Once Upon a Halloween (19 page)

    "Okay," Mandy said. "I'll go along with you."

    "Yes!" Bret blurted.

    "Not you."

    His mouth dropped open. He looked betrayed. "I am, too."

    "It's too dangerous."

    But where
isn't
dangerous? she wondered. Where can I leave him? Not
here.

    "You can't leave him here," Hunter said, almost as if reading her mind. "Even if the thing from upstairs doesn't bother him, more people like Bryce and Simone might show up."

    Take him home and leave him with Mom?

    Try that, she thought, and neither of us will be going on any rescue tonight.

    "If we keep him with us," Rhonda said, "at least we'll know where he is and be able to watch out for him."

    Hunter began, "We could make him wait..."

    "WHAT'S GOING ON?" Charles called. "COME OUT HERE!"

    "Just a second!" Rhonda shouted to him.

    To Bret, Mandy said, "I guess you can come with us, but you've gotta promise to do whatever I say."

    "Okay. I promise."

    "Cross your heart and hope to die?"

    With two quick swipes of his forefinger, he crossed his heart.

    Mandy looked from Rhonda to Hunter. "Okay. Only thing, can we take the same path Dad took? It starts by the dead-end barricade."

    "Charles'll see us if we go out the front," Hunter said.

    "We can go out the back," said Rhonda.

    Hunter led the way. Rhonda followed him, Bret tagging along behind her and Mandy bringing up the rear.

    "We oughta get some knives or something," Bret said. "Me and Mandy. All I got's my slingshot." Reaching back, he patted the slingshot in the seat pocket of his overalls.

    "You don't need a knife," Mandy told him.

    "But if we're gonna..."

    "I'm not going to have you running around with a weapon For Pete's sake, you're eight years old."

    "Eight and a half."

    As they entered the kitchen, Hunter flicked a light on. Looking back, he said, "Maybe
you
should grab a knife or something, Mandy."

    "I'm fine the way I am."

    "You oughta have
something,"
Rhonda said.

    "If Bret and I are supposed to be your prisoners, we shouldn't go walking in with weapons."

    Bret scowled over his shoulder at her. "If you don't want a knife,
I'll
take one."

    "No you won't."

    "Mannnndyyy."

    "Let's just keep going, Hunter," she said.

    He led them to the rear of the kitchen, then used his free hand to open the back door.

    The door had a broken window. "This is how they got in," Hunter said. Shards of glass crunched under his shoes as he walked through the doorway.

    From far away, Charles's faint but angry voice called out, "WHAT'RE YOU
DOING
IN THERE? DAMN IT, GET OUT HERE! I MEAN IT! THIS ISN'T FUNNY! I'M GETTING SERIOUSLY PISSED AT YOU GUYS!"

    "What about him?" Mandy asked as she followed the others onto the back porch.

    "We can't take him with us," Rhonda said.

    "He'll be fine where he is," said Hunter.

    "I don't know," Mandy said. "Maybe we
should
call him an ambulance."

    "He's an ambulance," said Bret, and laughed.

    

    

    They sat quietly, back to back, still a few yards away from the others. Ever since Fain's departure with Eleanor, nobody had spoken to them or bothered them.

    The three remaining guards - Royce and the two others - stayed together near the group of kids. The kids were kneeling or sitting on the ground, some of them quietly weeping, others whispering among themselves, but nobody causing trouble. Whatever else might've happened to them earlier, they'd obviously seen Betsy's attempted escape and they' d watched Laura get whipped. Enough to scare any but the most reckless kid into behaving.

    "How you doing?" Shannon whispered.

    "All things considered... not so great." Laura realized, however, that the fiery pains from the whipping had subsided. "I'm a little better," she admitted.

    "Good. You feel like some action?"

    "You're kidding."

    "I don't mean right now."

    "What're you thinking of?"

    "They aren't paying much attention to us."

    "Why should they? We can't go anywhere."

    "We might."

    "Rolling?"

    "Do you think you can stand up?"

    Though ropes still bound them tightly arm to arm and back to back, nobody had retied their legs. From their waists down, they were free.

    Laura supposed it might be possible to rise if she braced herself against Shannon's back and pushed upward with her legs. "Maybe. Then what? Sidestep vigorously?"

    Shannon laughed. She did it quietly, but Laura felt the shaking of her back.

    "Not exactly," Shannon whispered. "But maybe I can run."

    "What about me?"

    "You come along for the ride."

    "On your back?"

    "That's the idea."

    "We might do better rolling."

    "What I was thinking, we sit tight for now. Sooner or later, stuff s gonna happen. There'll be a distraction. Like when Eleanor brought the girl in. Or maybe a kid'll act up. We wait for something like that, then get up and make a break for it. Go for the embankment, maybe."

    "You running, me on your back?"

    "Right."

    "You might be big and strong, but you're not
that
big and strong."

    "I can do it."

    "They'll chase us down in five seconds."

    "Maybe, maybe not. Anyway, it'd beat just sitting here and letting them butcher us."

    "I guess."

    "And who knows, if we get one or two of these creeps chasing after us, maybe some of the kids'll have a chance to get away."

    "I guess it's worth a try," she said.

    The hell it is, she thought. We won't get away. Neither will any of the kids. Two guards will stay to make sure none of them make a break. Just one'll come after us. Probably Royce. He'll catch us. before we get anywhere near the embankment, and he'll take us down hard. And then he'll give us a little payback for causing trouble.

    "We'll probably end up getting creamed," Shannon said, as if she knew what Laura was thinking.

    "Probably."

    "What I wouldn't give to have my Sig Sauer about now..."

    "That'd be nice," Laura said.

    "Even nicer if I'd had it on me when those three fucks broke into the house."

