Dead in Bed by Bailey Simms, The Complete First Book (13 page)

January 26
^th
,
2014

3:17 p.m.

Milk and Honey

My phone’s battery charge
ticked down from 2 percent to one.

I shifted my weight
and changed the angle of my head on Bryce’s knee. I managed to find a slightly
less cramped position. The air was getting thinner.

We’re just in bed
, I kept trying to tell myself.
We’re just in bed, under the covers, in a
dark room. Soon, I’ll fall asleep.

I was scrolling
through photos of my family. Any second now my phone’s screen would switch off,
and I wanted to see everyone one last time.

I was looking at Tyler
and Haley in the photo I took of them before Tyler’s first football game. He
was lifting Haley off her feet, and they were both smiling ecstatically. I
flipped to the next image: Shawn and me right after our wedding. He was thinner
and looked happier than I’d seen him in a long time. Flip. There was my mom,
knitting on the sofa. Flip. And there was my dad. He was fishing, sitting in
the old lawn chair he always took to the river, gazing at the camera with the
gentle look that was unique to him.

I felt my chin start
to quiver. Tears welled in my eyes. I couldn’t help it; of all the people I’d
never see again, I thought I’d miss my dad more than anyone else. I tried to
cry quietly so Bryce wouldn’t hear me.

I wiped my eyes with
my shirt collar. When I opened them a text had appeared on the phone’s screen.

Could this be
possible?

I looked at the cell
reception meter. One tiny bar had appeared,
then
quickly vanished. For a moment my phone must have gotten just enough reception
for a text to come through.

It was from Shawn:

i
know where u r. why out there?
r
u with
bryce
t?

My eyes flashed over
the text, reading it a second time. What did it mean? How could Shawn know
where I was? Had he somehow traced my phone? Did he know I’d been buried alive?
If so, what did he mean by “out there?”

My phone’s screen went
black. The battery was dead.

* * *

It
started as a low rumbling sound. I was breathing so fast I could barely hear
it, but it was there. I was taking in deep gulps of air, and I still felt like
I needed even deeper and deeper breaths. I’d never experienced any feeling like
this, except maybe in high school after I’d sprinted around the track. I knew I
was about to pass out any minute now.

The coffin started to
creak, and as the rumbling noise grew louder the earth began shaking a little.
Bryce, breathing as frantically as I was, started banging on the lid. Little
bits of dirt fell on our faces.

When I felt the coffin
lurch, for a moment I thought it had caved in. But then I realized we were
being pulled out of the ground and then set down roughly. Before I could even
process the fact that we’d been saved, someone pried open the lid a couple of
inches. There was a flood of cool air and bright light. I swallowed gasps of
the fresh oxygen as if I’d just been deep under water. Bryce kicked the lid
fully open.

The sky was overcast,
but it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the sudden daylight. A man was
kneeling over the coffin with a crowbar. He was wearing a combat helmet. As his
face faded into view, I found myself staring at the last person in the world I
thought I’d see.

It was Jason Gibbs.

I hadn’t thought about
Jason since breaking through the police barricade at the fair.

“Fucking hell,” he
said. He turned and called out over his shoulder, “Just in fucking time!”

Then I saw
who
he was calling to. It was Shawn. He was climbing down
from a backhoe.

Jason held out his
hand and helped me out of the coffin. I was still dizzy.

“Jesus Christ,
Ashley,” he said. “You better be so fucking glad we got issued these GPS phone
trackers. How the fuck did you two get in there?”

I ignored him and
tried to make sense of what I was seeing. We were in an open field whose soil
had been heavily turned over. In addition to Shawn and Jason, three other men
where standing around an idling backhoe. All of them were wearing the same kind
of combat gear as the men who had come to the house: helmets, flak jackets,
boots
. They all carried semiautomatic rifles.

Shawn kept his gun
casually pointed at Bryce while one of the men put him in handcuffs. He hadn’t
even stepped out of the coffin yet.

