So I wait. I hold myself still beside the hut’s two steps before the front door until my thighs tremble and my knees scream from crouching.
Only once the native sounds of the forest come back to life and the hulking form disappears over the ridgeline, do I let myself stretch out my aching joints.
The coast is clear.
I haul myself up the stairs, boots slipping against the grimy planks mottled with rot, before I crash against the weather-worn door. The knob jiggles against my forceful wrench to move the thing in between the man I’m desperate to place in my sights and me. The latch gives easily, and I shove it open.
The smell is the first thing that hits me.
Rotted dampness and the sour stink of something left too long in its own filth. It crawls up my nose, sears down my throat, sinks into my clothes. My stomach heaves, the contents emptying on the floor at my side. I inch away, wiping the back of my hand across my chapped lips.
From this angle, I can see it’s him. Scott lies right where I saw him through the window. His mountainous frame folded awkwardly in on itself like a marionette abandoned mid-performance. His limbs curl inward as though he’s trying to shield himself, but the posture feels too still, wrong in the worst possible way. His normally sun-kissed skin is pale, the tips of his lips kissed with the faintest blue.
“Scott!” His name rips from my throat on a guttural cry, cracked with a frantic horror that I’m too late.
I drop to my knees at his side, the floor freezing beneath me. The boards ploom with dust and dirt, disturbed in my haste. My hands tremble as I roll him onto his back. Relief stings my eyes when his dark flannel lifts and falls steadily. It might be shallow, but it’s there.
He’s alive.
“Wake up! Please, for the love of God, wake the fuck up!” My voice trembles as I shake him hard, his head lolling uselessly against my assault. But my efforts to rouse him do nothing.
I pull off my thick gloves and pinch his arm until my nails bite through the fabric of his sleeve into his skin. No flinch. I slap his face, again and again, the sound an echoing crack against the suffocating silence. Yet, he doesn’t so much as groan.
Dread sinks low in my gut.
Why won’t you wake up? How could you leave me?
My gaze bounces around the hut like a trapped bug under a glass, searching for a way out. It’s filthy and suffocatingly small. Nothing like my family’s cabin, I wish I could teleport us back to.
A sagging naked mattress slumps in one corner. A rusted spring poking through the top, like a zombie’s hand through a freshly dug grave. A tiny table leans beside it, warped by the wet, plentiful this time of year. On top sits a glass of liquid, tilting to the side, half-full and cloudy with soot. An acrid smell radiates from it. The very air around the hut seems to be spoiled by whatever it is.
I don’t care.
Pulling my sweater up to cover my nose, I scramble across the short distance and grab it. The grimy condensation is slick beneath my fingers. I don’t wait. I hurl the liquid onto his face. The splash only intensifies the revolting stench, and my stomach roils again, threatening another spill. I swallow it back, watching the droplets roll down his temple, soak into his hair, slide along the curve of his bearded cheeks.
For a heartbeat, the world stills with my next breath as I wait for his reaction, but nothing happens.
“Come on, you asshole. Wake up before they come back.”
But he doesn’t. He doesn’t stir, doesn’t groan, doesn’t so much as twitch beneath the revolting mucousy liquid.
Why won’t he wake up!?
For a long, awful minute, I think he’s gone. Here in breath only. That there’s no hope of waking him and getting us out of here. That I’ll have to leave him here and head out on my own, wandering through the woods until I find my way through, or… or they find me. Whatever they did to him might have caused too much damage to let him come back to me.
My lungs seize with the unexpected emotion that I’ll never see those studying eyes on me again, or his lips tick up when I make a bratty comment, and I slam both palms flat against his chest. They fall again and again, until tears stain my cheeks and I can’t see past my drowning lashes.
Any last ounce of energy I have seeps from my limbs, and I collapse on top of his chest. It rises and falls at a steady pace, the only clue he’s not dead. My eyes grow heavy, and I decide that lying here just a little bit longer with him is worth the potential danger.
But my brain won’t quiet. My mind won’t let me give in to my body’s desire to give up.
Panic spikes and spirals wildly in my skull. Is this just an injury? Or maybe they drugged him? Could they have the type of drugs needed to do this to a person, or do they know a way to formulate some poison that hides plentiful in the forest if you know what to look for?
The possibilities multiply too fast, each one worse than the last. I don’t want it to, but my mind paints vivid pictures anyway. Scott overpowered in the front yard, then drugged orbludgeoned over the head, and forcefully dragged here. It’s inconceivable, but I can’t deny the proof lying motionless before me.
“Don’t you leave me,” my trembling whisper is fierce under its shaky delivery. “Don’t you fucking leave me here alone.”
That’s when I hear it.
