Heroes Read online

  The moment the group of them set foot on the front lawn, the girls began sprinting in a wild panic towards the woods, like a herd of deer, exposed, vulnerable, scared, and desperately trying to make it to safe cover.

  “Shit,” Hunter said under her breath, as she locked eyes with Ash.

  In an instant, both of them were sprinting, as well. They were rounding up the girls, grabbing them, and aiming them towards a wide path at the mouth of the woods that would lead to the car, a shy mile in.

  It turned into a bit of a bottleneck at the path, but at least the girls had been rounded and hadn’t made a sound.

  “Take them to the car,” whispered Hunter.

  Ash stopped, halting the girls at his heels. “You’re coming, Hunter. That was the plan.”

  “No,” she said. “My sister’s still there. I have to find her.”

  “We’ll find her together—after we get the girls to the car.”

  Hunter tossed the disposable phone to Ash. “Call Sarah when you get a safe distance into the woods. Have her come. Tell her I’ll be in the barn. I have a feeling.”

  By the time Ash caught the cell phone and looked back up, Hunter was gone.

  * * *

  There was an edge of darkness to the barn that went beyond the mere lack of light caused by forest shadows. It was as though the barn had been swallowed in evil. The thoughts that were surfacing in Hunter’s mind just by looking at the barn should’ve been enough to make her turn back, join Ash, and wait for Sarah; but, Hunter needed to do this. She needed to do this alone.

  It was quiet still, way too quiet. The entire ambush had been too quiet, too smooth. Where was he? Hunter looked around, turning slowly three-hundred-sixty-degrees, trying to spot Grizzly hiding somewhere, watching her and smiling most likely.

  With the girls free, and Ash away safe as well, Hunter was free to use her gun. She adjusted where it lay between the waist of her jeans and her bare skin at the small of her back. It was fully loaded. She knew exactly how many rounds she had. If the mood struck her, she would empty all of them into her father. She didn’t just want to kill him. She wanted to massacre him beyond recognition. She wanted to look down at his dead body when all was said and done and see nothing but a bloody mound of flesh pulp. Only then would she feel safe in the world.

  Hunter rolled the barn door sideways just enough to slip inside.

  What struck her first was the smell—straw and bleach and the tang punch of iron. She had forgotten how distinct the scent of the barn was. Nothing else compared. In an instant, her mind became flooded with images and memories that had been so deeply buried they almost seemed more foreign than familiar. It was amazing how a smell could bring so much back; but, these were not things she wanted brought back.

  Then, Hunter noticed a red light, a dot really, no bigger than a pea. She approached it, her eyes adjusting to the lack of light. She realized the red dot was coming from a video camera. It was set atop a tripod. The camera was on standby, ready and waiting to record. It had to be nearly 4:00 a.m. Something was about to go down.

  “Hello?”

  The voice had come from the upper level. A girl’s voice. Hunter paced forward, looking up, trying to get the right angle to see the ledge where the voice had come from.

  “Who’s there?” said the voice again.

  Hunter paused, holding her breath. Again, too easy. This was too easy. It was also the perfect location for an ambush, the battleground her father might have chosen.

  “How many of you are up there?” Hunter whispered.

  “Just me,” said the girl. “Who are you? How did you get out of the basement?”

  Hunter didn’t respond to that. At least the girl assumed that Hunter was one of them, perhaps escaped from the bunks in the farmhouse basement.

  “Where’s Grizzly?” asked Hunter.

  She was met with only silence.

  “I can’t help you unless I know where he is, otherwise the risk is too great,” Hunter went on, hoping to coax the young girl into telling her everything she knows.

  “He’s not here,” said the girl. “I don’t know where he is.”

  “When was he here last?”

  “I don’t remember,” said the girl.

  “Try.”

  Nothing.

  “Who put you up there?” asked Hunter, determined to find the angle that would get this girl talking.

  “He did,” she said.

  “He? Grizzly?”

  “Yes,” said the girl. “Maybe an hour ago,” she answered, finally acquiescing.

  Why would Grizzly tie a girl up in the barn in the dead of the night, incidentally moments before Hunter and Ash had arrived?