“What is this?” Bryce
was still catching his breath. “You can’t do this. Why are you doing this?”
Bryce looked at his bound wrists, bewildered. “You can’t… Are you the police,
or what?”

“Home Guard rangers.”
My husband was speaking in an official tone I’d never heard him use before.

Jason shoved Bryce
with his rifle. “Just finished crash training yesterday, bitch!” He grabbed
Bryce’s arm and dragged him toward a huge military vehicle parked behind us.
“And your ass is under arrest!”

Under
arrest
?

Shawn held a pair of
handcuffs toward me. For a moment I had an irrational flash of pride that he
was finally applying
himself
, but this wasn’t what I’d
pictured. Instead of joining the highway patrol, he’d become some kind of
paramilitary Nazi.

“Give me your hands,”
he said. He wouldn’t even look at me. “Give me your hands, ma’am.”

Ma’am
? What was going on?

I gingerly held out my
hands. “Shawn, why are you doing this?” I searched the faces of the other
so-called rangers. I didn’t recognize any of them. “Where’s Ian?”

Shawn wouldn’t answer.

“I’m your
wife
,” I pleaded. “What is this?”

My husband just
cinched the handcuffs tightly around my wrists. I looked around, trying to get
my bearings. There were two other backhoes parked on the loose soil, plus the
military vehicle. Otherwise just a low, gray sky surrounded us. We were somewhere
far outside of town.

“What is this place?”
I tried to look Shawn in the eye.

No response. Shawn and
one of the other men grabbed my shoulders and put me in back of the military
vehicle next to Bryce.

“Tell me what’s going on!”

“That’s classified
information for my rank,” Shawn said. “You’ll have to ask the sergeant.” He
nodded toward Jason, who was climbing into the driver’s seat.

“The
sergeant?
”

“Mass grave!” Jason
shouted into the rearview mirror. “You two were lucky as fuck!”

* * *

Outside
of Muldoon there’s a truck stop with a U-Haul center and a gigantic, warehouse-size
engine shop.

This was the first
recognizable landmark I saw when Jason approached the highway. I expected him
to pass it by, but instead he turned into the truck stop and drove the vehicle right
into the warehouse.

Inside were countless
U-Haul trucks—row after row of them. They’d all been stripped of their
engines and were in various states of disassembly. Jason came to a stop beside
one van without wheels; its axles rested on the concrete floor. Two of the men
pulled Bryce from his seat, shoved him into the back of the U-Haul, slammed its
door down, and locked it shut.

“Shawn.” I tried to
sound calm and reasonable, but I had no idea why we were here or what was
happening. “Please tell me what’s going on.” I steadied my breath. “Just…tell
me what you’re doing.”

Shawn kept quiet. No
one else said a word.

Jason maneuvered the
military vehicle around scattered hydraulic jacks and made his way toward the
opposite end of the warehouse. He stopped beside another U-Haul truck, this one
with its entire front end missing.

Jason got out and jerked
me from my seat. He shoved me into the back of the U-Haul.

“
Shawn!
” I screamed out. “
What’s
going on
? Tell me!”

I could see my
husband’s profile in the passenger seat. He didn’t even turn to look at me.

Jason reached up and
grabbed the cord dangling from the U-Haul’s sliding door.

“You just hang tight,”
he said with a terrifying grin. “We’ll let you know, ma’am!”

Then he slammed the door
shut. I heard him lock it.

Once again I was in a
dark space, this time completely alone.

* * *

I can’t
say for sure how long I was locked inside the back of the van, but it must have
been around five days.

At what felt like
twenty-four hour intervals, two men in combat gear—kids, really—opened
the U-Haul’s door. One always kept his rifle aimed at my chest. The other would
set vacuum-packed military rations and a gallon of water on the cargo space’s floor.
Then they slammed the door back down and locked it. They must have been given
orders not to speak to me, because I couldn’t ever get either of them to say a
word.

