not even a breeze. Sherri knew that she’d hear the warning voices if anything was coming. She stirred the fire once in a while and watched the sparks float up to the sky.

Raj didn’t feel much like making conversation. He just sat and made promises to the universe about what he’d do if they got out of here. Sherri could see his mouth moving and decided to leave him alone with his thoughts and prayers, if that’s what they were. She couldn’t help wondering how Shandre was doing. She hoped she could count on her Gran and Nana to get her home safe. “I’ll be back with you as soon as I can, little man,” she whispered to herself.

Eddie and Karla were awakened when it was time to take their watch. Karla started complaining about being hungry, cold, and tired. They sat down together next to the fire. It had burned low and Eddie threw another log and a couple of smaller branches on it. This caused a flare up and lit the clearing around them.

Karla snuggled up to Eddie, put her head on his shoulder and hugged herself while she fell asleep. Eddie, now nice and warm with her up against him, felt relaxed and it was only a matter of minutes before his eyes were closed too.

Macy had every intention of waking in the night to try to escape on her own, but she was lost in her nightmares of abduction and horror. Though she screamed in her dreams, she remained silent and very much asleep.

Just as the sun began to reach for the horizon, when the line between darkness and daylight began to blur, no one was awake as the deer came wandering into the far side of the campsite. Eddie and Karla were snuggled next to the smoldering ashes of the fire. They were laying on some material from one of the damaged tents, completely oblivious to anything happening around them.