  This was the trap.

  The girl was the bait.

  Which told Hunter two things: The girl up there was her sister. And this was the showdown.

  Chapter Six

  “Blair, it’s me, Hunter.” As soon as she said the words, Hunter’s heart began pounding in her chest. Bracing herself for any number of reactions, she gazed up into the darkness and breathed in the thick bleach fumes mixed with dust from the straw and hay.

  “Really? Hunter, that’s you?” said Blair after a moment’s hesitation.

  “Yeah, are you Ok?” Hunter crossed through the back of the barn as though her body remembered how to get to the upper level even before her brain did. She held on to a rung of the ladder. The wood felt prickly and dry. She hoped it wasn’t too brittle to hold her, as she began climbing up.

  “I’m cuffed,” said Blair.

  “Is there a keyhole on the cuffs?” asked Hunter by the time she got to the landing.

  “I don’t know,” Blair answered, after having felt around the cool metal for a keyhole, coming up empty.

  Hunter turned and there she was, Blair, crouched between two bales of hay, just a dark lump. Seeing her there, so small, she looked childlike, no different than the last time Hunter had seen her. A wave of remorse flooded through her. She should never have left Blair. It had been a huge mistake. This was not the time to get emotional, but Hunter couldn’t help it. The tears had already begun to fall.

  Hunter took a moment, hiding in the shadows where she knew her face wouldn’t be seen by Blair, and let her silent tears fall. No thoughts entered her mind, no worry. She didn’t realize her guard was lowering, that she was becoming human, shifting out of the autopilot kill mode she’d been living in for as long as she could remember. Hunter was so consumed by the guilt and sadness welling up that she didn’t notice Blair lacked emotion, completely. It should have struck her as odd, but it didn’t strike her at all.

  As if a spell was lifting, Hunter dried her eyes and regained her faculties. Her hand seemed to search through her front then back pockets of its own accord until it found a thin metal pick and a few bobby pins.

  She walked over to Blair quickly, pins in hand and slid one of the hay bale’s aside to get a better angle on the handcuffs.

  “Please hurry,” said Blair. “He could come back any minute.”

  Her voice sounded flat to Hunter, like perhaps Blair wasn’t actually concerned. There was no urgency in her words, only the fact of what she was saying.

  Hunter could barely see, but these weren’t handcuffs. They were manacles. It might take some artful patience to pick their locks. Something Ash was infinitely better equipped to accomplish; but, she had to try.

  “Do you know what the video camera is for?” asked Hunter, already knowing the answer, as she worked the locks.

  “Yes,” said Blair.

  “Why is it on standby?” Hunter asked again, anticipating the answer.

  “I don’t know,” said Blair. “Please hurry.”

  “Has he used it on any of the girls? Filmed their deaths?”

  “I really don’t know.”

  “But you’re next. That’s why you’re here, alone, isolated, and chained up, right?” asked Hunter who was beginning to sense Blair was holding back information. “Why did he put yo
u up here?”

  “He wants you dead, Hunter,” Blair blurted out.

  “Do you?” asked Hunter.

  She was met with only silence.

  “Do you also want me dead?” she asked.

  “No,” said Blair finally. “I just want to get out of here.”

  Not a second later the left cuff popped open, and Blair slid her hand out. She laughed a breathy fluttering exhale and shook out her wrist.

  “I think I’ve got the hang of this,” said Hunter, hoping the next one would take less time than the first.

  “Where’s Ash?” asked Blair.

  The question caught Hunter off guard. In so many ways Blair and Ash seemed to be in two different worlds, it was bizarre to think Blair knew anything about him. Also, the casualness of the question and the assumptions it implied, struck Hunter as highly odd. Yet, whatever red flags were raising up inside her, she settled on the fact that Grizzly had hired Ash, so Ash must have come to the farmhouse long ago, and that’s how Blair knew of his existence. That and Blair must have become Grizzly’s confidant to some degree.

  The second cuff popped open.

  “What do you know about Ash?” asked Hunter, getting to her feet and stepping back so that Blair could do the same.