Sitting there in the
dark, I mostly thought about Morgan. I’d promised her that I’d come right back
to the hayloft, but I’d never returned. I wondered if she was still waiting
there or if someone had found her. I tried not to think about what Jason had
said about a “mass grave,” or what the workers who had locked us into the
coffin had said. It sounded like they’d been burying other people who’d cried
out from inside. A couple of times I tried calling out to Bryce as loud as I
could, but I never heard any response.

I started fantasizing
that the next time someone opened the cargo door, it would be Ian. But, of
course, it never was.

* * *

The
fifth time the door rolled up, not only was it not Ian, but it wasn’t two men
with food, either. It was Jason.

“We’re official!” He
ducked into the cargo space and flashed me a bright grin. He was in the same
combat gear as before. “We got warrants now! And our people sure do want to
talk to
you
.”

He grabbed me by the
handcuffs and painfully threw me into the military vehicle he’d been driving
before. Bryce was in the backseat. He tried to give me an embrace, relieved to
see me, but his handcuffs got in the way. He eyed the armed squad
warily—the same men as before—and settled for putting his hand on
my knee and squeezing it.

Shawn sat still as
stone in the front seat. He didn’t even turn around to look at me.

* * *

Downtown
Muldoon was completely deserted.

When Jason drove
through on the highway, there were cars parked everywhere, but all of them had
been abandoned. I didn’t see a soul. Another military vehicle passed going in
the opposite direction, but that was it. The carnival rides, still standing at
the fairgrounds, were darkly motionless. The diner and supermarket were closed.
The post office had a notice posted on its door, but I couldn’t see what it
said. Some of the shops still had their “
OPEN
” signs up, but they
were obviously totally empty. Only the pharmacy’s lights were on, and some kind
of electronic steel door had been put up at its entrance.

One of the men raised
his rifle as we approached the Burger Shack.

“Sergeant, we got
something.”

“I see it.” Jason
slowed. “Good fucking eyes, Corporal!”

Shawn gestured at
Bryce and me. “Let’s just get these two to the center,” he said to Jason. “We
don’t have enough room. Let’s skip this one.”

Jason shook his head.
“We won’t
need
room.”

He pulled into the
Burger Shack drive-through lane. An empty car was parked at the order kiosk.

Even after being
locked inside a coffin and then a U-Haul, I was feeling constricted in the
handcuffs. I worried that if something happened, I wouldn’t be able to move or
defend myself. I glanced at Bryce, but he shook his head and shrugged
helplessly.

One of the men pointed
his gun through the window at the parked car. “Right there.”

I couldn’t tell what
they were looking at. Then I noticed that the car was moving very slightly. It
was rocking back and forth.

“Jesus fucking
Christ,” another of rangers whispered, disgusted. “They’re in there all right.”

Two of the men stayed
to guard Bryce and me while the rest got out of the vehicle. Jason, Shawn, and
another ranger, the corporal, approached the car. I wasn’t sure what I was
about to see—something told me I’d regret watching it, but I couldn’t
look away.

The corporal
positioned himself at one side of the car, and Jason, the other.

Jason gave a silent
count. Then they whipped open one door each.

Someone screamed.

Jason dragged a girl
from the car by her ankle, and the corporal dragged out another person—a
guy—by the collar.

“Wait! Wait!” the guy
shouted, covering his head with his arms. “We were just sleeping!”

I recognized him. I’d
gone to high school with him. He’d been a couple of years ahead of me. His name
was…Patrick something. He’d played something like the trombone in the band, and
now he stocked shelves at the supermarket. He was wearing a green T-shirt and
his pants were unbuttoned.

“Like
hell
you were sleeping,” Jason said.

Jason struggled with
the girl, who was pulling her skirt down from around her waist and trying to
stand up. He put his knee on her chest, pinning her to the pavement. She
slapped at his knee, flinging her bleached hair, but otherwise stayed silent.

“Get off her!” Patrick
yelled, his voice cracking. He struggled as the corporal pinned him against the
car’s trunk.