    "Think you could've gotten all three?"

    "No sweat. Double-tap each of 'em."

    "Maybe it's harder than shooting cans."

    "Gotta be easier. People are bigger."

    This time, Laura laughed softly. "Anyway," she said, "I guess it's water under the bridge."

    "God, if I had it to do over again..."

    "That'd be nice. Too bad life doesn't work that way."

    "It oughta. You oughta get a second chance sometimes."

    "Sometimes, maybe you do. But not this time."

    "I'd give my left nut for a pistol right now."

    Laura laughed again. "That's safe."

    "I was speaking figuratively."

    "I figured."

    "Is there any such thing as a Halloween wish?" Shannon asked.

    "I've never heard of one. You can wish upon the first star you see at night."

    "A little late for that."

    A little late for anything, thought Laura

    "Just the same," Shannon said, "I think I'll wish for a firearm It doesn't have to be my wonderful little.380 Sig. Any gun will do."

    "Oh, sure," Laura said.

    "Yeah, okay. If anyone out there is interested in granting my wish, please give me a decent caliber. Something bigger than a.22 or a.25... though they'll do in a pinch. And please give me as many rounds as possible. A revolver might not quite do the trick, if you know what I mean. On the other hand, much as I would love an assault rifle or shotgun, that sort of thing wouldn't be practical under the circumstances. So it should be a handgun, please. If possible."

    "What's going on over there?" Royce called.

    "Nothing," Shannon said.

    "Knock off the talking."

    "Yes, sir," Shannon said.

    "Gettin' smart?"

    "No, sir," Shannon said.

    "Want me to come over there?"

    "Would you happen to have a handgun we might borrow for a minute?"

    Royce laughed. "Wanta commit suicide?"

    "Something like that."

    "Sorry. Fresh outa guns. But don't worry, we'll put ya outa yer misery pretty soon."

    "Thank you, sir."

    Shannon waited for Royce to turn away and say something to one of the other guards. Then she whispered, "Well, it was worth a try."

    "Oh, of course," Laura said.

    "Couldn't hurt to ask. You know what they say. 'God helps those who help themselves.' "

    

    

    "Shouldn't we be going first?" Mandy asked.

    Hunter, leading the way along the forest path with Rhonda by his side, stopped and turned around.

    "If we're pretending to be your prisoners..."

    "Yeah," Bret said. "We oughta go first."

    "That's a good point," Rhonda said.

    "It's more dangerous in front," Hunter said. "Somebody might come along."

    "It doesn't look right if we're following you. If we really were your prisoners, it'd be too easy for us to get away."

    "The way it
should
be done," said Rhonda, "is one of us takes the lead and one of us takes the rear. With the prisoners in-between."

    "I don't know," Hunter muttered. He liked having Rhonda walk beside him. She was one of the most popular girls in school and every guy who saw her probably dreamed of being with her...
he
certainly had. He'd gone to football and basketball games for no other reason than to watch her prance and twirl and leap with the cheerleader squad. But he'd never spoken to her before tonight. Now, they were not only talking to each other but were comrades in arms.

    She
undressed
in front of me...

    He'd turned his back and hadn't watched, but she'd
done
it, taken off all her clothes in the same room with him. And he'd taken off his in front of her.

    Afterward, as they left the house and hurried across the back yard to the woods and began hiking up the path, he'd hardly been able to take his mind off the fact that she was naked underneath her robe.

    Rhonda Gale herself.

    They'd talked quietly as they walked through the woods. Sometimes they'd bumped against each other and a couple of times she'd stumbled and Hunter'd saved her from falling. It had been like something out of a dream.

    This whole night's been incredible, he thought.

    Horrible in some ways, wonderful in others.

    "I'll take up the rear," Rhonda said. She patted him on the upper arm, then stepped around Mandy and Bret.

    "If we're gonna do it this way," Hunter said, "let's at least stay close together."

    He resumed walking. Instead of Rhonda by his side, Mandy was a stride behind him. It wasn't the same.

    Better this way, he told himself. Rhonda was too distracting. I shouldn't be thinking about girls at all, not with everything that's going on. People dead all over the place. Maybe some of
us
dead before too much longer.

    Besides, what about Connie?

    
She might already be dead.

    Dead or not, she seemed like the distant past after all he'd seen and done tonight with Shannon and Laura, with Eleanor, with Simone...
especially Simone...
and Rhonda. Even Mandy seemed more real and vibrant to him than Connie.

    Mandy's just a kid, he reminded himself. She might be cute, but she's too young.

    Kind of sexy in a way, but...

    Stop it, he told himself.

    "Hunter?" Mandy quickened her pace and came up beside him.

    "Yeah?"

    "I've been thinking maybe this prisoner thing isn't such a hot idea."

    "It'll be a good way to get in close."

    "I don't
want
Bret to get in close. I think if we find the place where they've got everyone, we should maybe leave Bret out of it, He can hide when we go in. And then he can run away if things don't go right."

    "Things'll go fine," Hunter said.

    "I doubt it."

    "Then why are you coming?"

    "Need to find my dad. And Phyllis, I guess."

    "You don't sound too sure about Phyllis."

    "She can be a pain in the keester. She's my best friend, though."

    "Your best friend is a pain in the keester?"

    "Sure."

    "Sounds like you need a new best friend."

    "Nobody's perfect," Mandy said.

    "That's for sure."

    "Hey, can I ask you something?"

    "Sure."

    "That woman back at the house? That dead woman?"

    A sudden rush of heat made him feel sick. "Simone?"

    "You didn't
... do
anything to her, did you?"

    "I killed her."

    "She had all these... handprints and things all over her. Like someone had... you know, fooled around with her."