CHAPTER TEN

The next night I lay in bed wide-awake, the clock on my bedside table taunting a bold 3 AM. Guilt about everything swirled inside me: my Complement, my future, Zombie Zone Guy and most importantly the blasted rock. I could only wish for rain to wash away the incriminating charcoal words we’d written. The chances he’d actually find it were slim to none and we both knew it. Even still, Elle had spent the entire day at Landon’s watching the feeds to be sure and I wanted nothing to do with him or his place, especially after his insinuations I was good for him.

The most astounding part though was that my DOD had increased in time—to seventy years. Before, I would have been elated. Now, after the delightful talk with my Complement, I was depressed. Had the secret all along been to remain apathetic? Should I have not worried about how my decisions affected things?

The wind gently tugged the strings of my neighbor Mrs. Polnachek’s chimes hanging from her veranda and the soft sound fluttered through my opened window. I closed my eyes, feeling the lull of sleep finally take ahold when Roofus began to bark, then growl.

“Dang dog,” I mumbled, pulling the pillow over my head.

After he didn’t stop, I sat up in bed and peered out the window ready to yell at him. To my surprise, someone in a full length coat stood in the shadows of her yard. Roofus, now silent, lay at his feet, sprawled in an unnatural position. A gasp escaped my lips. The stranger’s head swung upward to my two story window. I bounced backward and leapt off my bed to alert my parents, smacking directly into something large and hairy.

A shriek burst from my lips a moment too late. One hand wove over my mouth while the other secured my waist, lifting me off the ground. I thrashed and kicked, holding onto the wall like a cat refusing to be bathed. This thing, whatever it was, wouldn’t take me without a fight.

Effortlessly, the creature strolled downstairs and out the opened front door. It placed me on my feet directly in front of the stranger: Roofus’ murderer.

My body trembled as I dared to look at him. His hood shrouded his eyes and left only his thinned lips showing. He clapped the creature on the arm, as if in thanks, and turned to leave. My feet lifted off the ground again, but this time courage sprang inside me. I reared my foot back and smashed the thing in the shins. It yelped in pain, but didn’t let go.

With a growl, the stranger looped a rope around my ankles and tied them together. I took advantage while he was distracted and slid my wrists together. With a quick prayer, I pressed the emergency button on my DOD.

“What’s your emergency?” the computer generated voice asked.

Relief and terror flooded me. Landon promised to be watching. He’d see my elevated heart rate and come to my rescue, since yelling with the hairy beast’s hand over my mouth wasn’t happening.

“What the—?” The stranger grabbed my arm. Red numerals counted down again—ten minutes left.

Fear overtook me as my suspicions were confirmed. He was going to kill me like he killed the dog. I arched my back and screamed under the creature’s hand. The stranger slid my DOD off my wrist and threw it to the ground. In slow motion, I watched him grind the thing that had guided every decision I’d made (since the age of six) into splintery pieces with the heel of his boot. I wanted to cry.

Then sirens erupted all around us.

I bit the beast’s hand and screamed. “Landon!”

The stranger whipped his head around. He pulled something from his backpack. “Hold her.”

The beast secured my head while the stranger tied a gag around my mouth. My wrists were next, then I was plunged into darkness under a sack.

I braced for the pain, for however he’d kill me. Instead, my body flew upward and came to rest on the creatures shoulder. Then the thing took off like a bucking bronco. Trapped in its hold, I screamed into my gag and clung onto its furry back. I quickly lost my breath and focused instead on tightening my stomach muscles with each jarring impact. The bag made breathing increasingly difficult.

Why were they waiting to kill me? I braced for the worst when our trajectory changed and we ascended downward. Brush scratched against my arms and hands. I tried to kick, only to feel the creature’s hands tighten around my thighs harder. As the sirens lessened, the soft footfalls and labored breaths of the creature filled the night. Then things began to click. Elle and I had seen this walking bear on the cameras, though we didn’t want to admit what we suspected it was: Yeti, Sasquatch, Big Foot, you name it. Now I knew they were real. Legend had suggested they’d smelled horrible, but this one didn’t. Did they make a habit of kidnapping people? And since when were they civilized and friends of humans?

Eventually we slowed, then climbed up what felt like a ladder. We had to be at the wall. I thrashed harder. No way were they going to take me into the zombie zone. Was that the stranger’s plan? His sick pleasure? To feed me to zombies?

“Stop that or you’ll fall,” he said from below. A thread of worry tinged his voice. Why?

“Then let me go,” I muffled into the gag.

They ignored me and in an instant, we were on top of something very tall. The wind whipped against my body, the vulnerability was terrorizing. I was deathly afraid of heights—of falling, actually. Then I was tossed into the air and freefalling to my death like my DOD predicted.

One moment of accuracy in the midst of chaos.

There would be no lonely existence for me in the stark white halls of Brighton’s laboratories. No rescue at all. I’d die of a broken back on the floor of the forest, hopefully before the zombies came to dine on my brains.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 600