  “What do you mean? The girls know a lot. Everything filters down to us,” she said.

  “What makes you think he’s with me?”

  “Isn’t he? You didn’t kill him in the city.”

  “No, Blair,” she said, piecing together the possibility that she just made a huge mistake. “What makes you think he’s with me here?”

  Suddenly, Blair pulled a knife from the hay bale she had been cuffed beside and pointed its blade at Hunter.

  “Because I watched you come with him across the field,” she said in an icy tone.

  In an instant Hunter drew the gun that had been sitting at the small of her back and aimed it at her younger sister.

  “Blair, you’re confused,” said Hunter in a low calm tone. “It’s not your fault. You’ve been here too long. It’s messed with your head.”

  Blair said nothing, only glared at Hunter with coal black eyes, like a wild animal, head lowered, snarling.

  “Ash and I got all the girls out,” said Hunter. “It’s all over, do you understand? You don’t have to be here anymore. You don’t have to do any of this anymore. We can leave right now.”

  Blair took a step towards Hunter, then another.

  “I will shoot you if you try anything,” said Hunter.

  “No you won’t,” she said.

  Hunter narrowed her gaze on Blair. The shadows across her face, the patches of darkness and gray, caused Blair to look different, foreign. Her face didn’t match the one Hunter remembered, as though the evil that had begun to surface behind her eyes was changing her. This was Hunter’s sister, and yet it wasn’t.

  “I’m not giving up on you, Blair,” she said. “Drop the knife, ok? I know you don’t really want to do this, just like I don’t really want to shoot you. But I will shoot you if you don’t cooperate.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  It was creepy how Blair was repeating herself. Soon, it became an echo, an eerie loop spoken lowly under the girl’s breath. No you won’t, no you won’t, no you won’t, as she stalked slowly towards Hunter.

  Hunter backed away maintaining the distance from Blair’s knife until her foot clipped the edge of the landing, her back braced against the railing. Turning her head quickly for a moment, Hunter glanced down at the barn floor twenty feet below. The red glow of the camera’s light still pierced through the darkness. The lens was aimed right at her.

  That’s when Hunter realized the snuff film her father had promised wasn’t intended for Blair or any of the girls. It was meant for Hunter. It had already begun.

  She shifted her gaze back to her sister. Their eyes meeting like iron striking iron. Maybe Blair was too far gone. Maybe she wasn’t. Either way Hunter was beginning to think she would have to shoot her sister, stun her, and carry her against her will through the field and into the woods.

  Hunter cocked the pistol and locked her arms, steadying her aim.

  “You don’t have it in you,” said Blair under her breath. “You never did. You hide. You don’t fight. You run away. You don’t adapt.”

  “You’re a hostage, Blair,” said Hunter through an unexpected burst of tears. “You’re nothing more than a victim. How can you possibly think otherwise?”

  “Hunter, you’re weak.”

  It happened so quickly. It was so familiar, as though she had done it a thousand times, as though she was coming home. As soon as that phrase, uttered by Blair, registered in Hunter’s mind, her vision seemed to soften and darken. The setting around her faded, almost melting away.

  Hunter tried to pinch her eyes closed then open them, but she couldn’t be sure she was moving the lids at all. It was like sliding backwards down a dark tunnel, she could fight it, but for how long? A faint rattling noise caught her attention, and she realized it was the sound of the gun shaking in her hands, the metal bullet vibrating within its chamber. But Hunter couldn’t feel her hands. She had lost sense of the gun in her hands. Didn’t recognize the weight of it, its cool temperature. That’s when her legs turned to rubber, all floaty and strange. She tried clinging to the clip of her breathing, tried pulling herself back to reality by climbing up the rise and fall of each breath.

  “Shoot me if you’re going to shoot me,” said Blair in a deep tone. The demand implied a world of threat. “Or are you weak?”

  Hunter tried to push the words up her throat, but only bile and panic emerged, surging upward to the back of her mouth.

  “I’m going to kill you, Hunter.”

  The statement sliced through Hunter, gutting her with an edge of despair.

