TORMENT (37 page)

“Put this on,” Mia said.

The woman took the shirt, put it on and buttoned it up. “Aren’t you all
polite.
”

With Melissa clothed, her strangeness diminished a little and the group relaxed. Austin lowered his weapon, but didn’t holster it.

“What are you doing here?” Mia asked.

Melissa looked around as though seeing the woods for the first time. She shrugged. “Out for a walk, I guess.”

“How did you survive?” Austin asked.

“Survive what?”

Austin’s grip on his weapon tightened.

Mia placed a hand on his arm. “Maybe she’s in shock.”

“What do you do for work?” Mia asked.

“Department store.
I run the register. We just got some of them new color TVs in.”

“
Color
TVs?” Garbarino said.

The woman’s eyes widened. “Don’t tell me you haven’t seen them yet.”

Austin pointed beyond the woman. “Can you go wait over there while we talk?”

“Sure thing,” the woman said. She turned and walked away.

“Wait,” Mia said.

The woman stopped.

Austin gave her a look that asked what she was doing.

“Why don’t you sit right there,” Mia said.

The woman sat.
“Whatever you say.”

Mia drew her gun and walked toward her.

“What are you doing?” Garbarino
asked,
his voice full of concern.

“She’s not like the others,” Mia said. “But she’s one of them.”

As Mia stopped behind the woman, Austin asked. “How do you know?”

Mia raised the gun and placed the barrel of it against the woman’s head. “Do you know what I’m holding?”

“A gun,” the woman replied.

“You know what it can do?”

The woman’s head bumped against the barrel as she nodded. If Mia had her finger on the trigger it might have gone off.

“It doesn’t concern you?
Me having a gun against your head?”

The woman turned around, all smiles, so that the gun was now against your forehead. “Course not, darling. I trust you.”

“You just met me,” Mia said.

“You seem nice enough.”

“I have a gun to your head.”

“You have kind eyes.”

“I’m going to fucking blow your brains out.”

Without a moment’s pause, the woman said, “I trust you.”

Mia stepped back and put her weapon away.

“Weird,” Garbarino said. “She’s cursed with blind trust?”

“The world being how it is,” Austin said, “that’s probably not a good thing. Given the dry blood on her body, I’d say she’s already trusted the wrong people more than once already.”

A question snuck into Mia’s thoughts. Pastor Billy, Henry Masters and the serial killer had all become the extreme opposite of what they had been before, perhaps even what they had detested. What could make a woman trust complete strangers, or even people that wanted to tear her to pieces? “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” Mia asked.

Melissa looked at her. “What do you mean?”

“You’re greatest...sin. What is it?”

“That’s simple, hon.” The woman shifted, getting comfortable as she stared off into the distance, remembering her previous life. “I was thirty two. My husband was fifty five. He robbed the cradle. Everyone said so, even though I was a grown woman. But I was really the one robbing him.”

“You’re a thief?” Garbarino asked.

“Heaven’s no. He was rich. And I spent his money on whatever tickled my fancy. But he got what he wanted, too. She motioned to her body. I was his whenever he wanted. I did whatever he wanted.
Even pretended to like it.
But I’m a woman, you know? Despite his voracious appetite for sex, he wasn’t fulfilling my needs.”

Mia tensed. She didn’t like the story’s direction.

“Our staff was mostly women, but there was a young man—well, my age. He worked in the kitchen.” Her body shivered at the memory. “My husband found us in the pantry. I was leaned over a hutch, dress hiked up. He’d come home early. Heard me shouting and thought I was being hurt. We never heard him come into the kitchen and I’m not sure how long he watched. But when I...you know...he took a knife, placed it over his heart and shoved it in. Turns out the old man actually loved me.”

Mia took a step back and sat down. Her head spun and her stomach twisted.
This is my fate
, she thought.
This is what I’ll become if I die...when I die
.

A hand on her shoulder drew her wet eyes up. “You okay?” Garbarino asked.

Mia barely heard the question as she fought the urge to vomit. Her body shook.

Melissa stood up, excited, and unfazed by her story or Mia’s reaction to it. “Do you hear that?”

The group fell silent. Distinct voices reached them, despairing, horrified voices. The horde was closing in.

Melissa hopped up and down, clapping her hands. “More friends!” she said and then shouted, “Over here! We’re over here!”

44

“Quiet!” Austin hissed.

Melissa smiled and said, “Okey-doke, artichoke.”