  “Unless you kill me,” she went on. “But I don’t think you will. You’re already hiding. So predictable. I don’t know what he sees in you. Grizzly had such high hopes that you were a killer, but you aren’t. You’re a coward. And you’re as good as dead.”

  “I’m not...” Hunter pushed the words passed her teeth, carrying them in the folds of her exhale. She drew in a quick sip then exhaled again, carrying more of what she need to say. “...giving up...on you....”

  “You’re too easy to trigger,” said Blair, as though she was spitting. “You have no value.”

  “I’m not...giving up...on you...” Hunter repeated, as she desperately clenched for the gun she knew was still in her hands, hanging on to reality, praying she wouldn’t slip all the way under, blacking out. Blair was hesitating for a reason, Hunter thought those words like a mantra of hope swirling through her mind. Blair doesn’t want to do this, she thought.

  Ash. He would be coming for her. Hang on.

  Suddenly, a sharp pressure jabbed through Hunter’s left shoulder. Excruciating pain seared down her arm and across her chest. The sensation was all consuming. She had been stabbed. Hunter knew Blair would stab the knife blade into her again, piercing her once more, if she didn’t act fast.

  In the blink of an eye, Hunter came to. Blair stood before her, her hand cocked back, knife held tightly there, ready to strike another blow.

  Hunter lunged at her sister, seizing her, and grasping her wrist to prevent Blair from swinging the blade.

  It had been the pain that brought her back. As Hunter wrestled her sister to the ground, punching her face and stomach, she knew she had to make a decision. Would she need to kill Blair? Was Blair too far gone?

  Hunter realized the gun was no longer in her grasp.

  Her left arm was blood soaked and on fire with pain.

  Blair’s fist struck against Hunter’s jaw, jarring her from clear thinking.

  Where the fuck was Ash?

  Where the fuck was the gun?

  Without warning, Blair got another punch in, this time striking Hunter’s cheekbone, which immediately flared with white-hot pain.

  She didn’t want to have to h
urt her sister. And she thought she could never kill her, but Blair was dead set on taking her out.

  Hunter grasped both hands around Blair’s neck and began squeezing. Tears streamed down her eyes. She didn’t want to do this.

  Blair choked but kept swinging and punching Hunter—though feebly—in the face, left, right, left, right. The swings became slower and slower the tighter Hunter squeezed, but they kept coming none-the-less.

  Then, she spotted the gun. It was across the floor. The barrel dangled over the ledge.

  Hunter jumped up and dove for the gun, just as Blair, released from her sister’s weight, scrambled to find her knife.

  Hunter wrapped her hand around the gun and turned back to her sister.

  She was at Blair’s back. For a moment, she aimed the gun at the back of Blair’s head, watching her sister scramble around on her hands and knees, grunting in desperate search for her weapon.

  “I’m not giving up on you,” said Hunter one last time.

  And just as Blair was turning to face her sister, Hunter struck the top of Blair’s head hard with the butt of the gun, pistol-whipping her.

  She fell to the ground unconscious.

  Hunter stepped back, breathing heavily, as blood dripped from her fingertips. She was feeling the full swell of pain in her shoulder. She might need medical attention.

  But first she had to get Blair out of here.

  Seriously, where the fuck was Ash?

  * * *

  “Don’t try to be a hero,” said Grizzly, as he aimed a rifle at Ash, who in turn aimed his gun at Grizzly.

  Behind Grizzly were a number of monitors. Each played, in grainy pixelation, the stillness of Blair and Hunter after their fight. It had been horrifying to watch. The dark images of the woman he loved, rolling in and out of view, as she defended herself against Blair.

  Ash had gotten a strange feeling when he had passed the woodshed on his way to the barn. Lights flickered, though subtly, from within, giving away the fact that someone was inside. Though he had entered with caution, gun raised, ready to fire, Grizzly had managed to surprise him. Not by sneaking up on him, it had been the opposite. Grizzly had been sitting in plain view, eyes locked on Ash, gun already raised, yet welcoming Ash inside. He hadn’t seemed interested in hurting Ash or overtaking him in any way. In fact, Grizzly had seemed more interested in reading Ash like a chess player reads a chessboard.