But it was too late. The voices had grown louder in response to the woman’s shout. They were coming.

A woman’s voice reached them from the distance. “I’m so sorry!”

Melissa waved her hand toward the voice. “Pish! Get on up here and—”

Austin clapped his hand around the woman’s mouth. She laughed. “We’re going to play hide and seek,” he said.

Melissa gave a vigorous nod.

“You know how to play right?”

She continued nodding.

“Stay as quiet as possible. Our friends are going to try to find us. But we have to stay quiet. Okay?”

She nodded six more times and then stopped. Austin removed his hand. The voices grew louder.

“We gotta go,” Garbarino said.

“Is there a place we can hide?” Austin asked Melissa.

She pointed to the concealed foundation.
“Down there worked great!”

“Someplace further away,” Austin said. He’d considered returning to the hidden foundation, but if they were found, they’d be trapped. And while Melissa trusted all of them implicitly, he couldn’t trust that she’d stay quiet. Besides, with so many people tracking them, one of them would surely stumble across their hiding spot.
“Someplace with lots of hiding spots.”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I grew up near here.
In a city.
Lots of places to hide.”

The voices were getting loud, fast. Henry Masters hadn’t announced his presence yet, but none of them doubted he was out there, hunting them.

“Good enough,” Austin said. “Can you take us there?”

“This way.”
To Austin’s relief she headed away from the voices. He followed her.

Garbarino took Mia’s arm and tried pulling her up. But she didn’t want to stand. Her will to live had been decimated by Elizabeth’s death. She’d been acting on survival instincts since then. But now, knowing what she would become upon her death, all hope had left her. Her betrayal of Matt had cursed her to a life of perpetual violence. She saw herself wandering the woods naked, trusting everyone she came across, murdered, mutilated and raped for eternity.

Her body sagged in defeat, resigned to let the violence begin shortly. She deserved it.

“Get up,” Garbarino said. “They’re coming.”

“Let them come,” Mia said.

Garbarino got down close to Mia’s ear. “Look, I get it. You fucked around on somebody and think you’re going to end up like her. But we’ve all done bad things in our lives. Collins sure as shit did.
Even the priest.
Right now we’re still alive and from where I’m sitting that means we have a chance to turn things around.”

“I don’t deserve it.”

“None of us do,” he said. “But some of us, for some reason, escape from this place and don’t come back.”

“Get moving!” Austin whispered back to them. Melissa wasn’t stopping and he wasn’t about to lose track of her.

“The way I see it,” Garbarino said, “is that the people who don’t come back go someplace else. If that’s true, we’ll see the people we lost.”

“How can you be sure? My sister is probably here.
My parents.
Matt. What if they’re all here?”

He took her chin and turned her face toward his. “There’s no way to know about any of them, but I can say for certain that Elizabeth is not here. And wherever she is, she wants you to join her.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

“Then we die and stay dead. Cease to exist. That’s still better than living here.”

“Mark knew,” she said.

The voices grew louder still. Garbarino looked into the woods. He couldn’t see anyone yet, but he knew they were out there. He looked for Austin and found him nearly one hundred yards away, waving them on. He’d be out of view soon. “Knew what?” he asked.

“That we weren’t ready.
That we would stay here.”
She looked at the ground. “And that he wouldn’t. He knew where we were. I figured it out this morning.
Before I woke up.”

Garbarino actually smiled. “I thought you were smarter than that.”

“What?” she looked up at him, confusion in her eyes.

“I figured it out two days ago.” He picked her up and was relieved to find Mia helping this time. “We’re in Hell.”

“On Earth.
But still alive.”

He looked beyond her for any sign of the killers. He still couldn’t see anyone, but heard the crack of branches beneath their feet. “And for some reason, we’ve been given a second chance to make things right.”

“I’m not sure that’s possible. Not after what I did.”

“A question to be answered another day,” Garbarino said. He ducked low and pulled her down. The top of someone’s head was moving beyond a distant ridge. “And to answer it, we need to live. Are you with me?”

“Let’s go,” she said.

The pair hurried away, keeping low to the ground. But Austin was no longer in sight. Garbarino led them toward where he’d last seen Austin, but there was no way to know if Melissa had kept the same course. Once they were positive they were out of sight of the mob, they sprinted through the woods.

Three hundred feet later, they stopped. There was no sign of Austin or Melissa. “Dammit,” Garbarino said.

“I’m sorry,” Mia said.

Garbarino shot her a stern look. “Don’t say that.”